The Art of Engaged Indifference: Strengthening Relationships

Episode #1006

Ever get hit with a comment like “you never help around the house” and instantly go on the defensive? Yeah—most men have. In this episode, Doug sits down with TPM advisor and Alpha Reset grad Chris to break down a powerful concept: engaged indifference.

It’s not about shutting down or checking out. It’s about staying connected while keeping your cool—especially when your partner is testing the waters. Doug shares real-life examples, coaching insights, and a few tricks to help you lead with calm, stay curious, and create the kind of emotional safety that invites real connection.

You’ll also hear how this tool can help you in conversations at work, with friends, and most importantly, with yourself.

If you’re tired of reacting and want a better way to respond, this one’s worth a listen.

🎯 Ready to Fix What’s Not Working?
If you’re realizing your reactions are pushing connection further away—and you want a clear path to shift that—check out the free training at fixmarriage.thepowerfulman.com/scales.

You’ll learn exactly what’s been breaking the connection in your relationship, and how to rebuild it without begging, pleasing, or walking on eggshells. It’s simple, practical, and designed for men who are ready to lead again.

Transcription

Doug Holt 0:00If I want connection with my wife, if I want respect from my wife, if I want intimacy with my wife, I get to, as the leader of the house, create an environment for her feminine energy to come out so she can come at me like, "You never clean the house." Now I can be engaged with her, but indifferent of her opinion or the outcome.

Doug Holt 0:19Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of The TPM Show where we bring topics for men just like you, three times every single week, and today is no different. Today we have Christopher Hansen here. He is one of the men that have been through the program. Chris has been through the Alpha Reset, and he also is one of the key advisors here at TPM, who talks to the men men just like you when you inquire about our programs. Chris, thanks for being here, man.

Christopher Hansen 1:12Hey, thanks for having me back, Doug.

Doug Holt 1:14Yeah, well, it's awesome with you living in Sisters, Oregon, where we have the TPM ranch for hosting events. We have The Alpha Reset coming up. In fact, when this will be released, I think The Alpha Reset will have just been over, and you volunteered to spend your time with those guys, and you'll be there as well. I'll be leading The Alpha Reset for those people that don't know. The Alpha Reset I always have to remember to tell people, because we're in it, we've been in it for almost a decade now The Alpha Reset is our flagship experiential event. It's four very full-on, intense days.

And the most common thing that happens at that event, as you know, men come in one way, with some expectations, but they'll almost always say it's the number one, if not the number two, most transformational experience they've had in their entire lives. And that's saying a lot. These are high-performing men. They've got kids, they've birthed children, they've gotten married. So for them to give it the one and two, we put a lot of effort into that.

Christopher Hansen 1:50Yeah, 100%. Well, having been through that event myself, I can tell you that for me, it's just the starting line, honestly. The impact that it's had after and the integration work around it has been... like, it's ever-evolving, the impact that it's had. It's really pretty wild.

Doug Holt 1:54It is. It is, and I'm super honored and excited to lead this group of men. I haven't done any of them this year, which has been great. Our awesome coaches have been stepping in so I could have some more time to work on the academy and other projects that we're releasing the Ascension Blueprint that we'll be launching. So it feels good to be back working with the guys one-on-one here at the the one-on-one and the small groups here at The Ranch.

Christopher Hansen 2:30Yeah, for sure. This will be the first one that I've done as a volunteer, so I'm super excited to get back into it. And I've already kind of planned out the intention like, what I want to get out of it, right? So, it's exciting.

Doug Holt 2:43It's kind of funny. So we have the TPM app, which some men that are in the movement know about we have our own private app that's in there. And I posted a poll question on Monday, like, "Is technology bettering your life or making it worse?" And the reason I bring that up is I I got this Plaud AI recorder. So, I don't know if you've ever seen them. I'm not affiliated with the company at all, but I love it.

And so I walked around the whole house the main the main house and the guest house, and around the ranch detailing everything we want done to make this perfect, so there'd be a checklist made. And I just started thinking, man, I got to share that in the app, because this is a situation where you have a busy owner who's doing so many things, and I need I need a checklist created. It would take me probably an hour to sit down, type everything out. And I literally walked around while Colton, who's our producer, was in the kitchen walking around... he's probably looking at me like, "What's this guy doing? He's talking to his arm." But walking around, listing all the things that would make the environment the perfect environment, and some of the behind-the-scenes items that I won't share here make them all work.

Christopher Hansen 3:52That's wild. So what was the outcome of that poll?

Doug Holt 3:56I don't know the exact numbers, we could pull up the app and look at it. It's really cool in the app, because you can see the percentages of people agree, disagree, or whatever on that kind of poll, which I really love about the app. It's got a heat map in the background, too, so you can see how many people said 40% or 100%. I think it was a mixed bag.

There's some people who said, "Nope, I got to detach. I'm going a different direction. Technology is taking over too much, too intrusive." And other people were saying, "It's changed my life, you know. Now I use a ReMarkable journal or AI, and it's just improved my life so much." My response is always: it's a tool like any other tool, and it all depends on how you use it, right? You got to use it responsibly in a way that best serves your life.

Christopher Hansen 4:38Yeah, for sure. Almost universally, for me, it's not a distraction like, it's a benefit except for social media, for whatever reason. Like, there's no I don't get any value out of social media. I don't do a lot of content creation and things like that. So if I can limit that piece, it's definitely a net positive, for the most part, I guess.

Doug Holt 5:00Yeah, I spend most of my time in our app, in the TPM app, but I do have a curated list of things on YouTube as well as TikTok. So when I go on TikTok, it's fitness, business, and personal development and that's basically all I see. Every once in a while they slip something else in there, and I can go down a rabbit hole in AI. Those are the topics I'm interested in, but I'm not being social on it, so I don't consider it as much social media as a media channel.

Christopher Hansen 5:27Yeah. The issue that I have is that the rabbit holes get me, spend most of my time there. But, interesting.

Well, yeah, I know that we have some questions from the TPM app, speaking of that, that we were wanting to maybe dig into today. Let's tackle one of them. Sound good? So this question comes up quite a bit and in different ways, but I mean, the meat of the question is the idea of "engaged indifference" and what that means. I think it can be a little bit confusing for guys sometimes, because it can be really easy to disengage. Yep. So, do you mind jumping into that?

Doug Holt 6:09No, I don't. When I learned some background, when I learned about the concept of engaged indifference, it sounded funny to me, like engaged indifference like this. It's an oxymoron of sorts, but I think it's paramount. So anybody that's in any relationship needs to practice engaged indifference. And it's almost like a version of stoicism, if you will. It's not, but it is. And so that's where guys can kind of get it wrong a lot.

So where engaged indifference can be in relationships, like a romantic relationship with my wife as an example, can be, she can come at me with a safety test, right? We used to call them shit tests. We realized that women do these for safety, so we call them safety tests. Now they're they're saying, "Am I safe?" We've done lots of episodes on what is a safety test and and how does it actually work, and why do women do them? They do them consciously and unconsciously most of the time.

So within that, engaged indifference means I'm engaged with you, but I'm indifferent of the outcome. So if my wife, as an example, let's say... trying to think of a recent art... we don't we don't seem to argue that much anymore. Not that we don't, but that they're very fleeting and never very, you know, grasp really grabbing things. If my wife were to say, "You never you never help out around the house," right? That's something she said before. Well, first of all, it's not true.

But also the old me let's call it Doug 1.0, 10-plus years ago could read that to be, "You're not good enough," right? That could trigger some stuff with inside of me, of my wife saying, "You're not good enough." So I could go into DEER mode. And DEER is an acronym, as you know, for Defend, Excuse, Explain, React. I was really good at the reacting part. Like, that was really good. "What? What do you mean?" I would instantly get defensive and start listing off, "I did the dishes this morning. How do you think the trash gets taken out? Do you think your car oil changed by itself?" Like, you know, I would just go, and I would go, go, go into this tirade.

Now, what does that do for her? Well, she now is feeling attacked, belittled. So she has two options: she can either attack back to defend herself, or she can withdraw completely. Either option is bad for me if I want connection with my wife, if I want respect from my wife, if I want intimacy with my wife. I can't... I need... I get to, as the leader of the house, create an environment for her feminine energy to come out so she can come at me like, "You never clean the house."

Now, I can be engaged with her, but indifferent of her opinion or the outcome, you know? So when I'm in a state of engaged indifference, that means again, just to repeat myself I'm engaged with you like we're connected. I'm talking with you, but I'm indifferent of what you're gonna say or how you're gonna react to what I say. You can completely disagree with my definition, but that's not going to affect me. I'm in a state of curiosity. I'm curious about your thoughts.

So my wife does that, and I use engaged indifference. So she says, "Oh, you never help around the house."

I could go, "Huh," go curiosity, engage. "Well, what does that mean for you, help around the house?"

And that's when she could go in and the situation's happened to me she'd go, "Well, I mean, you do, it's just right now I'm frustrated at the kids." And now I'm getting more to the source, and she can surrender, vent a little bit. And usually with my wife, she goes, sighs, right? That exhaust if you can't if you're not watching this on YouTube, that exhaust or that letting go is key. She's got this pent-up energy. She now feels safe with me. I've provided a masculine container for her. She can let go, release.

And usually at that time, my wife won't say sorry, but she'll say something like, "Well, yeah, I mean, you help out, just... I'm just frustrated right now. Like, I've been with the kids all day, and I just haven't had an adult conversation. And all... I vacuumed this floor two times today, and look at this, there's crumbs everywhere."

And I could just pull her in, go, "Babe, I got you," right? And then she surrenders, and it's not an issue.

But if I don't go with engaged indifference, Chris, and I react, right? Same situation: "What do you mean? I did the dishes. Car oil doesn't get changed by itself. I work all day." Now she's gonna attack me. She's already hijacked by the kids or whatever's really going on. She leaves and walks away. I'm stuck there, pissed off. She's now mad, maybe crying. And what's the chance of connection or intimacy that evening? Very low.

Christopher Hansen 10:42Yeah, and then you gotta you've got to rebuild that that trust until the the next moment where you have the opportunity to actually exercise it, right? One of the tricks that I like to use in my relationship... there are certain certain things my wife may say that like... that trigger point feels sharp, right? She may say something that it's really hard for me not to react to.

Doug Holt 11:09Hey 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. And not only do you know what's broken, but a step-by-step methodology on how you can fix it. That's the easiest way to do it, right? Otherwise, you're gonna be toiling with things.

That's why I created a free training a training that only shows you how you got to where you are, where your relationship is missing that love, respect, admiration, and even intimacy that it used to have, to how you get it back. How do you retain that where your wife's looking at you the same way she used to look at you when she said, "I do." You know, I don't know about you, but for me, when my wife looks at me like I'm her man, that 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, and I have a free video training for you. You can just click play and see if this resonates for you. Now, back to the podcast.

Christopher Hansen 12:12When I feel that come up, I try to imagine that she's like, just talking about one of her friends, right? She's talking about somebody else. And I find that if you're not familiar with staying in that engaged indifference spot, that can be a really good way to, like, get to that place of just like, "I'm not taking this personally, right? This isn't about me." Even though she's saying it is, it's not about me. And just kind of remove yourself from that piece of it, yeah? And then again, staying completely engaged, no expectation of outcome.

Doug Holt 12:48100%. It's disassociation, right? And it's a great way of doing it. So I'll teach the men that when they're learning engaged indifference. I'm glad you brought this up.

The second thing I'll have guys do is have them picture... so I do this like, what if this was the woman down the street just complaining about her husband or situation? You'd listen, but you wouldn't care, right? Because Frank down the street or whatever didn't take out the trash. No frigging big deal. This woman just needs to get it off her chest.

The second thing I'll have them do is remember that when most people are triggered, they're coming from a childlike state of trauma, right? Or trauma is one of those words I don't like using, but they're coming from a position where it's it's not their best self. So their five-year-old in there is is screaming. So picture your wife as a five-year-old girl. And 100% of the times I ask the men when we're coaching them, I was like, "What'd your wife say to you?" And they'll tell me, and they got upset, and they're yelling and screaming.

I go, "Okay, do you have kids?"

"Well, yeah, Doug, I got kids."

"Okay. Do you remember when your your child was four or five or even that? Imagine a five-year-old little girl coming off a playground, off the streets, and yelling at you. Would you react and yell back?"

"Well, no, no way. No."

You wouldn't, even if it wasn't your kid. The men that we serve in the TPM movement, the powerful men, they they're there to protect people. Like, they're loving men, and they don't want to see any child hurting, right? And they wouldn't react. They'd just laugh like, "Oh, sweetie, you know, it's okay." If you can picture your wife in that state because it is the five-year-old girl inside of her screaming, right, for help, or whatever else she's looking for for me, it's a version of disassociation that can help a lot of guys bridge the gap. Because if you can see her as a five-year-old girl, then you're like, "Oh, that's cute, you know, that's sweet." You gotta be careful how you say that, you know...

Christopher Hansen 14:39Yeah. I think there's a respect aspect of this, right? For sure. I know if my wife was was sitting here and she was, you know... let me say, "Well, I'm going to treat you like a five-year-old girl." That's not... the point isn't so much that, as it is to my mind to just soften it for yourself, right? It's really about like your state and how you can soften into and engage.

Doug Holt 15:01Yeah, and so I want to clarify one thing: it's not treat her like she's a five-year-old, but realize that it is the five-year-old girl in her that's crying out, just as it is you the five-year-old boy that's lashing out. So going back to the previous example of Doug 1.0... so Erin, my wife, she might say, "You never clean the house." I might instantly fall into guilt and shame, right? That's why we react. So I might... what I'm hearing isn't, "You're not cleaning the house." I'm hearing, "You're not good enough," right? That's the it's not the 48-year-old version of me, that's like the little kid that made up a story or is scared of being of not having love, or being shunned, or not being good enough for the person I care about. And so that's the person that's reacting, same with our wives.

And so it can go either way. I mean, I do this with men, too. When guys lash out to coach thousands of men, you don't think a guy's lashed out at me but a time or two? Sure. I could do two things, right? It's if you have masculine energy challenge challenging masculine energy, what happens? We're fighting, right? Both of us puff our chests up like, "What's up?" But if I look at him as like, "Hey, the boy in him, so to speak, is upset." Now, it's not demeaning at all. It's nothing but actual respect. Then I could calm down and go, "Hey, look, Chris," right? "I can see that you're upset right now," just like I would talk to my son, Bodhi, who's eight. And I talk with love and respect 10 times out of 10, it dissipates whatever friction is there. And now we can have a common... we could agree to disagree, we could disagree.

So I just want to make sure I clarify that it's not a disrespectful thing. It's just a gateway of disassociation, ideally, but you get the reps in, and you don't have to do that.

Christopher Hansen 16:47100%. Yeah, the more that you can sit in that place of neutrality in those conversations, the more of a leader you are, to be able to lead from that place.

Doug Holt 16:57100%. I think it's also... we look at engaged indifference. Again, I think most men lose at the engaged part. They're thinking of what to say next, right? "I asked my wife a question because I want to answer it right there." They're coming they're coming in there, and we all do it, right? There's no... I don't know anybody that's perfect at any of this. But you need we need to be engaged with the other person. And I think a lot of guys are so heady, right? "The longest distance a man travels is from his head to his heart." A lot of us have heard that saying before. I remember getting so pissed when I heard that, like, "What do you mean? Like, how do you get there?" Then it was a journey I spent two years on minimum of two years. And the Alpha Reset, it's one of those things that we we work on with the men at that event.

And so when guys can get engaged, they become less reactive as well. And I think the thing that helps most men is: what if you were an investigative journalist? Right? You see these top-end investigative journalists whatever you think of the news these days but they can sit across from a serial killer or a celebrity, and they can get all this information out of the person because they're just curious, not judgmental, right? They're engaged, and they're just having a conversation. Now, they could have feelings, opinions, and everything else after that, but if you approach your partner or anybody else with a state of curiosity, that can help eliminate some of those triggers.

Christopher Hansen 18:26Yeah, for sure. That's true in all aspects of life, right?

Doug Holt 18:30Yeah, you can do the thing that I want a lot of the men to understand is: look, maybe your marriage is really crappy, right? Maybe you're not in a place where you can have these types of conversations with your wife yet, because you're still you're stumbling, right? It's like learning to ice skate, I'd imagine. I've never ice skated, actually, but it looks like it'd be really hard to get going. You know, you fall down a few times. Most people probably don't want to get back up, but you need to.

And if you're not in a place with your wife where you can have it because you've left you've given up the power in your relationship, which is really typical... no guy likes admitting that, but that's what happens. Then practice at work. Practice it with your coworkers, practice it with your friends. Practice it. Practice it with the barista at Starbucks. Just engaged indifference. And what you'll notice is you'll get people to become lighter around you. And you'll also get more connection, yeah? And people start telling you stuff that you had no idea.

Christopher Hansen 19:27Yeah, for sure. What is a great framework for for working on yourself, also? The more that you can treat your own experience from that that same place, just neutrality, curiosity... you know, you may feel a certain way. Why? You know, just get curious. And just... I've I've never found really any any area of life that can't very easily be just mastered just from a place of curiosity.

Doug Holt 19:58Yeah, I agree. Yeah, so I posted this in the app, too. So my wife, Aaron, she coaches women, right? No big surprise there not for you, of course but she just launched her new website. And so I posted this for the guys, and it was about getting curious about your wife, was really what I was talking about.

Let me ask you a question: are you the same man today that you were five years ago?

Christopher Hansen 20:51No.

Doug Holt 20:53Okay, right? Me neither, right. And most men listening to this are probably like, "No."

Would you let... if you go back five years, do you want that guy driving your life today?

Christopher Hansen 20:55Absolutely no.

Doug Holt 20:56Do you want that guy raising your kids today? Do you want that guy sleeping with your wife today? Most men are probably going to say no, right, to a greater degree. Hopefully, we've become wiser. Maybe we've made more mistakes along the along the way. That's okay, as long as you learn from those.

What about 10 years ago? Same answer.

Christopher Hansen 20:56I would assume, yeah.

Doug Holt 20:58A lot of us forget that the woman we married 5, 10 years ago has also changed, and they forget to get curious about that, right? So I'd make it a point, using engaged indifference, to get into my wife's world.

What I would like to see... her new website. She got a new email address, which is not a big deal, but she wanted to take the website and have my last name in it. Her old website was Sweat, Dirt, and Soul. Now it's aaronmholt.com. Interesting, right? So now I could make some assumptions: "Well, it's just her name, so she wanted to do that." Or I could get curious. "Oh, what made you change your branding of your company?"

"Well, I just... I want my whole coaching business to help women with their families, and this is my family. Family is the most important thing."

Oh, see, I can make an assumption that she just did it because it was convenient or what have you. But when I get curious with engaged indifference, I find something totally different, yeah? Then she starts to open up. She's like, "Would you like to see a preview of my website? Like, we have... like, this is the page I'm most proud of, and it talks about our family." And lo and behold, there's pictures of me I had no idea of me, I had no idea, you know? Like, how beautiful is that for me, at least on my end, to see that that's the most important thing for her, yeah?

But if I didn't enter with curiosity and engaged indifference, I would have just assumed, "Oh, she changed her website." With a marketing background, like, "Well, you know, cool. Changing your clothes, right? Right? No big deal." But for her, it's a huge emotional journey.

Christopher Hansen 22:23Yeah, for sure. I mean, she's alone on an island if you were not meeting her there, right? She's gonna get those needs met somewhere a friend, another person, you know, whatever it is.

Doug Holt 22:32Absolutely. And I think and this is a little bit off-topic but men get to be curious about their partners and their friends and everybody else around them. Like, where are they today? I hope you and I have this conversation a conversation like this a year from now, and both of us are laughing at our former selves, right? That's that's my goal.

When I look at, okay, what do I want my life to look like? Part of that... and I don't want this to seem like I'm deprecating self-deprecating at all, because that's not the point. But I hope I'm laughing at my former self year after year after year after year, you know? Because when I look back at the man that married my wife, I'm like, "Dude, I wish I could just go back there and talk to him." All right, buddy, here's how The Activation Method works. Here's the triadic connection... save you 10 years of pain or, you know, and and tragedy. And of course, I grew from that, and that's great. And now we have a program that serves men all over the world, and I'm very proud of that, and I'm proud that I'm not the same guy I was all those years ago.

Christopher Hansen 23:50Yeah, for sure.

Doug Holt 23:51Awesome, man. I always appreciate you coming to the ranch. I know you've got a lot on your plate. Guys, if you're ever in Sisters, Chris and his family have their own store in downtown Sisters. Guys, swing by there and check him out and what they're doing. But I appreciate all you're doing for the movement, brother.

Christopher Hansen 24:08Awesome. Thanks, Doug. Appreciate you.

Doug Holt 24:10Yeah. Guys, I always say, in the moment of insight, take massive action. I just want to give you a shout-out for you guys that have taken massive action you're asking questions right in the TPM app. It's the first place we go. But you can also email your questions at VIP@thepowerfulman.com. So, Very Important Person VIP@thepowerfulman.com. If you have questions, just email them. I'd love to get a voice note, even, and we can throw that into the podcast.

I'll do my best to answer as many questions as I can. And if I can't answer them here on The TPM Show, I'll do my best to answer them somewhere else on social media. And if you give me your name or whatever else, I'll tag you in that so you can get the help that you need.

But whatever you're doing, do it with curiosity, right? That's the point of this. Engaged indifference was a tool and technique that I learned many, many years ago, that we've refined within TPM that is so critically important to having solid, foundational relationships with everybody, but especially your intimate partner. And if that's what you're interested in you want to find out more about what we do at TPM I invite you to go over to thepowerfulman.com and just click there. There's an application, a video that gives you more information on what we do, but if not, no big deal. Just make sure you're doing something, guys. A moment of insight, as I said, take massive action. We'll see you next time on The TPM Show.