Overcoming Excuses: Taking Action in Life and Marriage

Episode 1153

Are you telling yourself you're too busy, too stressed, or waiting for the right time to work on your marriage?

In this episode, Doug Holt sits down with TPM Advisor Ryan Peach to talk about one of the biggest patterns they see in successful men: using life's challenges as a reason not to take action.

Whether it's a demanding career, financial concerns, family responsibilities, or feeling overwhelmed, many men convince themselves they'll focus on their marriage later. The problem is that later often comes with consequences they never saw coming.

Doug and Ryan break down why waiting rarely works, how small daily decisions quietly create major problems over time, and why taking imperfect action is often the fastest path to saving your marriage and improving your life.

If you've been telling yourself that now isn't the right time, this conversation may challenge you to take a closer look at what's really holding you back.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why "I'm busy" is often an excuse that keeps men stuck• How fear disguises itself as logic and planning• The hidden cost of waiting for the perfect time• What high performing men get wrong about priorities• Why small problems become major relationship issues over time• How to take action even when life feels overwhelming

The future of your marriage isn't shaped by what you intend to do someday. It's shaped by the actions you take today.

Based on insights from Doug Holt and Ryan Peach discussing the common excuses men use to delay working on themselves and their relationships, and why immediate action matters when your marriage is at risk.

If you're not sure what's really causing the disconnect in your marriage, start by getting clarity.

Get the free training at https://thepowerfulman.com/scales and discover the hidden patterns that may be keeping you stuck. You'll learn how to identify what's not working, why your relationship may feel off track, and the practical steps you can take to start rebuilding connection, trust, and intimacy. The training is completely free and designed to help you take the first step forward.

Transcription

Doug Holt 0:41Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the TPM Show. Today I have a very special guest, a very good friend who's near and dear to my heart the man, the myth, the legend. You probably know him, Mr. Ryan Peach. Ryan, thanks for being here, brother.

Ryan 0:54Hey man, glad to be here. Glad to be here with you, for sure.

Doug Holt 0:57So if guys don't know about you, Ryan, your story is amazing. We're not going to have time to dive into it today because, well, you're going to be off helping other men right after this.

Ryan is one of our advisors. If you're curious whether TPM is the right fit for you, you'll get on a phone call with a guy just like Ryan. Ryan's more than just an advisor. He's been doing this for years, and he actually came through the TPM system himself. He left his business because he loved helping men just like you so much.

Man, thank you for all the work you do, the men's lives you've saved, and the families you've helped save. It's countless, bro.

Ryan 1:34Oh man, thanks. It's an easy yes for me. I'm stoked to be here and just help the next guy get out of his own way and start making some real change.

Doug Holt 1:44Well, you've talked to thousands of men at this point. What's one of the things that you're seeing come up for guys?

Ryan 1:51Being that we work with business owners, executive managers, and high-level guys, one of the number one things that always comes up is, "I'm busy." Right? I'm busy, I'm overwhelmed, and I'm exhausted at the end of the day.

The thing that is the problem often becomes the reason for not taking action. It's like saying, "I want to get healed from this cancer, but the problem is I have cancer." Well, that's exactly what we need to work on.

I see a lot of men come to me and say things like, "I'm the type of guy that wants to be 100% in, 100% committed. I want to give this 100%." So they say, "I want to save up all the money and pay for it all at once. I want to make sure I'm out of this busy season, and then I'm going to invest and do the work."

Over the years, I've realized that's just an excuse for staying stuck. It's just another way of avoiding the next step.

Doug Holt 2:57It's 100% what it is. I mean, I did this myself 15 years ago. It's hopium. You're hoping it'll get better, and the fear of jumping all in is the unknown.

So we make all these excuses about why it won't work, why we have to wait, why it's not the right time. Well, it's never the right time.

People say, "Well, I have money earmarked for..." You find money for anything you want and desire. It's just human nature. We make it work. We put things on credit cards, do whatever we need to do.

But it's that layer of excuses that stops good men from becoming the great men they know they're capable of being.

Ryan 3:31It's exactly right.

I tell guys all the time, "Okay, got it. So you saved up all the money to buy your house, then?" Well, no. They saved some and financed the rest.

"Okay, what about your car?" Well, no, they financed that too.

Then I'll ask them, "If your daughter called you right now and said, 'Dad, I need emergency surgery because there's a serious issue,' would you tell her, 'Sorry, sweetheart, that's not convenient right now. I don't have the money. This is my busy season. Can you put off that surgery until after the summer?'"

Of course they wouldn't.

You jumped into buying a house, buying a car, having kids, and getting married when you didn't have everything figured out. You didn't have all the money saved up. You were incredibly uncertain about what life would be like on the other side.

But you did it because it was important to you. You figured it out on the way down.

Doing work at this level is the same thing. It's something you have to prioritize, and it's something you're going to have to do imperfectly.

Doug Holt 4:42This is such great timing, as it always is, Ryan. And the reason this episode is going to be so short is my fault.

I was on a coaching call with a gentleman, and during that call, he invited his wife onto the call. The thing he told me we're working on his business, right? Because at TPM, what people don't realize is we do a lot of business coaching as well he said, "Doug, the business I'm building, the business I've built," and he's been very successful, "isn't worth it if my wife and kids aren't along for the ride."

If you lose them, what's the point?

She jumped on the call to let him know, "Hey buddy, you're about to lose that thing that you want so much."

I was talking to him and I said, "Hey man, what is it really worth?" He looked at me and said, "Doug, I'm stressed, I'm tired, I'm building this thing, and I'm building it for them. That's the story I've been telling myself. I've been lying to myself."

I said, "Exactly. It's not worth it if you don't have the ones you love riding alongside of you."

Men use this as an excuse. Money is one of them. It's the obvious thing. Money and time are the two obvious excuses, but it manifests for us guys, especially as high achievers, in so many different ways. The real root of it is a fear of taking action because, what happens if I fail?

Ryan 5:59That's right.

Doug Holt 6:00And at the end of the day, the inaction is the failure. The inaction is what's going to cause you to lose that family. The inaction is what's going to cause her to walk away.

You've got to take radical responsibility and action immediately.

Ryan 6:14Again, coming back to the cancer analogy, because I use it all the time with men, I want you to imagine you just sat down with a doctor and he said you have stage four cancer. It's bad. Really bad.

Would you hesitate? Would you say, "Well, actually, because that's going to be such a big, invasive, time-consuming, difficult thing, I'm going to put this off and deal with it three months from now when life gets easier?"

No. You'd think, "Wait, I may not have three months. I may not have six months."

I will figure it out. I'll get other people running the business. I'll use credit cards. I'll take out loans. I'll sell my least favorite kid.

You know, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get this work done because it's life or death.

Doug Holt 7:07Hey guys, I just want to share something with you.

I'm sure we can both agree that in order to fix something, you need to know what's broken. Not only do you need to know what's broken, but you also need a step-by-step methodology on how to fix it. That's the easiest way to do it, right? Otherwise, you're going to be toiling with things.

That's why I created a free training. A training that not only shows you how you got to where you are where your relationship is missing the love, respect, admiration, and even intimacy that it used to have but also how to get it back.

How do you retain that place where your wife looks at you the same way she did when she said, "I do"?

I don't know about you, but for me, when my wife looks at me like I'm her man, it feels like I can conquer the world. And I want that for you.

Simply go over to ThePowerfulMan.com/scales. That's ThePowerfulMan.com/scales.

I have a free video training for you. Just click play and see if it resonates for you.

Now, back to the podcast.

Ryan 8:09You just told me that your wife wants to leave you. That she's tired of living this way. That this may be the last summer. That this may be the last year that things continue like this.

Your marriage is in stage four. That's where it is.

You can delay it if you want, but let's be crystal clear: the only person stopping you is you. It's not your time. It's not the money. It's not the energy. It's not the kids. It's not the season of life.

It's you.

As long as you're okay saying, "I decided to put my marriage on hold again while I waited for the right season," then okay. But don't kid yourself into thinking life is doing something to you that's outside your control.

You're not a victim. You just can't be.

Doug Holt 9:03No, you can't.

It's amazing when people take action. The thing is, the things around us can look good.

I've got a great doctor. She's a functional medicine doctor. Man, I swear she's a vampire. She's taking my blood all the time. Luckily for me, my health markers are amazing.

About three weeks ago, Ryan, I couldn't catch my breath at night. You know when you yawn but can't quite get that satisfying breath, so you keep yawning again and again? I had that for about 14 hours.

I'm driving to my kid's school because I'm volunteering. I'm excited. I've got the volunteer badge. I've done the background check. I've done the whole thing. You're laughing because you know where this goes.

Ryan 9:41I know this story. Yep.

Doug Holt 9:43My wife calls me and says, "Call your doctor because I'm worried."

I'm thinking, "My doctor's not going to pick up the phone." It's noon. So I send her a text just to appease my wife.

My doctor texts back and says, "Go to the ER immediately."

So I go to the ER. Clean bill of health. The doctors are like, "We don't know. It could be a hundred different things. We've scanned you."

The symptoms looked fine. I just had this weird yawn thing where I couldn't catch my breath.

My doctor said, "I still don't like it. Go get a heart scan."

I get a heart scan.

"You have heart disease."

Not mild heart disease. Serious heart disease.

And this isn't a "woe is Doug" story. My point is that I immediately started making changes. My diet changed. Rest became a priority. On my coaching calls, I'm walking on a walking pad. Guys are like, "What's up, Doug?" and I'm walking while coaching.

Lifestyle changes.

Why? Because all the things I've been doing have been for a reason. I want to see my kids grow up. I want to see my daughter get married if she chooses to. I want to be there for those moments.

The symptoms looked good. The numbers looked good. The blood work looked good. But unbeknownst to me, there was an underlying issue.

I think a lot of guys don't see the underlying issues in their marriage. They think, like I did, "I've got more time."

I knew I was redlining. I knew I was working hard. I wasn't sleeping very well. So I'd have another cup of coffee. Maybe a pre-workout drink on top of that. Just pushing and pushing.

One year became five years.

I was lying to myself. If I'm being honest, I kept thinking, "I've got more time. I'll push through this year, and next year I'll slow down."

The reality is men do this in their marriages all the time. They think, "I'll wait. Right now isn't the right time. I don't have the money. I don't know if this is the right thing to do."

And we use those reasons, just like I did, as excuses not to take action on the things we already know we should be doing.

Ryan 11:51We do this in so many areas business, health, marriage.

When I talk to men, I tell them it's like putting on weight in your marriage. When we gain weight, we don't wake up one morning and suddenly we've gained 50 pounds. We don't look in the mirror and think, "Oh my gosh, what happened?"

It's one decision repeated day after day. It's the little things.

Guys come to me shocked and surprised. "She said for years that she felt alone. She felt stressed. She didn't feel like I was there for her. I thought it was just a season. I thought it was because of the kids."

Well, all of those things were one pound at a time, one pound at a time. And now your marriage is so overweight that she can't imagine staying in it anymore.

So you have two choices.

You can continue doing what you've been doing, and you already know where that road goes. I talk to men all the time about the fork in the road. You can keep doing what you're doing, and that road is definitely not going to end well.

If you had just continued to push through, Doug, saying, "Forget it," that doesn't end well either.

There's another road. It's darker. It's scarier. It's unknown because you've never walked down it before. It's new. It's different.

What are people going to think? Is my business going to be okay? Am I going to be able to pay all the bills? What is my wife going to think?

There are all these unknowns down that road.

But that road leads away from the path you already know ends badly.

When a guy says, "I want to be all in, but I need to save up. I need to wait. It's not the right time," I tell him, "Okay, fine. You're choosing the road that you already know leads somewhere bad."

It's like saying, "I know I have heart disease, but I'm going to give it another six months because I really need to push through this season."

Great. But what happens if you've only got three months?

At that point, it doesn't matter.

You have to decide that enough is enough. All the extrapolating what happens at work, what my mom is going to think, what about this, what about that you've got to push those things aside and focus on the thing that matters most.

Because if Doug doesn't address the heart disease, he's not going to be doing business anymore. He's not going to be there for his wife anymore. He's not going to be there for his kids anymore.

It's the same thing with marriage.

If you don't prioritize solving that as the most important thing, then everything else that falls out from it the financial fallout, the business struggles, seeing your kids only half the time, losing your wife that's not the path you want to go down.

You have to commit to something different, especially imperfectly, especially when the timing is wrong, and especially when it's inconvenient, simply because it's important.

Doug Holt 14:59Man, well said.

Guys, like I said, Ryan has been through the program and has been an advisor for years. You've been an advisor longer than most men's coaching companies have even existed. It's crazy.

Apologies again for being late. We love doing these podcasts, but our priority is the men that we serve.

Ryan 15:20That's right.

Doug Holt 15:21Guys, this laser-focused insight that Ryan has given you if you resonate with any of it, I encourage you to jump on a call with Ryan or any of our advisors. You can ask for Ryan specifically.

If you're interested in learning more about the program, he's an amazing man and someone worth getting to know.

This is the kind of laser-focused coaching and insight you get on one of those calls.

You don't have to go with TPM. We've been doing this for over 10 years. We've helped thousands of men with guys like Ryan leading the way.

But do something.

In the moment of insight, as I always say, take massive action.

If you want this type of laser-focused advice, guys like Ryan and myself are here for you.

Gentlemen, Ryan, thank you again for everything you do for men around the world and for all the families you've helped save. You're truly an inspiration.

I love you, man.

RyanLove you too, brother.