Are You Acting Like A Teenager With Your Family?

Episode #777

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Transcription

Doug Holt  00:01

Hey, what’s up, guys? Welcome back to the TPM show!

Today, what I want to talk about is a question. Not a question, but a statement I hear often from men. Now, this statement could be talking about business. It could be talking about their kids, especially if they have teenagers. But most often it’s talked about their wife. And the statement goes something like this.

You know what, Doug? She’s just not responding. I’m about to throw up my hands and just say, hey, screw it, I don’t care anymore, and let her learn her lesson on her own. In fact, recently I heard a statement similar to this about a man and his teenage daughter, and he was saying, same thing. She’s not listening to me. She basically wants to go off and do her own thing. And instead of trying to explain to her what I feel is the right thing to do and what she should do with her life, so to speak, then I’m just going to throw my hands up in the air, not talk to her, not engage with her at all. I’ll just provide her money, provide her food so she can live her life, and I’ll let her learn her mistakes on her own behalf. Fine.

Now, some version of this statement, what I want you to do right now, if you’re running, you’re walking, you’re driving your car, think about a time that you’ve had some kind of similar reaction where you basically just want to throw your hands up, say, screw it. If they’re not listening to me, let them pay the price. I’ll just check out. Or if she doesn’t want to engage with me or have sex with me, then I am just going to completely ignore her and I am going to do my own thing. Right?

If you’ve said that before, that is the teenager inside of you. I get it. I’ve done it. Completely understand? But that is a strong teenager. That is the reaction of a teenager. Now, why do I say that? Why do I say that’s a teenager in you? I know it’s going to trigger some of you. I know some of you are going to get upset. Some people are going to have some issues with this, and I’m okay with that. And you should be, too.

The reason being is we’re here to grow. We’re here to become more powerful men. We’re here to become more grounded when we find ourselves off center. And that’s what this man found himself with. This one I’m mentioning about his daughter when he found himself off center. It’s our job to get us back on track so I ask one simple question. I ask this of all the guys, and I’m going to ask this of you, what do you really want? What, in that situation, do you really want?

So when I asked this man who’s telling me about his daughter, his daughter wasn’t listening to him, right? He had this career planned out for him. He was a brilliant man, and he knew exactly what his daughter should do logically. And his daughter had a different situation, and his daughter wasn’t listening. They weren’t seeing eye to eye. And he was like, well, forget about it. I’m going to ignore him. I’m basically going to go in my cave. I won’t engage with her at all anymore, right? Where he spent a lot of time with his daughter playing basketball and doing other fun activities. He was no longer going to engage. He was just going to provide a paycheck. I’ll just be a paycheck. Fine.

If you’re not going to listen to me, I’ll be a paycheck. Well, that’s what a teenager reacts. That’s a reactionary situation. That’s not what a leader does. And I asked him, I said, what do you want? Is that really what you want to do? Do you want not to be engaged with your daughter? Do you want not to play basketball with her? Do you want not to try to explain it to her in a way that maybe she can comprehend differently? And he paused for a second. He was p***** at this time, but he paused for a second. He’s like, all right, I see where you’re going with this. I said, yeah, I’m sure you do.

The point is, what you want is connection with your daughter. What you want is to play basketball with her. What you want is to spend time with her. And what you want is to at least get your point across to her in a way that she can understand. And what she wants, probably, is to play basketball with you. What she wants is to spend time with you. And what she wants is to feel like you actually understand what she is trying to say rather than you just dictating something to her. She is trying to connect. And the reason she’s fighting back, your daughter, your wife, somebody else, is more than likely because you are not listening or they don’t feel heard.

More appropriately said, they don’t feel heard by you. And because of that, you’re fighting and then you’re throwing up your hands like a little teenage boy and you’re going into your cave pouting. If they won’t play my rules, then I’m going away. Look, I did this, too, so I’m laughing at this and I’m making fun of you. I’m making fun of me and making fun of all of us. You got to make fun of these things, guys. But you got to recognize that we do these things all of to them to a certain degree, some more than others.

And sometimes that’s where a coach comes in. A coach comes in. My job as a coach is not to be smarter than you. My job as a coach is to hold up a mirror and ask the right questions so you can get what you want. Because when you’re reacting to the situation, when you’re becoming that teenage boy and you are reacting to your daughter, to your wife, or wherever else it is and saying, well, I’m just going to go away and I’ll be a paycheck, fine. You’re not getting what you want. You’re giving up what you want. Really? And you’re giving all of your power to the other person. All of it. All of it. That’s not what a powerful man does.

See, a powerful man is going to be centered. They’re going to get pissed, but they’re going to realize, okay, why am I really upset now? They’re going to ask the key questions, okay, I’m upset because my daughter’s not listening to me and I’ve got sage advice, or my wife’s not listening to me, or my wife’s not engaging with me and I’m a great guy. She’s lucky to have me. I can’t tell you how many times I heard that for men. She’s so lucky to have me. Is she? She doesn’t feel that way.

So what do you get to do? Well, what do you want? Do you want to still be married? I ask that question a lot to men. Do you want to be married? And if they say yes, then great, let’s work on it. Because something’s not working in your delivery or something that’s happening to allow the other person to engage with you. That’s it. You just need some fine tuning. It’s like in golf, right? If you talk to a golf pro, a lot of times they’ll say your club angle, if you just twist it. One degree difference is the difference between slicing the ball off into the bushes or hitting it right down the fairway towards the green. But it’s that small change that makes the difference.

So if you find yourself in this situation, ask yourself, what is it I really want in this situation? So, for example, you come home you’re having there, and your wife is upset. You’re trying to engage and talk to her, but she just doesn’t seem really interested in engaging with you in a passionate way, in a way that she used to. Right? When she used to look at you with that love, respect and admiration in your eyes, it’s not there anymore. It’s just dead. You’re just another person to her.

And so you try it, and what you’re doing is not working. You try for a few more weeks, it’s still not working. You throw your hands up in the air and say, forget about it. I’m just going to leave her alone, provide a paycheck, and I’ll go about my business.

Then I ask you, what do you really want? The truth is, you want your wife, when you come home from work, to look at you with love, respect, admiration, the same way you did when you said, I do. The same way, if you look back, remember that time when you looked in her eyes, the love, the glimmer, the hope she had, the life, the energy she had when you got married, you want that back in her eyes. And that’s possible. That’s possible.

I see it with thousands and thousands of men. But how do you do it? How do you do is you stay in the eye of the storm. You become the lighthouse. A lighthouse is immovable. We use the lighthouse as an analogy within TPM because it’s immovable. A lighthouse doesn’t go out and bring a boat to safe harbor. That’s a tugboat. Tugboats don’t go out during the storms. They stay in the safe harbor when things are bad. That’s what the average guy does.

A lighthouse weathers the storm shines so brightly that it guides people to safety because it’s a leader. That’s what you get to become. So in that situation, when your wife’s not engaging, she’s not there, or your daughter’s not engaging, or an employee or whatever else it may be. You need to find a different approach. Oftentimes, this is where the Hidden Motives Technique  comes in. Hidden Motives Technique is one of three parts of what we call the triad of connection. I don’t want to confuse people that haven’t been through our program or read the book.

We talk about this in the book on how to save your marriage without talking about it. It’s on Amazon. I think it’s like $9 or something like that. Everybody here listening this can afford it, and it breaks this down for you. It’s the lowest price we can have. Amazon will let us sell it for.

But what you want to look at here in this Hidden Motives Technique  is allowing the other person to be heard, allowing the other person to be seen. If you listen to previous podcasts, we talk about three key things that women need. There’s really four. I’ll tell you the fourth one as well. The three key things are be seen, heard, and desired. The fourth one is to be emotionally safe.

Now, we assume that the emotional safety is there, then they need three key things. But that assumption is pretty false, right? Because a lot of women that we talk to more and more don’t feel emotionally safe in their marriages, even if the guy’s a nice guy, they just don’t feel emotionally safe. But you wanted them feel seen, heard, and desired. So I’ll take the wife out of the situation, though. That’s what most of you guys want to know about. But it’s also a triggering event.

So let’s go with the daughter. Maybe it’s your son or your daughter. You’re having a conversation about them, about life. They’re teenagers, right? They’re supposed to resist, and you’re saying, you really need to go to this university. And they’re saying, no, I don’t want to go to that university. And you’re batting heads back and forth, but instead, stop and hear my, hey, I really hear you. And I understand that you want to go to X, Y, Z University. Why is it that you want to go there? What is it about that university that’s so appealing for you? What is it? And get into their world and really understand what’s going on.

When you do this with somebody, you lower their defences. They start to feel seen. Oh, wow. You see me? Oh, wow. He’s listening to me. Not with your wife. You throw in the desire, not your kids, but then you can actually move forward in the conversation. This is what a powerful man does. Now you have the information. Their guards down. Now, you could say, I can really see why you want to go to X, Y, Z University and study zoology. They probably have a great program. I’ll have to look into that. What about zoology? Like, okay, this is this.

Have you considered the fact that saving the world, a great way of doing that is by having enough money to donate to organizations that already exist? Now, see, I’m using this as an example, because now that person’s receptive to what you have to say. You’ve disarmed them.

Same thing with your wife. You come home and your wife’s ignoring you. You get the opportunity of trying a different delivery system, the hidden motives technique, collecting berries. Great techniques we talk about in the book. We go into great detail in the program. The Activation Method. These are things that are going to allow you to flip the script and change the state of your wife or your partner so that they’re receptive to you. And once they’re receptive to you, now you can engage. Now we can engage in dialogue and what have you. And sometimes that dialogue turns into great sex, but depends on what stage your relationship is at.

The key here is, what do you want? Not throwing your toys like a little kid and just stomping off because you’re not getting your way, but instead being relentless, being relentless in your pursuit of getting what you want. And sometimes getting what you want is just learning a new methodology, just a new methodology on how you can get from point A to point Z.

See, if you’re always trying to get to point Z and you hit C, as in Charlie. And every time you bounce out back to A and you go, I just give up. Well, that’s not going to work. You got to try a different way of getting there. Try a different know. A lot of guys will have this in business. They’ll go, I’ll go under, I’ll go over, I’ll go through any wall, any obstacle, I’ll blow it up. But when it comes to the relationships, they just give up. They don’t blow it up. But you need to have that same mentality.

And sometimes it’s a little tweak, just a little tweak. And sometimes it’s an entire methodology, entire toolbox that you can use at any given point that will allow you to do it. But there’s one thing I can guarantee, guarantee it. If you don’t do what you want to do and you just throw away your toys, you will not get what you want. And you will end up resenting the other person and they will end up resenting you. And that creates a bigger chasm in the relationship that you just can’t afford to have. You just can’t. Now you got to build a bigger bridge.

 And unfortunately for most people, we’ve seen this happen with our parents maybe, or other relationships. And I certainly get to see this happen, unfortunately, is that chasm becomes the grand canyon of chasms. Comes so far apart. That’s really hard to bring that bridge back together. But like I said, we can try another way. We can climb down that canyon, swim across that river and go back up. There are always ways. But you have to go after what you want and you got to be relentless about it. Don’t be a child. Go after it.

Gentlemen, I did this before, and I get this question all the time of this statement. Like I said, there’s not a week that goes by that I don’t have a man reach out to me with some form of this predicament, let’s just call it, and it’s natural. And like I said, I’ve had it before, too. The key here is asking yourself, okay, what is it I really want in this relationship? Do I want to give up or do I want to stay in it? Okay, great, I want to stay in it. Let’s just assume if it’s give up, then just get out.

But if you truly want to stay in it, then it becomes okay. How can I approach this differently? What tools in my toolbox can I use? This is why we have The Activation Method. It’s a methodology. It’s a bunch of tools in your toolbox that you get to use in these situations to allow yourself to get out of it. So this gentleman that I was talking to about his daughter, I said, try the Hidden Motives Technique  with her. Just try it. Just try it for me. He went back to his daughter, had that conversation. They went out and played basketball.

Afterwards, she told him to her dad, that was one of the best times that they’ve had together, because instead of him just dictating what he wanted her to do, she actually felt seen and heard. And their dad really wanted to know what was going on. And in this case, it doesn’t happen all the time. In this case, her dad got it her way. Her dad actually took that time. Once she felt seen and heard, then she started listening to her dad and understanding her dad, her father’s reasons that he wanted to go, the wisdom that he had. It doesn’t happen all the time, guys, but it certainly can. And it certainly wouldn’t have happened if he just threw away his toys, so to speak, became a teenager like I used to be, stomping around, moping.

But instead, he stood in the eye of the storm, swallowed a little bit of his pride, probably right. Pride can be an evil thing, can be a good thing, I think, too. But he stayed in there and had a conversation with his daughter. And I see this with men, with their wives all the time, literally all the time. And the key here, men stay in the eye of the storm. Be the lighthouse, decide what you want and go after it relentlessly.

And if you need tools in your toolbox, invite you to jump on a call with one of our advisors for The Activation Method. And we can give you a whole set of tools that allow you to do this and a lot more. Gentlemen, as we always say, in the moment of insight, take massive action.

I’ll see you next time on the Powerful Man Show!