Episode #31
In this episode, Doug and Tim share their personal epiphanies and how it changed their lives.
Doug shared that asking yourself questions about what you really want in life or how you feel and what’s really going on will help you realize the things that really matter to you.
Examine yourself and answer those questions honestly, then take a step back, plan and start making a change in your life.
Tim, on the other hand, shared that having a serious and honest conversation with someone else made him realized that all this time, he has been insecure, he was always trying to prove himself to everybody around him, and he wanted acceptance.
He was unaware of those facts, and after realizing what is really going on, he took a moment and had an honest reflection with himself.
This epiphany made him look at some things differently, and it started changing his life.
In this episode you will learn:
- The importance of self-reflection
- The power of an honest conversation with yourself or with someone else.
- How to look at things differently.
- Importance of asking questions
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Tim Matthews 0:02
One thing these men can, the power of an honest conversation.
Doug Holt 0:07
Oh, thank yourself for someone else, right?
Tim Matthews 0:09
Yeah, thank yourself for someone else. The similarity between yours and mine is that we took a moment to pump the brakes and pause and take an honest reflection of what we were feeling and what was going on, leading to cars’ epiphany.
Doug Holt 0:28
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Powerful Man show. I am your host, Doug Holt, with my co-host, Tim, “The Powerful Man” Matthews. I love saying that intro, Tim, how are you doing, brother?
Tim Matthews 0:43
I’m fantastic, also I was all prepared to keep a straight face, and I hear you giggling.
Doug Holt 0:47
No need to be a stoic man. No need to be stoic. It’s just fun to say because here we are on doing a show. And people get to watch some videos, and they do these things. But I feel like an actual announcer when I’m bringing you in. I keep saying that. But that’s the way it feels.
Tim Matthews 1:04
It’s great. It’s great. I love it.
Doug Holt 1:04
It is. Well, Tim, today’s topic is “What was the epiphany that changed your life?? So kick it off for us, bro.
Tim Matthews 1:16
Oh, no. Why not let you kick this one-off?
Doug Holt 1:20
It’s your topic. You’re killing me. Yeah, I’ve had a lot of epiphanies that have changed my life. And a lot of them. The one I most commonly tell, and I’m happy to tell a lot of them we don’t have, we won’t do so much time before I bore everybody. But if you can imagine me in my 20s. So I had owned at the time, I owned a private training studio in Santa Barbara, California. And so this was if you’ve ever been to Santa Barbara, my private studio was on State Street, which is the main street that leads to the beach, where other businesses are, it’s also the high rent district. And I catered to a very successful business, business owners and business people and their families had a great business. Those two stories in the second story, I ran a magazine out of there. And I also did a consultation for the International Sports Science Association on the phone. So I would take phone calls from business owners that were members of theirs from all over the world. And then I also, on top of that, did other consulting and coaching on the side. So I was doing a lot. I always used to say, “Hey, look, some people paint, I build businesses and run them.” And I was young, and I was in my 20s. And I had a business coach at the time, Tim, and a very well known and respected person. And he was also a client of mine. I won’t say his name, but I’m guessing all our listeners have interacted with some of his businesses, unbeknownst to them, and some may belong to them, right, some software companies and things he’s had. So he was in the 70s at the time. And let’s call him Bill. And so I would talk to Bill.
And just like “Bill, something’s missing, what I want to do is I also want to travel, and I want to go on an adventure in the world. And I want to do these things”. And he told me, he’s like, “Doug, yeah, this is as good as it gets. Man, you’re, first of all, you’re in your 20s, you’re single, you’re in one of the best places in the world by the beach, you have successful companies, you’re way ahead of the curve”. He’s floating my ego here, which I loved. And build it, do that very often, by the way, and tell me how amazing it is. And like, “Hey, look, suck it up and enjoy it. You can be a vagabond, and things like that, and travel, but you’re not going to be successful. Right now. You’re successful right now. You’re doing your passion. You’re, you’re making money. You’re a leader in the community”, and I was in the community that I was living in Santa Barbara. And this is as good as it gets. And so I kind of Tim, as you do with mentors at times Bill’s in his 70s I’m in my 20s he’s already been extremely successful. By all you know, markers that you would tick off on a box on pages with money, family, you happen to live in Montecito, the next city over where Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres have homes there. It’s such a beautiful area, by far. So anyway, Tim, I hear this. I’m digesting it, and I’m always hearing from my coaching clients about how I have the life. “You have a life,” and I would smile and but inside, I knew something was wrong. And what I did is usually in the mornings, I went to a coffee shop and if anybody’s listening has been to Santa Barbara coffee shops, Guineans. It’s just a Figaro in a state to give you an idea, and I was always one of the first people that they opened the doors to. I would be there this beautiful outside seating in this kind of courtyard setting. I would bring my leather-bound journal and sit down, get a cup of coffee, and usually breakfast, and I got breakfast a regular with a breakfast burrito. And I would journal. But this time it was different, Tim.
So this time, I wrote at the top of my journal. “Are you happy?” I wrote that down. And what came to me surprised me, right? Because I’ve been conditioned, one is I felt happy. I had all the checkboxes of success in my early 20s, I am not in my 20s anymore, by the way, and when I looked at these checkboxes, the response came back right away to me, it was “no” I was like, “Oh, shit,” okay. And it wasn’t like I was super depressed or anything; I just wasn’t happy or fulfilled, even though I was told I should be. And then I wrote something down was kind of an epiphany of if someone followed me around the real me, not the meetup, my client saw, and wrote it into a book and wrote into a story would be something I’d be proud of, essentially. And again, the answer became “No.” I’, like, “Oh crap.” Am I the hero in this? If I was on the big screen, watching my own life before my eyes? Would I be rooting for me? Would I be the hero? Would this be epic? Again, the answer was no. And I say so commonly, and I’ve said it many times on this show before Tim, as I know, I’m not guaranteed in the life of that shot. When I looked at this, that’s when I had an epiphany, and something radical had to change. I didn’t care what Bill thought, and I didn’t care what my advisors thought. I did not care what my clients thought, my parents thought, my family thought, and anybody around me. I looked at this, these pages, these three notes listed here, and that’s when I knew that I had to make a radical shift. And that’s when I started putting plans into action to exit a business and start another business that allowed me this lifestyle because digital nomads didn’t exist back then. I mean, they existed. But you couldn’t find them online, and you couldn’t find out how to become a digital nomad or anything along those lines. It just wasn’t a thing. And so I set out on a quest to figure out how I could do this. And 20 years later, it’s led me here with you right now having a conversation. But sitting looking at that journal asking myself those questions. That was a huge epiphany that changed my life. Right? Huge. Because why don’t you want to be the hero of your journey? Why shouldn’t you be the Tom Cruise of Mission Impossible? The Tom Cruise of your own life, right? The star, the action hero, or the romance hero, or whatever it is you want to be? Why you should be the hero of your own story, you are The Powerful Man. Right? If you’re listening to this, you are that powerful man. So if you like me, or writing questions like that, am I happy? Truly, I’m thrilled, not like, yeah, I’m happy, but truly happy and fulfilled? The answer comes back. No, that’s when we get to change things. So that was my epiphany, Tim, that I had.
Tim Matthews 8:08
Wow, most profound. Oh, you were surrounded and had access to a lot of, I was going to say, successful. But it’s such a term that gets bandied about. And quite honestly, how I perceived success, as I said, it just then is on a financial level. But there’s so much more to success around that, as we all know. Now, a question for you is after having this epiphany, how did you or what was your process after that, that you used as you then spoke with other people within the community? That again, let’s say, Well, I was so successful, so wealthy, how did you then speak with them and filter in a way whereby he didn’t influence you or take you off track? And you still pulled out the nuggets?
Doug Holt 9:08
The short answer is, “I didn’t.” But that’s not the complete answer. So I’ll give it to you. When I came up with this epiphany, I brought it up to several people, but kind of that way, you sort of dip your toe in the water, like, “Hey, so I was thinking,” and I would bring it up in conversation. And I got shut down every single time 100% of the time, a hundred percent. Now to some of the people around me, right, like, people in my circle of influence where I was the leader, right. And I was the visionary. They loved the idea. Right? They sound great, but they had to be on to be fair. They didn’t have any real success in their life. They were young, about my age at the time, or somewhere in that ballpark. So I would go to business events like a chamber member, as I said, the Rotary Club. I wouldn’t talk about these things. I was already good at segmenting my business life because I already Tim. You got to imagine this is an unusual one. I’m one of the youngest business owners in the area, too. I’m running multiple businesses, which people can’t get their minds around. And so I was used to putting on a mask, so to speak, around what I was doing. So if I went to, let’s say, it’s the Rotary Club, I would only talk about one business, I wouldn’t talk about the other ones, or if I were going to another event, wherever that customer ideal avatar would be, I would talk about that business. So it was almost like living different lives already. And so, again, when I talked to these people about my dreams, when I would bring it up, everybody thought I was crazy. I mean, almost everybody thought it was mad. Which, in retrospect, hindsight, being 2020 slowed me down because I bought into some of that, right. And when this was all going around, this is when 2008 happened the crap market crash. So that set things back. And, again, everybody around me, people that cared about me, they didn’t do this to be mean, were telling me, “Doug, you’ve got it amazing. Stop dreaming so big, really, just be happy with where you are”. And being in your 20s, you’re impressionable. And I took some of that on, and I sidelined my dreams and goals. And on top of that, I was in a lease, and me breaking a lease was something that wasn’t acceptable for me. And so I wanted to serve out my lease before I terminated that for my brick and mortar business. But as soon as that lease came up, I executed my exit strategy.
Hey, guys, I want to interrupt this episode because I want to talk to you about something important. We put together a case study on how almost 300 men have taken control of their lives, their 4x in their business revenues, and they’re having more connected intimate sex, all without sacrificing their relationships or their health by using The Activation Method. Now, many of you have contacted us, and they want to know how they’re doing it. We put together this short 11-minute case study just for you. So you can see how these entrepreneurs are achieving this level of success. To get this case study, all you have to do is go over to ThePowerfulMan.com/bonus. And you can get the case study right now. All right, it’s only 11 minutes, and it’s going to show you exactly how these men have done it. Alright, let’s get back to the episode.
Tim Matthews 12:42
Wow. Well, wow. So it’s interesting because, for me, my epiphany, I had a similar reaction from the people around me in the sense that they thought I was crazy.
Doug Holt 13:03
We still do
Tim Matthews 13:05
Yeah. So my biggest epiphany is these two epiphanies that happen very close together. The first one, which we’ve covered in another episode, is when I met one of my good friends, Tom Crusher, who at that point was working his business online, helping more people earning more money traveling the world who was younger than I. And that’s what I desired for myself but didn’t know how to do. And I used to tell myself that because I didn’t have any real examples of it. It wasn’t as tangible, and if you will, it’s things I used to read about. But when you read about things, is it true that kind of mentality came up. And when I met Tom, I met him in a period for about five months after I ended the relationship that I was in, when I called off the wedding and didn’t move into the house, move back home with my parents, got rid of the offices, got rid of the business partner. I started to do my life my way for the first time, which was trust in my instinct and listening to my inner voice and going with it, because by that point, I had ignored it my entire life because it was too scary to listen to it, which meant I experienced a lot of stress, struggle, and sacrifice. Yes, I made progress. Yes, I had my own business and so on, but really, I wasn’t happy or fulfilled. So I then met Tom; I got introduced to him the Easter of the following year, so probably about six months after I ended the relationship.
During that time, I had restructured the fitness business, which was going to serve my life. And I was taking it online. A lot of uncertainty was going on. And it’s one particular night. I wasn’t supposed To be going out, but I ended up going out at the last minute to introduce myself to Tom when I’m going for coffee with him a couple of days later, and I was blown away by how he was living and what he was doing. And a couple of weeks after that, he flew; why did he fly to somewhere in the middle east and he and I kept in contact and hours just in awe of the lifestyle he was living. And it was a real epiphany of “Holy crap, this is possible.” This can be done by someone here who’s no different than I, younger than I, I can do it, I can do it. So it wasn’t so much of an epiphany as it was a real motivator. But shortly after that came to the real epiphany for me. And it was two conversations, actually, with two different people. Several months after Tom and me, after Easter, I managed to get the fitness business online. I had set it up in a way whereby it didn’t need me. So it was serving my life instead of my life serving my business. And I was feeling the pull for something bigger, something greater, and I didn’t know what it was. I knew I wanted to impact the world in a significant way. I didn’t know what that looked like or what form it was going to take. So I create the space and don’t force things and play about with many ideas. And it was pleased for it to happen when it happened. And around about this point, I had a conversation with somebody. And he was speaking to me about the work I was doing with The Powerful Man because, by this point, I had had a conversation with my uncle, my dad’s eldest brother, after an incident with my father, in which he just was very disrespectful.
And it really caused me to take a stand for myself, and I chose to take a stand for myself, really came clean to my uncle about how my dad was behaving. And my family, my mom, my mother and sister came clean as well. And at that point, I started to share on social media how we often try and grow businesses as men. Still, underneath it, usually, there’s a void we’re trying to fill, and we don’t feel good enough, and the relationship between father and son has gone through this phase of wanting to get all the skeletons out of the closet. I took pictures of myself just in my boxers, personal, and social media. This is my body. This is where I’m at with my fitness. This is where I’m at with my relationship with my father, and this is what’s going on. I just threw every skillet in our closet if possible. And my friends who were close to me at the time thought I was going insane. Truly, they’re like, “What the hell are you doing? You can’t say things like that”. “Have you joined a cult?” your care, all these concerns are confused. Responses, and shortly after, had a conversation with it with a particular guy. And although I’ve been through this process with my father of really coming clean and telling him what I was no longer willing to stand for that, so to speak about it. And I was then jumping onto phone calls with men. When I had this conversation with this one particular guy, he said to me, “You know what, Tim? Have you spoken to your father about this?” I could hear me. So well, this entire conversation, you’re talking about the work you want to do in the world, but it keeps coming back to your relationship with your father. Have you ever asked him whether or not he’s proud of you? I’m like, “No, why would I?” “Why would I do that?” It’s like, “Yeah, but have you asked him?” I’m like, “Nope.” He’s like, “Okay, so I’m gonna give you seven days to do it. If you’re up for the challenge”.
I’m like, “Okay. Yes, I’ll take the challenge. I’m not going to back down from it”. And that was a profound moment for me because it took me eight days to ask him. I ended up asking him, and we had an amazing conversation; I came clean about how I felt growing up. For the most part, I didn’t feel like my voice mattered. Then, very quickly after that conversation with my father, another guy who always was another friend of mine, who I was speaking to, turned around and said to me, it seems to meet him like all you do is trying to prove yourself. I’ve probably heard that many times before. But you hear certain things at certain times, certain moments, and it is land. And he said to me, and I just was like, No, don’t ever question me on that before. Now the guy with the question of asking if either is proud of you might have been alluding to that, but he never went straight to the root and said that to me. And I guess as I was throwing these skeletons out of the closet and coming clean and wanting to bear all looking back, I imagined I was trying to heal somewhere. I didn’t know that at the time; I just reached a breaking point. I was so frustrated with living a lie that I just had to get it off my chest. The burden of the lie was just too much. And when this person said, Hey, it looks like you are just trying to prove yourself. Even though I was starting this new business, The Powerful Man, and it was in a, in a, it was interesting, because it was, in the beginning, wasn’t even a business, I was jumping on the phone with men that were resonating with what I was saying and helping them out. When he said that to me, I was it really made me pause, and I crema got off the phone. I just journaled for hours. And I was, I was brought back to a memory of when I was young. And how I used to feel growing up. However, I showed my dad that my voice didn’t matter. I guess having that conversation with his kind of opened the door to dive deeper into this when that particular man said, you’re trying to prove yourself. So with this journal, and what came out of it was all this feeling rather than unworthiness and not feeling good enough that never addressed that always run from. I tried to be so stoic all my life, work so hard, have this confident exterior, be good with women, make money, and do all these things. But underneath it all, I was insecure. And all I wanted was acceptance.
And when I looked at this, I was like, shit, he’s right. This guy’s right; I have all this time, I’ve not felt good enough. And I’ve been trying to prove myself; I then started to piece things together with the events in my life when I was young, how I fell, and then how that translates into me wanting to pull all these women and cheat annex girlfriends because I did either need to be with all the women all the guys one, eight, and then went into me then taking drugs and being a “Real Lad” then went into trusted into business and wanting to work and work and work to make more money and then tolerate in a relationship and not wanting to let go of it. Because I was afraid of being on my own and afraid nobody else would want me and I didn’t speak my voice, my standards are shallow, impacting me with money and problem clients. It was just phenomenal to see this, almost like my life up until that point was laid out before me in this journal, everything that had happened, and the reason why it would happen, why it happened rather, all coming back to this one wound that I’ve never even stopped to look out or consider. Because I was hustling and grinding and going, believing that when I got to a certain point, that’s when I would feel a certain way or take my foot off the gas or whatever, when I’m able to buy something, that’s when there are lots of variations of that story that was going on inside my head. So it was a real epiphany for me to realize that huge epiphany for me to realize that and have a conversation with my father. And it’s interesting because those two men who shared those questions noticed those things within me. I’ve never really spoken to them since certain people come into your life for certain reasons for certain things. I very much believe that. Those weren’t men that were particularly close to me, though, just guys that were chimed to and come to the call with, and we laughed. And then they said something to me. And I was like, wow. And acted on it. And it was huge to realize that huge.
Doug Holt 24:28
Well, that is huge. I mean, what a huge epiphany. And as I’ve heard you tell that story, the longer version of that story before and every time, it gets me because there is so much more to it. And I think I’m glad you didn’t tell some of those details that are in there because the men will have to come to The Activation Method. We’ll get the full-length version. But the similarity with those epiphanies, right are people have you look at something differently than you’re currently looking at or you find it within yourself. I mean, that’s put an epiphany in really looking at things differently. And that all starts with a question, right with a question. So Tim, and rounding this all off, and we lost power during this recording. So it might be a little jumbled for the guys. We picked up. But what’s one thing that these men can take away? Right now?
Tim Matthews 25:16
What’s one thing these men can? The power of an honest conversation.
Doug Holt 25:25
Oh, thank yourself for someone else, right?
Tim Matthews 25:27
Yeah, with yourself or someone else? I guess yours was with yourself, wasn’t it? The man was with somebody else. But the similarity there between both yours and mine is the fact that we took a moment to pump the brakes and pause and take an honest reflection of what we were feeling and what was going on, which then led to the Epiphany, of course.
Doug Holt 25:52
Absolutely. All right, guys. Well, that’s time for you to ask a question. And let us know what your epiphany is going over to The Powerful Man, The Activation Method, Facebook group, and let us know what your epiphany is. If you’re not a member of that group, guys, I got to tell you, you’re missing out on just tons of wisdom and gold. The coaches are sharing information. We don’t hold anything back. But share your epiphanies. We’d love to hear them. That’s a wrap for us today. We’ll see you next time and have an amazing day.
