Episode #933
Have you ever considered how much your environment impacts your growth?
In this episode, we dive deep into the power of surrounding yourself with the right people and how it influences your relationships, career, and personal growth. Doug and Coach Chris discuss why men often prioritize material purchases over investing in themselves and their relationships—and the hidden cost of that mindset.
You’ll hear about:
- Why your environment shapes your habits and future.
- How to audit your time, money, and energy for maximum ROI.
- The key to building emotional safety in your marriage.
- A game-changing perspective on self-investment and growth.
If you’ve ever felt stuck in your personal life or marriage, this episode will give you the clarity to break free and take action. Listen now to discover how the people around you and the choices you make today can shape your future.
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Transcription
Doug Holt 0:00
I start hanging out with four guys who run all the time—that’s just what they do. They’re runners, right? Guess what I’m going to start doing? I’m probably going to start running. Absolutely. If I hang out with five guys that just want to drink beer and watch football, guess what I’m going to be doing? Drinking beer and watching football on Sunday.
For me, at least, I want to surround myself with guys who cherish their families, want to be good fathers—that’s the most. That’s a big one for me, the father thing—and also want growth.
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of The TPM Show, and today we are greeted once again with Coach Chris. Chris and I were talking offline, and today we have a really interesting episode for you, so stick around to the end because there’s going to be some action points for you.
Chris, thanks for being here, man.
Christopher Hansen
Yeah, glad to be back.
Doug Holt
Yeah. Well, I love the conversation we were having over coffee earlier, and I thought we could maybe talk about it in this episode.
Christopher Hansen
Yeah, absolutely.
Doug Holt
So, you were bringing up the idea—which I really liked—about where we choose to invest our resources, our time, and our money. So, talk a little bit about that.
Christopher Hansen 1:08
Yeah, you know, I spend a lot of time on conversations with guys all over the place, and a lot of times the idea of investing itself is new. Sometimes just putting any money out for that personal growth is really hard for guys to bite off.
What I recognize—and I realized—is that most of them probably have some really nice golf clubs. They probably have some pretty nice TVs on their walls, right? And so, it goes to show, where are we putting our resources—our time, our energy, our money—and what’s the return on that, right?
To me, it was a really good kind of eye-opener. Like, what am I doing? What am I sitting on that I’m putting all this time and energy into?
And, yeah, those hobbies are great, and they’re important, right, to fill our cups. But at the same time, if my wife leaves versus my golf clubs, what’s going to affect me more?
Doug Holt 1:58
You know, I was just talking to a guy the other day who’s a friend, and he just bought his kids new electric scooters, right? And so, not super expensive, but a healthy investment. I think they’re two, $300 each. And so those add up quickly, and that’s just one example.
And those are easy, justifiable purchases to go through. And at the same time, he was complaining about his wife wanting to go to a retreat. And I sat down and said, Dude, you’re going to get a 10x ROI on her happiness coming back from a retreat than you are on any material things you’re going to end up buying.
Christopher Hansen 2:31
I mean, that’s anytime I’ve done anything like that, or even had time to go out and just work on myself—or as simple as taking a trip by yourself and just kind of doing a reboot. That time and energy you invest in yourself—you just show up better, right?
And so, I don’t know. I think there’s a lot to it. I think it’s just so easy to distract ourselves, yeah, with other things and not really focus on working on ourselves.
Doug Holt 2:54
It is. And you’ve got to remember—I mean, I just bought a new big-screen TV for my house, and for the first two to three weeks, everybody in the house was excited, right? They wanted to be in front of the new shiny TV and everything. And then afterwards, it just dies off.
Whereas personal growth or development—whether it be investing in yourself for business or, like you said, taking a sabbatical or a little time to yourself—when you’re investing in yourself, no one can ever take that away from you.
And I think people forget about that. They’re looking for the easy dopamine hit of, This makes me feel good. I’m going to buy the ATV, the motorcycle, the golf clubs, or whatever else it might be, not realizing that they’re probably running from some kind of internal thing that they’re not fixing.
Christopher Hansen 3:35
Yeah. I mean, it’s a great point. Anything we buy that’s materialistic is only going to bring short-term happiness, but anytime we do that work on ourselves, it’s a forever gift.
Doug Holt 3:44
It is, and it stacks on itself. Eventually, you’re going to clean out the junk and what have you. And how often are you using that ATV, or the dirt bike, or whatever? The first year, like I said, you’re probably using it often. And then after that, it just starts collecting dust. Exercise equipment is a classic example people make fun of, right?
Christopher Hansen 4:03
Yeah. Or my boat—that’s another great one.
Doug Holt 4:07
Boats are notorious, yeah. And so is exercise equipment. I mean, literally, people buy it hoping that the equipment they bought is going to do the work for them. And it doesn’t—it doesn’t happen.
And then we see this. I mean, you and I have invested significant amounts of money and time in developing ourselves time and time again. What I would encourage the guys to do is, first and foremost, do it for yourself. But if the impetus is to save your marriage, or to advance your career, or your job—whatever it is that you’re doing it for—just do it. Take that leap and take that step to really do it because it compounds.
Christopher Hansen 4:45
Yeah. And I think there’s also—I mean, it kind of falls in line with—sometimes, as guys, we’re kind of conditioned to just handle it ourselves, handle it ourselves. And so, the idea of going to get help on a personal level—even sometimes on a business level—can feel foreign.
Well, the business I ran in the past, there’s a sense of pride you have to put aside to say, “Hey, maybe I don’t know this as well as I think I do.”
Doug Holt 5:05
Yeah. Well, I mean, most of the guys I know—probably not you, Chris—but they have a story like, “I can pull myself up by my own bootstraps. I’ll outwork it. I’ll out-hustle it.”
And it’s so funny because I get the same response whenever I bring this up. I brought this up at one of our Alpha Resets, which is one of our transformational events (there’s one happening next door right now, which you’ve been through).
I had 10 guys at the event, and I said, “How many of you have this story that you can out-hustle or outwork the next guy?”
All the hands went up. I said, “How is that possible, right? Because there has to be one guy that outworks the others. You can’t have 10 guys outworking each other.”
But it goes back to this whole idea of investing in yourself. And so this hit me in my marriage, where I realized that my wife—when she married me—she married the possibility of me, right? Of who she saw me becoming.
And when guys—or when I—invested in myself, my wife saw that subconsciously. She didn’t articulate it this way, but this is my analogy, of course. She saw it as the stock rising in her investment, so to speak.
That’s the way I look at it. If I’m investing in Nvidia, Tesla, or Coca-Cola, I want to invest in a stock that I think is going to rise and grow. And so, as humans—as men—how do we grow? Well, we have our physical fitness; we can grow there. But we also have our emotional, mental, and spiritual awareness that we can increase.
If you’re not working on it, you’re going to be degrading, right? Because if you’re not growing, you’re dying—you’re degrading yourself. So for a lot of the guys you’re probably talking to, they’re in a situation where their partners are thinking, “Hey, I knew who he could have been, but now I’m just seeing him degrade. He’s sitting on the couch drinking beer at night. He’s not doing anything with the kids. We’re arguing all the time.”
Or what happens to a lot of guys (this happened to me) is I ended up with a roommate with a ring, right? And not the cool one who throws you a beer while watching SportsCenter and says, “Hey, what’s up?” when you come home. It’s the one who doesn’t even want you in the house.
Christopher Hansen 7:11
That’s it. I mean, you get comfortable, and that’s where we think we have to do all these things to get the job, get the career, get the house, get the wife, and then we can just go on cruise control.
But we can’t, because the expectation they had and what they saw in us doesn’t stop. If you’re in a long-term relationship, you have to continue to grow and change and be a better version of yourself because that’s what they’re expecting to see from you—100%.
Doug Holt 7:36
And I look at this now, at this stage of my development, as such an amazing opportunity because I get the chance to grow. Somebody else can see in me my potential that maybe I can’t see in myself. You can’t see your own blind spots, as we all know, and they can say, “Hey, this is a tweak you need to make.”
Now, unfortunately, the way most people go about explaining this to us is the worst way possible, right? Our partners are the ones who can trigger us or upset us more than anybody.
Yeah, it’s like having siblings. They know exactly which buttons to push. I know my brothers—if I want to piss them off, I know exactly what to say or do that will set them off every time. My wife does too—consciously or subconsciously.
Christopher Hansen 8:19
I had a call just recently, and the guy, multiple times in the conversation, said his wife was pushing him to get a better job. And I hear that often. But there’s so much he doesn’t quite understand. I think what she’s asking for—it’s not always about the money. She just wants to see him grow and become the man she originally saw in him, right?
Doug Holt 8:41
Yeah, my experience is that when a partner asks a guy to get a different job or change jobs, it’s almost never about the money. It’s really interesting. The guy often translates it into being all about the money, of course.
But when I’ve talked to wives, they’re like, “No, I don’t care about the money. When we’re good, I’d sleep in a tent with this guy. When we’re bad, I don’t even want to be near him, regardless of how much money he has. It’s about how he feels and how he shows up.”
So many guys out there are bitching and complaining about their jobs and what they do. And you think about it—how many hours a week are you at your job? 30? 40? If you’re an owner, 60, 80? You never really turn it off as a business owner, or even as a manager.
If you’re going to spend that much time doing something, why aren’t you investing in doing something you actually enjoy? Not everybody has that opportunity, and I get that—I really do. But if that’s the case, then do something outside of your job that allows you to find fulfillment and growth, yeah?
Christopher Hansen 9:45
Yeah, that can be a lot of different things, right? There are so many options.
Doug Holt 9:50
Yeah, I think guys need to figure out what that is for them. If you’re struggling in your marriage, fix that. If you’re struggling with your kids, fix that. If you’re battling internal struggles like we all do—work on that.
And surround yourself with other like-minded men who are on that journey. Unfortunately, we’ve all heard the saying, “You’re the product of the five people you spend the most time with.” But actually do an audit—do an audit of the people you’re surrounding yourself with. Look at the language they’re using.
Take a step back. I’ve done this several times in my life, Chris. Take a step back, almost like you’re looking in from a third-person perspective. I remember doing this at a barbecue. I looked around and thought, Okay, of all these people, if we continue in the direction we’re going, where are we going to be 5 or 10 years from now?
The reality hit me—I didn’t like that reality. So I asked myself, What do I need to do to change that?
Part of it for me was changing the people I spent time with. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the people I was hanging out with—it had nothing to do with them. It was just the conscious choice of where I wanted to go.
When you look at a community or the ability to surround yourself with like-minded people, it’s been scientifically proven that it’s the easiest way to create behavioral change.
You know the analogy that’s commonly used—and this was studied—if I decide I want to be a runner, and I start hanging out with four guys who run all the time, that’s just what they do. They’re runners, right? Guess what I’m going to start doing? I’m probably going to start running.
If I hang out with five guys who just want to drink beer and watch football, guess what I’m going to be doing? Drinking beer and watching football on Sunday. So, for me, I want to surround myself with people who cherish their families, want to be good fathers—that’s the big one for me—and also want growth. And I like talking about business, so that’s a fun thing to surround myself with too.
Christopher Hansen 11:52
I’m very similar. I want to be inspired, right? The guys that are willing to do the work and change, even the guys who are new to this, that fire they have to get on a call with me because they want it—that gives me inspiration.
The times I get to come out and hang out with you—I get inspired because you’re teaching me something I don’t know. It’s the most important thing—who we surround ourselves with.
Doug Holt 12:19
Yeah, that’s why, selfishly, I like the TPM community. For anybody listening to this podcast, we deliberately market and talk to people that we like—people we want to hang out with, action-takers.
Going back to the original thought we talked about over coffee, this idea that, “I don’t have the time, I don’t have the money.” There are two things I often do when I coach individuals. I talk about it a lot in this podcast because I do it so often. If we were coaching and you said, “Doug, I just don’t have the time,” I’d say, Pull up your calendar. Show me your calendar, and I’ll show you your priorities.
Likewise, if you said, “Doug, I just don’t have the money to make the investment,” I’d say, Pull up your bank account. Let’s see where you’re spending your money. Your dollar is a vote. I look at every dollar spent as a vote. What are you voting for?
Are you voting for a healthy lifestyle? Are you voting for a healthy marriage? Are you voting for your dreams and aspirations? Or are you buying golf clubs you don’t use? Are you buying the exercise bike that’s now a coat rack?
Christopher Hansen 13:39
I love that. I’m so using that.
Doug Holt 13:43
Well, it’s true. I mean, think about it. If you just pull it up—and most people don’t look at their finances—I don’t like looking at mine either. That’s why I have someone to help me out.
When I sit down with my wife and we look at our finances, we ask, “Hey, where are we consciously spending our money? What are we doing? You’re buying all these clothes—is that what you want?” And when we look at it, my wife says, “No, actually, I want to go on vacation. I want to travel as a family.”
Okay, cool. Let’s return all these things and plan the vacation. It doesn’t have to be lavish—we can go camping, we can do something. But again, I’m looking at the calendar and the bank account to see where our priorities are actually focused. And does Doug 20 years from now agree with that focus?
Christopher Hansen 14:27
Yeah, because the return on your investment is key. That piece of clothing your wife bought isn’t going to last, but those memories from the vacation with your kids will.
Doug Holt 14:35
Yeah, it’s huge, man. And you also have to look at it from the perspective of ROI, like you sai For a lot of guys, it’s about making those intentional decisions. Are you spending time at your kid’s basketball game? Are you going to the school lunch when you can, even if it means taking time off work?
Because, to the best of your ability, being present at those actual events makes them magical. The stuffed animals, the scooters, the gifts—kids will forget about those next year. But they won’t forget about those moments you spent with them.
Christopher Hansen 15:09
Yeah, we see that all the time around our house at Christmas. We have a pretty big family, and the kids always get so much. And what I’ve realized is that, while we’re fortunate and grateful for the love they receive, you quickly notice they’re really only interested in a couple of things.
The other things don’t get much attention because it’s just too much. It’s the same in a kid’s world as it is in our world.
Doug Holt 15:32
Oh yeah. I mean, I tell my kids all the time—my son will come to me and say, “I’m bored.” I’ll say, “Cool, I’m going to give away all your toys then.”
He’s like, “No, no, no!” And I’ll say, “Well, if you’re not playing with them, then it doesn’t really matter, right?”
He knows I’m kidding—or at least, I think he does—but it’s about teaching the idea of where are we investing our time, energy, and thoughts?
For a lot of the guys listening, they’re in a relationship that isn’t working as well as they’d like it to. And it doesn’t have to be in the gutter, so to speak. You deserve more than average. I think all of us do. We deserve greatness.
We only get one shot at this game we call life. So, where are you investing your resources? You can always get back money, but you can’t get back time. That’s proven. We all know it, but very few of us live like that. And if your relationships are crumbling, your time is running out fast. That’s the biggest thing when we do the rocking chair test, Chris.
It’s the idea that when you’re in your 80s, sitting on the porch with a whiskey or lemonade or iced tea, reflecting on your life, what is it you’ll be most proud of? Ten times out of ten, guys say, “My family.” But how often do we, as men, invest in learning how to relate and grow in our relationships?
Christopher Hansen 17:01
Yeah, we’re not. That’s the thing. And we still hold onto this idea of, “I need to provide; I need to protect,” right?
Doug Holt 17:09
Hey, guys, I wanted to interrupt this episode because it’s dawned on me that many of you aren’t aware we actually have a book on How to Save Your Marriage Without Talking About It.
Thousands of men have read it and reviewed it. I want to give you the opportunity to do the same.If you’re interested, you can grab it—it’s a short read, but it’s helped a lot of men, just like you. Maybe you’re not ready for the Activation Method yet, but this is a small entry point that can really turn things around for you.
Head over to Amazon. We’ve priced it as low as Amazon will let us, so you have a resource to start getting results in your marriage right now. Now, let’s get back to the episode.
Christopher Hansen 17:45
But what about that emotional support? That’s something none of us really know how to do.
Doug Holt 17:51
I love that.
I had a conversation with Coach Andy Tor in this very room. If you go back and listen to it, I think the episode was called something like Understanding Your Assignment, or You Missed the Assignment.
He has a great analogy for this.
The “provider, protector” role—that’s the base. That’s not the gold star. You don’t get a gold star for just doing that. What I missed—and I think most men miss—is that protection isn’t just physical. It is, but it’s also emotional protection.
And I didn’t get that. I remember my wife saying, “I don’t feel safe.” At the time, we were in Santa Barbara. I was playing competitive soccer, doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I felt like I was a very safe guy to be around.
I wasn’t violent toward her or anyone else. I’d never laid a hand on her. So I thought, “What the f*** do you mean you don’t feel safe?” That’s when I started to learn and understand the concept of emotional safety—something we, as men, don’t often talk about.
Christopher Hansen 18:54
I mean, I missed it so hard until I found you guys and went through the program. It was like my 101 on emotional intelligence and understanding what it meant. I always thought I just had to do those two things—provide and protect. Same story—she didn’t feel comfortable, and she wasn’t fulfilled.
Doug Holt 19:11
Yeah, it reminds me… Man, yesterday—guilty pleasure here—sometimes I’ll watch social media clips, and there was an SNL clip. I’m probably going to butcher this and get myself canceled, but it was the guy on SNL who’s openly gay.
He’s talking about his girlfriends, saying, “I love hanging out with the girls, you know.” And then he says something like, “But there’s so much drama.” And so the advice is to “get a straight friend.”
In that scene, there’s a football player sitting there, and he goes, “Oh, man, my dad died.” And then he immediately apologizes, saying, “Oh, sorry for talking about it.”
The skit is about how straight men communicate differently and how little we actually talk about what’s going on in our real lives. The idea is that while gay men might need to hang out with straight men to avoid the drama, straight men need safe spaces to open up.
Obviously, it’s an SNL skit, and I’m butchering it, but you can go look it up. The point is, us guys—we rarely communicate about what’s really happening in our world unless we’re in an environment where we feel safe to do so.
Christopher Hansen 20:17
A lot of the calls I jump on, the guys are pretty closed off in the beginning because you can tell they haven’t had the opportunity to talk to another person—especially a stranger.
It takes a while to build that trust. But when they do open up, it’s crazy. They’ve been holding so much in that they just need to let out.
From the start of the call, you can feel the heaviness on them. By the end of the call—regardless of what direction we go—you can feel the lightness and hope just because they’ve released what they’ve been holding onto.
They’ve been wanting to express these things but either can’t express them to their wives or have tried, but it hasn’t come across right. There’s just too much mud on the glass, you know?
Doug Holt 20:58
Absolutely. And for you guys listening or watching us on YouTube who may not know this—for the last eight years, TPM has only worked with business owners and C-suite executives.
C-suite executives only came into the fold last year. And recently, we opened up a program called TPM Navigate for non-business owners, and Chris is heading that program up for us.
Chris, you’ve been getting on calls with a lot of these men. Your calendar is booked solid. As soon as you open your calendar, guys are flooding in for the opportunity to talk and get into the program.
One of the things we talked about over coffee—transparently—was the fact that a lot of these guys are saying, “Hey, I don’t know if I can afford to invest in saving my marriage or fixing what’s wrong.”
But we know they have the WaveRunner, the ATV, the motorcycle, the golf clubs. It’s just that whole mental shift that all guys—business owners and non-business owners—need to make.
Where am I investing my money? And—this is the one I added—where am I investing my time? Those are the two biggest excuses we make for everything.Christopher Hansen 18:54
I mean, I missed it so hard until I found you guys and went through the program. It was like my 101 on emotional intelligence and understanding what it meant. I always thought I just had to do those two things—provide and protect. Same story—she didn’t feel comfortable, and she wasn’t fulfilled.
Doug Holt 19:11
Yeah, it reminds me… Man, yesterday—guilty pleasure here—sometimes I’ll watch social media clips, and there was an SNL clip. I’m probably going to butcher this and get myself canceled, but it was the guy on SNL who’s openly gay.
He’s talking about his girlfriends, saying, “I love hanging out with the girls, you know.” And then he says something like, “But there’s so much drama.” And so the advice is to “get a straight friend.”
In that scene, there’s a football player sitting there, and he goes, “Oh, man, my dad died.” And then he immediately apologizes, saying, “Oh, sorry for talking about it.”
The skit is about how straight men communicate differently and how little we actually talk about what’s going on in our real lives. The idea is that while gay men might need to hang out with straight men to avoid the drama, straight men need safe spaces to open up.
Obviously, it’s an SNL skit, and I’m butchering it, but you can go look it up. The point is, us guys—we rarely communicate about what’s really happening in our world unless we’re in an environment where we feel safe to do so.
Christopher Hansen 20:17
A lot of the calls I jump on, the guys are pretty closed off in the beginning because you can tell they haven’t had the opportunity to talk to another person—especially a stranger.
It takes a while to build that trust. But when they do open up, it’s crazy. They’ve been holding so much in that they just need to let out.
From the start of the call, you can feel the heaviness on them. By the end of the call—regardless of what direction we go—you can feel the lightness and hope just because they’ve released what they’ve been holding onto.
They’ve been wanting to express these things but either can’t express them to their wives or have tried, but it hasn’t come across right. There’s just too much mud on the glass, you know?
Doug Holt 20:58
Absolutely. And for you guys listening or watching us on YouTube who may not know this—for the last eight years, TPM has only worked with business owners and C-suite executives.
C-suite executives only came into the fold last year. And recently, we opened up a program called TPM Navigate for non-business owners, and Chris is heading that program up for us.
Chris, you’ve been getting on calls with a lot of these men. Your calendar is booked solid. As soon as you open your calendar, guys are flooding in for the opportunity to talk and get into the program.
One of the things we talked about over coffee—transparently—was the fact that a lot of these guys are saying, “Hey, I don’t know if I can afford to invest in saving my marriage or fixing what’s wrong.”
But we know they have the WaveRunner, the ATV, the motorcycle, the golf clubs. It’s just that whole mental shift that all guys—business owners and non-business owners—need to make.
Where am I investing my money? And—this is the one I added—where am I investing my time? Those are the two biggest excuses we make for everything.
Christopher Hansen 22:06
Yeah. The guys, at the end of the calls, are like, “You know what? It’s going to be a lot less expensive than my divorce will be.” And I’m like, “I can promise you that. Guaranteed.”
Doug Holt 22:16
Yeah. Some of the guys I work with one-on-one are high-net-worth individuals. It’s over six figures to work with me one-on-one, and I don’t say that to impress you, but to impress upon the people listening.
One guy I was talking to said, “Dude, if I get divorced, this is going to be expensive.” But he’s a smart guy. He said, “The money is one thing, but the emotional toll it’s going to take on me and my business—I’m not going to be able to focus.”
And he said, “Honestly, I want to stay married if I can, so I’m willing to work on it.”
That’s the mentality a guy needs. You’ve got to say, “Hey, I’m going to go all in until I can’t go anymore.”
Now, not all marriages work out—it’s just the way it is. But the idea of going all in and doing your best until you reach that breaking point, or until the decision is no longer in your hands and she makes it for you—that’s the key.
Christopher Hansen 23:06
That was me. In 2020, when I found you guys, I was at that breaking point. When I talked to you, I decided I was going to commit and give everything I had to this last effort.
That way, I could walk away knowing I gave it my all.
And it’s worth it to do that and invest in it because, anytime there’s that kind of disruption in your personal life, how can you work on anything else? It takes over everything.
You’re not going to be successful at work. You’re not going to be successful as a parent. It clouds everything. So, it’s really important to prioritize that.
And I love when the guys come on and they’re not in that desperate place. They recognize things aren’t going right, and they’re being proactive. Those guys have the best chance of getting where they want to be because they didn’t wait too long.
Doug Holt 23:57
Yeah. What a lot of guys forget is that over 50% of all marriages in the U.S. end in divorce. I’m not sure about the UK or Canada, but I’d guess it’s pretty similar.
Nobody goes into their wedding day saying, “Yeah, I’m probably going to be part of that 50%.” Everyone thinks, “We’ve got this. We’ll figure it out.”
Of those divorces, over 70% are initiated by women. That number climbs to over 90% if the woman has a college degree or higher.
A lot of times, guys think, “Well, it’s not bad. It’s not great, but it’s not horrible.” Meanwhile, she’s dropping hint after hint after hint, and before they know it, it’s too late.
She’s like, “Hey, here are the lawyer’s papers.”
Christopher Hansen 24:57
Yeah, and one of the questions I ask guys to help them understand is: What questions are being asked of you?
A lot of times, as men, we don’t compute what’s actually being said to us. Sometimes, they’re being incredibly direct, but we just sweep it under the rug.
Doug Holt 25:18
Right—totally sweep it under all the other things under the rug. It’s what I call “hopium.”
We survive off hopium: “I hope tomorrow will be better. I hope in a month this will pass. I hope she won’t be as upset.”
Or, what I did—Total Mr. Nice Guy. “Okay, she’s not happy? I’ll show her.”
I’d flip the house upside down, clean everything, crank up the music, and scrub the house top to bottom. My wife would come home and say, “Oh, you didn’t clean the oven.”
And I’d lose it. That was my breaking point.
I’d think, “I’m doing all this, and you don’t even notice?”
What I didn’t realize was that it wasn’t about the cleaning or the surface-level things—it was about emotional safety and connection.
And when I felt like I was doing so much and she wasn’t seeing it, I’d hit resentment. And then I’d snap—not physically, but I’d get angry.
I’d think, “This is BS. You don’t get it.”
Christopher Hansen 26:25
I was telling you this morning—I’ve done that in my relationship too.
Doug Holt 26:28
Yeah. It’s a common pattern. You know, Dr. Glover has that book No More Mr. Nice Guy. For me, that book—and I’ve read it a few times, or listened to the audio version a few times—it just codifies where guys are.
It’s like, “Oh, that’s me.”
What happens in that scenario—and I know we’re going off topic here—is that we flip the dynamic in the relationship.
When I was being the guy who cleaned the house and tried to make my wife happy, what I was really saying was, “I need your external validation.”
And what she was receiving was, “I’m no longer safe.”
Because if I’m relying on her validation, then how am I going to protect her from anyone else in the outside world? If she can crush me, then what about the people she’s scared of?
Christopher Hansen 27:21
You’re speaking two different languages—or you’re trying to make deposits with the wrong currency at the wrong bank.
Doug Holt 27:26
That’s a great analogy. Yeah, there’s the language analogy, which is solid, but I really like the currency one.
It’s like trying to take British pounds to a U.S. bank, or vice versa. That’s pretty tough.
And again, I know the guys you’re getting on calls with, and the guys I talk to, are grappling with this whole idea of investing, right?
What are you investing in?
What I’d encourage the guys listening to this call or talk to do is to fast forward 10 years. What is it you hope you will have invested in?
Do you hope you invested in your learning and growth for your business?
Do you hope you invested in that set of golf clubs?
Do you hope you invested in learning how to relate to the opposite sex—because, let’s be honest, men and women are practically different species?
Or do you hope you bought the boat?
Where are you 10 years from now, thinking, “This is the most important thing to me”?
I’ll let every man make his own decision—no judgment. If you want the boat, get the boat. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a boat. I love boats.
But for me, when I’m looking at where I’m going to travel or where I’m going to go, I think about, “Where’s that investment for Doug 10 years from now?”
As a father, a husband, and a businessman, where am I going to get the most growth for myself?
Christopher Hansen 28:47
Yeah, I agree. Doing a five-year or ten-year projection forces you to visualize what you want to be in those years and make sure everything you’re doing is aligning with where you plan to go, right?
Doug Holt 28:58
Yeah. Well, think about it this way: I’m 47. If I could go back in time to my 37-year-old self, would I tell him to do a couple of things differently? Darn betcha, right?
So, what does 57-year-old Doug know in retrospect that I should be doing now?
When I think like that, I kind of create a checklist of things, like, “Oh, I’ve got to stop that thing. Gotta start doing that. Start looking at longevity versus just physical fitness.”
I start tweaking those things. And I think for a lot of men listening here, their future selves would tell them to invest in their own personal growth—especially in the area of relationships.
Christopher Hansen 29:41
I think the marriage rate alone shows how much work needs to be done in that area.
Doug Holt 29:46
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Well, man, thanks for coming on again, and thanks for taking on TPM Navigate to help these guys. Clearly, we haven’t marketed or said anything, and your calendar is already jam-packed. So thanks for taking the time to help these men.
Christopher Hansen 30:01
I’m really excited about the program. It seems to be growing really quickly. And yeah, we’re going to be able to help a lot of guys, a lot of marriages, and a lot of families.
Doug Holt 30:08
Yeah. And as we say, our mission here is to save children by saving their fathers first. Awesome job, gentlemen. As I always say, in the moment of insight, take massive action. I think here’s a really big point—you look 10 years ahead. For me, I’m 47 now, so at 57, what does my future self want me to be investing in now?
In terms of education, growth, and finances, where should I put my dollars? Where should I put my time and resources? I want you to answer that for yourself. What is it? What are the most important things when you look back in retrospect?
I’ve been doing this for a long, long time—several decades now—and with that, I’ve had the opportunity of talking to thousands of men just like you. And I can tell you: relationships are a huge one. It’s not only about relationships with other people, but also the relationship with yourself.
That was a hard one for me to really grasp over time, but I started to understand it more and more. When we fill our cups, we can actually help other people, too. But that starts with taking action for yourself.
And you’ve got to do it. If not now, when? When’s the time for you? Look at your calendar and find that time for yourself. Like I said, Show me your calendar, and I’ll show you your priorities. Show me your bank account, and I’ll show you your priorities as well.
Gentlemen, take massive action. We’ll see you next time on The Powerful Man Show.
