Latest / The Action Catalyst / REMASTERED: Scary Close and The Condition of Your Heart, with Donald Miller (Marketing, Branding, Communication, Promotion)

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REMASTERED: Scary Close and The Condition of Your Heart, with Donald Miller (Marketing, Branding, Communication, Promotion) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:00
  Host: The author that you're about to hear from is Donald,
• 0:02
  Don Miller. And some of you have probably many of you have
• 0:06
  probably heard of, of some of his other books. He's written
• 0:09
  several books. His most famous book is Blue Like Jazz, and it's
• 0:12
  sold well over a million and a half copies, he sold millions of
• 0:16
  books. Let's put it that way. And so Don, thank you for being
• 0:19
  here, brother.
• 0:20
  Donald Miller: I'm so excited about this. Thanks for having me.
• 0:22
  Host: So I want to dive right in. Why do you think it is so
• 0:27
  hard to just open up and allow ourselves to be known by other
• 0:32
  people or fully known as you say?
• 0:35
  Donald Miller: Well I think, you know, we live in a day and age
• 0:38
  where it's easy to project an image, especially with social
• 0:41
  media, we can project an image on Instagram, and Twitter and
• 0:44
  all this kind of stuff. And then when we actually are in person,
• 0:48
  we've got this image that we've projected in the back of our
• 0:51
  brain, and we try to keep it going, right. It's hard to do
• 0:55
  that in person, because we're not always in the coolest place.
• 0:58
  And we're in the coolest pose and hanging out with the coolest
• 1:02
  people. And so to let people know that you're normal, can be
• 1:05
  scary. But that's the only way we connect. I mean, it's, you
• 1:09
  know, it's the difference between people being impressed
• 1:12
  with us and people knowing us. You know, I got married pretty
• 1:15
  late, I remember a year into our marriage. And Betsy and I had a
• 1:19
  really great first year, we had about 120, overnight guests in
• 1:23
  our house traveled and we, we just had a great time the
• 1:26
  company was growing around us and really fun, and almost no
• 1:29
  arguments, you know, we're just not the type. I've had plenty of
• 1:33
  relations were argue all the time. Whatever reason, Benson I
• 1:36
  just don't don't do it. And laid in bed one night, and I'm Betsy
• 1:40
  is asleep. And I'm praying and I'm thinking, Okay, what's the
• 1:43
  theme of the second year? Right? What? What do I want the theme
• 1:47
  to be my second year of marriage? And I really just felt
• 1:50
  like God was saying, Why did you let her get to know you? Wow,
• 1:54
  the second year of marriage, right? Why don't you let her get
• 1:57
  to know you? And it wasn't like, you know, he was being a jerk or
• 2:01
  anything. And I just realized, wow, I, I still, I'm still
• 2:04
  putting on a, a, an act a little bit for my wife to some degree,
• 2:08
  right? I mean, there are things that I was sort of that I hadn't
• 2:11
  told her about my life of moments of failure that she
• 2:14
  didn't know about that. I you know, I assumed she wouldn't
• 2:18
  like me anymore. Now, I'm not I didn't assume that. I just
• 2:21
  wanted her to be impressed. Right, I assumed she wouldn't be
• 2:24
  impressed. And so I think it's true in minor ways, even in just
• 2:28
  close friendships and family. And there's something really,
• 2:31
  you know, we risk rejection when we let people get to know us.
• 2:35
  And it's not just this decision to be known, I think a lot of
• 2:38
  us, including me, don't even really know how to do it, right.
• 2:42
  We don't know how we don't know how to be known. And what
• 2:45
  happens is we end up in a room full of people that know us, and
• 2:49
  yet still feel isolated. And there's damage there. There's,
• 2:52
  there's when whenever we're isolated, bad things grow, and
• 2:55
  by bad things, I mean, insecurities and even
• 2:58
  temptations and all that kind of stuff. It's a It's not helpful.
• 3:01
  Host: Wow. I mean, just this, there's so many big ideas in
• 3:06
  there, talk about the self shame and the act to kind of talk
• 3:11
  about that.
• 3:12
  Donald Miller: Well I have a friend named Bill Loki, and he's
• 3:14
  a clinical psychologist at a at a place called on site. And it
• 3:18
  sounds really rehabbing. But it's actually not, it's a really
• 3:22
  great place where a bunch of executive types go to get their
• 3:26
  stuff figured out. So they can be better leaders. But he kind
• 3:29
  of sat me down, he said, you know, done. Every person is born
• 3:33
  a self right. And so he drew a little circle on a napkin, and
• 3:37
  he wrote the word self inside the circle. He said, This is
• 3:40
  you. And then he said, at some point, every human being as they
• 3:44
  grow up, they learn kind of lie that they're not enough that
• 3:48
  there's something wrong with them. And, you know, who knows
• 3:52
  what that could be either, you know, missed kicking a ball on
• 3:55
  the kickball field or something like that. But he said, that
• 3:59
  causes them to cover their or to feel a sense of shame. And so he
• 4:03
  drew another circle around the self circle. So he's making kind
• 4:07
  of a target. And in that second circle, he wrote shame. And he
• 4:11
  said, so we're feeling this kind of shame. And then he said,
• 4:14
  another thing happens after we discover shame. And we tend to
• 4:18
  something happens in our life where we succeed a little bit,
• 4:22
  or we get some attention that we want. So, you know, you hit up a
• 4:26
  homerun in a, in a softball game when you're a kid, and you
• 4:29
  realize that that you're good, you're good at athletics, and
• 4:33
  that you matter because you're a good athlete and you and so he
• 4:37
  said, we draw this third circle around shame. So we've got a
• 4:40
  three circle target here. And then he wrote the word, you
• 4:44
  know, good at athletics, or smart or whatever. And that
• 4:47
  tends to be the you know, the costume that we were in order to
• 4:51
  cover shape and any So the problem with all that is people
• 4:55
  get to know this costume, right? And they don't ever get to know
• 4:59
  the self. And so one of the things that in the book that I
• 5:02
  just made this conscious decision to do was to just tell
• 5:06
  the casual reader, here's who I really am. And I don't, I'm not
• 5:10
  a big fan of airing all your dirty laundry, I think there's
• 5:13
  some wisdom to being careful who you share your your
• 5:16
  vulnerabilities with, because not everybody is trustworthy.
• 5:20
  And so it wasn't like I was, you know, telling everything. But I
• 5:24
  just went back into my elementary school days and
• 5:27
  talked about where I discovered shame. And the I remember when I
• 5:31
  wrote that the story is of me, having a small bladder and
• 5:34
  wetting my pants and elementary school. So in the book, I
• 5:38
  remember where I wrote that story. And how, you know, it was
• 5:41
  a really hard thing for me to write not because I didn't trust
• 5:45
  the reader. But it was just a painful moment for me to go back
• 5:49
  in time and realize, wow, there's this, this kind of shame
• 5:53
  wound back there that I never fully processed that from an
• 5:56
  early age, when kids are learning the things about life,
• 6:00
  I learned I wasn't good enough. And I needed to hide. And what
• 6:03
  was really cool about it, from Bill's perspective of my
• 6:07
  psychologist, friend, is he said, Well, you know, now that
• 6:10
  you're an adult, you can actually kind of, you know, it's
• 6:14
  called a story map, and you kind of map out you reframe the
• 6:18
  narrative in your brain. And you sort of realize, you know, if
• 6:21
  the adult you can walk up to the kid you in that moment, how,
• 6:25
  first of all kind of silly, the moment is how it's not that big
• 6:29
  of a deal, right? And you would say to the kid, hey, you realize
• 6:33
  everything's gonna be all right, right? Like, this isn't? This
• 6:37
  isn't a defining thing. There's no reason to feel shame about
• 6:40
  this. In fact, this is the sort of thing you could grow up and
• 6:44
  be a comedian and talk about it and make a lot of money, right.
• 6:48
  And it's amazing how healing that experience is. Because I
• 6:52
  think so many of us just the way our brains work, you know, we
• 6:55
  get programmed to walk around with this shame, and you sit and
• 6:59
  think about you realize this was dumb. Why am I feeling shame
• 7:03
  about that, that's, if my child did that. I would have such a
• 7:07
  sympathetic, compassionate perspective on them that I that
• 7:10
  I'm unwilling to give to myself. And so that was a real healing
• 7:14
  thing for me. But I think a lot of people, you know, we walk
• 7:18
  around, and we meet folks who specially really successful
• 7:21
  folks. They can, they can, they've lived off that third
• 7:25
  circle of putting up an image for so long that they, they
• 7:28
  don't even realize they know, they don't even realize who they
• 7:32
  are anymore. And I remember for a buddy of mine, another
• 7:35
  counselor here in town, he counsels a lot of musicians,
• 7:39
  singer songwriters, a lot of people who are famous, and he
• 7:42
  had, at one guy sit down during a rebranding phase in his
• 7:46
  career, where he was moving from country music to some other kind
• 7:50
  of music. And Al said, Well, which one is more like you like,
• 7:54
  which one is you? And he said, Man, I don't I forgot who I was
• 7:57
  long time ago. I don't know if I'm the country or the rock. I
• 8:01
  don't know. Yeah, a lot of us are like that in life, too.
• 8:05
  Host: We live in this world where we can't survive without
• 8:08
  being that act.
• 8:08
  Donald Miller: Right? Yeah, well, you can't survive, you
• 8:11
  can't, you know, succeed, we can't get some of that stuff
• 8:14
  that we want. And those of us and I don't know if you're like
• 8:17
  this, but I am, you know, I bought into the lie early on
• 8:21
  that if I'm not successful, people won't, won't won't care
• 8:24
  about me. And so winning is really important. I'm not
• 8:27
  especially a competitive person. But I'm competitive with myself,
• 8:31
  right? I know what my potential is. And it bothers me when I
• 8:34
  don't reach it, and give it day. But there's this lie behind that
• 8:38
  where it says, you know, you know, they're gonna leave you if
• 8:41
  you if you're not successful. Right. And, and, ultimately,
• 8:44
  that there's just no truth to that. And so I think part of the
• 8:48
  reason that we get exhausted doing this is because we think
• 8:51
  they're going to leave us if we don't, when really what the
• 8:55
  people who connect best are people who are free to be
• 8:58
  themselves and okay with who they are. Because if you're okay
• 9:01
  with who you are, you make me really comfortable. And I get
• 9:04
  the sense that I'm going to be okay with who I am. But if you
• 9:08
  walk in the room, and you're the kind of person who Hey, only
• 9:11
  matter if I succeed, but I think as well, you're only gonna like
• 9:15
  me if I succeed and so I can only spend limited amount of
• 9:18
  time and because I can't keep up the act. And you know, we've all
• 9:22
  met people like that where it's really hard just to get real
• 9:25
  with them. And, and ultimately, you just kind of you need a you
• 9:29
  need a break and so I it was so comforting, you know, for me to
• 9:32
  make a conscious decision to cut that stuff out. And and it's not
• 9:36
  100% cut out but it's just easier, it's easier to just be
• 9:39
  myself and write things I want to write and do the things I
• 9:43
  want to do and say the things I want to say and a lot of that I
• 9:46
  think comes with just getting older too.
• 9:49
  Host: You know, I want to just have you fill in the blank there
• 9:52
  was a line that you said it said the most powerful and attractive
• 9:57
  person we can become is the person...
• 10:00
  Donald Miller: We already are. You know that I checked into
• 10:02
  this therapeutic retreat center called on site that we just
• 10:05
  talked about. And it's a really great place, I highly recommend
• 10:09
  it for everybody listening if you if you're trying to figure
• 10:13
  something out, or if you just feel exhausted. And what it is,
• 10:16
  is it's 40 people go through a program called Living centered,
• 10:20
  the 40, people are broken up into groups of 10, and do some
• 10:23
  group therapy for one week, but during that week, you can't tell
• 10:27
  anybody your last name, and you can't tell anybody what you do.
• 10:30
  It was unbelievable. It was like, I wanted to tell
• 10:33
  everybody, I'm a writer. And if you'd asked me the day before
• 10:37
  dawn, do you think your identity is caught up in the fact that
• 10:40
  your provider said no way? I mean, I don't care about that.
• 10:44
  It's just what I do. I hardly ever talked about it. And sure
• 10:47
  enough, you know, somebody seemed really in control. And,
• 10:50
  and somebody I wanted to get to know and wanted to like me, and
• 10:54
  on the tip of my tongue would be well, I'm a writer, I'd be
• 10:57
  trying to drop it into conversations, I realize, oh,
• 11:00
  wait, you can't you can't say that. You can't let anybody know
• 11:04
  that. And I thought, holy crap, I am so caught up and what I do,
• 11:07
  as is who I am, and even then over the course of the week, I
• 11:11
  mean, I sit there feeling like I've got this ace card, and all
• 11:14
  these people would really like to want to talk to me, and I
• 11:18
  can't use it. And the reality is, they don't want to talk to
• 11:21
  me, I'm sitting here eating lunch alone, and I've got an ace
• 11:25
  card I can't use. So why in the world do I actually matter?
• 11:28
  Like, is this the real me the loser eating lunch alone? Is
• 11:31
  this who I really am without my costume. And then slowly, as the
• 11:35
  week went on, I had real conversations with people about
• 11:38
  you know, my childhood and about my relationships, and then
• 11:42
  somebody you know, over lunch, or I'd be talking about
• 11:45
  something and they kind of went, wow, you know, that was a hard
• 11:48
  moment. And that comment made me feel really cared about. And I
• 11:52
  thought, so this is the difference between people caring
• 11:55
  about you, and people being impressed by and being cared
• 11:58
  about was like, eating really nutritious food. And B people
• 12:02
  being impressed was like, eating junk food. And I'd been out on a
• 12:05
  diet of junk food for so long. And Manny, you know, it was life
• 12:09
  changing for me. And I really came out of there going, I this
• 12:13
  is what I want, you know, I want I want to eat nutritious food
• 12:16
  from here on out. And, you know, you go back and forth course,
• 12:20
  you're standing from a lot of people and they've been paid to
• 12:23
  hear you talk you, you have a professional obligation to be
• 12:26
  impressive. Like you need to make them laugh. And yeah, and
• 12:30
  inspire them, that's your obligation. But you know, you
• 12:33
  step off the stage and, and that it doesn't feed you anymore. And
• 12:37
  you've got to actually have real connection with real people. And
• 12:40
  I think it comes from this conscious decision of I'm going
• 12:44
  to try not to be impressive here. You know, and the other
• 12:47
  thing is, and this was a year, I've got a buddy Bob Gough, who
• 12:51
  is a author and inspirational guy, and Bob, he actually has a
• 12:54
  New York Times bestselling book, and he put his phone number in
• 12:58
  the back of the book. And people call him and he he says all
• 13:01
  time, you know, you've got to be accessible, you got to be
• 13:04
  accessible to people. And I just completely disagree with him. I
• 13:08
  was like, if I'm accessible, I'm never gonna get anything done.
• 13:12
  This year, I just said, You know what, I think I'm going to allow
• 13:15
  myself to be interrupted and have my day hijacked a little
• 13:19
  more often. And just see what happens. What I discovered was,
• 13:22
  you know, and I've got a great staff and, and there's a lot of
• 13:26
  ways that I can get things done while being interrupted. I
• 13:29
  discovered I'm getting more done, and am more connected. And
• 13:33
  that's not for everybody. But I think this year is a year where
• 13:36
  I'm, I'm just being willing to kind of do that a little bit
• 13:40
  more. And I don't know, you know, it's a, it's a, it's an
• 13:43
  interesting transition in life to have built a life being
• 13:46
  impressive and realize you're feeling alone. And now to want
• 13:50
  to up to deeply want to connect with people consider that a
• 13:53
  priority. I can tell you emotionally and even physically,
• 13:56
  I'm probably healthier than I've been in a long time. So there's
• 14:00
  some benefits to it.
• 14:01
  Host: So I want to talk about the corrective pattern of some
• 14:04
  of this stuff. You know, you talked about how you know people
• 14:08
  caring about you is like eating healthy food, people being
• 14:12
  impressed by you is like eating junk food. And I mean, there's
• 14:16
  this whole this whole risk of intimacy and being known and
• 14:20
  allowing people in the, you know, the big theme, how do you
• 14:24
  tell the difference between enablement with somebody? And Grace?
• 14:28
  Donald Miller: I think there are different kinds of
• 14:29
  relationships, right? So with family, it's grace to the end.
• 14:33
  And you know, that doesn't mean you you allow our kids or or
• 14:39
  even our significant others to be awful to us or whatever, but
• 14:43
  you just keep turning the other cheek, over and over and over. I
• 14:48
  think you know, how to win in professional relationships.
• 14:52
  We've talked we talked about this often, as I run a company
• 14:55
  of, you know, when do you just when do you not show grace and
• 14:59
  when are you winning? Are we need to show grace but let
• 15:01
  somebody go or whatever. And I, the clarity in my mind comes
• 15:04
  from an interview I did years ago with Pete Carroll, Pete and
• 15:07
  I got out a couple hours alone in his office there in Seattle.
• 15:11
  And we talked a little bit about leadership. And one of the
• 15:15
  things I asked him because he is he's amazing at taking somebody
• 15:19
  who other people don't see the potential in any developed
• 15:22
  person. Yeah, yeah. Russell Wilson is an example of that the
• 15:25
  guy that was a great quarterback, but nobody saw that
• 15:29
  in him. And he turned him into a Super Bowl winning quarterback
• 15:33
  almost twice. And but he's also had to let some guys go. And and
• 15:38
  so I said, Listen, what do you what, you know? Are you willing
• 15:43
  to throw a guy a rope, you know, we were sitting on the edge of
• 15:45
  the, of Lake Washington there in his office, he's got a corner
• 15:49
  office that overlooks a practice field and lakes, and like
• 15:51
  Washington, there were some boats out there. And I said, Do
• 15:53
  you ever throw a guy row? And he said, out? Yeah, he said, If
• 15:56
  somebody on my team is hurting, or struggling, or even bringing
• 15:58
  other guys down or costing us, I definitely throw on the row. And
• 16:02
  I said, What do you do if they don't take the rope? He says,
• 16:04
  throw them another rope done. And so what do you do if they
• 16:07
  don't take that rope? He says, I throw him another rope. You
• 16:09
  know, and I was like, Wow, this guy's run a football team. And
• 16:12
  he said, you know, Ashley again? And it's okay, what are you
• 16:15
  doing that third row, because I let them drown. And I thought
• 16:18
  that's really fascinating, you know, gives you a few tries, and
• 16:21
  then he decided, he realizes this person is trying to drown.
• 16:26
  That's their, that's what they're trying to do that has
• 16:28
  nothing to do with me. That's their decision. And so he's got
• 16:33
  this great relationship between showing grace and developing
• 16:37
  guys, and not being codependent not and realizing this is their
• 16:41
  life, this is the decision that they want to make, and they need
• 16:44
  to make it. And they need to feel the consequences in order
• 16:48
  to develop as a human being. And he's not going to get in the way
• 16:51
  of them suffering the consequences of their actions.
• 16:54
  So I, so different relationships have different, you know, ways
• 17:01
  of enabling, I'll tell you that, you know, in the book, I've got
• 17:04
  this chapter called five kinds of manipulators. And one of the
• 17:08
  things I learned in relationships early on is there
• 17:10
  are some people who just are deciding not to make themselves
• 17:13
  compatible to have a good healthy relationship. And, you
• 17:17
  know, my friend, Henry Cloud is a is a psychologist, a great
• 17:21
  writer. He says, the only person that you can't have a
• 17:24
  relationship with is with somebody who's deceptive. And I
• 17:28
  thought, Man, that's really true. You can have a
• 17:30
  relationship with a drug addict, you never relationship with
• 17:32
  somebody even abuses you. But if they're lying, there is no
• 17:35
  relationship. Because there's no trust there. And you're not in a
• 17:39
  relationship with the real them anyway, you're in a relationship
• 17:41
  with whatever image they're projecting. I remember, I used
• 17:45
  to go hunting with a guy who would tell me Is it good
• 17:48
  Christian guy, church guy, and he'd tell me, you know, Dad, I
• 17:51
  don't read your books. You know, I, I, I only read the Bible, you
• 17:55
  know? And I was like, Okay, that's interesting. I don't know
• 17:58
  anybody who does that. Right. But talk about you know, I like
• 18:01
  Robin around my tracker, listen to praise, music and blah, blah.
• 18:04
  And, and I love talking with the guy. It was really fun guy and
• 18:08
  good guy, and really successful. I learned a lot from, but I
• 18:12
  never connected with him. And I just, it was like, you know, I
• 18:15
  could spend I spend weeks with this guy, and I have no idea who
• 18:19
  he is. And all I know is he's impressive from a religious
• 18:22
  standpoint. And then, you know, then he gets caught with a
• 18:25
  prostitute, right? And everything unravels. And he's
• 18:29
  got to go through all these programs and all this kind of
• 18:31
  stuff. And, you know, the first thing I thought when I heard
• 18:35
  that he'd gotten caught with a prostitute. No idea. I literally
• 18:38
  thought, good. We can be friends now. Right? Like, we can be
• 18:43
  friends like, yeah, now I know who you are. Wow. I am, like,
• 18:46
  let's talk. And let's not try to impress each other. So I and I
• 18:50
  think the reality is, he really wasn't good guy. He probably
• 18:54
  really did only read the Bible, when he probably really did
• 18:57
  liking like to ride around with his tractor and listen to praise
• 19:00
  music. And he liked some other stuff that he wasn't talking
• 19:04
  about. And it stayed in isolation. And so it grew. Yeah.
• 19:08
  And so I think it's really important, especially for those
• 19:11
  of us who a lot of people depend on us and look to us for
• 19:14
  examples. I think it's important that you know, we lose the
• 19:18
  battle to win the war. And here's what I mean by that. I
• 19:21
  was I actually am a Republican. If I ever run for office, I'll
• 19:25
  run as a Republican. But I liked a lot of the stuff in the first
• 19:30
  Obama campaign. I liked a lot of his stuff when fatherlessness
• 19:34
  really got me and so actually defending him a couple times.
• 19:37
  And I was in a debate with the John McCain team, public debate.
• 19:43
  I was on Obama's team. They had three representatives from the
• 19:46
  McCain team about 1000 people in the audience. Wow. And the guy
• 19:50
  that I was debating with on my side of the team was a civil
• 19:54
  rights lawyer, who was who went on to be on Obama's staff is a
• 19:58
  very important member of Obama. his staff. And he said to me
• 20:03
  before the debate, he said, Listen, it's not important that
• 20:07
  we win this thing. And I said, What are you talking? And I was
• 20:09
  like, ramped up, you know, there were some big names. There were
• 20:11
  some big guys on the other side of the deal. Sure. And I wanted
• 20:15
  to win. And he said that he's a no, he's you know, that if you
• 20:18
  try to win this thing, you might say something, and that would
• 20:22
  really cost the campaign a lot. And he said, here's what I'm
• 20:25
  saying, be willing to lose this battle so that we can win the
• 20:28
  war. And in other words, don't say anything on that stage and
• 20:33
  have that microphone, that's gonna make CNN tonight. And an
• 20:37
  Obama surrogate said this and cost us the entire war. If we
• 20:43
  lose this battle, it will not be on CNN. Right. So I think
• 20:46
  there's some, you know, when we're sitting around a campfire
• 20:48
  at night, sometimes just as leaders, we need to lose the
• 20:51
  battle, we need to say, hey, you know, I'm, I'm not doing well in
• 20:55
  this area of my life. And and what do you guys think about
• 20:59
  that? Well, that may cost you a little respect around that fire.
• 21:02
  But what you're not going to do is get caught with a prostitute
• 21:04
  and have it on the news that night, because you're your best
• 21:06
  selling author and owner of a company you get because you lost
• 21:12
  the battle you've talked about, you will really cost yourself a
• 21:15
  little bit of respect, and have people not be so impressed with
• 21:17
  you, so that you can move on and keep moving slowly into true
• 21:20
  integrity and, and, and who we need to be as leaders. So I
• 21:24
  think those are lessons that I'm figuring out as I get older.
• 21:28
  Host: Well, I love that line. That deception in any form kills
• 21:31
  trust, and here's what we're gonna do. We are out of time,
• 21:35
  where do you want people to go to learn more about you?
• 21:38
  Donald Miller: You can learn about my company. And all we do
• 21:41
  at story brand.com, we really didn't talk much about that.
• 21:45
  Story. brand.com is, is what I do. And you can learn about that.
• 21:49
  Host: Here is my last question. And this is one you're probably
• 21:53
  not prepared for. One of the things I loved most about you
• 21:57
  was the way that you talked about Betsy. At what point did
• 22:00
  you know that Betsy was the one you were going to marry?
• 22:04
  Donald Miller: Betsy, and I met, or years before we started
• 22:07
  dating. And I had not done a lot of the work I needed to do to be
• 22:11
  healthy. And so I immediately really liked her and also
• 22:14
  immediately felt this chasm between how just, you know, I
• 22:18
  don't mean to use economic languages, but how valuable she
• 22:21
  was as a woman, and how I wasn't worthy of her right. And I knew
• 22:25
  that I knew that in my bones. That's not just me being humble.
• 22:29
  That was actually true. And did a bunch of work. And then we we
• 22:33
  reconnected and I remember we were in Washington, DC, she
• 22:36
  worked in Washington, DC, and I was passing through town, we got
• 22:40
  dinner one night, and she actually had a boyfriend she was
• 22:44
  in and out of relationship for three years, when we were having
• 22:47
  dinner, we were having dinner with a group. And I just
• 22:51
  remember thinking this is this is the girl that I liked it for
• 22:55
  a long time I've done this work, and the eye and keep doing work.
• 22:59
  And I don't think I'm going to be a bad guy for her. This is
• 23:02
  the girl that that I want. I want to marry this girl it was
• 23:06
  it was right when we really connected. And so the other
• 23:09
  couple left the dinner and we kind of sat and kept talking and
• 23:13
  I asked her I said you know, I mean, I knew her well enough to
• 23:17
  have a conversation like this. And I said, you know, are you
• 23:20
  seeing anybody? And she said, Yeah, you know, I'm in a
• 23:24
  relationship. It's not great. He's doing a lot of work in
• 23:27
  Africa. And he tends to be out of the country a lot. And I
• 23:31
  don't know what he wants. And he clearly wasn't making her feel
• 23:35
  good. So I said, Listen, I'll give you 30 days to break up
• 23:38
  with him. I'm gonna call you in 30 days. And I really want to
• 23:42
  start dating. She just sort of sat there like, Who in the world
• 23:46
  do you think you are? And but it did go cause her to go home and
• 23:50
  to her roommates and say You wouldn't believe what this doll
• 23:53
  and all her roommates kind of looked at and said, he's right.
• 23:57
  And so 30 days later, I call her and I'm like, How are you doing?
• 24:01
  She goes, Well, I did break up with them. And slowly, you know,
• 24:05
  she started letting me data. But I'll tell you the key to our
• 24:09
  relationship is, you know, there's really not a day that
• 24:12
  goes by that I don't realize I massively got the better end of
• 24:16
  the deal. I mean, massively. And I think that, I think to people
• 24:20
  who think they got the better deal is the key to a healthy
• 24:23
  relationship. And it's an important thing for you to
• 24:27
  realize that you're also blessing this other person,
• 24:30
  right? Yeah, it's true. And that's another part of a healthy
• 24:33
  relationship is realizing not only am I getting a great deal
• 24:37
  here, she's getting a good deal, too. I'm just getting the better
• 24:41
  deal. Well, a better person than I. I mean, I knew it right away.
• 24:45
  It took her a little while to figure it out.
• 24:48
  Host: I love it. Well, thanks for the work that you're doing.
• 24:50
  And we appreciate you sharing your heart with us. And yeah,
• 24:53
  just thank you for laying it out there.
• 24:55
  Donald Miller: Thanks for having me.