Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Kier Gaines - Author of It All Starts When You Do | A Therapist Explains Why You’re Still Unhappy After Getting Everything You Wanted

Transcript

Kier Gaines - Author of It All Starts When You Do | A Therapist Explains Why You’re Still Unhappy After Getting Everything You Wanted · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  You've said fatherhood exposes things about you that you don't know about yourself.
• 0:05
  What did it expose about you?
• 0:07
  One thing that fatherhood revealed about me is I don't like being asked to do things.
• 0:11
  I prefer to chill, but the fact that I'm asked and I answer the call and I do it with love and intentionality says that I'm doing it for a reason that's far beyond me.
• 0:20
  Today's guest is Keir Gaines, a licensed therapist, professional speaker, and mental health advocate.
• 0:25
  In this conversation, he explores fatherhood, identity, success, and the pressure to constantly achieve.
• 0:32
  He shares how fatherhood revealed unexpected parts of himself and why success, productivity, and achievement don't always lead to a deeper sense of fulfillment.
• 0:41
  How do we get to the point where one thing is our complete identity, even though we are so much more than that?
• 0:48
  For some people, they achieve the thing and they realize it doesn't really make them feel, I would say a majority of people, they achieve the thing and it doesn't necessarily make them feel better.
• 0:56
  What are people actually doing when they're repeating these positive affirmations every morning?
• 1:01
  My ultimate question is always, where's the substantive value?
• 1:05
  After you finish feeling good, what are you able to do?
• 1:08
  What are you able to reconstruct?
• 1:11
  MyFitnessPal is a success story partner.
• 1:13
  Now there's something that stops a lot of people from doing the one thing that would help them feel better in their day to day.
• 1:20
  Give them more energy, make them sharper, help them sleep better.
• 1:24
  I think we all want these things, right?
• 1:26
  It's tracking your food.
• 1:27
  It's not rocket science, but tracking your food, tracking what goes into your body is the single best way to feel better, to live a better life, to have more energy, to show up,
• 1:40
  better at work, better at home.
• 1:42
  And tracking your food is not weird.
• 1:44
  It's not obsessive.
• 1:45
  It's not something that only fitness influencers do.
• 1:47
  Because when you first hear, I track what I eat, it can sound like somebody who weighs every grain of rice and is panicking about a slice of pizza.
• 1:56
  That's not what this is.
• 1:57
  That's not what I do.
• 1:58
  And I use MyFitnessPal.
• 2:00
  What I do is I log what I eat and it shows me what's going on with my food.
• 2:05
  And there's this misconception that if you log your food, it's gonna take up an hour of your day.
• 2:10
  No, they've nailed it.
• 2:11
  And I've been using for context the MyFitnessPal app for years now.
• 2:14
  It's one of the first tools I've ever used, first apps I've ever used when I was on my own health and wellness journey.
• 2:19
  The reason being is because it's so simple.
• 2:21
  So they have a couple different ways to log food.
• 2:23
  Barcode scanner that handles any packaged products.
• 2:26
  You just scan it, it'll log it.
• 2:28
  They have voice logging.
• 2:29
  So I can say what I ate out loud, they'll log it.
• 2:32
  There's also meal scan where I can point my camera at my plate
• 2:35
  And it figures out exactly what's on my plate.
• 2:37
  And here's where the premium version of MyFitnessPal comes in.
• 2:40
  It breaks down my macros by meal, breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, all separate.
• 2:45
  And that's valuable info because the distribution of my food across my day matters just as much as the total.
• 2:51
  So if most of your protein is at dinner and you're running on coffee and carbs until 2 p.m., well...
• 2:57
  your body is going all morning and most of the afternoon without what it needs.
• 3:01
  So if you feel like garbage around three and four, it's going to show you that.
• 3:04
  So MyFitnessPal gives you meal by meal breakdown.
• 3:08
  And the premium also has a food analysis that shows patterns across the week where you're consistent, where things start to shift when life gets busy.
• 3:15
  So all of a sudden that...
• 3:17
  Mid-afternoon crash is no longer a surprise.
• 3:20
  You understand what you ate and you understand what you feel like garbage, or rather you understand what you didn't eat.
• 3:25
  It also connects with 40 fitness apps and wearables.
• 3:28
  So if you use a smartwatch or a workout app, your nutrition and your training are all in one spot.
• 3:33
  Think about it this way.
• 3:34
  You wouldn't call someone obsessive for checking their bank account, for paying attention to their expenses, for making sure they're not overspending or have all these subscriptions that they're not using if they're trying to save up to purchase a house, right?
• 3:47
  It's smart to have the right data and people that check their bank account, they just want to know what's going on so they can make good decisions.
• 3:54
  This is the same thing.
• 3:54
  It's information about the one thing, food, that affects how you feel more than anything else.
• 3:59
  Because food is a foundation for your energy, for your sleep, for your weight, for your recovery, for your performance at work and at home.
• 4:06
  And you don't have to overhaul how you eat to get value from this.
• 4:10
  This is not about restriction or dieting.
• 4:12
  It's about having information.
• 4:14
  So do yourself a favor, start paying attention to what goes into your body.
• 4:17
  Go to podcasts, podcasts, podcasts, podcasts, and podcasts.
• 4:19
  myfitnesspal.com and use code Scott.
• 4:21
  That's S-C-O-T-T, all uppercase letters for 15% off MyFitnessPal premium.
• 4:26
  One more time, that is podcasts.myfitnesspal.com, code Scott.
• 4:36
  You've said fatherhood exposes things about you that you don't know about yourself.
• 4:41
  That's right.
• 4:42
  What did it expose about you?
• 4:44
  Well, fatherhood forces you, I think parenthood in general, but just through the lived experience of a man, it's just a lot different.
• 4:52
  I think fatherhood is unique because you have this person who you're responsible for.
• 4:59
  And it's this push and pull of making sure you do the right thing to nurture this individual, make sure that they grow into a competent, capable member of society, but also knowing when to step back and allow them to make mistakes, allow them to struggle a little bit so they can be used to adversity and know how to persevere through it.
• 5:18
  And it's a weird yin and yang.
• 5:20
  So one thing the fatherhood revealed about me is I don't like being asked to do things.
• 5:26
  I don't like being in a perfect world.
• 5:28
  I will be completely left alone.
• 5:31
  Don't ask me to do anything.
• 5:32
  And I know somebody out there is going to say, man, that's lazy.
• 5:35
  I will accept that.
• 5:36
  That's fine.
• 5:36
  I know who I am and I embrace it fully.
• 5:39
  But, um,
• 5:41
  I don't like to be asked to do things.
• 5:43
  I prefer to chill.
• 5:44
  But the fact that I'm asked and I answer the call and I do it with love and intentionality says that I'm doing it for a reason that's far beyond me, man.
• 5:52
  So fatherhood showed you what responsibility is and then it made you realize how much you hate it, but you're doing it anyways.
• 6:00
  Yeah, fatherhood more cemented because just the way that I grew up, I had to grow up really fast.
• 6:05
  So I always knew what responsibility was, but fatherhood cemented it in this really unique way that helped me realize, you know, they say that you can't pour from an empty cup.
• 6:17
  Maybe literally you can't, but emotionally we do it every single day.
• 6:20
  And no matter how empty my cup is, I will still find more for these people that I love.
• 6:25
  I didn't think I was that person before I had kids because there was no other way to test that.
• 6:30
  It's tough because that means that you cannot find out if you are right to have a kid until you have a kid.
• 6:38
  Yeah.
• 6:38
  And there's no amount of readiness.
• 6:39
  Like you can be.
• 6:40
  That's scary.
• 6:42
  Yeah.
• 6:43
  It's scary.
• 6:43
  It's scary before and it's scary during.
• 6:46
  And then when they grow up and they have their own lives, it's scary after because you spend the majority of the upbringing on exactly where they lay their heads at night.
• 6:53
  And somewhere around 18, 19, the majority of their life happens away from your view.
• 6:58
  So, yeah, it is scary.
• 7:00
  I think that's the whole point.
• 7:02
  It's scary, but like lean into it anyways.
• 7:04
  What's your advice?
• 7:06
  I mean, right now, I don't think there is a playbook for most people who want to be fathers.
• 7:11
  I'm thinking about, and I want to be a dad, and it's stressful.
• 7:16
  I don't know where I'm going to find the time for it.
• 7:19
  I'm working 24-7, 365, and it's so important to have good people around you.
• 7:24
  One of my really good friends, Leo, he's an incredible entrepreneur.
• 7:28
  He runs a publicly traded company, so he doesn't have a lot of time himself to be a father.
• 7:32
  And I said, we talk about these things.
• 7:34
  I said, you know, like, I don't know how I'm going to have kids.
• 7:37
  Like I wake up at, you know, seven o'clock work till two in the morning, go to bed, wake up, work all day.
• 7:44
  And he's like, Scott, you don't get it.
• 7:46
  When you have kids, it's like a forcing function to only prioritize the things that matter.
• 7:51
  Yeah.
• 7:52
  Because when you have this thing that you're responsible for.
• 7:56
  You can't dick around on stuff that doesn't move the needle in your life.
• 7:59
  Like you got to shut off at five and you, so it's almost like kids forces you to prioritize.
• 8:04
  Yeah.
• 8:04
  And you know what?
• 8:05
  That's a really good point.
• 8:06
  And if you don't prioritize, there's this overwhelming, profound sense of guilt that you will feel that you have to learn how to manage.
• 8:14
  So, yeah, most people who are busy and decide to have kids will if you have kids, sometimes you decide.
• 8:20
  Sometimes it's a pleasant surprise, but you make the room.
• 8:23
  And that's going back to the whole thing.
• 8:25
  When I said pouring from an empty cup, there is no time.
• 8:28
  But you find a way to steal it somehow or.
• 8:31
  or there is no time, but you find a way to maximize a little bit of time that you do have or you completely shift your priorities.
• 8:38
  Before I had kids, I spent my 20s chasing opportunity, like just trying to find my way and feel like I'm a part of something that makes sense.
• 8:47
  I spent my
• 8:49
  late 20s chasing women and just getting that validation, you know, being a good person, but still chasing the romanticism of it all.
• 8:56
  Spent my 30s chasing money.
• 8:58
  I wanted to secure myself and make sure I was OK. And then after kids, I had my first kid at 30 and it just it changed everything.
• 9:08
  It changed the the linchpin of what it is I wanted and what I was motivated by.
• 9:14
  Now I spend my time really chasing moments.
• 9:17
  Like chasing moments and chasing peace.
• 9:19
  The good things are already here.
• 9:21
  And now it's about orienting my brain to absorb what's happening in real time.
• 9:25
  It's so powerful.
• 9:26
  So many people who listen to this show are so ambitious.
• 9:29
  So they have the problem of, and I think this is a growing problem.
• 9:33
  People are having kids later because they're so focused on career and making money.
• 9:39
  And they feel like they, I felt this as well.
• 9:41
  I could not afford the same life that my parents had at my age.
• 9:46
  So I'm like, how do I push harder and achieve more?
• 9:49
  Then all of a sudden...
• 9:50
  You're mid-30s and kids are like, my goodness, how am I going to have this family?
• 9:55
  Now I'm on this career roller coaster and it's not slowing down.
• 9:59
  And I think that's messing with a lot of really ambitious people.
• 10:01
  Yeah, and it's the world that's been designed around us for the longest time, especially when I was in school.
• 10:07
  I'm an 80s baby.
• 10:09
  And the whole thing was achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve so you can have.
• 10:14
  And kids and family, it's terribly inconvenient.
• 10:19
  for progress and productivity.
• 10:20
  We can, we can paint it however we want.
• 10:23
  When I wrote this book, I wrote it against toxic positivity against the rainbow bullshit.
• 10:28
  The sun will come out tomorrow.
• 10:29
  Everything will be okay.
• 10:30
  Mantra that we've been sold.
• 10:32
  That is not true.
• 10:33
  It will be okay when you make it.
• 10:34
  Okay.
• 10:35
  So it's, it's terribly inconvenient to stop your life and do these things or have to slow down when the momentum feels the strongest.
• 10:43
  And yeah,
• 10:44
  It's just a matter of priority, man.
• 10:46
  It's when when you were in a place where your central focus is the ambition.
• 10:51
  I think you're driven by one thing.
• 10:53
  When you're in a place where family is now your central focus, the person you brought into this world, the person who helped you, who co-created this little thing with you.
• 11:02
  That's your that's your hub now where you're younger is your mom and your dad.
• 11:05
  When you get a partner, you become a good partner.
• 11:08
  It's the person you decided to be with and the little people that I make.
• 11:11
  So it's it forces you to slow down and forces you to look at things differently.
• 11:16
  It forces you to reexamine what automatically comes up in your mind.
• 11:20
  And Scott, I'm going to be honest, man, a lot of the hump, a lot of the hump that you have to cross is mental.
• 11:27
  you know, the things you, oof.
• 11:29
  I like, I like unpacking a title, um, because it means a lot.
• 11:33
  And when I just read it, it's, it's almost a little bit uncomfortable.
• 11:37
  Yeah.
• 11:38
  Because it just shows you that what you have to accomplish and what you're trying to get after in life, like nobody's coming to save you.
• 11:44
  Nobody's coming to like, you know, give you a helping hand.
• 11:46
  Like it's all on you.
• 11:47
  It is, it is the ultimate, you know, uh, it's, it's agency.
• 11:52
  It's internal locus of control.
• 11:53
  It is, it is all on you.
• 11:56
  Um,
• 11:57
  Wow.
• 11:58
  Like that's an uncomfortable message for a lot of people.
• 12:02
  Where do you start when you want to accomplish something in life?
• 12:05
  You have these conflicting priorities of family, of work, of ambition, of I'm not enough.
• 12:14
  Give me advice because I am my audience.
• 12:17
  I'm the person that knows what I have to do, but I don't do it because there's always another email to send, a meeting to take, a deal to close.
• 12:25
  All right, let's break this down.
• 12:27
  What is the priority?
• 12:28
  You're doing all these things.
• 12:29
  You say that you want to achieve all these things.
• 12:32
  The ultimate goal is to not achieve, but what do you want to feel when you have all these things?
• 12:37
  You.
• 12:38
  I want to feel fulfilled, successful, like I didn't waste my time on this earth.
• 12:44
  I think that's noble.
• 12:45
  That makes a lot of sense.
• 12:46
  Do you, in terms of priority, would you say that these things that you are chasing, these things that you are accumulating, do you think that is your ideal way to feel this sense of fulfillment?
• 12:57
  No, I don't know if it is.
• 12:59
  I think that it's just what I fell into because I think life made it really hard not to get after, you know, the next deal, build the business bigger.
• 13:11
  I think it's a side effect of life being really difficult for a lot of people, myself included.
• 13:17
  And then when there's sort of two ways to deal with that feeling.
• 13:19
  Yeah.
• 13:20
  You either give up, and I don't think that's any way to live a life, or you lean full into... Punch the gas.
• 13:28
  Yeah, you punch the gas.
• 13:28
  I think for, you're not different from me, because I was quite the same for a very long time.
• 13:33
  I think you start with, it's going to sound crazy, curiosity.
• 13:38
  You start with curiosity just in what you said.
• 13:41
  You said, well, I don't think so.
• 13:42
  Perfect.
• 13:43
  That's the perfect entry point.
• 13:45
  I don't think so.
• 13:46
  Your brain is not married to this relationship between this particular motif of success and the way that you're going about it.
• 13:53
  That means that you have space and bandwidth in your head and in your heart to adopt different ways to still be full and still feel fulfilled.
• 14:01
  Curiosity allows us to ask what if so when we when I'm talking to people in therapy, one thing that I try to have people practice was called a rational rebuttal, because I think if you can challenge your immediate thoughts, your media feelings, your immediate behaviors away from shame, blame and guilt.
• 14:19
  So you're challenging these things away from the feelings that make you feel worse about yourself.
• 14:24
  That curiosity lends itself to an opportunity for growth or a different perspective.
• 14:29
  So with curiosity, you can lean into the idea of, well, how different would this be if I were to slightly deprioritize the ambition that I have?
• 14:40
  What story would I be telling myself about myself if I deprioritize those things?
• 14:44
  Would I feel like a failure if I feel like a failure?
• 14:47
  Describe failure.
• 14:49
  Am I failure in every instance of my life?
• 14:50
  Because you're not just Scott, the brilliant podcaster.
• 14:53
  You're Scott, the business mind.
• 14:55
  You're Scott, the human.
• 14:56
  You're Scott, the guy that likes to work out.
• 14:57
  You're Scott, the friend.
• 14:58
  Scott, the son.
• 14:59
  Scott, the cousin.
• 14:59
  You have so many parts of your identity that are just as important.
• 15:03
  What that curiosity allows you to do is take the weight and the gravity that this beautiful ambition that you have, the weight that it holds and allows it to evenly distribute it throughout the other parts of your identity.
• 15:14
  Okay.
• 15:15
  That's what the curiosity does.
• 15:16
  And that's where you start wondering what if not what if in a way that says, man, really wish I would have done things differently.
• 15:25
  Not the self deprecating what if, but the what if that lends itself to possibility.
• 15:30
  That's that's that's exactly what the book is about.
• 15:33
  It's about changing your perspective and being curious about the things you think.
• 15:38
  One thing that I like to do that's been helping me since I have a day since I'm a dad and I don't have any time is I just try to think about the way that I think.
• 15:47
  Think about the way that I think.
• 15:48
  What's coming up for me?
• 15:49
  What stories is my brain concocting about what my decisions and what my thoughts say about me in totality?
• 15:58
  How can I partition it out?
• 16:00
  You know, if a snake bites you right here on your wrist, what's the first thing you do?
• 16:04
  Well, you make sure you get like a tourniquet or something that you cut it off of the joint so that the poison doesn't spread.
• 16:08
  It's the same thing with negative thoughts and negative self messaging and the negative what if that allows you to spiral.
• 16:15
  You find a way to partition it, cut it out, cut it off so it doesn't spread to other parts of your identity.
• 16:19
  What happens when, like, how do we get to the point where
• 16:26
  one thing is our complete identity, even though we are so much more than that.
• 16:30
  I think it depends on the person.
• 16:32
  If you're driven by this one thing, the thing that I find is it depends on how married you are to the idea of what it looks like when I finally accomplish it.
• 16:44
  What it looks like when I finally get the thing that I've wanted to hold.
• 16:49
  For some people, they achieve the thing and they realize it doesn't really make them feel, I would say a majority of people, they achieve the thing and it doesn't necessarily make them feel better.
• 16:58
  You know, the dog, on Monday he chases the car, on Tuesday he chases the car, in October he chases the car, in November he chases the car, this year he chases the car, next year he chases the car, and Scott, one day he finally sinks his teeth into the bumper.
• 17:09
  Do you know what he says?
• 17:11
  What now?
• 17:13
  You know, the goalposts keep moving.
• 17:14
  It keeps moving.
• 17:16
  The idea of the thing is always sexier than the thing.
• 17:18
  And sometimes it's it's hard to take a half step back.
• 17:21
  For some people, they need therapy.
• 17:23
  For some people, they need a coach.
• 17:24
  For some people, they need a community of folks who they love, trust and respect, who are honest with them and can help them identify the things that live in their blind self.
• 17:31
  that community of people is so powerful.
• 17:33
  I mean, I mentioned my friend Leo, like the reason I mentioned him is because he does have kids and he is that ambitious person and he works that much, but he still finds time for everything.
• 17:42
  And I think that, you know, there's this cliche saying, right?
• 17:46
  Like you're the average of the five people.
• 17:48
  I think that people think about that in the context of, well, I'm going to hang out with all these successful people.
• 17:52
  But what if they're all successful, single people that don't care about family and don't care about, it's not that they're bad people.
• 17:59
  But if you want that in your life, like maybe those are not the best role models to have around.
• 18:04
  Straight up.
• 18:04
  And it's also not just monetary success.
• 18:07
  It's success of having a strong moral compass, strong sense of morality, a strong connection to community, a strong idea of who you are.
• 18:15
  You know, my most successful friends aren't millionaires and billionaires.
• 18:18
  They're people who are secure and who they become.
• 18:20
  And they can look in the mirror and legitimately love themselves.
• 18:23
  One idea that you speak about, and this is a quote, mantras and toxic positivity won't solve your problems.
• 18:32
  So what are people actually doing when they're repeating these positive affirmations every morning?
• 18:37
  I love the affirmation question.
• 18:39
  I have to say this.
• 18:40
  I don't hate affirmations, and I don't feel like affirmations are useless.
• 18:44
  I don't want people to think that I'm just crapping all over affirmations, and I want to know what you think about them.
• 18:50
  But I think words mean things, and words carry tremendous power, but so do actions.
• 18:58
  And if you are...
• 19:01
  Saying the thing that is going to make you feel good.
• 19:04
  My ultimate question is always, where's the substantive value?
• 19:08
  After you finish feeling good, what are you able to do?
• 19:11
  What are you able to reconstruct?
• 19:14
  If you say, I love myself and worth a lot in the mirror every single day, you say that, but you don't deeply feel it.
• 19:20
  You took care of the symptom, but not the underlying problem.
• 19:24
  You replaced the drywall that was bubbling up, but your roof is still leaking.
• 19:28
  And if you fix the cosmetic part of it, the part that's most topical, the part that you can see, but you don't fix the source, it's bound to happen again.
• 19:36
  So with the affirmations, I don't think that they should disappear.
• 19:40
  I think they should be accompanied by actually doing the work.
• 19:44
  And doing the work is, again, not chasing the symptomology, but figuring out where it comes from.
• 19:48
  If your affirmation is I love myself, there's a high likelihood that you don't feel deeply a sense of profound love for yourself.
• 19:57
  So then, OK, if I don't feel love for myself, then what does loving myself mean?
• 20:01
  It doesn't always mean that I'm absolutely infatuated with every part of me.
• 20:07
  That's ridiculous.
• 20:08
  They're parts of you that you're never going to love.
• 20:10
  So now what?
• 20:12
  Well, if I can't love it, can I like it?
• 20:14
  Well, if I can't like it, can I be kind of neutral with it where I just accept it?
• 20:18
  I wish it was different, but I can accept the fact that it's not.
• 20:21
  There are different levels to the way that you see it.
• 20:24
  And I think that I call it a wellness fast fashion.
• 20:28
  You know how how you can you can get an outfit that feels good on you tomorrow.
• 20:33
  But after three washes, it doesn't fit anymore.
• 20:37
  So that's the affirmations can be fast fashion when we just use them as lip service to make ourselves feel better temporarily.
• 20:44
  But the substance of value comes in the proving it to ourselves and the actions that we take.
• 20:49
  I love it.
• 20:50
  You know, you you mentioned that just saying it is almost like.
• 20:57
  You know what I can equate it to?
• 20:59
  When instead of, in my world, people will listen to endless podcasts and read endless books about starting a business, for example, and they never actually start.
• 21:11
  Or they tell their friends they're gonna start and they get that dopamine, it feels good feedback loop.
• 21:15
  Cause they're like, I'm gonna start a business or I'm gonna switch my job or I'm gonna do the thing.
• 21:20
  And they never actually do it.
• 21:22
  And there's this gap between the thing you know you have to do and actually taking the action to do it.
• 21:27
  And so many people never actually take the action.
• 21:29
  So this is another way to almost escape the steps you have to take to achieve the end result.
• 21:36
  You are saying, I,
• 21:38
  You say all these positive things, and then you never do anything with them.
• 21:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:42
  Everybody loves cake, Scott.
• 21:44
  Not everybody loves the messy kitchen that comes from baking cake.
• 21:47
  Baking is a messy process.
• 21:49
  There's flour everywhere, there's egg everywhere.
• 21:51
  You might not have all the ingredients you need.
• 21:53
  You can say whatever you want.
• 21:56
  Like, words have power, and you can just... You can feel good by the words that you say.
• 22:00
  But you're not just who you appear to be when you're in front of all the people that you need.
• 22:05
  Who you need to feel like you're doing the things or who you feel like a buy in this projection of you.
• 22:10
  You are the person you are when you're alone in the room by yourself with your thoughts.
• 22:15
  Who are you in those moments?
• 22:17
  What what strength do you have to recoup and repair after something bad happens to you?
• 22:23
  How do you feel about yourself internally, realistically and authentically?
• 22:27
  We live in a world and you and I spend a lot of time on camera.
• 22:30
  We live in a world full of performers and performances, which is fine, except for when your internal world is damaged because of that.
• 22:38
  You don't know how to fix it.
• 22:39
  You don't feel good in your skin and you read books that give you these motivation.
• 22:44
  These motivational quotes and these things that give you the hoorah in the moment and you borrow this person's confidence.
• 22:50
  And then once it wanes, you're left with just the tools that you have.
• 22:54
  So what is what is that first step when you feel like you are out of alignment, when you're broken inside, when you're not happy, when you're not fulfilled?
• 23:01
  Like there's a million different things you can do, but like the first thing that most, this is my biggest issue with the self-development.
• 23:09
  Oh, he keeps about to get it to his back.
• 23:10
  Come on, Sky, get it to me.
• 23:12
  It's, it's that they want to teach things that don't heal people, not because they're malicious.
• 23:19
  It's because if somebody is healed, they don't have to go back to your content.
• 23:22
  Oh.
• 23:23
  I would be so happy if people listened to one thing in this interview and then did one thing in their life and never had to listen to a podcast I made ever again.
• 23:32
  You know how happy I would be because that means I actually did my job.
• 23:36
  I had somebody ask me this actually, do you feel like you always say about take action, do more, achieve the end result, get the thing done, but you're creating podcasts for a living to keep teaching people.
• 23:46
  Do you feel like you're almost contributing to the problem because you're not creating, how did he say it?
• 23:54
  He's like, there's this friction between the idea of getting things done and doing the action and just consuming more and learning more.
• 24:05
  Well, you're creating content to keep people in the learning phase.
• 24:07
  I'm like, no, I'm not.
• 24:08
  I always say on my shows, like, stop listening.
• 24:11
  Write one thing down that you learned today.
• 24:13
  Go do it.
• 24:14
  Like, I don't need you to listen to the podcast anymore.
• 24:16
  And see, even if you do that.
• 24:18
  So in the book, I talk about uncomfortable truths.
• 24:22
  And there are realities that we have that, I mean, we avoid for whatever reason.
• 24:26
  We're not ready to walk into them.
• 24:28
  It's just a little too real, a little too visceral for us to accept in the moment.
• 24:32
  Like, we walk around these uncomfortable truths.
• 24:35
  And one of the uncomfortable truths is that I'm not over a thing that happened to me.
• 24:42
  Some people have horrible things happen to them in their life.
• 24:44
  Some people have inconvenient things happen to them in their lives.
• 24:47
  And we're in such a rush to be healed.
• 24:49
  How many times have you heard somebody say off hill?
• 24:51
  I'm here.
• 24:52
  I'm completely healed from that thing.
• 24:54
  It's like, no, that's that's not an end game thing.
• 24:57
  That's something healing is a practice that you practice for life.
• 25:02
  Because even if you solve the problem today, the help that you need in the next three years that you have to give yourself will change because you will be different.
• 25:11
  So even if you were to give me a thing and I would apply it and it works, I still have to come back because there are other parts of my identity.
• 25:17
  There are other things that I struggle with.
• 25:19
  It's it's multifactorial.
• 25:21
  It's not a one shot deal.
• 25:23
  So even I see what you're saying when you say they want you to they don't want you to.
• 25:31
  just have problem solved.
• 25:33
  They want you to keep coming back.
• 25:34
  I would argue that continuously coming back is how you stay alone in your continuum of healing.
• 25:40
  As long as they're moving in the right direction.
• 25:41
  You got to be moving in the right direction, but you got to identify what that means, though, Scott, because some people think because your feet are moving, you're going forward.
• 25:48
  Like, no, you could be marching in place and, I mean, expending tremendous energy but not really having any inertia going forward.
• 25:58
  So this is what, you know, this was, I went on a tangent there about self-help.
• 26:03
  Nah, I love a good tangent.
• 26:04
  But like bringing it back.
• 26:05
  So then it all starts when you do.
• 26:07
  What is that first thing?
• 26:08
  Like the first meaningful thing that you can do to know if you're moving in the right direction.
• 26:13
  Well, the book really starts with self-awareness.
• 26:16
  and curiosity you're mentioning before.
• 26:17
  Yep, it starts with self-awareness.
• 26:19
  So just having a good idea of the different parts of you that exist.
• 26:24
  Sometimes we overcomplicate this idea of ourselves, sometimes we oversimplify.
• 26:28
  So in the very beginning, we break it down into four selves, the open self, the blind self,
• 26:33
  the hidden self and the unknown self, the open self.
• 26:37
  And it's just a concept for you to get to understand where you are in the world.
• 26:41
  Open self, things that you know about yourself and other people know about you as well.
• 26:45
  I mean, obviously, I like to talk about healing.
• 26:48
  I'm a therapist.
• 26:50
  You know, there are things that are pretty obvious about me.
• 26:52
  Then there is the hidden self.
• 26:54
  There are things that other people don't know about me, but I know about myself.
• 26:58
  Maybe it's a nervousness I feel before podcast interviews that I can I can fake really well.
• 27:03
  Right.
• 27:03
  Maybe it's an underlying medical condition that I'm struggling with, but I don't want people to think I'm weak, so I don't tell them about it.
• 27:09
  Then it's the blind self, which is what we work on on therapy.
• 27:11
  That's the things that other people can see, but you can't see in yourself.
• 27:15
  That's the dangerous side.
• 27:17
  These are attitudes, beliefs, proclivities that you just I mean, they evade your awareness, but it's obvious to everybody else in the room.
• 27:25
  And then the unknown self, things you don't know about yourself, but other people know about.
• 27:29
  I mean, other people don't know about you as well.
• 27:31
  These are things that are yet to be discovered, like Scott's an awesome dad.
• 27:35
  Nobody will know that until the time actually comes for you to demonstrate that.
• 27:39
  So it's I think one of the first places to start is to realize what lives in those four boxes in your mind.
• 27:47
  The blind self.
• 27:48
  I'm curious what other people see about us that we don't see about ourselves.
• 27:56
  In some cases, do we overestimate what people pay attention to?
• 28:01
  And does that inhibit us?
• 28:02
  Because I know that there's things that Gina sees about me that she sometimes tells me, but I probably don't see it myself.
• 28:09
  And there's things that all my friends and yourself included can see.
• 28:12
  But I think sometimes what stops our own growth and our own journey is we think that people see things about us that we don't see in ourselves.
• 28:21
  This is why we're so scared to change who we are or to...
• 28:25
  Or even to like, to do anything, to go get help, to, to change our career, to do something uncomfortable, to say that we're starting to post on social media when we think our friends and family are going to call us stupid and, you know, gross and corny for posting all these things on, on Instagram.
• 28:46
  Yeah.
• 28:48
  I think out of the four, the one that it's important to understand, but you can't let the blind self completely dictate how you operate in life.
• 29:01
  And I think some people overthink what other people are thinking about in regards to life.
• 29:07
  Absolutely.
• 29:08
  I think it's a I think you're right.
• 29:09
  I think it's a yin and a yang there.
• 29:11
  I think that we overestimate and we underestimate sometimes.
• 29:14
  Sometimes we like the overestimation is is obvious.
• 29:19
  I have a post on my Instagram where I was in the middle of Charlotte's airport.
• 29:22
  Think it's like CLT.
• 29:24
  Have you ever been to Charlotte's Airport?
• 29:25
  Charlotte, North Carolina?
• 29:26
  Way back, yes, but yeah.
• 29:27
  Massive airport.
• 29:28
  Airport's stupid big for no reason.
• 29:30
  And I'm just filming in the airport.
• 29:32
  I've been creating content full time for five years now.
• 29:35
  Five years ago, if I pulled out a camera in front of a bunch of people, everyone's like, what is this weirdo doing, bro?
• 29:40
  Get away from me.
• 29:41
  Now you can't stop people from trying to hop in the camera to be seen.
• 29:44
  But I was just showing everyone.
• 29:45
  It's like, you know, in my mind, I used to think that everyone was staring at me.
• 29:48
  But look, and I did a 360.
• 29:50
  Nobody cares.
• 29:52
  Nobody cares that I'm filming.
• 29:53
  Everyone has their own thing going on.
• 29:56
  And I had to challenge the way that I saw it at first.
• 29:58
  I thought people would look at me like, what is he doing?
• 30:01
  You know, judgmental.
• 30:02
  Right.
• 30:03
  But in all actuality, which is the curiosity part, what if instead of like that, it's like, huh, what is he doing?
• 30:10
  What if instead of judgment, it's a it's a it's a careful inquiry.
• 30:14
  It's curiosity.
• 30:16
  It's just a little bit of wonder that they have.
• 30:19
  So, yeah, no, we, the things that live in the blind and the hidden self that we don't see and we over and underestimate.
• 30:27
  That's why it's good to have the community around you to give you helpful feedback.
• 30:31
  Plot is a success story partner.
• 30:32
  Now, I spoke about Plot a few episodes back.
• 30:34
  This is the AI-powered device that captures your conversations, turns them into transcripts, summaries, action items.
• 30:40
  And I wanted to come back to it because I keep finding new ways that this thing is incredibly useful.
• 30:44
  Last week, I sat down with a potential sponsor at a coffee shop.
• 30:48
  And we were going back and forth on deliverables, timelines, pricing, a lot of details and a lot of numbers.
• 30:53
  And normally after a conversation like that, I'd open my notes app on my phone.
• 30:57
  I try to write everything down.
• 30:58
  I remembered and I'd probably get about 70% of it, but the other 30% would be gone.
• 31:04
  Usually the small details that end up mattering a lot later.
• 31:07
  But this time with their permission, I had the note pin S on my shirt and I honestly forgot it was even there.
• 31:13
  So after the meeting, I opened up my plot app and everything was already laid out the full transcript, a
• 31:17
  clear summary, the key numbers we discussed and the follow-ups I'd agree to.
• 31:21
  And I could even ask Plod, what pricing did we discuss or what were my next steps?
• 31:25
  And it pulls up the answer right away.
• 31:26
  I didn't have to reconstruct the conversation from memory.
• 31:29
  And that's the part that I keep coming back to.
• 31:31
  I'm not splitting my attention in meetings between being present in the conversation and trying to document and remember everything.
• 31:37
  I can just focus on the person in front of me, knowing that the important details will be there afterwards.
• 31:42
  And remember they do have two products.
• 31:43
  So the note pro magnetically attaches at the back of your phone.
• 31:46
  It's great for calls and the note pin has clips or magnetically attaches to your shirt, making it ideal for in-person conversations.
• 31:52
  And you can choose between them depending on the situation.
• 31:55
  So if you spend a lot of your day in conversations and you're tired of losing important details, go check it out.
• 32:00
  Go to plod.ai slash success and use code success for 15% off.
• 32:05
  That's plod.ai slash success and use code success for 15% off.
• 32:09
  Odoo is a success story partner.
• 32:11
  And remember that is pronounced Oh-do.
• 32:13
  Now I want to tell you something that happened to me recently that I think a lot of you will relate to.
• 32:17
  I was trying to send a quote to a client and this should be simple, right?
• 32:21
  Except the pricing was in one tool and the contact info was in another tool.
• 32:25
  And the last conversation that we had was in a third tool.
• 32:28
  And then I spent something like 20 minutes pulling it all together for one quote.
• 32:32
  And that's the thing.
• 32:33
  Each tool works fine on its own.
• 32:35
  The problem is that they don't talk to each other.
• 32:38
  So you become the person connecting everything.
• 32:40
  You become the integration.
• 32:42
  You're the one copying numbers between tabs and making sure everything matches.
• 32:46
  But that's what Odoo fixes.
• 32:48
  It puts everything on one platform.
• 32:50
  So I'm talking accounting, invoicing, CRM, inventory, HR, project management, your website, e-commerce, e-signatures, over 45 apps, all connected.
• 32:59
  When something happens in one place, every other place already knows about it.
• 33:03
  So you're not updating three systems every time you close a deal.
• 33:07
  And the pricing is the part that surprised me.
• 33:09
  The first app is free for life.
• 33:10
  Unlimited users, hosting included.
• 33:13
  One subscription after that unlocks everything else.
• 33:16
  So if you're spending your time connecting tools instead of actually doing the work you have to do, go check it out.
• 33:20
  Links in the show notes.
• 33:21
  My fitness pal is a success story partner.
• 33:23
  So people always ask me how I have time to track what I eat.
• 33:26
  Daily podcast, newsletter.
• 33:28
  I run a full marketing agency.
• 33:29
  My days are super full.
• 33:30
  And honestly, that's exactly why I do it.
• 33:32
  See, when you're running that many things, you can't afford to have your energy be inconsistent.
• 33:37
  Food is a foundation for energy, for sleep, for your weight, for recovery, for performance.
• 33:42
  And the days that I'm not paying attention to it, I feel it.
• 33:45
  The MyFitnessPal app makes tracking what you eat a non-issue, removes all the friction.
• 33:49
  I just say what I ate, I can voice log it and it's done.
• 33:52
  Or I can point my camera at a plate with MealScan and it figures out what's there.
• 33:56
  I'm not sitting around entering ingredients.
• 33:57
  The app does the work for me.
• 33:59
  And it connects with over 40 fitness apps and wearables.
• 34:02
  So my training, my steps, my nutrition, it all goes to one place.
• 34:05
  One picture of what's happening instead of having to piece everything together or just go by feel or vibe.
• 34:10
  See, the whole thing takes seconds, not minutes.
• 34:12
  So go to podcasts.myfitnesspal.com and use code Scott, all uppercase, for 15% off MyFitnessPal Premium.
• 34:18
  That's podcasts.myfitnesspal.com, code Scott.
• 34:22
  Why the title is so direct and like slightly aggressive?
• 34:27
  Why not something gentler?
• 34:29
  So as a therapist, when we're doing group therapy and I've done group therapy in a number of different community settings and I mean some rough setting sometimes we do this thing called norming the group and norming the group is when you set the expectation for the audience so they know what's about to happen.
• 34:47
  There's no, I'm not doing the, you know, I don't know if you ever watched Fresh Prince, the show back in the day, when Uncle Phil walks into the pool hall, like he's about to get washed by this guy and he's like, break out Lucille.
• 34:58
  And he has like a custom pool stick and he just, he's knocking them in.
• 35:01
  I'm not doing that.
• 35:02
  There's no gotcha moment here.
• 35:04
  I'm letting you know exactly what they expect from the jump.
• 35:06
  Like, yeah, I guess it can be seen as aggressive and very straightforward, but I'm letting you know exactly what the tone of the book is going to be.
• 35:14
  I'm going to hold you close and hold you accountable at the same time.
• 35:18
  When we want to get better, one of the most brilliant things that we can share is this idea that growth always feels good.
• 35:26
  that change always feels good.
• 35:28
  And I want to take it from being something that's kind of characterized as an possibility to something that's challenging, but manageable.
• 35:36
  But on the other side of that, Scott, it gives people the autonomy.
• 35:39
  Like you're not a passenger to your own life.
• 35:41
  It will start, but it all starts when you do not, when you're ready,
• 35:45
  Not when you're brave enough.
• 35:48
  Not when you feel like it.
• 35:49
  It's going to start when you do it.
• 35:51
  Like you said, the internal locus of control.
• 35:53
  You are the ignition in the flame that's going to burn forever.
• 35:58
  Becky Kennedy said, you have the rare ability to make people confront truths they spend their lives avoiding without condemning them.
• 36:04
  I love Dr. Becky.
• 36:05
  She's incredible.
• 36:06
  Yeah, I feel like you could tell people the truth without making them feel horrible about themselves.
• 36:11
  I tell this story when I give speeches
• 36:14
  all over the country about when I was first moving into our house, my wife went and she was like, look, Hey, you're not going to like this, but we're about to get this mattress.
• 36:23
  Just don't look at the price.
• 36:24
  Yeah.
• 36:25
  And I was like, it can't be that bad.
• 36:27
  And I looked at it and the price like a social security number.
• 36:30
  And I sat in on the mattress and it was the most comfortable mattress I've ever felt in my entire life.
• 36:35
  Like we still have it four years later as a great mattress.
• 36:39
  Even with the softness of that mattress, I would not want to be crashed into it at a thousand miles per hour.
• 36:45
  You can't crash people into the truth.
• 36:47
  about themselves at a thousand miles per hour.
• 36:50
  You have to bring it to them in a way that's manageable, palatable and digestible.
• 36:55
  So it's still the truth, but it's not so abrasive that it's a punch in the face.
• 36:59
  It's more like a gentle call in.
• 37:01
  When you're a therapist, you're not telling people what to do.
• 37:04
  The way I see it is, you know, we're both in a canoe out in the middle of the pond.
• 37:09
  I can't steer this thing for you.
• 37:11
  I can only give you instruction.
• 37:12
  You have hands on both of the oars.
• 37:14
  We can get back to shore.
• 37:16
  but we're going to figure it out together.
• 37:18
  I'll navigate, you'll look around, and we will be co-authors of this experience right here.
• 37:23
  But ultimately, it's all yours.
• 37:24
  You're in control.
• 37:26
  It all starts when you do.
• 37:27
  You have your hands attended to.
• 37:29
  What part of people's lives do they have the hardest time fixing?
• 37:34
  Is it relationships?
• 37:36
  Is it work?
• 37:38
  Is it physical health, mental health?
• 37:42
  There's so many different...
• 37:43
  I feel like, obviously, this answer will be a generalization.
• 37:49
  Everyone has their own struggles.
• 37:50
  But there are unifying points.
• 37:53
  I will go...
• 37:55
  A few levels below the things you mentioned, I would say managing expectations.
• 38:01
  Managing expectations, managing their own expectations, managing the expectations of people who love them.
• 38:07
  If you just look at your life, your life is a series of managing what you think is supposed to happen versus what actually does.
• 38:14
  Yeah.
• 38:16
  It's never the same.
• 38:17
  You know, you when you go to the ice cream truck, there's this like perfectly this perfect little Tweety Bird ice cream.
• 38:24
  And you think that's what you're getting.
• 38:25
  And when they hand it to you, it's like this disformed, like disfigured, deformed, gelatinous goo that doesn't look like the picture at all.
• 38:33
  And I think that's just a perfect characterization of what happens in life oftentimes.
• 38:38
  So what do you do after?
• 38:39
  You know, you said your biggest gripe with the self-help genre.
• 38:42
  My biggest gripe is it talks about the first move.
• 38:45
  It does not have a counterpunch.
• 38:46
  What happens when that doesn't work?
• 38:48
  Because then you're on this journey.
• 38:50
  You do the thing that's supposed to work.
• 38:51
  It doesn't pan out.
• 38:52
  And that can derail you.
• 38:53
  And that can almost demotivate you from ever trying to change your life ever again.
• 38:57
  I wouldn't say almost.
• 38:58
  I would say for a lot of people, it does demotivate them.
• 39:01
  Yeah.
• 39:02
  And that's exactly what I'm talking about.
• 39:03
  So how do you rearrange your expectations?
• 39:06
  This isn't what I thought it would be, but I can still find value here.
• 39:10
  What is the step that you need to take in order just, I mean, just to scoop back from it?
• 39:15
  Three feet and see it from another angle.
• 39:18
  How much distance can you get between the thing that upsets you and the behavior that will result from that that you might regret later?
• 39:25
  How much time can you buy yourself?
• 39:27
  How do you buy yourself that time?
• 39:29
  The self-help world doesn't always answer those questions.
• 39:33
  And that's exactly why I wrote it all starts with you.
• 39:35
  But this is such a powerful idea because think about...
• 39:38
  I've never heard anybody say that, but now just thinking about it, that is so important to manage the expectations in everything in your life because you go to the gym.
• 39:46
  You definitely don't look the way you want to look in the first month.
• 39:50
  Okay, you start the business.
• 39:52
  Well, it turns out the guy who was lying about overnight success on Instagram isn't giving you the best advice, so you don't have the Lambo.
• 40:01
  I don't have a jet, man.
• 40:03
  Don't have a jet.
• 40:03
  Just keep us nights.
• 40:04
  No, you got to put in 10, 15, 20 years, okay?
• 40:07
  Expectations, you have to manage them.
• 40:08
  The relationship.
• 40:10
  Yeah.
• 40:10
  What this person's supposed to mean for me, what they're supposed to do for me.
• 40:13
  And on top of the relationship, it changes over time, as it should.
• 40:18
  The person who you meet when you're 20, they're not going to be the same person when they're 30, 40, 50, and they shouldn't be, and you shouldn't be either.
• 40:26
  So imagine if you have these static expectations about who that person is supposed to be.
• 40:32
  Well, this is not going to create the best situation.
• 40:34
  It's not.
• 40:34
  And then on top of that, what if you marry too closely the idea of it working out the way that you thought it would?
• 40:43
  What if you marry that too closely to it being a good thing?
• 40:46
  So now if it doesn't come to fruition the exact way that I thought, if my wife isn't this exact person that I imagine her being, well, now I don't have a good marriage.
• 40:56
  You lose so much nutritional value in the things you own when you don't have the internal mechanisms or you don't lend yourself the opportunity to shift your perspective.
• 41:08
  But in order to shift your perspective, sometimes you need permission.
• 41:10
  Sometimes you need a little guidance.
• 41:12
  Sometimes you need those inquiries where you challenge yourself beyond the realm of shame, blame and guilt because they're not helpful.
• 41:19
  I'm assuming social media is not helping any of this in terms of setting expectations as to what life should be, what relationships should be, what, you know, it hurts as much as it helps.
• 41:29
  Probably hurts a little bit more than it helps because a lot of people are performing.
• 41:33
  But it definitely has readjusted our expectations.
• 41:36
  I don't think it's.
• 41:37
  I can't make social media the de facto little whipping boy here, though, man.
• 41:41
  It's a lot of things.
• 41:42
  It's the fact that I own.
• 41:44
  I don't know who your sponsors are, so I won't call any company names, but like I can I can pull up my cell phone and whatever I want to eat.
• 41:51
  What are you in the mood for tacos, burritos?
• 41:53
  It'll be in 15 minutes.
• 41:54
  Whatever song I want to listen to, I can listen to it right now.
• 41:57
  Whatever friend I want to check up on, I can check up on them right now.
• 42:00
  I can call anybody.
• 42:02
  I can check GPT, whatever's on my mind.
• 42:04
  Hey, who had the Russian title in the NFL in 1991?
• 42:07
  I can solve all of my sports debates with my friends right there in the instant.
• 42:11
  Our brains have been rewired by the technology that's available to us.
• 42:16
  So to think that that expectation won't bleed into our relationships and our physical fitness and our diets, I would love to save the turtles.
• 42:24
  But, man, those paper straws suck.
• 42:26
  You know, it's it's it's a different thing when it's actually in front of you and you have to experience it.
• 42:31
  So what is what is the the strategy for somebody to reset yourself?
• 42:37
  how they think through expectations, how they think through instant gratification so that they can be happy and fulfilled and malleable as a human being.
• 42:48
  I like the word malleable.
• 42:48
  That's a good one.
• 42:50
  I'm going to step back away from happy and fulfilled.
• 42:53
  I feel like that's an ultimate goal.
• 42:55
  And it'll be really easy for me to say, hey, get this book.
• 42:57
  You'll be happy and fulfilled.
• 42:58
  Like it's going to do that for you.
• 43:00
  And you'll buy it with the expectation and you'll you'll feel better.
• 43:02
  You have the steps.
• 43:03
  But happy and fulfilled is a big step.
• 43:05
  I don't know how many people feel happy and fulfilled.
• 43:08
  I don't know how many people being honest about that.
• 43:10
  But you can still live a great life without feeling happy and fulfilled about everything you do.
• 43:15
  So you ask, what's the first step?
• 43:20
  The hardest thing to do right now, and that's to pause.
• 43:25
  To pause, to not make every issue an emergency is something that you have to fix immediately.
• 43:33
  Everything is not a problem to solve right now.
• 43:37
  Pausing and evaluating are two powerful, powerful tools.
• 43:42
  I think that you need space and you need time to think.
• 43:45
  You need people to bounce ideas off of.
• 43:48
  You need some tutelage or mentorship to get another perspective.
• 43:51
  What did you do when you were in this situation?
• 43:54
  You need time to think.
• 43:55
  Maybe you were just not from a maturity standpoint.
• 43:58
  You're not in a place to make this decision as soundly as you would like to.
• 44:02
  If you don't fix it today, will everything still be okay?
• 44:07
  It'll be okay.
• 44:08
  It won't be ideal and it'll be inconvenient, but it'll be okay.
• 44:12
  It'll be okay.
• 44:13
  Sometimes you just need that reassurance.
• 44:15
  Pausing is the hardest thing to do right now because it feels like you're falling behind.
• 44:20
  People put too much pressure on themselves to fix everything immediately, myself included.
• 44:25
  Myself included.
• 44:26
  Yeah.
• 44:26
  It's so bad, you know, it's so stupid.
• 44:28
  I'm just thinking of how this happens every single day.
• 44:32
  I'm sure this resonates with some of the people who are listening, but I wake up, I have like 50 emails.
• 44:41
  right like this morning and I know I'm doing this podcast in an hour and in my mind I'm like how can I get through these 50 emails before I do this podcast that's the dumbest thing nothing no one who emailed me expects me to answer back immediately
• 44:56
  And these are not even problems.
• 44:59
  This is almost just like...
• 45:01
  It's like an obsession with completion of things.
• 45:07
  And, of course, I don't answer any emails because I actually have stuff that I have to do that's really important, which is sit down with you and chat, but...
• 45:15
  I think that this is something that happens in every part of our life.
• 45:17
  Like we have an argument with our spouse.
• 45:21
  God forbid we don't really have a lot of those.
• 45:23
  It's hard for me to do anything until I fix that argument.
• 45:27
  Mm-hmm.
• 45:28
  It's stealing all of your awareness in a moment.
• 45:30
  That's not good.
• 45:31
  That's not useful.
• 45:32
  That means I can't show up for anyone else in my life.
• 45:35
  And the argument does have to be discussed and fixed at some point.
• 45:39
  You don't want to have resentment towards somebody, but you can't let the thing just derail the rest of your life.
• 45:45
  I mean, a bad day at work.
• 45:48
  And then...
• 45:50
  I mean, a bad day at work for a lot of people can actually turn into an argument at home because they let that bad day at work sort of color their entire day a certain way.
• 46:01
  Yeah, the venom spreads.
• 46:03
  That's the perspective.
• 46:04
  Is it a bad day or a bad moment?
• 46:06
  Feelings, I talk about, and it all starts when you do, I talk about emotional hijacking and how emotional hijacking, it's this phenomenon where our brains can perceive a threat that may not be as big of a threat in reality as it feels on the inside.
• 46:24
  And that's what the half step back does.
• 46:27
  It allows us to understand, and this argument with my significant other is,
• 46:31
  It's probably not solvable in one conversation, but it's not so much that I want to solve the problem.
• 46:37
  And this is where the self-honesty and self-awareness comes in.
• 46:40
  Do I want to solve the problem?
• 46:41
  Ultimately, yeah, but I don't want to feel this way anymore.
• 46:44
  I don't want to feel the anxiety.
• 46:46
  Yeah.
• 46:46
  So now I got to get this done because that's going to make me feel better.
• 46:49
  And then you do it and you realize that it doesn't.
• 46:51
  Because now there's this one point in the argument that opened up 30 other points that all need your attention.
• 46:57
  And now you're in this spiral.
• 46:59
  And that's why I say everything's not immediately fixable.
• 47:01
  Some things you just need to pause on.
• 47:04
  And I think in our obsession with achievement, to use your phrase in there, I think sometimes that we forget that the goal isn't always to thrive.
• 47:16
  That's a ridiculous goal.
• 47:18
  Sometimes the goal is just to survive the moment.
• 47:20
  And that's okay.
• 47:21
  Yeah, we, I say we as in like myself, I have a tough time with that sometimes.
• 47:27
  I like when you do that, man.
• 47:28
  I like when you do that.
• 47:29
  I like when you put yourself in the boat too.
• 47:32
  Like, hey, I'm not better than you.
• 47:34
  Definitely not.
• 47:35
  I think because we have these microphones, we have all of this knowledge and I get it.
• 47:40
  But when you're living, the experience is different than when you're witnessing it.
• 47:44
  If I was to come into therapy, I could solve my problems in probably 15 sessions.
• 47:48
  Yeah.
• 47:49
  Oh, absolutely.
• 47:50
  But I'm living it and the emotions overtake me.
• 47:53
  And when I'm sad or when I'm disgusted or when I feel disrespected or when I have complex feelings, they they alter and they distort the way that I go about solving them.
• 48:03
  So I got to get help with these things.
• 48:05
  I got to use my tools or else I will fall in that spiral.
• 48:08
  We just talk about.
• 48:09
  I just want to tell everybody, we both have access to all the tools, all the strategies.
• 48:16
  You do it professionally, but I mean, because of the podcast, anybody who's accomplished anything, I can shoot a text, give them a call.
• 48:24
  And even when you know the things you have to do from the people that are the best in their field, it's still hard to do it sometimes.
• 48:31
  It is still hard to do it when you're living through it.
• 48:35
  you don't always operate in the perfect way.
• 48:39
  And I think with anything in life, especially when you're trying to
• 48:45
  Get on a good journey of self-development, improvement when you're trying to, I don't know, when you're trying to move in a different direction, when you're trying to manage expectations, when you're trying to do anything in life.
• 48:58
  You have to give yourself so much grace.
• 49:00
  I'm just regurgitating what you said.
• 49:02
  You have to manage expectations.
• 49:03
  But I think that when people see, you know, a guy like yourself who has access to all the information and there's still parts of your life that you've gone through that you've struggled with,
• 49:14
  I think it makes it a little bit more manageable and doable.
• 49:19
  Yeah, and I like that you regurgitated it because maybe somebody didn't catch it the way we said it the first time.
• 49:23
  And maybe that rephrasing just offers a different insertion point.
• 49:29
  The way I see it like this, like, knowledge doesn't always mean that you can implement the skill
• 49:34
  We have knowledge.
• 49:35
  There's nothing that you can't figure out almost.
• 49:39
  Knowledge is fine.
• 49:40
  Knowledge is data, but it doesn't mean you can apply the skill.
• 49:43
  If I ask you to draw my face, you can see my face clearly.
• 49:46
  But somewhere between- I suck at drawing, dude.
• 49:50
  That's the thing, right?
• 49:51
  You can see it.
• 49:51
  That doesn't make sense.
• 49:52
  If you can see it, you should be able to draw it, right?
• 49:55
  But somewhere between your eyes and your brain, between your brain and your hand, your hand and the pencil, the pencil and the paper, something happens at each transference, at each one of those little stopping points where you lose a little bit of ability.
• 50:07
  What makes you think that knowing the next best step in your life or knowing that you probably shouldn't say this in the argument because it'll be inflammatory and make things go left?
• 50:15
  What makes you think that knowing those things is going to stop you from actually doing them?
• 50:20
  You have to practice not doing them.
• 50:22
  You have to practice pausing.
• 50:24
  You have to practice sitting in the discomfort of knowing something like it all starts when you do, even though you're not ready to start and you don't want to and you're afraid of failure.
• 50:33
  Yeah, you have to carry all those things with you.
• 50:35
  That's the point.
• 50:36
  The longer you avoid them, the more reps you miss in practice.
• 50:39
  And the more reps you miss in practice, the lower the likelihood is that you will be able to successfully do that thing when it's game time.
• 50:45
  You have such a great message for men, and you speak to men often.
• 50:50
  You speak to men in context of...
• 50:52
  how they fail in relationships, how they fail in healing.
• 50:55
  And I say fail, it's a very harsh, inflammatory word, but it's because a lot of men don't have the right guidance.
• 51:04
  I don't think there's a lot of people that put out great information on how men can handle life.
• 51:10
  I think they're mostly left to their own devices or you have like...
• 51:13
  really horrible influences that are trying to speak to men.
• 51:15
  A lot of that going on.
• 51:16
  A lot of that.
• 51:18
  And I've said this many times.
• 51:21
  Like there has to be more positive male role models, and I think you are one of them.
• 51:24
  Thank you, man.
• 51:25
  There's not a lot out there.
• 51:27
  So I wish there were more.
• 51:28
  But I want you to give some really good advice for men in particular.
• 51:34
  What do they get wrong about healing?
• 51:36
  What do they get wrong about relationships?
• 51:40
  Because I don't think men are thriving right now.
• 51:42
  Yeah.
• 51:43
  OK, I'll do this because I think with men, one of the unfortunate things that happens is the the default setting is like deficit framed.
• 51:55
  We focus a lot on what men aren't doing, but it's important to know.
• 51:59
  So one thing is that I think that we're not doing is we're not taking advantage of our mistakes.
• 52:06
  And when I say mistakes, I mean just the things you wish you could have done better.
• 52:10
  A mistake means that, you know, what doesn't work now.
• 52:13
  You know, life is about experimentation.
• 52:15
  You're experimenting, trying to find the best way to do this thing.
• 52:19
  A mistake means good.
• 52:20
  Now we know what doesn't work.
• 52:22
  So now we know what we can retool and we can try it again.
• 52:25
  But we have to find the bravery to try it again without building this internal narrative of us being a failure.
• 52:30
  I don't think we take advantage of our mistakes.
• 52:33
  uh what men are doing really well men are doing a really good job at finding community we're getting better at that i think that we're stuck to the narrative of yesteryear and it still exists um and it still exists in large numbers in terms of just being lonely and being like the lone wolf guy but i do so many events for men and we do so many things in different therapy practices for men and we see men building this community and
• 52:57
  And the sense of community is getting better.
• 52:59
  And one more thing I'll say that men could do better at because it just came to me.
• 53:04
  I think that as men, we can do a better job of really accepting all the feelings that belong to us.
• 53:11
  And that's so tough because boyhood is really designed to separate you from your emotions.
• 53:17
  But there's certain emotions that society just tells us are OK.
• 53:21
  And we feel a lot of different emotions, but we'll rebrand it.
• 53:24
  I'm not scared, man.
• 53:25
  I'm just I'm just I'm locked in.
• 53:27
  I'm really I want to make sure that this doesn't happen.
• 53:30
  I'm responsible, bro.
• 53:32
  You may be responsible, but you're also scared.
• 53:35
  And the feeling that you don't accept, you internalize, it fizzles and becomes something else.
• 53:40
  And it comes out in a different, more uncontrollable, unforeseen way.
• 53:44
  You have to accept the feelings that belong to you.
• 53:46
  So when you're in a relationship with someone and you're getting upset and they try to make you feel like you're less of a man because you're upset, instead of listening to that person say, oh, Scott, what you upset you and your feelings?
• 53:57
  Oh, you soft.
• 53:58
  Say, yeah, I am upsetting in my feelings because I thought that a person who loved me wouldn't talk to me that way.
• 54:02
  And I'm disappointed.
• 54:05
  Don't let people use your feelings against you.
• 54:09
  It's some type of leverage point for them to walk all over you emotionally.
• 54:12
  You can stand up for yourself without.
• 54:15
  without being intimidating.
• 54:17
  You can stand up for yourself without being violent.
• 54:20
  You can stand up for your feelings, but you have to acknowledge them.
• 54:23
  And that takes a lot of practice.
• 54:25
  But why do I feel like even men, they have such a hard time standing up for themselves?
• 54:31
  Mm-hmm.
• 54:32
  Especially in relationships.
• 54:34
  It seems like there's two extremes.
• 54:35
  It's either they're too aggressive,
• 54:39
  too angry or not at all.
• 54:41
  There's no, they're not standing up for themselves at all.
• 54:44
  Why are there extremes?
• 54:45
  Why can't they have what you just said?
• 54:48
  Like, don't weaponize my feelings against me.
• 54:53
  It's not aggressive.
• 54:55
  It's totally fine to say that to somebody, but it takes courage to do that.
• 55:00
  So men either, I think in my experience, men, they go to one extreme or the other.
• 55:07
  They either are, again, way too aggressive or they let people walk all over them.
• 55:13
  Is there a reason why?
• 55:15
  Because I'm thinking about a lot of people that I know that are people pleasers.
• 55:21
  a lot of guys that are people pleasers, and they just never, and I was definitely for a very long time.
• 55:26
  It took me a lot of work to not be a people pleaser, but not being a people pleaser doesn't mean being an asshole.
• 55:32
  No, it doesn't, but nuance disappears when feelings get big.
• 55:35
  So I think it's multifactorial.
• 55:37
  I think it's a lot of reasons that men do that.
• 55:39
  I also think it depends on the man.
• 55:41
  how he was raised and what love and warmth and hugs and kisses and reassurance and validation and visibility look like in this house.
• 55:49
  We tend to look at men through this 2026 lens.
• 55:53
  It's funny to me, like the lens that we raise little boys through now.
• 55:56
  Little boys are getting taught something different.
• 55:58
  I'm 40.
• 55:58
  I was born in 86.
• 55:59
  Yeah.
• 56:01
  It wasn't any of this when I was growing up.
• 56:04
  Like it's...
• 56:05
  I'm 90, I'm 36.
• 56:06
  I'm not that much younger than you.
• 56:07
  So I'm pretty sure we had a very similar.
• 56:08
  Yep, so we're around the same time.
• 56:11
  The message in wasn't one where you get... Not every little boy was told that he's valued and, you know, he matters and he should hold himself to high regard outside of what he can provide and produce.
• 56:23
  That just wasn't the mantra and the message back then.
• 56:26
  I'm not demonstrating the message that was taught to me last year.
• 56:30
  I'm demonstrating the message that has been cumulative, cumulatively taught to me over the last 40 years.
• 56:36
  So I think we get that wrong, but it's when you don't have the practice feeling your feelings and having your feelings validated by your environment and understand that you can have feelings that may, that are kind of characterized as weak, but really they're just human.
• 56:50
  You don't have, you don't have,
• 56:52
  a lot of practice managing them.
• 56:55
  You don't have, you can't recruit the muscle fibers in order to move the weight slowly.
• 57:00
  So it either sinks right to the bottom, the two different extremes, it sinks right to the bottom where you just go to anger and violence because anger and violence, Scott, if I don't feel heard, if I don't feel seen and I flip this table over, not only do you see me, you feel me now.
• 57:14
  It's a very maladaptive way to get your needs met.
• 57:17
  Or I just allow you to walk over me because at least I won't be left.
• 57:20
  I won't be abandoned.
• 57:21
  I say yes to everything.
• 57:22
  I don't want you to be angry with me.
• 57:24
  If you're angry with me, then you can leave me.
• 57:26
  And if you leave me, what does that say about me?
• 57:28
  It confirms all the negative things I think about myself.
• 57:31
  So when you don't have practice exploring these emotions and really taking your time to understand what your language looks like inside of them or having this crazy fear of vulnerability, which is completely understandable, but also unhelpful.
• 57:43
  Everything sinks to the bottom or floats to the top.
• 57:46
  If it lets you walk over, I'll become a complete asshole.
• 57:49
  How do you operate?
• 57:51
  How do you how do you go through life?
• 57:52
  What is the way to increase your confidence so that you don't float to one of these two extremes?
• 57:58
  You have to be honest with yourself about the way that you feel.
• 58:01
  That's the first step.
• 58:03
  This is like a 90-step process.
• 58:05
  So if somebody were to come to me at therapy...
• 58:07
  It all comes back to self-awareness, though.
• 58:09
  Literally everything comes back to self-awareness.
• 58:11
  And it all starts when you decide that there needs to be a change.
• 58:15
  So if...
• 58:17
  You come in and, you know, you either rise into the top or float into the bottom.
• 58:22
  First off, we have to realize where you are in the process of change.
• 58:26
  Not everybody is in the same place with change.
• 58:28
  The five steps, the five stages of behavioral change.
• 58:31
  It's got the first step.
• 58:32
  You don't even know that there's an issue.
• 58:35
  And the steps to behavior change, you don't even do anything until the third step.
• 58:39
  The third step is preparation.
• 58:41
  And I break them all down.
• 58:43
  So you have to know where you are and what you're capable of.
• 58:46
  And then you have to figure out where the pain is, which would mean that you have to admit to yourself that there is something painful.
• 58:52
  You know, I wish my dad would hug me more.
• 58:54
  You know, I wish the kids in school didn't laugh at me as much.
• 58:57
  You know, I wish when the bigger boys were around, I could have defended myself a lot better.
• 59:02
  Those seem like stupid things as a 40 year old man, as a 35 year old man to be upset about.
• 59:08
  They're not stupid.
• 59:09
  That's the start of the pain.
• 59:10
  That's the epicenter.
• 59:11
  But instead of honoring the fact that that hurt and it is reverberated out to these other unrelated parts of our lives, we just dismiss it.
• 59:19
  That's a dumb thing to be mad about 30 years later.
• 59:21
  I should be mature.
• 59:22
  I should be over this, which is another uncomfortable truth.
• 59:25
  So we're not even honoring a reality that happened that affected us negatively.
• 59:29
  I think that's where you start.
• 59:31
  What's the way that we parent so that our kids don't have to deal with the same problems?
• 59:35
  Good Lord, Scott.
• 59:38
  That's a whole other thing.
• 59:39
  You don't think I'm selfish enough to like at least get some good advice for my life from this podcast?
• 59:43
  You're kidding yourself, bro.
• 59:45
  Nah, use the moment, man.
• 59:46
  I would do it if I was you.
• 59:48
  I think you're already getting a good head start.
• 59:50
  I think it's about being, damn, I'm telling you, I know it sounds like I'm a broken record, but it all kind of starts in the same place.
• 59:57
  It's being honest with yourself about the things that happened to you, how they affected you and how you feel.
• 1:00:02
  You know, my girls sometimes, I have two girls.
• 1:00:03
  One is four and one is nine.
• 1:00:06
  And I'm sorry, forgive me.
• 1:00:07
  One is four and a half and one is nine.
• 1:00:09
  Don't forget the half.
• 1:00:11
  She's kidding, she's getting a hard time.
• 1:00:12
  It'll be a problem.
• 1:00:14
  She's the youngest, man.
• 1:00:15
  They're always little spark plugs.
• 1:00:17
  But, you know, the other day, who was it?
• 1:00:20
  It was one of them, I can't remember.
• 1:00:22
  One of them came in and I've asked her to do something a million times and it wasn't done.
• 1:00:27
  And I jumped on her.
• 1:00:28
  I was like, yo, how many times do I have to ask you to do this?
• 1:00:31
  What I didn't realize is she got asked to do something else and it completely diverted her attention.
• 1:00:37
  And the thing I needed her to do wasn't as important as I thought it was.
• 1:00:40
  So do you know what I said?
• 1:00:41
  I grew up in a house where parents didn't apologize.
• 1:00:44
  There was no I'm sorry.
• 1:00:46
  Like that didn't happen.
• 1:00:47
  And I said, you know what, baby?
• 1:00:48
  I am so sorry.
• 1:00:49
  Daddy misunderstood what happened.
• 1:00:51
  I apologize.
• 1:00:52
  I apologize.
• 1:00:55
  My self-awareness tells me that even though my brain tells me I don't have to apologize to a kid, that's a person who has equal stakes, equal rights in this house.
• 1:01:04
  And she deserves to be apologized to.
• 1:01:06
  Whether I think so or not, the apology isn't for me, it's for her.
• 1:01:10
  So she can know that her mistakes are not indictments on her personality or identity.
• 1:01:15
  that's how the self-awareness thing works.
• 1:01:18
  It's levels to a sky.
• 1:01:19
  No, that's so powerful.
• 1:01:21
  Yeah, and it's a worthwhile endeavor.
• 1:01:23
  It's just not easy.
• 1:01:25
  It's not easy, and that's why I wrote this because there needs to be a guide that doesn't tell you what to do
• 1:01:31
  book kind of challenges you on what to think and how to think and how to think about your thoughts and how to think about your feelings so that you can approach it another way.
• 1:01:39
  It's almost like first principles.
• 1:01:41
  It's like if you understand, if you read this book, you understand how to navigate any situation in life.
• 1:01:46
  Yeah.
• 1:01:46
  If I tell you what to do, you only know what I told you.
• 1:01:50
  If I give you a different perspective, you have a lot of different tools in your arsenal that you develop that came from the call came from inside the house.
• 1:01:57
  That's your stuff.
• 1:01:58
  Those are your tools that you handcrafted.
• 1:02:00
  You know how to use and you have ownership of what was the hardest part about writing this book for you?
• 1:02:06
  I think it was realizing, man, in a book process, you become really vulnerable and realizing that I wasn't.
• 1:02:15
  As.
• 1:02:16
  I wasn't in a place in my healing that I thought I was.
• 1:02:18
  I had more work to do than I anticipated.
• 1:02:21
  I thought that when I did this book and I'll be on podcast and I'll be talking, I'd be telling other people how to heal, you know?
• 1:02:28
  You do it.
• 1:02:29
  You know what you're talking about, yeah.
• 1:02:30
  But it challenged me because when you're on a podcast and you're talking for an hour and 20 minutes and you listen back, you're like, ah, I wish I would have said that differently.
• 1:02:39
  Ah, man, I made a mistake.
• 1:02:41
  Ah, I stuttered on that word.
• 1:02:43
  And 10 years ago, that would have wrecked me.
• 1:02:46
  But now I'm able to say, ah, that is not indicative of who I am as a person.
• 1:02:52
  Mistakes happen.
• 1:02:54
  They don't say anything about me.
• 1:02:56
  They're just an occurrence.
• 1:02:57
  That's it.
• 1:02:59
  And being on this road and reading this book, and whoever's out there, if you decide to write a book, you're gonna have to read your book front to back like four times.
• 1:03:09
  And it could be an excruciating process because you first started writing this a year ago.
• 1:03:12
  You don't even think the same way anymore.
• 1:03:15
  And the inclination could be to ball it up and now let's just start all over.
• 1:03:18
  But it's forced me to look at my mistakes and not deeply internalize them.
• 1:03:22
  You know, it's really helped me develop that muscle even more.
• 1:03:26
  I've even found that writing, writing is such a clarifying exercise because it just shows you your own thoughts.
• 1:03:33
  Oh, yeah, for sure.
• 1:03:34
  It shows like forget about the fact that it shows you what you know and what you don't know.
• 1:03:39
  But when you start writing down everything you want to teach to somebody, it's a little bit different than we're just yapping on camera.
• 1:03:45
  because you're forced to sit with it you write a line and you're like wow that's great advice why am i not doing that no that's facts and also like when you speak you can do things like you can manipulate a little bit you can go low and then you can go high and then you can really focus in to make people feel like something important is being said you're not talking about shit important
• 1:04:06
  But when there's words, it's just words.
• 1:04:09
  You can't manipulate it to hit the brain a certain way.
• 1:04:13
  No, the words themselves have to hit.
• 1:04:15
  The words have to be meaningful, not just the delivery.
• 1:04:18
  And that can throw you off when you're reading it.
• 1:04:20
  Writing this out, was there any parts of your own healing journey?
• 1:04:25
  that you realized were not where you thought they were.
• 1:04:28
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:30
  In the back of the book, I talk about my family.
• 1:04:34
  My mom passed when I was 18, just a few weeks after I graduated from high school.
• 1:04:39
  And I spent a lot of time angry with my family because I felt like they didn't push in and they didn't do enough.
• 1:04:46
  And it gave me some emotional distance between them, at least in my head, you know?
• 1:04:51
  Um...
• 1:04:53
  What it helped me realize, well, I realized it then, but it solidified it, is at some point I got so married to the idea that they didn't do enough that I wasn't open to the fact that they started doing enough.
• 1:05:06
  And then it was my turn to not just project these feelings of anger, but to be open and accepting to the warmth and the love that looked different than I remember, but was very much present.
• 1:05:19
  You know, when your heart is closed, it's just hard to be open and accepting of those things.
• 1:05:24
  And I think writing that down, that was I think it was hard to say and hard to admit to myself, because like we just said, when you read it on paper and you see it, you get the gaps are just a lot more obvious.
• 1:05:37
  And I want to say the last four years, I've really been honing in on disrobing myself of anger and frustration and understanding that something bad happened to them, too.
• 1:05:49
  I'm not the only person that was devastated by this.
• 1:05:51
  You know, sometimes when somebody has a profound loss like that, you don't know what to say.
• 1:05:55
  You don't know where to push in.
• 1:05:56
  I talked about this at the top of the show with Parenthood.
• 1:05:59
  You don't know where to push in and where to hands off.
• 1:06:02
  And I have 18-year-old cousins that are lost people.
• 1:06:05
  And sometimes I don't know where to push in and where to just let go.
• 1:06:08
  So it just gives me a different perspective into what they were dealing with.
• 1:06:13
  And to jump into the idea that perhaps the feelings that I have weren't fully cooked.
• 1:06:20
  You know, they were a little raw in the middle.
• 1:06:23
  That's big to take on and not make yourself feel worse about.
• 1:06:27
  But again, I'm just going to point out, and thank you for being super vulnerable, but...
• 1:06:33
  For everybody listening, like you do this for a living and you still aren't perfect.
• 1:06:38
  And that's like a beautiful thing.
• 1:06:40
  And this is, I think the theme of this is going to be like just managing expectations, but also giving yourself grace on this journey.
• 1:06:48
  Because if you do this for a living and you still find gaps in your own healing journey,
• 1:06:55
  it's going to be very hard for people that aren't trained to do this, to, to fully heal themselves or to, or to get to where they want to go or to go deep into their subconscious and deal with all the shit that, you know, they felt with their family growing up.
• 1:07:14
  It's not easy, dude.
• 1:07:15
  It's not easy.
• 1:07:16
  It's not convenient.
• 1:07:17
  Um, um,
• 1:07:19
  But it's something that's possible to adapt and overcome.
• 1:07:23
  And it's something where it's very possible to recruit tools that can help you along the way.
• 1:07:28
  That's literally why I spent two years writing this book to make sure that the things that I teach people or I help guide people through when they come to my practice, that everybody can have access to it.
• 1:07:38
  Not everybody's going to sit down with a therapist.
• 1:07:40
  They're just not and not saying that this is a replacement for therapy because it's not, but it's such a good supplemental tool to just have you think a little bit differently and give yourself a different perspective of yourself.
• 1:07:52
  So not only you can continue on your growth journey, but you can actually see how much you've grown.
• 1:07:57
  You can actually see it.
• 1:07:59
  HubSpot is a success story partner.
• 1:08:01
  Now, every entrepreneur, founder, CEOs listening right now needs to pay attention.
• 1:08:06
  I have a question for you.
• 1:08:07
  When a buyer asks AI for a solution or a product that your business sells, does your business come up?
• 1:08:15
  The answer is that most companies have no idea.
• 1:08:18
  They don't know if their name shows up in any of the AI tools, chat, perplexity, Claude.
• 1:08:26
  And by the time they find out, they have lost tons of traffic and tons of deals to someone who did show up.
• 1:08:32
  HubSpot AEO.
• 1:08:35
  It helps you show up in those moments with the right answers that your customers and your buyers are looking for when they go type in a question.
• 1:08:42
  It's before the first click.
• 1:08:43
  It's before they fill out some form on your website.
• 1:08:47
  That is the moment that HubSpot AEO is built for.
• 1:08:51
  So if you want your company to show up in AI searches when your customer is looking, check out HubSpot.com.
• 1:08:57
  They are the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
• 1:09:01
  NetSuite is a success story partner.
• 1:09:02
  So every day there's another headline about how your business is already behind on AI.
• 1:09:07
  It's stressful for founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs.
• 1:09:09
  And the real problem isn't just that your business is behind on AI.
• 1:09:13
  It's that you don't know where to start and all of your company's data is scattered across a bunch of different systems.
• 1:09:18
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• 1:09:19
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• 1:09:28
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• 1:09:36
  And with NetSuite Next, AI is built right into how you work.
• 1:09:39
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• 1:09:45
  If I needed a product like this, this is what I would use it for the first time ever.
• 1:09:48
  You can try NetSuite Next for free.
• 1:09:50
  If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsuite.ai.scottclary.
• 1:09:55
  built for every industry, ready for every boardroom, netsuite.ai slash scottclary.
• 1:10:00
  Monarch is a success story partner.
• 1:10:01
  Now, quick question.
• 1:10:02
  Do you know where your money went last month?
• 1:10:04
  Not roughly, but exactly.
• 1:10:06
  And most people don't.
• 1:10:07
  And I didn't for years.
• 1:10:08
  And that is most of our money stories, right?
• 1:10:10
  When we first start our career, we have one income and one account, and you can kind of wing it.
• 1:10:14
  But once you're running businesses, once you're investing, once you're carrying 50 different subscriptions that you stopped paying attention to,
• 1:10:21
  Winging it gets super expensive.
• 1:10:22
  Monarch fixed that for me.
• 1:10:24
  It is the personal finance app that tracks everything.
• 1:10:26
  So that means accounts, investments, savings goals, spending all on one screen.
• 1:10:31
  The first week I had it, it flied recurring charges I'd been paying for months without realizing.
• 1:10:34
  And every single week, the AI recap tells me if spending spiked, if my net worth moved and what bills are coming.
• 1:10:40
  And I can just ask it, hey,
• 1:10:41
  Can I afford this trip without touching my savings?
• 1:10:43
  And I can get a real answer based on my actual numbers.
• 1:10:47
  It is a financial advisor in your pocket.
• 1:10:49
  It costs less than an hour with a real one.
• 1:10:51
  So write your own money story with Monarch.
• 1:10:53
  Use code success at Monarch.com and get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50.
• 1:10:58
  That's 50% off your first year at Monarch.com with code success.
• 1:11:02
  You talk about the difference between being happy with your life versus being happy in your life.
• 1:11:09
  Where are you right now?
• 1:11:11
  I can't take credit for that.
• 1:11:12
  That's Lori Santos, by the way.
• 1:11:13
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:14
  She's tremendous.
• 1:11:16
  She's a professor and a scientist who studies happiness.
• 1:11:20
  Am I happy with or in my life?
• 1:11:21
  Am I happy with or in my life?
• 1:11:23
  Um, you want to be honest, Ashley?
• 1:11:25
  We're going to be honest.
• 1:11:26
  All right.
• 1:11:27
  I'm happy with my life.
• 1:11:29
  With is the outermost show, if you don't know.
• 1:11:31
  With is, um, you're happy with the outcomes.
• 1:11:35
  You like your job.
• 1:11:36
  You like your, you know, you like the way you dress.
• 1:11:39
  You like your home.
• 1:11:39
  You like your car, that thing.
• 1:11:41
  I'm happy with my life.
• 1:11:42
  Happy in my life?
• 1:11:43
  I'm not, I'm not certain because there's a sacrifice you make when you put yourself out there on the internet.
• 1:11:49
  Yeah.
• 1:11:50
  And you lose a lot of privacy.
• 1:11:53
  And then there's a lot of expectations.
• 1:11:56
  And I think I'm transitioning into what it means to be in the thought leader space where every word you say can be used against you or every word you say people dissect.
• 1:12:06
  Either they find meaning with they find meaning in or they find a problem with.
• 1:12:11
  And I'm a super low-key guy, man.
• 1:12:12
  Like, I'd really rather do nothing.
• 1:12:14
  I'd rather be at home just watching TV with my feet up.
• 1:12:17
  I'm not the guy that has to always be busy.
• 1:12:20
  But with being the servant leader in the world, which I guess I've been thrust into, I'm like Jon Snow, man.
• 1:12:27
  I'm just reluctant to...
• 1:12:29
  I don't want that.
• 1:12:30
  I don't want to throw.
• 1:12:32
  You know, I accept it.
• 1:12:34
  And I know that many people are making great strides.
• 1:12:36
  But the day to day, I think I want a slower life.
• 1:12:42
  I think I want.
• 1:12:43
  But I don't think it's my time yet.
• 1:12:45
  Do you think it's OK to not be happy in your life?
• 1:12:49
  Yeah, absolutely, man.
• 1:12:50
  It doesn't mean that I don't like my life.
• 1:12:52
  There's so many things about my life that I'm happy with.
• 1:12:55
  And I'm happy with parts of I'm happy in my life in different parts.
• 1:13:01
  I love my kids.
• 1:13:02
  But parenthood is so wacky ride, man.
• 1:13:05
  You know, I love my wife, but I hate that I don't have enough time to just chill with her on the couch and watch Game of Thrones.
• 1:13:11
  You know, it's I will.
• 1:13:13
  I don't tomorrow's not promise.
• 1:13:15
  But I think my mission right now is to do this.
• 1:13:18
  I think this is it.
• 1:13:19
  There's so much healing that needs to happen in the world.
• 1:13:21
  There's so many people who are in pain, who are in peril.
• 1:13:24
  They just need a little bit of guidance.
• 1:13:26
  And we've been able to help millions and millions of people.
• 1:13:29
  And I'm eternally grateful for it.
• 1:13:31
  I just think that that moment will come for me.
• 1:13:34
  I don't think this is the season of my life.
• 1:13:37
  I love that.
• 1:13:38
  I think that too many people are trying to...
• 1:13:41
  can be happy in their life in all aspects of their life all the time.
• 1:13:45
  And I don't think that's reality.
• 1:13:46
  I don't think that's reality for a lot of people.
• 1:13:48
  And I let go of that expectation.
• 1:13:50
  I've rearranged it.
• 1:13:51
  That's why I can be honest.
• 1:13:52
  Are you happy in your life?
• 1:13:53
  Like, yeah, there are things that I absolutely love, but there are things that I need to be different.
• 1:13:58
  There has to be seasons.
• 1:13:59
  There has to be seasons of, I mean, I've never said it with your life, in your life, but I've said there has to be seasons of imbalance.
• 1:14:09
  If you are ambitious and you want to do anything, there's going to be parts of your life where you're working more than you want to be working.
• 1:14:15
  You're doing things that are uncomfortable.
• 1:14:17
  I mean, you can make it as comfortable as possible.
• 1:14:19
  You know, Gina's sitting in the corner chilling.
• 1:14:22
  We're on this trip doing work together.
• 1:14:24
  But, I mean, it would be cool if we were just at home chilling.
• 1:14:27
  You know, I like Game of Thrones, too.
• 1:14:29
  Yeah.
• 1:14:30
  But this isn't a season.
• 1:14:32
  You have this podcast.
• 1:14:33
  You have work that you have to do.
• 1:14:35
  You have people who benefit from what you say.
• 1:14:38
  And what a unique position it is to be able to say things that people resonate with, bring it into their lives, and find value in.
• 1:14:45
  Where are you with and in your life, honestly?
• 1:14:49
  I think I'm very similar to you.
• 1:14:52
  Very similar to you.
• 1:14:54
  I'm happy with my life.
• 1:14:56
  I think that sometimes I lie to myself and I say that I'm completely happy in my life because I enjoy what I do so much.
• 1:15:10
  but there's so much more that I, and family is the one thing that comes to mind when I think like, how can you say you're happy in your life when you don't even have a family, which is something that you've wanted since you were like a kid.
• 1:15:20
  I like my parents, my parents still around, but I mean like my own family, my own kids.
• 1:15:26
  So I think that it's easy for me to, you know, lie to myself and say that I'm happy in my life, but it's, it's because it's all short term satisfaction.
• 1:15:40
  Like, you know, the idea is if you think about yourself at 80 or 90,
• 1:15:47
  You look back at your life, would you regret not doing something?
• 1:15:50
  And I would regret not having a family, not having kids.
• 1:15:53
  But in the moment, it's very easy to forget.
• 1:15:56
  You know, oh, well, I can do another work trip.
• 1:15:58
  I can make some money here.
• 1:15:59
  I can meet this cool person.
• 1:16:01
  Yeah, for sure.
• 1:16:02
  So, you know, it wasn't an easy answer to your question, but none of these topics are easy, really.
• 1:16:06
  So I feel like there's days where I'm happy in my life, but then I realize that it's very short-sighted.
• 1:16:11
  You know what I'm beginning to realize is...
• 1:16:13
  The happiness in my life, I think it's also perspective.
• 1:16:16
  I think this is where you and I might differ a little bit.
• 1:16:19
  I think I'm a little too busy to really absorb the happiness that exists.
• 1:16:25
  I had a thought.
• 1:16:26
  I was in Martha's Vineyard a few weeks ago and I had a thought.
• 1:16:29
  Just a moment of clarity, just able to come up and breathe for a second.
• 1:16:32
  I was like, man, what if life never gets better than this?
• 1:16:35
  What if this is it?
• 1:16:37
  I'm waiting for better.
• 1:16:38
  What if I'm in it right now and I don't have the space or the latitude to see and appreciate that?
• 1:16:46
  So I think the happiness in my life or like thereof isn't really because it doesn't exist.
• 1:16:53
  I just don't think I'm in a mindset to appreciate it.
• 1:16:56
  And that's why I film so much, because I know I look back one day, I was like,
• 1:16:59
  Man, look how little my kids were.
• 1:17:01
  Look how I was able to, you know, spend time going fishing trips with my frat brothers.
• 1:17:07
  Look, I was able to do those things.
• 1:17:08
  I don't know if that'll always be my reality.
• 1:17:10
  Even my physicality.
• 1:17:11
  I love to walk.
• 1:17:12
  Man, look how I walked down the street and saw Scott.
• 1:17:16
  And then we walked up and and I was able to do all these things and move my body that way.
• 1:17:20
  That's not always going to be my reality.
• 1:17:23
  So I think it's also a matter of perspective that I still have to mature into.
• 1:17:28
  But I have the tools and I'm implementing the tools.
• 1:17:31
  It's just it's a time thing.
• 1:17:32
  It's time under tension.
• 1:17:34
  I just haven't put in the hours yet.
• 1:17:36
  When I say that I'm happy in my life right now.
• 1:17:40
  I think because two things can be true at the same time.
• 1:17:44
  I think that you should love what you're doing every single day.
• 1:17:48
  But I think, you know, said simply, I think you should have a bigger North Star and always moving towards that.
• 1:17:54
  I think that's the thing.
• 1:17:55
  Like, you can be happy in your life right now.
• 1:17:59
  but know that this isn't going to be your life forever.
• 1:18:01
  So appreciate it.
• 1:18:03
  Don't be upset that your life isn't something else, but know that your life can and will be something else in the future.
• 1:18:12
  I like that duality because I don't want to be doing this and be upset that I don't have kids yet.
• 1:18:20
  I'm being ungrateful for the opportunity that I have right now to sit down with incredible people like yourself and create content that helps millions of people.
• 1:18:28
  I don't want to be ungrateful for that.
• 1:18:30
  But I also don't want this just to be the only thing I ever do.
• 1:18:33
  That's the brilliance of it all is there's still so much time.
• 1:18:37
  You know, they always say life is short.
• 1:18:38
  I don't know.
• 1:18:40
  It can't be cut short at any moment, but there's so many opportunities.
• 1:18:45
  I'm sure your life now is different than it was five years ago.
• 1:18:48
  Bro, my life now is different than it was like last week, three months ago.
• 1:18:52
  And it changes exponentially.
• 1:18:54
  You know, it's it's not one, two, three, four is one, two, four, eight, 16, 32.
• 1:19:00
  So who's to say what the next three or four years will look like and how you have to adjust to what that level of happiness looks like or how you extract the happiness from those moments.
• 1:19:10
  It's all a matter of perspective, man.
• 1:19:12
  I just learned this when I was researching all the great work you've done.
• 1:19:16
  So VP Harris called you and asked you to help with mental health initiatives for the White House, which is wild.
• 1:19:22
  Crazy.
• 1:19:23
  I guess my question is, it's a huge honor, but your message obviously hits home with so many people in such a meaningful way.
• 1:19:37
  And we've danced around the idea of...
• 1:19:40
  You know, there's a lot of people to try and help somebody overcome problems with self-improvement.
• 1:19:47
  What is different about your message that hits almost so many people to the point where, you know, the vice president of the United States is thinking, hey, this is a new way to look at.
• 1:20:04
  self-help, mental health, personal development that we haven't seen before.
• 1:20:07
  And I want you to teach the country.
• 1:20:10
  Shit, that was a crazy moment.
• 1:20:11
  Have you thought about this though?
• 1:20:12
  Like what's different about your message?
• 1:20:14
  Because you're conical, no, but you have to do it.
• 1:20:16
  Like you have to, because if you don't understand why your message is different, like.
• 1:20:24
  That's the secret.
• 1:20:25
  That's what, like, there's something about what you teach that helps people in a way that most people, they don't communicate, like they don't communicate it that way or the message doesn't resonate with the audience.
• 1:20:38
  Like there's something, there's a nuance in how you communicate.
• 1:20:42
  So I don't.
• 1:20:44
  My wife always says that I'm completely oblivious to what makes me special.
• 1:20:49
  It's a good thing, because if you knew you'd be an asshole.
• 1:20:53
  I mean, so I listen.
• 1:20:55
  I'm aware of what's going on.
• 1:20:57
  I think it just may be people use the word authenticity, which always is a little awkward to me.
• 1:21:03
  because I think I don't understand the aversion to authenticity.
• 1:21:08
  But I think it's the fact that I don't I don't try to come off as I'm as if I'm better than anyone.
• 1:21:14
  I meant my mistakes out loud.
• 1:21:16
  I think one of my other biggest gripes was with self-help, man.
• 1:21:19
  We're really crapping all over the self-help.
• 1:21:21
  It's all good.
• 1:21:21
  I hope John, but we're in it.
• 1:21:23
  Yeah, I can talk about my people.
• 1:21:26
  You know, one of the things that frustrates me is people tell these mountaintop stories and they only tell you their success stories.
• 1:21:32
  When they already planted their flag at the summit of the mountain, they never tell the stories while they're still in the muck, in the messy middle.
• 1:21:39
  And there's a part of that to me that feels very disingenuous.
• 1:21:42
  Yeah.
• 1:21:44
  It comes across as, hey, I've already figured everything out.
• 1:21:46
  So let me show you how to figure everything out because I have all the answers and solutions.
• 1:21:50
  I will be the first one to tell you I do not have all the answers to all the problems in the world.
• 1:21:56
  But what I do have is the skills and the tools and the capabilities to be able to look at things and make an honest assessment.
• 1:22:02
  I have the ability to be self-aware and self-honest.
• 1:22:06
  And not just tell myself a convenient truth, but tell myself the reality that lives in front of me.
• 1:22:10
  And I don't I don't preach that to people.
• 1:22:12
  I just invite you in.
• 1:22:14
  It's in therapy.
• 1:22:15
  There's a difference.
• 1:22:16
  There's a there's a top down where I just like pour all this information in and you just kind of got to drink it up.
• 1:22:23
  But then there's this this this approach I use, which is called a bottom up, which is like think of like an aquarium that you fill in from the bottom.
• 1:22:29
  Everything just kind of lifts.
• 1:22:31
  It's a less disruptive, more eye-level way of helping people through challenges.
• 1:22:38
  And I think people pick up on it.
• 1:22:40
  Yeah, because I was thinking about somebody picking up this book.
• 1:22:43
  They've already tried affirmations.
• 1:22:45
  They've already tried journaling.
• 1:22:46
  And all the things.
• 1:22:47
  Meditation.
• 1:22:49
  What's the thing that they're going to get out of this book that they've never tried before?
• 1:22:54
  I think the ability to be more comfortable in the pausing and the evaluating of what's going on, I think it's going to be the ability to step.
• 1:23:04
  I would like to say ideally step away from shame, blame and guilt.
• 1:23:08
  But honestly, it's the ability to see it coming and maneuver around it.
• 1:23:12
  To know that it's not helpful, even though it takes a lot of your awareness.
• 1:23:16
  It's the ability to say out loud, you know what?
• 1:23:19
  I'm avoiding something right now.
• 1:23:22
  I'm avoiding it.
• 1:23:22
  I don't want to talk about it right now, but I promise myself I'm going to come back to it.
• 1:23:26
  I think it's saying the uncomfortable and the embarrassing thing out loud to yourself without minimizing or diminishing yourself in the progress, in the process.
• 1:23:35
  What's the advice that somebody should take from a 60 second reel versus a book versus a YouTube video versus a 60 minute therapy session?
• 1:23:44
  What do you mean?
• 1:23:45
  Explain that to me.
• 1:23:46
  Is there some things in your life that you should dive deeper into and shouldn't take advice from social media?
• 1:23:52
  But what are those things?
• 1:23:53
  Because in the world of social media, there is no clear line.
• 1:23:57
  No, it's scattershot.
• 1:23:59
  People are getting the, you know, grieving advice from a 45 second reel.
• 1:24:05
  And people are getting, well, I'd say the end goal is a one-on-one sit-down with somebody who's actually trained to help you through the problem that you're trying to solve.
• 1:24:14
  And you sit down with them for 60 minutes, you know, once a week, twice a week for a period of time.
• 1:24:18
  That's when you can actually get some work done.
• 1:24:20
  But people are using social media in, you know, as a replacement for like real work.
• 1:24:27
  So there's some things that are good and should be and can be taught on social.
• 1:24:31
  But I think that this is another bit of...
• 1:24:33
  you know, is also around the conversation of like, how do people use the different parts of your work for different parts of their life and different parts of their problems?
• 1:24:41
  I think from a 60 second reel,
• 1:24:44
  Just something that inspires you to think differently.
• 1:24:48
  Something that gives you a perspective that you didn't consider otherwise.
• 1:24:52
  I think that's what those quick hits are good for.
• 1:24:55
  You said something about who to follow, who to listen to on social media.
• 1:24:59
  I think you got to be careful.
• 1:25:00
  Does the content capture your awareness and agree with the things you already want to believe are true or the things you believe are true?
• 1:25:07
  Or does the content actually help you once you cut it off?
• 1:25:11
  It didn't just give you a perspective you already had, but it challenged you to shift your thinking a little bit.
• 1:25:17
  I think that's something really important to ask yourself.
• 1:25:19
  Also, who's talking to me?
• 1:25:20
  Who are you?
• 1:25:21
  What credentials do you have?
• 1:25:22
  Where else have you spoken?
• 1:25:24
  How are you practicing these things in your own life while you're telling me what to do?
• 1:25:28
  Very important questions to ask.
• 1:25:30
  But in a session is different because Instagram content is meant to captivate you in a moment.
• 1:25:35
  The session is meant to gather information and help you through a guided process.
• 1:25:40
  Therapy is a guided process.
• 1:25:42
  Something that's therapeutic helps you feel better, helps you cope, helps you regulate.
• 1:25:47
  You know, the gym is therapeutic.
• 1:25:49
  It's not therapy.
• 1:25:51
  Music is therapeutic.
• 1:25:52
  It's not therapy, a massage, all these things.
• 1:25:55
  It's not a guided process for you.
• 1:25:57
  So I think the outcomes are different and the process is a lot slower.
• 1:26:02
  Your first session with me, you're not going to walk away feeling like, oh man, I have so many different things to think about.
• 1:26:07
  It's an intake session.
• 1:26:08
  I'm trying to figure out how your mom loved you.
• 1:26:10
  Try to try and figure out what your dad's definition of discipline was.
• 1:26:13
  Where did you grow up?
• 1:26:14
  How do people see themselves where you grew up?
• 1:26:17
  How do you what happens when you get angry?
• 1:26:18
  What happens when you get sad?
• 1:26:19
  What happens when you're happy?
• 1:26:21
  I'm trying to figure out all these things about you.
• 1:26:23
  So it's not as much of the quick hit.
• 1:26:25
  It's more of the the the long term investment.
• 1:26:29
  You know, it's every time you invest money, you don't you don't see a return on it.
• 1:26:34
  In two days, some of your investments take decades to pay off.
• 1:26:38
  Don't replace therapy and real work with Instagram reels.
• 1:26:42
  No, no, you can't.
• 1:26:43
  But you say it like it's so obvious because you're in this space, but I think a lot of people.
• 1:26:47
  A lot of people that do.
• 1:26:48
  Yeah.
• 1:26:48
  And I think I underestimate how many people do.
• 1:26:52
  But the Instagram reels, who is this person that's talking to you and what do they want for you specifically?
• 1:27:00
  They don't know you.
• 1:27:01
  It's very easy to feed you hollow validations to make you feel better about yourself.
• 1:27:05
  You're going to keep coming back.
• 1:27:06
  I'm selling you honey, of course.
• 1:27:08
  But something that gives you a not just tells you something, but actually can give you feedback.
• 1:27:15
  It listens to you, considers what you said and then give you feedback.
• 1:27:19
  Instagram real can't do that.
• 1:27:21
  You know, a lot of people starting to use AI for therapy and they're a million different ways.
• 1:27:25
  There are a million different reasons why, but even AI systems can't do that the same way a therapist can, a living, breathing human that doesn't just see you, doesn't just hear you, doesn't just process you, but they experience you in real time.
• 1:27:38
  A lot of the success on anyone's journey is to a degree dependent on the people around them, their friends, their family, their spouse, their therapist.
• 1:27:48
  I want you to give people one last bit of advice on how to build, not how to build the right group around you, because some people...
• 1:27:56
  you're not changing.
• 1:27:56
  You're not going to change your spouse, hopefully, God forbid, on this journey.
• 1:27:59
  Maybe you change a couple friends here or there.
• 1:28:00
  Maybe you change a therapist, but not everybody can just swap in and swap out.
• 1:28:03
  You can't change your parents, your brother, your sister, your family.
• 1:28:06
  Nor should you always move to do that.
• 1:28:09
  But if you are on this journey, a lot of your success is dependent to a degree on the people you surround yourself with.
• 1:28:15
  So I want advice from you on how to speak to the people
• 1:28:21
  that you surround yourself with?
• 1:28:24
  How should they, like, how should they give you feedback?
• 1:28:27
  How should they, because a lot of times I think that people are with a group of, you know, friends, family who just say yes to everything.
• 1:28:34
  Say, you know, you're good, you're perfect.
• 1:28:36
  We love you the way you are.
• 1:28:38
  And I don't think that helps anybody.
• 1:28:39
  So I guess sort of two things.
• 1:28:41
  How do you communicate with the people closest to you?
• 1:28:45
  on how to interact with you so you can heal, you can get to the level that you want to get to or wherever you want to go, but also how do you choose the right therapist to help you on your journey as well?
• 1:28:56
  Ooh, all right.
• 1:28:57
  Let's deal with the people before the therapist because the therapist is the more complicated answer, I think.
• 1:29:02
  With the people around you, there are many different tools.
• 1:29:05
  This is a quick tool that I will give you.
• 1:29:09
  Monitor your reaction carefully.
• 1:29:11
  to things that you hear that are uncomfortable because sometimes people will only be as honest with you as you indicate that you're ready for.
• 1:29:22
  If every time I'm honest with you, even when it's uncomfortable for you, you lash back out at me or you disappear for a while
• 1:29:30
  Or you kind of fast talk.
• 1:29:31
  Oh, yeah, I was already thinking about that.
• 1:29:33
  I already made a few of those changes.
• 1:29:34
  You just you didn't see it yet.
• 1:29:35
  And you just fast talking through the response.
• 1:29:37
  You're not taking the feedback, internalizing it, pausing and say, oh, let me let me sit with that while I try to do something valuable with it.
• 1:29:46
  Monitor what your reaction is when you hear things about yourself that make you uncomfortable that you don't agree with.
• 1:29:52
  I think that's a really good tool because, again, it norms the audience around you.
• 1:29:55
  And I talk about this in the book.
• 1:29:57
  It norms people on what is and isn't OK, how honest to be with you.
• 1:30:02
  And of course, it is a foolproof.
• 1:30:04
  People who want to lie to you are going to lie to you.
• 1:30:06
  But we're talking about the closest people around you.
• 1:30:08
  They're going to go off of your behavior a lot of times.
• 1:30:11
  And it's uncomfortable.
• 1:30:12
  And I know no one's going to want to hear this.
• 1:30:14
  But try to become an easier person to tell the truth, too.
• 1:30:18
  No one deserves to be lied to, but try to become an easier person to tell the truth to.
• 1:30:22
  How to find the right therapist.
• 1:30:27
  I mean, I'm better off asking you.
• 1:30:29
  I'm better off answering how to find the perfect romantic partner.
• 1:30:33
  It's a very similar process.
• 1:30:35
  I think it's experiential.
• 1:30:37
  Two things.
• 1:30:38
  One, finding the right therapist is different than finding the right doctor.
• 1:30:41
  I don't care about my doctor's bedside manner if they can find cancer early.
• 1:30:45
  You know, I don't care.
• 1:30:46
  I don't care if you're an asshole, if you can detect liver failure before anybody else does.
• 1:30:52
  That's never going to work for a therapist.
• 1:30:54
  Your candor, your attitude, your body position, the weight, the thing you do with your face when I'm talking, all that's going to matter.
• 1:31:00
  So I think you have to identify what matters to you.
• 1:31:03
  I don't think you always need a therapist that looks exactly like you, not your same race, not your same religion, not your same gender, even though cultural competency matters.
• 1:31:12
  I'm not saying that it doesn't, but you don't.
• 1:31:14
  Always need a therapist that looks like you.
• 1:31:16
  And look, you all grow your therapist sometimes.
• 1:31:18
  You can have a therapist for one season in your life, see them for three years, and then what you came in there for, you're better able to manage and you need something else that might not be their ministry, might not be within their wheelhouse.
• 1:31:30
  So just being open to all of those things.
• 1:31:32
  But you have to try a therapist to know whether or not they work for you.
• 1:31:35
  Is it too simple to say, like, if it's the right fit, you just know it's the right fit?
• 1:31:40
  Yeah, that might be a little bit of an oversimplification because sometimes it starts a little rough and it may not feel like the right fit.
• 1:31:46
  And around session number five, it starts to feel like the right fit.
• 1:31:49
  Or I'm a therapist.
• 1:31:51
  I'm not a mind reader.
• 1:31:52
  If I'm doing something that you don't like, a lot of people don't feel comfortable enough in therapy to stop and say, hey, Keir, when you respond to me that way, it throws me off a little bit.
• 1:32:01
  My response would be, oh, I'm so sorry.
• 1:32:03
  I didn't realize that.
• 1:32:04
  Let's do this a different way.
• 1:32:05
  That's really uncomfortable.
• 1:32:06
  Most people just go to the therapist and never come back.
• 1:32:09
  So also speaking up for yourself in session when things aren't going on.
• 1:32:13
  You know, I thought that I feel a little different than I feel right now.
• 1:32:15
  Can we talk about our therapist-client relationship really quickly?
• 1:32:19
  Most people don't know that they can do that type of thing.
• 1:32:21
  And that lack of self-confidence really hurts in all parts of your life.
• 1:32:26
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:32:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:32:28
  I'm just thinking about that now.
• 1:32:30
  Like, everything, every relationship.
• 1:32:31
  Yeah.
• 1:32:32
  Like, being confident enough to tell your parents, your spouse, that they should be honest with you, being confident enough to sort of protect your boundaries, being confident enough to tell your therapist that you don't like the way... That lack of confidence is a motherfucker.
• 1:32:49
  It is, but it's also a little bit of fear.
• 1:32:51
  It's apprehension.
• 1:32:52
  You don't know what the response is going to be.
• 1:32:54
  I feel like...
• 1:32:55
  I don't know if I'll characterize it as confidence, but I don't know a better word.
• 1:32:59
  So it'll be confidence adjacent.
• 1:33:01
  But you have to practice that.
• 1:33:03
  Like that isn't something you're just born with.
• 1:33:04
  That's something you develop over time.
• 1:33:06
  You have to find a window of bravery, not when you feel perfectly ready, but when you feel more ready than you did before.
• 1:33:13
  Like you have to in the book, I talk about saying no.
• 1:33:17
  People always like, oh, I'm going to set my boundaries.
• 1:33:19
  I'm going to tell everybody no.
• 1:33:20
  No.
• 1:33:21
  No, you're not.
• 1:33:22
  Like, that's very hard.
• 1:33:23
  Let's practice telling people no.
• 1:33:25
  So when the guy in the mall walks up, says, hey, you want the spray of cologne?
• 1:33:28
  No.
• 1:33:29
  Hey, can I clean your shoes?
• 1:33:30
  No.
• 1:33:30
  Knocking on your door.
• 1:33:31
  Hi, would you like to buy solar?
• 1:33:33
  No.
• 1:33:34
  You tell people you start practicing no in these inconsequential moments so that when the bigger moments come up, you have the reps.
• 1:33:40
  It's not saying that you always perfectly do it.
• 1:33:42
  The goal is not to do it perfectly.
• 1:33:44
  The goal is to increase the likelihood that we demonstrate the behavior when time comes.
• 1:33:48
  here um where can people connect with you where people get the book um we're gonna put all the things all the links in the show notes too but it's out now so it all starts when you do amazon everywhere else you get your books where can they connect you to instagram website all that
• 1:34:03
  Yeah, Instagram.
• 1:34:05
  My name is Kier Gaines, K-I-E-R-G-A-I-N-E-S.
• 1:34:08
  I always have to spell it out.
• 1:34:09
  I'm the same on Instagram, TikTok, wherever you find me, all the socials.
• 1:34:13
  Instagram is where I mainly post.
• 1:34:15
  I have a podcast called Learn the Hard Way.
• 1:34:17
  You can find me there.
• 1:34:19
  And yeah, the book, it all starts when you do.
• 1:34:22
  This is not some way to support me.
• 1:34:24
  This is a brilliant way for you to support yourself.
• 1:34:28
  It comes out September 1st, and I think it'll be a really great tool whether you're in therapy, whether you have been in therapy before, or whether you think therapy is complete bullshit.
• 1:34:39
  I think it's an excellent tool for you to take the next progressive step to where you want to be.
• 1:34:43
  I need you to drop one last bit of wisdom for the audience.
• 1:34:46
  I'm actually going to ask you two more things.
• 1:34:47
  Okay.
• 1:34:48
  First question is, if you could go back and tell your 20-year-old self one piece of advice...
• 1:34:55
  If I could tell my 20 year old self something, it would be remain flexible.
• 1:35:01
  Strength is flexibility.
• 1:35:03
  Stay flexible.
• 1:35:03
  When things change, stay the course.
• 1:35:06
  Follow your heart and believe in yourself.
• 1:35:09
  And if you could only pass on one bit of advice to your kids, the most important.
• 1:35:14
  You know, nothing in this world is more important than looking at the person in the mirror and finding a sense of satisfaction with the person staring back at you.
• 1:35:27
  If you can look in the mirror and I'm not saying you have to completely love yourself.
• 1:35:31
  I'm saying if you can feel a profound sense of satisfaction for who you are, who you're becoming and who you've always been, that is the definition of success.