Gary Kadi explains why high-achieving men resist asking for help, a pattern that leads to weight gain, strained marriages, and workplace conflict. He calls this the "Valley of Avoidance" and offers strategies to break it.
Chapters
I don't know about you, but as a high achieving man, the last thing I want to do is ask for help. You know, most of the time we ask for help when it's too damn late. You know, it's like being all the way out in the Atlantic Ocean, paddling around all by ourselves and then hopefully a boat goes by and throws us a life preserver and we jump out. This is called the Valley of Avoidance. We're trying to solve the problem with the skull and crossbones. In today's episode, I'm going to help you build the bridge across the valley of avoid foreign. Welcome to the Inside man podcast. I'm Gary Katie and this show is all about our mission to help high achieving men achieve unreal success, fulfillment, connection and what I call chronic joy and zero suffering. In this episode, I'm going to talk about mentorship for men, how to lead and learn why it's important. I'm going to give you the action steps that you can take to improve your quality of life to achieve chronic joy, success and freedom. Now let's start by looking at understanding men's unique challenges. I don't know about you, but as a high achieving man, the last thing I want to do is ask for help. You know, most of the time we ask for help when it's too damn late. You know, it's like being, you know, all the way out in the Atlantic Ocean, paddling around all by ourself and then hopefully a boat goes by and throws us a life preserver and we jump out. You know, I don't know about you too. I let my world go in terms of my we. I was 44 pounds heavier. I was, you know, didn't have a track to be generational wealthy. My wife was about to throw me out, my son didn't want to hang out with me. My team hated me at work. Why is all that happening? So I want to introduce to you a concept called the Valley of avoidance. And so if you're here, you know, you've worked your tail off, you know, and you're, you know, dripping wet and you're exhausted and you've done some really great stuff and you've been successful, right? You've achieved some certain success, right? But now you're at a point where, you know, it's not sustainable. It's like going to that next mountain up here is almost daunting. It's like you can't work any harder. There's no more time in the day, you know, your body's wearing out, you're hungover, your wife hates you, your team hates you. It's sort of like what I was dealing with. Right. So what do we do as men? We do the beautiful. This is called the Valley of Avoidance. And this, in this valley, we don't figure out how to talk to our wife until maybe like my wife did, was ready to go to the lawyer and get my walking papers. Or my son, I'm just hard on him and just going off on him like I do at people at work. And then both groups hate me. And my son is beat down, doesn't want to hang out with his dad. Right. And meanwhile, he's dealing with his own, you know, stuff. Let's call it, you know, the body. You know, you're just mowing down, you know, unconsciously eating, unaware of how you're fueling your body. And then all of a sudden, you know, 30, you can burn 40, you're not burning. 50, forget. And then you're 60, and it's like, what the heck do I do? I'm eating well and I'm still not able to lose weight. And now I'm snoring. I'm throwing on a cpap. You can see the cascade of bs because what we're doing is we're hoping it goes away. We're stuffing it down. And then what's happening? Oh, a little porn. Oh, a little gambling. Oh, we're trying to solve the problem with a skull and crossbones. And then we know, like, this is not going to work. So what is there to do? In today's episode, I'm going to help you build the bridge across the valley of Avoidance, bring things closer to you so you can walk across that board and go up here. And now you're a champion over here, the way you want your life to work. So this is the valley of avoidance. We're going to bust out of this valley of avoidance. And what are we going to do? We're going to. Now look at your factory settings. My best friend, Michael Fishman, Consumer Health Summit. Unbelievable. If you want to be in the forefront of, like, health and wellness, he just. He's connected to all the latest and greatest of consumer health stuff Michael Fishman talks about. We have factory settings as a man. We just, like, get him plugged in at birth. And then we're just built to do things where there's control. We're doers, you know, we stuff our emotions down. We can do. We can get shit done. Gsd, I call it. And we can give. We're Givers. But we're not good receivers. We're not good receivers. And I wrote a book called Let me see if I even have it. Oh, I do. I have my book right in front and it's propped up on my camera because I had to switch my camera. This is called Raise youe Health. You Deserve levels. My second book, and what I learned in my third year of sobriety, is you don't get what you deserve. You get what you think you deserve. Nothing more, nothing less. So what happens is if inside I'm unworthy and undeserving. I'm built on shame and guilt. And I feel like I can't receive because, like, I'm a. I'm telling myself I'm a bad person. What ends up happening is when somebody's ready to give us something, we refute it. Even an acknowledgement. We say, you know, we want to acknowledge. You can't. No, that was nothing. You know, you don't say thank you when someone acknowledges you. That means that you can't receive. Receiving acknowledgment is directly proportionate to your ability to receive money, receive love, receive things we men haven't learned how to receive. And now there's three layers here as we understand the man. There's being, doing and having. Being, doing and having. So being is how you show up for yourself and others. I was showing up hungover, angry, and I was coming out sideways when something didn't go my way. I was suffering and I was miserable and I was. I didn't know I was so angry. And what was underneath my anger? Sadness. I was sad about things and I never talked about them. And then it becomes anger. Then it becomes sideways. When I'm exhausted, I'm hungover. I'm not getting what I want in life. I'm not getting acknowledged, not getting appreciated. And then I went sideways. So as Michael Fishman talks about, these are the factory settings. So this distinction of receiving is a vulnerability. And we high achieving men, we're not open to, you know, being vulnerable. That is like if anything gets close to vulnerable, we're knocking that thing down and we don't even realize we're doing this. It's just like we walk through our day in the fam, you know, in the factory setting. So we want to distinguish being. That's how you show up for yourself and others and how maybe you get a reaction and what you do with the reaction. Do you respond or do you react? Our reaction is coming from pent up twistedness. That's underneath and if you could relate to this. My wife used to say Gary you go from 0 to 100 in two seconds of being hot. I go honey I idle at 90. That's why I call it the company life on all cylinders because I'm idling way too high. So how do we take the temperature down? Release some of the pressure? That's what we're going to talk about today. And so being doing we're good doers. Doers are it's easy for us high achieving men to get stuff done. I don't know about you but I'm jacked on a to do list. I'm jacked about putting a strategy in and getting it fulfilled like that feels good because it's a control, it's a validator it kind of validates who we are and then it usually produces great results and that is even the bigger adrenaline rush. So then we get caught in that dopamine overstimul adrenaline driver and then what ends up.
