0:00

Why do you wanna improve yourself

0:02

when it comes to your relationships? What is it about you? Why do you need to have yourself improve

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while the other person doesn't? We're gonna be ta tackling this whole topic this week on episode 231

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of the relaxed male. This

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is the relaxed male, a show that comes to you each week helping men to remove the nice guy from their life so they can actually live their life on their terms.

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Join the host of certified coach, Brian Goodwin, as he helps men step out of their heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them.

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Hey, man. Hello, and welcome to the relaxed mail. I am your host, Brian, and I'm a certified men's coach that who assists men who are just neck deep in the suffering in their lives.

0:48

And they struggle with those relationships, struggle with the the problems that relationships can often

0:54

come about. And we're gonna be talking about one of the big struggles

0:58

that we have, and that is us, why we need to improve ourselves

1:03

to have a better relationship because these relationships

1:07

can be tricky. They can be kind of frustrating at times. And

1:12

even when they fail, we can grow from that, and we could become better because of those those different types of failures. And that's what we're actually talking about this week. We're talking about improving yourself,

1:26

getting yourself better, getting yourself to where you are

1:29

the better ideal man that you wanna be.

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And finding the the why, finding the steps, the the details that you want

1:40

to be able to have a a life that you crave for, the relationships

1:45

that you want, the the wife

1:48

that is glad to see you when you get home, who is

1:53

who is just a great and wonderful, give allows you to have a great and wonderful experience.

1:59

And so we're looking at

2:02

the the ability to improve yourself.

2:06

Now we wanna, look at

2:09

several of the different things. So so when it comes to our relationships, we're and being able to improve ourselves is, like I said, one of the more crucial,

2:18

crucial items. Our relationships are important. However,

2:21

there are times that our relationships and the communications, the connections that we have, they're just kinda start to crumble. And and this happens often when us guys

2:30

sit on our laurels. We just sit back. We get home from a long day, and we would rather just be able to relax

2:36

and not have to deal with all the kids and deal with the all the headaches. And And our wife comes in, and she starts asking us a 100000 questions.

2:44

And we then blow up. We get to we kinda become standoffish.

2:50

And then we step back and we wonder, well, why are we not connected like we used to? Why do we not have the wonderful relationship that we used to have?

2:58

And, how are you supposed to improve these relationships if you how are you supposed to become

3:05

a a a great husband if

3:09

everybody keeps doing, you know, doing things to piss you off? Well, that is kind of the point as to when it comes to improving yourself.

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What happens when you improve yourself? And why do we wanna improve you not to find a way to get our wife

3:24

to do what we want them to do? And the the point to that whole little aspect

3:29

is that you can control only 2 things, your thoughts,

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your actions. You can't control your wife's. You can't control your kids. You can't control your employees. You can't control your boss.

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None of nothing in the world is is controllable

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except for you. How do you show up

3:50

to whatever the circumstance is?

3:52

Now we can we often wander through life

3:56

living a very unintentional life. We end up having

4:00

aspects of our life that we just we we we struggle with. We bounce off

4:05

of off of difficulty, strife,

4:09

conflicts. We just we run into we have arguments with our wife, and we break those con those connections down.

4:17

But then we never go back, and we never fix what that what was actually broken. And so little bit of stress and a little bit of breakage

4:25

happens every time we have a fight. But if we don't ever repair that fight and we string, strengthen that connection back anymore,

4:32

we don't we it's like taking a broom and you kinda or broomstick and you kinda bend it a little bit, it's not gonna break. You kinda bend it again,

4:41

not gonna break. But, eventually, you're gonna start getting a lot of bend in there, and, eventually, it's just gonna let go and it's gonna snap. And then

4:50

one of us guys step back and go, well, I wish I knew she was not unhappy.

4:54

Well, she was to let you know she was unhappy. She showed you that,

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but we were too busy being in our own little world, living a very unintentional

5:03

life to even acknowledge the fact that

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we had caused a lot of problems. And, yes, it was us guys, us men who caused the problem,

5:13

not because we didn't

5:16

take the time to step up. Well, I shouldn't have to step up. May why don't she step up from time to time?

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Again, refer to the rule.

5:24

You can control your thoughts, your actions. So if you want something to be better,

5:30

yeah, you have to do it yourself. You have to become

5:33

the better person. You have to become the better man. You have to work

5:38

on your basics and work on yourself and try to get yourself to be the better person.

5:44

When you're a better person, as Jim Rohn says, you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. That means that

5:52

if you're around 5 people,

5:55

their influences are going to improve you. That is also

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true in reverse. If you're one of the 5 people around your wife,

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you're going to have the ability to

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influence her and improve her

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strictly by proximity effect. You're going to be around you. If you're a better person, you're gonna cause your wife to

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wonder why your life is becoming better, and she's going to want to improve. She's not she may not even fully understand why, but she knows that because you're influencing her life, she's going to become better person.

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Does that work all the time? No. She also has her own thoughts

6:36

and about what's different circumstances are. So she's not ever she's not going to take the same path you are. And if you ever think that that's the way that

6:44

the the world's supposed to work, well, I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. It doesn't work that way.

6:51

So you wanna start off if you're wanting to improve yourself, if you wanna become the better man, you wanna have the relationship that is just rock solid,

6:59

and you've got a wife who is just loves you dearly

7:04

and, you know, actually enjoys kinda getting getting naked for you from time to time. You wanna start off with

7:11

the basics. And the basics in this instance

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is working on your 4 pillars.

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And if you're not familiar with the 4 pillars of relaxed male, the 4 pillars are man's mind, the man's body, the man's soul, and man's community. Each of these are important for a man to just have a good foundation in his life. And you can

7:32

you can make make improvements on some and and kinda let others slide. And, yeah, you can you've got 3 other you've got 3 other pillars that can help you

7:43

stay together, but that 4th one just really levels everything out. So that's why there's there's actually 4 pillars. And I wanna real quickly. If you've listened to any of the other,

7:53

episodes, I talk about the the 4 pillars on a on a fairly regular basis. And, on my website over at relaxmail.com,

8:02

there those 4, pillars are are listed all over the place.

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So to to get into that,

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we're gonna start with the the first one being the man's mind. This is

8:15

you working your brain, you learning, growing,

8:18

improving how you think, improving how you

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look at the world, and you can only do that

8:25

by actually intentionally working on your mind.

8:28

Reading books, listen to podcasts, attending conferences, things like that. Becoming better

8:35

and and amassing knowledge and applying,

8:38

that's the key part though, applying the knowledge that you have learned.

8:44

Some of us like to and I'm guilty of this myself, of amassing knowledge, learning stuff, and then not ever applying it. Well, what's the purpose of of

8:53

learning something if you're not going to use that knowledge?

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It's not gonna it's not benefiting you in any way. It's not benefiting those around you in any way. So you want to work on your if you're gonna build your mind up on something,

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use build knowledge and then use that knowledge.

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Your you wanna learn

9:15

different parts of of whatever the problem is. What do you learn is yeah. You can read books and read,

9:22

fiction books and stuff like that, and you get a little bit of knowledge and a little bit of insight through there. But I'm really am focused in on the nonfiction, the learning books, the self help books. Are you struggling with having connections?

9:35

What or having you know, you've got,

9:39

you're you're not a connected person as you as you'd like to be. What do you do? Well, I mean, you might go out and read

9:46

getting to 0 by Jason Gaddis, a great book on

9:50

how your you approach conflict in your in your relationships.

9:55

Or maybe you're wanting to try to

9:58

improve your the the business so that you have are able to have more financially

10:03

stable life. Okay? Then you might be reading

10:07

books by Zig Ziglar or or

10:12

some other, I keep her Zig Ziglar is the one that I've been reading about, the most, so it's the one I kinda just kinda comes to mind. But, you know, different,

10:23

Seth Godin and and books on selling and and how to to improve the the bottom line or maybe some

10:30

type of, business finance

10:33

finance book. These are all things that you may be reading if that's what your interests are.

10:38

You're you maybe have a son who is acting out. That might be where you start reading books on child development, and you're trying to understand how do you get your child, your son

10:48

to be a to be a proper young man. And a lot of that's gonna be work on yourself. You're gonna find out

10:55

that, a lot of it is you have to have the man of the house involved in your son's life. The and the more the better the man is is the man's is the boy's father. You can get the father to to be involved if so you if you're the dad, we're talking you

11:14

involved in the in your son's life a lot more, he's going to be a lot better balanced. That's also is the same for your daughter. If your daughter is struggling,

11:24

dad, you've you've gotta be involved.

11:27

These are things that you end up learning

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when you're working on the working on your your on your mind. Now the other pillar is the man's body. This is just your health. Working on your body, getting yourself in shape.

11:42

Don't have to be, you know, don't have to be cut, ripped, and and all that, but having some some

11:48

semblance of fitness in your life,

11:51

being able to run to the end of the block without getting excessively winded

11:57

is a good thing. To have a the ability to

12:01

have some form of endurance

12:05

is is critical because, sorry, your fight for your your family

12:09

is often going to be very physical. And if you don't have the the wherewithal and the ability to do that,

12:17

And I'm not just saying that all because a lot of y'all like to go off and say, well, that's what a gun's worth. No. I'm sorry. But your you gotta your body's gotta be able to withstand the stress of having guns fired at you also.

12:30

So if you're in a in an actual shootout or something

12:34

and you're not physically fit, you're probably the stress of that is going to incite a a heart attack somewhere down the road. How are you gonna help your family when you're dead?

12:44

Alright? You need to get yourself in shape. You need to be eating

12:49

a little better than what you've been doing. I'm not saying go vegan. God. No. I would never tell you to do that unless that's something you wanna do. Then okay.

12:58

But if you're if you wanna be able to eat steak and potatoes, okay, well, eat steak, potatoes,

13:05

and throw in some green beans or broccoli or have some some eggplant or

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whatever, some other types of vegetables.

13:13

And mix in some fruits in there from time to time. Instead of eating a Snickers bar, have an apple, and then walk for a couple miles or run or go to the gym and lift weights or go to get into Brazilian jiu jitsu

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and just find a way to work your body, get yourself into shape. 1, you're gonna look better. You're gonna feel better. You're gonna have more energy to do things that you normally wouldn't wanna do. And on top of that, your wife is gonna look at you like, hey. You're looking a little hotter than you used to.

13:46

You're no longer Pillsbury Doughboy. You're getting a little closer to to the the in the fit throw, not the, Thor. You're not not bro Thor. You're

13:56

starting to get you know, you're getting that 6 pack kind of assembling back. Yeah. There's a little loose skin, but that's okay.

14:04

It'd be better to have some loose skin than to be dead.

14:08

Alright? So you wanna work on your body to show that you prove to your wife you're here for the long haul. You're gonna be there, and you're gonna be be there for the for the extent of how you of of y'all being together.

14:22

The 4 the 3rd pillar is the man's soul, and the man's soul is

14:28

important because if you're not doing what aligns with your soul,

14:33

that's where you're getting the burnout. That's where you're getting the depression. That's where you're getting

14:39

the the frustrations

14:42

and the dread of going to work. Now is work always fun? Is it always easy? No. No. It's not. But at the same time,

14:49

if you're doing if you're not doing what something

14:54

that feeds your soul, whether it is helping other men,

14:58

helping, the less fortunate,

15:01

building birdhouses or or or what in

15:05

finding something that just nourishes you. It might be your hobbies in your life. These are things that you can do

15:12

that just, one, allows your brain to reset, but, also,

15:16

it brings it lets your soul shine. Now a lot of people wanna use

15:22

the finding your purpose and work a purpose, doing your purpose means that you will never work a day in your life, and that's really

15:30

cute. I can I I am one of those who can say you if you can find what your calling is

15:38

and you can make money from that, then buy damn, go bore forth and do it? But that's not always the case, and that shouldn't be the case. If it's feeds your feeds your soul and you're and it's running a a soup kitchen,

15:52

Okay. How do you run a soup kitchen and

15:56

feed your family at the same time?

15:58

These are these are important questions you wanna answer. If you're out to help the homeless

16:04

or help the less fortunate in some way, you still have your responsibility

16:09

with your family. So you gotta be able to

16:12

work both of those. Or maybe it's just on the weekends, you're doing what feeds your soul whenever you can, however you can. Now the 4th pillar is probably well, it's not probably. It is the most important pillar.

16:27

Because without that pillar, you're going to probably

16:31

more likely fail on your

16:34

soul pillar, on your body pillar, and on your mind pillar. And the reason why is because, again, Jim Rohn's,

16:43

famous quote of you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. I I actually have changed towards your the average of the 5 people you spend the most intentional

16:55

time with. And the 4th pillar is the man's community,

16:59

and that is mostly the friends. How many friends do you have in your community,

17:05

in your little group of guys?

17:07

Or is it just you and you go sometimes go hang out with, Ed over in accounting? If that's you, you need more than just Ed. You need Ed and and

17:19

from accounting, and you need to bring in some other guys. You know, that one guy that you've kinda been wanting to talk to over in church. If you go to church, I hope you go to church because that's a great community to be a part of whether y'all like to think it or not. It's a good community to to attend,

17:35

to find other men who are like minded as you. Go on to meetups. This is another place that you can find other men who are like minded as you, and you can piece together

17:47

your 3 AM group, which is that group of men that you'd know you can call when you are 2 states away, 3 o'clock in the morning, and you're

17:56

you need help. It's like, dude, my car is just gotten

18:01

jacked, and I don't know how I'm gonna get back home.

18:04

Can you come and get me? And they go, yeah. What where you at? And you give them this location, and they're like, alright. I'll be there in here in a couple hours, and they show up.

18:14

Those guys are everywhere.

18:17

Society doesn't want you to think that they are, but they are everywhere.

18:22

You just have to do the work to find them. You have to decide

18:25

that getting off of your phone

18:28

and stop scrolling through Facebook as much

18:31

so that you can actually talk

18:34

face to face with these guys that are all around you, inviting them over to your house to where y'all sit around and y'all have brown water and and

18:44

have a good, have a good discussion about whatever the topic is. Y'all have discussion groups.

18:50

You talk to each other. You share what's

18:53

what is important to you, y'all become, and then start intentionally

18:58

living your life with each other. This is a big thing and a big change and a big help for

19:04

you when you are improving yourself because when you can have a group of guys who are supportive of you,

19:10

their masculine energy is going to feed into you. It's gonna fill you up

19:15

and that you can then take that masculine energy and share without your and throughout your family,

19:21

and that will lift them up because you have a group of men who help you.

19:27

When you have that emotional problem, you have those guys you can share that with. And you're emotionally

19:34

more stable when you have this group of men.

19:38

It's not like how women talk. We don't talk to to other men the way

19:44

women talk to each other. Men, we can be in the vicinity of each other and still be able to help each other. Does it help to talk? Yo. Heck yeah. And it doesn't actually necessarily even be about the problem. We can we, us men, have this wonderful ability of being able to help each other just by being around these other men.

20:03

But yet, especially us nice guys, shy away from men. We would rather kinda

20:08

bend over towards a towards the feminine

20:12

side of our relationships because women are a little easier for us

20:17

nice guys to manipulate, or at least we fool ourselves to think that. So you need to bring

20:23

masculine men into your life. When you start being

20:27

having these masculine men pour themselves into you, your community

20:32

grows. Your community becomes better. Your community

20:36

becomes the one where everybody else starts talking about it, And you start finding opportunities

20:42

that show up out of nowhere and your life becomes better, thanks again to the fact that you have

20:49

quality, noble masculinity

20:52

in your life. Now there's other points that I wanna talk about, not just the the 4 pillars. It wasn't just a point to the 4 pillars and why they those help you become better.

21:01

There's other things when you're improving yourself that you wanna make sure that you keep in mind.

21:06

One is that failure is good.

21:09

Do not shy away from a challenge because, well, you've never done that before because it's, something hard because it's not,

21:17

what you're good at. If you're not good at something, that's the very big reason as to why you wanna go ahead and do it so you can become good at it.

21:27

Failure is good for you. We don't have to celebrate the failures.

21:32

You can be angry and upset the over the fact that you failed

21:36

in something. Don't wallow in it and shy away from the challenge of getting back on that proverbial horse and doing it again. Failure

21:45

is there to teach you a lesson.

21:48

Learn from it. Feel that pain that they that comes with it.

21:54

Climb back on the horse and realize I don't wanna feel that me landing on my ass like that again. So let's,

22:02

let's not do that or find a way to not do that.

22:06

Failure is good. Now another thing you wanna know is that when it comes

22:11

to your thoughts, because what holds you back what allows for success

22:16

are your thoughts. Your thoughts create your

22:19

emotions. Your emotions create your actions. Your actions create your results.

22:24

So your thoughts create the results you want.

22:29

So you have to pay attention to what your ruminations are.

22:32

What are those thoughts that keep going in your

22:35

round and round and round in your head? Those thought loop errors that you're getting, those thought errors that crop up every time you come face to face with something that you're not you've never done before.

22:47

Those thoughts that are holding you back, those thoughts that allow that turn you to from purpose to to doing the

22:55

doing the opposite, to to being going to a buffering and doing just the indulgent emotions.

23:02

Those thoughts, you have to change, and you can change your thoughts. But to be able to do that, you have to pay attention. You have to see and understand when you're having a thought that is going to hold you back. When you can actually do that, you're going to start

23:17

learning how to alter your route, alter your life to where you're going in a direction that will actually benefit you. Now the last thing that or next to last thing is if you wanna have a better life, you wanna have a better relationship, and you want to improve and better yourself,

23:34

start understanding how you can have better disagreements.

23:38

Get better at disagreeing with other people. Doesn't mean you have to sit and run around and troll them and and be a be a an SOB because

23:47

you want you just feel like that's something what you have to do to I'm I'm bettering myself, so I have to disagree with everybody. No. No. You don't have to disagree with everybody. But when you come across somebody who is disagreeable,

23:59

you just don't light your hair on fire and go, oh my god. That's just horrible. And you blah blah blah blah blah blah. You wanna go off and you wanna be able to have

24:09

discussions with them to understand

24:11

that that conflict that you're having.

24:14

You want to, you wanna have, have date night every, every Saturday night by going just to the same

24:28

the the Catfish Shack because, I mean, all they have is catfish. And I don't like catfish. I mean, if you don't like catfish, first of all, I'd have to ask what's wrong with you. But second of all,

24:38

you know, it's it's okay.

24:40

You don't have to like stuff to try new things. You might have a decent hamburger at the catfish shack. I don't know.

24:48

You don't know. And you refuse to go to it because you it doesn't have steak and potatoes. Well,

24:54

again, for your body, you're starting to branch out. You're having some other types of of of meats in your life.

25:02

You might try some lamb. You might try some different types of fish. You might find the tay.

25:06

There's some fish out there that's actually pretty darn tasty.

25:10

Oh, but it's, it's fishy taste. No. It's surprisingly

25:14

you that halibut doesn't have near as strong of a fish flavor as you thought. Oh, wait a minute. Let's try some lean

25:21

meats. Try some elk or deer or moose or whatever it is. You might find somebody

25:27

who has a freezer full of exotic meats that you would like to try,

25:31

and they're willing to sell it to you. And so you buy some. You can improve yourself

25:36

by going out and trying different things and having disagreements with your wife on what's and I got sidetracked. Oh, I got it. See, I came back to it. But your wife

25:45

having disagreements on what you wanna do versus what she wants to do versus what your son wants to do, what your what your daughter wants to do, what your boss wants to do, All these people are gonna have disagreements.

25:56

But when you can have a disagreement and you can heal

26:00

and fix that that disagreement, that conflict,

26:03

you have a stronger connection because of it. The key though is understanding why are you running away from the conflict?

26:12

Why are you not attending to the to the the the scary discussions

26:17

that y'all are having? When you can stop

26:20

running from discomfort and start having those

26:25

hard to have important discussions, you're gonna find that your life gets better and your marriage gets better and your wife, she actually has more

26:35

faith in you and more trust in you. And all of a sudden, because she has more faith and more trust in you, all of a sudden, her clothes are falling off a lot more often. And it's almost wild that she you're you're having a little bit more sex from time to time.

26:49

Why? Again, because you decided to have

26:53

the conflicts that you were running from. You decided to start becoming better

26:59

at disagreements. And now the last one is

27:03

you can get a coach. If you wanna become better,

27:06

a coach can help you in any type of direction that you wanna go. Now if you're having problems with emotional you're having emotional problems and you're you're spending emotionally and you're falling into depression and things like that, This is where a therapist comes into play. That's not something that a a coach does.

27:25

A coach, though, can take you from where you are right now

27:29

and can help you see

27:32

what the future beholds. And you can then take those steps and will he will he or she, depending on which coach you get,

27:41

can also help you reach those goals.

27:44

They can help you to find like, if you wanna have a better relationship with your wife, a relationship coach like me,

27:52

great thing to do. You wanna have a better relationship

27:55

with, with your boss, then maybe a,

27:58

a a business coach is the direction you wanna go. If you wanna have a a financial coach can help you have a stronger wallet. But to be able to do that,

28:08

you're going to have to first go and and pay attention to what it is that you wanted to improve.

28:16

Because when you start improving yourself, you start seeing where those weak areas are, and you can then start building up on those those weak areas. Start shoring them up so that you have the better life.

28:28

So, guys, with that, I wanna say thank you very much for listening. Thank you very much for for

28:33

seeing what, what is going on in this new, new live version

28:38

of of the of the Relaxed Mail podcast. I am live. This is actually gonna get edited and, and

28:46

chopped up and put into, end of the the

28:50

the pot, end of the RSS feed and will come out this coming Thursday. Thursday,

28:55

at typically about 3 o'clock in the morning, CST

28:59

is whenever I aim for it. So it'll, it'll come out, and it'll be ready

29:03

for you to listen then, and you could actually kinda read go over everything that I talked about if you, are interested in it. And, again, if you wanna be able to receive this, be able to listen to the podcast itself

29:16

live each and every time it goes live, which is I'm gonna start aiming for about 2 o'clock on Sundays.

29:23

And but, again, I'm not I'm still working on time, so who knows? Maybe it'll end up being Saturdays. Other times, it might who knows? Who knows? I'm can't guarantee anything. Life comes along. So

29:34

it's gonna be we're gonna try to go as live as and as often as as we as we can on a as steady of a course as

29:42

as we can. So anyhow, I'm I'm more battling. We're coming to the end. We're wrapping everything up. So guys, if you are interested in

29:51

being coached, do you want you have some,

29:53

relationship issues that you wanna improve?

29:56

Maybe you're thinking, man, this marriage is nowhere near what it's supposed to be. How do I become better? How do I become the man that I need to have need to be so that my wife and my kids can

30:09

turn to me and become and see me as the as the husband I want him. Maybe I wanna you wanna have a stronger connection.

30:17

Maybe you've told yourself that it's not possible to have a better connection. Maybe you don't you've not had a

30:23

a an example of what a good healthy marriage is about. A coach like me can help you do that. You can go to relax mail.comforward/coachingoffer,

30:33

and that's all one word. And there, you can fill out a form, and I will send over to you a

30:41

a a Zoom invite and or a place that you can actually schedule for for a Zoom invite.

30:47

And I will and we'll sit down. We'll talk, and there'll be about 3 meetings that we do. And that that will allow me and you to kinda feel each other out and understand, hey. This is what this is about.

30:59

Hey. I can I can help you with this or I can't help you with that? And we can

31:04

determine, hey. We'd be a good work good team together. Well, let's team up. Let's work it through. Let's let's help you become

31:12

the the best man possible. And with that, if you would like to, like to do that, then we can go from there. And like I said, it's about 3 different the 3 visits that we do.

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So if this is something you're you're interested in doing, go to relax to mail.comforward/coaching

31:30

offer. And and we will, we'll talk to you then. So, guys, with that, I wanna go ahead and say thank you very much for listening. If anything I said here resonated with you, please take this, all your, all podcasting apps of choice, have a, have a share button, hit that share button, share it to your Facebook and your Twitters and your and your mastodons and, any place that you end up sharing your your your to your community,

31:55

please take the time to, share this out. Let them know that, hey. We've got this the show, the relaxed male that is helping men become

32:03

better men. And post it on post it up. Let me know that you're

32:08

that what you're saying, and I'd love to jump in, and I'll play part of the, of the discussion. So, guys, with that, I wanna say thank you very much for listening. Y'all take care, and we will see y'all next week.