Episode #939
Are you just going through the motions, telling yourself that things aren’t that bad? Many men stay stuck in “comfortable” but unfulfilling relationships, careers, and routines—because the fear of change feels worse than the reality of staying put.
In this episode, Doug and Chris break down the hidden cost of settling for average—especially in your marriage. They talk about why so many men avoid the tough conversations, how fear of rejection keeps guys stuck, and the real reason your wife might not be showing up for you the way you want. Plus, they share actionable steps to reclaim your confidence, take ownership of your life, and step into the man you’re meant to be.
You’ll learn:
- Why “playing it safe” is often the fastest way to lose everything
- How to break free from the patterns keeping you stuck in your marriage
- The #1 thing men get wrong about their wife’s lack of intimacy
- How to stop feeling like “just a paycheck” and build real connection
- The power of taking action—even when you don’t have all the answers
If you’re tired of settling and ready to step up, this episode is for you.
Listen now and start making a change today.
.
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Transcription
Doug Holt 0:00
I was talking to another guy who’s like, “You know, you know, I’m—I’m just gonna get divorced. I’m gonna go talk to a divorce attorney, scheduling it, the whole nine.” And the reason was because he didn’t feel he could be himself in his house.
So, dude, just be yourself. Like, what’s the worst-case scenario? Oh, she’s gonna leave you, and you’re gonna get divorced? What you’re planning on doing anyway. So meanwhile, you’re just pretending and you’re unhappy. You know what? Forget that. Be you.
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of The TPM Show. And once again, Chris and I are here, and we want to talk about today—when’s enough going to be enough? Like, really, when is it going to be enough? And Chris, you and I were talking about this offline again. As all these great things happen, we’re just joking. The whole conversation we just had, like, “Oh, man, we should have recorded that.” But this also, I think, is really important for all men to listen to—and women, if that’s good. But so many times, people think, “Well, it’s not that bad. Oh, I don’t need to change yet, or I don’t need to do something yet because it’s tolerable.” Do you hear that?
Christopher 1:20
A lot with the guys you’re talking to? I don’t hear it as much as I can just feel it when they explain their situation. And I can relate because I didn’t make a lot of those changes until my world was crashing down, okay? And so, when I do get these guys on the call and they start opening up and letting me know what’s going on, I recognize that some of these guys are not in as bad of a situation as I was in. And I kind of admire that. I admire the fact that these guys see they’re heading in a bad direction, and they’re stepping up before everything comes crashing down. And I was like, “Man, I wish I would—”
Doug Holt 1:59
Do you think some of them are putting on a front?
Christopher 2:01
Yes, I do. I do think so. I think sometimes there’s a lot of pressure, but I also think a lot of times they just don’t know what the next step is, right? They know, they can feel it—that their wives aren’t happy—and they just don’t know. And so, they are just trying to look for something, right?
Doug Holt 2:19
I can see that. You know, for a lot of people, there’s this idea of not doing it, right? So it’s kind of burying your head in the sand or, “Yeah, I really shouldn’t complain.” I hear this from a lot of guys: “You know, my life’s not that bad. What do I have to complain about?” You know, stiff upper lip type of thing And then they’ll use some— I did this, you know. I grew up in a middle-class family, you know, in Orange County, California. So what do I— I can’t complain about anything. I can’t complain about abuse in my childhood. I can’t complain about anything that happened to me because, hey, at the end of the day, look at the Palestinian refugees, or look what’s happening in Ukraine, or child trafficking. I wasn’t trafficked. Who am I to complain about this stuff?
And it really comes down again to this thing. I feel like—I guess this is my chant, if you will, today— “You deserve more than average,” right? Average isn’t good enough. And I also give kudos to guys who take action early. You know you should do that. But at the same time, how many times do we look at the five territories or any area of our life, and we are just accepting average?
Christopher 3:29
Yeah, we fall into that comfort, and from there, the only way to get out of that is to take action. And there’s that scare of taking those steps forward, that fear of failing—like, there’s a lot of things that fall into that that keep us frozen in that space. And that is where a lot of guys are stuck in their relationships. They are.
Doug Holt 3:49
I think it’s, I guess it is, kind of the fear of failure. I’m trying to think about where I do this in my life, and as we’re talking about it, I think there are some times when I’m like, “Okay, I got to make a change,” and I instantly feel tired, right? Like, “Just not today.” You know, it’s almost like my energy goes from a 10—I just had a great conversation—and it goes down to a two as I kind of tune into my body, like, “Oh, take a nap,” you know? Go into that energy of not wanting to do it, which, as a coach, tells me that there’s some kind of psychological block. Like, what’s the real reason I’m not taking action? What—
Christopher 4:31
Do you see those blocks? Are there common ones that you find in the guys?
Doug Holt 4:37
A lot of them.A lot of the men that we work with are struggling in their marriages, right? And so, one of the blocks that I see very commonly is the fear of upsetting the apple cart, right? It’s this thinking: “Yeah, I don’t want to upset things. Things aren’t good, but they could get worse. And if I don’t do anything, then I should be okay,” right? It’s that kind of mentality. What they don’t realize is their partner, on the other side, is thinking, “I don’t know if things can get worse, so I’m going to check out. I’m going to pull the ripcord on the parachute before the plane crashes.” And the men don’t realize that she’s not waiting around. And so, your worst-case scenario is going to happen by your inaction. That—
Christopher 5:26
Makes sense? Something that just came up is speaking your truth in those conversations that you know are going to be uncomfortable, so you don’t have them, right? And so, you kind of hide. And that’s what a lot of those relationships are based around—not having those conversations, not expressing your needs and wants, your hurts and emotions as the man in the relationship. Like, not just taking all of hers.
Doug Holt 5:51
Yeah? I mean, I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard guys say that they’re going to have an affair to get their sexual needs met, but they haven’t talked to their wife about it. Not the affair, but what their needs are. Because talking to their wife about it— “She might reject me. I don’t talk to her about that kind of stuff.” Like, okay, so you’re going to go get divorced or go have an affair, right? Which is probably not going to lead you down the path you want to go down—all because you’re scared. That’s what it is. It’s a fear of rejection and we all have fear of rejection. I mean, at least I do, right? And I think everybody does in certain scenarios.
And like most fears—you know, fear: false evidence appearing real or false evidence about reality. Either one, they both go to the same space it doesn’t happen. And literally, it baffles me. I get it, but it also baffles me that guys are like, “You know what? I’m going to burn the marriage down because I don’t want to have a conversation.” You know?
And I see this in other areas too. So it’s not just sexually. I was talking to another guy who’s like, “You know, you know, I’m just—I’m just going to get divorced, go to a divorce attorney, schedule it, the whole nine.” And the reason was because he didn’t feel he could be himself in his house.
So, dude, just be yourself. Like, what’s the worst-case scenario? Oh, she’s going to leave you, and you’re going to get divorced—which you’re planning on doing anyway. So meanwhile, you’re just pretending and you’re unhappy. You know what? Forget that. Be you.
Yeah, and when he started being himself, guess what happened? First, she tested him, and it went bad. But that was only for a day. After that, because he was resolute—”This is who I am”—she fell right in line. She was basically like, “Thank God you showed up. I’ve been waiting for you forever.”
And he was like, “What the heck?” He had put himself in his own purgatory.
Christopher 7:51
Yeah, I think it’s so hard sometimes for guys, even with their wives, to express their emotions and be able to do that. And because we were trained not to—conditioned so young to hold that back—and then we’re expected to, but when we don’t do it, now we have all this resentment. All these things build up, and all these little fires start popping up all over in our household because of it.
Doug Holt 8:13
And it’s also—we were talking about the guy, the client that was at my gym, who lost 25 pounds, and we gave him a 25-pound weight plate. He was just so used to being obese that walking up the stairs, being winded, or having to take a pause was just life to him. It had become the normAnd he forgot the fact that once he lost 25 pounds, he could walk up the stairs, walk up the next flight of stairs, or go for a hike now right? And do all these things that were previously impossible. But he didn’t look at them as impossible. He just looked at them as normal.
Christopher 8:51
I mean, I can personally relate to that. For the years I was married, I wouldn’t express myself—who I was as a sexual being, my needs and wants—because I didn’t want to be seen. I didn’t want to be judged, right? I felt shame. But when I got to a point where I was able to do that, the amount of weight that came off of me, that I was finally able to express what those needs, wants, and desires were as a man—it was huge.
Doug Holt 9:15
Yeah. I think there’s—I mean, I’m gonna guess you were like, “What is she gonna say? What is she gonna think about it? Is she gonna tell everybody else?” You know?
Christopher 9:22
It’s a very vulnerable spot for a man—you know, their sexuality.
Doug Holt 9:27
Yeah. I think, well, I mean, all men have different levels of vulnerability in different areas. Sexuality, for sure. In our culture, sexuality is just not talked about, which is so crazy, right? I mean, like, how are your kids born? You know?
Christopher 9:41
That’s why we’re sitting here.
Doug Holt 9:43
Yeah, exactly. But it’s not talked about, and it’s repressed so much. And because of that repression, we see so many other things come out of it that don’t work out for people—sexual abuse, affairs, or what I think is probably one of the worst: just complete repression of desires. Sexless marriages.
Christopher 10:14
Yeah, and then it turns those situations transactional. And so, there are fewer times of sex, this weird pressure builds up around it, and the enjoyment just isn’t there, right? you can really set in and accept that and express yourself for who you are. And what we don’t realize is there’s also a beautiful connection that can happen during those transitions. So when I was able to do that, it allowed her to open up that way. And now there’s this deep, emotional, intimate connection, which then sparks some great other things.
Doug Holt 10:47
So when you opened up, did she share things about herself that she had been holding back?
Christopher 10:51
Yeah she was. And she was more open to me than I was, for sure. But because of that, she was really able to express herself fully.
Doug Holt 10:58
That’s awesome.Doug Holt 11:29
I mean, and as a man, right? That’s what we want. We want a woman to feel like she can express herself fully because then you get the feminine version of her, the full version of her. Yep. I think men would be shocked too. I mean, again, going back to my previous—I call it my previous life—owning a gym. I had, Chris, I had—so it was a private training studio in Santa Barbara, California. It was two stories. I ran two other companies on the second story, but it was an open floor plan. And in there, we had air conditioning ducts and heating ducts, right? And those vents went right up to my office. So if you can imagine a group of women coming in with a female trainer and all the talk that they’re having.
Christopher 11:44
I would pay to be a fly on that wall.
Doug Holt 11:46
I will tell you, I know this for a fact. The guys listening to this are going, “Yeah, but my wife’s not interested in sex.” That’s BS. She might not be interested in having sex with you, but she is. I think women are probably more sexual than men, based on all the things that I hear and have heard. But the issue is, for men, if they’re like, “Hey, I’m in a sexless marriage,” or I hear this often from guys—”Yeah, my wife’s just not interested in sex.”
Like, there’s a reason Fifty Shades of Grey sold a ton of copies and all these other books. “Yeah, my wife’s in a book club”—and I say this in air quotes—”with a bunch of women,” and I’m like, “What’s the book about?” And she starts telling me, and I’m thinking, “That’s basically porn. It’s erotica.” And it’s all these women’s books. I remember as a kid going into grocery stores and seeing these books with this ripped, muscular guy holding a woman on the cover, and these books that were written for women—they’re all about the fantasy. Women are reading these. They’re digesting them. And so, it’s not that she doesn’t want sex. It’s just that, right now, for whatever reason—probably the way we show up—she doesn’t want to have sex with you.
Christopher 12:54
Yeah, it’s crazy. I have quite a few conversations with women who are divorced or in the process of a divorce, and they’ve opened up about what happened. And it’s amazing to hear. The two most common things I hear? Sexless marriage, right? Or there was sex, but there was no connection.
Doug Holt 13:15
Yeah, well, I mean, connection is everything. I always say—and this is something I’ve probably heard from someplace else, but I don’t know where—but for a woman to want to have sex, there needs to be connection. Men get connection from sex. Such a horrible deal, right? Like, we need it. So, my wife and I, if we feel disconnected, we will typically have sex—which is a horrible thing for me, as you can imagine—but it sets us on the same page quickly and lets us connect. Because we will connect through that realm.
Christopher 13:44
But I also think we might be conditioned as men that way too. Because I think, as you can agree, once we’ve learned that emotional connection at the beginning, it’s such a powerful thing. It’s like putting gas on the fire.
Doug Holt 13:55
Hey, guys, I wanted to interrupt this episode because it’s dawned on me that many of you aren’t aware that we actually have a book on How to Save Your Marriage Without Talking About It. Now, thousands of men have read it and reviewed it, and I want to give you the opportunity to do the same. If you’re interested in grabbing it, it’s a short read, but it’s helped a lot of men just like you. Maybe you’re not interested in The Activation Method yet, but this is a small entry point that can really turn things around for you.
Go over to Amazon. We have it priced as cheap as Amazon will let us, and that way, you have a resource you can use right now to start getting results in your marriage. Now, let’s get back to the episode.
Christopher 14:32
It leads to so much more, right? 100%. And I think that’s where we’ve got it mixed up—what they want is actually very similar to what we want.
Doug Holt 14:40
It’s the same, really. In my experience, at least for me and a lot of guys, we feel more connected when we’re intimate, and that intimacy needs to have connection within it. Does that make sense? I was talking to another guy who says, “Oh, I have sex with my wife twice a week, and she just lays there.” It’s like couples’ masturbation, basically. Well, she just does it because she’s his wife. She feels it’s her wifely duty. It’s a religious thing, right? He hates it, obviously. He’s like, “I don’t want that. I want something totally different,” which I respect—that he wants something different. And he’s working towards that, to free his wife up. And people have hang-ups, right?
But the point is, when is enough, enough? When do you stop settling for average in all areas—self, health, wealth, relationships, business? The five territories we talk about. You know, for the guys listening to this, if your business is just doing okay, when are you gonna stop settling for that? Like, you’re in there—do the best job you can. In your health, when are you gonna stop settling? I’m not saying everybody needs to be a cover model, but at least, are you doing something to help your wellness? And it doesn’t mean just looking good, but your inner health—how you’re feeling inside your body.
And then your relationships. Man, that’s a big one because, you know, you got one shot at this game we call life. You better be having fun. Don’t get comfortable. Don’t get comfortable. That’s a great point. Say more on that.
Christopher 16:03
I mean, we all fall into that. There are times we need those breaks and that rest too, but when we’re in our comfort stage, there’s no growth there. And we all know that when we go and challenge ourselves—when you go do something difficult, you say you’re gonna hike a mountain that you’ve never hiked and want to summit—the feeling that you get when you get to the top, and it’s hard, right? The hard things we do bring the biggest rewards that we can feel for ourselves.
And the only thing that keeps us from moving forward is that fear—the fear of failure, of not doing it. But even if I try to climb that mountain and I got halfway up, but I beat my last time, that’s still a win. That’s how we have to look at things, right?
Doug Holt 16:40
100%. It’s the effort we put in and actually going for it and going after what you want. I hear this often from guys too—they don’t know what they want. They’ve lost their “vision,” right? Or they’ve lost their passion. And really, to me, that’s a sign that they’ve lost attunement to themselves, right? The connection to themselves.
Next door to us right now, there are a group of men going through The Alpha Reset, which is our transformational experience that we put men through—or men get to go through. And one of the number one things that comes out of that is clarity, right? Guys talk about that all the time—clarity of vision. Usually, in those groups, there’s one or two guys who are like, “I haven’t had a vision for a long time,” or “I don’t have clarity on my next steps.”
It could be in their business, their relationships, or just their life—like, “I don’t know what I want. I don’t know how to have fun anymore.” And then, coming out of something like that, they can see clearly because they’ve experienced that average isn’t going to cut it. There’s a lot more out there for me.
Christopher 17:39
I’ve been through that, and the clarity is exactly what you get. Because that event also allows you to release a lot of things. And how can you see clearly when you’re holding on to so much that’s in front of you?
Doug Holt 17:51
I mean, it’s really, really tough. Some guys come out of that experience realizing how amazing their wife is. Some guys come out of that experience getting clear that, “Hey, maybe I don’t want to be in this anymore.” That’s a little more rare. And oftentimes, we talk about average, but a lot of the guys will say, “Oh crap, she’s been giving me a message for a long time about things not working out.” And so now, I see what she’s been saying.
It’s just a matter of really, truly not settling. At what point do you do that? Is there a way? I mean, I know you rate your five territories, but when do you think about settling in your own life? How do you mitigate that to make sure you’re not settling anywhere? Do you set a big, huge goal, or—
Christopher 18:37
It depends on what’s going on in my life, but as I do those reviews, I like to put a little action plan with all of them. Even if it’s not one of my major priorities right now, there’s still a plan for it, right? So there’s something that I’m gonna do, maybe something that’s a little bit of a challenge—maybe something I’ve been meaning to do that I just haven’t done, right?
So there’s always a step forward. There’s something I have to do—I can’t just let it exist, if that makes sense.
Doug Holt 19:02
Yeah, it’s just something you need. You need movement and action, moving in a direction. Even if you don’t—you said earlier—if you don’t know what that direction is or if it’s the right direction.
Christopher 19:13
I think you can relate to this. When you have a really, really tough time in business and you have to fix some really big issues—maybe it’s cash flow, you know, it’s really common—and you don’t really know how to do it, you still build a game plan around it, right? And you don’t know if it’s gonna work, but you always feel better once you start taking those steps forward.
Doug Holt 19:32
Inaction is the worst thing, right? In my experience with everything, because you become stagnant. And where it gets really dangerous—when we’re talking about average or being comfortable—is when people become comfortable in inaction. That’s when you see things go downhill, you know, really fast. I’ve seen this with so many men who’ve retired. You know, they start dying fast because they’re just comfortable, not taking action anymore, and they’re stagnant.
Christopher 19:58
This is probably something I—I’ve heard this quite a bit on the calls lately—is men completely lost. They’ve lost their ability to enjoy life. They don’t have any hobbies. They don’t even know what they like anymore.
Doug Holt 20:11
Yep, right? Super common. For a lot of guys, if I ask them, “Hey, you have a weekend or two days off—Tuesday, Wednesday—completely off. You don’t have to take care of the kids, your wife’s gone, and you can’t work. What do you do?” Most of them don’t know. That’s also why, I mean, for myself, I ended up with six companies at one point, right? No sane person, you know, has six companies. But one is—I like business. So I really enjoy it.
And so, when I got a business to a point where I felt like I could step away or it was running by itself, I said, “Okay, what do I want to do?” Oh, well, here’s my other business idea I’ve been sitting on. I started stacking those up, and then it comes to a situation where you’re like, “Okay, I’m not going to do that anymore. Now what?”
I’m like, “Okay, I guess I’m going snowboarding every day,” or, you know—trying to figure out what it is that I wanted to do for fun that didn’t involve a sport was tough for me. I had a really tough transition when I moved to Bend, Oregon, because I wasn’t playing competitive sports anymore, and I wasn’t in Southern California anymore. So there was a season here where I couldn’t just go outside whenever I wanted to. That was really tough for me. That was a really tough transition. And that’s when I was like, “Okay, I’m not just gonna go snowboarding for fun. I’m gonna go every day.” You know? I started being militant about it, which was also not the right way.
Christopher 21:36
Gotta find the balance.
Doug Holt 21:39
Yeah, like, find some more fun things. But that’s what it is. I think for a lot of us—and a lot of men in particular—we go into those roles of protector and provider, right? And provider is the one that I think a lot of us go for really quickly. But with that provider role, we want more.
We want more money because we want a bigger house. We want more money because we need to get our kids a car. We want more money because, you know, we should take our family on a vacation. And so we work more, and we get a side hustle or whatever it may be to bring more income in.
And the crux of this is most of the men end up being resentful of the people they’re providing for, and they feel like just a paycheck. And some guys cash out that paycheck by killing themselves. You know, in the United States, suicide is the number two cause of death. I think in the UK, it’s number one for men our age.
Wow. Number one in the United States is accidental death—which I think is probably a lot of suicides, right? Get the insurance money. Or—I’ve talked to countless men, countless men, who are like, “Well, they’d probably be better off without me. At least they’d get the insurance money for them.”
Christopher 22:49
Not taking that time to fill their cups and finding that— and the guys that don’t have hobbies, they don’t know because they’ve lost themselves. You just have to take a step. Go try axe throwing if you need to. Go bowling. Maybe it’s not that, but you won’t know what you’re going to enjoy until you start trying.
Doug Holt 23:06
That’s one of the reasons—so we’re here at the TPM Ranch. It’s a 106-acre ranch that we bought for TPM events. So people don’t think we’re fully invested when we are in the movement of helping men. We have axe throwing here, but we have events here regularly, and it introduces a lot of men to two things.
One is, now you have a group of guys, because a lot of guys, as we get older, our friend base goes down dramatically, and guys start “lone wolfing,” as we call it. And so axe throwing might be hard for some guys because they’re like, “Well, who do I go axe throwing with? I do everything with my wife and kids, and if my wife and I aren’t doing well, I’m not going to be axe throwing with her. So am I going to call a random guy from the job site or from work?”
So that becomes a problem. And the second thing is not knowing what to do. I was telling you, we have—so after guys go through our initial program, some guys are invited to continue on with us. We have several different other programs. One’s a one-year program called TThe Brotherhood, and it’s more of a mastermind education-style program that has a lot of growth to it. And in that, there are two events included.
One’s coming up. We’re going to Breckenridge. So there, we’ll be introducing the guys to all kinds of new activities. And we don’t tell the guys what we’re doing, right? We tell them what to pack and what to do. So there’s an element of surprise there. And for guys like me that like to put my hands around things and have a little control, it’s a little tough.
But, you know, in other words, Breckenridge is a ski mountain, so there will be opportunities to ski, snowboard, sled. Some guys won’t want to do that, so there will be other opportunities to do things with like-minded men, in an environment where they’ll be introduced to things they probably wouldn’t normally experience.
Christopher 24:47
Yeah, I love that. I love that fact of going out there. And I think, I mean, I think back to my grandpa and my dad. I know you can relate, but I always remember them going— they had, like, a guys’ bowling night, right? They’d go out there, and we’ve lost that in our country.
We’ve lost that sense of, “Hey, we got a men’s night, we go bowling,” you know what I mean? And I think we need to get back to that—find your tribe and find those guys that you connect with, wherever it is.
Doug Holt 25:13
100%, man. I mean, I found my tribe online, finding guys that weren’t in my physical community, right? Kind of like TPM, and started growing there, made some really great friendships.
Christopher 25:25
That’s the great thing about where we’re at. It doesn’t have to be in your physical community anymore.
Doug Holt 25:30
Yeah, it doesn’t have to be at all. With the advent of technology, you can travel and go meet people. So I’d go meet up with these guys every once in a while and go do kind of the “bowling,” if you would. But we don’t have that anymore.
I think there’s a stigma against it now. I know there’s a feeling for me—and I still have this come up—of like, “I should be home with the kids and with my wife. I should be doing this. I should be doing that,” rather than filling my cup or doing something that I really want to do. Granted, I travel the world hanging out with cool guys.
Christopher 25:58
You hang out with guys quite a bit, so you get that opportunity. But I think the realistic part is—absolutely, there’s always going to be that guilt. And there’s probably going to be some backlash from your wife if you’re not showing up for her properly.
So that’s not going to work out well if you’re not supporting her on the level she needs to be supported. But it’s also hindsight, right? You need to support yourself. You’ve got to fill your cup. You need that group you can offload some things onto, so you don’t have to put everything on your wife.
Doug Holt 26:24
Yeah. I mean, I don’t, I don’t believe your wife needs to, or necessarily has to be, or should be your best friend, right? That’s too much of a burden to put on her. She should be your wife, your lover, and your guys should be your guy friends. I think that’s just such an interesting thing because, like, when I got married, I always thought, “Well, she has to be. We’re gonna be best friends.” And we’re really close, right? We’re best of friends, but I don’t need to come dump my day in my wife’s lap at the end of a workday.
I had a rough day—a couple of rough meetings yesterday. You know, we’re trying to grow the movement to be much bigger, and not everybody’s gonna be able to come along for the ride. You’ve owned businesses, you know how that goes, and those are tough decisions, right, that you’re making. And so my wife goes, “Oh, how were your meetings?” And I gave her some information—what she wanted to know—but it wasn’t the time for me to vent. Do you know what I’m saying? Not that I needed to be there. I think all too often, a lot of men, myself included in retrospect, would just dump everything on her plate, right on her lap.
Christopher 27:25
And not only was she the best friend, she also had to be my wife, my lover. We were also tied in many businesses we ran together. So that is a lot on a relationship.
Doug Holt 27:35
Right? It’s huge, man. Like, what is it? “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” You were asking me how often I come to the ranch to work. So, for those listening, I live about 10 minutes from the TPM Ranch, and I have a great place. I have a home office. I’m from Southern California, so having a basement is like the coolest thing to me in the world because nobody I know has basements. And even here in Oregon, I don’t know anybody else who has a basement.
So, I have a basement. My friends in the Midwest are like, “What?” Okay, so I have a finished basement that I think is just amazing.
Doug Holt 28:12
It is. Well, I put one of those hotel locks in it that I can control from my phone. So I can lock the door and shut the basement. And so I have almost 1,400 square feet of this man cave at my house, and it’s awesome.
I come here to have separation. My wife is a stay-at-home mom, and she works on her coaching business as well. So instead of always being in proximity, I come here and work just so we have some distance, we have some space. So when I come home for dinner or just come home, there’s this sense of newness that is created.
I think after 2020—although I was doing this way before that—everyone started working remotely. And now you see the husband and wife connected constantly, and there’s no separation. So when someone’s irritating you or someone’s on your nerves, there’s no chance for that to dissipate. It’s like a scratch, right? Or an itch—you keep scratching over and over again because you see each other all the time.
So, you need that space. It makes sense. I worked with my wife once, and that was tough. It’s a tough position to be in. Some couples do it really well, right? They do it really, really well. And some don’t. And at that stage of our marriage, I’d be in the latter, you know, going through that.
All right, so going back to the topic of not accepting average—what are two things you’d recommend the guys do if they’re listening to this? We’ve kind of gone all over the place, but they’re like, “You know what? I am just accepting average in an area of my life.”
Christopher 29:37
Evaluate where it’s at, understand it, and build a plan around it. Not just consuming information—take an action step towards it, whatever that is. If it’s in your relationship, grab a book, but do what the book says, right? Listen to the podcast, but do what the podcast says. Sign up for the program.
Doug Holt 29:56
I couldn’t agree more. If you don’t have a plan, find somebody who’ll help you build a plan. But find somebody who’s done it, right?
It’s so interesting to me because in the coaching space, in the business world, there are tons of business consultants who have never run a business, right? So, they’re just all theory. I would never work with them.
Ironically, TPM has been around for about eight years now. We have a 106-acre ranch. You and I have kids, we’ve been married, and there are some people out there who are trying to help men—probably with good intentions—but they’ve never been married, have never owned a business, don’t have kids, and they’re just talking about theory.
It’s honestly like—now that you have kids, imagine taking advice on how to raise your kids from someone who’s never had kids.
Christopher 30:47
I remember myself without kids, thinking I was gonna give advice. And then I had them and was like, “What the hell was I thinking?”
Doug Holt 30:54
100%. So, what I would say is, if you don’t know what to do, find someone who’s been down that road before. Someone who has theoretical knowledge but also in-the-trenches knowledge—which I think is even more important—and ask that person for a plan.
Find someone who has been where you are and has also come out the other side to where you want to get to. I think those are the two keys. Whether it be your health—find a trainer who, if you’re obese, was obese or has helped a lot of obese people become fit. Not just someone who looks good in the gym, because maybe they’ve always been fit—maybe it’s just been easy for them.
Christopher 31:26
Yeah, that makes total sense.
Doug Holt 31:28
Awesome. Really appreciate the conversation as always, man. Thanks.
Gentlemen, as we always say—in the moment of insight, take massive action. That’s what Chris is talking about here, right? You’re saying, “Look, don’t just read the book, or don’t just listen to this podcast.” Hopefully, you’re taking some notes, hopefully, you’re taking some action steps.
Or maybe you just had the realization, like, “Heck, you know what? My life—things are a little average. I’m looking around at my house, my car, the gym I’m at, and it’s not where I want to be. It’s not where I deserve to be or aspire to be.”
Okay, great. Now, make a plan, right? Make a plan on how you get out. And if you don’t know how, find somebody to help you. Find somebody who’s been where you are and has been to the other side—and has a proven track record of helping people. That’s better, right? You want somebody who can actually lead you by the hand to the Promised Land, right?
Shorten time, collapse time. That’s the key to this life. If you can make that change quicker, you’ll win a lot faster.
All right, gentlemen, have an amazing day. We’ll see you next time on The Powerful Man Show.
