The 3 BIGGEST Relationship Mistakes You’re Making (& How to Fix Them!)

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Why are relationships seemingly so hard for so many people when it's the thing we need the most to feel alive, to feel happy, and to feel Connect.

This is the million dollar question. I'm a relationship therapist for 35 plus years. I work with people in their romantic relationships, family relationships, friendships, co-founder, colleagues, co-workers. So love and work, the two pillars of our life, as Freud said. And if I could just say, why is the simple feeling of loving or caring not enough? Because the entire human drama is really complex, the same way as nature is complex. So is human nature complex.

And.

I spent my whole career studying what is changing in relationships. You know, are they more complicated today? Are they more painful today? You know, have our expectations changed? That I have answers to. I don't have answers to why is it so, why, you know, but I.

Do- Is it more complicated now, relationships?

Yes.

50 or 100 years ago?

Yes, absolutely.

Why is that?

Why, for a very simple reason. For a long time, we live, and we still in many parts of the world, live in traditional societies where relationships are clearly codified. There are clear rules, there are roles, there are obligations. There's a tight structure from which you can't get out, but it tells you clearly who you are where you belong, where you rooted and what's expected of you. And you don't have too much questions about whose career matters more and who's gonna wake up to feed the baby and who has a right to demand for sex and what and everybody, every husband knows exactly what they can ask from their wife and the wife knows exactly what she should not tell her husband and children know their place and adults can interact. All of this was super regulated. You know exactly that on Sunday you go to visit your family and that you have to call your grandma and that and nobody had- Church and you go to church or you go to any other religious institution where you go to pray, to be with the community, et cetera. And you know what? Nobody needed to explain to you why it's important. You just went because I said so. And because that's what you do. That's what we do. And that's what we don't do because what will the neighbors say? And there is a community that looks over you all the time and the streets are narrow like that and everybody knows what's going on in the neighbor's house. Right now, your best friends could be breaking up and you didn't even see it coming. Nobody knows what goes on in the neighbor's house. That's where should we begin became, I think, so powerful. It gave you back a sense of what actually goes on in other people's lives. So that you're not alone wondering, am I the only one who's going through all of this? This tight structure of our society has moved into what we call today network societies. Network societies is not tight knots, it's loose ends, it's loose threads, with commitment that can be revoked at any moment. That's why your women are constantly writing to you. I thought we had something, and the next day he disappears. I thought we had developed a sense of trust. You know, where is the care? Where is the loyalty? Where is the continuity? All these things that now are not just set, fixed, they all have to be negotiated. Everything that was a rule is now a negotiation, a conversation. Who's going to go to work? Who is, are we gonna move you to the West Coast or are you gonna move with me to the East Coast? Are we gonna have children? Are we ready to have children? How many children? Do we even want children? You know, on and on and on. Am I happy at work? Oh, I could do better. Should I stay? A few more months? Should I leave? Should I, you know, is this what I really want to do? Is this who I really am?

Is this my passion?

Is this my passion, you know, this identity? the whole time. Is this who I want to be? Is this... And all of these questions are rather new questions. Why? Because in the past or in other parts of the world today, you kind of know who you are. Seriously. You're the son of somebody. Even you're the son of somebody. It starts with that, Ben, you know. And you probably will even do what your father has done. if you are a man and maybe not do much of any of the outside the house if you are a woman, or you may begin a charting course of working outside the house. And all of these things are very, very normative.

And now it's different.

We don't have any of that at this moment. We, basically, I call it the identity economy. We spend our time trying to figure out who am I? We have an enormous industry of self-help. with this belief that we are self-made, that we can have selfies, that we do self-care, it's this self-self-self that is so focused, such the center of everything, and so fragile. The freaking self has never been more fragile. We are constantly making sure that it doesn't get overwhelmed, that it doesn't get triggered, that it doesn't get violated, that it doesn't get shattered, because it stands there alone, like the little Dutchman with his finger trying to hold hold back the dike, you know, and that is the times I think we are in at this moment. And there, that's the waters I think you swim in.

Sure. Well, I think that's where suffering, inner suffering comes from on the surface is when you obsessively think about yourself, when you're obsessively self-centric thinking all the time.

Trying to improve yourself and feeling not good enough.

Right.

I think it's the combination comparing. Now, I don't know that people didn't compare themselves when they all went to and stood on the steps of the church on a Sunday morning. I I think communities, people have always compared themselves, but there was a different type of social control, the one that we have on social media today. Social control has always existed. So suffering is part of life. Community and not being alone is what helps us with all our experiences, definitely with suffering. I look at the disappointments of relationships. and the struggles that we have. Why are they so challenging? What is the challenge? What can you do about it? When is it you who can do something? And when do you have to realize the limitations that what you will do will not change another necessarily, when it does and when it doesn't? And how does this manifest at work and at home? You ask me how relationships have changed. I think we've never had more expectations of love and work than we do today. I think we expect today from love and work many things that we expected before from religion and from community. We want our relationships to be transformative, transcendent, meaningful, spiritual, purposeful, erotic, passionate, and we want it at home and we want it at work.

We want it at work too.

Oh, because we want work to be purposeful today. We want work to To give me a sense of identity, of meaning, of self-fulfillment, of development, I don't just want to go to work only for the paycheck. I need the paycheck, but I also want the paycheck to be meaningful to me. Work has become an identity economy. It's not just what am I going to do, it's who am I going to be. And it parallels, it parallels, you know, what do we talk about at work? Transparency, belonging, authenticity, trust, psychological safety. I mean, when did the entire emotional vocabulary enter the workplace to such a degree that soft skills, what they used to be called, which are emotional and social skills, relational skills, which used to be seen as feminine skills, and feminine skills, you can idealize them in principle, but disregard them in reality. And these soft skills have very quickly become the new hard skills. And that's why I'm working in the workplace. It's not because I have changed and I suddenly am interested in work, it's because work has changed and is suddenly interested in what I have been doing for decades.

I love this. I'm going to ask you a question that may be hard to answer. Maybe it's easy. But you've had, you've seen a lot of intimate relationships work and fail over 35 plus years, right?

Yeah.

What's the percentage of people in your mind who are in intimate long-term relationships? Marriages are not married, but together, are actually happy most of the time. Thriving, beautiful. I'm sure there's challenges, but like they're able to work through them with semi ease. How many relationships in your mind are super happy and thriving after decades of the changes of the times, society, work, family, all the dynamics that happen in life?

So I have two ways of answering.

Yes.

The first one is cultural. Your definition of happy and thriving and fulfilled is probably very different than many other cultures where Being healthy, having enough to eat, having children, having grandchildren, having good jobs, being respected in the community.

Is happy and thriving.

Is happy and thriving. It's not about you and I are talking on the couch and I'm pouring my heart at you and you are telling me, I'm the best thing that's ever happened to you in your life and all of that. Okay? So we- that's one version. That's one version is you have got to look at the word happiness and thriving really in a cross-cultural context. Because a lot of us, by the way, who have the new definition, have parents who think about marriage and what is a happy marriage with the other definition. And I'm wondering, you know, that maybe we are so unhappy because we want so many other things that are maybe not part of marriage.

We have such high expectations.

We have super high expectations. We want everything. We want a partner to be an entire community. My best friend, my trusted confidante, my passionate lover, my intellectual equal, my co-parent. And on top of it, I want with you to deal with all the physics of the everyday life and all of what we need to get to, all of that. And then we should also be passionate, great lovers, fantastic travelers. Exactly. You know, and very few of them.

Dancing every week.

So Eli Finkel has a best answer for you on that.

Okay.

He's a researcher on marriage. And basically what he says is that the good relationships of today are better than the relationships of history. But they're very few. Because the good, what you call that happiness, is the top of the Olympus. It's climbing the mountain. And at the top of the mountain, the view is fantastic, but the air is also thinner. And not everybody can climb the mountain. The people who get to the top, their top is probably better than the tops of the past. Now, what is the top? It used to be that marriage was for survival. Then it became a romantic enterprise. And it became what I call the service economy, from the production economy to the service economy. You want children, but no longer just eight, so you only want two, so sexuality becomes for pleasure and connection, so it becomes a service economy. It's no longer a production. And then from there you go into identity, which is what? I want to become the best version of myself, and you're gonna help me do so. That's the identity story of marriage. And that goes up the Maslow ladder. Now, if I ask the question differently, I actually wanted to write that very article. About 10-15 years ago, I set out to write a piece, what are creative couples? And do you know, because creative was the word I was interested in, not so much happy, passionate, but creative, meaning not stable, not solid, But what is this thing, creativity, the spark? And I went and I asked almost 100 people, do you know couples that inspire you? Do you know couples that you think have that spark still? And the frightening thing was that the majority of people could sometimes come up with one, maybe two, and that was it.

Wow.

You know, they knew people who were very good at renovations and people who were great parents together and people who were great business partners together, but that hole that you talk about. There were very few. And I thought that is so sad because here we are, we want something. I mean, if I say good business partners or business leaders, you would give me 10 people who you think inspire you to run a company or authors or musicians. We all have a long list. Who can say what's your favorite musician? I mean, most of us have more than one. When it comes to intimate relationships, people have very few models. Now, maybe it is because what they want is so high that there is very few models actually. And that's probably the challenge of intimate relationships today.

So.

How do we create that in an intimate partner? Or is it setting a lower expectation for what we want? So that we don't...

It's both. I think sometimes if you lower your expectations, you're much better off, no doubt. Calibrate... So, back to Eli Finkel's research, calibrating expectations is probably one of the most, the three main things for what he calls successful relationships. And calibrating doesn't mean you lower your expectations necessarily, but you also diversify them. You don't ask one person... To give you what the whole village should actually give you.

Okay, that was the first thing. What's the second?

You said there's three things.

So one is the calibration of the expectation, two is the diversification, and three, which is the one that very much speaks to me, is doing new things. That with your partner. That if you do the things that you enjoy, that's really nice, that's comfortable, that's cozy, that solidifies the friendship. But if you want to create intensity. It demands risk taking, doing new things outside of your comfort zone, a little bit more on the edge.

How often should we be doing new things with our intimate partner?

I think as often, I mean, look, the answer to this is very simple. Often enough, but not too often that you become chaotic and you dysregulate. Right now you're asking me a systemic question. This is true for an individual, a relationship or a company. Don't change or grow, you fossilize and you die. If you change too much, too fast.

There's no stability.

There's no stability, you go chaotic and you dysregulate. So how often it depends on where you are at in your life. Are you the two of you? Do you have kids? Do you have little ones? Do you have aging parents? Are you taking care of somebody? What else is going on here? We'll tell you if this is a period where you need more stability, or if this is a period where it's time to go and be curious and explore and discover and go into the world and launch.

Right.

If you're a young 30-something female, I get this all the time from a lot of women who reach out to me who are ending relationships that were really stressful for them, or they've been single for years and they're trying to figure out how do they find the right person or how do they create the right relationship for them? That's going to be a a long-term partner. If you're a female in your young 30s, what should they be thinking about? Like, should they be focusing first on themselves, growing themselves, or what are the things they should be looking for in the right partner?

I just wrote my current blog, which is a little bit of a critique of this taking care of yourself first.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So because you, you learn to love yourself in the context of your relationships. others. You know, this idea that you go first to work on yourself here and then you prepare this little nice little package and you bring it to relationships, that is completely off actually. It's interactive. You do it, you need a good amount of self-awareness, but you also need to be in relationships because it's people who help you become more aware. Practicing it. Practicing it, but other people let you see who you are. It's by being with others that you get to know who you are, not just by sitting there alone and say, who am I? I am I. But this is a relational perspective on life and I will stand by that. Read the newsletter. I really poured myself into that one because I'm tired a little bit of this. No, what I will say to you, I'm tired of the go fix yourself first and then go be in a relationship. Relationships help you to become who you are. That's what happens between children and their caregivers. The next thing is Instead of constantly thinking who's the right person I'm gonna find, why don't you ask yourself who do you wanna be? Who should the other one be? No, maybe it's on occasion, ask who will I be as a partner? Who have I been till now in my relationships? How have I shown up? What is it that I do? Not just finding the right person. Now, what does it mean to find the right person? And there I will say, The simplest way of looking at it is this: There are many people you will love and they are not necessarily the same people that you will make a life with. Are you looking for a love story or are you looking for a life story?

That's good.

You understand?

Yeah.

There are many people who have had love stories. This is a whole different story. I never thought for a minute I would live with these people. Take something else to have a partner in life with whom you're gonna go through the pains, the sufferings, the challenges, the, you know, all of that.

Can you have a life partner and still have a love story?

Of course, of course. You want the life partner to be a love story too, but the love stories per se are not life stories. It's different ingredients, it's different values. There are some things that you don't need in order to have a beautiful love story with someone. It lives in its encapsulated version on its own. You're not thinking, can I do this with you? Can I get old with you? Can I take you to my parents can, you know, do we share similar, it's about values life, not just about feelings. So when you're looking for the right person, it's not just what attracts you.

What do you think would be the three questions based on your personal experience in the coaching habit, but also how to work with anyone that every person should ask their partner before getting married? to try to set themselves up for a conscious, loving relationship, knowing that there's going to be, you know, ups and downs in life, but set yourself up for the best possible relationship.

Well, I'm going to take one of the questions from the book, which is the fifth question, fifth and final question, which is how will we fix it when things go wrong? The repair question.

That's great.

And, you know, I just acknowledge all the work of the great people like Ester Perel and Terry Real and John Gottman and Dan Siegel, these kind of giants in the world of intimate relationships who really studied this for years. And as I was writing this book and kind of re-immersing myself in all of their material again, two things became really clear. The relationships that last are the ones that get repaired, and most of us are not very good at repairing relationships. You know, most of us, we break far easier than we think. You know, we go like, oh, I feel a bit broken, a bit betrayed, a bit let down. And so many of us either do fight or flight or what's the other one? Freeze. You know, Terry Real- Freeze.

Yeah.

Terry Real said it was freeze and flee are two options. But the third one that he suggests, which I really like, is fits.

Fight, flight, or sex.

Interesting. Which is kind of moving into rescuer mode.

Right.

Like if you know the drama triangle, which is, comes from a psychologist called Stephen Kaplan. He's like, when relationships get dysfunctional, three roles play out. There's the victim, there's the persecutor, and there's the rescuer. And they're all equally dysfunctional. Rescuer sounds better than victim and persecutor. Just as screwed up as the other two. It is, yeah. And they're all, reactive ways of behaving and they keep the relationship stuck in dysfunction. And in fight and flight and fight, you actually have the brain description of those three roles. So I reckon- Interesting, 'cause when you're in the first two years of marriage, really, in all the years leading up to it, it's like, this is amazing. She's amazing. I'm amazing. We're amazing. This is- any kind of hiccups, they're like, minor stuff that we get over that because everything else is going on for us, it's fantastic. But after two years, it's like, okay, the veil drops a little bit, you kind of get clearer on other things, and it will go off the rails somewhere. It might be an explosion, it might be a dent or a crack or a bend or something, but something will happen. So I would say, I wish I'd asked this question because I didn't. How will we fix it when things go wrong? How will we fight? How will we fight in a way that will not break us, but will kind of be a source of learning and growth and clearing and kind of resetting?

Yeah, I think my friend Jay Shetty talked about this in his recent book, where it was about the success of a relationship is in how well you fight.

Right.

And how successful you can fight together.

I think so.

Yeah.

And not hurt each other too far beyond repair, which is the repair question.

Yeah.

How will you fix it when things go wrong? And I think it's, you know, death by a thousand paper cuts. Like, the way you hurt someone little by little, it's just like, I just don't care anymore.

Yeah.

You don't learn to repair it. I think that's key in intimate relationships, family relationships, friendships, career, is like repairing these things. When you maybe feel like there was something that wasn't good. But I think the challenge is asking this prayer question, how will you fix it when things go wrong? It might be easy to say, oh, when things go wrong, I'm gonna be fine. I'm gonna apologize. I'm gonna do all these things. But then when that time comes two years later, you're like, screw you.

Exactly.

You're horrible and I'm not talking to you for a week.

But here's the thing.

You may not remember what you said.

You probably won't. But that's not the magic of that question. The magic of that question is it says things will go wrong. It's an acknowledgement that the honeymoon moment is going to pass and that things will get hard and you get a chance to revisit it. So I think getting people's best guesses about how they're going to fix it when they go wrong, that's helpful. and if they can pull some of that off, then everybody benefits. But it does, what I think is the real hidden power of that question is it says it will go wrong and we're acknowledging that now. And when we say, how will we fix it when things go wrong? We're acknowledging a shared commitment to wanting to fix it. And when it does go wrong, it's something that you can say is going wrong. Right, right. We can actually talk about it going wrong because it's been raised before.

Yeah.

And I think it's that permission and shared commitment that actually can be part of the real magic of that question.

Yeah, and maybe you can say like, it's not going wrong, we're just not in alignment or something is off or whatever might be happening. And I think this is one of the reasons why I really love hearing stories about world-class athletes, Navy SEALs, MMA fighters.

Right.

Because they talk about Preparing for challenging situations and how am I going to get out of the challenging situation? You know, usually as an athlete, it's more of a solo sport or a team sport, but, you know, the MMA fighter doesn't just train standing on his feet punching when he's healthy and in the best position. He trains upside down with his neck against the cage with one arm behind his back. Getting punched in the face over and over again. Yeah, solve this. Yeah.

Say, how do I get out of this?

Right, exactly. It doesn't say, I'll be fine, I'll never be in this situation. And it's like same thing with Navy SEALs. They train for, okay, here is the mission, and here's the best case scenarios. Like, this is the plan.

Yeah.

But what is the backup plan when everything goes wrong?

Right. Right.

When this person gets hurt, when this doesn't work out, then what do we do? And I think when we prepare and acknowledge, Something's gonna go wrong. We're not gonna go 100% according to plan in intimacy and career and relationships. What can I do and take ownership of to be responsible for my part and how can I get back into alignment? And I think that's a powerful thing with this question, the repair question. To your point, there's that quote, maybe.

From the SEALs, I know James Clear tinkered with it as well, which is like we don't rise to the occasion, we fall to the level of our training or the level of our systems, depending on the level of our habits. Level of our habits, yeah. 'cause there's variations on it, but it's like you prepare for the mess of it. But for me, just the permission, like I didn't have this conversation with my wife. I've been with my wife for 30 years. Met in, in- How did you fall in love? I know. She was stazed and confused. But we had both arrived in England to study, and we had both left pretty bad relationships behind. She was going through a divorce. I'd made a mess of the previous relationship I had in part because she was in Australia and I was going to Oxford and it was all getting complicated. And we ended up sitting next to each other on a bus from Oxford to Stratford-upon-Avon to go and see some Shakespeare play. And it's a long and windy road and we'd been dating like maybe two or three dates. It was really, really early on. And we just somehow fell into this conversation about what are we up for? Like, I was 25, she was 36. So we were kind of old enough to go, we want to figure this out. We're like, it's not, we're not kids anymore. We've got a bit of experience. Let's actually try and do this. So we actually had this conversation. It was like amazing and excruciating at the same time, not least because we're in the back of a bus and we're both feeling car sick and maybe other things as well. But we're like, you know, this is what I've learned from my past relationships. Like, I was saying, look, here's what I've learned from the relationships that I've screwed up. I have a way of disappearing into my own head and taking that other person for granted. And she's like, great, because I will kill you if that happens. And I'm like, that's really helpful to understand. She's like, that just won't happen on my watch. And that is true. It's very hard to pull that off with Marcella. But we before we had any of this structure, before I'd figured any of this out, I just kind of got lucky or maybe desperate because I really fancied her. I'm like, I don't want to screw this one up. I screwed up the last few. I want this to be great. We actually had this conversation kind of tapping into the good date and the bad date questions that you're talking about, which is like, what can we learn from the past? Because both for the good and the bad dates, those patterns will repeat. They'll keep showing up again in the future. So why don't you be explicit about it with each other so that you can navigate around it, so you can know where the hotspots are gonna be, so you can give yourself the best preparation to say, this is how we can recover from this. This is how we'll repair this. We don't really have blow up fights. We have kind of separating moments where I'm like, I get into my own head, I take it for granted, we do that. And I'm like, how do we fix that when that's happening? And that would have been a healthier conversation. We figured this out. But that would have been a healthier conversation earlier if we could have got to that.

Sure. If you're in an intimate relationship. Yeah. Not a working relationship, but an intimate relationship. I think that's, you know, you have one of these questions, which is the good date question. What can you learn from successful past relationships versus what can you learn from frustrating past relationships? I think that's kind of interesting to ask in intimacy. Exactly. As well. Like what was the part of your previous relationship that really was great. And maybe you don't need to go into these details.

I'm like, exactly.

But what was too much information? Maybe that you were able to communicate effectively or you guys had calm, you know, resolution when there was conflict or what is the things that you enjoyed that worked really well? And what were things that didn't work well? And I think you get a better frame of mind. I agree. Standing around. Okay, how do we create our own agreement? What are our own boundaries or agreements? I'm just trying to think about all the things that I did with Martha, my, my girlfriend, which is essentially the opposite of everything I've ever done before. The thing. And listen, I'm, we're two years in, so I'm not 30-year marriage. So I'm, you know, sharing that information because people might say, well, wait till five years, wait till 10 years, all these things. But the thing that really made me say, oh, this is, this is my partner.

Right?

And I can really feel safe, emotionally, spiritually, physically safe with this person. It's early on I said, listen, I've made a lot of mistakes in my past relationships. And none of my past relationships have worked. But in each one of them, I wanted to do therapy when they weren't working. And the partners that I chose never wanted to do therapy with me. They were resistant. It took a year and a half, two years of like it not working and me saying, Hey, can we do this and find support?

Yeah.

And they never wanted to do it. Um, and I said, listen, this isn't really an ultimatum, but I want to feel emotionally safe. Would you be open to going to therapy in the beginning of the relationship? Not when things have problems in the future, but can we go together now?

Yeah.

She was like, 100%. That'd be amazing. I'm down for whatever. She was like, I've always wanted to do that too. I felt like, okay, just her acknowledging that. And then us doing it has been a beautiful foundational process of a safe space to talk about maybe touchy or uncomfortable conversations to create boundaries, agreements, and commitments. which has not, you know, removed all friction or conflict, but has removed a lot of it and given us a lot more grace and flexibility and freedom to have courage to communicate when there's something that, ah, that didn't feel right. Let's talk about it.

Yeah.

And that was a beautiful thing, just asking that question. So I don't know what that question is. It's not the therapy question, but it's more like, Yeah. Hey, are you open to having outside support and having these conversations?

Yeah, it's really powerful.

And so for me, that was a beautiful conversation.

Well, you know, the question it relates to in the book is the bad day question.

The bad day question.

Because what can we learn from frustrating past relationships? And it's like, and this is in my words, not yours, Louis, but it's like when the relationship was hard, I didn't feel like I had the support I needed and I didn't feel the other person was as committed to repair or fixing it than I was. And that's what I really want in this. And, you know, there's a definition of like an adult to adult relationship. And adult to adult relationship is being able to ask for what you want, knowing that the answer might be no. You know, you don't always get what you want. But being able to ask for what you want is a really rare thing. It's a really powerful thing. And, you know, it just feels like from your story, it's like what I've learned is I've figured out what I want and I've got the courage to ask for what I want. And that made all the difference.

And it occurs to walk away, you know, the steady question, what are your practices and preferences? You know, I was very clear with her in the beginning of us dating, Really in the first couple days of meeting each other, I said, this is who I am.

Right.

This is my vision. This is where I'm heading.

Yeah.

This is what I will be doing and this is what I will not be doing.

Yeah.

And I will not be living this type of relationship or this type of life.

Yeah.

If you want to put me into some stereotypical box of certain relationships, that's not me.

Yeah.

That doesn't mean I'm going to be, you know, out of alignment with a monogamous relationship, but I'm a driven human being.

Yeah.

I'm running this business. I've got a vision that is going to take a certain amount of energy and effort. And she asked me a question early on, which essentially is, what are your preferences? What are your preferences questions? She said, what are your priorities? And I never had the courage before to be honest with my priorities. Now this may evolve over time and anything else, but I said, listen, no woman wants to hear what I'm going to tell you. Are you sure you want the answer?

Right.

You sure you want the truth?

Right.

It was kind of like my Tom Cruise moment. You can't handle the truth, right? I. I said, are you sure you want me to tell you the truth? She said, yes.

Yeah.

And I said, I don't think you're gonna want to hang out with me after you hear this.

Right.

Because no one in the past was able to handle it, was able to receive it. Right. And so she said, yes. And I said, okay, well. It's been good knowing you, but here are my prayers.

Good for you.

I said my prayers. A brave moment. Right. And I was like, but I wasn't willing to risk, I wasn't willing to abandon myself anymore, which is what I had always done. I'd abandoned to make someone else feel okay or safe or secure or whatever, as opposed to just, this is who I am. It made them means we're not the right fit for each other. We're not the right match for this type of relationship.

But let me show you my cards.

And let's see how this goes. But I always lacked that emotional courage, because I was afraid of hurting people.

Right.

And I said my priorities, my number one priority is my health. And no woman wants to hear that they're not the number one priority in a relationship.

Right.

With an intimate partner, really.

Yeah.

They don't like that. Most of them at least. And I said my number two priority is not you or the relationship either. And no one wants to hear they're not number one or number two. Please number two.

Yeah, exactly. At least give me a silver medal.

Exactly.

Exactly. No, I said, My intimate relationship will be my third priority. Now let me give context because I need my health to be a top priority so that I have more energy, focus, and value to you and to my second priority.

That's that kind of foundational thing that allows everything else to be built.

Exactly.

Relationships and business.

And to my second priority, which is my vision, my mission to serve people.

Yeah.

And if you hold me back from my health, Yeah. And I feel unhealthy, I'm not gonna.

Be good for you.

If you hold me back from my purpose and you try to deter me from that, I'm gonna be resentful, frustrated, like antsy. But if you are in alignment that these are my top two priorities, you're gonna feel like the number one priority.

Well, that's nice.

And so it's creating that context and conversation, just setting the stage and just being like, can never pull me away from these things unless there's some emergency or whatever, but it can't be this, I don't want you going to the gym. I don't want you working on your mission. I don't want you. I need you here with me more. And I was like, I'm not that guy.

Yeah.

Maybe in 10 years, that'll change, and I will be.

Well, what?

But right now, I'm not.

What was the work you did that allowed you now to ask for what you want and be as clear as that?

I needed to heal a lot of my inner child worlds.

Right.

Really? And and have a different relationship with my younger psychological self that never got to hear or be validated the way that I needed to validate it and never got to heal or mend painful memories. So it wasn't until I was able to mend the memories of the past and create new meaning around them.

Yeah.

And create a sense of connection in an intimate relationship with my painful wounds.

Yeah.

Of repair. That's when I was like, okay, I am safe, I am free, I am peaceful as I am. I don't need to please you to feel loved and accepted and free. And I was able to say, okay, I'm happy alone if this relationship doesn't work.

Yeah.

But I'm never going to abandon myself again. So that was a big part of it, having that healing journey and doing the therapeutic work on that.

You.

Can go, Michael, stop interviewing me and don't ask me about my, my partner. But I'm curious to know if you were able to ask her what she wanted, like what her priorities were.

Yeah, I asked her.

Yeah.

Really, really early on.

Yeah.

And she, you know, one of these, this conversation where she asked me about my priorities, she was like, I was like, what do you want? What's your vision? And what's your vision for intimate relationship, you know, a committed relationship long term. I've said this on the show before a few times, but I was like, you know, she said, well, I want to be married and have kids. And that's something that I want and I value.

I said, okay, cool.

I value that as well. But I can't tell you that in the first couple weeks that that's going to happen with us. So I need to feel safe. I need to feel time, a foundation. So if you're cool with that, knowing.

That maybe- It's a maybe, yeah.

But everything has to work out for me to feel like a yes. I can't commit right now.

What do you see is the difference maker for healthy, long-lasting love for decades versus those that stay married a long time but aren't happy and those that eventually get divorced?

I think the statistics are something like 50%, right? So 50% of all marriages end in divorce. The illusion is that the 50% that are left are happy. No, they're not.

No, they're not. Maybe 15% or something.

Maybe, right? And we don't really know. I mean, if you went and polled everybody, you might be even shocked. Part of the deal is the bar's very low. So the bar's something like, we get along. Like, that's it. I've got t-shirts I get along with. What's it really all about? If that's the struggle, if the struggle is to get along, like I said, that's a very low bar.

You get along with lots of people.

Right. Really what I've found to be the case. And I'm not looking at particular people for example, but I'm going to look at what keeps a human being involved in anything. So, why does somebody like, so I love to play guitar. Why? Because I engage with that thing. I'm curious about that thing. I want to get better at that thing. I like how it feels when I accomplish something in that thing. If you take that in any aspect of your life, the same thing holds true. My relationship with my wife is a function of who I am in it. And I need to keep bringing that to it. There's no time when this is a done deal. I have to keep showing up here, not for longevity, which is I think where a lot of people get messed up. People look at the relationship like, well, I can't do this for the rest of your life, the rest of my life. And I'm like, well, you don't have to use that.

Let's do it today.

Right, it's like being on a diet. I don't need to go on a diet for three months, I just need to be on it right now. And it is moment to moment to moment to moment to moment, because that's really all you have. But so what I do notice is that the areas of life where you are flourishing most, there is some profound relationship you have between what you say and what you do. There's a profundity at play. So if you look at any area you're successful, you are literally doing what you said you would do, even when what? I don't feel like it.

Yeah.

Marriage is the same. Marriage is the same. Marriage, and I talk about this in the book, I say, especially in the Western world, but you look at, and I'm using marriage as kind of a model, but it applies to all relationships. Yes. But in a marriage, there's a ceremony, there's this coming together, or you make.

An agreement, a commitment.

Very good.

And you use words.

And it's a vow.

Yes.

Right.

And I talk about the bankruptcy of vow in a marriage because nobody vows anything anymore.

Or they vow it, but they don't live up to the.

Well, because they don't have a relationship to a vow. So we're not going around in life going, I vow to meet you at three o'clock.

Right, right.

Nobody's saying that. But 200 years ago, when you vowed something, the American Declaration of Independence is just people vowing. They brought something in the existence on the strength of what they said.

Yes.

There was no fighting. Well, there was some fighting, but they created a nation from words.

Right. Right.

I mean, that's what that is. That's like a, well, it was a declaration, right? We're declaring we're independent. Well, what do you mean you're independent? Well, we just declared it. So we are.

Yeah, yeah.

And we vow our lives in our sacred honor. And most of those people gave, literally gave the life for that. They literally gave the life to that promise. I bet they were scared.

Absolutely.

I bet they were intimidated, but their word was greater than that experience of themselves. That's the same in any area of your life. You have to start realizing that what you say is a big deal and what you say to yourself is a big deal. A lifetime of constantly bending, shaping, and breaking your word to yourself will leave you with a diminished relationship to you. You'll never do great things because somewhere in there, you think you're full of it because you've broken your word to yourself so many times.

You have integrity with yourself.

Very good. There's no power to those words.

What happens when we are out of integrity so consistently with ourself or even one time with our word? What happens to us?

Well, I mean, you got to start relating to what you say like it's important. Just like it's important. Start there. I said I was gonna and this is important, not because the thing's important, but what I said to myself and my relationship to that thing is what's important. So any area in life, like I said earlier, where you're powerful or successful, you'll see you have a very strong relationship to what you said, very strong one.

Sometimes- you-'re committed to that thing.

There's just no question for you. It's on like Donkey Kong, you know, you're just doing it.

Why is it easier in some areas of life than it is in others to be consistent with what you say and what you want to do?

Right. And that's eventually, it's great that you kind of put it that way because that's the path you'll follow. But the real strength of you is when you can say something, like for instance, when I was in my mid-forties, you know, I said, I'm going to produce authentic wealth.

What's the difference between authentic and inauthentic?

Yeah, I'm doing it for that, not for anything but me. which was wild for me because everything up to that point about money was all about fixing something about me or my wife. And I was just doing it to see if I could do it, which I'd never done before, and I'd never fully given it that attention, like, just for that. And so I put a number on it, which was a crazy number for that time in my life. Like, crazy number, like, for your 40s, it was.

How much you want to.

I was 45.

Yeah.

And I said, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna use my 50s for that, and I'm gonna produce it. I produced it by the time I was 52. And I only really started when I was 48. So I did it really fast.

The amount of money that you- The.

Amount of money that I said, but it was wild because I had no attachment to it.

What do you mean?

There was no emotion in it for me. There was no desperation, no burning It was just like, I said I was going to do it, I'm doing it. So I ended up with this really kind of flat relationship between my words and my actions. Like it was flat. Like there were days when I felt like doing it and there were days when I didn't feel like doing it. But the interesting thing for me was when I declared that, when I said I was going to do it, like the Declaration of Independence, I had no idea how I was going to do something like that. I don't know how you even, I'm not a money guy, you know, I'm not. But now it's game on because I created the top of the mountain in my speaking. So I spoke the top of the mountain in the existence.

And then you figured out how along the way.

But that's no the game now. The game, people say, well, you know, how do you even do such a thing? Well, that's the first question. How do you even do such a thing?

You know?

And, and you might have to engage with that question for two years or three years or four years. But you've got to be actively resolving some of that stuff for yourself. Well, it's the same in love. Like I'm committed to the most loving, passionate, and adventurous relationship that's possible. That's the top of the mountain. The top of the mountain speaks to me every day. I can tell whether I'm walking that path or not. That influences this. It's not even necessarily about that. It's more about what that does with us. Well, how does that shape me today? Am I lining up with what I said or not? And if I'm not, I might have a lot of reasons, excuses, and justifications for that, but at the same time, am I going to treat that like it matters to me? Or am I going to just be like, well, you know, so far so good, or it's been a tough week, or, you know, there's a lot in my mind. Or, you know, are you being a jerk? Why am I loving with you? Because I said I would. And that's what matters to me. That's what matters that I said I would matters to me.

Someone once told me that the key to his success in relationships was 80% of it was who you choose. 80% of the relationship success is, you know, how you match well with the person you're choosing. you only spent, I guess, a year with the person that you chose.

Yeah.

Did you know that when you were choosing this person? Did you were like, okay, I feel like we're going to be in a great alignment with our values and our vision and our lifestyle. Or was it more of just a feeling that you felt connected to this.

Person and you decided, I did what everybody does, right? What everybody does is they get in a relationship because they feel as if this person resolves something about themselves. That's what I did. And so there was something about this woman that I thought, wow, like being with her, everything seems right. Like, I feel good about me.

I didn't feel good until I met her.

Right, Ali, like there's something getting fixed here. So, no, I'm not that pragmatic. And I think most people aren't that pragmatic. And I think there's an illusion out there that somehow you'll find the one. And really, I feel as if the job is to explore what's possible between you and this person, whoever that person is and their potential and your potential. And so it was less about having, like, finding something that matched up with me, which I. I don't know if that would work for me. Might work for some people, but I don't know if that would work for me. What was really captivating for me at the time was being with her had me feel a lot better about me, and I think I really fundamentally believe that that's what most people go into relationships for.

Is that the right thing to look.

At or is it- no, that's an.

Absolute- It's a recipe to- because then.

You'Re always relying on that person to make you happier. Well, because whatever that thing is that they satisfy for you with something you.

Haven'T sorted out for yourself yet. Right, yeah. So eventually you're gonna have to do that.

Otherwise you're always needing that from someone else. Right, so you go in there and they're the solution. and you end it with the notion that they were the problem.

Ah, wow.

And what's consistent in all of that is you.

Right.

I mean, I don't know if anybody's ever noticed this, but in every crappy relationship you've ever had, it's got one common denominator.

That's you.

Right.

It's always you.

That's a big awakening I had after my previous relationship ended. I was like, man, it's been 10, 15 years of relationships that started and then that crumbled in some way or that fell apart. And the core of all those things was me.

Right.

Was my choices, was my getting into attracting those relationships, was the commitment to those relationships, was the unwinding of those relationships. And so why was I choosing these types of relationships? What was unresolved within me that I get to take a look at now? Or I'm going to keep repeating this pattern until I address the thing inside of me.

Right.

So, what's great about your kind of pathway, if you like, first of all, you've got to be able to look at that distinct from blind, right? I know a lot of people just heard what you said and thought, well, what if it is them? I know a lot of people sitting there right now going, DeAngelo, I did say that to myself. And I say, well, If you take away like who's to blame, and so sometimes people say stuff like, why do I keep attracting these kinds of people? And I say, well, what if it's not attraction? What if you are literally looking for them? What if it's you're seeking something about that person that initially solves what you're dealing with, right? But will allow it to keep perpetuating. like it keeps showing up and showing up. I call that an identity relationship. There's something about you, and it's the same for the other person, that when you get past all the stuff, whatever's incomplete will keep getting activated there or keep showing up. So when you start, you see it like, oh, these are just two human beings. Doing what human beings do, then it's not personal. which is radical when you get it like that. Like it's not personal. It's not personally them personally me. Like these are just two beings trying to work this out and what work water will essentially work themselves up.

Yeah.

So that's why I insist with people, the greatest work you'll ever do, you'll ever do, is to get complete with your first 20 years of life.

So true.

First 20 years. Because everything after that is a reflection of it. I spent 20, I spent 26 years in Glasgow, 26 years. I've been longer here. And I still identify with that like it's me, but I've been longer here. And it's some of the colloquialisms and the traditions and like I identify with that because it became so imprinted. In my second book I talked about you're the little magic sponge and you're not soaking up all of life, you're soaking up the bits. And then when you hit about 20, that little sponge just hardens and whatever's in there, that's it. It's in there. And that's what you use. That logic. And until you awaken to that and realize that all of that that's there is really only a potential you. There's so much more. If you think about it like quantum physics, right? Like multiple universes, endless universes all happening at the same time, multiple potentials. Well, that's every second of your life. Every second of your life, there's a myriad of potential yous that could be talking right now. and what you typically do is the you that you did the second before and the second before and so it perpetuates until you get aware, until you start to be like, oh, I'm not stuck with this. I could literally be somebody else when. Right now, yeah. Right now I could be somebody else. Right now I could say something else.

How many things did you realize in your first 20 years of life that you needed to deal with or face? or integrate a healing journey?

I think all of it. I really think all of it. I think I had to come to terms with, like when I was really young, I felt as if I was too small. Built in underneath with that was, I'm not strong. Right, I'm weak, I'm not enough.

I'm being very good. Very good.

I'm, yeah.

So there's all of that. And then I'm not lovable.

And then I'm- Then there's a whole, and then for me it was, I'm not smart enough. That was my- I don't know. I'll never be smart enough. See, that's the thing with these things. At that part of your life, it's not that I'm not lovable or I'm not smart enough or I'm not strong enough. It's that I'll never be that way. I'll never be that way.

It seems daunting, like you'll- Right, right.

So all of your persona and your personality is designed for you to overcome that. But that can't go away because if that goes away, if you've based your whole personality on that.

Yeah, your identity is based on that.

Now you're just facing a crisis because now it's like everything that I base myself on, what if it's not true? Then who am I? And people go nuts with that stuff. And I say, well, take a breath and think of it like who you.

Are.

Is a moment of time. And in any moment of time, there's the possibility of you expressing something new. that you've never expressed before.

Right.

Something that's not based on anything other than the moment you're in. It's not based on a previous logic. It's not based. It's like literally an opportunity for you to show up as something new of your own creation. Everybody has the possibility. Everybody has the opportunity for that. And it is a way of living life. It's. And it's not like, oh, this guy's found a secret to everything.

No.

I'm a human being too. I'm wired a certain way. It's there now. The question is how aware of that am I? And how responsible can I be for that playing out in my life? Am I gonna own that or is that gonna own me? And that's the space we all wanna be in. It's a space called choice. And it's a real choice.

What do you wish you would have done differently in the first few years of your relationship? with your wife, would you have had different conversations? Would you have created different agreements to cause less kind of friction or pain or stress in the first decade, I guess, until you started to unwind your identity and tap more into this loving being as opposed to this hard-working being that cared for her?

Well, in the first few years of my life, it was very passionate. So I was. I was crazy about this girl. You know, like, it was very passionate. and this was a time in my life when I was a musician. So, you know, I'm playing in a band and there's this beautiful woman who loves me. You know, like life is- Amazing. Life is good, man. You know, we've got three sons now, but the first eight years of our marriage was just my wife and I just having a brilliant time together. This is great. And we were like the antithesis to like married couples, you know, we were like happening, you know, this is all great. But now when I look back on that, There really was no look down the road. There was no, like, what's this about? You know, it was all very much riding that particular roller coaster.

Limiting the moment of fun and adventure.

The problem was nothing was getting created. There was no, this is what we are up to.

There's no vision coming to life.

Right. And, but that was in a very personal level. Like, there was no, there was no thought in my head, like, so where does this go? You know, I was just saying, well, let's see, you know, as there shouldn't be, by the way, when you're in your 20s and 30s, there's no, like, what would it be like when I'm in my 40s or my 50s or my 60s with this woman? You know, it was all just about making my way through where I was. The brick wall that I had, like I said a little earlier, was mid to late 30s. And I'm like, I don't work anymore like this.

How did you know you weren't working? Was it a feeling? Was it a stress? Was it a lack of mission or purpose? Was it a lack of love for yourself? How did you know, like, I'm not working?

Yeah, there was this kind of very fundamental experience of dissatisfaction, like no matter what I did, it doesn't matter what I do.

In the results and the success, it wasn't, you weren't satisfied.

It's funny because, and there was kind of earlier parts in my life, and I assert this is true for all human beings, you think the next thing is gonna solve it. and then you get there and the problem's still there. And you might not fully have fleshed out that problem yet, but you know it's there. Like, if you look back in the accomplishments of your life, like, when you had them going for it, you're like, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it.

I'm gonna do it.

I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. And then you hit it and you're like.

Now what? Yeah, right.

Now what?

Right.

Now what?

And then it's the next thing.

You do six of them.

Like, huh? I'm not feeling what I was supposed to be feeling.

Right.

How come I'm not feeling it? Because it never resolves whatever the thing was. And so if there was anything I wish I'd really identified, and. And I don't mean this from a space of regret. I really don't. But it would have been kind of neat to identify the hole that I was trying to fill. You know, it would have been neat to see what I'm doing. I'm just happy that I did identify it. Some people go through their whole life and never. there's no introspection.

Right.

There's no, like. And introspection is a funny thing, because you can do too much of that, too.

Right.

You can go too deep. You can have the belly button.

You need to just kind of relax sometimes and live life.

Right?

You gotta be like. Well, it's kind of like the way I've always related to it since I started to work on myself is, okay, that's a good little insight. How am I going to use this?

Yeah.

So I'm always using it for some thing in my life, for some good in. in my life are the people that are at the impact. Because you can get, you can start to kind of get off on that, like, oh, that's a great discovery. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But it doesn't actually show up in the reality of your life. You got to make it show up. Yeah, I guess that's the only real thing.

Like, what was the hole I was trying to fill? Because if you could have done that earlier, then what would you have done.

In those first 10 years? There's that kind of force for life that you have when you're 20. You know, there's a. which gets you by. I guess you overcome a lot of hills, a lot of mountains. There's just that kind of forward trajectory that maybe I'd have used it for something else, maybe it would have been... But then when I look back, I think the context that I choose for that time now when I look back on it is, I really had to go through the darkness to realize that that wasn't the light.

Right.

Because when you're in that, you think this is like, I'm going somewhere. And then there's a point where you're like, I'm going nowhere. I'm going nowhere. And so the context that I choose for that now is it was a brilliant learning process for me, real life learning process.

I just turned 39 and I told you before that I always wanted to, in relationships, start a therapeutic coaching, counseling.

Yeah.

Experience in the beginning of a relationship as opposed to two, three, five years in when there's some challenges and let's try to solve something and resolve it and get back to a place of love and peace. And so I'm creating that with my current relationship.

Yeah.

It's a beautiful thing because there's not.

Like an issue or a problem.

Right.

And I was asking our coach, I was like, how many people come to you when there's no issues? She was like, it almost never happens. Right. It's always there's like a big breakdown or something. And so it's kind of build this foundation from the beginning. It's trying to learn from my mistakes of the past 15 years and do it in a different way.

Yeah.

Approach in a different way. I'm curious, what would your advice be? I just turned 39. As I go into, you know, my 40th year and then this decade.

Yeah.

How do you wish you would have approached it differently? Or how did you do it that was successful for you that you would recommend to someone? going into their 40s or even in their 20s, going into the 30s, but a new decade, how would you approach it?

You've got to make it about something.

Like a mission.

It's got to be about something. If it's not about something, you're wasting your time. It's got to be about something, right? And I think that's a great way to split it up into decades like that. And you can start your decade at 33.

Right, right, right.

But if you make it about something, like this is the decade of, Right? Personal discovery. This is a decade of making a difference. That's a decade, like for me, was authentic wealth, right? For that decade.

In your 40s, right?

My 40s was all about making a difference. This is about my life being about somebody other than me.

In your 40s?

In my 40s. And I devoted myself to that. And I still do, right?

It's- what was the 50s?

So the 50s was supposed to be about this authentic wealth, which had- you did scooted through that in two years. You know what I mean?

And how did your relationship evolve as you started to bring more money to the.

Yeah.

Relationship and the family? Because a lot of the people struggle in marriages or relationships with money conversations. Did you see an improvement of the quality of relationship? Did you see challenges in talking about money? How did you guys address money when it's such a big factor for breakup, divorce, stress in relationships.

Somebody once gave me this little nugget and I believe it to be true. When somebody said, what's the difference between wealthy and not wealthy? And somebody said to me, it's just better hotels.

Right. Yeah.

Nicer flights.

And that's basically it for me. I never made it mean anything. My three boys, they're very grounded. You know, they're not in any way enamored by money or anything like that. Not like my 10 year old thinks if he could spend 10 bucks on his next game of FIFA, like, that's a big result. You know, it's like, yay. You know, I just bought that FIFA pack for 10 bucks.

Yeah.

It's a good day. And I don't shower them with stuff, you know? I don't. We don't do that. It just seems kind of ridiculous. As a family, we're very much about our experience of being alive and whatever money we might have or not have is always about that. Like it's always about enhancing that and embracing that and exploring that as a family.

What do you think is the overall key from everything you learned to having a fulfilling relationship then?

It's got to be grounded in what matters. I realized that Two things that mattered to me in life were love and adventure. I realized that that was now my job and my relationship to bring it, not to seek it and to bring it because it's who I am. When you take away the notion that you're seeking it, it's a whole lot easier to actually be in relationship.

-Because a lot of people say, I'm looking for love. If they're single, I'm looking for love. I'm looking for adventure. But if you be love, if you're being love and you're being adventurous, you will be it. You won't be defined it. You are it. And you'll attract other people who are it as well.

The interesting thing about my wife and I, which has been brilliant since I took on this kind of perspective, is she's not always looking for what I'm expressing, what I'm expressing. She's expressing her expression of what it is to be in relationship, which is sometimes really different. She's got a different expression of love than I do.

Mm-.

But I'm not sitting there like, oh, you know, feed me that. I'm more like, this is an opportunity. This is an opening in my life. This is an opening in time for me to get this up.

Yeah.

You know, and she's giving it her version, you know, and it really isn't 50-50 it's not like that because I don't, like I told her, you know, I don't, I don't need you to be anyone but yourself, you know, just be yourself.

What happened when you shifted that?

It was just like this massive release of pressure. You know, it was like, ah, we're okay. You know, we're okay. Like, you can just be you.

You don't need to control something. You don't need to fix something. You don't need to change something.

Nothing about this woman. Does that mean like it's all, like, if I look at my wiring in the way that I'm wired, no, I got hooked and I get triggered and I get, like, one of the things that we did, by the way, that I think is important is, we made it okay to argue. It's okay. Even if it's a stand-up argument fight and she called me some and I called her, it's okay.

Right?

It's. This doesn't. This isn't all adding up to the exit. It's not. It's like a moment in time. It's like something happened. Okay. Being forgiving is a massive part of my life and. And a massive part of my relationship. I don't. I'm not gonna string you up for something you did or said, like I'm not, you're a human being too. In other words, there's a lot of space that I'm continually making. I make a lot of space for my wife. I make a lot of space for my children. So whatever way they are, it's got a lot of room. I'm not like pressing on it and compressing it and you should be and control it. Now let me just back off and let that be, it'll dissipate. It's okay. And so there's a lot of that in a relationship.

But you probably have to be okay with who you are and comfortable with your own skin in order to create the space of whatever emotions or environment happens. You've got to be dealing with that healing journey continuously so that you're not reactive to it.

That's a critical part of it. You have to give yourself the room.

To be a human being.

Stop holding yourself to some ideal. You're not always going to be perfect.

Right.

There's got to be times in your life when you look at it, you're like, oh, could I even, you know, I was a real jerk there. Like, oh, my gosh. Like, I wish I could take that back. And I'll initially go there, and then I'll be like, hold on a minute. I'm a human being, too. And I think that's one of the things that's drawn a lot of people in my work. I'm not professing to have every answer, and I'm not floating around here like, you know, Gandhi or something, you know, I'm not like, this isn't, I'm not a perfect kind of human being on one hand.

Right.

Or maybe I am.

Yeah, exactly.

Maybe this is what it is, you know, to be a human being. It's all of it. It's all the things. It's, I really believe you're just a vessel for experiences.

Absolutely.

And some of them are great. and some of them are kind of crappy. And it's okay, you know, it's the more you try and fix it or shape it or move it, you're kind of nailing it down rather than letting it just pass through.

This is powerful, man. I've got a couple of final questions for you, but I really love this conversation in your book, Love Unf*cked. Getting your relationship together is out. People can buy it on Amazon or wherever books are sold. We'll have it all linked up as well in the description in the show notes, but Where are you on social media the most? Or how can we connect with you beyond the book? And I love the short but packed books, 'cause I can read them. So I appreciate this.

No, that's good. I love that you said that too, because I really feel as if the value in my books is in the thinking you're gonna have to do. It's not necessarily that you're gonna take something out of there linearly. But yeah, I'm everywhere, but Instagram's like a favorite. I'm like, you know, obviously I spend a lot of time on there. I love to give people stuff that they can think about and chew on. Yeah. But I'm also on Facebook. I'm on Twitter and obviously my website, garyjohnbishop.com.

There you go. And you got all the information for your books there and everything else you're up to at garyjohnbishop.com. yeah. Love this, man. I got a question for you. This is called the three truths question I asked everyone at the end.

Yeah.

So imagine hypothetical scenario. It's your last day on many years away. You live as long as you want to live. You are the vessel that experiences life to the fullest and you accomplish what you want to accomplish. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you on the last day. The books, the content, this interview, for whatever reason, you've got to go somewhere else. So it's not left in the world. But you get to leave behind three lessons with the world. Three things that you know to be true from your life experiences. and this is all we'd have to remember you by. What would you say are those three truths?

The only truth is the one you've agreed with. The second one would be you are an unlimited potential, whether you believe that or not. And be kind.

Yeah.

I want to acknowledge you, Gary, for a moment because you've had an amazing journey and you've dedicated this, I guess, second phase of your life to service.

Right.

To using your experiences, your thinking, your challenges, the pain, and creating work that inspires and serves and educates. And I really acknowledge you for showing up consistently with your perfect imperfections and just sharing what you know, sharing what you've learned, and putting it in ways that we can understand it that might be confusing at times. So I really acknowledge you for showing up big the way you have. And I think Shifting a identity that you were so stuck on from the way you grew up and being okay with letting it die and also holding on to some of it and transforming, I think, is so hard for so many people. I know it was hard for me. So I really acknowledge you for shifting that and being constantly in a reinvention phase of your life and in service to so many people.

Well, thank you for that. Acknowledgment. That was really brilliant. One of the things, I'm going to acknowledge you for a second if you don't mind. Sure. So I think you're a brilliant example, like a truly brilliant example of what it is to be vulnerable. Thanks, man. And it screams.

Thanks, man. In a really great way. Thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate it, man. I think, yeah, the last eight, nine years, I've really opened up and allowed myself to be vulnerable at any moment. Great. I get it. It's not easy. No, it's not easy. But I think the more I embody vulnerability, the more my heart is open to receiving people, to having intimate conversations, to being able to share things that are sad or scary or whatever might be coming up for me. So I appreciate it and I receive it, man. My final question for you, and again, I want to make sure people get the book. We'll have it all linked up. But my final question, Gary, is what's your definition of Greatness?

Oh, that's a brilliant question, right? So it's the triumph of the human spirit. It's the opportunity for somebody to go beyond whatever that might be for you. And sometimes it's a simple thing like going beyond some old hurt or pain, but sometimes it's going beyond a situation or a circumstance.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode.

In that review.

I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you of no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.