It's pretty short, isn't it? Yeah,

it's not that long.

It's just spaced out a lot.

So it says, yesterday, one of the men that I work with told me his wife said she wanted him to lead.

She wants a man who takes charge.

And we hear that quite a lot.

Sounds simple, right? Well, as I'm sure you know, it isn't because this came up after years of her not trusting him and not seeing the way he was already showing up.

yeah yeah excellent what's your biggest takeaway from this one

There- there's so much to that point, right? "I'm done."

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what I'm hearing is, number one, present, live in the present.

Don't get dragged d- back to the gap.

Get...

Stay in the gain.

Hmm.

Um-

No, I, I, um, I love that.

It just reminded me, just quickly, the...

I, I came off my alpha reset.

I was in separate bedrooms.

I was in, in, in, uh, in my ex-marriage, and, uh, we were in separate bedrooms and, and one of the things they said was, "When you get back, you know, audit your environment." And, you know, I, I wa- I was in a situat- very low vibration, very depressed, very kind of inner space.

I'd go back, and I was in the spare room.

Yeah

I mean, cl- do you see this with the guys?

I, I think, uh, a lot of the guys, uh, well, I think all of us, I...

Or every person I've spoken to didn't know what the preparation was until they joined the movement.

They didn't understand where they were.

You know, they, they thought that being a leader in business was building themselves up into this great man.

Uh, but no one actually sits you down, like the movement does, and says, "Actually, this is what you need to be doing.

This is what y- you know, these are the reps you need to be putting in.

Yeah

I need to keep myself.

I think he needs to build a container of trust for him and for him first of himself, first of all, that whole kind of building yourself up, the Bidu have kind of narrative, you know, got to be the guy that he wants to be, not just try and do the things that he thinks should be.

He's got to build that container of trust for her as well, that sense of, I'm here, I'm consistent, I'm not going anywhere, this is not a new fad for me, and all of that, and just build those two containers.

At some point, there will be a point where they'll have to address the physical intimacy issue, and that could be through a fun game or a conversation that they have or whatever, but And we're talking to one of the guys in my pack and he got divorced.

His marriage, I wouldn't call it failed, but he got divorced.

They split up.

They separated.

craving more physical intimacy but seems to be stuck in this space of just distance.

Little

child being told off by his mother and sulking and, yeah, having a pity party.

Absolutely.

And I think the reset in particular, the movement in general, but the reset in particular is it kind of rewires your brain so that that comes in through the eyes and the ears and, and doesn't, it goes to the amygdala.

There is a, you know, you can't avoid the feeling that, you know, visceral, particularly from somebody who, uh, you really respect or you really value, or you want to, you know, maybe, uh, you, you want something from them or something, but something that a real, uh, sense of wanting to please this person or to be thought of as worthy or, or whatever.

And you get this sense of, it goes, it almost goes from the amygdala straight into your prefrontal cortex where you can process it a little bit more and you can apply the teachings and the language that you're given around it and all of that.

And you get quicker over time to catch that and you're able to use the breath center.

Yeah,

And if you're able to stay present for what's true and therefore lean into the feeling you're trying to avoid, typically it's going to unlock the thing that you actually want.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Breath.

you've got to be able to breathe through that.

And it's not like silence is just another form of crumbling.

It's almost as bad as blowing up.

And the same is true for a lot of the men.

yeah all

right the first few and i got the jacket and i'm wearing it on a boat ride from the seltzer hotel to san marcos square And this guy comes up to me, an American guy, and he says, that's the craziest jacket I've ever seen.

I want five.

Just like that? Really? He said, I've got to get five.

Where did you get it from? So Melanie explained the story.

He said, we've got those five of us.

We're all smoking buddies.

They're not usual people, absolutely right.

... why do you think the guys struggle to achieve the quality time piece?

I think because when your wife or partner says, "I really value quality time", if you've had that conversation, then that big question mark of, well, what does quality time mean to you can loom large, and I think people...

I certainly have had a, a, an experience where my mind goes blank.

I start to think, "Well, what does that mean? H- how can I do that?" And, and for me, the concept of quality time is, right, well, what she wants me to do is sit there and stare into her eyes and, and, and, you know, have nothing else around and, and, and, and that to me feels alien and vulnerable and, uh, something that we're gonna need to apportion time to, and I need to work that out, and I'll have to have a plan of how I'm gonna do that, and how do I fit that in, and is that gonna...

You know, it doesn't really give me anything, so...

And I get into my head, and you go round and round in circles about how you're gonna deliver this, this deliverable output of quality time, and we don't realize that what she's talking about is your presence

Mm-hmm.

But then hey, we've gotta get used to being comfortable with discomfort.

What are some specific behaviors and-

I think, yeah, that's a really good question, actually.

I think the key to leadership, what I discovered the key to leadership was, or one of them, was knowing what you actually wanted.

Knowing yourself.

Because you can't really lead somebody on a path you're not on.

And no one can follow you if you can't allow them to see you.

So part of the first part of leadership was getting clear on what I actually wanted.

That is so foundational in this whole piece.

um and that's the journey you've seen yeah a lot of guys going i've seen a lot of guys going but the shame piece um and that's the wholeness piece the five virtues inside out that's more of a uh an integrated way of being you know living yeah the wholeness piece whereas i'd say well shame is one of the agonies

Yeah, I think people get stuck on the shame quite a lot.

When you look at those emotional, the charts of emotions and things, you have joy and bewonderment and all this on one side, and then you have shame is right down the other end.

It's a fundamentally, deeply implanted and imparted to you in your youth, in your childhood, in your youth.

And it's taking on... or your perception of other people's values.

So when you don't live up to those values, whether it's your parents or people at work or whatever you take on their values, you, you, you, when you realize you're not reaching those values, you start to feel less than, and exactly what you said, it's that kind of othering of yourself.

You kind of push yourself into a, I'm not good enough.

Yeah,

Mm-hmm.

I think now, I think if you opened up my calendar, there are different colors on there.

There is time blocking on there.

So the, the, the business software blocks out my time.

So it doesn't, nothing happens on a Friday.

Uh, nothing happens before nine o'clock in the morning.

You know, there's, there's, there's time blocks out there and there's, there's specific things in the evenings and at the weekends that are there actually diarized.

This is boundaries, isn't it?

kind

of bottom of the chest feel all the time.

Like you're just heavy, feels heavy, I suppose, to think about it, not from a head point of view, but from a body point of view.

I think it, there was a long period of time where, so the, the original business didn't go, didn't do well.

And we were, it did well up until a point and then the credit crunch happened and then it didn't do very well.

And we decided to, we took the plunge and decided to switch tracks and switch fire.

Um, and that really affected me more than I thought it would.

But whatever you do, just go through something that gets you out of your head and gets to the root of things and gets you into your body because your body really does keep the score and it really is a gateway.

I want to talk about this and see what you think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that that's the first time I've heard that phrase when you've said it today.

And, uh, it really rings true.

There are, there are times in my history where it should have been a really great day where things went just perfectly, exactly how you wanted.

And there was a, just an emptiness.

Because they've sacrificed so much in order to achieve financial success, yet they're also not going to allow themselves to enjoy it because they think the thing that they wanted is going to cause them to lose even more.

That's also where the interdependence lives.

Yeah.

Oh, I've got so much to say on this now.

Okay.

So...

Firstly, it's really interesting take to take because I think a lot of people in the movement where they lose themselves in a relationship are coming from a codependent environment and trying to learn this interdependence so it's almost like they've smothered the space between them and now they're having to separate but keep that interdependence so they keep the thing alive not just run away from each other and this is the other side almost the other end of that spectrum where you're fiercely independent because you've built stuff on your own and now you're having to accept that somebody else is part of your relationship.

Like you were saying before, the whole kind of me, you relationship, three things in this, in this relationship.

So I'd say that.

Because when you were describing your journey and where you were and where you are, I just get the sense that something came alive or is coming alive in you because there's some emotion on your face that could be way off, but there's something

there.

Um, I suppose there may be a little bit of guilt that I don't feel grief.

That's pretty honest, isn't it? I just got, yeah, I think, um, my, I was married for 33 years.

I've got three grown up children and, uh, my wife said it best.

My ex-wife said it best when she said, uh, she just feels that the marriage is complete.

Like we'd gone as far as we could go.

What would you