Are You In Integrity?

Episode #602

Are you choosing your friends wisely?

If you’re making excuses and waiting for others to take the lead, then you might be stuck in victim mode. It’s time to take ownership of your life by maintaining your integrity.

In this episode, we will learn why you’re refusing to take responsibility for your life and what you can do to prioritize yourself so you can prepare for success.

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TRANSCRIPTION

Doug Holt: Hey, guys, welcome back to another episode of the TPM show. Tim, how are you doing, brother?

Tim Matthews: Doing well. I’m fired up, quite frankly.

Doug Holt:  You seemed fired up when we got on before we hit record. That’s a good thing. I like you when you’re fired up.

Tim Matthews: Yep, it is a good thing. Depends on who you ask.

Doug Holt:  I like it.

Tim Matthews: Yeah, so let’s just roll in. So, the reason why I’m fired up- So, for the listeners, for those of you that don’t know, we have a program called the Inner Circle. So, guys come into the AM, that’s primarily helping business owners to fix their marriage without having to talk about it, especially when nothing else has really seemed to work, be it therapy, counseling, or other courses. And even when guys are on the brink of divorce, they go through that and see shifts, they see results. They get amazing results.

Go to thepowerfulman.com/results to see a lot of the results and the men. Anyway, once the guys have graduated through that, most guys choose to continue with us in what we call either the Brotherhood or the Inner Circle. Both of those are a year long. The Inner Circle is more of a kind of a semi-private setting where we cap it out at 10 guys, and it’s very laser-focused with myself, Doug, and Arthur. So anyway, today was the accountability call, as you know, Mr. Dougie Fresh. And as you know, we actually got feedback from the men a few weeks ago, asking them how we could make the program even better.

Essentially, hey, what would you like to see more of? And they said, accountability. Okay, fantastic. Thank you for that permission. Thank you for the permission. We were sorry, show. Yep, accountability. Along with a few other changes, right. We’ll jump on there today, a lot of these changes have been in place over the past few weeks. Last week, as you know, they all agreed to a digital version of the COIL. So that’s a chart of intentional living for married business owners. So it’s what we give the men in order for them to be able to gamify and track their progress over the week.

And also, within the Inner Circle, there’s a leaderboard of who’s doing the best within the five territories. Everyone agreed to fill in this in. Everyone agreed to have it all done, and they were going to use it, and so on. Fast forward to today, we get to the core, and nobody has done it. And you have to imagine these guys who are very experienced, super intelligent guys, driven in many areas of their life, have been with us for two or three years. So, the expectation was they’d follow through, right? These guys were very successful businessmen, they’re men of their word. So, to see it not being done was quite a surprise. Especially after they asked for it. And then we asked them, why hasn’t it been done? One by one. I’m gonna call you guys out. Chief, you said, ‘Oh, well, I’ve not done it because I requested access, and I didn’t get it. It gives me access to another sheet.’

Okay, so what did you do then? Did you follow up with the coach? Did you push to get access for the sheet you need? The one you said you want? ‘Oh no, I didn’t do that.’ Okay. Mr. Gosar. Why didn’t you do it? ‘Oh, well, I struggled to get access to it.’ Oh no, he said ‘I didn’t know what to put in it.’ Okay, did you reach out to a coach ahead of time, to get help, to get clear on your vision to put into it? ‘No, I didn’t.’ Okay, King of Cheese, why didn’t you do it?

By this point, he’d got the rhythm, he just said ‘look, no excuses.’ Force of Nature, he was silent. I won’t go through all the rest of the guys. At which point, you know, we had 30 minutes left of the call because we brought one of the experts in, somebody who’s a coach with us, who’s taught the MBA for a few decades and an amazing man, he was in there teaching some advanced communication techniques to the men, doing a deep dive. So, that took the first half of the call. So, this was the second half. So you have to imagine, we had about 30 to 40 minutes of the call left, these guys were fully expecting to dive into accountability.

Force of Nature was there with his cigar lit, enjoying the call as he does, I always love that about him. So at this point, after I went through everybody  and they all had lame excuses, they all became wise to the fact that they couldn’t try and bullshit the way out of it, we just ended the call. Guys, if you’re not doing what you agreed to do, there’s nothing to hold you accountable to. I don’t know where you are, the call is going to be ended in a few minutes time, you guys get to look at the promises you’re making to yourself, and others. Because this is a pattern. This will show up in other areas of your life, and how you agree to things and not follow through. It’s unacceptable.

I won’t allow myself to be in a relationship with you guys, where you agree to do something with me, but you don’t follow through. So, Arthur, anything you want to add? Arthur did his bit. And we ended the call. So I think there’s a major lesson in this. There’s lots of lessons in this. So I’m curious to get your take on the lessons that you see within this, both for the guys that listen to this podcast, and any others that you think they may apply to the listeners?

Doug Holt: I think there’s a lot of lessons in here. And you know, it brings me back, when I think of this group of guys in particular, and the Inner Circle, when I was in middle school. It was in sixth grade. I remember the teacher had one of those weird, you know, things on the side that teachers do where they cut out the paper, and they make like a sign. And this one said ‘birds of a feather flock together, choose your friends wisely.’ And I thought it was corny, but it stuck with me, obviously, because I’ve brought it up before. And you want to surround yourself with people who are showing up and performing at a high level.

Now, not everybody’s going to do it all the time, right? But you want to be around the guys that are doing it. As they say, iron sharpens iron. So birds of a feather flock together. So this group of guys in particular, when we think about what we want, are we doing the things that are gonna get us there? Or are we making excuses? I had a great call with a guy I’m working with one on one, and he and I were talking about a similar subject, actually. And he was missing his ARS, his Alpha Rise And Shine. And he’s like, you know, it should just be discipline. look, yeah.

But discipline doesn’t always work when you’re really smart. So, how are you keeping yourself accountable? Right? And he asked me, hey, look, can you just call me every morning to remind me? And I said, no. I will be your catalyst, but not your crutch. How are you going to be able to do this, to make sure you hit your ARS every morning? I gave him some ideas. Here’s how you could do it. How do you set up? And I look at this like the bumpers on a bowling alley, like they raise for the little kids. All of us are going to shift, but once you have to take radical responsibility, you need to do so not only for yourself, but like I said – birds of a feather. These guys in the Inner Circle, right?

Do it for the other men that are on that call, the other men that are showing up. Honor your word and your integrity, first and foremost to yourself, then to other people. But then also, how are you going to make it so success is such a clear and obvious endeavor that you almost can’t fail? Make it so easy for yourself? I was talking about my ARS. At night, I set up my workout clothes every night. I get the coffee ready. I get wood ready for the fireplace. I like to have a nice fire. I get up really early, I have the house to myself. I get my journal out. I set it out. I start prepping, what are those things that I’m going to do tomorrow? What are the big things I’m going to do? So I’m not in reactive mode.

I woke up to 47 messages on Voxer, which is a communication channel our team uses, alone. 47. But I got to get to those after I was doing my own morning routine. So what I’m trying to say here in relation to the lessons that are here is, there’s consequences for your actions, and you get to set yourself up for success in whatever you’re doing. So if it’s accountability, then you need to set yourself up for success there. I’m guessing there was one guy that was on that call that had his COIL score numbers, if he was on that call.

Tim Matthews: If he would have been on the call, yeah, but he could make it because of the festivities.

Doug Holt:  Perfect. So, to those guys, you know, don’t beat yourself up. Right? These are things you want to come back from. There’s so many things here, like the idea that people are saying, hey, I want accountability, but then they’re not keeping themselves accountable and following through on that accountability. I would start to wonder myself, am I making excuses?

Tim Matthews: Yeah, me too. We have a private Voxer channel that all the men are in. So one of the guys who said he didn’t have his vision, guess what promptly appeared in the Voxer channel, 20 minutes after the call ended?

Doug Holt: Hmm, I’m gonna go with his vision.

Tim Matthews: Bingo, ding, ding, ding, ding. So, you get the point. They’re not prioritizing their own- Well, they are, that’s not fair. These guys are prioritizing their growth, and at the same time, like all of us, there are times in all of our lives when we can find it easier to make excuses rather than take responsibility. And something that we communicated to them on that call is, hey, we are not responsible for you. We’re not responsible for your success.

We are responsible to you, to provide you with leadership, guidance, and accountability that’s going to help you to achieve your outcome. But your success is on you. I think it’s so easy whenever somebody goes into a coaching program – it happens in all walks of life – to pin your hopes and your success on somebody else almost doing the work for you, and somebody else instill in you the confidence and the accountability that you’ve really got to find within yourself.

So many lessons for these guys this week. So many more lessons, I think, they will have achieved by the call ending so quickly and abruptly, and then going away and seeing what reflections came up for themselves. Rather than Arthur and I diving in and say, so why have you not done it? Let’s have a look at it. No, no, no, no.  There  comes a point where you just get to cut the cord.

Doug Holt:  I don’t want to beat up these guys at all for any reason. Because it also can be miscommunications, misunderstandings as well. There’s always two sides to every story. You know, what I go back to is this idea of, almost like, Jocko Willink’s book, Extreme Ownership, just really owning your side of the street. And like I told this man that I was talking to you before we got on, you know, I’ll be your catalyst, but I will not be your crutch. Because I’ll just enable you, right? I will enable your bad behavior. Not bad behavior, but it’s not serving him to his highest level. And he got it, he totally and completely got it.

Because I want him to be able to do his ARS without Doug, without Doug messaging or somebody messaging him, or what have you. I want him to just evolve this into a routine, and put it into the toothbrush category, the ‘brush your teeth’ category. So when you look at this, for these guys, I mean, you guys listening, I would say okay, where else in my life am I playing the same role? Where else in my life am I waiting for somebody else to call me forward? Where else in my life am I waiting on somebody before I step into my own power?

And this could be in your marriage, guys. You could be waiting for your wife, to all of a sudden, you know, say that she wants to have sex with you rather than you initiating because you’re too scared of rejection. You could be this in your business, you’re waiting for your mentor or somebody else on your team to tell you what to do. This could be with your coach, as happened with these guys. Right? There’s other areas of our lives that we want to look at and see where this pattern could be showing up. Health and fitness is an easy one to look at, right?

You know, some people are waiting for the right diet, they’re waiting for the perfect workout. When the reality is guys, every one of you listening to this knows, all you got to do is eat less and strap on your running shoes. Go out for a walk, even. There’s the basics. Stick to the basics and do those things, and then you can look for the nuances. But where else in your life are you showing up this way? And that’s the question I would be asking myself if I was in their shoes.

Tim Matthews: Big time. Big time. Because, again, these guys are smart guys. Some of them have already taken action. If one of the guys posted his vision, it wouldn’t have been complete, but he will have got it done. So kudos to him for taking immediate action. Imperfect action as well, you know, not allowing perfection to creep in. And maybe that’s part of what was going on for him. I don’t know. But it’s amazing what we as humans can achieve, and with what speed we can achieve it, when we just quit the BS. It’s the straight line.

Things can happen so quickly for people. And it’s kind of like, you get what you tolerate. Whether it’s the coach tolerating a certain type of behavior from the guy, or whether it’s the guy tolerating and allowing certain types of behavior for himself. Whatever it may be. But you definitely get what you tolerate. So the more you can become aware of what you’re tolerating, kinda like the frog in the boiling water analogy, the more you can be aware of the temperatures changing and quickly get out of it, versus leaving it until it gets to a boiling point, by which point you’ve strayed a few degrees off track, and it’s been a few weeks, and before you know it, you’ve stopped your ARS. it goes down from every day to a few times a week, to once a week, and your weekly reviews kind of just stopped a little bit. and your workouts have got a little bit less intense. and you began to get a little bit crankier, you seem to drink a little bit.

All these little things just didn’t happen overnight, that huge change isn’t one thing that you just pendulum swing. Typically, it’ll just be happening bit by bit. But again, if you tolerate yourself, not allowing yourself to do your ARS, or accepting the fact that you’re not going to do it a few times a week, if you accept the fact that you’re gonna go easier on your workout, if you accept the fact that you’re not going to do what you said you’re committed to doing in your COIL or wherever it may be, then it permeates other areas.

Because the likelihood is there will be other areas for all of us where, if you’re allowing yourself to make excuses, then you will be breaking promises in other areas of your life. Whether it’s to yourself, to your wife, to your kids, at work. I get it, things come up in life. This isn’t about being perfect. If these guys would have messaged, for example, 24 hours before, or the morning of that they have not been able to get it done because of XYZ, there’s been a real – call.

Expectations have been shifted, and that’s all good, right? I get that things come in and things happen. Equally, whether it’s me and an expectation that I make for somebody or whatever else, that communication ahead of time, it’s still then the front of your mind, doing your best to maintain being in integrity with yourself, essentially, versus allowing your words to not really mean anything to you or to others. And again, I’m not saying that’s where these guys are at. I’m just saying that’s where it can end up one degree at a time.

Doug Holt: Sometimes we all need a kick in the ass. And sometimes that kick in the ass comes from your coach calling you out and cutting the call short, right? Because actions have consequences, positive or negative, coming in through there. So, the nice thing about this, these are amazing men, they’re gonna bounce back 10 times as strong. They always do. And you know, I’m going to ask those guys, because they listen to this, but also you guys listening to this that aren’t in the Inner Circle – Where else are you showing up this way?

I was talking to one of our advisors. For the guys that don’t know, if you get on a phone call to inquire about the AM, which is our flagship program, you’ll talk to an advisor. And a lot of the advisors have been through the program. We do have some female advisors who clearly haven’t, but they know the program inside and out. In fact, some of them, their husbands have been through the program.

But when I talked to one of them, I ask them what’s the biggest complaint you hear from the guys that you’re talking to? And one of the biggest complaints is the guys are like, ‘well, yeah, I know I need to make this change, and things aren’t good. But what if my wife doesn’t do the work herself? That’s what needs to happen first. Once my wife does the work herself, then I’ll do the work I know I need to do.’ And that’s absolutely ridiculous, guys.

Just so you know, if you do the work for yourself or you keep yourself accountable, that’s the same situation Tim’s talking about, where you have men who are waiting for somebody else to take action before they do. And you don’t want to be in that reactive situation. You want to be in a proactive situation where you’re owning your side of the street, you’re being in integrity with yourself and with the people around you. And that’s how you’re going to move forward. Otherwise, you’re going to be put in this game of waiting. And I’m not talking about these guys you’re talking about, but the men who are waiting for their wives to change first before they do something, I’m going to be honest with you guys, you’re in victim mode.

You’re playing a victim card, like you’re the victim, and she has all the control and therefore you can’t do anything. And that’s just not the case, guys. You do have control, you just need to take the action to do so. Don’t wait for your coach. Don’t wait for your wife. Don’t wait for me. Take the action for yourself, the best way you can forward. Don’t beat yourself up. It’s okay. We all make mistakes. We all stumble. And it’s not about how you fall down. It’s how you get up. That’s the key.

Tim Matthews: Yeah, well said. These guys will come back stronger. Half an hour later, they came back stronger, some of them. And they’re all posting in the channel, I needed that, I needed that, I needed that. So you know, like you said, sometimes we all just need a kick in the ass. As a coach, you know you are doing something right when you’re like, oh, when you either said something or delivered something and you’re like…

Because both Arthur and I, we knew that what we did with those guys was very firm. The idea of it was to, you know, we wanted it to interrupt the pattern. We wanted them to realize, hey, you say you want to go to the next level. The next level means you get to do what you say you’re going to do. So one, be careful what you say you’re going to do, be very mindful of that. Don’t just people-please, don’t just agree. If you take something on, take it on, and bring it to completion. Or, if you’re not gonna bring it to completion, communicate when it’s going to be brought to completion by. And then, two, be prepared to be called out and not allowed to make bullshit excuses.

Because you take ownership for your success versus ownership for your excuses. Those excuses that we were given were ridiculous. Oh, well, I requested access. Okay, well, when you didn’t get it, then what? Then what? Then what? Figure it out, bring it home, bring it to completion. It’s your life, it’s your success, bring it to completion.

Doug Holt: I love seeing you fired up, man. It is great. I mean, it just shows the passion that you have, and we all have for working with these guys, and helping the men get to their best. And as coaches, you know, sometimes we take their goals on as our own. And so, we want to push, we want the best for these guys. And it’s awesome to see you fired up and lit up about this, Tim. So, I love it. So, gentlemen, in the moment of insight, as we say, take massive action.

Where are you showing up in this way? Where are you showing up waiting for somebody else to do the work first? Where are you showing up waiting for somebody to lead you rather than taking the lead? Write that down. Don’t just move on to the next podcast or something else. But seriously, take some time to think about it. Go for a walk, do what you have to do. But think about it. We all need a kick in the butt from time to time. Tim does, I do, you do, those guys do, we all do. And sometimes we need our cage rattled a little bit to get us going. And that’s okay. Guys, it’s up to you to take the initiative. It’s up to you to take action. Tim, love the subject. Like I said, I love seeing you fired up, man. And I can’t wait to see some more insights from you. Guys, have an amazing week. We’ll see you next time.