Making Love Work: Understanding Men And Women In Fulfilling Relationships With John Gray

In a world full of turmoil, despair and darkness, you need to carry the light. Season three of the Get Attitude podcast is where we will ignite your mind, your heart and your attitude. Hey, hey, hey Gappers. This is Glenn Bill with the Get Attitude podcast, the Gap. I am your host, I am best selling author, keynote speaker and today we are going to light your attitude up. We have the leading relationship coach in the world. He wrote the book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. His new book out is called Beyond Mars and Venus. And just because you're listening to this podcast, you are going to be able to access a free class from this legendary leader on relationships@MarsVenus.com so it is a great honor to introduce John Gray, an American relationship counselor, lecturer and author. In 1969, he began a nine year association with the Maharishi Yogi before beginning his career as an author and professional relationship counselor. In 92, he wrote the best selling book Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. I believe it sold over 50 million copies or something unreal, which became a long term bestseller. His books have sold literally millions of copies. Ladies and gentlemen, he is here. He is in the gap. John Gray, welcome to the Get Attitude podcast.

Glenn, thank you so much. We all need good attitudes.

It's contagious, there is no question about that. And we always love to start our podcast by asking our guests, what is your definition of attitude? And who was your first great attitude coach?

I'd say my attitude is how you approach the world. It's what you feel. Are you projecting optimism? Are you appreciation, respect, enthusiasm? Are you glum and a big black cloud over you? That's what we want to avoid. We want to feel motivated to move ahead. We need to feel there's something in front of us that we're moving towards and the support we have is from our back. So that's attitude. That's a great attitude. I guess I'd summarize my attitude that I come back to again and again is I'm needed in the world and I'm not alone. What a great attitude. I feel supported. And who, who gave me the best attitude was my mother. My mother taught me and by her attitude, and occasionally she said it, you always have what you need in life and if you feel you're suffering, you're looking in the wrong direction. It's right over there. So it's learning how to pivot. Pivot from negativity to positivity, pivoting from too much attention on your relationship to your own personal Self or to pivoting from your own personal self to. To being with others, friendship, work, children, gardening, the planet, all these things we have to pivot. And it's that ability to flow back and forth. So for me, in a sense, I'm a master of pivoting because if anything starts to become a little boring for me or stressful for me, I know the solution is just shift gears to something else. Something else which is our emotional needs. And in one of my books, I talk about 10 primary emotional needs. And if you're just focusing on one, it will never be enough. When you're empty, it feels good, like you're looking for love. Oh, it fills you up. But you can't get everything in a relationship with a woman or a man, that's a romantic relationship. That's like one vitamin. You have to have a relationship with yourself. You have to have a relationship with people who are like you. You have to relationship with a higher power. You have a relationship with people who know more than you. So you're learning things. All these relationships work. Relationship where you're serving others and they're serving you back. Reciprocal relationships that make a difference in the world. And, you know, I'm 71, so my major thing is I just want to bring forth what I've spent my life doing. 20, 28 books and all that I've done. I just love doing that. But I have to make sure I take care of all the other needs.

I love that. I love that. I just want to go back to mom real quick. What was her name? And did she. Was she at home or did she have a job?

My mother had seven children. Her dream was to have seven children. She. She's a very happy woman, if you could imagine, six boys. And I saw a really happy woman. And I remember when I was very entrepreneurial as a teenager, I had my own paper out. And I remember coming to me one day after my little brother was finally out of the home. She said, well, now the children are growing up. I'm going to start a business. How do you feel about that now? I had to realize she had a husband who supported her and everything like that. But she said, now I'm going to start my own business. And she had such a big library of personal growth spiritual books that she would lend out to people. And then finally everybody wanted to buy the books, so she would order the books for people. Then she bought another house, and she had the biggest spiritual bookstore in the country. She had to build wings onto the house. And she never Advertised except the little bookstore sign in the front yard which said the Aquarian Age bookshelf. So she was somebody who was very fortunate in that she had a connection. She was connected, and she always felt. It's like the example of grace. You know, we hear in spiritual terms, grace. Well, grace means that at all times, you're being taken care of. If you can actually experience that, then the suffering goes away, the stress goes away. And her secret to it was to have many places in her life that brought her fulfillment. Higher power, of course, was one man.

That is so, so cool. Now, oftentimes, as we interview highly successful people just as yourself, we love to ask. And it's quite common that mom and dad are usually one of the very first attitude coaches. But oftentimes we find that the real gold is in the generation before. And so I'm just wondering if you were fortunate enough to have a relationship with any one of the four of your grandparents, and if you were, what was their name, what was their story? And what attitude lesson did you garner from your grandparents?

Well, I was pretty young before my grandparents died. I never met my grandparents on my mother's side, but I met my grandfather. And, you know, these things come through the genes as well. And Grandpa was a Texas oil man. Oh, boy. He was one of the first Texas oil men. Had an oil company. We had a ranch with oil wells and the whole thing. All my brothers are into oil. I went into personal growth. But I'm a fondness towards them. And particularly today with the. Or the oil shortages, when people don't know. Just Texas. I'm from Texas. In Texas alone, a big secret is we've got more oil in Texas than in Saudi Arabia. They don't want to advertise that because you got to keep the oil prices up.

Yes.

You knew how much oil was there, People would pay pennies for it.

Oh, my gosh.

But, you know, there's a lot of manipulation in the oil business. And right now, my brothers are all making tons of money because the oil shortage means more cost. It costs more to get that oil. So my brothers have shifted from becoming Republicans to Democrats. They just love the Democrats. That's a very funny story.

Oh, my God. Well, I would say that your books, although they may not be oil, are in fact, gold. And they are worth so much. And you're such a blessing to America, in my opinion, in your opinions and your thoughts and your candor. I just love. I love listening to your interviews, and that's why I'm so, so excited to Interview you real quickly. So you were one of seven. What number were you?

Five. I'm number five.

All right. I'm number five, too.

All right. Okay.

I'm number. We have high five. High five, brother. High five. So, well, let's. Let's get into this thing called relationships, because look at, we all have two things in common, right? Problems and relationship relationships. And most of our relationships are causing most of our problems. So number one, what I want to know is, do you believe relationships have transcended from when you wrote the book in 92 throughout the next 30 years? Is it tougher to be in a relationship today than it was back then? And what's much tougher? Much tougher? Well, let's just talk about it. Tell me the difference between Glenn, when I wrote the book, this is what it's like, and now what is the madness now that you're seeing and hey, what's the solution to help people?

Well, there's the book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. And that helped back 50 years ago, 40 years ago, relationships were more traditional. In a traditional relationship, the man is primarily the provider of safety and security, and the woman is the provider of love and family. And, you know, you can buy a house, but it's not a home until you put a woman in it, okay? And she has to feel loved. And the old days, if women didn't have jobs, they were dependent on a man for all the outside support, protection and providing money and providing support. You got boys. He's got to discipline those boys. So she. She got what she needed. My father had. And so when my father provided that and he was able to, he didn't need all these romantic skills that I teach. He didn't need communication skills that I teach. My mother was a happy woman. You know, when women are happy, men are like, amazing. But when women are not happy with men, that's where the problems come up. It's just like a man out of work. If a man has got a good job, he feels happy, he's being rewarded for what he does, even if it's hard work. You know, writing books is hard work, but I never resisted it, I never resented it because I got paid for it. And truly, people were benefiting from it. Yeah. So. But my marriage, well, in my parents marriage, that's traditional. So I'm writing about that primarily in Men are from Mars. Even today, people say, even back then, some women would say, I feel like I'm from Mars. Okay, that's because they were doing things in the day that men traditionally did. And therefore their challenges are going to be the challenges. The things I describe are like, men actually feel they're men. And most men do not admit that they're like women. But their wives will say, I feel like my husband's from Venus. He's always wanting to complain and talk and share. So there was starting to happen around that time of Men are from Mars starting to happen. A role reversal. Now we see it's complete. I mean, it's out there and what it is, the basis of it is hormones. So having I evolved with many books on relationships helping solve the new problems. But if I can summarize it, it's all the most latest edition of that is Beyond Mars and Venus. So when we're no longer having the traditional Mars Venus roles, we're beyond the Mars Venus roles. But we're still men and we're still women. And biologically we're hugely different. Our biology, particularly the biology of happiness, is completely different in men than women. And so our communication skills today can help women be happier and help men be happier as well. But we've got to have a whole new set of communication skills. It was enough in the past for a man to fulfill his role and for a woman to fulfill her role, and they got along quite well. But today, when women are more on their male side, they're making male hormones throughout the day. They need a new kind of help to bring them back to producing female hormones. If they're not producing female hormones, they're stressed and they're unhappy and they're not feeling enough. So many women today, you probably hear they say, I feel I'm so overwhelmed. There's so much to do, there's not enough time. Now on a practical level, well, it used to be women had all day long to take care of a home and their children and their family. And imagine that plight of the modern woman today who's doing a man's job throughout the day and then coming home to have children and a family and a home.

Yes.

Meanwhile, men, you know, and this is still true, I don't know the latest research, but I know many years ago there was a big study done on stress levels in men and women and what they found in the workplace. Women's stress levels were twice as high as a man's. And at home, when she returned home, her stress level doubled. Coming back to home, there's a nurturing aspect of woman and the home and the children and family and relationship. This is really key thing that helps produce female hormones. Estrogen Estrogen goes up and estrogen goes up in women. They need 10 times more than men and to be happy. And men need 10 times more testosterone. And some men need 20 or 30 times more testosterone, depending on their body type. Testosterone gets produced by doing things in the outer world to achieve success. You know, basically you set a goal and you achieve that goal, you make testosterone. Well, women need testosterone. Just we need more as men where women, they need 10 times more estrogen. And if they want to have romance, and so many women enjoy romance, those good feelings we have in the beginning till we become jaded. Those good feelings that just put you at the top of a mountain.

So, John, basically what you're saying is something that is pretty simple. Women's estrogen levels produce more when they're maybe doing more traditional tasks and chores. Men's also increase. Both need increase as they do more traditional tasks and chores, set a goal and move on, which totally makes sense. But the problem now is in today's society, now neither of them are doing anything. What is your advice for men, women or couples, if they were to come to you and say, look it, we don't know what we're doing. Things are bad. Tell us, what do you try to do with those people to help them in their relationship?

Well, you pointed out the problem. So clearly it comes down to simple terms. If our hormones are out of balance, meaning women are making more male hormones and not enough female hormones, which is very common today, and men are making more female hormones than male hormones addiction, for example, when men's female hormones are greater, their tendency to be addicted is greater tendency to procrastinate, tendency to lose motivation. And this is women's biggest complaint in relationships is men lose their motivation. Well, that's. Their estrogen's too high, you know. Have you ever noticed that when you distance when you're alone for a while and you're in a relationship? I, I had this benefit in my marriage because I would travel to China, travel to Russia, travel all the world teaching these ideas. So I'm gone a week or sometimes four days. Boy, I was so horny when I got back. Well, I was so attentive and interested, whatever. It always brought the passion back. Distance makes particularly a man's heart grow fonder.

I love it.

And so that whenever you feel, whenever you feel I'm alone, I'm doing my thing. I'm not depending on anybody, primarily me. What happens is testosterone will go up if you feel successful. Now see, that's why you have that positive attitude. Yes, Even, Even when I would have disasters happen, you know, I didn't have all this gold following me. There's a lot of disasters. You know, you expect to have a big audience and a little audience. You expect some interview to go really great, and it doesn't go really great and one book doesn't turn out, you know, for me, again, it's all about attitude. And I remember somebody taught me many, many years ago for a comedian. This is back when Johnny Carson was the main comedian interviewer and everybody wanted to get on Johnny Carson show and you do your little funniest bit and sometimes Johnny would pull you over and other times he says, thank you so much. It was like, so a comedian and comedy guys, that's a tough job, you know, make people laugh and what a huge pressure. Anyway, so you're up there and you don't care what the response is, because every job you do is simply practice until you get on Johnny Carson, right? And that's actually. I looked at it, I said, hey, if nobody comes and nobody knows, so that's good, right? But it's always practice and be good, then not good. Be good, not good. You have to have that attitude that I'm just learning to get better and better until the day comes when I get on the Johnny Carson show and that day will come. And that's having trust, trust in yourself. And when you get knocked down, you pull yourself up. And that's what builds testosterone. Just like when I lift heavy weights, you push the weight up, you push till you get to the edge where you have to collapse. Once you collapse, you have a recovery period. The recovery period builds your testosterone again. Let's say you push your muscles every day. You don't grow muscles. You have to have recovery time. And that's the same thing in relationships for men. You have to have action and then recovery time. And that's with the concept of the cave now, you know, now it's a. Every man's got his man cave. Well, that came from Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. It came from this cycle inside of men to build testosterone, sustain testosterone of action, putting forth hard work, effort. You know that this is not easy. Workplace is not always easy. It's problems solving problems, doing things, setting goals, doing what you can to achieve those goals and getting messages of success or an attitude that says, hey, I'm still learning, I'm growing. Whatever it is, you have to feel that you're. You're meeting your goals. Then afterwards, you become exhausted, you need to rest, you take cave Time, which is activities that don't produce a lot of estrogen. So that's the key. Testosterone will rebuild. So you have a hobby. It used to be all men had hobbies. It was even on your resume. You know, you're a golfer, play tennis, you do whatever. You know, you got to have a hobby. Which means I've got things I can do that are primarily testosterone stimulating, but they don't stress my body in any way. That's where you build up your testosterone. So that was the. The mars solution. Is still true. See, that's still true. Except today in modern relationships, often men don't feel the need to do that. They sit passively and watch tv. They'll just sit down and not do much. They go to their cave, you know, which is, I'm going to do something for me now, it feels good. But then they get stuck because they're not rebuilding. They have too much estrogen now. For women, it's just the opposite. Women with estrogen, whenever you're feeling, I have support, I have a home, I have money, I have love, I have friends, I have my children. These are all activities where she can nurture. When she's nurturing, estrogen goes up. But estrogen only goes up. Nurturing when she feels I have support. That's why man is so important to a woman. Now. Women don't have men anymore that the thought of trying to raise a child. They want their children, many of them still, and they get iv. It's like we've sort of pushed men out of the picture. Women can do it all themselves. Women will say to me sometimes, what do I need a man for? You can even have a baby without a man. You can order the sperm. So what's happening is she's doing it alone. Whenever you do anything alone without help and support, you produce testosterone.

Right?

When you feel, I don't have to do that, I have support to do what I like to do. And I can depend on others to help me to do what I like to do, to do what I enjoy doing, or to do things feeling love, not because I have to get something back, but because I naturally want to do it. You know, there's two kinds of love. One is, look what you've done for me. I love you. And another kind of love is, I'm going to do this for you because I love you. Well, when I do something for someone because I love them, that's a testosterone producer. But when somebody does something for me, the love that comes out of me is called appreciation. It's called trust. It's called acceptance, receptivity. Those types of activities produce estrogen. Now, a lot of women have those activities, but they're also lowering. They're neglecting that part of them by being so much on their male side.

Wow.

Now, without having to give your work life, you can be in a relationship where the man provides a new kind of communication never done before. A new kind of communication that will help her come back to her female hormones. And that's what therapy is really about. You know, I've been doing therapy 40 years. When women walk into my office, they can be upset about things. They. I get them to talk. I say, tell me more. What else? Let's look at this differently. And what else do you want? What would you like helping her express her personal feelings, her personal wishes, her personal needs. Whenever she can go inside and somebody is listening to her with empathy. That's called penetrating her. See, male energy, of course, is penetrating. If I'm a good listener to my partner and my partner is a good person to share. See, women, they have a hard time sharing. So many men will read my book and say, honey, we're supposed to be talking. She says, I'm too busy to talk, or I can't talk to you. You just don't understand. So women have to understand how to communicate their vulnerability to a man in a way that makes him want to listen. These are all new skills. And man has to learn how to listen in a way that makes it safe for women to share what's inside. 90% of the people who go to therapists, which is primarily women, are just talking. And I'm listening. 90% are women. Now, men do have a female side sometimes when they need to do that. But what men have to do more is analyze, solve problems, fix things. And that's what Freud did. You know, in the beginning of psychotherapy, it was Freud. Mostly male clients, rich male clients. Because anybody gets rich, suddenly they're unhappy because they have the actual experience that money doesn't make you happy. When you need money, it makes you happy. We no longer need money. It doesn't make you happy. You got to find another source of happiness. And this is kind of what happened to women, is when they needed men, men were wonderful. They built statues to us. They loved us, they accepted us. They thought we were great. But as soon as you stop needing someone, and they don't need us financially now, and they don't need us for protection now, when they don't need us, you have no foundation to produce Estrogen. See, if you're hungry, you. Your estrogen goes up and you'll never forget it. You know, it's like you're so grateful. So gratitude, appreciation, trusting, forgiving, accepting, not demanding perfection. These are all qualities of the female side and they're missing in many women today. So they can't fall in love with a man. They come to me, say, I just. I might. He's good material, but not enough, you know, just doesn't do it for me. I said, no man can ever do it for you until you do it for him. Which means you have to find the feminine energy inside of you. You have to open up for him to enter in, or he needs to learn skills to help you open up and then you'll let him in. This is like a new kind of communication. This never been taught before on the planet because it wasn't needed. Just my mother depending on my dad for money, living in a safe neighborhood, filling her dreams was enough to produce huge amounts of estrogen. That means she doesn't complain about anything. See, complaining comes from low estrogen because unfortunately, complaining produces estrogen for a while. So women feel better. They feel better complaining. Their mind doesn't stop. The thing for men is pornography, for example, feels good to man's brain because it produces testosterone. But then it goes right back down. Okay, actually goes down a little lower. So that's part of why males today, their testosterone levels are slowly descending. There's also environmental pollutants that are causing it. But another one is with low testosterone, you don't feel powers of man. You don't have that alive, feeling, masculine energy. And all you have to do is do porn for a few minutes and you'll feel that for a little bit of time. Men are hungry to feel their masculinity, but doing that actually lowers their masculinity in the long run. Just as for women, when they don't feel the power to get what they need, they go out and get it themselves. But then their ability to receive diminishes over time. And so that's what's been going on today. We've been going in the wrong direction, which is temporarily okay. If women go to their male side, they just need to learn how to come back to their female side. And if men have addictions or they lose their motivation, they lose their aliveness or they lose their commitment. Meaning commitment is a very powerful masculine thing. In marriage, you commit to your partner, and as soon as you can't regulate your sexual energy, and now you're releasing it other places, it also weakens your masculinity. There's such amazing research now that we just didn't have before. And there's bad information out there like that. Having sex with many people is very natural for the male. He has so much sperm, he can make babies every day. So what's the deal with monogamy? Well, that's just the way that the brain is designed in the unconscious. The monkey brain can make babies whenever. Okay, that's the monkey brain. We're not monkeys. We have monkey software. But we want to elevate it into, like, human, into love. And so, you know, my amygdala back here is violent. I'm a violent person. I've never expressed violence in my life because I also use my prefrontal cortex. So the amygdala. Every man is violent, but what you want to do is tame that, transform that, let it serve you through assertiveness and motivation. That's your juice. So you don't have to be violent to have juice. So power. So we want elevated power. What power with love. And the only way for men to have power with love ultimately, is to be with a woman, okay? It's very, very hard to find love unless you've got a being in front of you whose body is designed to make high levels of estrogen, which raise men's testosterone. And men. Men's testosterone, when it goes up in the presence of a woman, raises her estrogen. And that's called romance. See all these romantic skills that I teach, also, you've got communication skills, you have romantic skills, you have making love skills. Oh, that's a real big one if you want to sustain passion for a lifetime. I mean, I'm 71 years old. I have sex every other day, sometimes twice a day. None of my friends have that because they don't have the communication skills and the romantic skills and the sex skills that will sustain that connection. And also, that's just. That's just relationship skills. You also have to have balance in your life. You know, you have to have a job, you have to work hard, you have to feel good about your job. You have to overcome your procrastination. You know, there's a lot of things to be masculine, a lot of things to be feminine. Women have to learn how to be accepting, how to forgive, how to let go, how to process their emotions. You know, estrogen, whenever you're emotional, whenever you're emotional, estrogen's going up, okay? And for a man, when estrogen goes up and when your estrogen goes up, you're not being acknowledged and appreciated because women do not appreciate. Men who procrastinate, men who get mad, men who get upset. So you're not getting any appreciation. So your testosterone tends to go down. So as men talk more about their problems, women become less interested in their husbands. And yet those same women will say, tell me about your day. And then he'll start telling you about your day. He'll start talking. Whenever you talk about what's inside of you. On an emotional level, your estrogen goes up. When men's estrogen goes up, it's not attractive to women.

Right.

They just can't get turned on to you. Women get turned on when a man's testosterone goes up. And testosterone goes up when you detach. You have to be detached from my reactiveness. But then I can also be emotional in response to her emotions, like empathy. So if. If somebody is feeling happy, I'm happy for them. That's a form of empathy. Somebody's excited, I'm excited with them. That's connection. Or if they're sad or disappointed, I connect with that and I feel what they're feeling. This is a new skill for men, to feel empathy but not to be emotional. See, this doesn't make sense to most people because this is all new information. Well, this is why twice as many people are not getting married. Relationships are a disaster. Passion is gone. Monogamy is disappearing. Monogamy, Thousands of years, they finally figured the monogamy thing out. And we realize this is really powerful, but people don't realize the power of it. We now have science proving it, is that. You know, I remember Alan Watts, a brilliant philosopher, when he was like, my age, he said, finally, the dragon is dead. And what was the dragon? His sex drive. He wanted to get rid of his sex drive. It could never be satisfied. As opposed to having a dragon, which is totally satisfied with your spouse. And it turns out that there's a hormone, monogamy hormone. When you are committed to a woman and you provide excess estrogen for her and she raises your testosterone. That's called marriage commitment. They did studies on married couples versus single men and masturbation. And what they found is that a single man having sex does not make the hormone prolactin. But a married man, when he has a relationship, he loves her, he's committed to her, his body will make prolactin. Prolactin inhibits his desire for sex with other women. Now, if he doesn't have good communication skills, it will inhibit his desire to have sex with her as well. So a lot of my friends in the 70s, they don't care about sex anymore, okay? Their testosterone levels have gone down so far. So you need to be making prolactin, which frees you from lusting after any woman. They're all just pretty girls to me. I got that jewel at home. So that's the. The attraction never goes away. If you have plenty of prolactin and good communication skills, that will raise your testosterone.

So let me ask you this, because everybody's going, okay, communication skills. Let's go ahead and do a course. Go ahead and give us the gold. Like, what are the three best questions guys can ask girls? And what are the three best questions girls can ask guys to get the communication skills started?

That's so great, Glenn. Thank you for that. Now we get to some practical things. People can walk away from this interview. You can try it out and just see. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, but it's the easiest thing.

Oh, we're going to get to that sexual thing that you said later. Don't you. Don't you worry.

That's more advanced. All right, so when it comes to man's testosterone, every woman can practice this. And you'll see when a man's talking and he pauses for a moment, if he makes sense, then say, wow, that makes sense. That's it. That makes sense. And you do it from a feminine. With a feminine tone in your voice. See, I can say to a man, that makes sense. It's going to bump up his testosterone a little bit. But how many times does a married man today have his wife say to him things like, honey, that makes sense. Barely do we hear it. We're hungry for it. We want a female to go, well, that makes sense. Oh, that's one phrase. Another one is, what a good idea. What a good idea. Show a little enthusiasm, a little emotion. What a good idea. Oh, man. We'll just eat it up. You'll watch his posture change. Blood will go to his face. He'll feel so. And he doesn't even know you're doing it. You can do this 20 times a day.

I love.

Whenever he's talking about anything, you just. And if you feel inside he's right, then put a little femininity and go, you're right. That's so amazing. All right. You're right. This is what juices men up. Just keep giving it, pouring it on. Now, there's other things, but I just want to give you three. Good. You're Right. Good idea. That makes sense. Okay, so that's it. And only if you feel it, but amp it up a little bit, okay? Amp it up. You know what I do in my seminars, Glenn, is I have 10 men come on stage and have them pretend that they just won the world championship of that local area's team, okay? Soccer team, football team, whatever. Imagine these guys coming on stage, and I haven't prayed around. Let's give them a big round of applause. And everybody stands up and claps for them and gets all excited for them. These guys are pumping. Testosterone never felt so good, and everybody in the audience never felt so good either. And then I tell them to double it and triple it. You got to pump it up. You have to do this sometimes because we get sedentary. It's like going to the gym for people who are sedentary. You got to use some resistance to overcome your resistance. Women, you got to overcome your resistance from making men heroes. Right now it's like, oh, and if he's white, you can't say anything to him.

Right.

He's a white supremacist. This is so terrible. You know, it's just every man deserves to be acknowledged, appreciated, trusted to do his best. This is what we need, and we need to earn it. So he has to say something or do something. He goes, that makes sense. Well, that's a good idea. Or that's. If he does something, your response to his doing will raise his testosterone a lot, which is why we have traditions. Like, for a man, you pay for the meal. Why do you pay for the meal? Because she could basically go, oh, thank you. I received something from you. So many women today, they'll just go, oh, let's split the meal. Nothing. There's no. There's no connection there.

Right.

What she doesn't know is that her allowing him to do something for her and then appreciating him. Appreciating him is the key. Appreciation means nothing. If he doesn't do something, and it doesn't last that long, he has to keep doing little things. That's the idea of the new romantic skills. We can get into those practical details as well, but here, the communication on the surface.

So, yeah, for women, right now, we want to know. The guys want to know what are the three things guys can say?

Yeah, what you say is, there's nothing to. There's things to say, but more importantly, it's to ask.

Okay, what are the three questions we need to ask?

Questions you ask. So women, you don't have to ask Questions. We don't need too many questions. I wrote a whole book on Mars, Venus in the workplace. The biggest complaint men had was women ask too many questions.

Yes.

Stop interviewing men. Instead, what men can do for a woman. What a man can do for a woman. She's talking now. You've got this impulse to interrupt. Don't interrupt. You've got this impulse to get to the point. What do you want me to do? So why are you telling me? That's that impulse. You got to stop that impulse. Don't speak. That's really. I Still, after 40 years of teaching this stuff, I have a little sticker that says, don't speak. Remind. Because, you know, I'm a big speaker. Imagine what I am with my wife. She could say anything. I could talk for an hour.

So I get it.

So don't speak. Ask questions. Ask questions. So what I would the thing, three questions for men to ask. She's talking. And even if you're not interested in the beginning, pretend, okay, that's like I'm saying to women, amp it up. Just pretend. And you have to have the words to express it. And it will become. When it works, anything you do that works, you're going to do it more. You don't have to pretend after a while. So the first thing is you have to know what to do. So don't. Don't interrupt her. Know this is going to take longer in your mind. Look at the clock and go, if it's your wife, I'm going to give her 10 minutes. I can give her 10 minutes. That's all I need to do. She'll be happy in 10 minutes. I can give them 10 minutes. So you have to give yourself a time. Because when women start talking, if you were to just sit there and listen, you don't know how long it's going to go. So your energy drops also. Then you say something that tells her you don't understand. And now it starts all over. So you do have these times where your wife has talked all this long distance. Men remember that we're going to get an argument. But not even, you know. So you got to put all that to the past by having new strategy. The strategy is, first question, she's talking. Your mindset could be 10 minutes. I'm not going to talk about me at all. And she'll trip you up on this because she's going to start asking you questions because she hasn't taken my class. So when she asks you questions, you say, well, let me think about that. But first I Want to understand you. Always. She's the priority. She needs to talk, not you. Although she thinks you do. They all think you need to talk. You don't need to talk. Talking just makes estrogen. What she does is she needs to talk. And sometimes she even says, I need you to talk first. So if she asks you a question, you give a real quick answer. My daughter, who teaches classes for women, she calls it the lunch menu. If they say, what's going on inside of you? You say, oh, I had lunch today, and I was just thinking about the salad I had. Or I had a meeting with so and so. I was just thinking about what he said. It went so well. Never go down. You're not here to share your therapeutic feelings. Whatever. Have a coach, have a buddy, and have a beer and drink about it. But with her, you talk a little bit, and then that makes her feel safe to open up. Now she's talking. So what are the three things you can do when a woman's talking? Anytime she says something, she pauses. Help me understand that better. That's it. Invite her. Wow. Help me understand that better. And then you ask.

I'm writing it down, of course. Go ahead.

I know. I see you doing that. I'm glad you write it down. Help me understand that better. Well, tell me more. Tell me more. And then you say, tell me more. She'll tells you more. Then there'll be a pause, and it's amazing. There is always more men. You don't get it. Once your woman feels safe, there's so much more. There's no point. There's many, many points. There's spirals. So you want to make it safe for her to talk more. And I know some men will think, oh, she talks so much. She only talks so much because you keep interrupting with advice. You tell her, don't worry about that, or, why would you say that? Or, hey, you're getting upset about nothing. Those things are just terrible. They just make her start over. You know, he doesn't understand. He doesn't understand. Women need. Primarily, they need to feel you care about them. That's called empathy. They. You understand what they're going through. You disagree with it. You know, my wife always complained about the traffic. I could easily say, honey, we moved here because you wanted to move here. Okay, one, two. Everybody has traffic. So you don't complain about. After a while, you just. That's what life is.

Yes.

One of the funniest things I have to share is we're going on a little romantic getaway. When I Was young and didn't have a lot of money. And it was a big deal for me to pay for the hotel, you know, go there. It's a big deal being spits. And we're getting in the car to go. And she didn't seem happy. You know, I said. I said, so I said, I'm going to practice this. And I said, you don't seem happy. What's the matter? And she goes, oh, I don't know. It's so much trouble to get everything together, plan this vacation. I had to get babysitters. I had to get this. And now I'd have somebody look at the house. And I'm like, thinking, well, then let's just stay home. Why spend all this money if it's not going to make you happy? But I practice. I just practice saying, well, help me understand that better. Well, tell me more. It went on for a good 10 minutes. I couldn't believe how she had so many objections to going on this trip. The final one is the only one I can remember. Now it's 40 years later. And I. And she said, and, you know, even when we get home and we've had a good time and we get home, there's still all the mail. I just so much wanted to say everybody has mail when they go on vacations. But I just. I just said, well, help me. The three phrases help me understand that better. Then I said, tell me more. And then I said, and what else? And that's when the. The mail thing came out.

Ah, okay.

I was like, I'm just listening to this, and I'm, like, ready to die. You know, my energy is going down. This woman has so many, many problems. And. And, like, literally my posture is bent over because I don't feel very successful at all. You know, I want to be happy. And so I'm. My testosterone's dropping. And then I watched her as I went down. She stood up, she took a deep breath, and she said, well, it's all worth it. I'm excited to go. And at that moment when she says, I'm excited to go, then immediately, immediately my posture changed. I'm like, yes, let's go. Because I got the feedback that this was a good thing I was providing. But she needed to unwind a bit on all that stress of, you know, I got to take care of the kids. I got to do this, I got to do that, this. And go. Women have to process out loud, and we don't do that. Okay. And if we do it, we should stop. Okay. Unless We're. Unless we're talking to a friend, a coach, a buddy, a friend, you know, not to your wife. Don't process stuff out loud with them. Otherwise they're now going to be there for you. And when. See, when you're listening to someone, their. Their pain or their frustrations or disappointments and their concerns and their worries and the things they feel bad about. Anytime somebody's sharing that stuff, the other person who's listening, if I'm just listening, I'm now penetrating in. I'm going in. I'm on my male side, and the person who's sharing is on the female side. Well, if a man goes over there, he's now opening up to receive her, penetrating him. I just have to make my favorite joke. When women penetrate into men, we're not women, so you get an asshole. Nobody will ever forget that one.

That's good.

Stop penetrating into men. You think that's gonna. See, she wants to connect. If you're like, over here and she's feeling over here, she wants to go in. That connection is good. But now he's the female and she's the male.

Yes.

Instead, when women. I need to get in there. Really? You need him to get in you.

Right?

So what you do. Practice willpower. All of our tendencies are wrong. Okay. When we don't have. If you're not having a happy relationship, you have to look at yourself and realize something is wrong in what I'm doing, if I'm not feeling healthy in my body, I have to say I'm not exercising enough. If my muscles are shrinking, I'm not taking care of myself. I have to overcome that resistance to do that. We all have places in our life if we're not fully grounded and happy and fulfilled and motivated. I am most of the time. And when I'm not, I do something that's hard for me to do. That's it. I just say, look, I have to overcome some resistance and I feel better again.

That's good.

Sure, I gave too much information, but help me understand that better. Tell me more. And when it seems like she's done what else I love, it's this pregnant pause which allows her to come up with more. And in your mind as a man, just think 10 minutes, 10 minutes is going to do it. And then how do you finish it off? A good line for men. There's so many good lines after men. And it's not just like fake. It's in the beginning, you might have to fake it. But then as it works, it becomes A part of you, because it's true. The truth is always inside of us. So when you, after she's shared, you just want to solve her problem instead, you have to realize her problem is she needs someone to validate what she's feeling. And you can't always agree with what she's feeling, but you can validate her frustration, her disappointments, her worries. Yeah, I understand that. I have worries, too. I have concerns, too. So if you're validating, how do you give the message that I validate? Well, easy way to do it is not to give a solution, but instead, take a deep breath and then look at her and say, honey, you do so much for so many people. I just want to give you a hug. That's it. When I do that, women swoon in my workshops. They go, I would love for my husband to say that journey. And the thing is, man, do it not once. Do it again and again and again and again. It's gonna be your. It's just like saying thank you. Yeah, listen.

And then I like this. So gappers, you guys gotta understand, Dr. Gray has a free class for you on mars and venus.com marsandvenus.com if you.

Like this, it's marsvenous.com Excuse me, marsvenous.com.

And we have it pulled up right now, marsvenus.com so if you like the 1, 2, 3. I mean, look at he just, I, this is so awesome. And I could interview you for 10 hours. There's no doubt about this. But I want to, number one, offer that free class again. Marsvenus.com if you want to go and learn and you love what he's saying, it's good. But John, if it's okay, what I'd like, I got a couple other quick questions for you. You have been interviewed by Oprah, Phil Donahue, and some of the biggest people. Can you share with us your experience on what was it like to be interviewed by Oprah? Were you, like, face to face? Were you on her show? Like, what was your attitude going into that thing for you?

I did 18 shows with Oprah, and I was coached during her during the 90s, and I taught her meditation then as well.

Wow.

She's a lovely, lovely woman. Very independent. But what's it like when you're sitting in front of Oprah? She gives you your full attention? I remember the third show I did with her. I had somebody tell me this once, if you're on somebody's show and they're popular, make sure they talk more than you Right. Secret. Because, you know, people often want to share their stuff. But if you've got a host and she's talking, let her keep talking because people listen to her, not so much you. Right. And I remember third, she. She called me up in my house and she said, john, I want to do a show. Normally, I have producers. I'm producing this one. I just want to sit with you, and I want you to tell me what is the most important thing we can teach people. I want them to have that gift. And so we sat at the table and she just. I said, well, let's just go through the book. So there I was sitting, she had the book in her hands and she was reading it. And at this point and say, what do you think? She talked about it. She asked me a question. I give short answers so that she could say more because she would relate a good interview. Often what Oprah would do is she was like teaching. She's. This is when she was trying to see women. You got to do this and this and this. And at the end of that show, and I have to say, she's a big part of my big success, that particular show, she stood up there and said, now everybody, you know, I promote books and everything. If I was to promote one book in my whole life. And the only book you should read, if you don't read that many books, is this book. And it was so great. And then the producers, when they actually aired it, they took it out because they said it was too much of a commercial, if you can imagine that.

Gosh, you're kidding. I had to kill you.

They literally, they couldn't. They couldn't put that part. But she, but just. She really supported me a lot. I appreciate it. And who I appreciate even more, just because it's. What happened to me is. Was Phil Donahue. Phil Donahue. It's an amazing story. You know, every success story, there's so many obstacles. I never received for the, for the seven years, six years, my book was a number one bestseller. Five of those years. Number one. I mean, it was amazing. Just every week, every week. Never received a positive print interview the whole time.

Wow.

Video. People see me, people love me. I'm fun to be on tv. I was on every TV show that was like, I'm charismatic and playful and fun and informative and helpful. All that good stuff. But print interview, never a positive one. Always a pissing match. Sometimes it was the only one that criticized me in print. So anyway, that was hard. That was hard. Particularly to get to the bestseller list. Took a year of negative articles, but a lot of TV to get me there. And it was Phil Donahue gave me my break. And Phil, he's a man, okay? Men relate to my material, okay? And so the Phil Donahue show, the producers are mainly women, and they were against me, and they actually had three experts against me. They had couples who didn't like my message. It was a hit piece on me, and I didn't know. I found out in the makeout room that people didn't like me. So it was a hit piece. And we were about to go out. I didn't mind. I was used to it. You know, this is controversial stuff then. Still is. So that was the day the world. The first time the World Trade center had an explosion. 1992, there was a. At the base. There was an explosion. It was the first big terrorist attack.

Yes.

And so they canceled my show. They canceled it right there. And I said, no, you can't cancel it. He said, Phil said, we're doing a live show. I said, but after the live show, let's do another show. I got to do it. And he says, we'll postpone it to another time. I said, no, we got to do it. We got to do it. I just persisted. No, I don't know how I convinced him. He said, john, you don't want to do this. This is an audience of. I can't get you another audience in time. And this audience of terrified women, they're upset. This is a terrorist attack. I said, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Gotta do this show. Gotta do this show.

Wow.

And in my heart, I knew. I knew the answer. This was my big breakthrough. They have this very antagonistic audience against me, against anybody saying good stuff, in a sense. And Phil has this thing. He'd go around, put the microphone in front of people, and what do you think about this? And what. Not one woman liked me in that audience. Not one expert liked me. And here I was putting some of my ideas out there, and it was like an explosion. It was like. Like that building blew up. It was. It was the breakthrough for me. Everybody was upset. And so I knew this is good, because Phil. Phil was a man, and Phil was an equalizer. Phil Donahue always take both sides. He's a Libra as well, so he takes both sides of things. And so if somebody's really attacking me, what's Phil gonna do?

Right?

He's a guy, he's a man. He's gonna have to defend. And he would say, oh, this. This young man, he has an idea here. Doesn't he describe your husband in certain ways? Yes, he does. And my husband shouldn't be that way. I said, well, maybe your husband is that way, and we can just accept our differences and then learn how to get together and get our needs met. So Phil, literally, he defended you.

The whole show. Is that on YouTube? We can still probably get that, I would think, right?

That'd be fantastic. I'd like to see that show, too. Amazing show.

Jason's pulling it up right now. Go ahead.

Oh, my gosh. It was the best. So then what happened is I had Phil Donahue at that point. What people don't know, my book got to the bottom of the bestseller list. Bottom the 12 and then went to 11 after six months. Went to 10 and then went to 10, stayed at 10 and then disappeared. It was like my publishers gave up. No. What? I didn't know for six months that my book was out of print. I kept looking, where's my book? Because what the publisher decided to do is he made a bestseller in hardback. Now, let's wait in January, bring it out in hardback, which is the best month for. I'm sorry, backwards. It wasn't hardback. They're going to bring it out in paperback in January. Well, they didn't bring it out for nine years after this because what happened is I told him I got Phil Donahue coming for Valentine's Day, and I. You owe me hardback books. I'm not taking it. You owe me 25,000 hardback books in the front of bookstores. I'm not allowing you to release those paperbacks. They had 200,000 paperbacks. I did the field on a show. Now Valentine's Day came, the books were in the store, and they canceled the show and the book sold out. Same thing happened next month. They said they're going to play it again. I got 25,000 more books on the front. They canceled the show. Third time the show aired. We sold out of the books and then took two months after that. I don't know why. I don't think somebody liked me very much to be number one. Because we sold out of 25,000 books right away. Normally, that means you're a best seller if you can sell that many right away. And then it just kept going on and on that I stayed in hardback for eight years because the sales, always number one going up there so high. Finally went in with the paperback. Worst decision ever for a publisher because they make more money on hardbacks. Sure didn't change the sales. People were buying that book because they had friends that told them that was a great book. It was all word of mouth.

I'm wondering how. How did you come up with the title?

Oh, that's a go. That's another gift from God. You have to realize I'm. I pray. And so, such frustration. I. My class was called Men, Women, and Relationships. I taught it for many years before I wrote that book. But long before I wrote the book, I was trying to make a fun way, a fun way of looking at differences. You know, people didn't like saying men and women are different. Even now, they hate it even more. But men and women are different. Many people loved it, but they're always somebody. I give these talks, and people would get mad at me and yell and scream. Sometimes have signs I'm a sexist and no good. Now they were doing it to me back then. People hit pieces. People want to write things bad about me. So anyway. And it's awful when you're having a fun talk like this and somebody yells and screams and gets mad at you. It's sexist. You know, it just disturbs the whole nice energy in the room.

Yes.

So I kept thinking, I got to make a nice, fun way of saying men and women are different. So at two years, I was just, I gotta find some. I need to find my hook. Need to find my angle that's playful. And then I was given a talk on differences between men and women. And at a certain point, I think this woman was drunk because she said in the audiences. Well, worse, I was talking about men and women were different. Oh, here's how it went. And I said, women, I want you to imagine. Remember the movie E.T. 1984. 83. Around that time.

Sure.

Is that it? Anyway, whatever. Dates at work, we all seen the movie E.T. now, in the movie E.T. the E.T. the extraterrestrial needed Reese's cookies or candies. And of course, the kids were saying, don't tell mom that we're feeding, but he needed different nutrition than humans needed. So I was making the point to women. Just imagine your husband's ET and before I could finish that whole example, all the women started laughing when I said, just imagine your husband's E.T. we just seen the movie. And they all started laughing. Yeah. And then this woman said, well, well, where's my husband from? And then that's the moment I said, are you kidding? He's from Mars.

Oh.

Then I had the hair stand up in my arms. The whole room started laughing. It was so funny. So men are from Mars. And then I had to figure out, well, where are women from? And that came a little later. Women are from Venus. And talked about how we're different on our different planets. But boy, I so grateful that happened that moment, you know, but it was intention. You know, everything happens in success. Strong intention and patience. Intention and patience. Intention and patience.

Well, and the thing that resounds with me is, you know, whenever tough times come, you always, you have that attitude of resilience. You have that attitude of, as you said, pivoting. So what I'm going to do, because I want to respect your time, we close all of our interviews with something called knowledge through the decades. And I hope you'll play with me and I hope you have fun with me as we do this. And I like to walk people through their life and ask them the attitude lessons as each 10 year birthday hit. And so if it's okay, I'd love to just do that with you. And we'll start with childbirth, birth. And again, you probably don't know or remember being child born or being born, but you've had kids and probably grandkids or whatever. But when you think about childbirth or being born, you being born into this world, look at the ripple effect you've had. What do you think the attitude lesson of being born or childbirth is?

Oh, I used to teach rebirthing about 30 years ago. So I have the memory of my birth, the kinesthetic experience of that.

Awesome.

I was an induced baby, actually, I think is like a fingerprint of so many lessons you have on your journey here. You know, my mother, I'm number five baby, she had no problem with babies, so she went early because it didn't want the baby to pop out in the taxi. All right, so there she's waiting at the hospital and the doctor said, oh, come on, let's just do it now. And gave an inducement. And she said no. And Pitocin is to induce a birth?

Yes.

And she said no, no, no, no, three times. And he did it anyway. So I as a baby wasn't ready to come out, but I survived. And that's part of the, part of the whole thing is when I feel, when lessons I've learned from that is when I feel I'm not ready. Everything's going to be okay.

I love it.

That was an important big thing for.

Me in my life and man, so I always had.

It took a long time to learn that lesson because many times, you know, I have a youthful appearance and when I give a talk at 18 years, 19 years old on meditation. I was teaching a transcendental meditation teacher at that time. People would think, this looks like my, my child. How can he teach us anything of wisdom? So it was always like, even though I'm not ready, everything's going to work out fine. I love it. Work out fine.

I love it. So let's go to. That makes it well, absolutely. And it's, you know, it's something that you, like you said, tapped back into and it's probably a recurring theme for you. So let's go to third and fourth grade. Do you remember who your teacher was, what school was? Was there something that occurred in third or fourth grade that you can call back and go, you know what? Yes, well, whatever. 10 year old attitude lesson at 10 years old.

Okay, well, when I was in third grade, okay, my brothers had Playboy magazines. And in those days it was women wearing underwear. And I didn't want to get caught with the Playboy, but I don't know why. I just like looking at the girls in their underwear. Natural thing for a little boy curiosity. So I didn't want to get caught with it. So I ended up tracing these women's body. So I became an expert at drawing a naked woman's body. And I used to sit in third grade watching Mrs. Delk drawing her naked. And they were actually better than anything I could do now. It was amazing.

Oh my gosh.

That's third grade. Fourth grade. I remember giving an award to my teacher, a little statue, as the best teacher in the world. And remember going shopping with my mother. So that was one is sex. The next one was, I love my fourth grade teacher. She's the most wonderful person in the world. Kind of like at this level, guru thing. Someone really amazing, but full of love. And in fifth grade started to meet my challenges of not being recognized. I was a little guy and everybody was introducing themselves and the teacher. And I'm listening to everybody talking. Nobody's putting their voice out there, you know, put it out with strength. Wait till I get up there. And as soon as I got up front, the teacher said, now, little Johnny, I know you've got it in you. Put that out there. I was so mad because I could do that without her help. So that was a part of my journey is I'm more of a rebel and I'm more of a. I'm very autonomous, self sufficient. That's part of my strength, is self sufficiency. And I think that's one of the keys in my message today, which is whenever Your partner's not giving you what you want. You need to pivot and give yourself what you need in a healthy way, and then you have more to give.

I love it. I love it. Now, obviously you went to college. Do you remember your 20th birthday or your 21st birthday? And what was your attitude lesson when you turned 20 or somewhere around there?

I don't remember the birthday itself, but I do remember a painful moment. I had become a Maharishi, a TM teacher, okay, Transcendental Meditation teacher. And one of my friends had become his personal assistant. And that was like the greatest thing in the world for people when you're following a guru, you know, it was amazing he could be so close to him. And this was a friend of mine, and I wanted that job, okay? And I really wanted that job. And I told the teacher, the guru that I wanted that job and I can do this like my friend. And he told me, you're a really smart kid. He just said, you're really smart. You need to go back to college. I was in college at the time. You need to go back to college. And I was devastated. I mean, just devastated. You know, I felt like I'll never going to achieve my goal. I really. I felt it was a part of me to become his assistant. And I've never felt so much. I had tears coming up. What's going to happen? I know it's in my destiny to be with him. And then basically I had a catharsis. And I said, I'll figure out a way to get back. And I did. I was at University of Texas, and I got credits for going to be with the Maharishi and writing a thesis on transcendental meditation and research. So I was able to go back, but I had to figure out a way to do it. So I got completely knocked down. And then I hooked myself back up. I actually became personal assistant. I became his number one guy. I taught us. I developed and taught his teacher training programs in the 20s. That was my 21. I felt like, I don't know if my dream can come true. And then I overcame it.

That is so awesome. All right, let's go to 30. Do you remember being 30? What was going on in your life at 30? And what was happening? What was the attitude lesson? What did you learn?

Okay, so around 28 years old, 29 years old, it was time for me to. To leave the Maharishi. I don't know why. I just woke up one day and realized, this is not. I don't need to be here. Anymore. And it was a time of, you have to realize, for me, being his number one student, I really was. And my picture was in all the TM centers, 3600 centers around the world. I taught these teachers to be teachers. I was his guy, you know, and traveled with him. But I was also pure celibate, okay? Pure celibate. That means no masturbation, no sex, no girls. I loved it because I meditated a lot. They did brain research on me because I was dedicated meditator. And he liked that. Of course, his technique was working really well. They could prove it with my brain. This is back in the 70s. So then I'm now moving through that time and one morning I wake up. People could say enlightenment experience, because there's so many experiences. But at that time, it was time to go. I didn't know where I was going to go. I just got on a plane. Also had a dream about a woman having sex. So I thought, well, this is new. And then I met that woman when I was in California. She was not that interested in me. Eventually I convinced her and that's when I first started having sex. So the moment there, 20 years old. Wait, this is 30.

30.

Yeah, I had set 30, had sex when I was a young guy, but now celibate and everything. And so it turns out that I was no longer needed a guru anymore. And she also just left some other female famous guru. And so she said. So then I said, now she gave me the attention I was looking for. And then I said, what do you do? She's a massage therapist. And she said, you want a massage? I said, sure. And then she told me to take off all my clothes. Well, that was the day I stopped being celibate. I remember lying on my stomach and she said, so why are you still celibate? And I said, I don't know. And that became my journey and exploration and sexuality.

I love it.

And during that time, you know, during the. Actually during the. At 30, when I was traveling, I was traveling around with many girlfriends. Kind of easy for me because I was famous in the TM movement and they were all like TM teachers and, and whatever and students. I had like big credentials in a sense.

Oh yeah. They had a lot of estrogen and you had a lot of testosterone, baby.

I mean, and what I did is I basically, because I had the monk status and high status for them, I would say, look, you know, it's been a while since I've had sex. And so I'm trying to learn what are the Best things to do for you. So tell me about your body and what makes you happy in sexual. And we talk about it first. And you know, most couples, they don't talk about it or anything, but. And women sort of expect men to know and they don't want to talk about. But because of my monk status, they were happy to share everything. We did examine the clitoris, the vagina, the G spot, the kissing, the touching, what they like. I didn't know any of this stuff. So I interviewed these different women and I thought, I have learned so much as a 30 year old about sex, now I can teach the sex. And so it's ironic here as a celibate monk, now no longer a celibate monk teaching sex, because I realized so many people don't talk about sex. Women often don't know what other women know about their bodies. Men certainly don't know about that. Women don't know about what men want. So I thought, let's get people together. Called Making Love Work. That was the workshop. And talk about what makes sex great for different people. And just having conversation help people a lot about that subject.

Oh my God. I mean, hell, he's only at 30, Jason and I just want to be this guy. Okay, 40 years old. 40 years old. Now the testosterone might be backing off a little bit. Tell me what you remember about turning 40 or what your attitude lesson was at 40.

Okay. So basically this is tricky getting to the birthday, but I know what happened at 40 is I'd been after all those girls. One of those girls just left her husband for me and I ended up marrying her. It was a mistake. And that was a lovely relationship. That's kind of where I learned men and women are different. And then I left that woman and found my wife, Bonnie. Bonnie was actually one of the women, all the women I was traveling with, but she wouldn't marry me. This other woman wanted to marry me, so I married her anyway. So in my 30s, I'm married to Bonnie. And then Bonnie and I have a baby. And then we lived in LA for a year, then we moved up to Northern California. Now I'm 40 years old. Okay, so what happened? What happened at that time was I spent every. I took care of our baby and my wife during the day and throughout the night. I wrote my first, my second book called Men, Women and Relationships. That number around behind me over there. Men, Women in Relationships. It's big, thick book. It's like everything I'd learned teaching about relationships for 10 years. It's kind of like My opus. And I put that book out there. I got self. Self published. It basically got it out there and it did really well. There it is. Thank you.

That's Jason.

That's the best version of it. The original version was twice as big, but I interviewed people and they never finished it. It was so dense.

Right?

So already I was. I wanted to write another book, and that's 40 years old. Agent called me. Prior to that, no agents would take me. I was a nobody. I had to do everything myself. And this one agent, finally, he's so great. You should see this guy. You know, you can sell his book. People love him. So she called me up and says, I'm retired. I don't want to do this. But my friend said, I need to do it, but I'm not going to do it. I said, okay, and then come back, I just have to do it. Something in me says, I have to do it. I can sell your book to New York. She went to New York, she could sell men, women, relationships. This is. I'm 40 years old. I can sell it to New York. And. And my little publisher that published it, a little friend of mine, had a little publishing house. I went to him and said, oh, great news. New York wants to book. And he said, you know, this happens every time. We have a good book, New York buys it off of us, and we can do just as good as New York. Give us a chance. And in that moment, I thought, okay, I remember the moment. Give you a chance.

Wow.

Very heartfelt. And I said, okay, you keep the book. My agent's there, my wife. What do you mean you're going to sell a book to New York? You're not going to do that? And I said, nope, not going to do that. And then so I just knew I had to do the right thing.

Wow.

And I remember in the elevator, 40 years old, I remember exactly this moment where I'm in the elevator and the agent says to me, well, if you're not gonna. If you're gonna keep the book here, New York wants you. What are you gonna do? And I said, right in that moment, my heart spoke to me. It said, I'll write another book. And she said, you can write another book on, I'll do a better book. Because in that mind came to me, I'll write the same book, but very short, very simple, very easy to understand, because that was too dense. And that became Mena from Mars, Women from Venus.

Whoa.

Right there in my heart.

Wow. Well, and that's, you know, the. The gift of Loyalty, the gift of karma, maybe, that you did that.

There's more to that story, actually. When the president of the company was saying, you know, give us a chance. My younger brother had committed suicide.

Oh, boy.

My little brother. And, you know, when somebody does that, you feel like I could have done more. I should have done more. And one of the lessons I learned. Every emotional thing happens to me. I try to learn a lesson. The lesson I learned from that, and this is many years before this moment, the lesson I learned is Jimmy always looked up to me because I was a little guy. And Jimmy always made me the big brother. And I realized. But nobody ever made him the big brother. And I felt very guilty about that. So I made a pledge that in my life, the people that helped me become bigger, I'm never going to forget. And I'll always be loyal to them. And at that meeting, I felt the spirit of Jimmy come through this guy. When I said, okay, I won't forget you. You have this book, and I'll pivot. And so that was very touching. I had tears in my eyes when I. When I. At this moment where I could actually help somebody who'd help me.

Do you call that the Jimmy principle in one of your books yet?

I should, but I've got a lot of those principles. That's why I got all those books.

I love it. That's so beautif. Wow. Powerful. 30, 40 very powerful stories. Let's see if he can outdo it. Let's talk about the big five. Zero. You're a Libra. When's your birthday? Like, October 19th or something?

December 28th.

December 28th. Okay.

I turned 50 and my book went off to bestseller. And what happened at that time was there's a price you pay when you're literally having millions and millions of people thinking about you all the time, Right. Most movie stars, they become addicted. It's energy coming at you, and you have to let energy flow through. You know, you look at a very gifted person, like Michael Jackson, he was never happy in his life. Never happy. Only time he's happy is when he's dancing on stage. That's because the energy that comes at him, he's like a channel, and it flows out. If it's flowing, there's no resistance. But as soon as it's not flowing out, he didn't have the family, the relationship skills, the love to have the energy channel in other directions. That was his only channel. So at 50, it was actually good and not good at the. At the. What used to happen for Me is in the night, around 3 or 4 o' clock in the morning, all the people dreaming and thinking. This is my interpretation of. It's called Akka chords and Hawaiian mysticism. If you think about somebody, energy actually connects to them and then you forget about them, it dissipates. But these actual energy interactions and around 3 o' clock in the morning, in my power center where I'm in my belly, all this energy would come and wake me up. And it woke me up. It was painful for about two hours. I would meditate and transcend energy back to them. But it was hard work, okay? And my wife couldn't do that, so she had to go in another bedroom to sleep. Many times it was just too much electricity in the room. Most people, when they're super famous, they deal with that by taking drugs. Drugs burn off the energy or they have big arguments and fights. I was grounded in my ability to meditate and feel the energy and love, energy coming back, gratitude and giving the energy back. So literally I'm a laying on hands healer as well. So I'm just sending the energy back out to everybody that would give me peace. But literally having to do that for two to three hours is a lot of work in the middle of the night. So finally these little voices speak to me sometimes. And every year, every year they would say while I was on the bestseller list, getting so much energy, they would say to me, is it enough? And I said no. When I turned 50, around 49, they said, is it enough? I said it's enough. The next week it went off the bestseller list. It's like magical, maybe coincidence, whatever. At the Same time, at 50, I was then six months later diagnosed with early stage Parkinson's. So that was a big change in my life. I'm always, you know, self reliant person figuring things out. So then I figured out a special natural solution to Parkinson's. It's in the family. And Parkinson's, if you take therapeutic drugs for Parkinson's, symptomatic relief. But the condition gets worse and worse and worse and it's awful death. So I didn't want to take therapeutic drugs. I wanted to provide my body what it was missing. And so I developed these minerals, these very unique minerals that were discovered by a doctor in Germany, Dr. Hans Nieper. And there's a brain, brain mineral called lithium. And lithium is something they get for bipolar people. Whatever, it heals the brain. But Doctors would give 500 times the dose. And so it's toxic. Anything that's too big Of a dose is toxic to the system. And. But I realized I needed to rebuild my brain. Lithium actually regenerates brain cells. It's proven to do that, you put in a petri disk, the brain cells duplicate. Normally they're all dying. As we get older, lithium regenerates them. So Dr. Nieper found that if you bond lithium in a special process with oriatic acid, and oriatic acid is a substance in mother's milk. It will rebuild your brain. So I did that and healed my Parkinson's. And still today, 25 years later, I have my super minerals. I call them lithium orotate, magnesium orotate, calcium orotate, potassium orotate, or attic acid is something nobody knows about in the field. And yet there's research showing it is the most powerful delivery system to regenerate cells. And it's a regenerative. It makes the baby's brain. It's in mother's milk. Okay. It's like. And combine it with the minerals necessary to process the production of dopamine and serotonin. So then I wrote books on brain differences between men and women and brain solutions and supplements and opened up, created a healing center at 50 years old, a ranch. Decided to create alternative healing for people, for longevity, for brain problems, for Parkinson's, for ADD and all these kinds of conditions, depression and anxiety. And spent seven years in that decade at the ranch, bringing in all the world's experts to teach there. And I learned from them and had them listen to me. I wasn't teaching the wrong things. And became an expert on health and wellness and ADD and Parkinson's, particularly depression and anxiety. So it's like, you can have the right attitude, but it can also burn you up. Okay. Anytime you're really high all the time. Which I was throughout the whole decade of number one bestseller. I spoke at every big venue in the world. Thousands of people clapping, standing. That's a lot of energy, a lot of travel, Overstimulated brain receptor sites. And then they. They will start to shrink. And that's Parkinson's. So then I had to rebuild them. And I did. And I. I taught nutrition. I. Then I started opening the health food store online. Multi million dollars. And then I closed that. I said, you know, I don't need to do that anymore.

Well, is the ranch. Is the ranch still open or. No, ranch is done.

No.

Yeah. Okay.

Well, we.

I need. I need some of those drugs for my add, man.

Oh, that's what. Read my book. Cause staying focused in a hyper world, the most powerful thing for ADD that I've seen is the super minerals combined with vitamin C and X, Grapeseed extract, grape seed extract, vitamin C, twice as much vitamin C, grapeseed extract, and then the super minerals. And then add to that. The super minerals today have a few extra things in them. Rhodiola, rosea, ashwagandha, bacopa, and various things. And then there's something that's the secret that I learned in India. I've been to India 23 times. One of the most amazing things there, they did in the freezing cold, up in the mountains in the springtime, called shilajit. It's a fulvic acid that they called the destroyer of weakness. It's very powerful. You can get it, but you don't know if it's clean or not or if it's poisonous, whatever. So I was able to find another version of that, which is made in America, not India. And it's. It's got the fulvic acid in it. It's got all the 72 minerals in it. And so that's also in my super metal product. And literally, everybody who takes it feels better, but you need to also have good relationship skills.

I love it. I love it. Okay, well, we're closing in, but I appreciate you sticking with us. Remember, Gappers? I transcribe every single podcast I was showing him. I've taken three pages of notes in this podcast. It's hilarious. And so all this will be transcribed. All this you can find@glennbill.com podcast and you're going to want to read this. Let's go to 60 years old. What's your attitude lesson at 60?

I don't have that one mapped out so good. I can't remember my 60th birthday. I think my memory became a little less around that time. I do know that that was a time. Okay, so in my 60s was. I can't eat that out of me. I'm sorry. I can. I can. I can tell you what my big one was. My. My seventies. Okay.

Okay.

My wife died. Bonnie.

Oh.

And that's been the biggest transformational experience of my life. I think that overshadowed what I would say about my 60s. It's just not coming to mind.

Sure.

Well, loss, everything.

Yeah.

It's a huge loss. It's a. Now, you have to realize I've written books on healing after breakups, healing after death. I'm sort of expert on all that stuff, counseling loss. And so I had the skills so that I could go through this deep, deep depression, which healed me tremendously. You know, when bad things Happen. I was so attached to her. I loved her so much. We had such a beautiful family, such everything together, and she's the center of the family. She's the center of my life. Love her. So much great sex, you know, I, I. So much attachment. So I went through the grieving process, and it was a good two years of grieving.

Yes.

And breathe. You go to your deepest levels of attachment. See reason, there's grief. Because, see, somebody said to me, why are you so sad? Why are you grieving so much? Why you have so much going out? I said, attachment. But they said, but, you know, she's in heaven and she's happy now. And I go, I know that. I know. She said, and I communicate with her, but there's something in the brain called attachment. Now, Freud was the first person to explain this, and that is that I know of. And what he said is called need. Integrate. If I need love and you give me love, my brain starts to think, I don't need love anymore. I just need you. So now if you're gone now, I'll never get what I need.

Right.

As opposed to. So there's a rip that you have to let that tear happen, where you begin to experience that. Well, in the past, I needed her, but now I don't have her. So I need love, and I can get love. And so you have to now pivot to all these other places. That's it. Mars, Venus, starting over all these other places to fill your heart, and gradually you can let go. And then after two years, I met another woman who I'm deeply in love with. But even for those two years of going deep into my grief, knowing how to keep letting it go, the world became more beautiful to me. Suddenly trees were amazingly beautiful. I mean, we're talking in awe. I just felt in awe of nature. And in a sense, that was my wife's experience. You know, she wasn't like a public speaker like me or anything, but she was in awe of life and in awe of nature. Yeah, it's like you feel little. It's like when you go to the Grand Canyon, you just feel, oh, my gosh, it's so big. Well, the healing result of healing with my wife, Bonnie, the loss, coming back to just feeling more and more love, opened me up to feel this huge world, another spiritual experience, basically. And that's my 70s is having that. And then now being in a new relationship, being able to have learned all my lessons of the past that I wish I knew then what I. What I eventually learned, you know, when you have a problem, you learn a lesson and you move on. But now I had a new relationship and I could apply all of those lessons. So you don't have any of those problems. Yeah. So that's why I'm now in my 70s, just in heaven again. Being able to apply everything that I've learned in my marriage with Bonnie and my new relationship.

I love it. John Gray, you are just super fantastic, and you've been a blessing to the Get Attitude podcast. We always like to end our show. There's somebody walking on a beach, John. There's somebody sitting in a car listening to this, or somebody taking a walk, listening to an ipod or whatever that maybe is down. That maybe is saying, how do I bridge the gap from where I am to where I want to be and from who I am to who I want to become? And I always love to ask our guests to just give a message of hope, or if you could talk to that person who's tuned into this podcast to find the answers to transcend and bridge the gaps in their lives, their relationships, or their problems. What would your message be to them? And then we'll go ahead and conclude the interview.

You're not alone. That's the most important thing, is we're never alone. There are resources that we can reach out to, and we can't do it ourselves. The only reason you're in that dark place now is that you feel not alone. I mean, you're not feeling the connection. There is a connection, and there's a place in your life right now where you can go and get the support that you need. It could be needing to talk to somebody. It could be needing to get a coach. It could be needing to get a therapist. It could be needing to read a good book. You have to shift the gears from where you are now to another source of love and support. It could be just reading books. It could be listening to. You're listening to a podcast right now. Continue to listen to those podcasts. And what I would. Oh, my dog just ran over something. Is get a pet. Yeah, get a pet. That's very important that you have a place where you're giving to someone that appreciates what you have to give. Because we're here in this world for a reason, and we're never alone. And our suffering comes from thinking that we're not needed and that we don't have what we need. And we have to pivot to get what we need. And we need to find someone that needs what we have to offer, someone who has less and you have more of something. And that can bring you back to why you're here in this world. And the other side of this is learning to express your emotions. If you could journal. Journaling is one of the most powerful tools in my mind. I mean, I meditate. I think learning meditate is fantastic. Everybody should learn to do it. But meditation brings up the suppressed programming inside of us. And you just write out what I'm feeling. I have a little thing, that simple thing I'll describe. Write out what you're angry about. Write out what you're sad about. Write out what you're afraid of, and write out what you feel sorry about. Then write out what you want. Write out what you're grateful for. Write out what you understand. Because when you write this letter, a wisdom will come, a knowing will come. The answer is within you. But sometimes you have to unblock. You have to become aware of all these negative emotions to get in touch with what you want. Freely express what I want, what I want, what I want, and then what I'm grateful for, what I understand. And basically you will have a realization. What I know now is. And then you confirm at the very bottom of the letter, you say, right now in my life, I'm in the process of whatever goals you have. So my goals of finding a good job, right now in my life, I'm in the process of finding a good job. Or you could be more spiritual. Right now in my life, I'm in my soul's journey. And this is one of the downs that will eventually take me up. And I've been down before and I got up before. So right now in my life, I am in the process of. And write out some of those things that you said you wanted and you will feel better and you will reach out so you will see the answers will come. But you have to put that goal out there and your mind will start looking for it.

I love it. Dr. John Gray, we love you, buddy. That was just a killer, killer podcast. Thank you so much. I'm so grateful for you. And we wish you nothing but the best. You got nothing but positive attitude vibes coming your way from our studio. And again, we thank you and gappers. We will talk to you on the next Get Attitude podcast.