The Unspoken Expectations Are Quietly Hurting Your Marriage featuring Michael Bernoff

0:02 Welcome to the Dad Edge podcast. The Dad Edge movement creates leaders of men. Leaders of families and leaders of communities. We will not only impact this generation of fathers, but the next generation as well. The kids we are raising will have better chances and odds stacked in their favor because of the amazing example that their fathers emulated for them.

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1:01 Michael Ben Roth. What's up? Welcome to dad edge, man. What's going on, man? Thrilled to be here, Larry. I'm excited to have you, too. We are talking all things communications. We're going to get deeply psychological on communication, the psychology of communication, why people misunderstand things, all kinds of things. But I want to start here before I introduce you to the crew.

1:21 I asked you if you go by Mike or Michael, and you said there was a story behind that. I don't know what this story is and knew that was the audience, but now you got me intrigued. What's the story? I'm telling the story right now. Or save it as a loop. All right, now let's hear it now. Literally, I was Mike most of my life.

1:37 I was born Michael. And this is a fascinating thing. I, I didn't realize this was right in my book. I remember my first day of kindergarten, my nursery school, my parents dropped me off, and there was a simple assignment the teachers had. Go find your chair. And that's all it was, was just go find your chair. And I remember this should be simple.

1:55 I know some of the kids in the neighborhood. I'll find my chair. Andrew sits down. John sits down. All the Gen X kids. Laurie, Maria. I can't find my freaking chair anywhere. I'm looking around. I'm like, having been away from my mom and my dad ever in my life. Can't find my chair. And I'm walking around looking for Michael.

2:09 Looking for Michael. Looking for Michael. Looking for Michael. Looking for Michael. Looking for Michael. And I started turning red. Started crying. And, I remember this like, vividly because a peak emotional experience. And I went to the teacher. They said, I said I can't find my chair. Said, oh, you can't find it. And then she goes right over here and my chair that just said Michael, said Mike.

2:29 She goes, here's your chair. It says, Mike, this is you. And at that point I became Mike. And I think I was absent a couple other days in school today. They taught me who I was or whatever. And then it wasn't until I met my wife and she goes, You're Michael, why do you call yourself Mike? And I had no idea that some teacher decided that was my name when I was a kid, even though I was, Michael felt more powerful.

2:50 Felt better not against Mike. You know Michael Jordan. You know Mike. Mike Tyson. I'm not going to tease him for it, but I did that most of my life. And it wasn't until I was working on my book I realized that I was Michael, until one day I was in a peak state and somebody goes, this is who you are, and I don't.

3:05 I've never even told it on the air before. It was interesting that you brought that up, but that literally was a huge distinction. My my wife said to me, because you're Michael, why do you call yourself Mike? And I'm like, I don't know. So I've just always have. And she goes, just be Michael. And that that was a big for me, that how many people in our lives decide things for us when we roll along with it, man?

3:28 Well, you know, my funny thing is, is my name is Lawrence. Okay. That's my real name. That's my birth name. I've always gone by Larry, and I've always hated my name. And so many, you know, it didn't really even hit me until college. I was like, I cannot stand my name. And then people were like, well, why don't you in my, my middle name is Joseph.

3:46 They're like, why don't you just go by LJ or Lawrence or whatever like that? And I like, tried it on, you know, but nobody could ever grasp it, especially people who knew him my whole life. So I was just like, well, whatever, I'm just. But my my wife, she calls me, she calls me lair all the time, okay?

4:00 Or she calls me layers, you know? So it's like, whatever, I it's fine. Do you like it? I like it when she calls in Metallica. Lars. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Well, man, I want to introduce you to the crew here, and you've got an extensive bio here. So, are you ready for this? Let's go. All right, so here it is.

4:19 So you've spent more than 20 years studying something that every person listening to this show today. But very few of us learn how to do it well. And that is communicate. You are a human behavior expert, founder of the Human Communication Institute, creator of of human interaction technology, and the author of Average Sucks. But what I find interesting about your story is that you didn't come from an extraordinary background.

4:45 You've described yourself as very average, middle class Jersey kid who had above average desires. You even call you even called average sucks a battle cry from your childhood. There's a story you shared about being a kid working at Short Hills Mall in New Jersey, parking cars, looking at these beautiful cars, and hearing a message from your mom that essentially said, those kinds of things aren't for people like us.

5:13 And I think that's incredibly relevant to today's conversation because those little sentences matter. The things are parents say matter. The labels. As you've well spoken about already, we give our kids matter. The words spoken at the dinner table in the car after a bad grade, after striking out after losing the game, or when the kids screw up something.

5:32 Those words matter because eventually our voice has a funny way of becoming their inner voice as they get older. Your own path wasn't exactly a straight line either. You've talked openly about not being a great student, struggling to pay attention, landing at errors in a state university, and eventually going to junior college and then around 19 years old, discovering how to win friends and influence people.

5:54 That realization that communication was actually a skill that you learned and changed the trajectory of your life. Then, at 21, you met Jim Rohn, who became an important mentor in your development. From there, you spent decades studying human behavior, influence psychology and language, and eventually developing your own approach to understanding why people do what they do and more importantly, why incredibly capable people can know exactly what they need to do and still struggle to do it consistently.

6:23 One of your own philosophies on communication really caught my attention. You basically say that communication isn't about what you said, it's about what you said was heard a man. That statement definitely applies to us as dads, as husbands, and just men in general, because I think every dad today listening has probably had that moment where he's thinking, that is not what I meant to say or that is not what I meant.

6:47 And his wife is thinking, well, that's definitely what I heard. You've also talked about something that I think we're going to have fun unpacking today, which is adversity. As parents, we want to protect our kids. We want to make life easier for them. You've pointed out that when we remove too much adversity, we can make unintentionally remove the very experiences that teach our kids how to cope, adapt, and even be different and confident.

7:13 So today I want to get practical and I also want to get deep. I want to talk about the words we're using with our kids, the words we're using with our wives, the words we're using with ourselves when nobody else is listening. And what I want to find out is how a dad can become more intentional about his language, standards and communication patterns that he's installing into his family.

7:33 Because whether we realize it or not, our kids are listening and our voice becomes their inner voice for the rest of their life. So, Michael, welcome here, brother. Well, I'm thrilled to throw to be here, Larry. And wow, I love that that intro. And, it got me to realize I've been at this a long time. This is exciting.

7:51 Yeah, man. You have. You know where I want to start, though, to just, just maybe unexpectedly at 21, you met Jim Rohn. How much time did you spend with him helping out with events and different things? Throughout, throughout a period of time until you passed in 2009. So I would say, helping advance different things. You know, it was always a mentor.

8:13 I probably spent 100,000 hours listening to him on audios and different things, but the but the integral things, whether supporting event or helping out somewhere that that was a more than enough. And I will tell you his words. I have my dad and then a second financial mentor, almost like rich dad, poor dad, my dad's fantastic. I love my dad.

8:31 Yet the stuff that I learned from Jim was success principles. So that answers your question. Here and there and everywhere for about a decade. Wow. Are your parents still married today? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're they're great. They're completely nothing like me. They're wonderful people. But I believe in life. You either become exactly like somebody or have a path to go the opposite.

8:52 We are very different. My dad's an aerospace engineer. My mom's an educator. That adds exact. I'm sporadic, you know, so my dad's Shi'ar. My. I'm completely outgoing. My mom, they're they're very, They're very great people. They're amazed. They've taught me so much about life and being good to people and and money indirectly. But they would never be the people that would take the risks and be an entrepreneur.

9:17 Got it? Man. What? How many siblings did you grow up with? One sister. Yeah, she's four years older. Okay. But you you kind of grew up with this narrative. Like the thing that really caught my eyes. Those things are not for us. What was. Go deeper on that for me. Yeah. So it wasn't my mom would separate like it was always interesting anytime somebody would donate to the school or something, she's like, oh my God, Paul is amazing.

9:41 You know, he's a he's an entrepreneur. He knows how to network with people. It was always like, that's them. This is me and I live my life that way. So I would see the girl dating the guy I'd want to like. Like this girl was this dating this guy. And I'm like, oh God, how would I be like him? And what is he doing to to date a girl like that? And I always be like that same. This is me. I would see a guy making the team I wanted to make and be like, that's for them. This is for me. So I don't know if my parents meant to, but they taught what I would call a pedestal mentality.

10:12 But like, that's those people. And if you go to the Bible, there's what is it, no false idols. Let me ask you this, Larry, have you ever watched a sports player juicing incredibly well? Like, what do you like? Sports was like, this wasn't always so until my 18 year old started playing football ten years ago. And then he played football for a decade and great.

10:32 I grew up a wrestler, and so I didn't know much about football, but like, I really loved watching football. Okay, but even if you saw a wrestler like from Iowa back in the day and we were kids, right? Iowa was the spot for wrestling and you'd watch a guy be amazing. What are the natural tendencies people say, Larry, they say this.

10:48 How does what are they? How does that sentence go? Like you watch Michael Jordan do something. Lawrence Taylor, you watch Mike Tyson. How do you finish that sentence? How do finish that sentence when they do sing. Amazing. Yeah. So one wrestler in particular who I'm actually I've been friends with now, very close friends with for the past ten years, Jake Herbert, he's like an American wrestling legend.

11:08 He's been in the Olympics and everything. And how does Jake do what he does? Like? Unbelievable. And I believe most people do this. And this causes we should teach our children how to do that. A I call it false idols, but B when you look at Michael Jordan, you look at Jake, you look at I worked with Jake Paul, helping him with some mindset stuff when he was before he was in the boxing world.

11:29 And if I look at him and go, how does he do that? Immediately I separated him from me. Real language needs to be, how can I do that? And the second you switch them to I, my parents would always say they're entrepreneurs, their business owners, they got network, they got money, they got resource, they got connections. They never said if you want what they have, you'll need to do those 4 or 5 things.

11:52 They basically said, that's them, this is us. They didn't mean it. It wasn't negative. It wasn't like we're poor and or we're middle class and they're not. It was more, that's them. This is us. There was never a gap. If you want to be them, here's how to do it. So I want to give my parents full credit on that.

12:10 But I also know I heard it incorrectly as a kid. I did hear that's them, this is us and they're better, but we can't get there. You know, it's funny you mentioned that. So I talked to I talked to Jake every day. We actually by 6 a.m., we text each other what were what we've been grateful for for the past 24 hours.

12:29 And like I said, I've known Jake and I've gotten deep with him because we're close. And I'm like, how have you done what you've done? He's like, it's programing. That's his response. He's got four kids himself, and he always gives these incredible examples of exactly what you're talking about when he's pouring into his son or his daughter or whatever else.

12:46 He's like, this is programing, this is programing. They can achieve anything they they want. And those are the programs that I give my kids. Those are the things I pour into them, you know? And he always goes back to the how, you know, if you want this, this is how you get it. This is the hard work that's associated with that.

13:01 This is the resilience, the perseverance, all these different things. He's like, it's programing. He's like, I'll never tell my kids, you can't do that. So unless they're doing something wrong. Of course. Exactly, exactly. So so basically so basically you're telling me that your your your kids, basically you would tell them they're capable of doing whatever. Would you say that to them?

13:23 Would I say that to them? Yeah. Yeah. As long as it's not like holding up a convenience store at gunpoint or something like that. Okay, good. So we're going to be, we're going to be effective with that. I love how you and Jake still stay connected with a gratitude thing. Think about it. If you were 16 years old and you were wrestling, that's the last thing in the world you'd be thinking about as a kid.

13:40 Or were you like, I was thinking about girls. I was thinking about the party that night. I was thinking about being insecure. Imagine the programing as a kid. If you had that that Nick Saban mentality as a kid and you were you were learning gratitude at 15 or 14. I know they taught it to us and in the churches and the temples, but I don't think very I don't think a lot of people actually, understood that.

14:04 So I love that you guys are doing that now. It's it's funny, we try to race each other to the first attitude. Yeah. And it's usually the latest time I think we've ever actually posted it. It was 6:04 a.m., so I think we're always in competition every day to post before the other person does. Today I am literally going to take a note on this on the show here today.

14:25 Have a gratitude race with a gratitude accountability I love it. Yeah. Yeah. It's so it's it's you know, it's like the first thing you when you roll out of bed I know you're not supposed to check your phone, but that is the first thing I do because I try to see what Jake wrote or write him right away.

14:40 And it's just like, it's like this launching pad that just gets my mind right for the morning. You know, the the gratitude versus like, what are the obligations and the heaviness of the day? You know what I mean? That's big. Yeah, it's really big I love it. I'm glad we brought him up. He hasn't come up in many shows has he.

14:57 He the crazy thing is, so I just share with you then I want to get to obviously the deeper psychology communication. But so when I first started podcasting back in 2015, I, you know, that's when Twitter was Twitter wasn't actually at or anything like that. And I, you know, I didn't have much of a following. I think I was and I kept seeing this guy repost all my podcasts and I was just like, Who is Jake Herbert?

15:20 And then one day I went to his profile. I was like, who is this guy? And he would send me DMs like all the time. He's like, oh man, I really like this show. Or this guest was really good. And I was like, oh, this guy's just, you know, a fan and that kind of thing. And then I went to his handle and I was like, this guy is 170,000 followers.

15:36 Who is this guy? And I messaged him, I didn't do any due diligence. And I was like, I saw your following. Who are you? And he's so humble. He's like, so humble. I mean, he won the silver medal back in 2012. He was like the gold medal to win in 2016. And he's like, oh, he's like, I, I, I don't do a good job of talking about myself.

15:55 He's like, just Google me if you want. And I was like, oh my God, this guy is like America's wrestling legend. Like, that's who this guy is. I was like, and then I ended up having him on the show. I think he was like episode like 30 something. And he talked about the gold medal mindset that like the whole mindset that you and I have spent the last few minutes talking about, and then we've been friends ever since, and he's just a great guy.

16:18 And, but, you know, I really want to get into communication. Yeah. Let's go. Well, you know, so let's let's talk about like, can you give us just an, like a bare basic and maybe even to a deep level, what is like the psychology of communication? Like what do we not know? What should we know. That is super simple for us to understand, because I think most people don't even understand this.

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18:25 Head on over to the edge.com/join. This is only for the month of October. Don't wait for your marriage, fatherhood or life to change. Lead the change again. The date edge.com/join for the month of October for all these goodies and advance copy of my new e-book. So let's let's make this make this really, really simple for people. Most people, what I would say is they, they use words to talk.

18:54 Yeah. And with them and others and they have random thoughts and they produce random thoughts in people's heads. And what it leads to is like a reactive lifestyle, meaning, like whatever shows up comes up and I'm hungry. Oh my God, I need to eat. Didn't really think it through. Most people never take into consideration that their words said to themselves and others have a biochemical reaction inside of the mind, which creates a series of chemicals that go off.

19:19 Now, I'm getting a little complicated here. But not really. And they live a little reactive lifestyle, and there's another group of people that really want to study communication. They get on a podcast like this. They want to be a better communicator. Their wife gave them a hard time. You never communicate. So they decided to communicate. And then they work to build like a mindset.

19:36 They learned from you. They learned from me. They learned from your your friend Jake, and they start studying this so they could start taking the actions they want to take or even help their kids take the actions. The type of stuff that I talk about isn't about words and language. It's not even about how to relate to people with communication.

19:53 It's truly using your words to influence behavior. Because words are more powerful than AI. People think AI is powerful. Without words, AI is useless. So the most powerful subject in the matter in the world is language. Language. Everything happens with language. For instance, guns don't kill people. Language does. I'm just going to be very, very clear about that.

20:14 I'll say it point blank. You can't even pick one up or pull a trigger unless you actually say something to yourself to do it. You can't have a baby without without words. It's, hey, do you want to or tequila or something? Or hey, you're hot or whatever it is, like you're everything requires language and requires words. So the part where he teaches influence to truly create the appropriate mindset and to allow people to truly perform better in life.

20:43 So the key to performance, whether performance as an athlete, performance as a salesperson, performing is an incredible dad. I don't mean putting on an act, I mean performing. Most of us have never said I am going to perform as an incredible father, perform as an incredible husband, and perform as an incredible leader of my household. Performance is influence, not just communication.

21:03 So the second somebody realizes it's not what you say, it's how what you said was received that matters. We can stop speaking to sound good and stop speaking for grammar and start realizing that I'm going to use my words in a way that influences myself and or another person to get the response and the result that I'm looking for.

21:24 So I will tell you, depression, anxiety, ad 90% of it is language based and very few people are willing to look in those areas. And then your children, they're talking to themselves all day long, and others, how they program their language is really the life they're going to get. So that's the short version of it all. It's the basis of everything that I teach is I work with people, and I love people that say, you know what, I would love to use language to influence my behavior and other people's behavior because it's happening all the time.

21:55 And I will tell you, corporate America knows this. The casino industry knows this, meta knows this. Fox, NBC, CNN, ABC. They know this by how they use their words. And I get asked to work for these guys a lot. I turn them down a lot because I work for the good guys. Well, meaning good people, not ones that want to control the world.

22:15 Interesting man. So what are. Give me an example, and let's just talk about self-talk for a moment. You know, I find that our default mode tends to hurt us pretty poorly. Like what we focus on grows. What we focus on expands. Give me an example of something that you have heard, even yourself, or one of your clients that you just hear over and over and over again.

22:38 And then what is what is the reframe of that language even look like? I have a bunch of these. So let me let me give you a simple one, especially as parents. Have you, Larry, ever had one of your for children say to you something was hard? Oh yeah. So let's just play with that word for a second. Hard. So let's like let's really pick this, let's have fun. Because I'm a, I'm a I'm a I'm an experienced guy. And if you ever want to teach somebody something, create an experience. Because if you can create an experience in front of them, they'll understand it. Logic is cute, experience is permanent. So let's let's look at this.

23:12 So tell me something one of your boys ever said was hard. Like, pick a scenario. Doesn't it be perfect? Be anything I would say right now, a perfect example. My 12 year old, he's, he's on the football team. Great. And he. I mean, bless his heart, man. He he didn't get played a whole lot last year. And he's like, I want to be played next year.

23:34 I said, okay, well, what are you willing to do in the off season? He's like, what should I be doing? And so we went through some ideation and then he landed upon he's like, I'm going to wrestle just to get my body more physical literacy, you know, to give me stronger, you know, more athletic. And then he did wrestling in the on season and then he did wrestling all the way.

23:54 So eight more months into our football started. And now he's in a position where and it's really it's quite unfortunate. He's definitely a different player than he was last year. But he's still not getting ample playing time. And he tells me he's like, dad, I don't know what the problem is. I'm out there working as hard as I can.

24:11 This is really hard and I'm not getting played. Now. As a well-meaning parent will typically say, you know what, I love you. You're good. You got to keep going. One day you'll get there. And we never correct the prompt. So what I mean by that is when something is hard, our natural biochemistry. So here's the way communication works.

24:28 We got a brain which is the physical organism. And we get our mind which runs it like are my Mac is my Mac computer is my brain. What runs it is the mind and that is the operating system. Snow leopard, upside down, giraffe 305, OS 15, whatever it is, blah blah. So it's always looking for advantages in life, like what could make my life better.

24:48 And it's always our mind is always like, oh my God, how do I make life better? What can I do? What does this person want? How can I do it? And it also avoids anything that's mildly uncomfortable. So when we say something's hard, our brand is like, well, we should avoid this. This is not very good. So as a well-meaning parent, when your children say calculus is hard, it's hard to find good people.

25:06 What do I do? We need to quickly say to them this very simple phrase. Actually it's not. It's harder than you'd like it to be. The second you add an air, it creates motion to it. I had a drunk lady walk out of a bar once and she said, I'm going through a divorce. It's so hard. And I was at this restaurant.

25:24 I said, actually, it's not. She sobered up. She was mad. I said, it's harder than you'd like it to be. And the second we realized things are harder than we'd like it to be, we could create a solution. So one of the biggest things is we say sales is hard. Actually it's not. It's harder than we'd like it to be.

25:39 And it's frustrating because it's harder than we'd like it to be. It's not hard. There's a lot of people. It's not difficult for its long as we keep it hard, it becomes impossible. So it's just like this. Have you ever told your kids you're proud of them? I have, I got so much heat on the internet for saying never say that again.

25:55 So I'm not going to say never say that again. I do want you to tell your kids you're proud of them, but pride is the the release of a neurotransmitter called serotonin, which is. I'm proud because I made a good decision. So what I teach my kids, and this is different. I don't want my kids to think I'm proud of them permanently.

26:13 So if I said to your son, hey, listen, man, great, great wrestling match or great football game, man, I'm proud of you. He said dad, thanks. Thanks, Michael I appreciate it versus great job. You should be proud of yourself. Now the second you say you should be proud of yourself, you watch that grin happen on people's face. The Tom Brady grand that a confident grin that all the girls were attracted to.

26:34 You're doing it right now. I could see it, Lowry. You know, the grim, the grin is. I just literally put somebody in the guillotine. I'm old. I remember wrestling guillotine was our the guillotine back in the day. Dude, I remember that was one of my. I'm a 77 kid. When were you born, Larry? At 75. Okay. So you were Gen X were like me.

26:50 So the guillotine. And you remember wrestling like I did. So what's interesting is when you commit, when you submit somebody, you'd say, dude, man, I'm proud of you, man. Most importantly, you should be proud of yourself. And then you walk out of there with this, this serotonin leak of chemical down your face. And you were the most attractive, powerful person out there.

27:10 So I teach parents that your outcome is to get your kids to become proud of themselves and not need us to tell them we're proud of them, because if they need us to say we're proud of them, they'll need that for the rest of their life. So this is natural tendencies. As parents. We do this so I can go deeper on this, but we've got to stop taking the credit for what they did and give them all the power.

27:35 Our job as parents is to empower, not to say great job. We can say great job. You did that. So just out of curiosity, when we say you should be proud of yourself. I'm sure you've gotten this response. Like people, some people will react with, like the the grin that you're talking about, right? But I think they'll also react with like, yeah, but I'm not very rarely I've said or I shouldn't correctly it depends what they did.

28:04 If they come home with a straight A's on a spelling test, a phenomenal job. You should be proud of yourself. That's what all that hard work does for you. Great job son. We sandwich it and then you walk away. And the biggest thing is we need to walk away before they do that to themselves. And as parents, that is if you study any transactional analysis, which Eric Bernays book and if you've never read games people play, that is a way to bait somebody into a manipulation game.

28:31 Like I'm a little insecure, so I'm going to bait you into this game with me. I'm going to make you listen to me. So I'm going to get to be the victim, and then you're going to be the the you're going to be the victimizer because you just hurt me by what you just said. But then I'm going to get you to save me.

28:44 Thanks, mom. Dad, let's play that game again. You have no idea how many parents get sucked into that game of of. You don't get how bad my day was. Oh, honey, but I love you. And then you're making me feel worse. And then I got to make you feel better. And then we become their their binky. And we're actually limiting their confidence.

29:04 You know, I want to I want to add to your what you're talking about here. This was about I learned this lesson the hard way. So I still tell my kids, and I'm really glad we're talking because I still tell my kids, not frequently, but I do tell them that I'm proud of them. Like they're just not a bad thing.

29:24 It's not a bad thing. But. So, I couldn't figure out. So like, and I'll go back to my 18 year old when he when he was seven, he was like this insanely like talented wrestler. He got like second in state his first year wrestling. Like he, he was he was a he was he was talented. He worked at let me rephrase that.

29:43 He worked really hard. And then I I'll never forget the very first Navy Seal that I interviewed. He was he was an expert on growth mindset. And I remember talking to him on the podcast and I was like, I can't figure out why my son completely. He only lost four times that year, but he completely lost his mind.

30:01 Like, not in a bad sportsmanship type thing, but he was very emotional and he just like couldn't get over the fact that he lost. And he's like, well, what do you say to him when he's done wrestling? I was like, I was like, dude, good job man. You are a good wrestler, right? And he's like, well, yeah, your son is going to have that emotional response.

30:20 He goes, because he only identifies himself good as if he wins. He's like, what would it look like for you to shine a light on all the hard work it took him to, to get on that mat and point out the hard work and the work ethic versus the result. And to make a very long story short, you already know the psychology behind all this.

30:37 He's like, so stop telling your your your kid. He's good when he wins because he thinks he's bad when he loses. And that's one of the biggest things that gets in the way of a human being in their mindset is identifying whether the result was ideal or not, and everything else leading up to that. If it wasn't a good result, then everything was worthless and they're worthless.

30:56 So he's like, you need to change your language to the work and the effort and the journey versus like whether he's good or not buy the result is that. Will you comment on that? Would you mind? Yeah. We'll come I will comment on that. Because if first off we got to be really good winners and losers. And that's the thing.

31:14 Like when I coached ice hockey for years of these kids, I spoke the other day at a law firm for one of my guys. I coached him. He was 14. He's 39 now, which is nuts. And he even brought it up. He's like, Coach Michael, when we lost, gave us a harder speech than we won because we won. I'll forgive me when we won. He got me when we when we won, he gave us a harder beat down speech than we lost. We lost. We already knew what we did wrong. We already know we learned from that. So what the gentleman was saying and to to go in depth on this is we need to honor the activity, not the result.

31:47 And so like when a great salesperson in my company will say, hey, I close the big deal, I say, of course you did. That's the kind of person you are. All that work you've been putting in for three years, that's what this looks like. That's how it is. So the quick response of of course you did. That's the kind of person you are is better than great job because we want to build up that person of of how they are.

32:10 So when I think of what this Navy Seal told you, which is what's fascinating is we need to honor the work and the dedication, the fact that you got up this morning and didn't want to. This is why you're a winner. The fact that you got up at 6 a.m. exhausted is what the power is. But the idea that you've been doing this for three years, that excites me more than all of these trophies.

32:33 Most people can, can win, win a win a trophy. The fact that you've been doing this for three years straight, every single day, that's the part that you should be proud of and I'm proud of. So we get them to honor the activity, because at the end of the day, again, I mentioned Nick Saban earlier. He removed outcomes from his teaching philosophy because if you only focus on the win, you don't get many of those, like in a real estate agents.

32:57 I work with them. They'll close 30 houses a year, maybe, maybe 40, maybe, if they're great, a team, 200. What are you going to do the whole rest of the year? It's how we live our life that we need to honor people for. So the way we live in our values and the way we live our life needs to be what's honored?

33:14 The result is just the cherry on top. I agree with you, ma'am. You know, I've I've been in fitness for a long time. Like I actually, that's what I have my undergrad in. Oh cool. I got I have a sports med nutrition and for the longest time I would focus only on the results. And if I'm not getting the results, I would I would like in years past, I would sabotage myself.

33:36 Well, the results aren't coming, so I'll just eat this pizza or drink these beers. And I would say over the past five years, I've really flipped that script to like, this is not about the result for me really, anymore. The result is actually the outcome of of the habit. And so like, why do I train now? I train because I want to have more energy for my kids.

33:59 I want to have more energy for my clients. I want to feel comfortable in my skin. I want to be able to go out and play wiffle ball with my kids for two hours, right? And once I released like, oh, I just have to have this picturesque, perfect physique. This is what it should look like versus like, no, this is what I get to do with it.

34:17 It completely changed the, the, the joy that I felt training, you know, and it makes me even want to get in there more. So I love I love that it's interesting you bring that up because I, it's funny the word workout, right? You love that you say the word train because I found myself my 30s, I was having trouble working now and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't do it.

34:36 I played hockey my whole life. I would stop working out, but then I went back to like, what was my original reason for working out? Number one is I wanted to defend myself in hockey. I wanted to be strong. I want to pick up girls, you know what I mean? I wanted to, as part of a team and then my 30s. I'm married. I don't need to be talking to women, you know what I'm saying? Like that. I don't need to be fighting anybody because I'll go to jail, right? I don't need to. I'm not on a team at that level. And I realize the word workout led to something I say I'm going to do. I don't, but the word trained training my body to feel right, to do the things, pick up my kid, do the things I want.

35:08 So language has a lot to do with it. And you said something interesting, Larry, and I'm, I'm a I'm a coach by nature, and I love serving people. You said the word sabotage. It's amazing how clinical that word is. I don't know where that word came from. I'm going to strip that from everyone's vocabulary, listening. I don't know if we sabotage or we just run a different pattern that doesn't work for us.

35:27 I think sabotage got a very negative connotation. So basically that's what that did. So what happens is when you wanted the perfect physique, you then would it didn't lead somewhere, led somewhere else. So instead of thinking you sabotaged yourself. I truly believe that's how that pattern works. Instead of thinking it's a negative. So I've I've worked hard on removing words like that from peoples vocabularies because I don't think you sabotaged yourself.

35:50 I think you found something better that works better for you. And your mind was telling you and you didn't listen. So it was you were stubborn, so it had a poke you hard. And we call that sabotage. And really what it was your mind was saying, dude, you can have this physique, but you're probably going to be miserable trying to keep up with this 24 hours a day.

36:06 Or you can live a really long time. Look great, you know what I'm saying? Feel great and run around with your kids and not have to be able and boring. Very true. Man, can we talk about words a little bit? Yeah, I love words. So yeah. So let's, let's I, I, I love the fact that you're, we've done this actually a couple of times now even even through us talking like just different words have different meanings.

36:28 What do you find that is most common when it comes to people using words that you perhaps, maybe stop them in their tracks? No no no no, it's it's not that. It's this. It's a lot of things. I mean, I, I just, I, I'm going to give you a, I'm going to give an. I'm going to give one for the single guys out there. Even the guys in relationships that want to work better out there right now, I literally had a guy, two, two, two amazing men sitting in one of my events recently across the table, and they were talking about dating profiles, and because they're both single now, one is newly divorced and unhappily once that doesn't want to get out there with his profiles.

37:03 The other guy's young and wants to figure it out. They're talking and they're like, oh, and this and that and decide the the doing this typical thing you'd fill out in a profile. I said, is there anything wrong with looking for somebody who's capable of loving you for who you are? Is there anything wrong? Isn't that what you want?

37:19 Ideas. That's easy. Where's the prompt for that? I said, shouldn't you find someone that's capable of loving you for who you are and capable of accepting love and giving love? I think we should start there and then we can give them a long hair, blue eyes, brunet blue eyes, whatever it is we're after, right? But at the end of the day, like teaching our kids to to love themselves and to love people around them is probably the baseline of everything we should do.

37:41 We don't have to be weak or pathetic. So I bring that up because we've got a lot of social things that we do that we don't realize that we do on a regular basis. Like there are just words that that I like. You're in fitness. How many times you've heard people say, man, I'm going to work out every day?

37:59 So many times we've done that where it's not good. That's called an absolute. And there are no absolutes in this world outside of your your your spiritual beliefs. I don't believe in absolutes. So what I teach people how to say is, more often than not, I'm going to train more often than not. Listen, if everyone vested more often than not, trained more often than not love their family more often than not 5,161% of the time.

38:20 Holy moly, we would change our lives. So the word all the time comes with anxiety and stress and worry and concern. Just switch to more often than not. And the reason is simple as that switches it takes the pressure off and go. I can do that. I get exercise three and a half days a week. I could do that.

38:37 That's possible more often than not. So that's a big word. So why don't you, to you or me, Larry? Because I can go everywhere with this. Give me an area of life or a specific scenario, and I will give you a word or phrase to shift, because I am very particular about this. And once you shift a word like I got stuff around food that I'll cover with you, blow your mind how people could talk their way to being healthier.

39:04 I can even just go there. Well, I do want to go there, but I. I have one for you. Go. Okay, so I had this coach one time. I'll never forget him. He was probably one of my best coaches. And he said, you will never hear me say the words. I'm so tired today. I'm exhausted today. And I was like, that's really interesting.

39:26 I find myself like, so I'm one of those people. Maybe you're wired like I am. I do not like to leave anything on the table. Like I go to bed exhausted every night, and I kind of take a lot of pride in that. But I find myself sometimes late at night. More often than not, I don't know how to do it. Great. Isn't that great? Best student I've ever had, right? Just teach me, Yoda. Let's go. But more often than not, like there are times where, you know, I've had it like. Like. So, for instance, Mondays were my really, really busy day. So I go, I go to the gym early and I take my son to school early in the morning, go straight from school, I go to the gym for an hour and a half, I train and then I literally coach for three straight hours.

40:09 Then I do anywhere from 2 to 3 podcasts, and then I have another client from 415 to 515, and I literally go on Mondays, 6 or 7 hours with very little breaks. I just go to the bathroom and that kind of thing. It's usually a day. I do heavy intermittent fasting and usually by the end of Mondays I'm like, And I'll say this to my wife, I am smoked today and I always want to catch myself and say, is that what I really want to believe?

40:35 Right? Do I really want to say that? And then here's here's the output of that. I'm smoked. So I probably show I know on Monday nights I probably show up that way. Guys, I need your attention for just a second because this is one of the coolest opportunities we've ever had for the Dad Edge audience. I was recently contacted by the Arizona Cardinals and they want to host an official Dad Edge day at State Farm Stadium.

41:03 So on Sunday, November 15th, we are taking over Arizona for an absolutely epic day of Brotherhood football and celebrating the men who are part of the Dad Edge audience. The Arizona Cardinals are taking on the Los Angeles Rams, and we have put together something really special for you guys. When you get a ticket through the data edge.com forward slash, you're not just getting a seat at the game.

41:26 You're going to get a signed copy of my book, The Pursuit of Legendary Fatherhood. You're going to get an exclusive dad edge iron sharpens iron branded shirt. And before the game, we are going to be doing a private meet and greet where I get to hang out with you, shake your hand, we get to take some pictures and spend some time together before we all head into the stadium.

41:46 Gents, this is going to be an awesome day. I mean, think about it. Hundreds of men from the Dad Edge audience all to show up to one game. We are all over the country, actually all over the world. And we're trying to become better husbands, better fathers and better men. But on November 15th, we actually all get to come together.

42:05 We get to do the meet and greet, we get to celebrate the brotherhood, and then we get to walk into State Farm Stadium together and watch the Cardinals take on the Rams. This is not something we've ever done before, and I have a feeling these tickets are not going to last long. So if you want to be a part of the first ever Dad Edge day with the Arizona Cardinals, go to the dad edge.com/nfl right now to get your tickets.

42:29 Again. That's the data edge.com/nfl. Get your ticket. Get your sign book. Get your iron sharpens iron shirt. Come hang out with me before the game. And let's make November 15th a day that none of us will forget. And I cannot wait to see you there. Yeah, I be careful with that. I'm just going to give you how I look at the week, and I don't even use that word.

42:52 So that's the last time you're going to hear me say that I don't even Monday. I do my day on purpose. My buddy Don told me this is a billionaire. He doesn't do one day. He does my day. The world looks at Monday as a negative thing. So he calls it my day. Do whatever you want on my day. I don't do weekends. I do strong beginnings. And the reason I say nobody needs to be week. Friday is Friday. If you think about fried, of course people are exhausted. It's called Friday. Like why would you want to be fried? I've never done that. So so careful how we say things. Weekend. I do strong beginnings. No wonder people do nothing on a weekend, so I would.

43:23 You got to realize before you I'm a I'm a background in hypnotic language patterns. I do hypnosis and I do very advanced neuroscience. So what you do prior to going to bed for the 15 minutes prior to going to bed will replay in your mind at least 15 to 30 times while you're sleeping. So that's why I only do a yellow book light with a physical book.

43:40 I'm not watching videos before bed as much as possible because it lives in your mind, and those people know how to make those videos in ways that make you obsessed. And I'll talk about how the character develop those people where you make you watch those shows. That's a whole nother scary thing. So instead of saying you're fried, instead of saying you're exhausted or smoked, what you could say is man served a lot of people today.

44:04 Do you know what I'm saying? I it was really, really, really wonderful. And I'm going to need a few minutes to recover my energy because you could always a positive way to say it. My body is in the process of recovering and it knows exactly what to do. So I do this too. I have done this. I get back after.

44:20 Oh man, I'm just exhausted. I've got so much going on. All you're doing is programing your mind to look for more of that. So instead of saying your span to your exhausted say, man, we served a lot of people today, this is what it feels like to to serve a lot of people and help a lot of people, man, get to work to get that lactic acid back in my body.

44:38 I pumped a lot of lactic acid today. This is feels like a feels like a great training I did. I just trained my mind and my body in incredible ways. And this is what it feels like afterwards. I'm going to allow myself to relax a little bit and be even more ready for tomorrow. Wow, man, I just hearing that, like, just quite frankly, it brings me to life, you know, and it's it's looking at the perhaps the gratitude like like even even when you said like I served a lot of people today that feels really, really good to me.

45:08 I also thought about the opposite. What would if you like to not serve and not be blessed with all those clients and being on podcasts and those types of things like it's it's I love that. Thank you for sharing that, man. And you could even say this is what they talked about in the Scripture. This is what they talked about back in the day.

45:27 The amount of work, this kind of healing, this kind of helping man. No wonder. And this should be hard for people. But the fact I got the body and the ability to do this, this is exciting. That's how you give thanks and love that man. Gotta remember a good prayer as a future place. You don't ask yourself for a blessing has to be one.

45:44 And this is this is the part we need to be the blessing. And this is so great that I was blessed to have this body and this ability and this training and these kids and this this thoughtful wife that allows me the ability to do the things that I'm doing. This is this allows me to have the energy to do this.

46:00 And when you say, this is what allows me to have the energy to do this, you will be more energized than I'm exhausted and tired because remember, everything is a pattern. Everything is a program we are running prompts. Nobody understood this. You could go back to my my audios and trainings from 20 years ago, 25 years ago when they had fax machines back in the day.

46:19 No ChatGPT, no Claude. Nobody knew what a prompt was. And I was saying, do you realize that you were patterning in programing your language based on what you speak? So this is one of the things people do. What about what about food? Tell me about that one. Dude, this is this is epic. Oh, my God, you're gonna you're gonna steal this.

46:38 And if you do steal it, give me a few times. I'm stealing it for sure. And steal is good. Steal is good. So, it's funny because if you take a look at food, not all food is the same. And I learned this. This one at Disneyland, which I don't love going to Disney, but I learned this one at Disney with my kids.

46:56 And what happened is, what I realized years ago is most people don't categorize things and they call all food food. They put Doritos, they put, lean protein, broccoli and, I don't know, like a big chocolate cake all in one category called food. The second you split things up and you realize that they have different names and different categories, immediately your mind will respond differently.

47:24 I'll give you a prime example. When a baby is born, there is a little bit of sucrose created in breast milk. And for the guys listening, just let you know that's what makes the the baby's, palate, the, the baby's palate be able to drink the milk and be able to, to like it. And it gives a little sucrose, makes it taste good.

47:42 So they drink it. If not, babies wouldn't make sense. So God's got plans. And how the how the baby and how life works. So the same thing goes when you drink a shake. Like if you ever drank a shake. Larry. Oh, sure, you should never drink a shake. You should chew a shake. Because if you drink it, it goes straight to your body.

47:58 And the enzymes don't know what to break down the second you chew it. No different than the sucrose. These little things send signals to the body. They're spirulina in there. There's way protein. Here's the enzymes to break it down. You know this from science, correct? I do okay, but nobody does it. What do they do? Right. You chew it now in when we're eating food.

48:21 Imagine having a relationship with food. Think of that word. I have a relationship with food. If I'm an have a relationship with like dating, I want to know what's name is, what's intentions are with me, what its plans are for me. It's going to be inside me for a long period of time. I need to know what the hell am I to do with this thing, right?

48:35 So when I look at food, I break it into three categories nutrition, entertainment, and addiction. Now think about that for a second. I sit down with you. You'd whip up the grill, you cook up some food, we're gonna have some broccoli and some meats. And guess what? That's that's nutrition. You got some Doritos prior and some cheese. That's entertainment.

48:59 That's fine. And then afterwards, you know what? You know, Mike, we're going to need a whole chocolate cake, or we're going to be fat boys and we're going to eat the fat boy. We're going to eat the the ice cream truck shows up. It's addiction. Now, what I do with this is this I usually say, how do I feel prior?

49:13 How are you going to make me feel? So I call it out. I'm about to have some nutrition. This will give me energy for the day. I'm about to have some entertainment. I'm going to pay the price tomorrow. I'll be a little sluggish. I'm about to have some addiction. I'm about to take some years off my life. If people stopped going a happy hour and they started realizing, I'm going to spend the next two hours poisoning my body and be less effective tomorrow, they'll probably go less or the Lord or water.

49:36 So what I learned was when we would go to Disney, we were there and it was all entertainment, entertainment, entertainment, entertainment. There's no way around it, even the restaurants. And if you go to a restaurant, it's called food poisoning, unless you order off the menu, because you've got to be like, give me a salad with no salt, no nothing.

49:54 No seed oil. Like that's the only way. It's all food poisoning. It just is what it is. So we were doing entertainment, entertainment. And I remember my daughter and I, we were at Naples, Downtown Disney, and she goes, daddy, we've had a lot of, we've had a lot of junk the last couple of days. Can we order a salad, too?

50:09 And I'm like, she got it because your body wants to reset. So here's the way the game works. The second you do this and you go, you go. All you have to take us three seconds. I'm about to have some nutrition, entertainment, entertainment, entertainment. Eventually, if you called it out, your mind would auto reset and go. You know what, Michael?

50:26 You've had six entertainments, one addiction and two nutrition. I think it's time you have a nutritious dinner. You automatically reset. I've covered that for 15 years. I've had thousands of people come up to me and Michael. I didn't change my diet. I literally changed my language. I've lost 7 pounds, 10 pounds, 15 pounds because all food is not food.

50:43 So I know that's a short version of a long training, but you got the glimpse of it I did. I mean, that's my background. I definitely can get behind that. I had this one personal trainer friend of mine. He called it bricks or mud. That's great. That's what he, he also trained one of my. He trained my 18 year old in the off season.

51:02 He's like, you got to eat bricks. You can't eat mud. He's like, mud is like the Doritos and the Cheetos. And he's like, the bricks is the protein and the basically what you call nutrition. You know, it's interesting the, the language that you use because with my kids, like, I, I really clean and I don't actually call it nutrition, but I call it fuel.

51:24 And I my kids have heard me say this till they're probably blue in the face. I was like, I eat high octane fuel. That's the label I give it. Right? Versus like, you know, I call the junk food, I guess junk food. But yeah, that's that's clear to me. Can we move to marriage? And communication can go anywhere you want.

51:44 Yeah. Let's do this. So I've been coaching men in marriage now for a decade, and they come to my table. One of the biggest complaints that they have is I don't have the best communication with my wife. Usually when I ask them what they want, they say I want to have either A or B, which A is, I want more communication or I want better communication.

52:04 I always say that that's that's about as useful as going to your doctor and getting bloodwork. And your, your doctor looks at the blood work. He's like, all right, Michael, I need you to get more healthy. And you're like, what? What's the problem? Don't worry about it. Just go get more healthy. It's so general and it's so broad.

52:19 It has no specificity to it. But what what have you found? I mean, you've been married for 15 years. You've had clients who have been married. What are some of the most common pitfalls? And by the way, in your bio, that's not the way I meant it. Well, that's what I heard. I mean, we we we those lines get blurred so much.

52:37 So what is the psychology of communicating with our wives and then communicating back to us? What are we missing here? I mean was a long conversation. We go on for days on this one. One of my favorite things I even learned, I learned from my wife. And she said expectations minus reality equals disappointment. And what that means is we expect something from somebody.

52:58 And in reality, that was our expectations, not theirs. Expectations, unspoken will always lead to disappointment because they're going to get it wrong. And so any conversation unspoken is a challenge. And the other thing I learned from my wife, too, is that because we train in different things together, we covered this the other day at one of our events, and she said, whenever we screw up, we don't say sorry.

53:19 We say, that's mine. That was me. That's mine. And, I own that. And I definitely could have done better than what I did. And you not only own it, but you protect your influence along the way. You protect your power because a lot of people walk around. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I mess up, and then you got someone standing over you like this.

53:38 Like, of course you messed up, idiot. You know what I'm saying? So we don't want to get to that point where we get there. So a lot of a lot of men have to figure out what type of relationship are they looking to create, like what is their definition? Let's just start there. Like what is your definition of a relationship?

53:53 And very few people have even thought that out. They've got a picture in their mind of The Brady Bunch or Leave It to Beaver. We grew up as a kids or or this, this picture of this, this person. And I've got to ask you, like, what type of relationship are you looking for? What is your definition of a relationship?

54:12 What would you like your relationship to look like? What would you like communication to be like? And I don't think anybody ever really asked. Most people never take the time to actually ask those questions. So if you want to talk scenarios, Larry, I can. I would love to because it's parenting, it's money, it's religion. These things break marriages.

54:31 We just got through. We work together. We're raising a teenager right now in the middle of my oldest just got engaged, and we're building a house for the last two and a half years from scratch. So everything that can be a problem. And we have a competitive figure skater daughter who travels the 15 competitions a year and and it's insane.

54:50 Her schedule. So my life is nutty and we've been through every everything under the sun. So talk to me, Larry, a little. Instead of me just being generic, give me a scenario that comes up in an area. Guys would love to get better. I got one for you. First of all, I love you. When you got one, it's like, this is you're going to be like The Brady Bunch, like Joe Glass.

55:10 You know what I'm saying? It's about you. Go ahead. No. So first of all, I, I agree with everything that you're talking about especially and I and I, I say this to my clients all the time. The unspoken expectations are very dangerous. Right. But but here, here's the one. I want to run past you. Because this one, I think I have my own triggers with this, because I had a mom that was struggle with alcoholism.

55:35 And triggers are responses. What's that triggers the responses? Is it responses? Well, is it trigger or response because triggers very very violent. And the response is is this way you've been responding. We can take we can change your response. But triggers can't be changed. Responses can. So is it a trigger. You're having a response.

55:56 Maybe both. Think about that. Play with that later today and get back to me on that because that's interesting. Anyways. Go ahead. So when I would do something or not do something and I would say maybe more not right, my mom would always say, you should know, I shouldn't have to tell you. And I see this all the time in marriages and especially I would and I don't want a stereotype.

56:19 All women. But I see women saying this to men a lot. Like when a guy is like, well, what do you expect? And her response is, you should know by now, I shouldn't have to tell you. And I think I've been married for 23 years. I've known my wife for 30 years. We learned that one the hard way. It's like if she doesn't know what my expectations are, how am I supposed how am I supposed to hold her to that? Even if I think it's super simple? Stupid, right? But if I don't communicate that, then how will she know? So, like, I'll give you I'll give you an example. Yeah, I have a lot to unpack on that, but go ahead.

56:52 Yeah. Go ahead. So my wife and I, one of my love languages is physical touch. And it doesn't even have to be non-sexual. I just I always told my wife I was like, when you touch me in any way, even if you walk behind me and you just brush your hand over my back like there's a there's a tremendous amount of just peace that just, like, flows all over me, right?

57:09 And so lately, like, we, we, we get we love deep conversations. And one of the conversations we had is there's something that you wish I would do more of or something I, you wish I did less of. And so we went back and forth and I shared with her. I was like I said, I wish you would touch me more in a and it doesn't have to be in a sexual way.

57:26 I just wish I was like, I just love your touch. And then she immediately sex. But I do touch you all the time. So it's like the defensive things come up versus receiving it. And I've been guilty of that too. But then we we landed on common ground just fine. I was like, well, when you touch me. Here's what happens.

57:41 And I was like, I would just love for you to touch me at least once a day for for no reason whatsoever. And, but here's the thing. Like she I could say to myself, she's known me for 30 years. She knows that I like this. And then every time she doesn't do it, I hold her, hold it against her, and she'll be like, what do you want me to do?

57:59 And be like, well, you should know by now. We've known each other for 30 years. I think that that's such. That statement is such a nail in the coffin. So you should know this is you got you got to translate that. So when a woman says you should know this by now, I cannot believe you did this or whatever it is.

58:16 It's really code word for I have enough going on in my life, and the last thing in the world I need to do is teach you how to live your life. And you're there to protect me and keep me safe. And this is crazy that I got to remind you to put the dishes in the sink. Thank you. If you can't put dishes the sink, how are you going to be able to load the rifle? I'm just. I'm just telling you that is deeply rooted, translated out. There you go. That's what I believe. Or, this is one more thing for me to think about. I thought you were here to protect and save me. And you're making my life harder than it needs to be.

58:44 Leaving a tissue on the counter. I'm just telling you, it is code word for you. Heard them incorrectly. What they're saying is not exactly what they're saying. So your ask of your wife, and you're like, do you mind doing this once a day? You've got to be okay with the idea. You're okay to ask. You are not promised a response from anybody.

59:03 I got to teach my kids. You're owed nothing. Does that make sense from anybody? So you have every right to ask you also every right to get whatever response you get back. And they have every right to respond to any which way. And you're probably going to be let down because you just gave her an every day instead of more often than not, see, more often than not is calculated, not calculated.

59:23 You're not going to sit there and go, okay. Out of the 365 days in a year and the average of give you Sundays off, you're not going to do that. You don't be really cool once in a while here and there. If you were to do it, that would be great. And then when she does it, you condition her to do it a little bit more.

59:37 But that's what how I would look at it because she's busy, got four kids, got a lot going on in life, gave birth, spend all those months being pregnant, just putting it out there. Now you're asking for something. So I'm not saying don't ask, but we can also ask for a little. And that's where the more often than not, you know, it'd be great every once in a while if you do it.

59:55 I love that you do that every once in a while. It's wonderful. I know you want every day, but that's just the thought. So when somebody says, you should have known, you don't really need to take offense to that. This is the craziest thing in the world, Larry. I'm going to throw at you real fast. I'm sitting there in my van and I couldn't figure out what my wife never told me.

1:00:16 Good job to anything. Like, I hang the moon. I do the thing. I mean, maybe to hang the moon. But we do make millions of dollars by this house. We do this thing, we go into vacations, we do it all, and we work together. She works just as hard as me. And I'm sitting there in my event one day and I going, wait a second.

1:00:35 Why do I need her to tell me good job she's with me. If I wasn't great, she'd find somebody else. Her being with me is in her being with me and I. And I said to her, I screamed at Deborah, I think I figured it out. The fact that you're with me and the fact that you you, the fact that we're together is because you see me as great.

1:00:58 She goes, of course I see you as great. I don't need to tell you. Your grant wouldn't be with you if you weren't great. So this is the part we need to realize. They're not our moms, okay? They're not our babysitters, okay? They're not there to comfort us every minute to feel good. Okay? So we've got to realize as men, we've got to realize she expects you to be great.

1:01:19 And when you're not, she's not disappointed. She's just reminding you. I thought you were great. What did I miss? Like. Like you can't do that one little thing. So I take it as a compliment now, so it's hard to to reposition. But instead of saying you should have done that differently, going, man, she thinks I'm great. She thinks I could do more than I'm doing.

1:01:37 I know it's crazy to hear Larry. But again, it aren't you. I get it, I get it, man. I never understood it to that depth, though, as well as how you just. Your wife thinks you're so freaking amazing and incredible that she gave you for children, and she's with you, and she thinks you're amazing. She may not say it all the time, may not touch you all the time, all that stuff.

1:01:57 But, man, she thinks you're incredible. And as soon as you weren't, she'd have a different conversation with you. Oh, yeah. You're not good enough. You're a loser. And I'm. I like this guy. That's what would happen. Okay? But that's not what's happening. What she's saying is you're great. I'm confused right now. Why would a great person do that?

1:02:15 So now it's like, dude, she thinks I'm amazing. Love that man, I love that reframe. That is that is gold man. Well, that works for me. Let's do this. I, I know we only have a few minutes left. What have we not shared that you think is really important and meaningful for all the dads and husbands listening today?

1:02:38 We haven't shared about taking the lead. We haven't shared about if the communication is going to change in your house and you're listening to this podcast and incredible. I mean, in fact, you've done this, Larry. Absolutely amazing. Be proud. This is like super cool that you've you've done this along. And the fact that you're here, it is not up to them to lead.

1:02:57 It's up to us to lead the charge on this. And we've got to realize that we could start with the simplest things in the world if we're going to upgrade our language. And remember, it isn't what you say that matters. It matters most. How do you want them to feel? So when you speak, stop speaking for grammar. Stop speaking to be politically correct, going, how do I want this human being to respond?

1:03:19 How do I want them to feel? Because the way they're responding is the language you just used, and then also accepting the power of our own influence and realize that the state of our relationship is the state of our communication. We could go, Joe Rogan, man. We could go for like five hours. I think. I would love that.

1:03:38 Dude, this is this is when my team introduced us and I looked you up. I'm like, how do we not know each other? Ready? I know shocked. Should have been a long time. I want to have you back for our part two. I love that. I'd love to have you on our show as well. I would love to do that, man. By the way, what part of Arizona are you in Scottsdale? You ever check out any Arizona Cardinal games? I don't, but we should. I mean, I've been before many times, but yeah, it's down the street. Well, so the the audience heard this in the mid roll. So the Arizona Cardinals are having a dad edge day on November 15th.

1:04:11 Oh really. Yeah. So I'm going to be doing a book signing. They're gonna it's a dad edge thing. But but it's also they're going to be honoring all dads there. But if you're around or if you, you come to that game, me and my whole family were flying out to Arizona on the on I think like the I think we're going on in the 13th or 12th, but but we'll, we'll be there for, for like, I'd love to see you there.

1:04:32 Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do I get the details on that from you give my team or can you have your whoever set the to get with them okay. Yeah. For sure. It's just the dad Edgecomb forward slash NFL. It just guys are bringing their kids out. We're doing a meet and greet. We're having some fun and and but they're going to be honoring all dads there at that game that day.

1:04:50 Oh, my God, I love this. Yeah I love that. Yeah I'm down the street. I live all my buildings off the 101. And then that's in Glendale. So it's 32 minutes from my, my office. Oh, shoot. Man, it'd be great to meet in person, man. That'd be great. Yeah, we actually, we'll do our. If you have time, we'll do our podcast in person.

1:05:06 Have all studio here. Do it in person. Let's do that. Okay. Let's do that. That would be great, man. Well, where can the guys find you if they want to connect with you? Obviously your book and everything else. Like, where's the best spot? I mean, there's different types of guys, so I'll just tell you, Amazon, you can find my book or average.

1:05:23 Com and and or you can stock me on Instagram, Facebook LinkedIn, Myspace I do have a website. It's called Michael Vernoff. Com and I have my name spelled correctly now I have my name wrong. Earlier I realized I typed it in small, I that was on me, I did that, and then if you're really serious and you're like, dude, I like what you're saying.

1:05:43 I'm a Gen Xers, like, I'm old school. You can literally text my assistant at (480) 800-8051. Just this is for those that are like, what do you got? I need help with this specific thing for 808 hundred 851 just text or word influence. And there's like a real person on a real phone. And, and Shia will gladly book a time for us talk.

1:06:04 That's not for everyone. I can't take every phone call, but I just throw that out there. You never know who needs help or or need something. So that's how much we connect with our community. So feel free. I love that man. I'm so glad you corrected your name because like for my podcast team, like I had to type in your name and I was under the impression that was burnt off.

1:06:23 And then as soon as I saw your first got started. Right, I know, but I was like, oh crap. I was like, I spelled his name wrong in our. You said it in a different way. Yeah, but that's okay. And you have to watch the show to to realize we got there. You don't have to redo it unless you want to. No, I just, I, I just feel bad. I said it wrong. So I was looking at your name. I was like, oh, I spelled it wrong. When I told my team, I literally set you up to lose. I owned a good that. Yeah, that's my techniques. It's so funny, man. But yeah, let's, let's definitely reconnect. That'd be great.

1:06:55 Well, let's do this guy. So, thank you for me to be on same man, same as an honor to have you guys. You won't have to look far for anything. The link for the NFL. Everything we talked about today, if you guys go to the dad edge.com/1544 for this show. Again the edge.com/1544 Michael thank you so much man.

1:07:15 This was awesome. And I can't wait for our part two. It's it's an honor Larry. Thank you. You bet man. Talk to you soon.