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Explore your curiosity - Interesting people with fascinating stories.
Life consists of three things:
-The stories we tell others
-The stories others tell us
-The stories we tell ourselves.
David, welcome aboard to the show. Thank you so much for joining us here today.
Speaker 2:It is an honor to be here. I'm super excited.
Speaker 1:So David, we're gonna send you back to the worst day of your life. Maybe you tell us, tell us about that moment where you understood that your marriage is in serious danger if you don't change something.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So this was back in a time several years ago, and I thought I could just push through what I was enduring. I thought I could just, you know, I'm, I'm strong enough. I'm tough enough. I can just, I can get through it.
Speaker 2:And the truth was no, I needed some help. And this was back in about 2020. And, it started off with little signs. The first sign for me was I was getting up early in the morning. I was working long hours and I was walking out of my house.
Speaker 2:As I passed my son's bedroom door, he was about five at the time, the door opened. And then he was standing there and I was like, oh, hi, buddy. Good morning. And he looks at me and goes, hi, god. I'll see you.
Speaker 2:I'll see you Saturday. And I looked at him. I was like, buddy, it's Tuesday. I'll see you later tonight. He's like, no.
Speaker 2:You're gonna be too tired to play with me, but if I'm lucky, maybe we can play Saturday. And I was like, arrow to the heart, man. You gotta pull that out. So I was like, well, I I wanna fix this because I I wanna work hard to build a future that I love, but I don't wanna lose the people that I love in the process. So I thought the solution was let's switch jobs.
Speaker 2:Let's change it. So I went and I worked in cybersecurity and I spent some time and I got myself a 100% remote job. I literally took work home with me. This didn't change a thing. In fact, I was a 100% physically home, but I was 0% mentally home.
Speaker 2:During that time in the economy and all that, my wife said, let's start a side business together because we thought that was a good idea. So, we invested thousands of dollars into the side business and it wasn't making but pennies a month, and it started to really strain us. You add on top of that, I got a one year old daughter who's not sleeping through the night. So, now we're reaching the point where hallway embraces turned into project checklist. Hey, did you get this done for this client?
Speaker 2:And our date nights became project management meetings. And my wife used to hate date nights. She used to hate them. And it got to the point where something had to change because we were sleeping in separate rooms and we were headed down a very dark path. For us, my wife is really smart.
Speaker 2:If we listen to our wives, they usually have smart advice, if we listen. But she came to me and she's like, We should get some coaching. And I was like, I don't want therapy. I want a solution. And I wish I could say coaching was a guru moment that solved everything.
Speaker 2:But I was like, You know what? Something has to change. I'm a shift my commitment. And we took the coaching and the coaching did help. It was like someone finally handed me tools and I'll share some of those tools that we learned along the way.
Speaker 1:So wait, before we get to the tools, I want to dive into the problems. Okay. What were the what were the issues that were kind of making life unbearable for you and for your wife, for the kids? What were the frustration moments?
Speaker 2:The number one thing had to be communication. We did not have common language, like even jargon. I spent eight years in the Navy. I spent ten years in cybersecurity and almost seven years in healthcare. I spoke a lot of technical jargon.
Speaker 2:My wife didn't spend any of that time in any of it. She stayed married to me the whole time. But with that then, we didn't have any common ground and common language that we could communicate on. And when I said one thing, she interpreted it as another, and it really created a lot of friction. The second big pain point was clarity.
Speaker 1:Do you have do you have, like, any, like, strong memory around, like, an explosion that happened where you're like, that's not what I meant.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. We we had some, like, especially back in Florida when I was stationed down there in the military, we had some that really were quite explosive where she just didn't get it and I just didn't get her. We had no clarity on each other. She had desires that I didn't understand and so did I, and we just couldn't communicate.
Speaker 2:We had times when the silent treatment, that was something her parents did, something my parents did, and so just go silent with each other, which by the way, that's like ignoring a fire. It's not going to help. It just makes it worse.
Speaker 1:You talked about kind of having different needs. What were those needs? Kind of what were the things that each of you needed, but were just being ignored mutually, I should say?
Speaker 2:I think one of the big things that we both needed that were being ignored is someone to truly understand what our desires were. In life, everybody has desires about what they wanna do. Some people, it's about getting things done the right way. For some people, it's about moving people forward and helping people overcome. For some people, it's about connecting with the right people.
Speaker 2:And for others, it's about thinking and learning and creating and having deep intellectual discussions. Well, you know, hindsight's twenty twenty. Right? Now, I know my wife loves deep intellectual intellectual discussions. Discussions.
Speaker 2:She likes talking and likes communicating and likes having these deep things, but I don't. That's not my thing. I like telling stories and helping people move forward and overcome obstacles. And so she's over there trying to have a deep discussion with me. And I'm like, what's the point of this story?
Speaker 2:Where are we going with this? And so I'm shutting down her natural gift of deep intellectual discussion. And she's over like, why are you trying to move me forward? And she's shutting down my gift of moving people forward. Once we had that clarity, dude, most of our fights went out the door.
Speaker 2:I'm like, oh, my wife wants to connect with me and have a deep discussion. I don't need to solve the problem. She wants to talk about the problem. And then vice versa. So,
Speaker 1:I mean, you're not changing as human beings, but you want to come towards each other. Do you kind of have a safe word of this is going be an intellectual discussion or this is going to be a story and like, who's playing, who's gang? Like, what do you do nowadays?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. So frame it. If I had to give one piece of advice, it'd be frame it. So I'm big on telling stories, and I'll tell a story for a while. As you probably noticed how I started talking, I just I just keep going on story.
Speaker 2:With her, she's coming to me sometimes just to talk and go from there. So here's how this We come up to each other and we say, Hey, I have something I want to share with you. It's going take about five minutes. I'm not looking for a solution. I already have one.
Speaker 2:I just want to bounce it off of you. So, then the other person knows what to expect and in what timeframe. So, frame it. Frame it when you go up and say, Hey. That way she's not going, What are we getting into?
Speaker 2:How long is this gonna
Speaker 1:I love that. Like my wife and I, we have come to the understanding that, by the way, I'm your wife in style. I'm the deep intellectual and she's the, you know, all these emotions happened and I need to share like what everybody was feeling and kind of what all the social fabric was. So very, very different. But we're kind of, we're in the middle of this and we're like, Hold on, what are we doing right now?
Speaker 1:Like, are we, am I listening? Am I solving this? Sometimes I'm not sure. So I absolutely love the frame it suggestion. So, you know, obviously that's one of the tools that you learn.
Speaker 1:What are the other unlocks that allowed you to rebuild your relationship?
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. Yeah. So we spent five years after that, we're gonna get a divorce kind of moment. And over those years, we learned a lot of things. Couple of big ones.
Speaker 2:One of the biggest ones was called the three businesses. This, I wish I had known this years ago. Like, I wish I had learned this and mastered it. The three businesses are are these, your business, other people's business, and God's business. And when you understand the three businesses, you can actually control your controllables and focus your energy, which limits your anxiety.
Speaker 2:Let me let me explain. So start with your business. You have full control over everything you think, feel, do, and create. What you think about will become how you feel. For example, if I'm pissed off at my wife and I'm thinking, well, she's just acting like her mom, and I let my thoughts do that, I will begin to have negative feelings towards my wife.
Speaker 2:When I have negative feelings, my actions, what I do, will become negative. And then I will create an environment of negativity. If she reciprocates, we call this the crazy cycle. Or it's just like, this is not good. Get out.
Speaker 2:Get out now.
Speaker 1:It's like,
Speaker 2:done that. I think everybody's been in the crazy cycle at one point. However, right, we have full control over that. I can say, you know what? Where are my thoughts right now?
Speaker 2:Are they good towards my wife? Are they good towards my boss? Or am I just sitting here dwelling in negativity? Because if we change what's here, we can change the environment we're creating, but it starts here. Things you can't control though, this was huge for me, Things you can't control is other people's business, which is what they think, feel, do, and create.
Speaker 2:I was explaining to this, this to a lady, and we're working with her on a weekly basis, and she made this like sound, like as soon as I said that. And I love that sound. It's a light bulb moment for people. I'm like, tell me, tell me, what are you thinking? And she goes, like 90% of my anxiety is because I'm trying to make my husband feel loved.
Speaker 2:I was like, yeah, you can't make, you can't control his feelings. You can influence them by the environment you create, but you can't force them. So I said, here's what I want you do. For the next week, I want you to focus on the environment that you're creating. Is it an environment of love?
Speaker 2:Is it an environment where he can feel cherished? And detach yourself from the result, whether he feels loved or not, it's up to him. She comes back the next week and she's like, Kiwim, you won't believe it. Two days ago, he comes to me and he was like, I feel so loved by you. I don't know what you changed, but I love this.
Speaker 2:You're not like forcing anything on me. You're just it's beautiful. And I was like, yep, that's what it's all about. For me and my wife, that was the same, man. Like I was so trying to force her to feel things or force her to do things.
Speaker 2:Same with my employees. When I had employees, I'm like, I had multiple teams with them and like 27 people and I was trying to manage all of them and like, you guys have to do it this way. The truth is, I was not responsible for their doing. I was responsible for my creating. So I focused on creating an environment where the work could be done.
Speaker 2:Oh, management became easy. My marriage became easy. I'm like, I gotta focus on my controllables. The last business
Speaker 1:Sorry. Go ahead.
Speaker 2:So last business is God's business. This is everything else that is outside of your business or other people's business. So for example, acts of God, like hurricanes. You can stress all you want about a hurricane. You ain't gonna change its course.
Speaker 2:Or the timing of results, the blooming of a flower. I can cultivate a garden. I can water it. I can get the right fertilizer. I can even plant the seed, but I can't make it germinate.
Speaker 2:I can't make it grow and I can't make it bear fruit. That's outside of my control. So I focus on the environment that I create by controlling what I think so that I can have more control and more influence over those around me. It's not about controlling everything outside your control.
Speaker 1:So I completely agree. However, easier said than done.
Speaker 2:True. True.
Speaker 1:Do we if we're just thinking about changing the way that I perceive others, right? Because there's ambiguity in the behavior of others. My perception of their behavior dictates how I feel about it, which dictates how I behave about it, right? It's that reoccurring side of the loop. How do you stop and basically change your perception from oh they're out to get me to well maybe this is neutral or maybe this is a question or maybe this is actually positive because there's so many things in life where, you know, there's ambiguity and we choose one side of the emotions and we might be wrong.
Speaker 1:How do you make that change?
Speaker 2:Oh man, that was hard for me. I totally agree with you. It was so hard for me to be like, well, I need to control what my employees do. I need to control and make sure my wife knows I love her. Right?
Speaker 2:One thing that changed for me is I stopped thinking about them and I started thinking about me. I asked my question and I asked this question anytime I get into an area where I feel uncomfortable or I don't like what's going on, I ask myself this question, who do I want to be known for in this situation? So we could have like all hell breaking loose at work. But I was like, who do I wanna be? Who do I wanna be known to be?
Speaker 2:What do I want to be? Because it's about it's funny. It's not about me. It's all about me. Right?
Speaker 2:And so when I say, you know what? I want to be the guy that I have steady control in the midst of the chaos. I want to be the guy that people can trust when they need someone to lean on. So I choose to be that. And then when I do that, I control this, my thoughts, which then controls how I feel about the situation.
Speaker 2:I'm going to take control of the situation for my part of it. And then it changes how I do and what I create. This is really hard. This is really, really hard when you're working with people who don't reciprocate. Like when you have, I'm just going to take the marriage example.
Speaker 2:Say my wife was doing this for me. She's controlling her controllables and I'm over here like, no, this is all your fault. This is all your stuff. That is really hard to do in the midst of that. But at the end of the day, my wife did this to me like a couple of years ago when I was all upset and she goes, you know what?
Speaker 2:I appreciate what you think, but I can't control it. And it just like made reminded me of this training. And I was like, that's right. I have to control my own thinking. And so who do you want to be in that story?
Speaker 2:And if you don't like who you are in the story, you can change it.
Speaker 1:Did you did either of you need to put a red line and say, look, this is not my intent. You are perceiving me very negatively. You need to we can't continue until you basically rethink how you're perceiving the situation. Is there any stage where it's still hard and you need to be like, no, that's not what's happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We have a timeout rule. Sometimes when emotions are really high and again, not a doctor, but I know enough about biology to know this, your fight or flight kicks in, which is where you vasodilate and stuff like that, and all the blood leaves your brain and goes to your muscles. So, you can fight or fly. When you do that, you can't think straight.
Speaker 2:So, when you get really emotional in something, it actually becomes really hard to have a good discussion with that person. So sometimes you just need to take a break and let your norepinephrine levels lower. And so we've done that where we said, hey, I wanna finish this conversation with you. I know it's a little heated. I need a little break.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna come back in five. Our rule is what we call the five minute rule. The five minute rule can be reset as many times as needed, but you have to recheck back in after five minutes. So that way stuff doesn't be like, we're gonna ignore this and leave it on the back burner, and then all a sudden we got a fire, where it is we are rechecking in. We've actually gotten good at this, going back to the first thing we talked about called framing it.
Speaker 2:My wife will come to me very upset about something. Sometimes it has nothing to do with me, but she's just upset. And so she'll come in and she'll be like, Hey, I wanna talk to you about something. I'm mad. I need five minutes to vent, and then I want a solution.
Speaker 2:But that means don't interrupt her for five minutes as she vents. And I'm like, then I don't have to take it personal. I'm like, there we go. She's just venting for five minutes and then we'll talk about
Speaker 1:it. What were shifts in your own perception that happened after you both practiced these practices? Was there something that kind of fundamentally changed in the way you saw yourself, your wife, the world? Or are these just tools that you use to communicate better?
Speaker 2:So these are communication tools, but it did fundamentally change how we worked with each other because it wasn't and we talk about this in how to win every argument with your spouse. Right? A lot of times we go into an argument saying, you know, someone has to lose. That's really a recipe for someone either becoming a tyrant or a slave. And here's how that works.
Speaker 2:I had a coach tell me once that he said, all relationships are negotiations. And I was like, okay, now I'm interested. Tell me more. Right? Like, what do you mean?
Speaker 2:And he says, when you negotiate, you negotiate to the point both parties come to a win win. If one person is like, it's my way or the highway, that's a tyrant. Or if one person's like, well, fine, you can have your way. I'll just I'll give up on my hopes and my dreams and my ideas, that becomes a slave. And you really don't wanna be either one in this situation.
Speaker 2:And so one of the things we looked at is like back when we got married, you know, you're holding hands, you're in love with them, you're like, you know, rich or poor, sickness and in health. In that moment, it's you and me versus the world. We're gonna get through this together. But kids come along, you start a business, start a side gig, start coaching together, and then all of a sudden, you know, things blow up and you're the problem. No, you're the problem.
Speaker 2:Right? So you got to go back to that. You got go back to it's you and me versus the problem. And sometimes the problems are hard to communicate with. And then again, that's where the five minute rule comes in.
Speaker 2:Bring it down. And then you frame it. You're like, okay, hey, it's you and me versus this problem, let's figure out what this problem is together.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna ask you the question that every single person who's listening to us, who's a parent is thinking of right now. The kids come to you, they ask you for something, they ask mom for something, they pit you against each other, It's hard. It's hard. How did, and maybe you haven't solved this yet. Don't know.
Speaker 1:I'm going on a fishing expedition. Do you make sure that your wife and yourself are aligned as it comes to the management, the philosophy, the rules with the kids?
Speaker 2:Train outside the moment. So here's how that looks. This is what we call unmet expectations into agreements, pathetical scenario. Let's just go with something simple like you said, where we said, okay, one kid's gonna come to me, ask me first up. I'm gonna say no.
Speaker 2:And they're thinking they're gonna be smart. They're gonna go talk to mom and ask the same question. We've gotten to the point too with our kids. We ask, what did mom say? Because we know you and usually by the time they get to meet, I know they asked mom.
Speaker 1:That's a that's an easy example. What if you genuinely have a disagreement with your wife on what the solution should be in a sit in a situation like this, but you need to make a call at that moment or maybe you don't. And maybe like if you have that discussion with your wife, it's going be an argument in itself. And yet this person is waiting for a solution or, or you can't just come back and punish them a day or a week later. Like it's complicated, right?
Speaker 1:There's, it's not as simple as well. What does mom say?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And you're gonna, gonna make mistakes. I gotta lead with that. I have lots of processes, lots of systems that we use, and we keep them stupid simple. We really do.
Speaker 2:So, they're easy to remember and easy to use in the moment. But we're humans. We forget our emotions get the best of us. And so you make mistakes. It's not about being perfect all the time.
Speaker 2:It's about having something you can fall back on. So, perfect example, in the moment, we gotta make a decision in the moment. We have something called, disagree to decision. So, when you disagree, number one, the first step, detach your identity to your idea. For example, I may think the kid needs to be disciplined one way.
Speaker 2:She may think the kid needs to be the other way. If my wife says, well, that's a bad idea, she's saying, I'm not a bad idea. My idea might be. So you gotta detach. So the first step first step is detach your identity from your idea.
Speaker 2:So if it does get shut down, go from there. And then it's not who's right, it's what's right. In some scenarios, I have more experience than my wife and vice versa. And so, we both present our data. And we look at the data and say, in this situation, who has better data, better experience, or better knowledge, and what's gonna best fit the outcome we want?
Speaker 2:So, you have to look at the data from both parties. And then if you still disagree at this point, and you're like, ah, I don't like your data, you bring in a third party. That could be a friend. That could be an ally. That could be a mentor.
Speaker 2:We've brought in ChatGPT. We've done that. I was like, just need more logical data here. Turns out my wife was right. I was wrong in that scenario.
Speaker 2:But you bring in a third party. And then step four is you decide as a couple, as a partnership. It's not a, I'm just gonna be the slave and let your ideas go. No, you have to decide together. So it takes a minute sometimes to come to that conclusion.
Speaker 2:But if you're willing to communicate and work through those steps, you will come together each time and make the best decision with the best of your knowledge at that time.
Speaker 1:I wanna kind of talk about date night for a second. This is not something that all couples do. And I'll be honest, I was at fault for many, many years. We only started this, I want to say, I can't remember exactly, but six months to a year ago. It was, we're together twenty years, right?
Speaker 1:So it was for more or less the last ten years that we hadn't done anything like that. So I think that's kind of horrifying and I have a feeling that maybe I'm not alone in this, that it might be a common issue. So I wanted to ask you about that And then I also wanted to ask like, what's the right way or wrong way to go about planning and doing date nights?
Speaker 2:Date nights are awesome. I know we call them date nights. This is something I've actually learned. You can have date breakfasts too. Night night detach the word night from it.
Speaker 2:We're gonna go on a date. Right? I was working with a couple recently and they're like, have no time at night. Was like, do you have time at breakfast? And they're like, no, we do.
Speaker 2:Like, here there you go. Yeah. It doesn't have to be at night. Right? Anyway.
Speaker 2:Alright. So date nights are awesome. And you're right. When I got married, I stopped dating my wife, and that was detrimental to our relationship. So now, and this is really hard.
Speaker 2:If you're an entrepreneur and you've got multiple businesses or you're working multiple jobs, you're both working in jobs, trying to put food on the table, like, it is really hard. One of the things that I tell people is you put a date night on the calendar. I recommend weekly. And even if it's one hour, but weekly, and then you protect it like a million dollar client deal because, and here, this was a perfect example. I was working with a guy who was making about 10,000,000 a year, and he's married to his wife, and we're working together.
Speaker 2:And I told him, this is really more like protecting your date night is more like a 5,000,000 million dollar client. Because if she divorces you, she takes half of everything. And once he got that, he was like, Oh my gosh. Yeah, this is important because your relationship is the foundation upon which your success is built. And perfect example, if you're fighting with your spouse at home and things aren't going well and you try to go to work, yeah, it's hard to focus at work.
Speaker 2:But when your relationship is good at home, you can have a bad day at work, but you know you're coming home to a good relationship. It's the most important thing, so protect it like a million dollar client. For date nights, you specifically asked me, like, what do we do? What I find to do is you find something where most people like to try new things, have new experiences. Because when you have new experiences, and they don't have to be good ones, by the way.
Speaker 2:Me and my wife have tried some date nights, we're like, that was dumb, but I'm glad I did it with you.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you, of our best memories are the worst things that happened to us. The one that we still laugh about, what is this, fifteen years later, is that we were in this terrible hotel in Italy and it literally had bugs all over. The toilet like rocked if you sat down on it, it wasn't connected and we kind of took the sheets out and there were like things crawling in the bed and it was like the worst experience we ever had but when we came to it somebody said oh yeah supreme breakfast and then we get so this is our joke now it's that yeah supreme breakfast. I love that.
Speaker 2:The worst. It's good breakfast.
Speaker 1:So that is such a strong point right you know sometimes when you're in the trenches together, that actually is what builds relationships even more than having fun together. Not that I'm recommending that you plan like horror night instead of date night, but but you know, it's a fair point to say that getting through hard spots together, and I love what you said, like what is the kind of person I want to be in this moment? Getting through the trances together and being that person and getting through the hard stuff together, that actually builds not only character relationships. So I love that. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I I love your story about that. That just it make it makes my heart warm when I hear other people did stuff like that. Because you're right. It's actually the date nights that don't go well that tend to be the ones that are most memorable. I've pride myself on making people laugh.
Speaker 2:I should have been a comedian in a in a past life. I should have. Because I I just I usually say smart ass stuff all the time. We were out painting once because my wife is like that. She likes to just think, learn, create.
Speaker 2:So was like, oh, let's take her to one of the places you you paint pottery, and then they make it. I suck at painting. Like, I'm not good at it. And so I'm painting, and it looks awful. And my wife's like, what are you doing?
Speaker 2:And the and the guy who runs the shop was walking by us. Was like, it it's called modern art. And the guy next to us just starts losing it. And I was like, yes. That's one of my favorite memories.
Speaker 2:It's like, I made the curator laugh.
Speaker 1:David, let me ask you this. So you're working, you know, with clients, you're coming across now, not just your own problems, but, know, stuff that you might not have had yourself. What's the what's the hardest thing that you had to deal with and you're like, I don't know what we're gonna do here, but let's figure it out together. Tell me that story.
Speaker 2:Art is the hardest thing. Oh, you're making me think. I was like, when me and my wife went through our struggles and we got coaching, we went and we spent like four or five years almost just studying it because we wanted a better marriage. And then we started helping others. During that time, I studied lots of conflict resolution methods, how to argue, how to win, how to disagree.
Speaker 2:I had a client actually recently that asked me a question that did challenge me. I wouldn't say it was the hardest thing I've done, but it was the most challenging thing I've done. You know, a little personal, but it was how does your strengths coaching help in the bedroom? I'm over here doing conflict resolution, not intimacy. I'm I'm not a sex therapist.
Speaker 2:Right? I'm not a therapist at all. I'm like
Speaker 1:I have an opinion about that. If you have shit communication on day to day, there's not gonna be a bedroom.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And that's kinda where I was. Now we help people improve their communication and their clarity, and now they're talking really good, but like, okay, how do we take it to the next level? So I took it as a challenge. I like a challenge.
Speaker 2:And I spent several months studying my coaching methods with strengths and how does that apply to intimacy. It was one of the most enlightening experiences for me because then when I finally got it all figured out, I took it to my wife. And I was like, hey, let me show you this. Let me show and she was like, oh, that's so cool. And I was like, this makes so it's like having I grew up playing video games.
Speaker 2:I'm from the video game generation. Having that cheat code that makes you invincible or have all the ammo, this is what that was like. So I sent it to the client who challenged me on it. I said, hey. This is brand new.
Speaker 2:Check this out. It was the hardest thing I've had to study because it's not usually my thing. But I send it to him. He sends me back a review a couple weeks later. He goes, this is super interesting.
Speaker 2:You should have this in all of your coaching going forward. I was like, fair enough. I'll add it. So, but that was challenging. Sometimes people come to you and they'll ask a story or a question.
Speaker 2:You're like, you know, I don't know. My answer is always, I don't know. I'll learn and get back to you.
Speaker 1:I'm no expert, but I can share from my personal experience that the huge shift in intimacy is not what happens. It's like negotiations. You don't win a negotiation when you start negotiating. You've won or lost a negotiation the week before and the way to win this negotiation specifically, although win is probably the bad way to say it, is by working on that intimacy way before and that means you know giving your wife a compliment in the morning, right, every single day. It's making her coffee if you know that's what she's into, a little gift and gestures of service.
Speaker 1:It's by building that love and intimacy way before the physical act. You know for me You that was a huge don't flip a switch and like oh no we're intimate. No, you're intimate the whole fricking day, the whole fricking week, the whole fricking year. So you can't expect that there'll be these abrupt changes. So you've got to be working it all the time.
Speaker 1:So that's my little piece of advice that worked.
Speaker 2:I 100% echo everything you just said. If you can't connect emotionally, you'll never connect correctly physically.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. David, what an absolute pleasure. Believe it or not, we're out of time. Oh nice. This has been so much fun.
Speaker 1:I do have one question that is really difficult because it's very personal. If you had to go back to the most difficult part of your life, whether it was, you know, two years ago or twenty years ago, what advice would you give to your younger self?
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. That is, that's a deep question and I love that question. There is a lot of, can I go back and change things? And the truth is I wouldn't change a thing because what I've been through has made me the man I am today. And I'm proud of the man in the mirror, but I didn't used to be.
Speaker 2:If I could give one piece of advice for the man back then and for anyone listening now, it was what I call the dollar bill secret. I do not know who originally wrote this or I'd give them credit, but I went to a bank recently and I fact checked this, and it's actually true. Because I had to check it before I teach it. If you take a dollar bill right off the press, out of the treasury, it's worth a dollar. And it looks good, smells good.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's a dollar. Well, someone's going to shove it in their pocket. They're going to crumple it. It might end up in the ditch, get a little dirty, and it doesn't look as good anymore, but it's still worth a dollar. It may even get ripped.
Speaker 2:And this is the cool part. You can take a ripped dollar bill into a bank as long as it has the serial number and at least two thirds or like 51% of the bill, they'll actually give you a brand new one. Now that ripped bill, if you take it to a vending machine, it's gonna reject it. If you take it to a cashier, she's gonna like, Yeah, we don't take that here, buddy. You need the whole bill.
Speaker 2:But just because they reject it doesn't mean it still retains its value. In fact, the original creator was like, Oh yeah, no, I got you. This is brand new. I checked this too. If your bill is unrecognizable, like it's burnt or something, you can actually send it into the treasury.
Speaker 2:They'll carbon test it. If it is a bill, they'll actually send you a new one. I'm like, this is so cool. This is what I wish I could share back with my old self and anyone listening now is your value in who you are as a person was there at your birth. And it'll be there till your destruction.
Speaker 2:You're beginning to end, your value is there. No one can take it away. You may have been through some stuff, crumpled down, spit on. You may have been rejected by people because you feel like you lost a part of yourself. There may be people who are like, Ah, I'm a vending machine to take that away.
Speaker 2:But your creator, your very beginning, that value cannot be taken away. You are valuable. And that's what I wish I could share.
Speaker 1:David, what an absolute delight. Thank you so much for joining the show.