Divorce American Style...Success In Business
listen to the vibes the views and opinions of our guests may not necessarily reflect those of the host or the vibes broadcast network listener discretion is advised welcome everyone to another episode of listen to the vibes and i'm very privileged to have dr elizabeth dubois here with me she is an executive coach and a divorce coach and we're gonna get to know her and have a great conversation and so let's kick this off tell us a little bit about yourself yeah first off thanks for having me i'm really excited to be here um so i am like you said an executive coach and a divorce coach which maybe sounds a little bit kind of like a two diverse practice areas but i find that there tends to be a lot of overlap because whether it's leadership or creating a new life the thing that they have in common is really about getting in touch with who you are your core grounding into that clearing away the [ __ ] artifice of this is the way things have to be this is the way things are done uh and moving into a place of what do i feel like in my gut is the right answer in this moment and how do i sound so hokey but like how do i stand in that truth uh and live from that place um i find a lot of times when people are in um leadership whether that's um within the nonprofit sector the private sector in elected leadership there's so many ways that things are done right well this is this is just the way it's done this is how things work and when we have um you know a unique period in history like the one we're living through right we have a lot of um dismantling of power structures happening right now we have black lives matter really um you know pushing us to consider where we are as a society and what we need to do in order to actually make good on the claims that are in our constitution that are in our declaration of independence we have a lot of different um topsy-turvy things happening with the way that we think about gender and gender disparities we have so many uh moments of change happening and so when we look at how do we move into a society that looks a lot like the one we'd like to have the one that we say we have um becoming comfortable with leadership looking different than it differently than it has up to this point i think is really key to that and so with executive coaching what i do is help people really ground into what are the things that they feel are true in terms of their understanding of how things should work how their companies can grow how their nonprofits can grow the things that they offer their constituents and moving that vision forward with confidence and clarity and then on the divorce coaching side it's the same right a little less attuned to societal change or business development i'm much more attuned to okay i've been in a situation where i thought my life would look one way and it's turned out to look quite different given that that's the case how do i allow myself to move forward in a way that is authentic um and no the way that i got into this was in large part because i went and got a phd in conflict analysis and resolution with a focus on marital conflict i've done work and research on domestic violence and marital conflict in four countries over the course of a decade and from that work really got juiced about the idea that there were a lot of potential for societal transformation if we look at marriage and leadership as points of potential transformation for the way that things could get better and get different well i know when i was married the first time and um i was in that marriage for about 20 years my life never moved forward um i was literally married to a narcissist who um couldn't tell the truth to save her life always excuses when we didn't have money to pay bills and that but yet she was walking around new shoes and got a new purse and all kinds of other stuff never seemed to back me in my dreams and the things i wanted to do and yet i made sure that i did everything to help her to pursue her dreams constantly lied to my children so they thought that i was this evil person and then when she finally she left me for another guy a much younger guy by the way um instead of being upset it seemed like a relief yeah and it took me 10 years to find a relationship that i felt comfortable enough to get married again and now i'm actually pursuing my dreams i have someone that's in my corner someone that you know she does everything she can to encourage me and i'm and of course i do everything i can to encourage her we we are definitely in a partnership because we share everything as you know the chores the cooking the cleaning all that and um now i'm just like i'm relaxed yeah quickly to that's so hardcore but there are many folks out there that they're in a relationship like that and they don't want to it's like they don't want to get out of it or they do they don't know how so what would be your advice to to help someone who's in a narcissist type relationship yeah wow um you know it's interesting i said i relate so hard to that i relate less to the narcissist my ex-husband is a really good guy um and more to the just like feeling relaxed i'm in a in a relationship now where i just i know where i stand at all times there's never a moment where i'm like feeling controlled or that i'm not quite sure which way is up um and and it is you know it's a relief it's a relaxation um okay so how to leave a narcissist one-on-one um first off i think that there's a bit we're like living through a cultural moment where like narcissist is kind of a buzzword right if someone's an [ __ ] and they must be a narcissist um in in my book narcissism is well it's a personality disorder right on like a mental illness right like um schizophrenia bipolar depression narcissism is an underlying personality disorder and it's kind of built into the hardware of how someone functions um versus a program that's running on the hardware which would be kind of more than a way to think of mental illness so with narcissism i think of the defining characteristics um that that underlies it is it's a fixation on having one's needs met right and as humans like our biological drive is to have our needs met right from the second we pop out of our mom like we need to have our needs met we need to eat we need to sleep we need to hopefully not die of diaper rash we need our needs met right but when when someone has narcissism this underlying personality disorder this is a hyper fixation it's having my needs met at the expense of others and that's not necessarily a like you know they're not walking around the world being like how do i [ __ ] over other people in the service of having my needs met but often times that happens right where such a myopic focus on what i need what i want how do i get it um and again none of this is kind of like frontal lobe intentional thinking where they're like ha ha today i will [ __ ] people over uh you know it's just an inability to really empathize with where the other party might be um and and a lack of willingness to try right so we've got someone walking around in the world and they have a hyper fixation on having their needs met the next element of narcissism is are they controlling people are they seeking to control in an effort to have those needs met right because someone could walk around the world and be like i need my needs met i need my needs met and their methodology is um you know make a good billion dollars every year so that they can have all of the resources that they need to you know have a housekeeper and a chauffeur and a private chef and a masseuse and you know what a sugar baby you know all the things that you could possibly want in order to have your needs met or you can get into a relationship with someone and walk around the world viewing them as the the sight of the reason that your needs are not being met and therefore you will control that person through overt and um you know kind of less overt and subtle ways in order to get what you want and then the third element is this hyper fixation on how you're being perceived so a narcissist wants to be the good guy or the good girl in all contexts and they will warp reality through their words both towards the person that they're in a relationship with as well as to the outside world in order to make that reality reflect them as the hero so there's always going to be some element of gaslighting of twisting the truth in order for them to be seen as kind of the person who is either being wronged or the person who is kind of sticking the landing on how life should be so we've got a hyper fixation on how our needs are met we've got a desire to control others in order to have our needs met and then we want to be seen as kind of the the person that's getting it right and when all three of those elements are present and you are the spouse or you are the significant other you are the person kind of in in the midst of the storm who is the most likely um target you know you're you're not causing the hurricane but you're standing in the storm and narcissists don't change they're not going to become someone different and what i see often is people especially women this plays out a lot with women um people are socialized to believe that love can change someone right just love this person enough right things will different things will get better and then you have the narcissist reinforcing that belief by saying if you just do this better i'll be able to you know stop doing this right so what if this is landing for you well i'll i will say you just described the relationship that my daughter just got out of because that that was her thing she had been with this guy and then broke up with him get back with him broke up with him and then she would say well if you know he oh he's on his medication if i just do all this better and i i love him enough he'll be okay he'll change and yeah i told my wife when she moved back in with him i said if you watch two weeks from now it'll be back to the same old same old because he's going to act okay in the beginning but you go back to being the same old jerk in two weeks what and sure enough two weeks later he was back the same old same old and i noticed that we we both have this problem with our own uh we don't have confidence in ourselves in a way we think well we can't do any better and we're lucky to have this person and we're willing to accept the abuse and whether it wasn't so much physical it was emotional and mental abuse and so we share that a lot in common even though we're not we're not blood related we're it's like we have uh a spiritual connection i guess i don't care if she came from another man that's still my daughter you know yeah of course i mean families are made in all kinds of ways um so there's a couple of things going on right so researchers call that dynamic right where they break up get together break up get together it's called cycling and the reason that it happens is that there's kind of a um you know a bond that happens between the two people sometimes it's called toxic sorry trauma bonding where one person feels like they can complete the other so um you know if you can think of this i'm i know this is an audio file so i'm going to try to illustrate what i'm doing here it's video too so okay perfect great so we pop out of our mom and we are for the most part right unless you you know are coming from a context in which you're you're popping out addicted to some sort of substance which certainly happens but let's for the sake of argument let's just talk about in theory um you pop out of your mom you're like this right you're walking around the world and you're believing to people this is interdependence you get into relationships with people and you're interdependent right i am helping you mow the lawn and we are cooking dinner together and we are having healthy fun sex and everyone is having a good time and for the most part life is good even though taxes suck and the dog needs this is interdependence what happens often is as children we learn that in order to have our needs met mom mom behaves like this right mom is not like this mom behaves like this and dad behaves like this right and we've got different kind of variations in personality traits and in the ways that we have adapted our behavioral patterns in order to get our needs met and so as little children what we do in order to get our needs met is we are going to match that pattern so we go from being a blank canvas to matching the pattern of relation that our parents have in order to have our needs met right in order for me to uh get the love and affirmation i want right dad's going to come to the recital and clap for me i know that i need to be a perfect good girl and not talk about the fact that i you know whatever whatever the thing is right i'm not allowed to not allowed to get up in the middle of the night because i'm scared i have to lie in my bed quietly because that's what's going to get me the you're a good girl right and so i'm going to just learn that it's more important to be scared than it is to speak up when i'm afraid i'm pulling this example from a client that i have so we walk around the world and we learn that in order to get love in order to get our needs met we're going to bend in this way so we go into adulthood teenage years right we're like oh i can't wait to get a boyfriend it's going to be amazing i'm going to be loved right and we look for someone that has the same bent this is called trauma bonding we're going to find someone that has the same particular patterns of relating to other people so that we can get into a cycle where we feel connected right the problem with this is when you go to separate you can't and so we see cycling happen in relationships because the couple has come to believe that this is the person that is going to really understand them the best and i should say you know i'm i'm speaking here not just from my experience as a researcher but i've lived out some of these patterns especially in earlier relationships um so with this kind of concept of i'm gonna be on good behavior and then i'm gonna kind of escalate and then i'm going to explode so very well documented cycle domestic violence cycle whether or not there's actual you know physical violence in place we know that people change a lot you know it's traumatizing to be in a relationship where someone you know you're walking on eggshells and then you have this you know you have this tensing period and then there's a blow up and then you guys reconnect there's the honeymoon phase then you go back into tensing and then you go into a blow up and every time you go around this kind of hamster wheel of doom you're getting a dopamine hit from the reconnection saying oh my gosh i feel you know we're meant for each other and i'm sorry i will never do that again i just i just really just lost my temper because it's been so hard and we're gonna just i need your love because i know that you're the one for me right and we go around and around and around and around and around because we get hooked on this dopamine hit that we get when we reconnect with that person it feels so good to be recommitted to the person that we're bent like and so we stay in this pattern for a very long time it was always my belief that there's a reason why they're your ex first place oh it's so funny i woke up to a text message from someone that i'd gone on a couple of dates with and i had cut off you know the budding relationship after after two dates i think we talked on the phone for about a week and then we'd gone on two different dates and there's just like way too you know it was like the red flag you know waving brigade and um and so i cut it off and he he reached out this morning and said something and then was like even though you [ __ ] me over uh in a really shitty way and i was like because i told you i didn't want to have a relationship with you my bad you know and i was just like i can uh good on your ex-wife for leaving man yeah no kidding well uh i'd say i it took me 10 years to find the woman that i'm with now and mind you i was in and out of some really bad relationships and i i found myself like overdoing it like i would do all the cooking all the cleaning everything thinking this was going to make them want to stay and not not realizing that i wasn't really standing up and being the man i was that i was supposed to be instead i was just a pushover and when when i met michelle my wife now we uh we talked for a long time before we went out on the first date and we really got to know each other and then i found that she was in a strange way allowing me to be who i really am which helped build up confidence and i still i have a hard time taking praise and i i still don't think i'm good enough but uh i'm yet i'm i'm stepping up to the back i should say and it's also given me the courage to uh start the podcast and make a business out of it she actually has every reason in the world to leave if she wanted to because after we got together i developed a disease in my spine where my my bones are deteriorating and and so um i can't get around like i used to i had to retire early but she's been in my corner the whole time so i don't care i just want to be with you and even if you're not able to walk again you know i still want to be here and i'm making this happen do you find that getting away from those relationships like adds that courage or that uh i don't know the uh the confidence to do this it can so i i think that there's a couple of ways it can go one is someone can get out which is which is difficult right for all the reasons we just talked about right the the bonding the the kind of uh toxic hamster wheel of domestic violence cycle there's so many so many different reasons why it's hard to bounce um and when you do a couple of different things can happen one you can go replicate the same pattern with another person right the initial uh new relationship energy as dan savage calls it the nre of being with someone and kind of the high flying feelings that come with initial attraction things like that it can be really easy to overlook red flags and it can be really tempting to overlook red flags right and so because you've kind of curved in a particular way you can fall into the same cycle immediately with someone else the other thing that can happen is you get a boost of self-confidence right you do the inner work to get to a place where you're like [ __ ] it i'm out i deserve better than this i'm not gonna deal with this anymore or um you know your kids are suffering consequences right emotional and otherwise um and and that gives you enough of to get out of it um but then you kind of like stay in a place of you know i did it and now i'm gonna kind of tread water and i'm gonna be really stuck on how i failed my marriage how i didn't make it work i can never make a relationship work i can't you know like where did i go wrong right and kind of take the ownership um the other thing that i see in that kind of vein like if we can hybrid those two different patterns of i'm gonna fall right back into the same thing and i'm gonna take a lot of like over responsibility for the situation um i see a lot of women pass around this like empowerment self-help therapy nonsense where they talk about my picker is broken let's say well my picker is broken i just keep picking the wrong guy over and over again and this kind of i see this often in 12-step rooms too where they're like well it's all my fault because every single choice that i made um that led to these consequences was my choice and it's like well okay biology is playing a role here you know socialization is playing a role here there's so many different contributing factors that go into being in an abusive situation um developing addictive tendencies there's so many different things that contribute to us getting into situations where we're [ __ ] ourselves over and i think it can be very um tempting and and i think be tempting to over i don't like like take more responsibility than is really ours to take and say well well i caused this this was on me my picker's broken and i made terrible choices you know i'm i'm an addict and i [ __ ] it up versus there's biological and socialized reasons that i ended up in this situation and how do i support myself and my growth and personal development so that i can address and heal those things so that this doesn't happen again and i think that we live in um a society america is really big on bootstraps right we're like you know pull yourself together and you know make it happen and get up at four in the morning and work out for 47 years and then publish a book and then you know take a [ __ ] and you know create a new recipe for a power bar all before 8 am because you can do it right and we've got this kind of high performance culture mixed with neoliberalism that says it's all on you to make it work um and and that can really become very unhelpful when it comes to how do i stop engaging in a pattern of relationship like this because what we need to say is hmm not my picker is broken but what what are the instigating factors that are leading me to end up in relationships like this not i [ __ ] it up and i'm broken and i'm screwed up and therefore my picker is broken therefore i keep ending up with the wrong guy but what are the kind of childhood patterns that are playing out here today that were present you know again as a child that need to be healed in order for me to make different choices not better choices but different choices how do i support myself how do i love myself how do i grow when you ask those questions you move past this initial burst of self-confidence that then kind of like peters out into you know while i'm out of the relationship but it's my fault and i caused it and blah blah and i just should have seen the warning signs and the red flags and i [ __ ] it up if you can work on healing yourself working with a good therapist working with a good coach and again i want to delineate that those are two very different types of people i work with coach and a therapist at all times um you know getting support getting help helping yourself see those different underlying patterns and heal them and address them then you have a shot at lasting self-confidence that can really bloom into something quite different which is what it sounds like you've done a lot of folks out there they uh they don't seek the help that they really need because a lot of this you can't do on your own and sometimes you need someone to remind you that you do have the answers you just you're not not grasping them you mentioned about the the things that happened as a child i mean my first wife and i were both were let's say broken uh i was molested as a child and she was molested by her stepfather and had it had a child by him and so um i i i think he was kind of the blind leading the blind and then once you know i guess she got comfortable with me and then i think that's when the narcissism kicked in yeah and then i was still that broken person who had no confidence and you know i mean how do you how do you deal with something that happens to you like that and then even though i i went into therapy later in life it got a lot of help it still wasn't resonating with me but for some reason when i got with michelle i was starting to like get over that you know i will say though i've had a lot of people that have come on my show that have dealt with people that have gone through that and they've given me great advice i just i get stronger every time i talk to someone like you i get stronger and stronger and stronger but i do have the affirmation from my wife um yeah i i think it's also important that people know you you need to validate yourself you don't need others to validate you but it does help when you have somebody in your corner yeah well first off i'm really sorry you went through that god which is the words are insufficient um i think it can be really powerful to kind of build off what you said about the validation has to come from within as well um there's kind of two maybe three things three things that i want to suggest to folks if you're in a position where you are really needing to do some significant personal growth in order to i want to say get over but but move to a place where those experiences are less active in your day-to-day remembrances right we all kind of like things pop up and our memory is our move through the day right but i don't in general think about what i had for lunch at kindergarten on a regular basis but i really sit down with it i remember that a teacher told me you can't eat pineapple and drink milk at the same time and that advice has served me well you know but it's not a it's not a memory that's active in my day-to-day kind of mental rolodex um at all times and so when we kind of think about like uh extreme trauma right in the genre that you experience that your ex-wife experienced what we want to think about is less you know how do i get over it and more how do i how do i gently surround this experience with love and with caring and with kind of a neutral approach as opposed to i can't believe this [ __ ] happened here or of course this happened and i deserve it and i'm bad how do we approach it with some neutrality and say this is a thing that happened and it really affected who i am um and i'm choosing that that just for today this is going to be something that i gently set on the shelf and let it be a thing that doesn't define who i am right right yeah right exactly right now you know and not putting pressure on yourself to say uh forever and ever and ever i have to get over this because we we know um you know from from good brain researchers we know that trauma is not a trauma recovery is not linear ptsd recovery is not linear we have flashbacks we have flare-ups when we get triggered by particular incidences um i think we're living through an interesting moment in history where we have this kind of language about like snowflakes you know and like trigger warnings like oh trigger warnings or you know i taught i taught at um american university and gw for a while and there's this kind of like very uh nuanced debate among like liberals versus you know like i would say far left far far right conservatives about like trigger warnings and um you know i'm pretty like squarely like moderate conservative but i'm always just like why is this a thing like if i was if i was gonna be teaching about sexual violence i would say to people like hey next week we're going to be talking about rape and we're going to be talking about you know these other things and so if you need to have a stomach ache next week and not come to class that is just fine you know and like like that was not me being like alert it was just like hey you know if you would prefer not to you know have have experience of childhood sexual assault uh come to the forefront of your mind for the next three months skip class next week thanks you know and and not all this kind of language that makes it very difficult for us to have actual conversations about how to help people move through trauma right not necessarily move past it but move through it um so so the three things that i want to suggest to people um one get a whiteboard or chalkboard right on that chalkboard people that will unconditionally affirm the [ __ ] out of me and then write down every single person in your life and maybe it's two people and maybe it's 22 people every single person that no matter what if you pick up the phone they're gonna be like oh my god you're the [ __ ] and i think you're the best and i can't belie oh my god you got fired well you know they're [ __ ] lost [ __ ] them you know like that person those people right that board and if you are in a place where where your trauma memories are really really active that you're going through an active uh reliving those are the people to talk to anyone else that you have to talk to whether it's your boss or your mama you know keep the communication limited and really just surround yourself with people that are going to not just bolster you but like foie gras force feed love down your gullet because you need um so that's the first thing the second thing is being very attuned to what are the things that are going to trip wire me right so if i know that going into a movie theater like for some reason going into a movie theater for me uh really activates some of the feelings of dread and anticipation that i had um in the immediate aftermath of my sexual assault it just it's very difficult for me uh even though i wasn't insulted in a movie theater i think that the dark and the enclosedness and the kind of like loud noises and all of it feels very out of my control so i don't go to movie theaters if i'm feeling very sensitive you know and instead of being like oh man i can't you what the [ __ ] you know this happened so many years ago it's a [ __ ] movie theater and you just want to go see the minions with your kid you know i'm just like okie dokie today is not the day um so really having that kind of neutral energy instead of the like get over it dumbass pushing um and then the third thing i call this mirror work and i guess we'll talk about inner childs too um so i want you to do two things um beyond your whiteboard and your being attuned to triggers i want you to every night start to sit in front of the mirror if you've got a full-length mirror this is really easy just get cozy in front of it if you've got a sit on your bathroom vanity go for it uh get comfortable sitting in front of a mirror and just start talking nicely to yourself um bonus points if you place your hand on your heart kind of skin to skin so you've got that contact and can kind of invite your parasympathetic nervous system which is the breaks to your fight flight or freeze responses just inviting that parasympathetic nervous system to kind of kick in and say okay you know it's okay i am here everything that i need in this moment is available to me and just really talking nicely to yourself um you know if you had a hard day at work just being like you did your best man i'm so proud of you that you know tps report was great and you know whatever whatever it is um and then the final thing i'll say i said three things i'm gonna say four um i want you to just grab a piece of cardboard like construction paper what is it called poster board go to cvs poster board um and find pictures of yourself growing up and and just younger versions of yourself so i have on my i call it an inner child board um kind of like a vision board my inner child board i have pictures of me from birth all the way up to kind of where i'm at today earlier versions of myself and it's hanging right next to my full-length mirror and i just you know chat with them and i'm like you did such a great job thanks for getting me to where i am today thanks for taking care of me in that hard moment you know they've got a picture of me in high school high school sucked for me you know and i talked to her a lot and i'm like you were so strong you were so brave you got me through so much [ __ ] and i'm so grateful right because often times when we have experienced trauma when we look back on those experiences we go into a place of a lot of self-blame and a lot of self-doubt you know i can't believe i put myself in this situation you know i [ __ ] it up of course this happened to me because i was doing x and when we when we have an inner child board and we can have an actual conversation eye to eye with the version of ourselves that went through that we develop a tremendous amount of gratitude and compassion and that can be a really powerful springboard for feeling better about who we are today i've always find it hard to not put myself down even when i'm joking i'm constantly doing that and instead of building myself up now someone brought up to me about being molested as a child that not to necessarily forget that it happened but to change the story absolutely as you tell it and like how you were able to overcome it and so once you've kind of rewritten and you think of it a different way you can handle it a lot better yeah amen amen one of the most powerful experiences of my life uh happened on my living room sofa um i i went into a deep meditation and i walked into the room where i was sexually assaulted um i'm so sorry thank you you know it i have yet to meet anyone that hasn't had some sort of experience where they had a part of them ripped out you know whether it was through something um fairly banal or something really extreme like what you experienced um what i what i did in this meditation was i i walked into that room you know bed i can see the bed frame i can see the yellow sheets i can see all the snoopy underwear i could see it all um and i i picked that 15 year old up off the bed and i carried her out of there and um something about that that meditation was probably 12 years ago at this point you know it really was a pivot point for me being able to say that that that's over now that's that's done it happened and i'm not over it but but it's done it's finished it's not happening again it's not active right we can kind of think like i'm going to botch this in a million ways right like basic quantum physics right we know all things are happening in all times right i like to think that that that incident that was continuing to happen over and over again all things happening at all times right if that was still a thing that was happening uh i that that's done now it's no longer happening um i closed the door i tied it up you know tidied it up it's not happening anymore um and i feel the truth of that even though i don't understand the science what do you think about hypnotherapy i love hypnotherapy um i do eft with all of my clients which stands for emotional freedom technique which is the most you know generic term ever for those of you that don't know what emotional freedom technique is it's just tapping um it's it's acupressure plus cognitive behavioral therapy uh cbt so yeah i was like thinking for a second the the what is the the cannabis thing it's different than oh it's not cbd yes no it's not cbd it's cognitive behavioral therapy so um emotional freedom technique is hitting on acupressure points um borrowed from the chinese meridian uh system the concept of that your body has energy meridians running through it so you're hitting on particular pressure points while also stating aloud like your friend said the story of what happened and then reprogramming that story so you're hitting these energetic meridians um and again you know buy into the science don't buy into the science but what i have seen consistently with my clients over two years is that is a drastic drastic and immediate shift that we then over the course of three to six months uh reinforced yeah i i can't stress enough if anyone out there has experienced that get some get someone you can talk to someone you can trust um find a therapist don't let that destroy you because it will destroy you if you allow it don't put yourself down you've already been assaulted by someone else don't assault yourself that's i went through that for so many years just destroying everything that was a part of me everything i i i thought everything i liked everything i did was stupid yeah nobody liked the same stuff that i did and you don't do that to yourself you waste so much of your life doing that it's not your fault somebody else was an idiot somebody else did something stupid to you they're the one that should be punished not you amen and um i don't know how you feel about it but i did a past life regression mm-hmm yeah i'm a big fan oh my gosh that made such a difference that like kicked everything off from me it was an aha moment for me yeah to inside your head to to change everything how the events happen everything and to to rewrite it to where you're the hero of the story yeah oh my gosh that makes such a difference yeah huge difference now if we could switch from that to the the business part of it sure let's go um i i've found that my myself included a lot of people are afraid of being successful yeah and a few things are interrelated um oh man why what a big question such a small word what a big question right you know i think that there's a lot of different reasons um one i think society is really good at holding up success stories and really bad at holding up failure on the way to success stories um you know thomas edison and invented again botching numbers you know come for me people but here's the general concept um thomas edison invented hundreds of light bulbs that didn't work before there was one right we've got all sorts of different instances of things that didn't make it to market before the thing that did make it to market right but we as you know we're storytelling species it's how we make meaning we're not big fans of telling the like soggy lunch bag when we got pushed in the mud by the school bully we really like to just hear how he like went to prom with the prom queen you know we're not we're not big fans of the failure on the path to success story and i think if we were to normalize failure in our culture in a way that is not at this moment we would have very different outcomes in terms of innovation and success i think we tend to um you know as much like i should say i'm a deep patriot i i love this country so deeply um you know and we don't do a great job of celebrating failure as a necessary stepping stone to innovation and i think that it holds us back when we talk about why we're lagging in math and science um and we'll talk science specifically when we're lagging in science i think this has a lot to do with it right we live in a culture of success and now that we have social media that's kind of been amplified of and we only show the parts that are really working well what a beautiful couple and three weeks later they're divorced right we don't show the sausage being made um so i think one of the reasons that we're afraid of succeeding is we are afraid of failing on the way and you are there's only so successful you can be if you don't really bite the big one pretty often in the pursuit of something great and so we see people go into stupid [ __ ] horrible you know cubicle in the office jobs right where they're propping up mediocre companies that are doing generally you know i don't want to say generally oftentimes there's you know big corporations aren't like necessarily acting in the best interest of their employees or the best interest of the country or the best interest in the environment right and they're pumping out products that are like mediocre and crappy and when you've got people that get really innovative and scrappy i think what you see um consistently is that they have a certain level of confidence around [ __ ] up you know pretty big and um for for all of my um executive coaching clients i make them watch we watch a clip together of elon musk uh throwing a like metal ball during the public um you know like unveiling of one of his trucks and they had like played this up as like the windows are shatterproof which i don't understand i'm not a car guy like i don't get it but this was like this was like a thing that these like windows didn't shatter like fine whatever um and elon musk comes out in the middle of you know millions and millions of people watching and he has this like demo friend like pull out this metal ball and they're like the windows want to shatter here's the demonstration and he throws it and the window shatters oh no elon musk like kind of nonchalantly he's like try the other one right okay and then he tries the other one and the other one shatters right and what i have my clients do is really pay attention to elon musk's body language in this moment his shoulders don't go up he doesn't get into apology mode like he literally had he been holding a beer he would have been like quietly sipping it you know like he there were no feathers that were ruffled and and maybe under the surface there were right i don't know i'm not in his brain um but when when you have someone who has a deep sense of i'm okay i'm good enough my products are innovative i'm changing the world even if one flops when one does even in a very very very public way there's not this kind of existential crisis of i'm not good enough because my product didn't work and i think oftentimes especially when we talk about entrepreneurship whether it's you know physical products or services um we have people get wrapped around this axle of i am my product and if my if someone doesn't like my product therefore i am not worthy i am not good enough yeah i know exactly what you mean yeah okay have you heard the story of formula 409 you know why it's called formula 409 no because the first 408 times it didn't work right yeah there you go so people should think you know we that's a good cleaning product took them that many times to get the the formula down right so yeah and epic fuck-ups are often wild successes you know 3m did not mean to invent velcro it was supposed to be something else post-it notes were supposed to be some sort of um i'm pulling out my origin stories incorrectly here they were supposed to be like a bookmark they were supposed to be something else chocolate chip cookies were not chocolate chip cookies they were like mushed up chocolate in the service of trying to get them to be like chocolate cookies potato chips where a chef like trying to say [ __ ] you to someone because some guy kept like sending back his french fries being like they're too thick they're too thick and the chef was finally like [ __ ] you try this [ __ ] like now we have potato chips right and so when we think about um you know like bob ross there's no mistakes only happy accidents right you're you're not failing you're learning um you know and unless you're driving drunk or raping someone like you know don't then you're failing and you're a horrible person you know but in in general if you're you know the question is why are people afraid to why are people afraid of success i think people are afraid of failing publicly right on the road to success is public failure um two i think oftentimes when we grow up in systems right home systems where on happiness and conflict was the normal we will go try to replicate that um because we are humans and we seek what feels comfortable not what feels good um we seek safety we seek that which our nervous system recognizes as home base um so when you've got that in the work world let's say you go you know you leave a crappy home growing up not that there's crappy homes but you leave crappy conflict dynamics right and you go replicate that in in your adult relationship and now you want to go like succeed on a higher level like it's not going to play out well um and then i i think related to that i call it the who do you think you are um conundrum right you grew up or you are currently in a social system in which success was not celebrated and it was pointed at as an evidence of like being too big for your britches then then why would you why would you succeed we will prioritize getting love over anything else yeah and if being successful in exceptional ways right publicly being celebrated we're talking specifically in the context of business right just being exceptional and succeeding in business um means that you're too big for your britches and the people that you grew up with are gonna think that you're trying to one-up everybody and that means you know on a deep psychological level whether or not it's um conscious you're afraid that you're gonna be abandoned you're not gonna do it yeah true yeah that that that seems to have been uh one reason why i would never try anything yeah now it's like throw caution to the wind i'll give it a shot it's either going to work or it's not yeah i love to bake and i can't tell you how many recipes that i've i've tried to kind of make my own and it screwed up but then i'll try something different the next time and all of a sudden everybody loves the cookies or pastries whatever just give it a shot yeah but something else that i wanted to to make a point of i see other youtubers out there that they talk about oh i don't take a day off i do this recording every day and i do this blah blah blah and i spend all these time all this time on it but even though that's good that you're spending time on perfecting what you're doing i don't think they emphasize enough the balance of home and to me spirituality on top of business um what's your advice on that i think this comes down to kind of hustle culture right like the way to get ahead is to hustle hard um and we have lots of evidence that that's true and we have limited evidence that it's not but that evidence exists so in the same way that i want you to put together a board of people that will unconditionally support me want people to kind of hit silence on anyone that is working in this crazy breakneck way that that doesn't feel authentic right and and find people to expand your belief in the possibility of being wildly successful while also taking very good care of yourself um and so i think a couple of my kind of key expanders here um my coach emma burgess who's uh based in new zealand you can find her just at emma in flow uh so e m m a i n and then flow.com um she has already what are we were july right now she's already made you know million cash in house right now i i don't know what her sales are at this point i think one point no it's got to be more than that um you know her first year where she decided i'm really going to prioritize self-care overall other um she she made 1.2 million dollars um this year she's cash in house at one and you know that was before the end of q2 um so this was yeah before the end of last month um and and she she's not working more than six hours a day um we have other examples that i really like to look at um for laci phillips her website's just 2b just2bemagnetic.com t-o-b-e magnetic.com uh she's a really great example of holding that up um there absolutely are people that you can look to and say here's someone really prioritizing their spiritual well-being and still making millions of dollars and still making a great impact in the world and then there are people that you know i want to tim ferriss hold up tim ferriss four hour work week right hustle culture does not have to be the only path forward i remember listening to tim ferriss right as i was finishing up my dissertation and him talking about he doesn't get up before 10 am as a general rule and i was like that i want that because i i wrote my dissertation when my son was an infant and i was running a non-profit of 5 000 people and i was just like as you know that scarlett o'hara moment before the end of the before admission intermission where she's like as god is my witness i will never go hungry again i was like if god is my witness i will never wake up at 5 a.m
and then i went again i went to a business conference in uh november 2019 and all these different entrepreneurs you know from quest nutrition i mean like ed milette big you know big entrepreneurs that i uh admire they all got up and they're like the common element is that we get up at 5am and um for a long time i felt really guilty i don't get up before eight and as a general i'll sleep later than that given given the opportunity um and i felt really guilty about that and this is where hustle culture right comes in i'm sorry i'm gonna [ __ ] talk somebody um you know one of the people that was really the leader of the bandwagon as i was getting into into my business full-time uh one of the people that i really look to as as a kind of like prototype of where i wanted to go was a woman named rachel hollis and uh for those of you that are listening and know you know who she is um you're probably cringing but but she was really someone that i um i don't wanna say idolized but she was someone i looked to and was like i i can make a living doing this so she's a um white kind of self-help guru coach um entrepreneur uh coach that she turned herself into a business coach um which i have so many thoughts about that too um but she was this person that i really looked to and i was like you know i can make a career for myself serving people in the professional development space who want to really accelerate who they are and do it in a way that serves the world deeply and the more that i watched her personal life unravel and her like double down on this like drink half your body weight in water and exercise every morning and if i get up you know if my if i wake up before you know 4am i go back to bed but if i wake up after i get up and the alarm goes off at every day you know at five a.m and my husband and i always have these reconnecting rituals and bull you know just like every time you know she was selling a um what was it called a journal at target that it called the start today journal that was like all these different kind of like you wake up at five and then you meditate and then you journal and then you go for a run and then you you know run your business and you do all this stuff um she just like had a public meltdown she got on to she was using social media um as as most business owners are at this point um and she got on and she compared herself to harriet tubman and yeah exactly after doing a rant where she um spoke about her her cleaning company as a sweet lady that comes and scrubs her toilets and um you know the the i want to say more attuned to privilege uh contingent of the world was like um maybe don't describe your housekeeper that way like that's kind of you know like like really boiling it down to its most uh you know like i i have a housekeeper once a month she keep like my house would go up in flames you know like i'm so grateful for her support and love and you know organizational skills and i can't imagine boiling it down to that um but then in her means of doubling down um she went and like compared herself to harriet tubman and and so when you think about kind of hustle culture high performance culture how do people get ahead how do people make it work and where does that coincide or not with prioritizing spiritual and mental well-being i think when you don't prioritize those things there is only so far you can go before you kind of icarus crash your ass back to the sea because if you are not taking time to reconnect with your own kind of highest self inner wisdom and you are not making time to really listen to your feedback loop you know i i have a number of people i call them my board of directors i have a number of people in my life that are there to call me on my [ __ ] and i listen to them you know i'm in recovery i have a sponsor um i have a therapist i have a coach of people in my mastermind group that i run things by i have a couple of dear friends one of whom's been in my life for 31 years um and if i'm gonna make a big move or something feels a little niggly in my gut i run things by them because i'm not super interested in losing what i've built because i get over tired and overworked and therefore i'm just shooting from the hip without you know anything in the gas tank yeah well to me my philosophy is if you don't take care of your home first you can't take care of anything outside of it so and that starts with the self you have to be take care of yourself mentally physically you know i have diabetes and all these other problems if i don't control all that then i'm not going to be there for my wife when she needs me and i got to make sure my house is in order that you know the there is a flow between me and my wife and everything is going like it's supposed to and our relationship is strong our relationship with my kids and my grandkids and and then my business is going to come next yeah i know a lot of people don't feel that way they think their business has to come first but it's not going to work for me if everything else isn't going there has to be a balance yeah there has to be and i think it's like more than a balance i think it's a foundation and and here's what i mean by that you cannot have a skyscraper if you do not have a strong foundation right exactly you know it's going to fall over and so the way to build a really strong business and you i mean multi-million dollar business i have a dear client that's been with me um you know for the better part of 18 months and and he's built incredible things he's leading a 500 million dollar sales team now right this is not a like sit in a corner and sing kumbaya to yourself and listen to like i don't know tony robbins tapes until you puke right that's not what this is about strengthening the core of who you are developing a foundation of unshakable trust in your own abilities and from that foundation understanding that you can build as high as you want yeah i i love the fact that you meditate because i i do myself i actually incorporate that when i'm working when i'm doing my my videos and i'm editing and i'm waiting for the conversion to happen that's usually when i start my meditation when i'm with my my wife and we go to the river or we go out to the lake i do my meditating out there as well we do that together and um it's it's helped me to one get over my depression get over my anxiety my ptsd i i have to stress this to everyone you talk to your doctor before you do anything but i slowly weaned myself off of the pills that i was taking they weren't doing me any good and i was actually getting thoughts that i shouldn't have yeah but i once again you talk to your doctor don't do it just because i did it um but i was able to to slowly get off of those medications and now my meditation is my medication love that love that and okay so i'll kick in the other side of that then because i i think that there's a lot of opportunities to strengthen our our inner reserves calm our nervous system get to a place where we feel safe and comfortable um moving forward in life with our own inner resources and then i also think that there's there's conditions that require medication um i have bipolar one uh bipolar one is more fatal than breast cancer and testicular cancer combined and so so with with those stats on hand and we know that therapy is a really important component of that and healthy eating weeping and water you know um like sleep sleep cycles like throwing off a bipolar person's sleep can be extremely dangerous oh yeah using marijuana using over the you know over-the-counter drugs that cause stimulation using alcohol can be really really dangerous and so you can eliminate all of those factors you know have healthy sleep have exercise get vitamin d all of that and still have a fatal illness that is more you know has a higher mortality rate than breast cancer and testicular cancer combined right we think of schizophrenia think of different you know different illnesses that it can be really dangerous to try to wean off of and so i think when it comes down to it it's really a matter of looking at where do i want to go in my life what is it that i'm shooting for and that doesn't have to be i want a fortune one you know fortune 100 company i want a ferrari i want a waterfront home if if that's on your vision board you know [ __ ] go for it i should say i don't necessarily do vision boards but you know whatever if that's if that's where you want to head go for it you know for me um where i'm headed is like i want a seven-figure company um eventually i'd like an eight-figure company i want to drive a really nice car i want a house that's paid off in full i want my son to have a really grounded insane mom i want a relationship that feels like home base and anything beyond that is like yahtzee man like i i'm excited and i know for me meditation working a program of recovery with the 12 steps doing you know things to support my mental well-being like eating healthy and going for walks on a pretty regular basis um those only
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