Episode #868
In this episode, we delve into the often-overlooked power of the stories we tell ourselves—and how these narratives can become chains that hold us back from living a truly free and fulfilling life. They explore the subtle ways these self-imposed stories seep into our minds, dictating our actions, shaping our beliefs, and ultimately, limiting our potential.
Through candid personal anecdotes and actionable advice, Doug and Tim unravel the complex web of how these stories are formed, why we cling to them, and most importantly, how we can begin to let them go. They discuss the impact of these narratives on different areas of our lives, from relationships and marriage to business and personal growth, offering practical steps to break free from these mental constraints.
If you’re feeling stuck—whether in your marriage, your career, or your personal journey—this episode is a must-listen. It’s not just about identifying the stories that are holding you back, but about learning to rewrite them, empowering you to reclaim your power, and step into a life of greater purpose, peace, and joy. Tune in and start your journey towards true liberation and self-mastery.
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Transcription
Tim Matthews 0:00
So it takes a level of humility to be able to accept and admit that you might be wrong, and definitely a level of honesty to admit when you’re telling the stories, and a level of courage to be able to then course-correct, whatever that may look like. So it’s going to be tough. Most people don’t do that. You know, most people listening to this show will not take action on it. That’s the reality.
Doug Holt 0:37
What if I told you that letting go could save your relationship? Now, what I’m going to talk to you about is a simple methodology and a conversation I recently had with one of the men that I work with privately, one-on-one, and it’s this idea of letting go. We’re going to talk about it in more depth and then show you how you can apply it, not only to your marriage but also to other aspects of your life. Tim, as always, thanks for being here, man. These last few podcasts we’ve done have just absolutely been a blast. Yeah, they have. I love being here with you. It’s funny, for guys that watch this on YouTube, they’ll see the introduction that our marketing team made for the podcast. I don’t know if you’ve seen the recent one they did, but it throws back to podcasts where you and I have done, like, six years ago or so, from hairstyles to looks to goatees, no goatee, beard, no beard. It’s a blast to think about that. Man, I think we’re gonna be at, by the time this airs, I’m gonna ballpark it, and Colton can let us know, but it’s gonna be about 870 or so podcasts by the time this one airs—868 he’s shouting from the corner. So, 868 times we’ve shown up to record these podcasts to bring value back to the men. Now we have some revisits, so what have you, but it’s awesome. It’s epic. Yeah, and today I want to talk about the power of letting go. So, I was talking to this gentleman, and he is in a state where his marriage is great, business great, kids great, health great—he’s crushing it in all five territories. And as we were digesting what this shift was, because six months prior, it wasn’t like that. The house was on fire, right? Everything was burning down. He wanted to get divorced. He wasn’t doing it for religious reasons. In fact, he was hoping his wife would cheat. He was begging and praying his wife would cheat—a very religious man—because that would be the only way he could save face to exit the marriage. So he’s trying to create this situation where his wife cheats because that’s how bad it was for him. Now, his daughters, his kids, they’re not listening to him. It’s all burning down. He’s got all this sage advice, yet they’re not listening. Business crumbling—this man, it was worth quite a bit of money, but everything was crumbling around him, and he let his health go. Six months later, everything’s firing on all cylinders. What did he do? He let go of what he thought his stories around his wife were, and his stories around his kids. And so we went through a bunch of processes to get here, but I’m gonna give the guys today a shortcut. And I know The Surrender Experiment is a book that you love and that kind of concept of surrendering, but this idea of letting go. And so what I told him to do is I said, what would it look like if you just let go of the stories of your wife being nagging? What if you let go of the stories that your wife doesn’t love you? What if you let go of the stories that your kids are missing out on your wisdom—they’re just being kids? What if you let go of all of these stories for 30 days? Just try it for 30 days. And that’s where we started.
Tim Matthews 3:35
Such a powerful concept.
Doug Holt 3:38
It’s a very powerful concept, a very hard one for most men to grasp, definitely hard at times for me, and a lot of guys who are business leaders might have some control issues. I’ve been told that once or twice in business, I might have a few control issues where we know the quality, we know that we’ve gotten here because I can outwork anybody. I can pick myself up by my own bootstraps. You know, all these stories we tell ourselves, and then when we get into relationships, especially, that’s something you cannot outwork.
Tim Matthews 4:11
I have seen, and I don’t want to take this in this direction necessarily, but it’s true, the men that I have seen let go at the biggest degrees have been the guys who go through the reset.
Doug Holt 4:31
Oh, there’s no doubt about it.
Tim Matthews 4:34
Because that process, in itself, is a process of letting go. And there is no theory, there is no book, there’s nothing that replaces or even replicates being put in a situation where you literally have to let go. Because it has to be experienced. And in the process of being experienced, you learn that it’s okay. You learn to find trust in yourself, you learn to find confidence in yourself, you learn to become secure in yourself—all these things. But it’s got to be experienced. It’s much, much harder. Obviously, you’ve done a great job with this guy, and he’s obviously done the same thing. He’s learned it through actually doing it. But the fast track to this, which obviously the reset happens over a number of days—The Activation Method for self includes it, which is a number of weeks—but that’s a fast track, right? And it’s incredible to see the men on the other side of it. That’s why they look different. It’s why they have color in their skin. It’s why they look younger. It’s the before and after pictures we take. You know what they look like. It’s crazy.
Doug Holt 6:00
It is crazy. And this guy, you know, he came to the program to save his marriage, right? And now he has. Part of his process of saving his marriage was letting go of the stories. We have so many men inquire about our programs, and we do have—there’s an application to get in, and you speak to the advisors because we need to make sure it’s a good fit for you and a good fit for us, right? To go through the program. That’s why we have such a high rating and a high success rate with the men, which is, that we know our methodology works, but it doesn’t work for everybody, right? There’s certain guys that—if you’re not willing to put in the work, it’s not going to work for you. It’s not something that just happens by osmosis. You actually have to be a doer. You have to be someone who accepts to do the work and look into themselves. And this guy did, and it was a process to get him there, right? This idea of like, “Hey Doug,” you know, he would say to me, “So you just want me to drop the stories? You don’t get it. She is a, you know, a bitch, or she is this, or she’s doing these things.” And maybe she was. Maybe she was. But do you think the lens when he’s looking at his wife, hoping that she’ll cheat on him so he can divorce her? Do you think she picks up on the energy? Do you think his kids pick up on the fact that he’s resentful because he’s so smart—this guy’s genius-level intelligent—because he’s got so much wisdom, and they’re not listening to it? Do you think his kids pick up on his resentment of that? Now, he loved his wife, he loved his kids. It just wasn’t working for him because he had stacked so many stories on this that he couldn’t use the practices. What’s even funnier? You’re gonna laugh at this. So, at this point, fast forward to today. He told me—today I had a call with him. He said, “Doug, I’ve been working with you for one year and nine days.” It was great. And he said, “You know the stuff in The Activation Method for Relationships?” Because he went through that program first with Mark Smith, I believe, who’s running The Alpha Reset next door for nine men. He goes, “That shit works. If I had just got out of my own way and dropped my stories sooner, this whole thing would have been expedited, right? This whole process.” And what I find, Tim, is the smarter a man is, the harder it is for him to let go, because he solidifies the stories and then finds evidence of why his stories are true. 100%. This guy hasn’t done The Alpha Reset yet. He has not done a reset.
Tim Matthews 8:29
Do you think it would have been his journey would have been expedite? How do you do one 100% he was scared to do a reset.
Doug Holt 8:33
He was scared. Yeah, he was supposed to show up to The Alpha Reset two months ago, and this was his last chance. So a guy and he, I don’t know if he knew this, I told him, but I don’t he knew this because he wants to come to one, he can’t. I was like, Look, you get if you book one and you don’t show up, like you pull out for whatever, insert the excuse. We’ve heard it all, man, like, at this point, we’ve been doing this for eight years, 1000s of men. We’ve heard every excuse under the book. And as valid as some of these excuses are, they are excuses. You can find a way. So his opportunity, his doors closed now, will that door open up a year from now for him, potentially, but right now, you know, we put so much time and energy and resources into getting the men across the line at the reset. It is such an intensive experience. And I love this guy, and I would tell this right to his face, and he listens to the show, so he’s gonna hear this, and he would validate everything I’m saying. He knows that I will tell him the truth, not because I’m a jerk, but I tell him the truth because I love him, and that’s where I think love is. I will tell you the truth despite what implications there might be because he might not like me, he’s not going to like hearing these things potentially. But if he comes from a place of love, a place of caring and play, from a place of wanting to help somebody, then it’s digestible, right? You respect that. But this guy, what I respect is he finally took him some time. Took him some time. Him, but he finally got to the place where he tried this idea of letting go, letting go of the stories, and he reaped the rewards.
Tim Matthews 10:08
Yeah, I just wonder how much quicker his journey would have been as well. How do you have I’ve been a lot quicker the irony is, to go to the reset, would have had to let go.
Doug Holt 10:19
Well, that’s it but I don’t want to get lost in the fact of how quick it’d be. We have guys that saved their marriage within the first week, right? They literally saved their marriage in the first week of our program. We have guys that go to the Alpha Reset, and they come back, every one of them a changed man. That’s what they’ll say. We do anonymous surveys. What I want to highlight about this guy is not the fact that he didn’t come to a reset, not the fact that it took him a little longer than may have, but the fact that he kept working, he didn’t give up. Most people give up. Look at the gym. The whole industry, the fitness industry, is made on you giving up. They make money if everybody Planet Fitness is one of the biggest gym chains in the United States of America. They have pizza night and bagel night for their staff. They literally do, right? They have done everything they can to turn away serious gym goers. Their equipment is, like, a pinkish purple. You’ve worked out one, we worked out one in New Hampshire where did reset. It’s purple and, like, pink, and you can’t drop weights and like, the stuff that serious gymgoers would be into. They’ve made it so those people won’t come. Why? Because they don’t want you to show up. They want you to pay the guilty tax of your membership over and over again. So to me, it’s the people who show up, even when they drop out consistently. I want to praise those guys and praise this guy, and this is what happened to the idea of letting go of stories. I think for a lot of guys, it’s really hard to let go of the stories, because if my wife isn’t a bitch, if my wife isn’t the problem, ooh, could that problem be me?
Tim Matthews 11:53
I’m with you. It’s definitely difficult to let go of the stories. It’s really difficult to let go of them, especially if you’re trying to use willpower. And maybe I’m a bit blindsided, because I just think about getting to the root of it, and I think about, you know, what could a guy do? And obviously, hence the reset. I think that way because it is so hard to do it without being put in a situation where you literally have to practice doing it, because you’re with a group of guys over several days, and the environment and the container is set up.
Doug Holt 12:31
Hey guys, sorry to interrupt this episode, but the reality is, if you are watching or listening to this right now, then you are looking to better yourself, and I applaud you. You’re one of my people, and I want to give you the opportunity to take massive action. So if you haven’t joined The Activation Method yet, it’s our flagship program, do what thousands of other businessmen, just like you, have done, and take action. Be one of the one percenters that actually does the work and takes action. There’ll be a link in the description that’ll take you right to a page. It’ll just give you more information. There is no obligation. Just go check it out and see if it’s a good fit for you. All right, let’s get back to this episode.
Tim Matthews 13:14
Whereas, if you’re at home after getting off a coaching call with yourself or myself, and you can, you know, you tell yourself a story, it becomes increasingly hard. You’ve only got yourself to hold yourself accountable to. So, yeah, I mean, this guy, absolutely acknowledges and praises him, right? The fact is, he keeps showing up, he keeps stepping to the line, he keeps being willing to take risks and be vulnerable and be courageous and lean into it. Because, look, most people don’t do that. You know, most people listening to this show will not take action on it. That’s the reality.
Doug Holt 13:52
We can look at the stats. We know how many people download the shows with the clips and things. And I don’t want, I don’t want to call those, oh, I want to call those guys forward, because I used to be one of those guys in different areas of my life where you go from podcast to podcast. I call it emotional masturbation or educational masturbation. Excuse me, they go from one thing to another just learning. Get a nugget, but don’t apply it. I can’t think of his nickname, so I’m just gonna call him by his first name. Donnie does a great job of taking notes of all the podcasts and posting them. He does a fantastic job. That’s an example of someone who’s applying, right at their own pace, but applying, and I think that’s the key is, you got to run this race at your own pace and your own time and figure out what it’s worth to you. So coaching one-on-one with me is $250,000 for a year. This guy has been working with me for a year and nine days, he told me that, and it’s been great. He renewed, right, that’s kind of the proof in the pudding, in the coaching model like, do they renew? And I only share that with the audience, not to impress them, but to impress upon them. It doesn’t have to be that way. You could choose to let go, and go to an Alpha Reset, right? Do something like that. Have an experience over a course of four days, which is a lot less than a year and nine days, and actually get the results a lot quicker. Some people aren’t ready for that, for whatever reason, and so it does require if you’re not ready, more time, more capital. Some of you guys listening to this right now are paying the price of time because you’re just going to listen to this. Hopefully, you get something from this that you can apply to your life, something Tim says, something I say, and then what you’re missing, though, is compressing time. That’s what The Alpha Reset does to me. Boom. Let’s just get there quickly. You know, it’s four days. No one’s ever said the Alpha Reset’s easy, not one person. In fact, one of the volunteers, Oracle, is in there. I remember day one of his Alpha Reset, him looking at me, Doug, I’ve heard this all before. This is nothing new. Just wait. Just wait, by the end of day one, let alone two and three, his mind was just blown. And now here’s this guy, an amazing guy. He’s been in the program, The Brotherhood, for over two years now. I think he’s in year two, and he’s flown out here, left his business, his family, to hold space for other men going through this process, because it was so transformational for him.
Tim Matthews 16:10
Yeah, and he’s an amazing guy, an amazing guy.
Doug Holt 16:13
And he also had to let go of his stories while he was going through it. That’s that, I think there’s such—what’s the word I’m looking for—texture, I guess. And this concept of letting go, now I just a minute, right?
Tim Matthews 16:27
It takes a lot of wisdom to be able to let go as well. Strength, yeah, strength, awareness, courage. Gotta be very honest with yourself, yeah, in order to be able to let go of the stories, because the ego can be a very strong thing, right? And for a lot of guys, to your point earlier, when you talk about the wife, well, if she isn’t the problem, it’s me. A lot of the guys are gonna fight for their story, because a lot of the time, their identity is built around their story. But the reality is, if they don’t have the result that they want, that story isn’t serving them. So it takes a level of humility to be able to accept and admit that you might be wrong, and definitely a level of honesty to admit when you’re telling the stories, and a level of courage to be able to then course-correct, whatever that may look like. So it’s going to be tough, be it tough on yourself or tough on others—not on others, but because you may have to come clean to others, which is also a very courageous thing to do. So it’s a very practical thing to be able to do, but it’s also a very, it’s a very challenging thing.
Doug Holt 17:45
Yeah, it is. And I think there’s a key to knowing when to let go, not to—there’s a strength in that and a wisdom in that. Hence not unlike the book The Surrender Experiment. Don’t like it. The guy just blames everything on letting go. And it’s just like, come on dude, there’s so much nuance that gets to be added to that. In my opinion, my not-so-humble opinion on that one. But also, you know, the hardest thing is, or could be, realizing that when you’re holding on, that’s what’s slowing you down, right? You’re holding on for control. You’re holding on for something. You’re holding on tightly and not letting go, not jumping in with two feet. So for this guy, he did—by creating these stories about his wife and about his kids, but, you know, and other things. But these stories, to him, they were facts. They were indisputable. He’s a very black-and-white guy, like in other words, it’s this or it’s that—there’s no in-between. When you get him to play in the gray, he’s brilliant, he’s really creative in that area, but getting him in that area can be a challenge. And so with him, right? These stories were facts: “No, Doug, but this happened at this time. She said this exactly, verbatim,” and what have you. When I got him to let go of that—of the animosity, or whatever, the pretense and him thinking he knew what the outcome was—all of a sudden, his wife softens, right? He started using The Hidden Motives Technique that we taught him. All of a sudden, she’s opening up to him in ways that she never has. And all of a sudden, I get on a call with him. Tim, he goes from stressed and anxious, and I get on a call, and I’m like— I was almost at his name—I’m like, “Hey, how’s it going?” And he’s like, “Oh yeah, everything’s great.” “Okay, what’s going on?” And he’s like, “I just, I did what you told me to do six months ago. You know? I let go. I let go of the stories, and all of a sudden, everybody around me is changing.” And then he and I both just erupt in laughter, right? Because we both know the irony in all this; we both know nobody’s changed. They may have a little bit of reflection of his energy, but by letting go of our stories, right? If you have a story—guys listening to this—you have a story about your wife not respecting you, maybe you have a story about how you work so hard and all she does is sit at home with the kids and you deserve more. Yeah, or maybe you have a story about your wife having had an emotional affair or a physical affair. What is the power of letting go of those stories and then learning a methodology of being able to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch?
Tim Matthews 20:14
So much power in that, though.
Doug Holt 20:16
There really is, and from that place, it gives you a jump-off spot for what I call marriage 2.0, right? I know my wife and I were having problems, and we were coming back together. We made a conscious effort, and I said, “Hey, look, what would marriage 2.0 look like? Let’s just—we weren’t getting divorced, but let’s say we end marriage once, and we start a marriage anew. What do we want that to be? Let’s be in a place of creativity. Let’s let go of the old stories of what our marriage used to be, or what it could have been, or all the past. Let’s just dump the past baggage. And if we were to move from today, from this moment, and let go of everything else, what do we want our marriage to be?” We decided to call it marriage 2.0. Cool. What does our second marriage look like? And we start from that place. When we let go of the stories, we’re able to paint a beautiful picture of what we wanted, and how we want to interact. What was acceptable? What were boundaries we could use, right? What are things that were acceptable in our lives? There’s certain things for my wife that are unacceptable. For me, it’s just normal day conversation. You know, you and I banter all the time, back and forth. That’s not her thing. You know, she doesn’t do well with that. So that’s a boundary for her. And I have other boundaries for me, right? And so we started designing these boundaries without the stories, and then we’re able to build something very beautiful.
Tim Matthews 21:38
There’s a lot of power that exists in the gray, a ton.
Doug Holt 21:42
I think it’s the place to live.
Tim Matthews 21:46
I’d go that far. Yeah, there’s a lot of texture, a lot of richness, right, in the area where we question the assumptions that we have. You know, the most dangerous beliefs that we hold are the ones that aren’t questioned. That’s true. That’s a good point. And the gray’s where we question them, the gray’s where we’re open to possibility, where life can really happen. Because otherwise, I mean, if you live in black and white, it just seems like a really strange way to live, as we’re talking about in this context. It seems like a very strange way to live because just living with presuppositions and assumptions that you know the answer or the way or what life holds—I mean, that’s a very boring way to live as well, right? Because where’s the spontaneity, where’s the fun, where’s the exploration? Where’s the adventure? When you drop those things and you question the beliefs that you hold and you’re able to let go of the stories, it creates space for life to be able to flow into the places where it previously wasn’t able to get to.
Doug Holt 22:59
I love that. Yeah, there’s so much there. And this idea of letting go, this idea of the freedom behind letting go, and you can call it surrendering, although I don’t like that word, but there is something special about doing it with forethought or foresight and looking forward to the future. So if a man’s sitting out there, Tim, right now thinking, “Huh, this is interesting. I think maybe I do have a lot of stories about my wife. Our marriage isn’t working the way I want it to or stories about my kids—my relationship with my kids isn’t working.” What’s one thing you’d recommend?
Tim Matthews 23:39
Read the “I thought to be fair”.
Doug Holt 23:44
A lot of people like that book, and that’s great. And I was talking to— I can’t think of his nickname, so I’ll call him Kyle.
Tim Matthews 23:52
Oh yeah. And we’re both going, we hate that book.
Doug Holt 23:53
I don’t hate it. There are problems with, I have issues with some of the premises in that book. But anyway, we don’t have to get into that now.
Tim Matthews 24:00
What’s one thing people can do? Kyle? Consider what they might be missing out on by living in black or white.
Doug Holt 24:08
Boom, let’s leave it there. I think that’s great, gentlemen. In the moment of insight, we always say, “Take massive action.” Tim just gave you an amazing point. What could you be missing right now in your life? The joy, the fulfillment, the woman that you love, the woman you said, “I do” to—what are you missing? The texture, the other colors that are out there? Maybe it’s with your kids. Maybe it’s just with yourself. What are you missing by trying to be right? You know, I remember one mentor of mine once said, “Doug, would you rather be right, or would you rather be happy?” Now, of course, I want both, but if I’m going to choose one of them, I’m going to choose happiness each and every time. And gentlemen, that’s what I want for you. You are meant for more than just average. And now it’s your chance to go out there and get that. Get it. We’ll see you next time on the TPM show.
