00:00:00.01 iandawsonmackay anything like that, anything you want to do, just let me know. But thank you. 00:00:04.15 Dr_ Robert Glover Let's just have let have fun. 00:00:06.49 iandawsonmackay Thank you so much for coming on the show. um I'm a massive fan of your book. I've got a copy and I've got the audio book myself. I find it quite a difficult listening at times because it opens up that kind of avenue of the work that we need to do. 00:00:20.60 iandawsonmackay And it kind of allows you to see where you're going wrong and then make it given teaching. But how would you explain who you are and why you're helping so many people? 00:00:30.32 Dr_ Robert Glover Explain who I am. Okay. I'm Robert. So nice to meet all you guys. And I live in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, originally from Seattle area in Washington state in the US. My background is I have degrees in religion and ministry. I also have a doctorate in marriage and family therapy. And I was a minister for eight years in another lifetime, really long time ago. 00:00:55.30 Dr_ Robert Glover And that's my dog Nala barking right outside my office is board. There's somebody outside that she gets excited about when people come around outside. So she'll quit barking in a minute. And I started working on my own self, my own work. 00:01:12.57 Dr_ Robert Glover 30-something years ago when my then wife said to me, everybody thinks you're such a nice guy, but you're not. I don't trust you. You can be mean. You can be passive-aggressive. You embarrass me in public. You don't follow through. And she goes, you need help. And I thought, well, i'm you're the one who's unhappy all the time, but okay, I'll try to i'll to make you happy. I'll go get help. Luckily, I landed in some good places. I landed in a 12-step group for sex addiction. Found out I wasn't a sex addict, but For the first time in my life, just started revealing myself. And, you know, as you and I were kind of chatting, that's so challenging for most men to to to be vulnerable, to take the risk of showing somebody, who am I? What am I struggling with? Who am I afraid? What's not working well in my life? We tend to keep that hidden in secret. I did. And um so I landed in a group I got with a therapist. I later joined a men's group I was with for several years that worked around sexual shame. 00:02:10.05 Dr_ Robert Glover And then I started noticing men coming to me for therapy with their wives and girlfriends were saying the same things I was. I'm a nice guy. I'm one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. I treat her better than her ex. I'm raising her kids. I give her everything she wants. She's never happy. It's never good enough. When's it going to be my turn? And she never wants to have sex anymore. 00:02:28.83 Dr_ Robert Glover So I thought, they're like me. So I started a No More Mr. Nice Guy men's group about 30 years ago. Started writing just kind of little lessons about stuff I was learning about me. And I was starting to learn about nice guys in general. And nobody had ever written about nice guys at that time. There was just nothing out there for you know these passively pleasing men that want to make everybody happy and yeah or unhappy themselves. So about six, seven years to write No More Mr. Nice Guy, 00:02:58.03 Dr_ Robert Glover Another three years to get it published. A lot of editors said, Robert, we like your book, but our marketing department says men won't buy a self-help book. Well, that was before interview, podcast, Amazon, you know, you see a book and you hear a book and a podcast, you go on Amazon, click it, Amazon said, people who bought this book bought this book and this book and and guys buy books. So. 00:03:21.55 Dr_ Robert Glover That's 20 plus years ago that No More Mr. Nice Guy came out. And to this day, I'm still working with men. I love working with men. Still working on myself. ah Still you know finding new and interesting challenges in life. and So that's my story. That's who I am. That brought brought you up to date for the last 40 years to today. 00:03:41.57 iandawsonmackay I like it because it's definitely something that, you know, we're taught as adults, and as you grow from, you know, from boyhood to manhood, to go out to be the nice guy. Don't upset anybody, fit in, you know, just be well behaved, you know, show respect, etc. But everybody ah misunderstands the title of the book, that it's not nice guy in that sense. There's more sort of sense that undertones to the nice guy. 00:04:08.62 iandawsonmackay what What is it about ah being a nice guy? I know you're probably fed up asking this question, but what is it that... 00:04:15.26 Dr_ Robert Glover I've never been asked that question before. Never been asked, who am I and what's a nice guy? um Yeah, even as I'm kind of talking about who am I, I'm thinking, yeah, how many podcasts have I talked about that on before? um And I thought, you know, people watch very many of of my interviews, you're gonna hear a lot of the same things, which I know is true. You know, the nice guy thing. Yeah, the the the title is kind of an interesting paradox. 00:04:40.35 Dr_ Robert Glover Number one is that, you know, people might pick up the book and say, what's this? A book teaching men to be not nice? There's already and not enough nice not nice men out there. And, you know, as I said, a typical interpretation. And then another interpretation is what's wrong with being a nice guy? I would have asked you the same thing 35 years ago. I would have told you, I'm a nice guy. I'm one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. 00:05:02.88 Dr_ Robert Glover And I thought that was a good thing. I was trying to be different from my father because my mother raised me to be different from my father. So I thought that made me a good, a better person. I'm not selfish or narcissistic or angry or controlling. 00:05:15.63 Dr_ Robert Glover um i'm I'm trying to be different than all the quote bad men. I've heard women complain about oh ah Man, they just want one thing, you know back in the day. It wasn't toxic masculinity But there was the same message during the angry Feminism of 60s and 70s that I grew up with every man's a rapist and erection is a sign of aggression You know it's just all this, you know Don't be that guy, right? So, and i I grew up in a fundamental Christian church, you know, you know, be a good man, be kind, be caring, be gentle, be passive. um Don't be selfish. Don't put yourself first. Don't rock the boat. and and And repress your sexuality. That was a big part of it too. Hide your sexuality. Sex is bad. and Sex is dirty, evil, and sinful. for it So save it for the one you love. You know, that that paradox seemed to be lost on most people. So, 00:06:08.66 Dr_ Robert Glover You know the this the whole nice guy thing is a nice guy's a guy who who is trying to do two things Become what he thinks other people want him to be so he'll be liked and loved to get his needs met So he's very chameleon kind of like, you know, lick your finger hold it up. See which way the wind's blowing. Okay, I'll be that I'll do that I'll i'll look like that. i'll ah I'll behave in this way performing this way then I'll be liked and loved and I'll get my needs met and The second thing that a nice guy is trying to do is hide anything about him that might get a negative reaction. So if I do something and you frown or you scowl or you get angry or you walk away from me, oh, that was wrong. I did the wrong thing. 00:06:50.28 Dr_ Robert Glover And so nice guys end up hiding a lot, their their needs, their wants, their opinions, their feelings is a big one, and their sexuality is huge. Because we think, oh, if somebody sees that I'm a sexual guy, or that they know that I look at porn, or I'm turned on by young attractive women, yeah oh, no, people will think I'm disgusting. So nice guys are walking through life, in a sense, by being really inauthentic. 00:07:15.46 Dr_ Robert Glover You can't really trust a nice guy. Who is he really? What does he really think? What does he really feel? What does he really want? What's he really up to? You don't know. And so that makes it really challenging to be in a relationship with a nice guy. He won't say what he wants. He won't set a boundary. He won't ask for it. 00:07:32.96 Dr_ Robert Glover and and and nice guys lie a lot we didn't think a nice guy wouldn't tell lies but if you're trying to become what you think everybody wants you to be and hide anything get a negative reaction you actually have a little lie coach in your head that says tell it this way or leave that part out, or misdirect their attention, or bring up that good thing that you did, or just you know look like you don't know what they're talking about when they say it. That lie coach is coaching us all the friggin' time. Okay, that's not a nice guy, right? That's not a nice human being that's constantly thinking of what lies do I need to tell in order to to go along and not get in trouble, not have consequences, not have anybody mad at me, not have anybody leave me. 00:08:15.96 Dr_ Robert Glover and All of those often add up to nice guys really not being their true selves, not asking for what they want, not expressing themselves. and so And then they use something called covert contracts, which we can talk more about. It's a giving to get. And nice guys, because of all these patterns, often end up being pretty resentful and passive aggressive. And passive aggressive just means indirect, roundabout, unconscious expressions of anger. We can actually be out and out mean. 00:08:45.83 Dr_ Robert Glover You know, when we when we you know don't get what we want or get our feelings hurt, we'd be pretty hurtful to the people around us, all the while thinking, I'm a really nice guy. So the there's a lot of pieces, especially in interpersonal relationships, but another big piece is nice guys often are huge underachievers. We often fail to live up to our full potential for various reasons, either because being successful will put us in the spotlight and we'll be too visible and people might criticize us or have a higher standard for us. 00:09:14.61 Dr_ Robert Glover we think we might make other people feel bad if we're too successful or we'll maybe rise too much above the family standard we grew up with and that that will you know make our family, you know who do you think you are? you know That kind of thing. so And we get so caught up in codependent relationships, fixing other people, helping other people, solving other people's problems that has a real good distraction from Taking good care of us solving our own problems living up to our full potential So these are just you know a clump of the things of why of what the problem is with being a nice guy and as you know, I I dive into these very early in the book probably first second chapter I start talking about what's wrong with being a nice guy cuz I want to establish up front Not that nice guys are bad or wrong or evil or anything like that. I'm gonna I'm a recovering nice guy. 00:10:05.43 Dr_ Robert Glover But just to kind of be the big stick upside the head, all the while we think we're being nice and building up credit in the bank for being all our nice credits. Nobody should ever get mad at us, leave us, call us out. People should like us. Those things actually make us not nice. 00:10:23.37 iandawsonmackay Because it's amazing like because I like to listen to put like audio books. And I kept feeling myself stutter. When I was walking, I would sort of stop and go, oh my god, that really hit home. And there were so many things that just kept opening up about why i I'm attracted to certain people. Because I tried to fix them, rather than try to fix myself. Why I self-sabotage, because i don't want to be in the I don't want anybody to have an opinion that maybe I'm not as perfect as this. 00:10:52.23 iandawsonmackay the but image I want to portray. you know It was just one thing after another. 00:10:54.74 Dr_ Robert Glover Yeah. 00:10:56.48 iandawsonmackay But one thing you really hit home in the book is about how the relationship with your father dictates how you're going to be as a man yourself. Do you think this is the problem now that we have a generation of men that are you know, led by mothers, only fans, porn, social media. 00:11:13.80 iandawsonmackay So we're now playing a character to try fit in because we don't have a male role model or we don't understand how to be masculine. So we allow others to dictate the journey we should go on. 00:11:26.35 Dr_ Robert Glover You know, the yeah, to answer your question, yeah, all that, true. You know, when I started working with nice men that I call nice guys, so 30 plus years ago, most, you know, at that time I was probably my mid-late 30s, I'm late 60s now, so you know, thirty s and and most of the men I worked with were probably around my age, in in the U.S., what we might call baby boomers, um men that were born after World War II. 00:11:53.30 Dr_ Robert Glover And I've quickly found out that every nice guy had their own story. We often had a number of similarities, but we weren't all the same. And we didn't all have the same story. At first I thought, well, all these other nice guys out there are probably just like me. And I thought that they weren't. So our our stories with our fathers can be varied. 00:12:12.39 Dr_ Robert Glover Back in those times 25 30 years ago the most common stories I heard was father was either absent You know, he'd left, you know divorce the son's mother he'd never the boy never saw his father or Absent because he worked a lot or traveled a lot and just wasn't there around the family 00:12:16.77 iandawsonmackay Thank 00:12:31.55 Dr_ Robert Glover I heard stories of fathers. It kind of fit more with with my father's story. 00:12:35.05 iandawsonmackay you. 00:12:35.35 Dr_ Robert Glover Maybe that they were angry or maybe addictive or maybe abusive to the children or or the the son's, the boy's mom. um And so I heard a lot of that. 00:12:47.36 Dr_ Robert Glover um And, you know, a few of the guys, you know, basically said, well, I grew up in a leave it to Beaver family. But, you know, they didn't really even know their dad and they didn't really have a depth of connection with their dad. 00:12:59.35 Dr_ Robert Glover Now, nowadays, when I listen to younger men, you know, whether this is millennials, generation Z, a lot of them are telling me, oh, my dad was a nice guy. 00:12:59.33 iandawsonmackay Hmm. 00:13:09.82 Dr_ Robert Glover And it makes sense, my son just turned 39 two days ago, and his father, he's a millennial, was a nice guy, me, right? and And what a lot of the young men I hear say, all my father taught me was, don't piss off your mother. 00:13:24.08 Dr_ Robert Glover I mean that was kind of the rule because dad was walking around on eggshells and not trying to piss off the kid's mother and that's how I was when my son was young of course as well and I wrote No More Mr. Nice Guy when my son and stepson were you know teenagers you know between about you know probably 12 and 18 years old ah is when I was writing the book and really doing my own work so at least my my my son got to grow up with an evolving recovering nice guy father But but I know that I'm sure that still had an impact on them that just like it just don't upset your mother What was was kind of the key message? 00:13:59.88 iandawsonmackay because that was something that really hit home was when you talk in the book about your relationship with your mother, that you know that they tend to bond with their mother. And it's almost like they can't let anybody else into that. So they you know they sabotage relationships, that they're always going to be connected to their mom and stuff. There's so much that opened my eyes to kind of, whoa, I don't have a good relationship with my dad, you know that I'm presenting him for this, that I've been brought up by my mom. She would teach me how to put up shelves and things like that. 00:14:32.69 iandawsonmackay How much of that, um you know, men are taught to be the strong, silent type to fix problems ourselves. But now we have a generation who are going to therapy, they're discussing their problems. At what point does it become good to talk? And because you see in the book how a lot of guys come in to moan about the other person never accepting responsibility on themselves. 00:14:57.27 iandawsonmackay So when does it become good to talk and discuss our feelings, et cetera, but then switch into the bad version of, you know, rose tinted and been manipulative and power hungry and, you know, like, where's that balance between the two, do you think? 00:15:14.60 Dr_ Robert Glover Well, I'm actually not a big fan of finding balance between two toxic extremes. there there's just's There's not a balance there. It's it's a contradiction of terms. 00:15:21.62 iandawsonmackay No. 00:15:23.62 Dr_ Robert Glover so but But you know, that's the thing about us men. We often go, well okay, I don't want to be this, but I don't want to be this. Where's the balance? We'll go, okay, what's the tipping point between those two extremes? I don't know. 00:15:34.66 Dr_ Robert Glover and so But it's not going to be any healthier. So I'm not sure balance is the answer we're often looking for, even though most of the men I talk to really like that word a lot. Balance. I gotta find balance. You know, honestly, most of the highly successful people I've known in life were pretty out of balance. I'm not i'm not sure. You know, there's some things that you know I don't want to get too far out of balance on. 00:15:57.91 Dr_ Robert Glover But I think I also have to be willing to get way out of balance on certain things if I really want to you know hit it out of the park if I really want to you know to to make a big mark of some way So yeah there's probably four or five questions in that question that you asked just now 00:16:15.27 iandawsonmackay I have a habit of that. 00:16:17.09 Dr_ Robert Glover I have it. Yeah, you're not the only one believe me I'm ah i'm um'm a professional at listening to the multiple questions and trying to pull them out and see if I can remember what they all are by the time I finish answering the question so I Believe that vulnerability is huge. I think this is iss extremely important for people's happiness mental health self-esteem living up to their full potential what What happens is yes, culturally, we we do kind of discourage men from being vulnerable. Look like you know what you're doing. You know, look like you're competent. If you don't know what you're doing, don't try because you don't want to embarrass yourself. And so that's really self-limiting. It's limiting it in a lot of ways. So we don't try new things. We don't take risks. We don't step out of our comfort zone. We don't accept mentoring, coaching, assistance, criticism even. 00:17:14.69 Dr_ Robert Glover Because that makes us feel like, oh, somebody's seen that I'm not good enough. I'm defective. I'm bad. I'm whatever our core. We all have different core messages around that. But for me, one of the most powerful experiences I had, I mentioned when I went to that 12 step group for sex addiction. 00:17:32.92 Dr_ Robert Glover For the first time in my life, I started being vulnerable. I started revealing me, telling things I'd never told anybody before, things I'd never even really wanted to look at. And you know the the most powerful response I forgot was, thanks for sharing, Robert. And I got into therapy and started revealing. And my therapist would just look kindly and say, well, let's explore what that's about. 00:17:54.96 Dr_ Robert Glover And I was in a men's group you and we we we dove into sexual shame. So we're we're sharing kind of the deep dark stuff. Most people don't ever get around to sharing. And then when I realized nobody rejected me, nobody thought I was evil, nobody attacked me and that actually found out I was actually pretty normal, maybe pretty tame actually. 00:18:14.83 Dr_ Robert Glover And so that was so powerful to have that vulnerability. And and for example, I you know i do workshops, a few times a year I'll do a workshop here in my office, usually about eight, 10 guys. I've started a men's program. It's an international program called Integration Nation. I've been working with men, like I said, for 30 plus years. And what I found that if you can give men a safe place to just Tell their story. Talk about them. That it's contagious and that other men then open up and want to reveal. And that becomes the basis of how we develop depth of genuine connection with other people. How we escape this loneliness trap that so many men are in today. 00:18:59.76 Dr_ Robert Glover how we break out of our hidden addictions that we don't ever let anybody take a look at how we break out of all the fucking time wasters we have social media scrolling youtube doom scrolling instagram you know surfing for porn you know we start revealing that stuff and take that risk and feel vulnerable and we find out people accept us and like us and maybe even like us more because they actually know who we are we're not just some teflon front And now we have friendships and connections. And oh, now that I have friendships and connections, I'm not surfing so much porn. I'm not on Instagram so much. I'm i'm not you know you know wasting time looking at YouTube videos. All of a sudden, life starts to change because of that vulnerability. 00:19:46.24 Dr_ Robert Glover Now, with that said, I'm a therapist by training, and I often say, I know this sounds strange coming from a therapist, but feelings are overrated, and talking about feelings is even more overrated. Because I know what what a lot of you know people do, maybe what we think of as a therapy, is just talking on and on and on about how I feel. Why feel really sad about this? Why feel really hurt about this? 00:20:10.95 Dr_ Robert Glover and I think it's a good idea to be connected and in touch with our feelings, but I think when we talk about feelings, we're talking more about a visceral response. Sad, mad, glad. And and I think it's good to be able to access all of those feelings, because if we can't feel sad or mad, we can't feel glad. And if we can't feel glad, we can't feel sad or mad. They're all very important feelings. 00:20:34.64 Dr_ Robert Glover But most of the time when people are talking about feelings, they're actually talking about their mental perceptions of things, not feelings. All right. And often when people say, I feel like, well, they're not actually describing a feeling. They're describing a thought process. Usually I had one client, a female client that used to come to see me with her husband and her husband was in a men's group that I led. And she would begin almost every sentence with, I feel like. 00:21:01.12 Dr_ Robert Glover Finally, I said, I don't usually do this with women. I can do this with men. But I said, listen, if you say, I feel like the next time you say, I feel like you have to get down on the floor and either give me five pushups or five crunches. And and she agreed. And so she said, I feel like and so she did. She got down and gave me five pushups. And you know, it it took a little bit. And I remember one time they brought their daughter to the therapy sessions. They could find a babysitter. 00:21:27.04 Dr_ Robert Glover and the daughter was like four or five years old and so the the daughter got down on the floor with her mother and did crunches and push-ups every time the mother said I feel like so A lot of what when men do express feelings, a lot of times actually what they're doing is puking out their victim state. 00:21:50.45 Dr_ Robert Glover like you know they'll come They'll come to a men's group or they'll come into therapy. 00:21:50.58 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 00:21:53.49 Dr_ Robert Glover and Back when I was like working a lot with men in private practice and had five men's groups a week that I was leading back when I was living in Seattle, you know a guy would come into a group or come into therapy, usually in a group and he he'd be complaining about his wife or his girlfriend or complaining about his boss or complaining about this. And I said, okay, you get two sessions. 00:22:15.64 Dr_ Robert Glover to complain, whine, be the victim. This is session number one. next time Next week, you can come complain and whine and gripe and be a victim again. Then, no more. From then on out, we're addressing what are the issues within your power to act on and resolve because there's no more playing the victim. So again, a lot of times when people kind of get into, quote, their feeling work They're just kind of rehashing their mental constructs of things that have happened to them. They're not really in their feelings. Now I'm a big fan of feelings. Feelings make us feel a alive, but typically we don't have to talk about our feelings, but it is helpful to actually feel them and know what it is we're feeling. A lot of people don't. ah you know For example, when I was working with couples, 00:23:06.47 Dr_ Robert Glover I'd have a lot of couples come to me and the woman would be saying, I don't know what my husband's feeling. I don't know what's going on inside him. I don't know what he's thinking. I can't really ever tell. I, you know, I feel so alone because he just, you know, won't open up to me. And I can't tell you how many times in a couple session, kind of the woman sitting on the couch, kind of talking away and the man starts to tear up. I can see it. You know, I've learned to recognize, you know, the getting misty eyes. 00:23:33.52 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 00:23:33.62 Dr_ Robert Glover You know, not not just sobbing or bawling, but you know, he's tearing up. And the woman's just yakking and talking while he's sitting right next to her, having feelings. And I'll interrupt the woman and I'll say, look at your husband's eyes. And you know, she has to kind of get reorient because she's in her head yakking at me about something. She looks at him and I said, what do you see? 00:23:58.40 Dr_ Robert Glover Oh, he's crying. He's got tears in his eyes. ah Yeah, I said, he's been sitting right next to you having feelings and you didn't even notice, but yet your major complaint of his ah of him is you don't know what he's feeling. You don't know what's going on inside of him. I said, maybe the problem is not so much he doesn't have feelings, but you're not paying attention to them. 00:24:21.20 Dr_ Robert Glover And that's kind of always kind of, a you know, I don't take the big stick upside the women's head very often, I do it with men. But that's kind of about as big a stick as I can get, is is telling a woman, he's having feelings. Do you really want to know what he's feeling? Do you really want to see him as a feeling human being? Or do you want to sit and complain about the fact that he never has feelings? 00:24:41.18 Dr_ Robert Glover so Feelings are meant to be felt. They're meant to be an alarm system that wakes us up to something that just says pay attention. That's all. They don't need to be going off all the time just like we don't need our alarm clock going off. But when they do go off, we should pay attention. Sometimes it does help to talk to somebody if we don't know what the feeling means or what it's about. That can be helpful. 00:25:05.81 Dr_ Robert Glover But again, most of the time when people kind of go in and and they're just kind of victim puking out, you know, all this stuff and just regurgitating, you know, all the stuff they've been ruminating about, that's not really doing feeling work, in my opinion. 00:25:20.66 iandawsonmackay No. No, I definitely knew that. Because when I did talk therapy years ago, it was just, it was fine at the start. And then you just kept that victim mentality up by talking about it. It got round and round houses. you know There was never any action. It's only when I started doing CBT and actually taking action. I said, no, it's the difference. And that's what I liked about your book was that you got us to the reader to actually identify and challenge their behaviors. 00:25:49.95 iandawsonmackay I think it was Carl that you mentioned where you were on about using his car for the external validation, how he would always use it. 00:25:55.44 Dr_ Robert Glover Oh yeah, yeah. Always had to be he had to be super clean and his daughter always had to be really cute and you know, all that kind of stuff. 00:26:00.53 iandawsonmackay but Well, I mean, I'm exactly like that, but I'm the being the joker. So I'll make silly jokes. And it's when you were talking about that couple just now, I was thinking about times where I've analyzed what to say and how to say it and how you know rewriting things in my head before I would speak. 00:26:17.70 iandawsonmackay Whereas I would see colleagues who are female who just feel it and just say as they thought. And it made me realize it's like how much of a character I play in a lot of roles in my life. 00:26:30.44 iandawsonmackay And I'm now at the point of kind of, where does the nice guy or this version of this character of myself end? 00:26:30.91 Dr_ Robert Glover Yeah. 00:26:37.19 iandawsonmackay And ah where do I begin? And I think that's the problem is a lot of guys, it's a paradigm. They don't know that they're but you know they're just following their programming. When do the guys start coming to you? Do you see, is it after divorces, after losses? Is it that the, you know, what's the event that kind of pushes them into working with you, do you think? 00:27:01.44 Dr_ Robert Glover All right. Can we come back to that question? Can we back up just a little bit and talk about your feelings? 00:27:05.65 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 00:27:06.97 Dr_ Robert Glover You want to do that? A little free therapy here? 00:27:07.86 iandawsonmackay i Go for it. 00:27:09.33 Dr_ Robert Glover All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your your your voice went up in pitch. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about my feelings on my podcast. 00:27:13.94 iandawsonmackay Oh, i think i think I think a lot of that is I've spent a lot of the last few months trying to work on myself and I'm challenging behaviours and stuff and I'm coming to a transition like of a job ending and it's that moment of, who am I? 00:27:25.40 Dr_ Robert Glover Yeah. 00:27:30.93 iandawsonmackay what Where did I fit? What am I? You know, I've not got the kids, I've not got the marriage that I expected. So I'm now at that stage of, society says I should be this, but I'm actually this. You know what I mean? 00:27:44.19 Dr_ Robert Glover Well, let's back up even further. this this this the in this i'm I'm not gonna poke too much, I promise. 00:27:49.52 iandawsonmackay And... Now I go for it. 00:27:51.46 Dr_ Robert Glover back Back when you said um, two things You've said you have a tendency to be the joker to kind of start telling jokes in certain situations I do too. I I realize that in certain situations where my anxiety state goes up a newer novel situation ah I'll kind of get jokey, right? Another piece you said is you have this tendency to kind of start overanalyzing overanalyzing, you know, what should I say or what should I if If you and I were working together, right if I was your coach or therapist, I would actually take those two pieces of information. Those are valuable information. 00:28:25.75 Dr_ Robert Glover because you like most of us have been taught well I say in No More Mr. Nice Guy, nice guys are uncomfortable with two kinds of feelings our own and everybody else's right because feelings represent out of control the unknown yeah I might get hit I might get spanked I might get scolded I might get ignored for having feelings right that's painful if you're a little child and you're having a feeling and 00:28:48.90 iandawsonmackay and 00:28:51.27 Dr_ Robert Glover Nobody gives a fuck, nobody notices, that's painful. So you learn, oh, i can't I don't want to go there, that hurts too much. So we all learn, all of us, we all learn things to distract ourselves from our feelings. 00:29:04.72 Dr_ Robert Glover Even talking about feelings can be a distraction from feeling our feelings, right? 00:29:09.98 iandawsonmackay yeah 00:29:10.42 Dr_ Robert Glover So if we know, if we have a little picture of ourselves, know ourselves well enough to know when we are distracting ourselves from uncomfortable feelings. and And for some of us, all feelings are uncomfortable. A lot of guys I work with are uncomfortable being happy. Oh no, this feels weird. I can't walk around being happy. There's, you know, it might make my girlfriend but feel bad because she's unhappy all the time. And if I'm happy that, you know, that's not, so even that sad, mad and glad, even the glad part might make us uncomfortable to feel. 00:29:43.70 Dr_ Robert Glover But if we know what we do to avoid feelings, like maybe seeming really intelligent and smart to avoid feelings, maybe being the joker to avoid feelings, maybe, you know, being bravado or trying to make a good impression to avoid feelings, or maybe clamming up and not talking at all to avoid feelings, maybe, you know, there's various ways we all can do it. So what I would say to you, for example, if we were working together, I'd say, okay, next time you notice the clown in you has come out the jokers come out and and if you can be the noticer of that especially with no judgment just notice oh i'm joking and i'm joking a little too much and trying a little too hard right notice that without judgment and and then you can just get curious hmm i wonder what i'm uh avoiding i wonder what's really what i'm wonder what i'm feeling 00:30:38.09 Dr_ Robert Glover right Now, this is not being overly analytical, it's just being curious. 00:30:42.55 iandawsonmackay Hmm. 00:30:42.70 Dr_ Robert Glover Hmm, I think I'm just uncomfortable in a new situation with people I don't know. That might be all there is, right? It's often things like that. I'm just, um I'm anxious. And mostly the two things you'll probably find is that you're either probably dealing with anxiety or shame. 00:30:58.42 Dr_ Robert Glover Shame is ah an internalized emotional sense that I'm not good enough. I'm not okay. I'm gonna be found out. I'm bad and Anxiety is just oh, no. What if what if I do something and something bad happens? What if I get embarrassed? What if somebody doesn't like me? What if I look foolish? What if you know, I get shot down? What what if what if what if so you can pay attention to those behaviors that you tend to run and when you're having uncomfortable feelings. And again, often the time those uncomfortable feelings are either shame or anxiety. I had a guy named Dr. Robert Augustus Masters who wrote a book called To Be a Man on my men's program about a month ago. 00:31:37.89 Dr_ Robert Glover And he said shame, toxic shame is the most uncomfortable feeling men have. And I know that's true for me. yeah Even though I've worked on my shame and become very open and very vulnerable, you know you probably watched enough interviews with me. I talk about anything and everything about myself. I got no secrets from the world that they're all out there. But even little things, I noticed I was on an interview last week. And it was maybe one of those days where I had three interviews in a day. 00:32:05.53 Dr_ Robert Glover And about 15 minutes into maybe a 90-minute interview, ah thought I I gotta go pee. I need to pee. And then I thought, well, again I can't just stop the interview right now and say, I gotta go take a pee. Actually, I'm pretty good at doing that when I need to, but it's kind of an interview. So I'm thinking, oh, I think I can hold it. I think I'll be okay. And it wasn't until the interview was over that I realized I had shame. 00:32:31.74 Dr_ Robert Glover about just saying, I gotta take a piss, I'll be right back. And so I managed that by just doing whatever I had to do to get through, you know, the interview. 00:32:41.70 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 00:32:42.08 Dr_ Robert Glover So that was shame that, oh no, you know, somebody will think badly of me or I'll be a burden to somebody or I'll be disruptive in some way. And it it it took me a good 45 minutes after the the interview ended to even realize, oh, I had shame about needing to take a pee. 00:33:00.33 Dr_ Robert Glover 15 minutes into an interview so that that's shame and and I repressed it so like everybody else I tended to you know override it in some way, okay, so Be the noticer of that when you get too analytical about stuff might even just ask yourself. What do I feel? 00:33:18.38 Dr_ Robert Glover Or if you're being kind of the joker, being funny, or, you know, being clever or distracting, go, Hmm, what's up? What's going on with me right now? Now, again, I know a lot of people that do quote, feeling work specialists, they'll say, all right, where do you feel it in your body? What color is it? and And whenever people do those routines with me, I go, that's a poor excuse for therapy. 00:33:39.41 Dr_ Robert Glover You know, you learn that in a workshop somewhere to ask the person what color is it. You know, just notice, and and a pretty good guess is, you know, something that's triggered your fight-flight-freeze mechanism, so it's probably either shame or anxiety or fear, right? And, you know, those are pretty good guesses. Probably you're not being the Joker because you're glad. And you might be because you're sad, but it's probably more around fear or shame or anxiety. 00:34:03.68 Dr_ Robert Glover So these are just those little clues you can pay attention to to do your feeling work. And then if you want to tell someone about that, tell it to your friend, tell it to your partner, tell it to your therapist. Hey, I discovered something about myself when I'm in that jokey place is because I'm feeling an uncomfortable emotion. 00:34:20.85 Dr_ Robert Glover Now, if you tell this to your partner, your girlfriend, your wife, now the vulnerability we have is, oh fuck, now she knows me. Now she'll call me out when I'm being the joker, and I won't be able to hide behind that anymore. 00:34:29.63 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 00:34:33.02 Dr_ Robert Glover So that's why it's actually, I think, healthy to tell our partners this stuff, because that requires another level of vulnerability. of us getting out of our comfort zone and taking a risk, because that's what vulnerability is, is taking the risk that somebody will see us. And again, nice guys are trying so hard to become what we think people want us to be and hide anything we think might get rejected or have a negative consequence. So this is such a powerful way of breaking out of those nice guy patterns, is finding safe people, a coach, a therapist, a men's group, a 12 step group, a minister, a rabbi, 00:35:07.69 Dr_ Robert Glover a best friend and start risking opening up and telling things that you're uncomfortable telling about yourself. And then we can learn to just start doing that within ourself pretty easily. 00:35:20.52 iandawsonmackay That makes a lot of sense, because when you were discussing about the using a joker to kind of navigate through anxiety, I could think of some events where it was popping in my head, where I stopped going to jujitsu because I was not as good as I wanted to be, or you know that a colleague of mine left, and I was going to have to train with people who I had no idea or didn't know anybody. And suddenly, instead of having a fail-safe person, a safe person to train with, 00:35:48.37 iandawsonmackay I was like, oh no, I might have to be shown up by new people. I don't know how to connect with men anymore. 00:35:53.51 Dr_ Robert Glover Mm hmm. 00:35:55.96 iandawsonmackay I went out for a night out a few weeks back. And when I realized like how much I tried to control the scenario by how very analytical the questions I write are, rather than just letting interviews flow, for example, I went out for a night out the other day and 00:36:09.17 Dr_ Robert Glover Yeah. 00:36:11.97 iandawsonmackay We were sending a bunch of us and they said, oh, why are you not going back? Or what about you going to? I think it was why am I not going? backpacking or something around the world with the money I'm going to get off in this payoff. And I said, oh no, I could never do that. I've got really bad social anxiety. And they said, what? I would never have said you've got social anxiety. You're on a podcast. You're up speaking to 30, 40, 80-odd students at a time. And I think you're talking at your arsh. You know, like making a joke of it. And these were friends I knew from work. And it was that moment of, 00:36:46.17 iandawsonmackay I think it really hit home, is it the Japanese saying? You have a face for your family and friends. You have a face for the public. And then you have a face for who you actually are, you know that but part of you that you never let out to people. 00:37:00.78 iandawsonmackay And I think that's when it really hit home of people see me completely different than I personally see myself. 00:37:07.16 Dr_ Robert Glover Mm hmm. 00:37:08.37 iandawsonmackay You know, i'm an I mean, I self-sabotage. I'm a perfectionist. I will struggle to speak out. And if I think I'm going wrong, I will take criticism like you brought a knife to end your deep down in the spine. 00:37:22.67 iandawsonmackay Are these the kind of behaviors that you see? The kind of. 00:37:25.84 Dr_ Robert Glover yeah sound normal Yeah, you You sound like all the guys out there that I work because you're like guys will say to me. 00:37:27.93 iandawsonmackay That. yes 00:37:33.32 Dr_ Robert Glover Robert you know oh if I could just be so confident like you are I could accomplish all the kinds of things you've accomplished and I go I'm actually not that confident of a guy and you go oh yeah but you know okay look I how many of the interviews I mean sometimes a couple weeks ago I did 11 interviews in a week I've been doing interviews for years right I've interviewed with some pretty big names Bill O'Reilly, Geraldo, 00:37:52.62 iandawsonmackay Mm hmm. 00:37:57.53 Dr_ Robert Glover um Dick Clark I mean I don't know if you know any of them but I've interviewed with big-name people you know for years so I've done it a lot I do Q and&A calls all the time I'm in my zone of of kind of safety and genius and expertise put me at a party where I don't know anybody And all of a sudden, I don't come across quite the same way. All right. So we all have these kind of vulnerabilities. We all have our insecurities. And of course, we're all doing our best to, you know, hide them from ourselves and hide them from people we know. I mean, we're all doing that. And that's the beauty that I love about, you know, so, you know, if if you came over here to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico on ah for a weekend workshop and you're in here with seven, eight other guys, 00:38:43.04 Dr_ Robert Glover everything you just shared about yourself Friday night, it's all just why'd we come here? What do we want want to get out of the workshop? What's going on in our life? Everything you just shared, you know, those few minutes right there, you know, everybody'd go, yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. Yeah, I do that. I can relate to that. And other guys would share stuff. You go, oh yeah, I get that. I relate to that. And that's such a gift to, you know, 00:39:05.69 Dr_ Robert Glover ah Lately I've been referring to it, it's the secret sauce. It's it's just that that magic ingredient that helps men blossom. 00:39:17.79 Dr_ Robert Glover level up to the best version of themselves. Start living that good life that used to be a fantasy. It's it's not near as complicated as we think. We think it comes from thousands of hours of reading self-help books or watching you know YouTube videos that tell you how to do this or do that. or do that mean how many How many videos do you need to watch to learn how to get strong pecs? Or you know how many videos do you need to watch to learn how to approach a woman? 00:39:42.61 Dr_ Robert Glover You know, I tell guys you probably have enough information to take bold action in your life right now. But gathering more information is a lot easier than taking bold action. So I'll get a little more information. 00:39:52.69 iandawsonmackay feels safer, doesn't it? 00:39:54.02 Dr_ Robert Glover Oh, feels all it is safer, right? 00:39:54.77 iandawsonmackay Well, it feels like you're doing something and doesn't I? 00:39:56.19 Dr_ Robert Glover Bold action is scary. It's risky. 00:40:01.10 Dr_ Robert Glover Yeah, it's an illusion of doing something, but but it's not. So when guys get together and open up and say, I'm scared, or, you know, I, you know, I'm social anxiety, or I spend too much time looking at porn, or, you know, my marriage just sucks. You know, when they get together, not in that complaining, I'm a victim, but just real, like this is where I hurt. This is where things aren't going well in my life. 00:40:28.13 Dr_ Robert Glover That is the secret sauce for men open up to other men. Be supported by men, be held by men, be encouraged by men, be held accountable by men. All of those things is what allows us to start leveling up and and changing the situations that we're in. Because the way I look at it, our ancestors Our male ancestors all spent the majority of their lifetime around men. Very little time around women. I know this this probably seems strange, but men spending significant amount of time with women, even a girlfriend or a wife, 00:41:10.47 Dr_ Robert Glover has not been the norm other than maybe for the last 60 years since World War II, really. Because in World War II, men went off to fight this this you know this great war, and somebody needed to build the bombs and the airplanes and and be the nurses and and make it. 00:41:18.73 iandawsonmackay No. 00:41:30.03 Dr_ Robert Glover basically keep the war machine running. That was women. they they they Most of the time, they'd been in the home, taking care of kids, the guys were out in the fields, were in the factories, doing what they did. 00:41:40.85 Dr_ Robert Glover Very little time spent, even with your your partner. Now all of a sudden, men and women were working together in the same workplace. War ends, men come back. Many of the women went back to being homemakers, but many stayed in the workplace. Feminism comes along. Now more women get degrees than men, and there's probably more women being successful in the workplace than men are. I'm not saying that either that's good, bad, right, or wrong, or we need to revert back to anything. 00:42:03.78 Dr_ Robert Glover All I'm saying is that throughout all of human history, except since about the last 60 years, men spent most their time with men. 00:42:14.90 Dr_ Robert Glover And that's where we learned how to work as a team is where we got, you know, through men kidding each other, teasing each other, busting each other's balls, you know, lifting each other up, pulling each other through, you know, cutting each other down. All those things that we men do with each other is to sharpen us and give us a band of brothers and help us live at our very best and do our very best job at things. Nowadays, we don't have that, right? Men hang out, I call it men hang out in the nursery. 00:42:43.92 Dr_ Robert Glover You know, we, a guy, you know, I don't even know if a guy even has to have a job anymore. You know, most men, you know, can kind of get by, you know, so they got their smartphone, they can look at porn. They don't have to talk to, you know, a woman. They don't have to be in a relationship. You know, they, they, they can watch, they can binge on Netflix. They, they can surf the internet for shit they don't need. Like I said, they can waste hours on Instagram and YouTube. 00:43:09.87 Dr_ Robert Glover and smoke a lot of dope, drink a lot, go do a lot of plant medicine, you whatever it is that they do to distract themselves from actually fucking getting out and getting out in the world and living up to their full potential, living with purpose, living with passion. I'm not being judgmental. I love men. I love working with men, but it is so easy now just to sit and let information get pushed at you you know on your phone. 00:43:34.99 Dr_ Robert Glover that why would you go do anything if it's easy I just get pushed you know look at all this great information getting pushed to me on YouTube look at all these hot women on Instagram look at all this great porn I can look at why why would we get out and do anything so I think we men need that vulnerability with other men for men to be able to say you know hey Robert hey Ian you're kind of wasting your life hey you you're you you know doom, doom, scrolling on Instagram. What's that getting you, you know, spending two or three hours hiding away, looking at porn. How's that working out so far? And, and, and it was love and, and support to actually level up because that's when we get happy, right? Those feelings states again, happy for men, we get happy. 00:44:25.07 Dr_ Robert Glover I believe when we have the depth of love and connection with other men, I don't think women tend to make us happy. I mean, I'm talking about the heterosexual men. We think the right woman is going to make us happy. But I often ask men, think about your past relationships with women. This is not a criticism of women, by the way. It's is a misperception we men have of women. I say, look at your past relationships. How many of them made you more happy than unhappy? 00:44:52.54 Dr_ Robert Glover And you know, if you go through every single relationship you've been in, at some point, they must have made you more unhappy than happy because you're not in them anymore, right? 00:44:59.10 iandawsonmackay Oh, yeah. 00:45:01.38 Dr_ Robert Glover If they were making you more happy than happy, you'd probably still be in them and so would the woman, right? Now this is true whether whether you're gay or straight, but we have this expectation that women are gonna make us happy, but they don't. 00:45:13.61 Dr_ Robert Glover They really don't. I've been married three times. I've been a marriage therapist for 40 years. that's ah That's a false impression we put on women that they're gonna make us feel loved and whole and complete. I get those feelings from men. 00:45:24.88 Dr_ Robert Glover When I'm with men, that's where I feel loved and held and whole and complete. Because my guy friends don't don't love me one minute and then think I'm a jerk the next minute. Call me an asshole the next minute or withdraw from me or withhold their affection. Women do that to me, men don't. So when we get this connection with men, really open up and trust men. Find safe men we can be with. That's the secret sauce for and for most things, we just got to get out of our comfort zone. 00:45:52.97 Dr_ Robert Glover All right, I tell men, take your social media apps off your phone. Every man I tell that to, fact the younger he is, I say, take social media apps off your phone. Leave them on your desktop. You know, if you want to look at them, look at them on your desktop, look at them on Firefox browser so they're not tracking you, you know, get them off your phone. And guys go like. 00:46:12.31 Dr_ Robert Glover What would I do if I couldn't you know scroll Instagram? I couldn't watch the YouTube videos. I couldn't swipe right for all those hotties on Tinder. What would I do if I couldn't look at the news? I couldn't read the sports. What would I do? I'm um like that. I don't have social media on my phone. But yeah, I got i got the sports site. So I can look at my favorite ball team. and yeah I'll look at the news. And it's just a distraction. okay So what can we do? 00:46:38.23 Dr_ Robert Glover to to get out there, get connected with men, get vulnerable with men, get supported by men, get held accountable by men, and actually start living our best life, living up to our full potential. And um and so that's to me the secret sauce. we need We need men in our life to go do that. 00:46:55.49 iandawsonmackay Because I think there was a study, I'm trying to remember who did it, but it was something like 72% of the people who responded had said they barely had any male friends or had a best friend. 00:47:07.97 iandawsonmackay They had no real connections outside of their wife, their kids, their job or whatever it was. 00:47:13.78 Dr_ Robert Glover yeah 00:47:13.84 iandawsonmackay And I thought that was terrifying. And then I realized that I've just come 41 back in November and suddenly I'm looking out, barely knowing anybody. I could probably count five people at work that I get on OK with. All the other people are married, kids settled down. And suddenly you think, life's passed me by. This is the end of the world. What am I going to do? You know and you feel that tightening of the chest. you You think like, oh, what's the point? And I can see why you men men tend to think about suicide more, because we haven't got that safe place to not even to vent to be open. 00:47:52.39 iandawsonmackay how And the book you mentioned about how the importance of male friendships, the groups, et cetera, how do we find these safe people? you know People like you can't be open. 00:48:03.94 iandawsonmackay And how do we get over that initial, oh my fucking God, I can't say that. I've got i've done this really bad thing in my past. i you know If I said I hit my wife, or um I did this, or I did whatever but it was, 00:48:10.82 Dr_ Robert Glover yeah 00:48:17.38 iandawsonmackay How do we get over that initial, even if it's good, that I'm terrified of my job? 00:48:23.81 Dr_ Robert Glover Even bragging about ourself, right? Yeah. 00:48:26.02 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 00:48:26.21 Dr_ Robert Glover Hey, I got the promotion or hey, you know, I, I, you know, I lost that weight. I've been trying. Yeah. We've been hesitate to do that. Right. So this is a good question. I'm i'm glad you asked cause this is, this is kind of really what I'm all about is helping men find community, being community with men. 00:48:42.39 Dr_ Robert Glover Cause I believe in, I did the majority of my quote, nice guy recovery work early on in men's groups. Right. And whether it's 12 step group, whether it was ah just a men's therapy support group. 00:48:53.89 Dr_ Robert Glover um i just yeah know The studies you mentioned, there's probably multitudes of studies out there talking about how lonely and isolated men are. It does lead to deteriorating health. It does lead to shorter lifespan. It does lead to suicide. these addiction It It it you know leads to all kinds of problems. 00:49:15.11 Dr_ Robert Glover and um I was just reading last night an article in the Seattle newspaper online that was on my phone reading news um about a runner's club up in Seattle that meets every Sunday And it's a runner's club for black men. 00:49:32.89 Dr_ Robert Glover And as this is black men get together and it said, it's not just about running. It's about their overall health and wellness. And like, that you know, some of these black men were saying that, um, Oh, you know, a black man running through some neighborhoods can get you shot. 00:49:46.50 Dr_ Robert Glover You know, I go, that's it. 00:49:47.23 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 00:49:48.06 Dr_ Robert Glover That's it. That's a shame. And, you know, but that's not my life experience. But I thought, you know, That that would make a man, you know closed down right and they said they get together and run as a group You know, I think there's like 400 of them in this runners club and I don't know if there's all 400 of money given Sunday running through a park for a mile loop and it said that you know, they talk about their their their Life their work their relationships their struggles. They've camaraderie with people who understand I thought I want to go join that runners group and I go well They're not gonna let me in cuz I'm a white dude 00:50:20.43 Dr_ Robert Glover but because i don't have their same shared experience of the world but i thought but i want that right i want that doesn't matter if it's a black runners club there's somebody turned me on to a group ah in the uk a year or so ago um um i'm i'm gonna get the name wrong but something like andy's club and it was you know 00:50:40.83 iandawsonmackay That's so what I was going to mention. There's one called, I think it's Shed Club as well, where retirees get together and they build stuff and they do, they fix a lawnmower and they all sit and chat about their problems. 00:50:52.56 Dr_ Robert Glover Yeah, how cool. 00:50:52.60 iandawsonmackay But because they're fixing a problem, they're not focused on what will they think, what will they do? They just talk and be themselves. And I think, yeah, I think it's Andy's groups, the other one. 00:51:01.09 Dr_ Robert Glover Yeah, and that, that, the, the, the Andes, some, it, they, they meet like every Monday throughout the UK and small groups all over, all over the UK. Um, and I think, you know, they'll have a beer or just talk, but it was started when a guy named Andy committed suicide. 00:51:18.07 Dr_ Robert Glover and it was started by his mother and his best friend who said if he'd had someone to talk about It probably wouldn't have committed suicide and when I saw this model that they're using the guys that lead them They go get a little bit of training from them and you know, it's free You just drop in and you know get this connection with guys So I'm just such a big advocate and a big fan of any way that men can find groups with other supportive men and again be real be vulnerable talk about what's real and all things is one guy and 00:51:49.38 Dr_ Robert Glover you know If I'm in a workshop and one guy says, I spend way too much time looking at porn. Now all of a sudden, four or five other guys, me too, me too. They might not have ever said that if that one person had. Now they can open up. They feel safe. I'm not going to get, you know, people aren't going to look at me like I'm bad or pervert. So I'm a believer in this. So like seven years ago, 00:52:13.02 Dr_ Robert Glover I just married my wife. we're coming We'll come up on our eighth anniversary this November. um She's Mexican. I'm living in Mexico. um I'm learning Spanish, because she doesn't speak English. And so I'm living in a foreign country, foreign culture, working at home. Most of any everything I do here is in my home, in my house. I didn't have a lot of guy friends here when I was single, living in a different part of town. I had more men that I knew. Most of them were gay, because it was a very gay part of town. 00:52:42.79 Dr_ Robert Glover um But I had guy friends there that, you know, I connect with. And I was thinking, yeah I have maybe one and a half good guy friends in my life. i'm I'm kind of struggling in my new marriage. I feel lonely. I feel isolated. And so I was leading a workshop. I think I was up in Seattle, actually leading a workshop. 00:53:00.08 Dr_ Robert Glover And one of the guys in the workshop, I shared, I need a men's program. He said, I just joined this men's program with this guy who studied with David data for 12 years. And we have these retreats and I go sign me up. I'm in. And I started working with that coach. I joined his program a few months later and and and did it for five years. And now I went from having maybe one and a half good guy friends in my life. I got 25 to 50 men. I could call up and in a heartbeat. 00:53:28.06 Dr_ Robert Glover They'd go on an airplane, fly down here and be here for me. I didn't have that six years ago. And I tell you what, it's transformed my life. My life has changed. I'm i'm in the best health of my life. i'm um I'm now as lean and fit as I've been in 25 years. I've launched a new company in the last year. My marriage has improved dramatically. I travel, my businesses are well, financially I'm doing well. Everything in my life has just multiplied since I joined a men's program six plus years ago. aye So I'm a believer of it. and that's why That's why I launch men's programs. I'm trying my best. That's why I launched Integration Nation. um It's this my men's program international where men from around the world can get on a program like today. 00:54:17.61 Dr_ Robert Glover Every Thursday, we've got a call. I did it earlier today, my time. Every every other Thursday, it rotates time. So like today would have been a call people in Europe could have attended, would have been or early evening your time. 00:54:27.07 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 00:54:28.85 Dr_ Robert Glover And today I got to do an interview with a guy named Dr. Orion Taraban. Who's got an interview called psychax that i've been on and he's very popular just wrote a book called the value of others talking about the sexual marketplace And it was so much fun having him on that call and talking to him and having all these men on there and asking him questions and you know, I just love building community for men because When I started my own journey, you know went back when my ex-wife said to me, you're not such a nice guy, you need help, there wasn't much out there. There was like the the Robert Bly, Iron John, Mytho Poetic, go out in the woods, beat a drum, have a talking stick, and say, oh, you know that that's about all there was. Maybe there were a few more things. That was fairly pre-internet. 00:55:14.56 Dr_ Robert Glover um It just didn't exist. Now there's so many good books that have been written for men. Now there's so many men's coaches, so many, you know, I get invited to a lot of interviews and usually I ask the interviewer, who's our audience? And they go, oh, it's men 25 to 45 interested in health, personal development, you know, entrepreneurship. but You know, it's kind of like the same gig. That shit didn't exist, you know, even 15 years ago. And so now I'm so grateful that if a guy wants a connection, whether it's in that Andy's Club, whether it's in a Black Runner's Club, whether it's an integration nation, whether it's a local man men's coach leading a weekly group, a meetup, there is so much out there. And you know some of it's better than others. 00:56:04.41 Dr_ Robert Glover But I tell guys, if you go to one thing and it just doesn't click, doesn't fit, don't just say, I tried that, I'm not gonna ever you know reach out and connect with men. There's so many different programs, so many different people, so many different skill sets, so many different layers of of you know ability. Keep looking, keep looking, because I promise you, I'm i'm the happiest. 00:56:28.02 Dr_ Robert Glover when I've got good men in my life. I'm the most productive when I have good men in my life. My marriage is its best when I have good men in my life. I used to tell couples that when they'd walk in my office for marriage therapy. I'd say the best gift you guys can give your marriage is have good same-sex friends. You need friends outside of your partner. And I tell men, 00:56:49.30 Dr_ Robert Glover that a good relationship with a woman with a partner is built on good relationships with other men. That's the foundation of a good relationship. So yeah, I'm preaching, but I'm just such a big believer in men having safe spaces with other conscious, growing, powerful, loving men. It's so transformative. 00:57:10.69 iandawsonmackay Because that's a big thing about that in your book. It really hits home the importance of connection with other men. Because when I actually looked at my life, like because your book was just page after page, just was prompt that made me think, whoa. you know Every time I did one of your challenges, I thought, oh, fuck. That had waves of kind of resistance fighting, the kind of the sole opening part of it. you know they've just got And I realized I'm at the bottom level of reading your book, whereas I need to go through a couple of journeys and just keep rereading the book to level up my understanding of it as much. how How do we use that book to, because there's so much in it and there's so many amazing prompts and there's so much amazing understanding, but how do we use the book 00:58:05.71 iandawsonmackay going forward as a kind of a starting tool. Because we can join the club, we can speak to our partners. 00:58:10.62 Dr_ Robert Glover yeah 00:58:12.95 iandawsonmackay But how do we start taking our power back? How do we take away the blocks, the covert contracts? the the you know How do we stop in a soft mail? I think you referred to this generation of males being led by nice guy fathers. How do we make sure that what we're doing is passing on for the next generation To make a better version 00:58:34.93 Dr_ Robert Glover Yeah. 00:58:37.36 Dr_ Robert Glover Like I said, and and and I say this in No More Mr. Nice Guy, so I've been preaching this for 30 years. Go find safe people. Go find a coach. Go find a therapist. Go find a men's group. I'm i'm such a fan of any kind of group. So yeah, i'm I'm being a broken record. In terms of the book, 00:58:53.55 Dr_ Robert Glover In terms of just reading it, it's not a difficult read. It's not a hard read. Any number of people said, yeah, I i read it in a day. I read it in two days. you know and Now, other people say it took me three years to read it because I'd read about six pages and put it down. It couldn't come back to it for six more months. It is a challenging read in that if it hits home, 00:59:17.04 Dr_ Robert Glover It can be a you know pretty big baseball bat, a pretty big stick, you know, upside your head or, you know, you know pretty big saber right through your heart. So even though it's it's easy enough to just pick it up and read it in, you know, day and a half, whatever, depending on your reading skills or listen to it. 00:59:36.87 Dr_ Robert Glover I'd suggest reading it once just to get the whole feel for it or listen to it once. I get a lot more men listen nowadays than read. That's okay. So listen to it once. And by the way, for those of you that listen to it on an audio book, they can email me at robert at drglover dot.com and I'll send you a PDF of the breaking free exercises activities that are in there. There's, I don't remember, 56, I think, breaking free activities. So read through it all. 01:00:05.40 Dr_ Robert Glover and then just kind of get the feel. Then maybe start reading it a second time and really yeah a lot more stuff will jump out at you that didn't jump out the first time because there was so much of it. I've had so many books like that. I remember listening to The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Every time I listen to that on a road trip I go, 01:00:25.99 Dr_ Robert Glover Did I even listen to this before? It's like everything in this book is new. Like, like I gotta remember any of this. 01:00:29.78 iandawsonmackay Oh, yeah. 01:00:31.51 Dr_ Robert Glover Or David Date is way of the superior man. Every time I read it, you know, I go, was that in there the last time I read it? I don't even remember that. So it can be you know good to to to reread it, just let other stuff sink in. And then start working the breaking free activities. And they're all the way from just things you can do to observe yourself. Something you can do in a few minutes. Something that might take more time and energy. Like one of them is go take a trip to a foreign country by yourself where you've never been and maybe don't know the language. 01:01:02.17 Dr_ Robert Glover That's such a powerful way to get out of your comfort zone and and go practice being you because nobody knows you you can be anybody just go be you you know this foreign country get out of that comfort zone and your your your anxiety management strategies that you're used to using and and so there's all kinds of different activities and and my suggestion is is get a partner, get a buddy, get in a group, get somebody and work the exercises together and talk with each other about what you're experiencing. Because a lot of, I say to nice guys all the time, you did not become a nice guy in social isolation. You're not going to break free from nice guy syndrome in social isolation. 01:01:45.71 Dr_ Robert Glover We guys, we really do. We want to just read the book, watch the video, listen to the audio book and go, okay, I got it. I can change all this. Again, it goes back to we don't want to be vulnerable. We really don't want to be seen. But I really do think, again, that's a secret sauce and it is the thing that will most challenge us. So don't just read this book by yourself and think you can break free from the nice guy syndrome. I wrote the book. 01:02:09.88 Dr_ Robert Glover I've been working on me for 30 years. I've been working with thousands of nice guys. I've been in my own men's programs. I still need support of other men. I've got a men's group that I've been in. I started it seven years ago with seven guys. We had a call yesterday. We talked every other week. We've been doing so for seven years. We're committed to being in this for life. When we started it, we said, let's do it for life. And so I i still need these support systems because this stuff just keeps coming up in different layers and different ways and different manifestations. And so I need my brothers, I need my bros to help me do this. So I'd say do the breaking free exercises, but have at least one person that that you're sharing it with and you'd be surprised. I've had so many men tell me, 01:02:56.41 Dr_ Robert Glover You know, they go, I've got a friend or two that I know are nice guys. and And they'll say either, should I give them the book? Or they'll say, I gave them the book and they read it and they go, thank you, man. This saved my life. So oftentimes I've found guys start in a sense, their own kind of little men's group. 01:03:13.37 Dr_ Robert Glover By just giving the book to one, two, or three of their buddies that they think would benefit. And the buddies are now going, yeah, let's talk about this. This is good stuff. And there's just this natural thing that men do want to talk about this once they get, uh, come once our eyes are opened. 01:03:31.32 Dr_ Robert Glover to how their nice guy patterns have been existed and where they came from and how they're getting in the way. And they see there's a different way to do this stuff. hey They do want to talk to other men about it. So yeah that's even just a great start right there. If you share the book with a friend or two, I have a guy say, you know, like last workshop I led down here, one guy who had already been here before came back again with his brother and best friend. You know, he brought them down here to come to the workshop. So and you can start your own your own little group, which is people you already know. 01:04:00.48 iandawsonmackay I love that idea. I'm definitely going to do that because there were so many times I would have this little prompt or this kind of understanding. And then as I listened to the ones about relationships with partners or other men, I would start seeing, oh, wait a minute here. That person's behavior is that. Or I can understand now where they came from when they did x, y, or z. 01:04:24.59 iandawsonmackay How then do we, as we start making the changes, if we do fuck up and we make the slip or if we do, you know, m yeah i how do we establish boundaries? How do we take the partner off the pedestal? Because you talk a lot in the book about if it's male or female partners, it doesn't matter. 01:04:45.05 iandawsonmackay You know, you have the guy that stayed with another guy because he tried to fix his alcoholism, but he knew that he couldn't. A female that she just treated him like vermin until he stood up for himself. And it was actually that that he thought would scare her away. It was actually the thing that made her more attracted to him. 01:05:04.75 iandawsonmackay how How do we start creating this? Because there seems to be a balance between dealing with a toxic shame and creating, you know, like going out and creating a new life for yourself. And a lot of guys will do all that, you know, join the group in that. But how do we actually tackle that toxic shame and create these new setups to stop us falling and what happens if we do fall? 01:05:29.92 Dr_ Robert Glover Yeah, there's three or four or five questions in that question. 01:05:33.59 iandawsonmackay 28. 01:05:34.59 Dr_ Robert Glover The toxic shame. Yeah, toxic shame. I don't know of any other way to release toxic shame other than finding safe people. Could be a coach, could be a therapist, could be your minister, like I said, could be a men's group. 01:05:47.18 Dr_ Robert Glover 12-step group, but find safe people and take a risk. Share something about you you're uncomfortable sharing. And that's how I started out. And then when I realized that people in those safe groups handled it well, they didn't judge for me, they didn't shame me, and then they shared, reciprocally, their own shame. That's very powerful when somebody else shares their shame as well. And you go, okay, well, we may not all have the same story. We may not all have the same shame, but we all have shame. 01:06:16.46 Dr_ Robert Glover and I don't judge them and they don't seem to judge me. So it's a great way to start releasing that. So again, we do need the safe people to do it. Now, in terms of the slips, the falling back, expect that's going to happen. Kind of part of our our masculine perfectionism is, all right, I better get it right. I better get it right the first time and I better than ah better not make that mistake again. i better But you know what? 01:06:44.75 Dr_ Robert Glover ay I tell people, this is as an example, I got a PhD in marriage and family therapy at 29 years old. I was already in my first marriage at that time. I've been married three times. 01:06:57.73 Dr_ Robert Glover I've had a number of other relationships that didn't end in marriage. And even with a PhD in marriage and family therapy, I've bumbled my way through every relationship I've had. I mean, nobody's born being an expert on relationships. Some people get to view healthier relationships in childhood. And so they kind of sets them up to have healthier relationships. Most of us don't get to view a healthy relationship. And in some ways, especially early in life, if we get into relationships, 01:07:28.22 Dr_ Robert Glover Getting into a good relationship is almost more luck than anything else. 01:07:32.77 iandawsonmackay Hmm. 01:07:32.97 Dr_ Robert Glover yeah You just lucked into a person that you got along well with and you communicated with and you liked each other. That's that's a lot of luck. Now, I think there are ways to actually work at this and getting more conscious, but I found that most people don't get around to creating conscious relationships until they're maybe in their late 30s or 40s. It kind of takes a while to learn what you want and learn what you don't want. I've often said every new relationship I've ever gotten into showed me something new that I didn't know I didn't want in a relationship. 01:08:03.69 Dr_ Robert Glover and Think about that one for a minute. 01:08:07.26 Dr_ Robert Glover Think about your past relationships. You get into one relationship, and it kind of unfolds, and there's good things about it, or you wouldn't have been there. But there was probably at least one thing that just was a killer. 01:08:18.72 Dr_ Robert Glover yeah it just It made it impossible to live with that be with that person. 01:08:22.93 iandawsonmackay yeah 01:08:23.03 Dr_ Robert Glover Well, you probably didn't see that coming. If you saw that thing coming, you would have said, no, there's that thing. I already know I can't deal with that. 01:08:27.79 iandawsonmackay I think it's when you said machine dogs feeding on the scraps of love I was kind of like holy hell that that may be just thinking about three relationships I was like fuck 01:08:29.06 Dr_ Robert Glover okay so you get 01:08:35.98 Dr_ Robert Glover ah well yeah yeah you Your table table dog, yeah, I know. Okay, so let's say, think of your listeners, think of three relationships. Probably, you you you know, you get into one relationship and as you get to know the person, you find out, oh, they clam up and don't talk to me when they're upset at me and have a problem. Well, I didn't see that coming and now that I'm out of that relationship, I'll never settle for that one again. Well, you get into another relationship and this person, maybe they don't clam up, but over time you find that they don't pay their bills or manage their money and they hide that from you. 01:09:09.58 Dr_ Robert Glover You go, okay, I'm never gonna do that one again. Then you find out you get in the next one and this person you know is critical and demeaning of you and you know you don't see that coming. 01:09:17.73 iandawsonmackay Thank you. 01:09:19.44 Dr_ Robert Glover And then you get into the next one and this person, after you know you've been having sex for a while, it totally dries up and it goes away. None of these things you didn't know in advance, you didn't want them in relationship. 01:09:31.12 Dr_ Robert Glover So almost every new relationship teaches you something new. 01:09:31.27 iandawsonmackay Hmm. 01:09:34.97 Dr_ Robert Glover that you didn't know that you didn't want but because you didn't already know you didn't want it you didn't see it coming and and you you kind of you know go down that pathway you know into that relationship until you figure out that doesn't work okay so the point I was making I've bumbled my way through every relationship. i we're not We're not built for for you know intimate, parabonded, lifelong sexual relationships with the opposite sex. It's not in our human DNA, but we think we should be, so we keep trying to do it. 01:10:05.73 Dr_ Robert Glover so Most of the things in life were not actually built to do. We have to be trained or taught how to do them well. And even after we've been trained or taught to do well, we can emotionally sabotage ourselves. We can get distracted. we can you know Our attention goes somewhere else. We slip and fall and go, how'd I get here again? I've done that. And that's where you need a support system. I had an event in my life about 10 years ago. 01:10:34.38 Dr_ Robert Glover that where I slipped and fell. I engaged in a a ah typical an old typical behavior for me that I thought I'd overcome. I thought I'd gotten over. I had a relapse. And um and not only did I have a relapse, but I indulged it for a while, a few months. And then you know finally when I kind of woke up, 01:10:56.51 Dr_ Robert Glover and um start dealing with it. I thought, how did I get there? you know I thought I'd worked on that. I thought I'd resolved that. you know I hurt myself. I hurt other people. And I was talking with a buddy. And this good friend of mine, this is what guy this what friends are good for. And he's he's a psychologist as well. He said, Robert, you can be a dick. 01:11:15.21 Dr_ Robert Glover But you're not a dick. And he said, once you integrate those two things together, you'll have this figured out. And I go, oh, yeah, I can be a dick. But I'm not a dick. um I'm not a bad person. I'm a good person. And I can do some hurtful things. I can do some unconscious things. I can accept both of those things about myself. 01:11:35.72 Dr_ Robert Glover So learning to accept all parts of ourselves is integration. And that's what I'm all about, it teaching men to be integrated men. Not hiding this stuff about ourselves, not trying to become this over here, but just taking everything about who we are, our light, our dark, our good, our bad, our spiritual, our material, our happy, our sad, bringing them all and integrating them together, saying, this is me, this is me. And showing that to the world and saying, here I am, this is me. 01:12:05.42 Dr_ Robert Glover And you know what? That makes us really interesting people, as opposed to the Teflon men I talk about in No More Mr. Nice Guy. They go, I do everything right. I don't do anything wrong. I don't fuck up. Look at me. You know, tell me how good I am. That's not at all interesting. It's not interesting to other men, and it surely isn't interesting to women. 01:12:24.85 Dr_ Robert Glover we We men think, oh, I have to be perfect for a woman to like me and want to be with me. Now, women get with imperfect men all the time, and it's our it's those imperfect rough edges that give people something to connect with. If you're smooth and Teflon, what's there to connect with there? 01:12:42.28 Dr_ Robert Glover so Love and embrace your fuck-ups. I tell guys, no more Mr. Nice Guy is not a chronicle of my successes. It's a record of my fuck-ups. It's all the things I did that didn't work. And you know and that's okay. I used to joke a few years ago when I was single. I got good at good enough at dating that my client said, teach us what you're doing. i i'm I'm not a dating coach, but I was having success, so I kind of figured out what I was doing, taught a course ah taught courses on it, and I've written two books on dating. But I joked, this was about 15 years ago, when I was single and going through a period with no girlfriend in my life, I'd say, I'm a marriage therapist that's been divorced twice, and a dating coach that doesn't have a girlfriend, and men are still lining up to pay me money. 01:13:32.98 Dr_ Robert Glover So apparently we don't have to get it all right or be perfect all the time because i think I think men, maybe especially, are more trusting of the teacher that's fallen down and gotten back up again, who's made the mistakes and learned something of value from them. 01:13:36.47 iandawsonmackay Can you? 01:13:49.37 Dr_ Robert Glover Rather than the guy that just read it in a book or went to school or saw it in a YouTube video And now he's out there teaching it like he's an expert Yeah, it's a sideline. I People send me stuff all the time and go this person's ripping off your stuff Somebody just sent me a thing but off X yesterday of somebody talking about sexual emotional tension Enlisting a bunch of stuff. I go they're ripping you off and I go OK, you know, I guess that just says the status that I've risen to. 01:14:19.83 Dr_ Robert Glover But yeah, there's a lot of people out there that just go watch other YouTube videos and now they're coaches. 01:14:23.86 iandawsonmackay Hmm. 01:14:25.77 Dr_ Robert Glover Now they're going to, you know, they got their click funnel. They're going to sell you a product. I think those those people we quickly see through them. But the person who's been at it, who's stumbled and fallen and gotten back up again and learned from it, I trust that person. They got something to teach me. So kind of going back to your question, I think we have to we have we have to work at not being judgmental of but of ourselves for not being perfect. Let's embrace our fall. There's no mistakes, only learning experiences. And I think if we live that way, 01:14:58.84 Dr_ Robert Glover We're going to learn a lot. we're We're going to get our advanced degree in the school of life. But it comes from making the mistakes more often than it comes from getting things right. 01:15:08.10 iandawsonmackay I love that. It's partly why I made the podcast. I was so fed up of hearing all these gurus talk about the airy-fairy fixes and magical things that they had never actually done themselves. And I just wanted a podcast for somebody and came along and said, I'm an average guy, try and get better relationships, try and get better X, Y, whatever it was. 01:15:27.30 iandawsonmackay And I don't know how to do it. I'm going to ask some people. And that I thought, there isn't a podcast. I'll create one. And too many times I'll listen to these videos and I go, they've never had a mental health problem. They've never had anxiety. 01:15:38.65 iandawsonmackay They've never, because it's just the same advice, but with just a different name at the top. Like how many interviews have you done for the book where you could literally change the name at the top of the podcast and they ask you the same questions over and over again. 01:15:45.41 Dr_ Robert Glover Yeah. 01:15:53.56 iandawsonmackay They don't ask you about you. 01:15:54.00 Dr_ Robert Glover Oh, I never get asked the same questions. you know I actually don't watch a lot of interviews or podcasts. 01:15:56.78 iandawsonmackay Yes. 01:16:02.69 Dr_ Robert Glover you know ah Up until maybe six or eight months ago, I probably didn't watch any. Just because, I don't know, I'm ah busy. yeah I'm doing stuff. But you know guys would say, have you ever watched this podcast? 01:16:12.98 Dr_ Robert Glover Have you ever seen this one? ever you know It's kind of funny because you know you mentioned seeing me on Chris Williamson. you know About six months ago, about three different people said, Robert, you should get on the Chris Williamson Modern Wisdom you know Podcast. I go, who's that? Because I didn't know. And then I go, that name sounds familiar. And I got to looking at my email and my calendar. Oh, I'm doing an interview with him this Friday. That was about six months ago, right? And ah then I've done a second one with him in person where I was in Austin and about three months ago. 01:16:40.80 Dr_ Robert Glover But you know what, I i think, and so now i watch I watch more podcast stuff. I'll watch like Peter Atiek. I like kind of his his male health-related stuff. I'll watch Steven Bartlett's Diary of a CEO, um Chris Williamson's podcast. I mean, there's a lot there's a lot of good ones out there. 01:16:57.91 Dr_ Robert Glover And um I think one of the most just engaging interviews I've seen in a long time was Chris Williamson and Tim Ferriss just basically having a conversation. 01:17:09.94 Dr_ Robert Glover Now here's two men that, you know, have risen to a pretty pretty decent stature, you know, with Tim Ferriss probably being, you know, more of a household name than even Chris Williamson. 01:17:10.96 iandawsonmackay Yep. 01:17:20.01 Dr_ Robert Glover But Chris Williamson's blown up in the last few years. And here was two guys talking about their fears, their insecurities, their relationship struggles, therapy, good books. And they were talking fiction books. I'm going, yay, fiction. Men don't read fiction anymore. Men just read coaching books, 10x books, 10x your life, 10x your business. We're all about self-improvement. And they're talking fiction books. And I'm going, oh, man, I could just sit and listen to two men 01:17:55.07 Dr_ Robert Glover being real sharing their struggles and these are people that you know most people would go i'd love to have their lives i'd love to have their success and they're just talking about their struggles and the therapy they've been to and what they're looking for in relationship and what happened you know went wrong in their last relationship and and and that's just that's just real shit as people being real and i can see why they both have had the success that they have you because they're willing to get out there and struggle with their own shit and be real about it and talk about it and talk with other people in real ways. And yeah, I can watch that. I can listen to that. For me, that's that's engaging and entertaining. I felt felt like I knew them, like they were my buddies watching this. 01:18:37.84 iandawsonmackay I mean, that's the kind of thing I want. I want ah this podcast, the kind of guys to go and listen to his podcast because I want to be that kind of podcast that people kind of come and listen to and go, that really helped me. you know I don't want to and don't really mind the money, the fame, whatever. I'd rather be that person than to actually give back because I wasn't always a nice person. I was a bit of a dick in times and I've done bad things. I've hurt probably people and stuff. and And I could give back now. And that's a toxic shame I'm probably dealing with. And you know that's why I like the book, because it really opened me up into thinking, et cetera. I like how you even go in about self-care in the book. you know You talk about doing something for yourself, take something off this list, and go and do at least once a day. Do you find that's the biggest struggle a lot of men have? They kind of burn themselves out by opening themselves up, but don't know how to deal with 01:19:31.89 iandawsonmackay the feelings and the challenges and the stresses and all that that it brings and not look after themselves. 01:19:37.68 Dr_ Robert Glover Yeah, yeah yeah let's let's talk about self care and then as my own personal self care, we'll maybe wrap up with that because I have to take care of myself before the next interview I do in a few minutes. 01:19:47.16 iandawsonmackay I was going to say we've got about 10 minutes. 01:19:48.98 Dr_ Robert Glover so I'll take good care of myself. um I think it's huge. I think it's absolutely huge, this whole self-care issue. i i When I do my workshops, I teach a lot about what I call cooperative reciprocal relationships, of how we consciously surround ourselves with resources to help fill our bucket, to help get our needs met. and Those resources can be people, just friends, acquaintances, they can be professionals, they might be your accountant, your attorney, 01:20:18.22 Dr_ Robert Glover your therapist, your coach, your personal trainer, your your chiropractor. um It can be practices you do every day, your meditation, your your your morning pages, your trip to the gym, your walk in nature, and they can be packs. They can be groups of people you have in your life. And so I walk guys through a three-step process of both looking at what resources they have in their life to fill their bucket, 01:20:44.01 Dr_ Robert Glover Second part is what resources could they use? Do they need? Kind of like, you know, when I said I need a men's program, it was in the process of teaching that unit and workshop that all of a sudden a men's program showed up. Just back in April, the workshop I was leading here, I said, you know, I was doing that same practice. Page two, I need a nutrition coach. Two guys in the workshop said, I know a nutrition coach. One was a personal trainer, the new one. and Another was a guy that was working with a nutrition coach. 01:21:13.19 Dr_ Robert Glover I hired that person's coach, um former professional competitive swimsuit competitor, um and a master's degree in gerontology. So she works with old guys like me. And I've been working with her for three months, and like I said, I'm as lean and as strong and as healthy as I've been In 25 years, 25 years ago, I did a 90 day body for life competition, 9% body fat, you know, I but i was 25 years younger than two. And so I added a nutrition coach to, you know, my resources in my life. Page three of this practice is what 01:21:51.99 Dr_ Robert Glover What do you have in your life that is no longer either cooperative or reciprocal? What do you need to either have a conversation about, cut out, just move it out of your life because it doesn't serve you. This is an ongoing process. I tell guys, do this every six months as old practice. And because we spend so much of our time giving to other people, might be giving to our boss at work, it might be giving to friends, it might be giving to a partner, giving to our children. 01:22:17.46 Dr_ Robert Glover just just giving and we get we're giving from an empty bucket because our bucket needs filled daily. I get up and I start my day. before anybody else in my house is up. I go sit, yeah here I can sit outside year round. So I sit at a table that's kind of under a little roof right next to my swimming pool. but On a good day, my dog's down there with me. She's gotten kind of lazy, so she likes to stay up in the bed near near where my wife is. I do my meditation. I do my morning pages. I write three pages. I read some good good reading material. Then by then, my wife and the dog have gotten up. We take the dog for a walk in the park. 01:22:56.24 Dr_ Robert Glover And then by 9, 9 30, I'm ready to either dive into some work or maybe hit the gym. You know, so the gym will either come earlier, go later, depending on my schedule. And then I'm ready to work for the next 6, 7, 9, 12 hours, whatever the day may look like. 01:23:12.68 Dr_ Robert Glover But in there, sometimes, you know, like before I got on this call with you, I went upstairs and put a little hot pad over my eyes and just laid on my bed for 10 minutes. I'll do that. I'll take these little breaks where I just go take good care of me. So the more we're conscious of filling our own bucket, taking good care of ourselves, making our needs a priority, 01:23:32.96 Dr_ Robert Glover The more generous actually we can give to other people, the more we give from the overflow, from the bounty that we have. But giving from an empty bucket will just wear us out, make us resentful, probably lead to addictions, which are just pseudo, they're junk food. 01:23:50.26 Dr_ Robert Glover whether it's watching too much TV, surfing too much internet, looking at too much porn, eating too much junk food, playing too many video games. That's junk food nurturing. Now, video games can be fun. 01:24:01.93 Dr_ Robert Glover Watching TV can be fun. Looking at porn can be fun. But maybe doing it in a conscious way where, you you know, you go do it for a little bit and then you're done rather than this is unconscious because our bucket's empty because we're dry. 01:24:13.59 iandawsonmackay no 01:24:14.85 Dr_ Robert Glover So, fill the bucket up with healthy resources, the meditation, talking to a good friend, going for a walk, playing with your dog, talking to your partner, ah reading, taking a nap. 01:24:27.10 Dr_ Robert Glover you know just eating healthy, getting into the gym, things that fill your bucket up, then you got a lot more to give to other people. And and you can do it for a lot longer. Like I said, I'm 68 and um I still have plenty of energy and plenty of drive. and My dad retired at 55. He had a blue collar job. It was a more of a physical, tiring job. but But I don't. I i can do this for it for a lot longer. But I know I got to take good care of myself. Because I do take care of a lot of people. you know i've I've got a home. I've got a wife. I've got two step kids. I've got a son. I've got a granddaughter. I have a dog. I have you know hundreds of men that i that I work with. I've got my coaches that work with. I've got a lot of people that I give to. So I've got to give to me. 01:25:16.05 Dr_ Robert Glover And so that's a high priority. So yeah, I think men, because that can make us really uncomfortable because we think that makes us selfish. It makes us bad. No, it, it, it makes us mature and loving and, and gives us something that again, we can give from the overflow. 01:25:33.34 iandawsonmackay a good answer sir because I cannot thank you enough for this book because it started me in a journey where I felt completely lost to now actually thinking I understand where I'm coming from. So I'd like to do a second one later on where I'm maybe along the journey a bit more and i I've kind of understood more of the prompts and the challenges and the And it'd be interesting to see because I can feel a bit of resistance in myself sometimes going, oh, I don't know about that. 01:26:00.07 Dr_ Robert Glover Yeah. 01:26:00.41 iandawsonmackay word And it'd be good to see how it shapes as I start going to and along my own journey and find my own safe people, et cetera. But what do you want people to take from this? you know m It's a sort of way of summarizing this because I could tell them to get the book. 01:26:15.19 iandawsonmackay It's life changing. It's one of the best books I've listened to and read. for you know I've got that much highlighter through it. 01:26:20.88 Dr_ Robert Glover i I hear that a lot. You know, guys show me the books. It's all yellow highlighted. Guys will say I've read every self-help book, but this is the first one that spoke to me. Now, if you're not a nice guy, it's not gonna resonate, but if you're a nice guy, it connects all the dots. 01:26:34.76 Dr_ Robert Glover You finally go, oh, it all makes sense now. All those other self-help books, I just read them, felt inferior, felt like I'm doing that, or I'm not good enough, or I just try harder. 01:26:38.71 iandawsonmackay Yes. 01:26:45.10 Dr_ Robert Glover They read No More Mr. Nice Guy. ah yeah they They relax into it. So yeah. I'm proud of the book. ah you know it's Most books don't stick around very long. 01:26:55.63 Dr_ Robert Glover um It's been around 20 plus years and still going strong. My royalty checks get bigger every year. So it's still ah ill helping a lot of people, men and women around the world. 01:27:02.02 iandawsonmackay Very well deserved. 01:27:07.92 Dr_ Robert Glover You know, i'll I'll just keep going back to you know Don't don't overthink this don't don't try to figure out some big plan to start But yeah, if you haven't read the book and it resonates yeah get the book and read it go go watch You know I've been talking you know shit about social media and YouTube go on YouTube and watch videos that I've done if it resonates with you go find a men's group, a men's program, check out Integration Nation, integrationnation dot.net. Go to my website, drglover.com. I have courses, I have workshops. Integration Nation is my legacy. It's what I hope to leave behind, a worldwide men's program where men can go do this work with other good men and not feel alone, no matter where they live in the world. 01:27:51.46 Dr_ Robert Glover So there's resources out there. Don't do it alone. Challenge yourself to go find a friend, two friends, a 12-step group, a men's group, integration nation, whatever. Just go find some other men and risk being vulnerable. Take a chance. Reveal yourself. 01:28:13.44 Dr_ Robert Glover Go slow with it. Check and see what the people do with it. Do they handle your you know what you reveal well? Are they reciprocal in what they reveal? Are they supportive? you know Go slow with it, but go do it. Go do it. 01:28:27.05 iandawsonmackay Well, how can people get keep in touch, follow along the journey? You know, you've mentioned the the group, but how can we, you know, are you doing clients on? 01:28:37.90 iandawsonmackay How can we find you on social media? Perfect time. 01:28:41.87 Dr_ Robert Glover Well, you probably won't find me on social media. Now, integration nation does have social media accounts. And I do have a YouTube channel where I where i post you know videos on on, just started that a few months ago and we just reached a thousand subscribers. 01:28:57.27 Dr_ Robert Glover yesterday. So that was fun. That was fun. 01:28:59.72 iandawsonmackay Congratulations. 01:29:00.00 Dr_ Robert Glover So um so but I say go to drglover.com. D-R-G-L-O-V-E-R dot.com to find my courses, ah my podcast, my workshops. 01:29:10.83 Dr_ Robert Glover Go to integrationnation dot.net and just check out my men's programs and membership program. We have over 55 calls a month that men in the program can access. And just, I've got a lot of great certified normal more Mr. Nice Guy coaches working with me. I'm on a call every single week, every Thursday. They said we have great, great people that come on the show. Dr. Warren Farrell recently, Dr. Robert Augustus Masters, John Wineland. 01:29:46.26 Dr_ Robert Glover My mind just went blank on on a good friend of mine. I had Sean T. Smith on there. Like I said, I had Mark Manson two weeks ago. This week was, as I said, Orion Terraman. Connor Beaton, that's what I was trying to think of. He's been with us. ah Those are all great people. Be great on your show. But, you know, so we just have this vibrant community. It's growing. It's fun. We're supportive of each other. So, yeah, drglover.comintegrationnation.net. 01:30:13.57 iandawsonmackay power oh head stop