The Grit Factor Podcast w/ Karl Jacobi

TGFP Ep 45 Audio

00:00:00 Speaker: Average is the enemy of greatness. Comfort is the enemy of growth. Welcome to the Grit Factor podcast, where we strip away the highlight reel and get into the darkness beneath it. The real stories, the real battles, and the battle plans used to conquer them. I'm your host, Carl Jacobi, combat vet, entrepreneur, resilience and performance coach, keynote speaker, husband and father. I've built, scaled, and exited multiple companies totaling over forty million in revenue. But here's what that highlight reel doesn't show you. Life has been smacking me in the face with a two by four since I was just five years old. Broken home. Constant chaos. No playbook. No safety net. Just grit. And if you're anything like me, you know you've got another level in you, in your business, your career, your faith, your leadership. You're just not sure how to get there. That's exactly why we're here. Be sure to follow me for more great content, and check out my website success with Karl dot com. Now that's Karl with a K. Now let's get to work. All right. Welcome back for another episode. And today, guys, I'm joined by a guy that on paper is exactly who you want in your corner if you're building a business. Three decades of building companies. He's mentored thousands of store owners, helped hundreds of brands scale past seven and even eight figures spoken on stages around the world, and built the biggest e-commerce optimization event in North America. But that's not the reason I want you to listen to my friends. I want you to listen. Because years into all of that winning, he sat in a room doing emotional intelligence work and came face to face with the truth that every single thing he had built and he had built as a man who did not believe he deserved any of it. Which is something I could deeply resonate with with an abusive father, a mother who was not there emotionally, a survival mode that the world kept calling hustle. He had the revenue and the reputation and still felt broke in ways that mattered most. All while the relationships he cared about quietly starved. So if you've ever hit every marker you set out and laid awake wondering if it ever felt like enough. This hour is for you. Matt Stafford, my dude. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation. Me too man. Me too. Especially as I was reading over your profile and putting this intro together. You know, a lot of this is stuff I could deeply resonate with. And I want to preface the audience with this, um, you know, and you, you probably share the same sentiment. I don't like the relationships I have with my father is very different than I had before, which isn't a good thing. Right? He had the program that he's had. Um, right. And none of that is their fault. It's just, you know, the way that the dominoes have crumbled. So I'm definitely excited for this conversation. It really resonated with me as I was reading your profile and things you built and things you've accomplished. So before any of that, right before the stages, before anything, all the things you've built, there was a guy underneath it who looked like he had it all handled right. So take us back to, you know, as far as you can, as far as you want to wear life? You know, it could be a childhood or anything where the abusive father, the mother who wasn't there for you emotionally. Walk us through those moments where you know that was life for you in that younger years. Yeah. So, um, and a lot of this didn't come to light till later on in life when I actually had conversations with my mom after my dad passed away. And so, um, early on, he, he had always been abusive with her. And then when that no longer got him what he wanted, he then used the abuse on the children in order to get her to comply. And so I don't, um, well, I'll, I'll go back to the moment that I realized, um, I had always been looking at the wrong thing. And what happened was my whole life growing up, I always thought, I'm. I'm broken because my parents said they loved me, but yet they would then abuse me. And I always blame that on my dad. Well, when I was going through this emotional intelligence, it was a three weekend event. Um, they had us do this scenario where you would act out your dad and then you'd act out your mom. And so I acted out my dad, and I was, like, angry and pretended to slap. And the just the normal stuff of what life was growing up. And then I got to, I had to act out my mom. And there was a wall about three or four feet behind me. And for whatever reason, I'm looking at this lady that's sitting in front of me. She's probably in her late seventies. And, uh, I turned around and walked over and was looking at the wall. And I remember the, the voice in my head, I go, this is weird. My mom never hit me. And then I went. Oh, my mom never played with me. My mom never took me to school. My mom never. And that was the moment that I realized that it wasn't. I was always looking at, um, how do I be nicer to not be abusive like my dad and think everything will work out if I'm just nicer? And what I realized was I had never really actually established a healthy connection with my mom or a woman. And so that was actually, um, that was the turning point for me to realize like, oh, that's my in, in order to start processing what I went through as a child. And, uh, since that moment, I can say, you know, my life has done three hundred sixty and, you know, multiple times better, um, with a lot of work. But that was, that was the moment, that was that aha moment where I had for forty years been looking in the wrong direction, and that little shift made all the difference for me. Gotcha. Thanks for sharing it, man. Allowing us a little bit of a glimpse into that story. And again, not that, you know, I had an abusive past. I mean, there was other forms of abusive behavior by my mother. Um, and, uh, my dad, again, no fault of I don't fault anybody. You know, it is what it is, right? And, uh, you know, my dad, you know, he was going off of what he was programmed with, and, uh, he did the best he could with what he had in those moments. And so, um, he wasn't there, you know, in a lot of ways that I needed him as a father. As a dad. Strong work ethic. Right? Um, great integrity, but just in a lot of ways, he wasn't there for me emotionally available. And, um, his things I needed as a dancing with my mother, you know, from my mother most of my life. And I think I'm here from you. Most of what I built my life was to prove my mother wrong. So if I would never hear, you know, um, I, you know, here I love you, or I'm proud of you or, you know, because most of my life I was fed, you know, uh, you, you you won't be successful. This is not for us, you know? And, uh, I watched her die in every aspect, unfortunately, uh, hearing you talk about this, you know, emotional intelligence work and emotional work, what point did it, you know, what point was it a breaking point for you? Like, I've got to get this. There's something off with me. Yeah, yeah, I remember that exact moment too. So, uh, really what had happened was I had a relationship with someone that I thought was really good for a couple of years and that it was going to be permanent. And we got a house, bought all the furniture, and literally three to four days before that, um, she ended the relationship and decided she wasn't going to move in. And I remember that was so difficult for me. I said to myself, I'm like, okay, what's the common denominator in all of these things? It's me. And so I'm going to figure out what I'm doing that attracts this type of person into my life and take one hundred percent responsibility for everything that I do and for every result that I get. And from that point forward, I was willing to invest the time and effort into, uh, exploring what made me tick and what unconscious stories were driving the bus. And through that process, um, I was led to do a dark retreat, which is where I spent four and a half days in complete darkness and silence. And so it's just you, you, yourself and your thoughts, and there's nothing to avoid. And you process through an infinite amount of memories with complete clarity. And it was the most, uh, shift that I ever had, uh, where I went from always thinking that something outside of me was going to make me feel better to, uh, when I feel better inside, what I'll create outside will be infinitely better and more aligned with who I am. And that was, that was the work that I started. Wow. So what I'm hearing you say, correct me if I'm wrong, is you took ownership, right? You took ownership of you. Yeah. I'm one hundred percent responsible for everything that happens in my life because I choose it with my beliefs. And I journal that every day. And then the other thing that I journal is whatever happened couldn't have happened any other way because it didn't. And that allows me to separate from it and just give today my energy rather than thinking or investing time in the past, wanting it to be different because it never will be. And so just whatever happened, happened, it couldn't have happened any other way because it didn't. And I'm one hundred percent responsible for everything in my life. I'm choosing it in some form or another with my beliefs. Because what I realized in that dark retreat on the third day, my brain had it was at the height of discomfort and I went over to lay down, to go to sleep. I was tired out and I was sitting on the edge of the bed, and all of a sudden my brain literally turned on the light and I could see the entire room. I could see the yoga mat, I could see the door to the bathroom. I could see the little bench built into the wall, everything. And I sat there and I was like, wow, my brain is so uncomfortable that it literally turned the lights on in the room so that I would feel comfortable. And I'm like, all right, I'm going to get back up and go over to the meditation bench where I had just done a long meditation, and I got up and I took about three steps towards the bench and walked straight into the concrete wall. And I was like, oh, wow. So my brain was uncomfortable. It created this reality to make me feel better in what I had to do was walk into the concrete wall to realize that it was all made up. It wasn't true. And so I, when I came out of there doing was, uh, realizing that I wanted to walk into as many concrete walls as possible to shatter what I thought was real and create a much more accurate version of my reality. And so that's really what the work was done for the last year and a half as like, I challenge what I'm believing. Constantly to see if it's actually true. Because I believe our brains don't let us really see reality. We see it how we believe it is. And so my goal is to constantly challenge my belief. To see if my brain is telling me the truth or if it's lying to me in order to feel comfortable. What we look like five minutes or ten minutes into this, we're dropping some massive bombs here. You're speaking in my lane. I'm not a nerd in this, but I've got I've really have nerded out in just how much our brains prevent us from growing as much as we. You know, we don't give enough credit just how much our brains prevent us from growing. Right? Yeah. Um, you know, and it does it unconsciously. So those beliefs. Yes, ninety five, ninety eight percent of the decisions that we make are completely unconscious. We think we're in control. And they're based off of these old stories that we've never surfaced. And so what I realized is how many of those stories surfaced in that dark retreat, because there's no distraction. There's nothing except for your thinking. And you watch your brain form thoughts. You watch it like create these realities, do all of these things. And then now you can go, oh, okay. Well, I'm going to go back to that memory. When I was five years old and my dad locked me out and was abusing my mom. Well, I did that. And then I thought, like, where do I feel these sensations in my body? And I just laid there on the bed and just processed those sensations. And then all of a sudden I felt way better. I'm like, oh, okay, that was really amazing. Now let me think of this memory. And I did that for several hours. I literally tried to think of everything I could locate where I felt it in my body. Just acknowledge it, not make it good or bad, right or wrong, until it would go away and then do the next one and do the next one. And what I realized was when I got out of the dark retreat for about the next ninety days, about every week or so, old things that I used to do, I had just stopped doing them. It was like the old belief was kind of withered up and was dying. And so I was acting different. I was behaving different. And that happened for about three months straight. So I'm like, okay, that's pretty amazing. I'm gonna go again at the six month mark and once at the one year mark. And so that's what I did. And each time I went, it continued to do that to where now, um, I feel like I've processed everything I can. And so now I just have like this nightly routine where I just sit and kind of think about what went well during the day and what didn't go well. And if I've stored anything from that, and if I have, I just process it and I sleep good, I wake up good, I wake up excited, I'm happy to do things, and I'm accomplishing more than I've ever accomplished in my life. That's that's incredible, man. Real quick, before we keep rolling, maybe life hit you hard. Business fell apart. Career isn't working out. Relationship ended. Health took a dive. And now you're standing in the rubble. Trying to figure out what the next move even looks like. Or maybe nothing blew up at all. On paper, you're winning. Sure, but on the inside, something's off. If you're not in crisis, you're at a crossroads. And the playbook that built the life you have is not the playbook that builds the one you want. Either way, you're stuck. Not broken. Stuck between who you were and who you're becoming. Most self-help just piles more weight on the load you're already carrying. I do not want to do that. I put together a free video series called the Grit Code exposed, and I want to invite you to check it out. Seven short videos. That's it. The five laws that change everything for me. In every client, I coach the same five that every person who's ever come back from the fire has walked through where they had a name for it or not. No fluff, no ninety minute webinar, no bait, just the free video series. You can start it tonight. Grab it at grit. Code exposed dot com one more time. Grit code exposed dot com. It's free. You don't need any more hustle. You need the next version. And this is how you find it. Check it out. See if it speaks to you. And if it does, I'll see you inside. All right, let's get back to the conversation. I'm sure there's a lot of people that's listening right now. I'm going to get in some questions based on things I've heard here. There's a lot of people that's listening to me, man. Matt. This sounds all like foo foo, woo woo stuff, right? And trust me, I, I, I did too for a long period of time until I've done a lot of what you talked about. I haven't gone into like the dark retreat, which is something that I'm really intrigued and want to ask you some questions on that. But when I started to slow down and really question really, at the end of the day, it really comes down to questioning everything that you're told to believe, either by other people or yourself. Right. Question all of your beliefs. It was ironic to me and how you're talking about how your brain was fighting so hard to keep it yourself when it thought protected. Yeah, it was projecting images of things that were not even true one hundred percent. That's crazy. Yeah. And what I realized, uh, in there too, was that these triggers that we have are treasures, because every one of those triggers that we have is a belief somewhere that we're using to label, uh, what we think is happening. And so for me, um, I got into the habit of every time I would be triggered, I would right away, I would just pause, I would close my eyes and I would ask, what's the brain, my story? What's the brain? What's the story my brain is telling me in order for me to feel this way? And then I would ask, is that true? And I still do that to this day. Um, whenever something triggers me, I'm like, okay, well, for some reason I'm having a reaction. So what's the story my brain's telling me? Is it true? Is it really true? And why do I believe that? And what facts do I have to like, not believe it or to think that you know where it's coming from? And I can usually work through everything on my own very, very quickly now because I've gotten in the habit of doing that for everything. So there's just over the last three and a half years, there's just not that many stories that come up anymore that I haven't already processed. I'm hearing a key word here says processed. And so while I'm, I have an idea what you're talking about here to the person that's listening is like, okay, I'm hearing processing, I'm hearing processing. So the person that's listening, it's trying to grasp this concept, right? Um, that's probably experiencing some flavor of it, right? Or they've, you know, they've hit every external marker of success, but they're like, they feel off, right? They're trying to attack life, feeling a void, which was where, you know, where it kind of got me, where finally got me. What do you mean by process? Like, what does, what does that mean? Yeah. So most people believe if I can figure this out, I'll be okay. And what I realized was if I feel it out, I am okay, so I can think of a thousand ways to describe love, and all of them could be true to a lot of people. But how many ways can I describe what love feels like and what I mean by feel? Not the story, but like, what do I actually feel? Oh, it's in my chest. Oh, it's about the size of a, of a pool ball and oh, it's, you know, it's warm and it's like blue and that is feeling it not, oh, this person needs to treat me x, y, z. That's a story that I'm telling. That's not a feeling. And so when I'm talking about processing it's um, not trying to figure it out to be okay, but try to feel the sensation that my body feels from the event that I'm processing. And when I do that, my body processes it, lets go of it. And then I think our brain now sees that story from who we are now instead of who we were when the trauma happened. And so now, as a fifty three year old, looking at that same event, I have a radically different view of it and a radically different reaction to it. Now it's just a fact of life. It's not this thing that happened to me. And so it doesn't create the feelings and the emotions tied to it that are unconscious. Now it's conscious, and I have a choice of, do I want to respond or do I want to react? Wow, that's so good, man. So now looking back, I would say looking back, I set the right choice of words here. So now in the season of life you're in, how do you feel that this journey that you've been on has affected you, as in all the roles that you serve? I don't know if you're married and have kids and so forth. I'm just I'm just going to generalize for a moment and all the roles that you serve. How do you feel that this journey has affected you? Uh, it allows me to show up one hundred percent who I am, not who I think I need to be to be validated. Ooh. And so when I can show up one hundred percent authentic and not hide or not only put the part of me out there that I think people will accept, um, my relationships are infinitely better, uh, much stronger, much cleaner. Um, and from that place, uh, my quality of life is equally as powerful just because, um, I get to be me. And it doesn't matter if you accept me or the other person does, because I love who I am. And in that from that place now people are actually, um, getting to know the real me. And so I feel connection where before, if you have these two people and they have these un unprocessed traumas, they need the other person's validation to feel okay. And so what do they do? They only share what they think will be accepted so that the other person will validate them, or at least make them feel better. And when that happens, the truth of the matter is you still don't feel the connection because it's not the real you. It's the you that you presented that they're actually connecting with and you don't feel it. So now I feel connection with all the people that I deal with, that I do business with, that I hang out with all of that because I am one hundred percent me. And that also filters out the people that aren't willing to be honest and authentic, and it's just too much for them. So they kind of filter themselves out of my life, which means my entire peer group is people who are living the same life of, um, radical authenticity and just being okay with who they are, understanding we're doing the best we can and we'll keep improving. But that that's, that's, it's a good thing. You know, it's a great thing, right? Yes, I agree, I'm saying this you clearly obvious to us, but those are listening. It's probably like they're afraid of death, right? They're afraid of death because acceptance is all part of that, right? The acceptance, the validation, fear of abandonment, right? For a large part of my life, I had fear of abandonment. And still to this day, sometimes that plagues me, right? So the mere thought of potentially shutting people out, either intentionally or unintentionally, scares a lot of people. Sure. Can we pause for just a second? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm doing a podcast right now. My dad is calling me. Over there. Yeah. They come back. Oh my my my book. Oh I can't. Yeah, I can't answer. I'm on a podcast right now. Yeah I can't. Someone can walk to the gate. I can't answer the phone right now. Oh, she's in there knocking on my door. It's all good, man. Let me, uh. Fuck. Yeah. They keep calling my phone. I'm gonna have to answer it in a second to let him in at the gate. Sorry. Yeah. No worries. It's all good. Okay. All right. So. Yeah. So, you know, for the. I don't remember what we're talking about other than, you know, accepting the radical authenticity of, uh, showing up, um, with real connection instead of, uh, what you think people will accept. Yeah. So do you feel, or do you find yourself me answering or me ask it in a different way? So A lot of people are exhausted in a day, right? They're tired. So for in my in my belief, I feel a lot of exhaustion comes from a mismatch of alignment, right? Alignment of who their public think they are and who they truly are, uh, the values and so forth. Right. So, you know, when you freed yourself of those chains, right, you freed yourself of the chains of the past and the beliefs and all that stuff. How do you feel now and in a sense of your energy, all of that, do you feel yourself a lot more vitalized? Do you feel a lot more free? Like, help us understand what that looks like from a energy perspective? Yeah, one hundred percent. So the other thing that I will tell you is I'm the healthiest I've ever been. And I really believe it's because of, um, all of that emotional weight and things that you're processing that cause inflammation and cause the lack of sleep and all of these different things. I processed that out. And so now when I, I exercise every day, seven days a week and I recover better, less injured. All of these things are better. I eat healthier because I choose things that are good for me instead of the thing that will get me by. Uh, yeah. So I would say that, um, every aspect of your life will improve when you're making decisions, um, through the lens that you're worth it. Then the lens of I'm not good enough because when you're not good enough, um, and you don't go exercise when you said you're going to, uh, all that does is just confirm that belief. See, I knew you weren't gonna da da da da. So I would say the other part of it is I am a lot more consistent with who I am and with what I say I'm going to do. I stop negotiating that because I'm worth it. And I believe that. And so I show up that way. Man, that was so good. I read something a long time ago. I say a long time ago, several years ago. It's inspired by a book. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, especially in all the work that you've done. Uh, the body keeps count. Yeah, the body keeps the score. Yeah. Yeah, the body keeps the score. Yep. Um, and I don't think a lot of people put enough weight to that, that your body does keep the score, right? Yeah. And it's often times even passed down. Like, I mean, part of the work I did, I was doing a, an, um, a process with someone else. And when we were all done, I'm like, wow, this feels really weird. I said, I feel like, um, I got rid of something that wasn't mine. Yeah. And he goes, very interesting. Um, where do you think that you picked it up? And I was sitting there and I'm like, man, it almost feels like I got it from my mom when I was born. And he goes, absolutely. And, and what it was, was, it was this feeling of shame that felt like I got rid of it. And he said, what was your mom going through when you were born? While my mom was seventeen, almost eighteen. Um, just getting married to my dad. I was the second child. And this was back in nineteen seventy. And so all the families had basically shamed them for having children outside of wedlock. And they weren't married yet and all this stuff. So my mom had all this shame that I naturally picked up and wow, my whole life I had had this shame that, you know, helped reinforce the belief that you're not good enough. Um, one way or another, we get that and then we get our, you know, we have our ability to take ownership of it and then process it and get rid of it. But that for me was a huge thing. And what was really interesting was I track my sleep with the aura ring, and what I would average was always under an hour of REM sleep and deep sleep, no matter how long I slept and nothing else had changed. And from that point forward, I now averaged about one hundred or about an hour and a half to two hours of REM sleep, an hour and a half to two hours of deep sleep. Literally nothing else changed. But those two sleep metrics, like shot through the roof, um, after that experience, and that's remained constant since then. So just my sleep alone improved drastically, which obviously gives you more energy. You show up more clear brain fog, all this stuff from this thing that I had literally been fighting my entire life. Wow, man. That's that's astonishing, man. Especially, you know, because again, we don't typically think that this weighs on our bodies, right? We think it's just in our minds or emotional, but we don't tie it to our bodies and how it weighs on us, how it increases inflammation, how increases, you know, all these different, you know, things that we experience in our bodies, right? And we just show up tired. We don't have the same level of vitality. We're just exhausted. We try to sleep more or we consume more coffee, energy drinks or whatever. My, my flavor is espresso, but so what does that. So you said, you know, you absorbed that shame, right? Um, was there anything on your dad's side that you picked up? Was there anything on that other side that you picked up that made you, you, that you felt like you inherited or that, uh, yeah, about best choice was inherited. Um, how would I describe it? Uh, I think I had swung the pendulum the other way where he was, um, couldn't control his anger and physical abuse. I learned to suppress it and pretend like it wasn't there, and then not actually, um, do anything about it. And so essentially what I was doing is just kept stacking that pressure inside of me. And what would happen was when I was tired, um, it's almost like, uh, I think of it like a teapot where it's always perking and then all of a sudden it gets to the point where it's boiling and what does it do? It let off steam. And so I'm this really nice, kind person. And then all sudden I would have this thing that would, I would, I would react way different than what the, um, scenario warranted. And then I would use that to then beat myself up. And now I'm like my dad and all this other. And so I could shove it down farther. And so what would happen is you get this Jekyll and Hyde type of experience where people are like, this just doesn't make any sense. And really what it was, was all that stuff that I hadn't let go of or hadn't really dealt with, that I constantly pushed down. I can definitely a lot of what you're saying here, you know, for the bulk of my younger life, I had a lot of anger management issues. You know, I would be fast to to flare a temper, you know, and I saw the destruction that it would cause. Right. And then I did what you're just talking about, right? Became the tea kettle. I just suppress, suppress, suppress and suppress until one minor thing. Right. And it's not even usually the big things, it sets you off. It's the one minor thing. Um, maybe somebody glanced at you wrong or something. Um, we live in South Florida, so we can relate to this, but somebody pulls out in front of you, right? Yeah. Um. Every other day? Yeah, exactly. Every other day. Exactly. Um, you know, then it's just you explode, right? All because of that one minor thing. Um, man, this is so good in that dark retreat, man. What was the most revealing thing of that experience where you just can't unsee it anymore? Honestly, honestly, I think I shared it. The walking into the concrete wall when I literally thought I was getting up, walking over to the bench and just realizing, uh, with concrete evidence, pun intended, that, uh, our brain will literally create a reality to make us feel comfortable or that will confirm what we think is happening, even though it's a lie. Yeah. That's so that's so true, man. That is so true. I still think we give enough weight to how much our brains can interfere, or how much they can weigh in our perception of things, right? It's powerful enough. It can change our physiology, uh, just with the belief. Because if you think about people who have split personalities and their eye color changes, so your brain is strong enough that if it believes you're a certain person with a certain color eye, that it literally creates that person in real time, and then it can go back to the other one. So if it can do that, uh, what are the other things that it can do that we're not giving it credit for? And it's so true. I mean, think about when we go to sleep, right? We pretend we're asleep until we're actually asleep. Yeah. That man, I didn't actually think about telling you. You just said that. That is so true. We don't give enough. We don't give our brains enough credit for just how powerful they are. Yeah. And when we can harness that, or when we process the things and then use it for the things that we choose. Uh, it's just as powerful. And what happens is magic, man. Woo! This has been a great episode, man. So what would you, you know, talk to a version of you, right? That's probably before you did this emotional deep work before. That's, you know, done this, that's done the work that you've done. What would you tell this person? You know, they're they're experiencing the same thing you experienced, right? They built all the things they built and they feel like they fill this void. Or maybe they're that tea kettle that's about to explode. Like, what would you tell that person? Yeah. Thankfully, I do that now. Like I actually have a coach, um, other entrepreneurs through this process because it's made such a difference for me when I share that, like they resonate with it. I have a guy right now that, you know, his business does over a couple hundred million. And his belief was that when I achieved this, I'm going to get this feeling. And so he has never actually felt. And so getting him into the process of feeling instead of thinking his feelings, he feels his feelings. And that makes all the difference in the world. So really, the magic happens when we stop trying to figure it out to be okay. We feel it out. And when we learn to connect our brain with our body and go, oh, this feeling or this emotion that I have, it's not good or bad, right or wrong. It's just an emotion. I don't need to figure it out. I just need to feel it. And when I feel it, it goes away. The problem is most of us go, oh, that's uncomfortable. We shove it down and then we just keep feeling it over and over and over, but we never actually feel it. We just feel the discomfort of it. And once you can feel through that discomfort, it goes away and you don't have to deal with it anymore. Yeah, such a valid point, you know? Especially I like the obvious. We're both dudes here, right? Yeah. For the women out there, this just seems to be I'm not going to say it's easy, but it is easier for them to be. They're taught to feel their feelings. Guys are taught to, um, rub some dirt on it and, uh. Don't cry. Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. Right. So talk to that dude out there, talk to the dudes. Because this is a big thing that I stress on a lot is by default, we freaking we fail miserably in this, right? And I think, no, I'll correct myself. I'm of the belief that we like everything is dependent on us, our kids and everything else. Right? So, you know, talk to the dudes out there that's, you know, listen to you, like feel what? Like that, you know, that's not for me or, you know, that's that's that sounds, you know, that's that sound like it's for me or it doesn't sound for real. What? Like, what do you tell that guy? That's this big six, eight, three hundred pound dude? You know, that's burly? Um, you know, that's doubting everything you're saying right now. Yeah. I ask him to raise his hand if he believes that if he figures it out, he'll be okay. And, uh, they always say, yep. And I'm like, okay, then how's that working out for you? And they're like, oh, it's not. Yeah. I said, so, uh, if nothing changes, nothing will change. It's like so. Right. So in other words, you need to try something else. You need to choose something, some other form to process it than what you've been doing. That doesn't work. If what you're doing is working, then great. Like that's working for you. Um, I'm going to be your cheerleader, but clearly there's a problem or you wouldn't have this conversation. And if you're having that problem, then why do you keep thinking doing the same thing is going to actually be the solution when all you're doing is avoiding the thing that you're avoiding what you want because it's on the other side of what you don't want to do. So do the thing that you don't want to do, and you'll have the thing that you want on the other side of it. That's so true. And that applies to every area of your life, right? I mean, oftentimes more times than not, you know, the thing that we want is on the other side of the uncomfortable, the thing that we don't want to do. Yeah. The thing that we're avoiding. Yep, yep. The very thing that we're avoiding. And, you know, that resistance that we meet is right there is that bear to the biggest breakthrough. It's actually a gift. It's revealing. This is a place of you that is not okay. That is not okay with what happened. And until you process that, you're going to be not okay. So it's good that it's surfaced. Now you can take care of it and quit dealing with it in your Neuron conscious that doesn't know how to get rid of it. It just knows how to confirm it so that you can keep believing what you believe. Yeah, it's so good. Man. Real quick, before you go, if you're still with me this deep into the episode, something in it hits you. Maybe it was the guest. Maybe it was one line. Either way, you're still here. And that feeling in your chest right now, that's the signal. Most people get a signal like that and do absolutely nothing with it. They close the app. Life rushes back in. The moment's gone. Six months later, there are the exact same spot. I don't want that for you. So I put something together. I want to invite you to check out a free video series called The Grit Code Exposed. Seven short videos. The five laws. I walk every client through. The same ones that rebuilt me when everything else fell apart. And if you listen closely, you heard them running underneath the entire conversation because everyone who's come back from the fire walks through these five laws. Some find them on their own, some get help, but the laws don't change. Free video series. You can start it tonight. No fluff. No ninety minute webinar. Just the series. If you're going to do something with what you heard today, do this before life talks you out of it. Go to grit Code exposed dot com one more time. Grit code exposed dot com. And hey, before I let you go, thank you for riding with me this long. It means a lot more than you know. Thank you. Fast forward to today, man. You're already put this out there. You're doing a lot of work with helping other doctors to, you know, process through things to help them, you know, show up the best version of themselves, right? Show up to be to be their true selves in the mask removes and so forth. You know, what is it that you're most fired up about today that the world has yet yet to see? Um, I honestly, I, I no longer believe that it has to be difficult. I think once you do it, you know, fear is this illusion that it's this deep lake in front of us. It's a mile wide. And the moment we jump into the fear, we realize it's just a puddle. It's only an inch deep. And so the belief is like, oh, this is I got to do all this hard work in order to take care of this. And I just asked them, well, what if it was easy? What if you labeled that as easy instead of labeling it as hard? When you label it as hard, you are going to create Struggle. And if you could label that it's easy that I just do this thing. And on the other side of it, I feel better. And it, you know, most emotions last long, less than three to five minutes if we actually sit with it. Um, so the reason why it's constant and it's been for years is because we've never actually sat with it and felt through it. We just keep pushing it down, pushing it down. It's like, man, this, none of it goes away and it just gets worse and worse and worse. Yeah, we just got to jump into the puddle, realize it's an inch deep feel through it. And on the other side, we're okay. Mhm. That's true. A lot of it is, is, is, is an illusion one hundred percent, man. It's been a lot of knowledge here, man. A lot of gold here for sure. So in your experience that you've you walked through this, right? Where do you see the biggest gap? Right? When I say the biggest gap, where do you see like somebody listening to you right now. Right. And they're, they're sitting there driving or whatever. Like a lot of us suppress things that we don't even feel like we're suppressing, right? So what are those triggers that you see in people that's like, oh, that stuff you haven't processed from like thirty years ago when your grade school teacher said that you suck, right? I'm being gentle here. But what, you know, somebody that's driving and listening, you're like, what are some things that areas that you look for where they, they need to, you know, go through this journey or they need to walk through this processing. Yeah. I try not to say to anyone that they need to, they can choose to, because when you need to do something and someone tells you that you need to do it, your body will resist it. And so it is so good. Um, if you change it from I need to do it to I choose now your body doesn't resist it. And really, um, the gift is in the body. That's where the triggers come from. everybody's are different. They've all had different experiences, so I don't try to coach them through, oh, you got to deal with these certain things. Whatever comes up for them. I'm a mirror. We discuss it, process it and let it go. Uh, and I also believe that the more times that you tell a story of a certain thing, that the more you believe that that's the cause, when really that story is not the cause. If I believe your story, that's the most unloving thing I can do because your story is what keeps you stuck. So the story keeps it stuck there. Let go of the story. Just feel the feeling and you'll process it and the story will change. It'll upgrade from who you are now, looking back at it instead of who you were when you create when the story was created. So who would be the individuals that's listening right now? You know it. Yeah, I know I'm generalizing a little bit, but, you know, give some examples of people that like, oh man, I went through that or I went through this. Or believe it or not, it's the most successful people that I ever run into. And I think that the reason why that is, is because, um, they're so driven to create something to feel better inside that it's yeah, they're constantly chasing that. And what I've found is once we go through that process, what they create is way better, way more solid, uh, many times making multiples of what they were making before because they created it from a place of no longer needing that thing to validate them. Now they're creating it from their genius, which is where they were always creating it from before, but they were never allowing it to sink in that it was them creating it. Mhm. I like you said, Zone of Genius. Yeah. Awesome. Well, cool man. Well, dude, for anybody that wants to learn more about you, they want to connect with you. They just want to, you know? Yeah. They want to learn more about your work and so forth. Where can they connect with you, man? Yeah. I have an agency where we help e-com business owners. And that's just my personal email is mad at build dot com. Uh, people can reach out and typically, you know, it's referral, but if you reach out and say, hey, I heard you on the podcast, you know, I'll connect with you that way. Awesome, man. Thanks, man. I appreciate the sharing. We'll definitely be dropping it all in the show notes. And, and, uh, you know, the email and anything of that nature. So awesome, man. I love to give every person, you know, a chance to talk to the version of themselves before their biggest breakthrough, right? Sixty to 90s. Like, what would you tell this Matt, who was building businesses, chasing, validation, chasing, you know, what he thought was success and he was on the wrong path. What? You know, a few days to talk to that person, look in the mirror or in the camera and give him something he can grab hold of to get out of that path of destruction. Yeah. I think secretly we see, um, all of our flaws compared to everyone else's highlight reel. And I think social media has, um, made that glaringly obvious for most of us. And all that does is confirm the story that we're already telling is like, oh, well, I have all these hold ups and all these things that are wrong about me because look at how well they're doing. And that perpetuates. And so I think just understanding, uh, the reality of, you know, they're going through the same thing I am, uh, they're dealing, They, you know, they got to get up the same way I do. They're not negotiating with themselves to feel better. They're just choosing to do the thing that they need to do. And so for me, that I was always good enough. And I just need to, you know, be consistent with that long enough that it will work out. Mhm. Awesome, man. All right. As we close, man. Man, I feel like this almost this last hour has just flown by. Um, but, uh, I know you've got things to do as as do I. And as we wrap up, I've got a couple rapid fire questions in this season that you're in, man, especially in a journey of self-discovery and really just being more emotionally intelligent about the best way I can describe it. Right. Okay. You know, what is your personal definition of grit? Um, don't negotiate with my feelings. Uh, decide. Decide what I want and choose that, uh, what I'm willing to put forth and then stick to that. And what I realized by doing that is we all have like this personal thermostat of where our life is on average and say it's seventy degrees. And when we start doing better, uh, what happens to the thermostat? We turn it on and bring it back down. And what I realized is that when I stop negotiating with my feelings and I do what I say I'm going to do, I continue to raise that thermostat and my capacity to handle more, to do more, to accomplish more is infinitely better. Uh, when I don't negotiate, when I wake up, if I feel like going to work out or if I feel like doing my journal, etc.. Yeah, love this man. I, I, I'm hearing glimpses of, uh, gay Hendricks Brook uh, uh, what's the name, the big leap. Yes, yes, one hundred percent. Great book. And I did work with Gaye and Cathy Hendrix for about six months in somatic work. Yeah. Awesome, man. Awesome. In fact, I just quoted some of their material in some of my programs. I love his work as well as in my lectures. Um, you know, talk about the thermostat. Yeah. Yeah, I, I man, this is so good. All right. Last two questions. Um, when you're in the thick of it, you're in the trenches and, you know, lights are out. What is a scripture quote or directive that you tell yourself to pull you out of the out of that moment? For me, it goes back to that I'm one hundred percent responsible for everything that's in my life. And so if there's a thing that I'm working hard, I'm responsible for, if there's a thing that's bothering me, I'm responsible for it. And that, uh, just like anything else, it passes, you know, none of them have ever killed me yet, so I don't plan on it killing me in the moment, even though our brains trying to tell us that it's going to cause death. Yes, I agree, I agree it it is so true man. Our brain makes it sink, makes us think that we're going to die, or there's this catastrophe. It's just like, nope, we'll live. We'll live. All right, last question. This comes in two parts. And those for the listener watching. I always love to offer my current guests an opportunity to challenge my next guest with a challenge of their own. And the lineup is completely anonymous. So I promise you, I did not tell Matt anybody who was coming up. So Eric Low from a previous episode asked you this if it all ended today, if the business you run right now failed, what would you do? How would you pivot and what problem would you solve first? MM. Great question. what would I do? Well, I've always thought that I'd like to be in the pet niche because people spend an inordinate amount of money on their pet. And I've thought about it a lot. Why do they do that? And my belief is that I think that that is one of the only places that people get unconditional love. So the pet, like literally loves them no matter what. And that feeling is so strong and they don't get it anywhere else. That that pet becomes invaluable to them. So I think I would build a business around the pet niche and help people create, you know, an even better relationship with their pet and themselves in the, in the process. Man, that's, that's really good. All right. Matt, what would you love to challenge my next guest with? What question of your own would you like to share? Yeah. Let's go back to the question I asked earlier. Um, do you feel like if you figure this out, you'll be okay? And how's that working for you? I love that. How fitting is that? That's awesome. Well cool man. Well, I can't tell you who it is, so you're gonna have to have to tune in. But, uh, that's such a great question as I'm looking at the lineup in the podcast sheet for it. So. Well, awesome. Well, this has been a great time. You know, thank you for so much coming in here and sharing the last, uh, almost hour with us and the deep work you've done, the emotional intelligence work that you've done. And quite frankly, in my opinion, probably one of the most important pieces of what we could do for ourselves and not just for ourselves, but for other people around us. Right. You know, and so thank you so much for not just talking about the amazing business successes, which we didn't really talk about at all, but, you know, all the things you just talked about today. So thank you so much, man, I appreciate that. Yeah, thanks for having me. It was a great conversation. Yeah, man. Absolutely. I know we've kind of talked a whole lot longer, but I know we've got, you know, a certain a lot of time. So. Alrighty guys. Well, listen, for the person that is connecting or that is listening or watching right now, listen, the gap between average and excellence is just action. Guys don't just take, you know, this, this, uh, Matthew, take one thing he shared today. He shared so much information about processing emotions and so forth. Take one thing and do it in the next twenty four hours, as well as be the reason someone doesn't quit today. Share this episode. Someone in your circle needs it. Send it to them now. Matt. Again, my dude, thank you for stepping on my man. It's good to have you. Thank you. My pleasure.