Episode #17
In this episode, Tim & Doug discuss a real-life example of a man they spoke with who felt everything around him was the reason he was unfulfilled. He blamed the location in which he was based, the people, and other external factors for all that was wrong in his life, avoiding the real issue, which was himself!
This is a very common occurrence in men that Tim & Doug help regularly. People who don’t take responsibility for themselves and always look to the nearest thing to point the finger of blame. We’ve all met that people who never seem happy in their job/relationship and yet they continuously blame external things… their job, their boss, their partner. It’s not bad luck that puts a person in these circumstances over and over, it’s the person themselves, and once they accept that their lives can be changed.
At the end of this episode, Tim & Doug also share a story of how another man who had fallen into the habit of blaming external issues in his business, once he made the realization he saw some immediate changes to his business and turnover.
Until you decide to take responsibility for yourself, you will never be the happiest and reach your full potential. Don’t fall into the trap of blaming anything and anyone for your own failures. Find out how you can make that all-important step in this episode.
What you will discover in this episode:
- How it all starts with you!
- Why a location or external issue is not a problem.
- How you can reclaim YOUR power.
- The reason people use locations or external issues for what’s wrong in their life
- What ‘the curse of the achiever’ is and how it can affect you.
- The dangers of ‘hustle’ mode.
- How you can improve your relationship or business by taking responsibility.
- Actionable steps to get out of the habit of blaming external things.
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Episode Transcript
Doug Holt 0:00
They’re blaming things external of these guys because they’re in hustle mode, and they’re making some money, but they’re not fulfilled inside. When you’re not fulfilled inside truly filling your cup up, then you have to start blaming things external to you because you’re empty inside. So, therefore, a problem has to be external.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Powerful Man Show. I am your host, Doug Holt, with my co-host, Tim “The Powerful Man” Matthews. Tim, how’s it going, man?
Tim Matthews 0:34
Doing well, brother, how are you?
Doug Holt 0:36
I’m doing awesome and having a great morning. Ready and exciting to get this rocking and rolling.
Tim Matthews 0:42
Yes, me too, man. I was enjoying our conversations.
Doug Holt 0:46
Yeah, absolutely. So Tim, what we’re talking about today is location. And what happened is one of our Alpha Resets, one of the men complained about what we’ve heard before. But he was saying, “Where I’m living isn’t conducive to support me in my environment.” I don’t know if you remember that conversation. But it kind of became a joke, and I’ll explain why that became a joke. But what I want to talk about today is how our location isn’t the problem here.
Tim Matthews 1:21
Yeah. Do you remember the conversation completely? And I wasn’t there in the evening when the initial conversation was happening. But I remember, the guy shared it with us and the reaction that it got. At that moment in time, the gentleman in question just couldn’t see it, could he? That’s okay, we often can’t see our blind spots, and we don’t know what we don’t know. But it was so nice and exciting and amazing to see his response by the end of The Alpha Reset when it landed with him. And he could see, “Wow, shit!” At the end of the second day, you remember that day going, oh, my God, it’s not the location and is none of those things. Chase me, and I can change it. And it was such an amazing, beautiful sight to see him reclaim his power. Day two is all about release and reclaiming. At that moment, for him, it was able to reclaim it. And from moving forward into day three, it was a phenomenal change.
Doug Holt 2:33
Yeah, so for our listeners, let me set the scene because I was there I had the conversation with him initially. So what was happening, we see this a lot, and it may not be your location, and we hear this about people, “Okay, in my area, I don’t have people around me that I can have these conversations with.” But this particular person, what happened we’re at lunch, and we’re all chatting. Once again, he brought up the fact that his location was the issue, and when he moves closer to home, where he grew up, it was going to be a lot better. However, if he moves closer, there are all these other issues. He has traveled around and has been very successful in his business endeavors. And his business takes them around the country or as per his, his choice, to take them to great locations are great places around. Texas, Colorado, he’s a mountain person, so really likes the outdoors. So perfect for him, he complained about the location and all the places he lived and how horrible they were. I started asking him what was good about it, and he got upset at me like you could see it in his face. He was so enraged. “Doug, why do you keep asking me these questions.” And I kept asking him, like, eventually, I went into “What is the one thing that is always at that location where you end up?” and he got so frustrated. Meanwhile, the other guys are kind of laughing, you know, they’re all friends at this point. So they’re laughing because they’re seeing what I’m seeing is he’s stuck in the story, that his location is the issue, his location is causing all of his problems. When in fact, you and I know it had nothing to do with the location at all. Eventually, we wrapped it around after about 15 minutes of dialogue and coaching, and he finally realized that there was one thing that was always showing up at the location, and that was him. But he hadn’t yet got it to the level that you’re talking about him. That’s what we’re seeing with these guys often, is they’re creating, and I did it too, and maybe you did, but we create this external issue this, the problem is external of us. The problem is external to me, and it’s my location. That’s the issue, and it’s the place I’m living, it’s my town that’s too small, it’s too big. The people aren’t smart enough that people are too greedy, I can’t have conversations that matter. Whatever it may be, insert whatever excuse you want. But the one common denominator with each of the men that have this complaint is that they are at the location, and they haven’t taken care of themselves.
Tim Matthews 5:14
What do you think then is why, in this instance, this particular guy, and it’s not limited or restricted to that particular guy that we see time and time again? So what do you think the reason is for this story?
Doug Holt 5:33
Yeah, I think it’s important, I’m not calling him out particularly, I’m using him as an example, right? He’s an amazing man. The reason for this story is, it’s easier to blame what’s external of us? It’s easier for us to blame what’s outside of us. So when we’re not doing well inside, we’re not given the skills as children; for most of us—going through school certainly doesn’t teach us how to deal with our inner game or inner environment or mindset. So as we’re going through life, we’re walking down this road of life, and we hit these bumps along the road. It’s bumpy, and once we hit these bumps, we start to look for the wrong things, we start to find problems mode. As men, we like to solve problems, and then as we’re going through life, though, we’re looking for problems to solve. But when we’re not happy or not fulfilled, we start looking for things external to us. It’s my wife, that’s the problem. It’s my kids, and it’s my job, it’s my location, that’s the issue. So for this particular guy, he’s an extremely intelligent person when he was going through a rough patch and hadn’t had a chance in the past, before coming to The Powerful Man and coming to The Alpha Reset. Hadn’t worked deeply on his inner game and so he didn’t see it; he can’t see the forest from the trees at that point. What happens is these men start blaming what’s external of them, we start looking for fault in others rather than taking care of our garden, our tending to our garden. And you and I often say, “Before pointing out, your neighbor’s trash, make sure you tend to your side of the street first.” And I think a lot of these men and this guy, in particular, were starting to look across the street and look at all the garbage and look at all the issues across the street, rather than looking inside themselves.
Tim Matthews 7:25
So true, and it’s fascinating, isn’t it? Because as I’m reflecting on what happened with a particular guy, and all the men that have been through The Alpha Reset and The Activation Method. The pattern that that shows up, it’s almost like there’s a curse of the achiever, if you will get on with these guys and that they have strived so much to create a certain level of success in their life. They almost trap them, and the persona that they then show up in the world with the mask, ultimately, that’s what it is. The stars build a lot of guilt and shame, because to everybody else on the outside, they look like they’ve got this amazing lifestyle. They’ve got the perfect marriage, they’ve got the perfect business, they can do whatever they want, they can travel, they can do this. So as everybody starts to tell the guys, and I hear this every day. When people in their life start to mirror back to them, “Hey, wow, you’ve got such an amazing life, you can’t have any troubles” or “you shouldn’t do this,” or “you shouldn’t do that,” then start to close down. Sometimes they will often start to believe this as well; they start to believe what everybody else around them is telling them. However, everybody else around them tells them these things based on the representative that this person is putting forward based on the mask they’re seeing. So the lies start to build, the persona builds, the character builds, and as a result, it becomes really painful. Like you were saying a moment ago to take ownership and accept that “Wow, you know what? I’m falling way short of the line here. Now, I’m nowhere near as far ahead, as I thought was, sharp financially” the maybe there or whatever. But for the most part, in terms of fulfillment and terms of happiness, in terms of the amount of love they have in their life and the presence of the family, the kids, and the staff themselves.
It’s just not there, and you weren’t there. I was with this particular guy when we would do the next interview. And one of the questions he was asked was, “Why did you join The Powerful Man?” He shared a very touching story about how he was off on disability from his very well paying corporate job. He gave him a lot of space and time to reflect on why his life was like, and how he showed up in his life. And he hit a low point, so low that he was contemplating suicide. You know the guy how amazing he is, and unfortunately, he reached out, and you know, it was in that dark period of him getting real with himself, and realizing that life isn’t as good as I’m making it out to be. There’s some pain here that I’m not addressing. Now, then fast forward to The Alpha Reset at first, the exterior. However, he’d accepted where he was, and he was still showing up there with his representative because he was so afraid of what taking ownership would say about him as a man. It doesn’t mean that I failed as a father doesn’t mean I failed as a husband, as an entrepreneur. When they’re able to actually just drop those labels, lean into this, come clean with themselves first and foremost, and come clean with their wives and children. Whoever’s involved always opens up an amazing conversation but an amazing new chapter in their life and in that relationship. It’s never as scary as it seems we’ve spoken about this time and time again, on past episodes. Running towards your fear and other ones that we’ve mentioned, it’s never as scary as it seems. But to go into that space and why I love The Alpha Reset gives these guys space to express that anger and the sadness and pain they’re feeling. That they deny within themselves, which is causing them not to want to own the story, for this guy in particular when the penny dropped, and he’s like, it’s not the location, not the job just went on and on and on. He saw his face soften, and he didn’t realize that “Fuck, I can change this, wow.” Because before I felt so helpless, didn’t he? While he was blaming the story, it was very helpless, which was very much the cause of the situation.
Doug Holt 12:33
Hey, guys, I had to interrupt the show because I want to talk to you about a case study we put together. It’s only 11 minutes. What we do is we go over and show you how almost 300 men have taken control of their lives, already have 4X business revenue, and are having more connected intimate sex with their partner using The Activation Method. And they’re doing all of this without burning down their relationships. And without suffering and sacrificing their health. We want you to have this too. So go over to https://www.thepowerfulman.com/bonus/the number 11 one, one, and get this right now. It’s only 11 minutes, and it’s going to show you exactly how these men have done it. Alright, let’s get back to the episode.
This guy’s a guy’s guy, right? Very much a man’s man, kind of guy, you drink some beers with. I don’t even know if he would say he was lost. I feel like he was looking just to better himself somehow; new things weren’t working out as well. And again, he had these things external of him, as many of the men do. Certainly, I had in the past, and it’s something I’m always working on. But I would continuously blame other things outside of him, not realizing what was going on is that he wasn’t happy with himself. He was showing up as truly showing up as a man, and he had; this is something you and I talk about often if there was no congruence with his standards or values. Right? He’d say one thing; this is what I believe he happened to be a Christian Catholic and had certain values and belief systems that were very devout for him, yet he was living his life another way privately. He didn’t talk about this and most of these guys, and he said the same thing. All these guys like, “Hey, my best friend doesn’t know these things that I’m sharing.” One of the cool things about The Alpha Reset is it’s such an environment that’s broken down by the coaches that are present that opportunity to explore these things in a very safe environment. And so for him, the location became the crutch, the location became the thing that he could point at and blame outside of himself, thus releasing the pressure from him. It’s not my fault. It’s the location.
And so in that same conversation, Tim again, I know you weren’t there. You are doing stuff. In the same conversation, he went on to complain about his wife, and all the things that she wasn’t doing in the marriage, the things that she wasn’t showing up as the problem, her, right? Like, “Doug, she’s the issue,” and he started going on, and on and on, I stopped him. Again, you got to remember, we’ve already gone through this location thing, this guy’s visibly upset with me already. He transitioned to his wife, and he’s standing up against the wall, and I’m sitting down eating. So I just, as I often do, I kept going. And so I said, “Look, here’s the deal, your wife’s external view, if your wife was standing up here, right now, you weren’t here. And I asked her if her husband was showing up as the man that she married is the man he promised to be?” What would your answer be? And he paused. And he thought about it for a second, that’s when he said, “You know what? She’d say no”. Again, he was blaming things external to him for his problems for what he was going on. We talk about this often on the show, and I’m sure we’ve talked about it before, right now, the flavor of the month, the flavor of the year, is a hustle. That’s what’s being sold out there in the marketplace. We have when this comes out, and you’re already going to have the 10X growth con has already happened, all a lot of this is going to be hustle, hustle, hustle, you gotta work hard, only sleep for hours, work seven days a week, get up at three in the morning, go to bed at one in the morning, that kind of a deal. So that’s being sold to these guys because it’s sellable. And I think some of these people believe it, but it’s not producing the results that they desire the outcomes. We look at outcome orientation, right? As a business, we’re always looking at outcomes, what’s the outcome that we want, the process comes second. So with these guys, they’re blaming things external of them, because they’re in hustle mode, and they’re making some money, but they’re not fulfilled inside. When you’re not fulfilled inside truly filling your cup, then you have to start blaming things external to you because you’re empty inside. So, therefore, the problem has to be external. And that’s what is happening with this guy and happens with a lot of men you and I end up talking to.
Tim Matthews 17:17
I did a video into The Activation Method community today titled “The Root Cause Versus Symptom.” The whole video was about; Hey, you guys in the community, all of you, if not 95% of you have applied to be part of the community off the back of expressing pain in your relationship. We offer a seven-step decompression cheat sheet through some Facebook ads. As the guys come in, they can go into the group. So it’s a relationship problem. And then, when they come into the group, they answer some questions to serve them best. And one of the questions is, what’s the biggest problem you are struggling with right now? And I would say, over 80% of the responses we get, if not more, or all-around business. It’s the staff, and it’s the system’s need to make more money and work-life balance. I could go on and on and on and on, and that’s what they believe at this moment in time is the reason why they’re experiencing the problem in their relationship. Now the cheat sheet is all about how to switch off. And you know, the video that I shared today was exactly going into what you’re talking about Doug that often what you think is the actual problem isn’t? It’s the symptom and we know what we came down with, so, in the video, the message I delivered was what’s going on beneath you; it’s not your business. It is none of those things; it’s you. For the most part, you’re operating from fear. You check your phone as soon as you wake up, checking your phone is right before you go to bed. You lie awake at night thoughts will and anxious you distracted during the day you mean everything to everyone, you lack focus, you’re unclear, you’re burnt out, you’re scattered all these things, then mean that when you try and go home and be present with your wife, or your kids or whatever, and you struggle is not because of all those things going on in your business.
Because of the energy and the space in which you are choosing to operate from, and the reality is, there’s always going to be the next thing in business. In the next system, there’s always going to be refinements, there’s always going to be input, it’s never going to end as long as you want to grow your business. It’s never going to end for as long as you want to believe it’s the business. You set yourself up for failure is not that it is you. It all starts with you. I completely agree. This whole message around, working harder and hustling, and 15, 16, 17 hours a day. I don’t know it might work for some people, but it doesn’t work for you, and I. Doesn’t work for the men within The Activation Method or The Brotherhood. That’s not what we’re about as a powerful man; we do not believe that you must sacrifice your health, your happiness, or your relationships to be the entrepreneur that you are probably capable of being. We’ve seen it time and time again, that guys come to us having tried that model, and what’s happened, there’s a trail of destruction behind them. And marriages are falling apart, the housing pieces, they feel empty and unfulfilled, like you were saying, they’re not filling their cup, it’s very much that Have-Do-Be mentality that we often speak about. When I have the 100,000 a month revenue, when I have the stuff, when I have the whatever, that’s when I’ll be able to go on a holiday and switch off, and then I’ll be happy and present for my family is never going to happen, it’s just not going to happen like that. Because that thing on the end that has an item is just going to shift to another half thing until you increase your standards and fill your cup, and put yourself first, and it’s not going to happen otherwise.
Doug Holt 21:11
So true. Think about it, pausing to reflect is when we do these, and if somebody’s never been through, any powerful man course has never been to The Alpha Reset. I know it’s hard to understand. But these real guys are your friends, neighbors, bosses, co-workers, and their friends. And when we ask the question at the end, anything, you ask the question of. How many guys have thought about or attempted to commit suicide, and several of them in the room had come close. And that was alarming to me when we’re looking at this, what drives a human man to get close. I’m talking close like I have planned to have things set out, guns loaded the whole nine is close to ending their life. And yet publicly, the displays on social media, Facebook, like everything’s rosy, right? There’s something that drives us to do that. And that’s that inner dialogue and mindset that occurs when we don’t let things get away from us. And we’ll let things slip. And we’re not up-leveling our life. Maybe we listen to podcasts like this one, and maybe we read some books; we’re in a community. But until we take that step to do the deep dive to go through something like The Alpha Reset. We leave that door open and open too wide. In my opinion, it was really both alarming but also heartwarming for me to see those men come out just as I mean. You do, but they’ve changed. We joke around that people get tans, and they physically change color; they color in their face to get vibrancy. And you can see all of this pressure from what they believe to be their past stories and mistakes, and some are. Still, they come forward and step into them and take responsibility for their lives, they gain back control, have something that they lost, and often they didn’t even know they know that they lost that, and I think that’s one of the most rewarding aspects of what we do.
Tim Matthews 23:27
Oh, God, you know, I was rubbing one of the guys’ shoulders as we walked in on the final day. It was like, wow, I feel a lot looser, you know, he’s trapped because it was shouldered and was raised on the day he arrived because he was carrying around so much tension and anger all this bottled up emotion. And you’re completely right; until you focus on you, just not going to work. I don’t mean to set us off on a tangent with this one comment, but it’s an example of this, which is recently one of The Brotherhood guys. We just stopped working with him because he just wasn’t doing the work. It wanted to focus on business to grow his business. They had no money routine in place and had a huge gaping hole in his self-love and how he sees himself and his sharing stuff through social media about a certain lifestyle that he has got. It’s just adding to the mask he’s just is he’s boxing himself into a corner. It makes it harder and harder to get us because it adds more and more of a burden. It feels more ashamed of basically where he is and who he is, and hence the lies he’s telling himself, and it is easier for him to blame other things, just like location and so forth. His whole thing was Facebook ads; he was blaming Facebook ads.
Doug Holt 24:55
Don’t get me started.
Tim Matthews 24:56
It’s nothing to do with the Facebook ads. I’ve seen it, we’ve seen it, The Alpha Reset Doug. This was a few years ago when one of the guys was there. A brilliant guy who has been trying to get past will grow his business. He couldn’t get past a certain upper limit. And The Alpha Reset came out for him because he just wanted to make his father proud; he felt so unloved by his father. When he was younger, he stepped in to earn some money because his family was strong enough to take some risks that his father had taken. And he did well. And he felt like he showed his father, ever since then, he felt like his father had been very different from him. So what did he do? He dimmed his light, and he held himself back. He wants to again as I said, make his father proud. And for him, a huge wave of emotion came out a huge wave of sadness, like uncontrollably, sobbing, eyes, nose, everything, uncontrollable. And then afterward, he had a conversation with his father. It’s hilarious. I remember getting messages from him like, “Tim, the business has doubled this month,” “Tim, business’s triple this month,” “Tim business has quadrupled this month.” And every month, it just kept growing and growing and growing. And he hadn’t made a lot of changes to the strategy at all. He was how he was showing up as a leader, and the energy that it was bringing to the table as well because he had stopped blaming everything outside of him, and got to the root cause and changed it. It can’t happen that quickly, and it really can.
Doug Holt 26:39
We see it time and time again. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s why I feel so blessed to do what we do. And it’s amazing to see these guys go through it. So to wrap up here in this conversation, gentlemen, if you are blaming your location, or something external of you, I invite you to the possibility that it is not the location, it is not where you’re born, it is not those things external of you. And take a deep dive internally. Yes, I get that sometimes things happen. Take that on a case by case basis. But I would guess about 90 plus percent of the time. It is not that item external of you. It is what lies inside, And I invite you to take a deep dive in an Indiana Jones-type adventure into your internal world and see what’s going on there. I think that will be an adventure that you will never regret.
Tim Matthews 27:39
Hmm. Well said.
Doug Holt 27:40
All right, Tim, that wraps it up for us for another episode here. You know what, if anybody wants to see that testimonial, go ahead and email Tim at https://www.thepowerfulman.com/, and he’ll get that over to you. Until then, we’ll see you for another episode of The Powerful Man show. Thanks, Tim.
Tim Matthews 27:55
Cheers, Doug.
