Do Not Define Yourself By Your Mistakes
24 Feb 2023 · 7 min
Dean Graziosi talks about moving past divorce and rebuilding. He interviewed long-term couples, made lists of required traits with Tony Robbins, and read books to understand what a healthy partnership looks like. His point: give yourself multiple chances to get it right in relationships, health, and business.
Chapters
We could be defined by what we've done wrong. Or we can truly. And you already know this, but I want to talk about a little deeper. We can learn from that and decide to forgive ourselves. Whatever you believe in, I think you make a mistake and you keep doing it. It's like, ugh, you make a mistake even if you make it two or three times. But finally one day you. You learn from it and decide to never do that again. I think that's what life is. You deserve a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth chance. It's your thing. In my last relationship, my ex is awesome. She's a dear friend of mine. But we started that relationship off. I didn't work on it. I didn't. It was a convenient relationship. We laughed, it was cool. And. And I have to tell you, I look back, I didn't work to fix it. I don't know if it wasn't. The relationship wasn't there and I was scared to try. I don't know. All I know is that I'm just as responsible as her for mistakes made. I'm just as responsible for that marriage ending in a divorce. I didn't do a lot of the right things. I made bad decisions during that relationship. I hurt her, she hurt me. She did some stupid stuff. I did some stupid stuff. We probably were never meant to be in a relationship. We're better friends now than we were in a relationship. We're kick ass co parents. Our kids come first. We did a child centered divorce. We are killing it as co parents. Our kids are thriving in a. Listen, it's not ideal. I'm not an advocate of divorce in any way, so please put that note down. But this was a relationship that wasn't gonna work and we kicked ass on being co parents. But I wanna tell you, I know what it's like to feel like a failure. I know what it's like to feel like missing your kids. I know what it feels like to feel like you're screwing them up. I know what it feels like to know that I hurt her and made some dumb choices while we were together and didn't care as much as I should and didn't listen. But here's the thing. I could have been defined by that. I could have also said, hey, I screwed up so bad in my last relationship, maybe it never should have happened that I don't deserve love, or love doesn't work for me, or love doesn't exist in the whole world. But instead I found a way to give myself permission to be Open to a second chance. To be open. To not giving up. To obsessing on people who had great relationships and extracting their knowledge. To looking back at my relationships that didn't work and figure out what didn't work and never do it again. To look at what was working and compound that. To literally read book after book on what makes a connected, passionate, intimate relationship stick. How does someone at 50, 60, 80 years old still hold hands, love each other, still want to kiss? I interviewed those people and obsessed on them. I gained that knowledge and guess what? I gave myself permission to be open. Open to another chance. I found the greatest relationship of my life. I'm not one of those fall in love overnight. I'm not girl crazy. I'm not a dreamer. I'm a realist. At least that's what the term I'd say. And I figure real love on that deep level, maybe most people don't get it, but when I lifted that and decided to go for it, I found it. Literally. I sat down with Tony Robbins and I wrote down all of the things that were unacceptable in my next relationships. My next relationship. And I wrote down all of the things that were a must in my next relationship. You could do that with the current relationship you're in too. I wrote them down and I stared at them. I looked at them once a week. And I found that relationship. I have a partner for the rest of my life. And I dropped on one knee and asked her to marry me. It was the most excited I've been in my entire life about a relationship, about. About getting married, about being in love. It's brought me to a whole other level. So why am I sharing that my personal story? Because I don't want you to think I got this shit all figured out. You don't have to have it figured out. And it's okay if you screwed up, excuse my language. If you up more than once, a whole bunch of times, if you let people down, if you hurt someone. I don't believe you're a bad person. I believe you made a bad decision. We can loathe in it. We could focus on what we did wrong or what other people did wrong to us. Or we could say enough is enough. Today is the decision I did wrong in the past, or someone did me wrong. But that is the past. I'm going to learn from those mistakes. I'm going to model somebody who's doing it right. And damn it, I am bringing that into my life. Zero questions. When I made that decision, I manifested the relationship I'M in. So many people look at Lisa and I, they're like, oh, you two got so lucky. Screw that. It wasn't. Look, I decided who I was going to be with. I wrote down who was not acceptable. I wrote down everything that was a must and everything that was unacceptable. Somebody who talks about the glass half empty, somebody who talks about other people, someone who's not into their health, someone who's not sociable, all these things. And I just decided to do nothing else except that unacceptable, acceptable. And I brought that into my life. And so did she. And I remember thinking to myself, you don't deserve another chance. You had it and you blew it. Go get a job. Settle. It's like this inner villain, right, that I write about in Millionaire Success Habits wanted to tell me to do that. But guess what? Somehow I found a way that I said, I deserve a second chance. I deserve a fifth chance. And I learned from those mistakes. I modeled people like you're doing right this minute that were more successful than me. I realized there was no magic money machine. It was all these little fundamentals that we teach month after month right here. I started compounding that. And I'm blessed to be here right now with you at the most successful time my life. I want to say this. If you are down and out right now, you deserve a second and third chance. If your business is doing okay, or you're getting ready to start your business or just starting off doing okay, you deserve for that to be a monster. If your business is thriving like some of you I know so many of you on here who are crushing it. It's time for your next level. You deserve this. You're ready for this. And if your business is crushing, but your health sucks. If your business is crushing and your relationship is eh. If you're more excited about being out on the road and seeing strangers than the person at home, we gotta fix that shit. Seriously. I was aligned in so many parts of my life, except for my relationship. And now I can't tell you how it feels to be congruent in all areas of my life. So when we're here, do I want you to make more money? A shit ton more? Give it all away if you want impact the world, Do I want you to have more freedom more than anything, More control of your time? Yes. But I'd love for you to take all these pieces and balance each area of your life because you deserve it.
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