Episode #67
The agony you feel when you start comparing yourself with the man you know you could be can be stopped if you just commit to change.
The idea of change is not as scary as we believed it would be but it is worth taking the risk.
Change your ways.
Stop comparing yourself.
And uplevel your standards in order to be the man you are capable of being.
Don’t be in no man’s land, a situation where you are in between where you are and where you want to be.
We go through agonies, we feel insecure, lonely, empty and we end up sabotaging ourselves. Because of anger, we start pushing our loved ones and sacrificing our relationship until we become lonely and empty.
When shame and guilt build-up, it will result in self-isolation and fueling up the cycle.
You can get out of this situation as long as you are willing to recognize that you are in it and are willing to commit to a change.
Raise your standards, think of what standard you want to pass on to your kids and what kind of man you want to be for the people you love.
Value yourself, invest in your self-improvement and happiness and value the people that you love and step forward.
What you will learn in this episode:
- Leveling up your standards
- The importance of committing to change
- Knowing what you are capable of being
- Getting rid of the agonies we experience from comparing ourselves to the man we are today to the man we know we could be.
- Valuing yourself and stepping forward
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Episode Transcript
Tim Matthews 0:00
As he was wandering through it with lots of other men around him all wandering through it too, no one’s making eye contact with one another, no one wants to admit to the man next to them they’re in no man’s land together. Yet, if they did, we’d be able to help each other get out of it. Because on the other side of no man’s land is what we call the promised land.
Doug Holt 0:20
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Powerful Man show. I am your host, Doug Holt, with my co host, the founder of The Powerful Man movement, Tim Matthews.
Tim Matthews 0:36
I like the original one, told transparency we just jumped on a minute ago, and Doug introduced me then like, Tim Matthews. I’m like, what’s that? That’s so? So we’ve come on again, and you’ve changed it still?
Doug Holt 0:50
I have, I like change, change is good.
Tim Matthews 0:54
Yeah, me too. Yeah, it’s good to roll with it. Right?
Doug Holt 0:55
You still are The Powerful Man.
Tim Matthews 0:58
Oh thank you, it means a lot. I’ll sleep well tonight.
Doug Holt 1:03
So Tim, well, before we got on, to hit the recording button, we were talking about a subject that you wanted to bring to the table, do you want to take that away?
Tim Matthews 1:10
I would love to take that away. So I had an enrollment conversation with an amazing man on Saturday, and this is someone who has been on the fence with us for about 12 months and, oh my god, on the call his whole body was just, you could visibly see the tension, the overwhelm, and the frustration that he was experiencing. His hands were fidgeting, he was rocking back and forth, he was rubbing his hands through his hair. He was frowning and he was, he was rubbing his eyes, things that reach boiling point of him in his life, whereby he knew it was so obvious to him that he was playing so much smaller than he knows he’s capable of playing and that’s then having an effect on his family, on his relationship, and on his own personal happiness and fulfillment. So much so that he actually shrunk his business back. Now, it got to the end of, well, towards the end of the conversation and I just said to him, “Look, you have two choices right now. The way that I see it, is you either accept it, accept that this is the way that life is going to be for you and just stop putting yourself through all of this pain and turmoil and lower your standards and make peace with that, or you change. It’s really as simple as that. Stop putting yourself through the, the hell and the torture of comparing yourself with the man that you know you could be if you are not willing to make the commitment to change.
Doug Holt 3:02
Hmm, what did he say?
Tim Matthews 3:03
He said, “I’m in.” It said, “I’m in, I’m doing it I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to, I will look” In all honesty there was a silent pause, for about, seemed like about five minutes, but in reality, probably about, a minute or two, and obviously I would, you know my office , I’ve got standup desks, I was just walking about, we could see each other on zoom. So I was walking about very detached from it, just watching him really. And yeah, it was like a volcano that was ready to erupt, and in the men that we work with, they all, they’re all kind of like in the early stages, and they’re either erupt, they’re going to erupt, it’s inevitable that they’re going to erupt, and they either erupt by choice or by force.
And when they erupt by force, is that involuntary action where they’re then stopped on their kids or they’re short tempered with the wife or they sabotage the business or they shout at the staff or whatever it is and that sets off the whole cycle of the sedition and sabotage and so on, because they feel ashamed or they can erupt by choice, and choose to call forth on a power that’s already inside of them and stepped forward with it in, a very controlled, conscious, and confident manner. And this guy just stepped forward which is fantastic. But I think for him, that was a real wake up call. Look, you have a choice, lower your standards, drop the expectation, stop comparing yourself to a man that you could be an ideal or change.
Doug Holt 4:37
And it’s really that easy. for a lot of these guys that call up and it’s really about making that change. Now, Tim, when you have these conversations with men, I’m sure you run into a time where some guys are like, you know what, I’m just going to, if the idea of change is too scary, I’m just going to stay the same. Does that ever happen?
Tim Matthews 4:55
Yeah, of course. Usually about six, six to seven out of every 10 men usually go into the programs, it’s about a 60 to 70% enrollment rate. But yeah, of course some people choose to step away from the line and honestly, Doug, I can only make guesses as to why that is. Obviously they throw up all the usual excuses such as money or time or whatever they want to try and put the reason on, but we all know, that’s not the real reason because money is definitely not a question. it’s if they’ve gotten to this far in the process and gone to a call with me, it means they have been, like, maybe some of these guys listening to the podcast, digest in emails, seen ads somewhere the ads are very specific that the message and we put out there speaks to a very particular businessman.
So usually, I’ve never really come across a case where it’s very rare. I’ve come across a case whereby men literally cannot find the money, whether they have it, or credit, or friends or family or savings, or whatever it is, it’s very, very rare. So the money excuse isn’t really valid.Time the reality is, when change becomes a must, Omar, for example one of the men in The Brotherhood, an amazing guy, we spoke about him on various podcasts, if you want to edit out his name Billy, love a good book. When Omar joined the program, it was amazing, because he was, Omar and I are, whether to join, and he was sort of all these excuses around time. I’m going to be in Hong Kong, I’m going to be in this meeting, I’m going to be in that meeting. And I didn’t know this, but at that point, his wife walked in the room, shoved his credit card in his face, and said, “Do this now.” Because she could see the, the pain that he was putting himself through by being in this torture of comparing himself with the money Mills is capable of being, yet not taking the action.
Doug Holt 7:06
Well that’s, they say, that’s the definition of hell. Hell is where you go to meet the man you could have been. The possible greatness, The Powerful Man. So if you go to hell, you get to meet the powerful version of yourself that you could have been, and that’s the most painful thing.
Tim Matthews 7:25
Wow, that’s, I heard you say that leave it in. When you said it just now, it really, really struck me because yeah, I mean, you realize that a lot of your the lies that you told yourself as to why you had to wear or why you couldn’t do things, or why you weren’t good enough, we’ll just that lies, whether you’ve you’ve tried to fit into a paradigm that your father handed down to you about what it looks like to be a man or what you must do in order to, to make money or what success must look like, or whatever it is. We spoke about this in previous episodes, didn’t we? When you actually, are trained to, live in a way that is aligned to somebody else’s way of life, not actually yours, not actually saying your precedent for what you want and who you want to be, but instead kind of coasting through life, almost asleep.
So yeah, I mean, hell, that definition of hell rings true for me so much when I was in this place. Now, before I hired my first mentor many years ago, I never used to understand-, I used to think that just by an info, a product was enough it is 97 pound or 49 pound ebooks or whatever, we’re going to be enough to really get me the result that I wanted, and I invested in, in everything outside of myself, I invest in the marketing, in the sales, in the people, and it all starts, but I’ve never invested actually myself and looking back, I think it’s because I never used to value myself enough and I was so used to putting my needs last. by sacrificing myself in business and working crazy, long hours, and slogging myself in the gym. And I used to see everything as a real chore, “I’ve got to do this, and I should do that, I need to do that.” Okay to fight my way to the life that I wanted to have, and as a result, I also delayed my happiness for some point in the future. When I achieve a certain point, that’s when I can be happy, but until then, I’ve got to suffer.
And, I think that fed into me not investing in myself and I get it that the first investment I made, I made it myself was a, it was a leap for me. A leap in time in, in vulnerability in, in money, in the risk of failure as well, a cost of failure, because if you are about to do something that you really believe is going to help you then it’s almost like well, what if it does? Well, I don’t have anything to fall back on. So I understand it when some of these men step away from the line, I get it, it can be scary, change can be scary, yet, I really encourage them to not continue putting themselves through turmoil and suffering, because that is just continuing the cycle, which then takes them away from the family, takes them away from the business, just, just lower the standards. If that’s going to be the way that’s okay, that is completely fine. If you want to lower your standards and step away from the line, but don’t, don’t be in no man’s land in the middle of, of where you want to be and where you are.
Doug Holt 10:43
Guys, I’m interrupting this episode because I want to know, do you feel bored, burnt out or broken? Discovered the system that over 300 business men are using to let go of the grind, find inner peace, and unlock unlimited personal power, so they can have more time, more intimacy and better sex while living a life they love, without stressing about work, or feeling like a fraud. Head over to ThePowerfulMan.com/11 to see what this is all about. Alright, let’s get back to the episode. Define Yeah, define no man’s land for the listeners.
Doug Holt 11:21
Define Yeah, define no man’s land for the listeners.
Tim Matthews 11:24
So, when we, we call no man’s land in The Powerful Man. It’s a place where a lot of men exist when they first come to us and in no man’s land, they’ve really been or they’re in the process of being run out of their pact, because what they’ve done is they’ve very much been a lone wolf, and in the process of being a lone wolf, they’ve often used aggression, and dominance and insecurity to really lead the pact. And if you imagine like a pack of wolves, the alpha wolf often isn’t the most dominant one, he’s got it within his locker, should he need to call it forward, yet, he often sits very quietly amongst the pack, letting the pack do their own thing. And every once in a while, you’ll get a wolf that comes along that tries to exert his force on the rest of the pack, and they’ll try and do it with aggression, with dominance and almost rule by tyranny.
And what happens then is he’s in ran out of his pack and usually, a lot of that behavior underneath it all comes from the insecurity and in with the with the men that we work with, when this happens to them, they get run out of their pact in many ways, whether they get handed the divorce papers they’re about to change, yet they come home and there’s a letter on the table for them, has the wife’s name, has the wife, the wives handwriting on it, they’re name, then open it up, it’s the divorce papers, I knew it was coming, but the chose to ignore the warning signs that could be run out of the pact with their team, with their staff that could really attract air players and then end up, just sabotaging it all, and when they do that, and then up in no man’s land, they experienced five agonies, and this is something that we’ve, we’ve come back, and we’ve reflected on the hundreds of men we’ve worked with, and we’ve seen a pattern in this, and the five agonies that the men experience and cycle through one by one, the first one is emptiness.
They’ve really believed that the answer to everything was to make money, that, that was a way in which they were going to be the man and get the significance, and they’ve, they’ve strived, and they’ve hustled, and they’ve pushed in the force and they’ve grinded it out. And they’ve sacrificed health, happiness and relationships, and no matter what they achieve, it’s just never enough. So they end up in first agony, emptiness. And then it moves to the second agony of anger, because they don’t understand how to handle the emotions, probably not within them, think of the volcano they erupt by force or by choice. And as a result, they start to experience fits of anger, whether the anger is expressed at their loved ones or at their staff, or whether they do it themselves in silence. But either way, there’s a there’s an undercurrent of anger just bubbling in, it usually comes out in the ways that, the family or the loved ones least expecting, people they love end up walking on eggshells around them, because they never know what father, what man, what husband is going to walk through the door. Which then leads to the, leads to the third, third, wait I can’t say it, third agony of shame, because they are acting in a way that they know they don’t want to, in a way that they know is hurting the people that love yet they don’t know how to stop it.
They try so many times to control this anger and change their ways, and they make all these promises that they’re not going to work late tonight, they’re going to come home early, but one thing or another happens, and they still stay, stay there late, they missed the school plays, they miss the birthdays, and over time, the family just end up making plans without them because that the wife isn’t going to stand by and let the kids continue to pay the price for this. And as a result, the shame and the guilt builds, and the only way that the men often know to deal with this is to sedate, whether it’s through alcohol, social media, porn, drugs, working working even longer hours, there’s many ways which then leads the fourth agony of loneliness, they then pull themselves away from all of the people that mean something to them they actually then start to isolate themselves, and as a result, they, again, just fuel this cycle, and they tell everyone else around them that, that it’s all right.
Well, rather everyone else around them tells them that you’ve got the ideal life, you’ve got the perfect life, you’ve got the home, the holidays, the money, the family, the business, you should love it, you should love it, why don’t you love it, which piles on even more of the feelings of shame and isolation, because at that point, they have no one around them that they can turn to and speak to, no one gets it, which then leads to the final agony of uncertainty. they know that the people around them are not going to put up with this forever, the staff, the wife, the kids, they start to pull away and come up with a plan B this cheating crosses their mind, whenever the woman pays them attention they then start to think about leaving the wife scenarios go through the head, because the business has become the surrogate wife as the easiest place to be. However, even that, is uncertain, because it’s time to resent the business for, that they blame it a lot for the situation that they’re in, and the tough race at home, the more they work, and that then leads to again, it feels the uncertainty and they really start to risk losing it all. So that’s no man’s land in a nutshell.
Doug Holt 17:12
That’s, it’s a great nutshell, and I’m guessing a lot of the men listening to this can identify with it. In fact, Tim, last night, I went out and met with a guy. And this is exactly you’re describing exactly what he said, not only himself to a lesser degree, but also one of his good friends. One of his mates was, he went out with and he was describing this exact protocol of agonies, you know. Going through all these things, trying to work, married with kids, relationships not working out, and guess what he turned to, of course, another woman, and we were talking about that, and, and the no man’s land that he and that he has friend, obviously his friend, to give him some anonymity, his friend ended up being in, and it was all about standards. And one of the things he said, Tim, which I think I’d love to hear your opinion on, he said, “Doug, no one’s talking about this. No one out there knows it.” So this guy is just kind of wandering aimlessly in a lot of pain and suffering, and he’s ashamed and scared to tell anybody anything, and obviously he confided in this guy that I was with. But he said, “Hey, I could just see the pain that he’s in, the absolute agony.”
Tim Matthews 18:29
So heavy burden to be no man’s land I’ve been there, you’ve been there. many men have been there. Especially when you’re a guy that’s really focused on growing and being the best he can be as well the chances are, you’ll cycle through no man’s land from time to time, but to a lesser degree, and you’ll realize you’re in it and be able to move through it quicker, rather than a lot of men like the guy I spoke with on Saturday. He didn’t even know he was in it, so he didn’t know how to get out of it, But as he was wandering through it, with lots of other men around him all wandering through too, no one’s making eye contact with one another. No one wants to admit to the man next to them, they’re in no man’s land together. Yet, if they did, we’d be able to help each other get out of it, because on the other side of no man’s land, is what we call the promised land and that’s where they experienced the five freedoms and the five freedoms of peace on other side of the emptiness agony, number one is the first freedom of peace.
On the other side of agony number two, which is anger, is power, where they’ve got energy and they’re alive and the side of agony number three, which is shame, is pride. Again, in number four, which is loneliness, the other side of that, is presence, that should be able to be present with themselves and their loved ones, and then finally, on other side of agony number five uncertainty, is production, they’ve actually got purpose in their life, because they know who they are and what they want, and they’ve got a balanced life, which enables them to be able to actually bring that to fruition, and it’s, it’s the gap between those two, the journey from No Man’s Land to Promised Land is not as big and as scary and as wild and inherious, people often think it is, I think in, in the world that we live in today, and in the marketing that we often see, we’re often led to believe that we’ve got these great big gaps, and it’s really scary to be able to move from one to another, it can be scary, but it depends on the story that you’re telling yourself and who you surround yourself with, and if you actually, in my opinion, do not know your standards, the world needs you at your absolute best.
Your family needs you, your kids need you, your wife, your, your staff, you, you, you will create a huge ripple effect around you, which will impact hundreds, if not thousands of people, and you’re probably already making that. And you might already be making out but it might be a negative one, you need it, so do not lower your standards. Consider this a rallying call for you to stay, stay strong with the standard that you moving into, and then take that leap, whatever, wherever it is that you’re thinking about making a decision and making an action to create the change and create because one of the beliefs that we have, as a powerful man is that you’re already a powerful man, you really are you’ve just forgotten how to be it. It’s not like you’re going to transform into this superhero. Now, imagine, Leonardo, Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci whichever one it was, chipping away at the statue of David. Now someone asked, how did you create this? and he said, David was already there just to chip away at everything that wasn’t him.
Doug Holt 22:07
So, so true. So Tim, I mean, there’s so many nuggets here. I love the information you’re dropping for the guys. If a guy finds himself in this situation, not just No Man’s Land, but in a situation of complaining, but having the same complaint, let’s just say more than three times about his life, about changing his wife, his situation, what advice would you give to him?
Tim Matthews 22:32
What advice would I give to him? What’s it costing you not to change? Like, if this continues, like be real with yourself, remove the positivity for a moment. Don’t allow positivity to mask reality. But if this continues to happen, really what? What is the price that you’re going to pay and the people around you? How is the relationship between you and your wife? Or whoever it is? How’s that going to play out? You’re going to end up getting divorced? And she’s going to end up blaming herself.
Your kids aren’t going to pay the price from having a broken home with two parents that are both at war with one another, and both in pain and in shame within themselves and within each other. And then if that does happen, unless you’ve got data, what’s the standard that she’s aint going to to look for in a man that she wants to marry? How do you say to her that you want her to marry a particular guy, but the reality is she’s going to marry a man very similar to you. Your son, what kind of father is he going to grow up into? do you want to be a grandfather 70 years old, 80 years old, watching the same patterns play out in your grandchildren, that you today could have chosen to stop, because what you do take on, you pass on. So you either do the work now, so your kids and the people you love to have after or you stand by and watch, as everybody else continues to pay the price.
Doug Holt 24:21
So profound. So gentlemen, this is your call to action. As you heard here, right now, if you made it this far, where are your standards? either lower your standards and accept the position you’re in, you are a combination of the thoughts and decisions you’ve made in the past as Tim has said, or raise your standards and step up, step up to the line and be The Powerful Man that you know you are. Tim, such amazing, amazing words of wisdom. I really appreciate it. Gentlemen, as always, we’d love to continue the conversation with you.Go over to our free Facebook group, it does require registration to get in, we do try to keep that community nice and tight, just go over it just do a google, excuse me, a search on Facebook for The Activation Method which is our, our flagship program. But the group like I said is free, it’s just a place for men like you to continue the conversation, share what’s going on in your world, and what I’d like to know is where are your standards now? If I look at your life, from an outside perspective and outside looking in, what would I say your standards are based on your results. Alright guys, that’s a wrap for this episode, and we will see you next time. Have an amazing week.
