Why Your Relationship Keeps Repeating the Same Pattern | Gary John Bishop

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Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest, Gary John Bishop in the house. My man. Awesome to see you, brother. You've had a lot of success over the years with many books, but this book, Love Unfucked: Getting Your Relationship Shit Together, is a powerful one. And we were just talking about this beforehand. A lot of people feel stuck in their relationships.

Yeah.

And they get in the relationships and they'll stay in relationships for years. And then something happens where they're like, it's not working, right? It's not working. Maybe it's a few years, maybe it's 10 years, 20 years. They're thinking it's not working. They're trying to control the relationship. They're trying to change the person, right? Trying to fix someone. And why do you think that so many people are stuck in relationships in this mindset?

Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. First of all, thanks for having me.

Yeah, man.

But I think, I think there's a couple of things. One of them is most often by the time you're really struggling with it, you're, you're now at the thick end of the wedge. So it started somewhere though. It literally went off on a trail. And what happens with us in relationships is that trail's kind of okay at the beginning. You know, you're kind of going along, you're like, okay, I can manage this. It's not the way it was, but it's still good. There's still good things in it. We're still, you know, compatible or together, whatever. By the time you're really struggling with it, you've lost sight of where you took the turn. So, a lot of the times with people, you gotta begin with really addressing how you got where you are, but not in the kind of typical way you would explain that, like, you know, we don't get along anymore, or, you know, I got fired, or my business went down. No, there was some fundamental shift in how you related to that other person. Once that starts to go that way, you're down the swanny.

Right. Because in the beginning, you're not, you're not in that space. You're in love or you're connected or you're having fun or you're intimate or you're putting your best behavior on, right? For the first year or two. And then all of a sudden it starts to shift. Why is it? Why does that shift happen for so many people?

Well, at the beginning of a relationship, you're generating it.

You're generating the relationship.

Right. So you're bringing to the table, right? You're constantly bringing to the table. There is a point though, for many people, where you stop bringing to the table quite as much, you're spending more time looking at what's on the table, which invariably becomes, what are they bringing?

What are they bringing to me?

Right. So then that's when people start talking about, I'm not getting what I need, and I'm not getting what I want. Well, it's kind of like standing in a supermarket and waiting for the groceries to jump into your trolley, right? It doesn't quite work that way. You got to go make something happen. It's kinda like having the check engine light on in your car. When the car breaks down, it's too late. You know, you shoulda, you wanna go back and see where that thing started at.

What is that flashing light? For 6 months it's been flashing, yeah, why don't you take it in?

Right, and there's people who are putting black tape over the top of it like, ah, like I'm pretending.

There's nothing wrong, yeah.

And that is what people do in relationships. They pretend what's not working is somehow okay, they'll overcome, which all human beings are brilliant at overcoming. But not great at transforming, not great at dealing with what's actually in the way. They're great at overcoming it and overcoming it and overcoming it until it becomes too much.

Or just tolerating it, right?

Exactly. That's the big word, right?

Maybe you're not overcoming it and transforming. You're tolerating the brokenness or the stress of it or whatever it might be.

See, that's the problem with it, that whatever you are tolerating in your relationship, you'll make it okay. You'll make that thing okay. It's not great, but it's okay. And human beings have a tremendous capacity for making things that don't work somehow workable. But there again comes that point where you're looking around yourself and thinking, this ain't it. There's something off here.

It's where people stop investing and bringing something to the table. And then there's a level of, I guess, maybe there's some disrespectful words that are said every now and then that becomes okay. Or there was an apology, but then it's a continuum every few weeks, and then it's every day, and then you tolerate that. And then there's some physical abuse that was once, and then, okay, well, I'm just gonna let it slide this time, and then it becomes every month, or whatever it might be, or an explosion of emotions.

It could be, and it could be simple things like there's no real intimacy anymore, or you go to the mall together or a movie together and you don't hold your partner's hand, You know, all those little kind of breakdowns become the norm, right? Like there's just this kind of distance and that distance comes from observing. So the more you're observing the relationship, I invite people to take the case you're not in it. You're actually watching it. And you gotta get that really like in an experiential way. We spend a lot of time in our relationships watching what's going on and in an internal mechanism with ourself, about how that's doing, which includes keeping score, of course.

Mm, keeping score.

Right.

Is that something we should or shouldn't do?

No, I mean, the only people that are really truly fascinated by the score in the game are the spectators. The people who are on the field, they're just playing.

Yeah.

They're just, and I know they're aware of the score, but they're all about the next play, the next play, the next play, the next play, the next play. And that really is how it is in relationships. It's like, Are you actively in it? And the one little caveat that I would add to that is a lot of people are in it and doing what they're doing expecting something different. So they're looking, still looking over there like, if I do this and I do that, this will change.

Right. But it won't change.

That never works that way because it's not truly authentic. See, it's really a manipulation, which is People hate hearing that word, you know, like, "Ah, I'm not manipulating." But if you just sit with that for a moment and say, "Yeah, I am doing this so that you'll be different or this will be different." And that'll never be the case.

My girlfriend Martha, who's amazing, in the beginning of our relationship when we just started hanging out, we weren't like officially together or whatever, but we were dating and, you know, seeing other people, but getting to know each other. I said to her at one point, I said, "Listen, I'm always gonna, in the past, in my relationships, based on," the model of my parents and what I witnessed growing up.

Yeah.

I repeated the model where I tried to please every relationship. I tried to change to make someone happy when they were unhappy. And no matter how much I did or shifted or changed, they would still never make them happy.

Yeah.

Which made me feel miserable.

Right.

And upset and resentful and all these things.

Yeah.

And I said, listen, I've been doing a lot of healing work over this previous year on the inner child and relationships and all these different things. That if we get together, I'm letting you know I'm never going to do anything to please you. I'm never going to shift or change. I'm never going to change who I am. I freaking love it for you.

I love it.

I will change or shift because I want to improve, or because I'm aware that it's for, or for the betterment of myself, the world. But I'm not going to do anything to please you, right? We're going to create agreements and connection and all these things, right? I don't have to give you my best, but if you're upset of who I authentically am then you shouldn't be with me. Right. We're not a good match.

You need to get a t-shirt done and it says, it's not my job to make you happy.

That's true.

Now, and I want people to get that in its purest sense, right? Not like you don't care for people, you don't love this person, you're not committed to this person. It doesn't mean any of that. It means, and I've really found a lot of freedom for this in my relationship to my own wife, like where she's at is okay. It's okay. Like if my wife's upset, it's okay. It's not the end of the world, you know what I mean? And even if she's upset at me, it's okay. She's allowed, you know, she's got the freedom to be herself. And that includes for me, I don't make it my wife's job to keep me on an even keel. That's not her job.

That's your job.

Exactly right. So because that's really the only job I can effectively do. That's really the only job you can effectively work and make it work for yourself. Well, the real balance comes in for me, and I'm going to look from my own perspective, from my wife. But where the real balance comes in for me is like there's so much freedom in my relationship with my wife because the pressure's off. There's no pressure. It doesn't have to be a certain way.

It's amazing.

And you'll see how much of that creeps in in your thinking, like it's supposed to be a certain way. And the real struggle is when you're caught in that no man's land from where it is. To how it's kind of supposed to be in your mind. That's where the struggle is. So you're never really there for it. You're always pulling it somewhere or pushing it somewhere. And it's just a recipe for disaster. You know, we're really bad at relationships if I'm going to be straight about it. You know, we're just bad at them.

We don't have the tools.

We never—

we weren't taught this growing up unless we just were modeled this from our parents. And like you said before, We either loved the model that our parents had or we hated it.

Right.

We said we want to be like that or we never want to be like that.

Right. And that's all you've got.

That's it.

Right. So I've kind of pointed out why both of them are flawed in their own way, because some people think, well, you know, modeling my relationship on a good one would be, would be a good thing to do. And I say, no, you're constantly holding your relationship to a standard.

To a judgment, right? Right. This is where it's supposed to look.

So it never gets to be itself. You never get to have the relationship you've got. And it's a failed policy. It doesn't work. It's like constantly comparing yourself to somebody else.

Mm-hmm.

It doesn't work. You have to be able to be yourself in relationship. And one of the things that I always kind of point people towards is say, when you're in relationship, you should be aware, and this is something you and I kind of discussed a little bit earlier, you should be aware whatever junk is incomplete for you from your childhood, it's coming up. Yeah. And it's like trying to keep a beach ball under the water, right? Like you can't, Can't stop it. Yeah, it's coming.

What were the 2 or 3 biggest things that were junk for you from childhood that came up in your marriage in the last 26 years?

Yeah. So your relationship to your parents is all over your relationship, right? And it's all over it in ways that you can't even see.

Mm-hmm.

So the big one that always come up for me was, you're selfish, right?

You felt you were selfish?

No, my partner.

You would say—

You're selfish, right? Because That was my experience of growing up, of one of my parents, like that they are selfish. Now, that's a perspective of a child. Was it true when I look back?

No.

But that's what it was like for me as a kid.

That's how it felt. Yeah.

Right. And I had to really unpack that for myself as I got older. Like, wow, this is— it's really cancerous in my life. Like, it's a barrier between me and people. I never— and it became a big barrier between me and particularly with my mom. Like, it was there between her and I through my teens that when I started to do work on myself, thankfully I managed to get on the other side of that and really just love the mom that I had, like fully and authentically love the mother I have. And my teen years, my early 20s, that was not there, like a possibility wasn't there. So that was a big one for me. And then, you know, the other one was my searing independence.

So I wanted to be independent.

I'm always like, I'm always trying to figure out my stuff myself. I need to figure out myself. Which, if you think of that in the context of a relationship, it's completely absurd. Yeah, right. Like, here I am committed to you, we got a problem, you sit there, I'll work this out.

Mm.

You know, I never fully was able to kind of be with my own fears and be with my own perceived inadequacies. Like, these things were like ruminating in the background of my thoughts. And, you know, me being stereotypically culturally Scottish, you know, like, you know, I'll sort that out myself, which was a complete crap show, you know. But so those elements of that kind of, like I said, this kind of driven, independent, and this kind of judgment of, you know, the way that you behave and how you shouldn't be that way and you should be more like this way, had become a big obstacle that, by the way, my wife and I were just dancing around it.

You weren't addressing it.

No way. It's hard to see a relationship in terms of anything other than you and another person.

Yeah.

When you start to see who you are in it, just take a start from— I would say, who am I here? Who am I? Take away all your best efforts and all your positivity and all your justifications. Don't take away all that away. And just look at it in the cold light of day. Say, who am I here? It's hard to tell yourself I'm judgmental and I'm cynical and I'm da da da. But if you look, you'll see that playing out. You'll see it playing out right in front of your face. Wow. And that paradigm and that way of thinking. My wife never stood a chance. Wow. Not a chance. You have no hope against what I'm driven to do.

Yeah.

Until I saw what I'm driven to do.

What made you wake up and see that?

I'd actually started to come to terms with how one of my endearing traits, if you like, is I'm hardworking. Okay, so I will grind it out. You know, I'll just see this thing through, you know. But what I really struggled with was vulnerability and love. Like, I couldn't, I couldn't love this woman fully. I couldn't. All I could do was show her that I cared. By working harder, right? Like, you'll never have to worry about anything. I'm just going to keep grinding it out and grind it. And it was myopic. It was like, you know, these blinkers on.

And how long did it take for you to realize you couldn't love her? Oh, I mean, I was convinced I was loving her, but she didn't feel like you were loving her.

No, because, you know, she's from a very similar background. And like, so culturally, you're very influenced, you know, you're very influenced culturally. And so whatever you came out of, you're either gonna reflect that or rebel against it. You're gonna be one or the other. And so I reflected a lot of that kind of Glasgow, kind of cultural, tough, you know.

That's who I am, yeah. You identified with it. That's your identity, yeah.

Right, and the big breakthrough came for me when I realized, and it was amazing, I'll never get over this, right, and it happened 15 years ago and I'll never get over it. When I realized that I hadn't told my mom that I'd loved her since I was 12. Wow.

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Why didn't you tell her?

Because I'd went from being a player in my own family to becoming a spectator. I'd gone from being on the field And I'd taken one too many knocks. And I thought, I'm coming out. And I didn't consciously do it. It's just kind of where I went. And so telling my mom that I loved her was like, it just— I remember being a kid and telling my mom I loved her. I remember holding her leg and I remember holding her hand and I remember all of that stuff. And then I just remember like me here, her there. And now I'm just going to kind of observe the job she's doing. And it was not a great observation. It was not a great commentary.

It was a judgment.

Big time, in my opinion, about what she should have been doing, how she should have been parenting me and how I should be raised. And da da da da da da da. And I'm just a kid, which is all fine, but it had an impact.

Of course.

And the impact was, I'm here, you're there, and never the twain shall meet.

Mm.

When I realized not only that, but how that had played out now, who I'd become, I realized, and this was a time in my life when I used to, I'd call my mom every week, but it was, you know, how you doing? You know, the neighbor's dog's barking, right? You know, the weather's terrible.

There's no intimacy, there was no vulnerability.

Nothing. It was like a check, checking through the boxes. And I called her up and I said, hey, how you doing? She goes, yeah, I'm good. And I said, I need to talk to you. She goes, okay, you know, She's completely indifferent to whatever the heck I'm saying. And I goes, I said to her, I'm sorry. And there was like a silence. She said, for what? I said, I judged you for the way you raised me. She's silent. And then I said to her, I never knew what it was like for you. She's still silent. And I said, "I love you." And I could, like the last word, I'm getting moved by it right now. Like the last words are coming out my mouth and like my lips trembling. And she said, "I love you too, baby." Wow, oh my gosh.

Did she tell you she loved you in between this time?

No, we had both had this kind of thing, you know?

How old were you when this happened?

40.

So you spent, 28 years not telling her.

Wow. And so it all— I'm like sobbing, I'm like, like, it's all coming out. And I really got, like, my job from that point. I got how I wasn't a loving man. Wow. That was the truth. I wasn't a loving man. I could be a partner, but don't expect me to love you. Wow. And then when that just started to gush out, like Now I could just freely love my wife. It was like the gates were open. And I started this revolution in my family. It was crazy. I've got 3 older sisters, you know, and so I called them all up. I'm like, I haven't been telling you I love you and I love you. And they're all like, what the hell's going on with you? And I'm like, I just got like, I don't tell the people in my life who matter to me how much I truly love them. Not like just, I love you. Like, you know, truly love them. And a couple of my sisters, in fact, all my sisters initially were like, eee.

Something's wrong with you.

Right. Something's up. And one of my sisters actually said to me, I told her what happened with my mom. And she says, what, are you on her side now?

Mm.

Right.

Man.

So I got— because there's this narrative, there's a story in my family about who the good ones are and who the bad ones are and all that stuff. And I just said, "No, I've really got that I'm a loving man. Like, I want to love people. I don't— I'm not interested in who's right anymore. I don't care." Wow. And that I love you. And so one of my sisters was like, she would stop picking the phone up to me. Right. And so she didn't have a cell phone or anything. It was only our home phone, you know. And I remember like one time I called the woman next door I called her neighbor because I had that like an emergency contact. And I told her to go in and tell her there's an emergency because she wouldn't pick the phone up to me. And she had to go in the neighborhood. She's like, yeah. I go, it's me. She's like, you know, what do you want? And so I told her at the time, I said, you know, you have no say in whether I love you or not and you're not allowed to fall out with me over this. And she was like dumbfounded. You know, she's like, what do you mean I can't fall out with you? I'm like, no, it's not allowed. I love you. And that's it. And so now, after all that time, telling the people in my family that I love them and them telling me that is a regular occurrence. And it spread through the family like wildfire. I literally, you know, I talk about it like I started this love revolution in my family.

Yeah.

You know, and it's real for me now. It's like real for me, my wife. It's real for me with my children. It's real for me in my work. Like, I authentically love people. It's not something I have to muster up, it's a self-expression.

What shifted for you after that? What did you start to experience in your life in the last, I guess, 15 years since you started that journey?

My life works. It works. I'm guided by something. I'm not a skin bag of feelings. Like there's some purpose to my life.

Before, was there no purpose?

It's just hard work, you know?

Right.

Just work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work. But there's no meaning. There's only this identity that I've become. And the identity that you become as a human being is a function of all the little subtle decisions you made all the way there. So there's these little movements. You have no sense as a human being of consciously constructing this self. But you did.

Mm. Right.

That's the reality. You made this machine.

Yes.

Now, you don't know you made it. But if you can do that kind of work where you start to see like, oh, I did that, I changed my thinking there, I did this, I did this, I've become this. When you're in that kind of thought process, there's nobody to blame. It doesn't matter what happened. Like it matters to the degree that it matters to you. But if you're really interested in freedom, and I mean like legitimate freedom.

Inner peace, yeah.

If you're interested in freedom, You'll look at the incidents, okay? But what you should really be looking about what it was you decided after it. That's where it turned.

The challenging thing is most of us don't have the tools to understand how to process them.

Right, right.

Until we figure out those tools. And that might be breakdown after breakdown after breakdown. It might be, you know, getting injured or losing relationships or loss of job over and over or just feeling like, why is my life feeling stuck and something's off consistently, where you're like, okay, I need to find some solutions. Unless we're taught this at an earlier age, it's like we gotta go through this the hard way, it seems like.

Yes, for sure. There's only two changes you'll ever make in your life. It's the ones that you've discovered for yourself or the ones that you're forced to make. That's it, there's nothing else. It's either what you've seen for yourself and what you're forced, it's kinda getting shoved in your face, right? Like it's right there, which is a lot of my work. You know, I present people with something that you're either going to try and escape from or you're going to push through. But you should know that if you're trying to escape from it, it's still there. You know, like, it's amazing how folks, when you confront something as serious as this, they will fight for their misery.

Absolutely.

They'll fight for it. They will argue with you for it. Like I'll say, Something like this, I'll say, it's not what happened to you, it's what you decided after. And they'll say, no, no, it's what happened to me. And I'll say, no, it's what you decided after. And they'll say, no, no, no, it's what happened to me. 'Cause if that hadn't happened, then I wouldn't have had that thought after. And I'll say, well, no, there's 50,000 thoughts you could have had after, you had that one.

And you went that way. And you held onto it.

And you held onto it and you constructed from there. The benefit of you seeing something like that is, oh, I made the beast.

Mm-hmm.

Now, if I made the beast, then I can at the very least come to terms with the beast.

Mm-hmm.

But I could create something else. Like, I have a profound ability to create who the heck I am. You can't get there until you confront and deal with the impact of who you've been. If you can't confront and deal with the impact of who you've been, then it's just like shellac on top of nonsense.

Yes.

Like that. You'll never have the breakthrough that you really have to.

How did you deal with the impact at that age?

Well, it was devastating because it's carnage. Yeah. It's carnage. Like, what did I do? Right.

Who did I hurt or how do I impact people in a negative way?

Right. Right. And then so if you're not fully responsible in that stage of things, you'll take yourself down another rabbit hole. You gotta be like, you gotta kind of be flat about it. So one of the ways that I did it is this whole notion of who's to blame. So it's a massive part of our makeup as human beings. So if you start with the idea that blame is the anchor to the past, so you're either blaming yourself or somebody else. And that thing, this thing about who's to blame will ruin you. Like, it will ruin you.

Yes.

Right. And I just got like, there's nothing to blame. There's no one to blame. Everybody was doing what they were doing at the time, given their logic. And I responded in a way that I responded, given my logic. I'm not making that okay.

Right.

I'm not making a case for any of that. I'm just getting, and that's what's so. And when I could get it that flat, like, that's what's so, I noticed there was no charge on it for me. Yeah. Like nothing. Even people who have done quote unquote really bad things in my life, like really bad things, that was their logic at the time. As flawed as it was, as messed up as it was.

Yeah, not saying it's okay. Not saying I wish you experienced it again.

Right. No. And You know, like I went through like a similar thing in my childhood, you know, where there was sexual abuse involved. It didn't happen like a ton of times, but it happened. And I look back and it like when I could see that person's humanity, you know, I wasn't making an excuse for them. I'm not making that okay. But suddenly, like, they were no longer the devil.

Yeah. And I think it's, it's figuring out a way, like you said, not being emotionally charged to a thought or memory, because when we are charged emotionally or triggered to a memory or an experience or event, or we see we see something that reminds us of that, it pulls us back into fear as opposed to, you know, leading us into love, right? Leading us into a vision greater than the pain or the suffering or the hurt, right? And we have a decision every moment. Do we want to be triggered by our past experiences, or do we want to be healed of the past experiences and focus on a mission greater than the past, right?

That's great. I mean, if you would have sat down and write out all the stuff that happened, and it filled 10 pages. Yeah, there's probably only 3 things in it that are what happened. The rest of it is your interpretation, your extrapolation, your interpretation, the kind of juice that gets added to it. Most of what's got you, right, is all that stuff. Yeah, the what happened, they're like, that thing, that thing did.

The story about what happened is what kind of holds us back.

Well, yeah, because, you know, you're inextricably linked to that language. So however you've captured it for yourself, you're— and there's lots of different fields that would break this down for you. But the connection between what you say and how you feel is just there.

Right.

Right. And so you are tied to all of that language, right? Like I say, there's this kid at school who bullied me and it was relentless and it was incessant and it was every other day and it was cruel and it was da da da da da da da. Right? And then I went with, well, there was this kid who used to say things, which is just because that's actually what happened. You can either believe what he was saying or you don't have to believe it. All the damage was in how that was kind of captured for me in language.

Yes. How you held on to it.

Very good. So then I got to the point where, like, I really realized how attached I'd become to the narrative, like attached to the narrative because it justified this. That narrative justified and explained this. And so I was no longer able to get free of this because I was so attached to that narrative. And so when I broke that down for myself and was able to get a little bit of space about it and really bring a sense of nothingness to it, like, yeah, like, you know, as cruel as it might sound, so what?

Yeah, exactly. You know, why do you think it's so hard for us to be 100% authentic in relationships?

Yeah. If you would ask somebody about your characteristics, like your personality, for instance, what your strengths might be, that's what you've come across that you feel as if is a good machinery to make it in this life, right? So this is like, you know, I'm maybe I'm charismatic, maybe I'm hardworking, maybe I'm analytical, maybe I'm, you know, competitive, maybe I'm these ways. Somewhere along the lines of your life, you realized this would be a good thing. And this gets me a little further forward.

It's all about—

yeah, very good. So, so then there I am in life being this way, and the more successful it is, the more I'm going to be this way. So now more and more and more like this, to the point where there's no distinction between this thing and me. Like, we are the same now. It's this— there's no line anywhere. It's just all how you would explain yourself now. What you also realize though is that those ways don't work everywhere. And so what people call imposter syndrome is basically just the realization that your shtick don't stick. Like you're like, my stuff don't work here. And so people are like, oh, I feel like I'm an imposter. Well, you are in many ways, but not in the way you might think. You are an imposter. There's a you there doing another you, but behind that you really is you.

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So how do we get behind that, you? How do we break down the thing that's been working for so long, but maybe won't continue to work in the next evolution?

If I'm, for instance, competitive, right? And it's a trait of mine, and it's stood me in good stead, and I've created a life from that, and maybe some success from that, or in my case, hardworking, right? But it could be other things. It could be analytical, and it could be— and this is obviously a kind of— these are ways of being. This is an ontological element, right? Or the element of being a human being. So if I'm competitive, I can point to all the places where that's really done me well, right?

Sports.

Maybe. Or maybe I'm in sales, right? Or maybe I'm building my own business, right? I mean, this is a strength here, right? Yeah. Try taking that home.

In relationships, it doesn't work.

It's a crap show, right? It's like, this is not going to work for me.

You know what's fascinating? I would say I defined my identity, a piece of my identity, most of my life as a competitor.

Yeah.

Right? Being in sports.

Yeah.

And using sports as a tool to make myself feel better, to prove the bullies wrong from childhood. Yeah. All those things and say, I'm gonna make something of myself.

Yeah.

I'm gonna win at all costs in sports and things like that. I started early in my 20s to translate that into business and it worked in a sense.

Yes.

But it left me feeling more, I don't know, against people than it was with people.

All right, can I ask you a question?

Yeah.

Right, so there you are and you were having an experience that this competitiveness actually wasn't working for you. Right, it wasn't.

Right, even though—

It was getting results in some way, but not results in the other ways.

Right, so you're starting to see something there though that's really interesting. I mean, that is, Here you are being yourself, right? But hold on a minute, is this myself?

And why am I suffering inside? And why am I going through these challenges, right?

So I want to know is what's the thing that's suffering then? Like, what's that?

Yeah, I guess it was, uh, the identity that this isn't working. Like, who I am or the way I'm being isn't working fully. It's working partially to get certain results, but it's not creating peace inside.

All right, so I would flip it the other way. I would flip it the other way, look at it from the other direction. That is, it's fine for the— this competitive expression, but not okay for you.

Absolutely.

And it's the you, that you, that I'm interested in. I'm interested in that, because that thing right there, what matters to that thing? And so you actually pointed to it. So the thing that mattered to you then was people.

Absolutely.

But you see how like that competitiveness was now the barrier between you.

Absolutely.

And people.

And when I learned the word collaboration and fully like was like, oh, you can thrive and accomplish and improve and make an impact through collaboration.

Yeah.

More than through competition.

Yeah.

And you can feel more connected through collaboration and more, and you can experience more love and support. As opposed to it's me versus the world type of feeling.

I really just got you there. I just really got you, like your trajectory. I really got it. Like, that was what a burden you've had to carry.

Oh man, it was a weight for so long because it was working in a sense of it was getting results. But then at the inside, I was like, why am I still suffering or feeling pain or feeling stress or anxiety? Or why can't I sleep at night?

Yeah.

So it wasn't until I hit about 30 when I learned the idea of collaboration, right? And shifted from I need to be number one and the best and grow the fastest and the biggest to, right, I want everyone else to shine, right, with me, right? How can we all rise together? And that's when I started this show and I said, I'm going to put the light on everyone else, right?

What's interesting about what you're saying though is what, what's now driving you is who you really are.

Yeah. Service.

Which always comes down to that.

Absolutely.

I don't care who you are, what you're doing. Everyone's purpose is to be of use. Can I be of use?

Yes.

Right. Like, can I— will I die and say I made a difference?

Absolutely.

Right. And I don't care what you're doing, how you're doing it. If you can't take all the layers away and get to that and you need to get to it because it shapes everything you're doing. Yeah. And if And, you know, to use a well-used term, the rest is kind of like the ego. Ego wants what it wants and what it needs. And what did it— and you might get some success with that, but you will never be happy with that. You'll never be settled with that. And it's your job as a human being to actually disappear. And I really mean it like that, like to disappear your addiction to that and to get grounded in you. Where's your true north? Like, where are you? What's your expression? If you take away all the fear, if you take away all the armor that you've built, right? And realize that what needs to get out is way more powerful than anything you've, you've put up to protect yourself, right?

What needs to get out, meaning what? You, right?

The, the you that you started with. See, look, when you started this life, like all human beings, like me, like everybody watching or listening to this right now, if you go around a 2-year-old or a 3-year-old or a 5-year-old, they're tremendously robust.

Yes.

Like robust. Like they get upset by things, but then they're like, "Bro, okay, next thing." Like when you get to 30, you're like wounded. You're like, "Oh, for the love of God." You know what I mean? But when you're little like that, like if you've ever been around kids that are like 2, ontologically, that is their self-expression, their ways of being are vast.

Yes.

And they can be lots of different ways. Like, and it's crazy. You watch them like flip from one and you're like, oh my God, that's manic, you know? But you used to be that way. You used to be that like fully there. Over time, one decision after another, it's getting narrower and narrower and narrower such that by the time you reach your late teens, you're pretty much just heading there now. And a lot of what I've done with people is to get them back to that spot of like unabashed aliveness. You know, like I'm just here to be alive, which is what the philosopher Alan Watts said, you know, the meaning of life is to be alive. There's nothing else, it's just to go and run with this meat bag, you know, and make it do some wild things and then it's over, you know, and you know, people have got their views about the rest of that stuff, but— But really, for me, that's it. It's like to realize first the constraint. What am I constrained by? What am I locked in by? And it's not people, it's not circumstances, not that. It's you. What about you? And then beyond that is a life of wonder. And it's not like it's all like, oh, you know, this is amazing and I'm amazing and you're amazing. No, there's still trials and tribulations and all that other stuff and problems. And yeah, that's all part of the deal. But what's different is who's now doing it, right?

Who's doing it, right? How are you showing up differently?

Very good. How am I showing up?

Which part of you is showing up, right?

Yeah. Is it the junk or something else? Yeah, exactly.

Right. You've been in, you know, you've been in this marriage and relationship for 26 years, right? How long were you dating before?

No, I literally asked my wife to marry me after just a matter of weeks.

Wow.

Yeah.

Then you got married that year.

Yeah. A year later.

We waited a year, but I'm curious then, you've been in the relationship for a long time, obviously 27 years total now. I'm assuming you've met a lot of people who've been married and who've been divorced.

Yeah.

And I'm also assuming you probably have some friends who've been married for 20, 30, 40 years that you're in, in contact with. What do you see is the difference maker for healthy, long-lasting love?

Yeah.

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, is that the 50% that are left are happy.

No, they're not.

No, they're not, right?

Maybe 15% or something.

Maybe, right? And we don't really know. I mean, like, if you went and polled everybody, you might be even shocked.

It's 5% or less.

Might be, right?

Gosh, why are they so challenging to be healthy and happy in the long term for so many people?

Well, I think Part of the deal is the bar's very low. So the bar's something like, we get along.

Right.

Like, that's it? I've got t-shirts I get along with.

Right. You know?

Yeah, yeah. So then 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, right. I mean, I get along with the person who makes my coffee at Starbucks, right? You know, I mean, but— Really what I've found to be the case, and I'm not looking at particular people for examples, but I'm going to look at what keeps a human being involved in anything. So, why does somebody— so I love to play guitar. Why? 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. So, 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. You know, 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, well, I can't do this for the rest of your life, rest of my life, and I'm like, well, you don't have to, you just have to do it today. Right, it's like being on a diet. I don't need to go on a diet for 3 months. I just need to be on it right now.

Yeah.

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.

Mm-hmm.

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, right. 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 this ceremony, there's this coming together.

Where 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 the 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 life going, "I'll vow to meet you at 3 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 into 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 declaration, right? We're declaring we're independent. Well, what do you mean you're independent? Well, we just declared it. So we are. And we vow our lives and our sacred honor. And most of those people gave, literally gave their life for that. They literally gave their 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're out of integrity with yourself.

Very good. There's no, there's no power to those words anymore.

What happens when we are out of integrity so consistently with ourselves, 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's— what I said to myself and my relationship to that thing is what's important.

Yeah.

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. Like 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-40s, 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 about me.

Mm-hmm.

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 forties or what?

How much you want to make?

I was 45. Yeah. And I said, I'm going to do it. I'm going to use my 50s for that. And I'm going to produce it, right? 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 wanted to make?

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

What do you mean?

Like there was no emotion in it for me. There was no like desperation, no like I got to do it, no burning. It was just like, I said I was gonna do it and 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 it, when I said I was gonna do it, like the Declaration of Independence, I had no idea how I was gonna do something like that.

Like, none.

Like, 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 into existence.

And then you figured out how along the way.

But that's now 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? And you might have to engage with that question for 2 years or 3 years or 4 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. It's— 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 this. 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 gonna treat that like it matters to me? Or am I gonna 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 wee you? Because I said I would. Mm-hmm. And that's what matters to me. Yes. That's what matters. That I said I would matters to me.

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Someone once told me that the key to his success in relationships was 80% of it was who you choose.

Yeah.

80% of the relationship success is, you know, how you match well with the person you're choosing.

Yeah.

You only spent, I guess, a year with the person that you chose.

Yeah.

Did you know that when you were choosing this person? Do you were like, okay, I feel like we're going to be in a great alignment with our values and our vision.

Yeah.

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, right?

I feel good about her, right?

I like— I like— there's something getting fixed here. So no, I'm not that pragmatic.

Yes.

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.

Mm-hmm.

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 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 for—

Yeah, it's a complete— Because then you're always relying on that person to make you happier.

Well, because whatever that thing is that they satisfy for you is something you haven't sort it out for yourself yet. Right.

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.

It's a big awakening I had after my previous relationship ended. I was like, man, it's been 10, 15 years of relationships that, that, 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 this commitment to those relationships, was the unwinding those commitments, 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 am I gonna 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, you can't, first of all, you've gotta be able to look at that distinct from blame, right? I know a lot of people just heard what you said and thought, well, but what if it is them, right? I know a lot of people sitting there right now going, dang it, I did say that to myself. And I say, well, if you take away like who's to blame.

Yes.

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, right? That when you get past all the stuff, whatever's incomplete will keep getting activated there or keep showing up. So when you, when you start to see it like, oh, these are just two human beings doing what human beings do, then it's, 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 work what out? Well, essentially work themselves out.

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.

Right.

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. You know, 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. Yeah, it's in there. And that's what you use, right? That logic. And until you awaken to that and realize that all of that that's there is really only a potential you. Mm-hmm. 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 the second. 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. I know I could say something else.

So 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.

Really?

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 picked on. I'm— yeah.

So there's all of that.

Then I'm not lovable.

And then there's a whole— and then for me it was I'm not smart enough.

That was—

and I'll never be smart enough. So 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.

Right.

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.

Mm-hmm.

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.

No, no, 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.

Mm-hmm.

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 the 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 going to own that or is that going to own me?

Yeah.

And that's, that's, that's the space we all want to be in. It's a space called choice.

Yeah.

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, uh, 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 3 sons now, but the first 8 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's just, it was all very much riding that particular roller coaster, living in 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 on a very personal level. Like there was no, there was no thought in my head like, So where does this go? You know, it was just like, 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, that's—

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 in those kind of earlier parts of my life, and I assert this is true for all human beings, you think the next thing is going to solve 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 at 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 this, I'm doing it, I'm gonna do it. And then you hit it and you're like, mm, now what? Yeah. Right, now what, right?

Now what?

And then the next thing, you do 6 of them, I'm like, huh, I'm not feeling what I'm 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 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 into your belly button, right?

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

Right. You got to 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 or some good in my in my life are the people that I'm out to 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. Yes. It gets you overcome a lot of hills, you know, a lot of mountains. There's just that kind of forward trajectory that maybe I'd have used it for something else, you know, 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 like 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.

Yeah.

You know? And then there's a point where you're like, I'm going nowhere.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm going nowhere.

Yeah.

And so the context that I choose for that now is it was a brilliant learning process for me, real-life learning process.

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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 2, 3, 5 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, in my current relationship. 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's like, it almost never happens, right? It's always when there's like a big breakdown or something.

Yeah.

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. 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 their 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 the decade of making a difference. That's the decade, like, for me was authentic wealth, right? For that decade, in your 40s, 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, like, and I still do, right? It's—

what was the 50s?

So the '50s was supposed to be about this authentic wealth, which You did. Scooted through that in 2 years, you know what I mean?

So in your 40s, did you build authentic wealth then? Or did you—

No, no, I was already in the middle, I'd already said. So it was like the kind of middle of my 40s, tailing into that second half. And I'm like, my 50s has gotta be about authentic wealth because I'd done so much work on myself. I saw so much of what this identity wanted to do that was inauthentic. It was to fix the identity, it wasn't about me. It was about it. And so then to say to myself, I'm gonna make my 50s about this. And it was radical because when I took away all the needs and the wants and the attachments and the emotion, it was such a clear pathway.

So what was the shift? I guess you started this at the end of your 40s, you said. Yeah. What was the shift from doing something beyond yourself in your 40s of being in service to saying, okay, now how can I do this and generate an abundance of wealth? What shifted in you? And then when did it start flowing?

Yeah.

With this financial— was it your ways of being was different? Was your thoughts were different about money? Was it just your efforts, your energy was different?

Well, remember, you can't create a breakthrough in something until you come to terms with what's already there.

Mm-hmm.

Right. So you have to see like, what's already there for me? And so everybody has a relationship to something like money. There's already something there. The question is, what is it?

And were you good at making money before?

No, I was terrible at it. Oh, okay. And I never even— because it was never a thing for me. Like, it was never an authentic thing for me. It was all, it filled a hole.

To like buy something to feel better about yourself.

Right. And, you know, I feel better now that money's in the bank. And then I started to think, well, what if it's just a transaction? What if I took me out of it and it's just a thing? You know, it's just like a way to make something multiply. Like, how do I do that? And so what I realized with, at the time, well, two things. One was I lived with a lot of mystery about money and just avoided it. Like, you know, that sounds like a lot of work.

Pay attention to it.

Right. Like, I don't need to know that. Right. And I'm looking for lots of short circuits and how to do things. And then the other thing that was pretty massive for me was I realized that, and this is true in all areas of somebody's life, but if you start with financial aspect, you're always operating in some paradigm. You're always in some network of thinking. And so identifying what my network of thinking was like, what was it? And so I realized that there was, believe it or not, a number that I thought that if I did that number, that was a— I've kind of done it right.

You feel good about yourself, right?

But it wasn't even like in any sense of the word a massive number. But I thought like, that's the number. When you kind of peel back some of that, you'll realize that the number is what you think you can do based on other things.

Based on your life and experience and your skills.

And other views that you have of yourself. So I had this magic number. And again, it wasn't like a crazy number.

But it was big for you. It was like, OK, this is something I've never done before.

Right.

And it would make me feel good about myself.

I did it. But what I found myself doing is I'm sitting in front of a laptop, and I've got the Excel spreadsheet up. And I'm looking at the number, and I'm like, where did that come from? How did I end up with that? And I was about to give the next year of my life to it.

To that number.

To that number. And every thought, and every strategy, and everything was about that number. And then I thought, well, what if I doubled it? And I was like, whoa, you know, I can't even be with that. You know, like, it was so crazy. And I thought, but it— But if I doubled that number and gave my word to it, that number would demand something of me. Like, it's now telling me that what I'm doing ain't it.

Right.

Man, that sent me off on a pathway, like a vein of thinking, where I started to realize, like, everything was happening in this kind of network of conversation that I'm in with myself. And when you change the outcome, It completely short circuits the thinking. That thinking can't produce double. It can't. It won't do it.

You have to change the way you think.

I have to change the way I think. And I have to, I have to really challenge what I think is possible. Like, really challenge it. And I noticed, like, there was a massive emotional attachment to that. Like, oh my gosh, so significant. Like, it can't be done. Guys like me can't do that. I don't have the education. I don't— da da da. So I started to think from The future. I put myself there.

In the future.

And that's what a visionary does. A visionary doesn't see the future. A visionary is coming from it. They're coming from the future and they're standing here and looking at what they're doing right now and asking themselves, is what I'm doing right now aligning with that? And if it's not, I need to stop. Stop. Even though, like, well, none of this could maybe turn out. If it's not aligning with that, stop right in this moment. And so at the beginning, it was a series of that, of stopping what I'm doing. And, you know, you've got an attachment to what you're doing because it'll produce that other number, which ain't bad, you know.

Right, right.

But when I doubled it, the first time I ever doubled it, because I did the first year or two, I doubled and doubled. And when you start to hit that cycle, you're realizing the only thing that's limiting you is what you're thinking.

Right.

Right? Because—

So what allowed you to double it then? What was the shift internally or the execution that was different?

It all begins with the right kind of thinking. Not thoughts, it's the right kind of thinking.

What's the right kind of thinking?

Right. You got to be able to hang with an idea without getting attached to it. Right? And that includes the ridiculous.

The ridiculous, yeah.

You gotta be able to hang with the ridiculous. Why? Because what you've already determined is ridiculous is based on some other logic that got you where you are. So you gotta reinvestigate the ridiculous. You gotta kind of go in and be like, well, hold on, hold on. And you gotta allow yourself to kind of be with it. So one of the things that I think I've gotten pretty good at is hanging with something without letting go of the need to answer it.

You mean just thinking of an idea that's ridiculous and not needing the answer on how to make the ridiculous come true?

Right. And so what happens is when I do that, if I do that for a week or maybe 2 weeks, lots of stuff will come up in my thinking. I'll wake up with ideas like, oh my gosh, I never thought about that before. Oh, what about— oh yeah, I never thought about that. And then so the more that I got into it, the more that I was kind of getting outside of my own logic, my own thinking, which really allowed me to step into things that my identity would not be comfortable with, like not comfortable with at all. One of them was, for me, was doing like big speaking engagements, right? So I, you know, I could do 200, 300, 500 people, that's fine. 25,000 people, maybe not so much. So I started to kind of put myself out there, you know, and I started to, you know, I started to talk to the right people, right? Which was a big shock. I didn't know anybody. You know, I'm like a, especially at that time, one-man operation. I don't know anybody. I'm just making a difference. How do you? And so I had to knock down some— it wasn't knock down their walls, it was knock down my walls about them. And that process, I started to really get connected to, my doing this has got nothing to do with them. I'm going to make such a compelling case that they have no say. They have no say in this. I'm going to present what I need to present here in such a way that they're like, okay, just give the guy the microphone and let him go. Yeah, that is actually what I did. I ended up doing like, you know, massive speaking engagements, you know, with people like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tony Robbins and blah, blah, blah, you know, and I'm out there like 25,000 people like it's nothing, all inside of being of service to them. But in the background includes my commitment to creating this environment of authentic wealth for myself. And never the twain shall meet. It was never like that this thing here is getting switched, uh, never. It was always grounded in making the difference that I'm out to be.

Authentic service for authentic wealth.

Right. Very good. Anywhere that I sense or experience that this is more about the money than the difference that it can make, I'm not doing it. Wow. I will not do it. And I've had, my gosh, so many opportunities, so many people present me with, oh, if you would only do this. And I won't, because when you mess with the integrity of what you're about, there's no substance to it. There's no substance. So all of it is guided by, yeah, but does this make a difference? And that includes the people that work with me, like the agents that I have, the people that are involved in my team. My little team, if you're not here to make a difference, we're not doing it. And I won't do it, and I refuse to do it because you're selling out on what it is that makes this thing real. And it's got to be real, not for me, it's got to be real for people. Because ultimately, like we talked about a little earlier, it's got to be about making some kind of difference.

Absolutely.

And if it can't, then I'm not doing it.

And how did your relationship evolve as you started to bring more money to the 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? Yeah, 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. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's basically it for me. Like, I never made it mean anything. You know, my 3 boys, like, they're very grounded. You know, they're not— in any way enamored by money or anything like that. Like, my 10-year-old thinks if he could spend $10 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. 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 the 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. I wouldn't say I'm a particularly flashy guy, you know, I don't really do anything like that. It's not really my thing. Like, for instance, I'll give a little example. So when I started to do the speaking engagements with those big groups of people, I rarely stay up on the platform, right? I go down and I go to the back and I talk back there and I'll go hang out with those folks. Why? Because I've been in those seats. Mm-hmm. I know what it's like to be back there and unseen. And I want you to be seen.

Wow.

Like, that matters to me. That matters. I want the people who bought the $1,200 ticket to sit at the front.

You're good.

You can turn around and watch me at the back a while. And I think it's that authenticity, that grounding that has never really allowed anything like money to kind of get in the way. I'm still, I still really relate to, and even you can look at any dedication that's in my books, I always dedicate them to people who are maybe at the bottom of the ladder right now. Like, they don't feel as if it's working for them.

Right.

I think my first book, it was like single moms and unemployed. I dedicated this book to the single moms and the unemployed fathers. Wow. You know, like the people who are having a gutted out.

Yeah.

And I still, 'cause that's most people.

Right.

Most people are wrestling with something. They're not all sitting at the top of the tree enjoying bananas. You know what I mean? So I just have never been somebody who like, I'm where I'm at and it's great. I want to relate to people who are, who are in the race.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

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 in 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, right, you will be it. You won't need to find it. You are it, right? And you'll find— you'll attract other people who are it as well.

What the interesting thing about my wife and I, which was really 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. You know, like she's got a different expression of love than I do.

Mm-hmm.

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 out.

Yeah.

You know, and she's given 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 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, oh, we're okay. Yeah. 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. No. Change something?

Nothing about this woman. Does that mean like it's all— like if I look at my wiring and the way that I'm wired, no, I got hooked and I get triggered and I get— 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 something and I called her something, it's okay, right? It 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 a massive part of my relationship. I don't— I'm not going to 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. It— I'm not like pressing on it and compressing it. And you should be in control. Now let me just back off and let that be. It'll dissipate. It's okay.

Yeah.

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.

Right.

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. Like, 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. There's going to be times in your life when you look at it, you're like, oh, did 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 Gandhi or something. I'm not like— this isn't— I'm not a perfect kind of human being on one hand. 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. Absolutely.

This is powerful, man. I've got a couple final questions for you, but I really love this conversation. And your book, Love Unfucked: Getting Your Relationship Shit 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 it's— I love, I love the short but packed books because I can, 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 going to have to do. It's not necessarily that you're going to take something out of there linearly. Yes. But yeah, I'm everywhere, but Instagram's a favorite of mine. Obviously, I spend a lot of time on there. I love to give people stuff that they can think about and chew on. But I'm also on Facebook, I'm on Twitter, and obviously my website, garyjohnbishop.com.

There you go. And you've 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 3 Truths question I ask everyone at the end. Yeah, so imagine hypothetical scenario, it's your last day on earth, many years away. You, you live as long as you want to live. Okay, 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.

Yeah.

On the last day, the books, the content, this interview, for whatever reason, got to go somewhere else.

Okay.

So it's not left in the world.

Okay.

But you get to leave behind 3 lessons with the world, 3 things that you know to be true from your life experiences.

Yeah.

And this is all we'd have to remember you by. What would you say are those 3 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, uh, 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 your perfect imperfections and, 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 an identity that you, you were so stuck on from the way you grew up, yeah, and being okay with letting it die and also holding on to some of it and transforming, I think it's so hard for so many people. I know it's hard for me. So I really acknowledge you for shifting that and being constantly in a reinvention phase of your life.

Yeah.

And in service to so many people.

Well, thank you for that generous acknowledgement. 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 8, 9 years I've really opened up and allowed myself to be vulnerable at at any moment.

Great.

And it's—

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— yeah, whatever might be coming up for me. So I appreciate it, and you're welcome. I receive it, man.

Yeah.

Um, 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.

Right.

And sometimes it's a simple thing like going beyond some old hurt or pain, but sometimes it's going beyond a situation or circumstance. I really do believe in the possibility of people living great lives. And so it always comes down to triumph of the human spirit.

There you go, Gary. Appreciate you, man.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

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 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 moving forward. And I want to remind you, if 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.

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