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In this episode we talk with Alex Runolfson of Bloom Recovery in SLC, Utah, about the role money plays in our happiness. If you like what Alex has to say, you can find more at https://bloom-recovery.com/
JF 00:01:10 Welcome everyone to another podcast with university of leap, mental health podcast, dr. Hans Watson, and a special guest today, Dr. Alex. Dr. Alex, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself, your practice for everyone. Hello, I’m Alex I’m owner and operator of bloom recovery in salt Lake city, Utah, where we specialize in trauma anxiety in peak performance. We have specialties in financial therapy as well as some other areas. So I’m really happy to be here. Very excited. Great. Let’s go. Wonderful to have you, Alex. Thanks for being on the show today as always wonderful to have the expert elite, dr. Hans Watson. And today we are going to be addressing a question. That is a question that you’ve probably heard a lot of times. And, I don’t know, I I’ve grown up kind of indoctrinated with the answer to this question. So I didn’t really feel like this was a question for anyone anymore, but, uh, the question is can money buy me happiness?
JF 00:02:10 I’ve always been taught money can not buy you happiness. And so, it surprised me a little bit that that is a question, but when you look at people’s behavior, you see that definitely people are still questioning that they, they don’t behave as if they’ve made their minds on, on that. And so we’re going to jump into that today. I’m excited to hear from the experts what they have to say about it, but, uh, here’s a, here’s a quick example for you guys to consider, sir, Paul McCartney of the Beatles. He wrote the song on this topic, right? Literally wrote the song can’t buy me love. And I’m just going to consider love the same thing as happiness here, because why else do we seek love as human beings? I don’t know. Maybe you have a deeper answer on that, but, Paul McCartney is one of the richest private citizens ever, ever to live in great Britain. very, very wealthy and did money by him. Love was money able to buy him. Love, went through a very nasty divorce with Heather Mills, lost 24.3 million pounds, to her that was kind of her payout in that divorce ending. she was going for 125 million quid. And so, really going, sorry. Quit is the same thing as pounds for those.
Dr. Hans 00:03:40 They didn’t really hear that I’m there. He’s, he’s getting fancy with his, uh, with his British slang. Yeah,
JF 00:03:50 Go British yellow. so anyway, in my opinion, uh, he’s, he’s got a band of his best friends that broke up and, and had a hard time getting along, lost his wife in a nasty divorce. Doesn’t really seem to me like all that money was able to ensure happiness, at least whether or not it bought happiness in the beginning. It wasn’t able to secure that happiness longterm. So, let’s turn it over to the experts. You guys, what’s your opinion. Can money buy us happiness?
Dr. Hans 00:04:29 So I love where you’re going with this. And what I would like to do first is let’s actually define happiness because happiness can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but ultimately I have made a living out of studying and getting down to the details on what happiness is and is not because early in my training, I had people come in and I started saying, what is depression? What is, and eventually I was led to a dead end and what is happiness? And, and so I’ve actually gotten it down to even, uh, we can talk emotionally, but I want to talk neurobiologically and then I’ll defer to Alex to tell us the emotional side of happiness. But when you look at it, there are two important parts of the brain. And these two important parts of the brain are very, very impactful to the center of our brain, where we experience happiness or not.
Dr. Hans 00:05:26 And here’s the, here’s the answer to it immediately. The frontal lobe is mainly the part of our brain that controls happiness, but what stimulates that frontal lobe to experience happiness. There’s one area called the nucleus accumbens, and another is called the ventral tegmental area. Now the nucleus accumbens is in the frontal lobe, but the ventral tegmental area, it’s in the middle of the brain and that what I like to call the unconscious part. And they do two important things. The, the, nucleus accumbens does, wow, that felt good. Or I liked that. And it sends out all those reward though, dopamine and your norepinephrine and your serotonin that says, that felt good. The nucleus accumbens, is so it’s the pleasure SIM the ventral tegmental area is the one that said, let’s do that again. I desire that. And so now you’re going to start craving it.
Dr. Hans 00:06:22 And these are the two that are also found in addiction. So when somebody’s happy, essentially you can view it as they have become addicted to something that’s good. When somebody is addicted, as we use the term, they become addicted to a counterfeit to true happiness, whether it’s using substances or, or intimacy or anything else. And so what makes it real, that’s where we’re going to go with this and I’ll give Alex a chance to, to give his opinion before I share the, the old psychodynamic view of how that happened. But what are the things Alex that you’re you see from a psychology standpoint that you’re guessing this would stimulate the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens. This guys are this guy’s our expert we have on this week. So I’m excited to hear from him.
Alex 00:07:13 Well, first of all, I love that you started off by asking, well, first we have to define happiness, right. And happiness is an emotion, right? And like all emotions, happiness comes and goes. So does having a whole bunch of money in your bank account make you permanently happy? Well, of course, non right. We all have updates. We all have down days. Right? And so the amount of money in your bank accounts not going to directly affect how long you stay happy, but I think a more, you know, broader look at things would be like, can money help us increase our overall well being? Right. Can happiness actually improve our sort of standard of happiness, our standard of like how we see the world. And I, I think the surprising answer is actually yes,
Dr. Hans 00:08:01 I agree with that. That I agree with that. There is some times where yes. Is the answer.
Alex 00:08:06 Yeah. Right. Like it’s obviously not, you know, all, I just need more and more and more because that’s again where we get into that sort of addiction realm. But, you know, there’s a, you know, there’s been several studies about sort of where’s the worst, the cutoff, right. And, uh, studies have shown that arounds for the United States. Let me make that clear for the United States around $75,000 a year is the cutoff of where a person sort of starts to plateau in terms of happiness and income. Okay. And why is it that number? Well, it’s all about, uh, you know, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If you’ve got, if you’ve already covered that with in previous podcasts or not, but it’s that idea of like, if your basic needs are met, then anything extra is not really coming to contribute to that. So a good example would be, you know, for a person who is making $10,000 a year are struggling to really pay off, you know, just buy groceries, just buy rent, just like maintain like safety level.
Alex 00:09:04 Well then somebody bumping them up from $10,000 a year to $50,000 a year is actually going to increase their sense of wellbeing dramatically. They’re going to feel safer. They’re going to feel more stable. They’re going to feel more secure and it’s actually going to improve their standard of living in their overall wellbeing quite a bit. Now, if you take somebody who’s making a hundred thousand dollars a year and you bumped them up to $125,000 a year, that’s not going to have the same impact as the person who was previously making $10,000 a year. So I think, Oh, sorry. Yeah. You know, cause I think, I think context is a real important factor. Whenever we’re talking about the psychology of money, right. To somebody who is a billionaire, losing a million dollars is a drop in the bucket. Right. But for somebody who is, you know, has $1 million in the bank losing a million dollars is losing everything. Right. And so we have to put it into a, an accurate context. And you know, not only that, but it’s also not about the money so much as what do you do with that money. Right. And you know, there’s actually very specific ways that we can spend our money, that we can use it to actually increase our overall wellbeing. And it’s really fascinating, interesting psychology stuff.
Dr. Hans 00:10:20 Yeah. Let’s dig deeper on that. I love it. But one thing that you said that I want to build on is you talked about a certain amount of money and, and we can get even, even more basic in depth with the psychology here. and so I’m going to take what you did and run with it there and steal your thunder.
Alex 00:10:38 Love it. I love it. Good, good, good.
Dr. Hans 00:10:40 So, so, happiness, I don’t know any other way in all the reading I’ve done and all this happiness comes from us accomplishing harder.
Alex 00:10:54 Yes.
Dr. Hans 00:10:56 You cannot have happiness without accomplishing something hard. Now some people will say, Oh, but it’s, it feels great when I win. Yes. That’s the reason it feels so good when you win is because that is the validation that you have overcome hard things. It fulfills your it’s as if saying you are worthwhile because you did something that’s hard. And that is the only way. So, so when we look at this, if money represents, you have now overcome something hard, you will always be happier with that money because it’s another, another reminder that you’ve done something. It I’ll give you an example. I, as a doctor, love making more money than I made when I was a waiter at a restaurant, but it’s not the money that’s making me happy. It’s that? I know that I studied a hundred hours a week for four years in medical.
Dr. Hans 00:11:53 And I survived the in spite of crippling health problems and everything else. And then in residency, I studied and became an expert, not only in psychiatry, but in psychotherapy and addiction and many other things. And so as I look at my income, it does make me extremely happy, but not because I have the dollars. In fact, to be honest, I don’t spend much more money personally than I did before I went to medical school. The same thing that’s made me happy before playing catch with my friends or with my kids. They’re still the things that bring me happiness. But when I make that more money, it does bring me happiness only because it represents, I overcame the hardest school known to man, which is medical school and then residency. And now I’m succeeding and becoming a professional doctor. So I love what you said there, and I’m going to have that. That would be my expansion on it, which is, which is, if it represents you having overcome something hard money absolutely can bring happiness, but winning the lottery where you didn’t have to work hard for it. I don’t know a happy lottery winner.
Alex 00:13:09 No. And there’s, there’s psychology behind that as well. Right? That, uh, that idea of when things are handed to us, right? It doesn’t, it doesn’t translate, but I love what you said because it’s absolutely true. It’s also connected to the idea of the hedonic treadmill, right? That idea that we constantly pursue happiness and constantly pursue things that make us feel better, right. Things that make us feel good. If you talk to any business owner, the happiest dollar that they ever made was the very first dollar they made. Right? When they go, Oh man, I started a business and I’m successful. I made money in my business. Now you take that same business owner after five years. And they’re now making a quarter of a million, half a million, a million dollars a year. And you ask them, is that money? Is that millions of dollar? As happy as that first dollar, they probably will answer. No, because they’ve gotten used to it. You remember our brain, our mind gets used to stuff real easy. Right. It gets so used to just like, Oh yeah, this is normal. Oh yeah. And then suddenly we lose that normal and distress happens. And that’s why people
Dr. Hans 00:14:15 Normal, it’s important to say normal may mean that you’ve developed new skills to where it’s no longer as hard for you to do the thing. That once was really difficult.
Alex 00:14:23 Right. Right. You know, it’s something like, Oh, this is routine. This is, this is easy now where two years ago it was really difficult for you. Right. And so that, that relationship between effort and accomplishment is huge. Right. So we always want to be, again, putting things into context. We always want to be sort of looking at it like, okay, where am I in relation to my money? Where am I in relation to my accomplishment, to my effort, right? Because if we don’t have
JF 00:14:52 The right amount of effort, right. If we have too much skill and not enough effort, then we get bored. You know? And if you have too little skill and the challenge is really hard, we get anxiety, right. So we want to find that perfect sweet spot of like, Oh, this, this challenge matches my skill level, you know, and that’s how we learn and we grow and we get better and better and better. So I love how you, how you put that in terms of like, uh, effort and accomplishment. Cause I think it’s directly related. It’s huge.
Dr. Hans 00:15:22 Give me, give me a recap of what we talked about to make sure that we’re not just nerding out over here and, and just, uh, making this our funnel only conversation, help us to make sure we’re staying on track with the average.
JF 00:15:37 I’m saying, I like this. This is good. And any questions? Absolutely. My mind is going wild. I think I’m filing, following right along. but a couple of things that I’m thinking about right now are several billionaire examples that I’m thinking of as you guys are saying this and, and, one in particular is Elon Musk who was announced just today, overtook, Warren buffet as the seventh, most, uh, the seventh richest person on earth. So he’s making more than, or has more now than Warren buffet has. But one of the things that I admire about Elon Musk is that he’s, he’s never been satisfied with just his money. He’s constantly going out and pursuing new challenges. I want to get somebody to the moon. I want to create the Hyperloop. I want to, do all these different things that he’s doing. I’m building car companies and all this stuff where he could have just been insanely wealthy by sticking with PayPal and just saying, no, I’ve got a great thing here.
JF 00:16:46 Why would I change it? Why would I venture out and do anything else? But I think I’m seeing an example of what you guys are saying here, that in order for Elon Musk to sustain his happiness, he is going out and continuing to pursue new challenges. That aren’t the easiest things for him. There’s not what he’s used to and everyday, Oh yeah, this is, I do this in my sleep. It’s like, Oh, let’s go find out. Let’s go find something. Everybody says it’s impossible and let’s try to accomplish that. And I’m sure he gets a very, incredible sense of fulfillment from when one of his rockets launches and the lambs again, which has some pretty incredible stuff that he’s been a part of lately. Another thing that I’m, that is coming to mind is just how I’ve said for years, because my history before this was, I had a global medical devices company that built prosthetics that allowed amputees to get back to, activities that they really valued, skiing, snowboarding, and things that they’re doing with their families.
JF 00:18:02 It wasn’t just being able to get around and walk and function in society. It was able to do the things that they identified with as part of their personality. People say, I’m a snowboarder, I’m a skier, I’m a rock climber. That’s part of who they are. And I always said that meant more to me than the money that I made in that company, because it was the currency of impact. It was how I was impacting other people’s lives. And it really did. It brought me more happiness than the money that came from doing what I was doing. And so, am I on track with what you guys are saying?
Dr. Hans 00:18:44 Yeah. I think in, in, in another example, that’s perfect of that would be a guy that I absolutely love is Dave Ramsey, never listen to anybody. Who’s following Dave Ramsey. They’re doing the hard thing. And they’re happy as can be to telling you that they’re living on rice and beans and beans and rice, as he says, and they love it because they’re accomplishing something hard, they’re watching their debt shrink and now they’re building their wealth. And the happiness is not because of this financial gains. It’s what the financial gains represent. Now, Alex is an expert in this and I have, I have also done, psychotherapy and worked with people on, on exactly this thing, which is, let’s just be honest. I’ve had some very famous and wealthy clients that have come to me for, for help. And oftentimes financial is part of what we talk about, but Alex has made a specialty out of this and I want, I want to turn it over to him to say, Alex, what do you look at there with a guy like Dave Ramsey? And we watch the happiness that comes out of people. Talk to us a little bit about the psychology of what he’s actually doing, because he’s a master with the psychology,
JF 00:19:55 His game. He is, he is. And I love Dave Ramsey’s work. I think it’s brilliant. And it’s really easy to, for people to digest and things like that. And I think part of this is the idea of, like I said earlier, it’s not the money that makes us happy. It’s not that the number in our bank account, but it’s how we use it. And one of the ways we can use it to increase our overall wellbeing and happiness is to spend it on other people. Right? And so when we take our money and we spend it on other people in any number of different ways, right, we can donate to charity, we can buy a present, we can build a business and like contribute that business to other people like Dave Ramsey has done, right? There’s, there’s so many different ways we can do it. And when we attach that to, you know, our overall wellbeing, we happier and the people
Alex 00:20:48 We are helping are happier, right? Because we are a social species and we thrive on social interaction. And so when we can recognize like, Oh, I don’t have to spend all my money on myself. I don’t have to, you know, it’s not about greed. It’s about if I make more money, I can actually help a lot more people. And I think Dave Ramsey would agree that like, it’s about that part of his whole message is like, you can give, now you can give to other people in your life, you can give to charities. You can give to the world. It’s not about us as just our tiny little egos, but it’s about our impact on the entire world around us. And I think that’s where a lot of people get stuck is that they’re so focused on the selfish ego, greedy kind of parts of us, but when we can step away from that and go, okay, it’s not about me.
Alex 00:21:38 It’s about, I can actually help a ton of people if I made more money or if I gave more or if I was more generous and things like that. And so I think that that impact the idea of what, how am I making an impact in the world is huge when it comes to overall happiness and wellbeing. And of course, if I have a greater impact on helping even more people, I’m going to feel awesome about myself. I’m going to love myself. I’m going to be like, yes, I’m accomplishing something. I feel like I’m actually contributing to the world, which is huge.
Dr. Hans 00:22:11 You know, Alex, you can tell this as a professional who is in his zone with this because he’s taken us to the next area without even talking about it. He’s taken us to the next area. I obviously wanted to talk about, which is if you tie your money, that you’re making to a goal, if that money represents or is tied to a goal, it will bring happiness. If money itself obtaining it, Israel
Alex 00:22:43 Or power is your only goal because money does represent power. Let’s not pretend, but if power or
Dr. Hans 00:22:49 Obtaining more money, which is a form of power is your only goal. I’ve yet to see it, make somebody happy. But if it’s tied to another goal, which he just gave three or four, great examples of helping people as the goal, I want to see other people come out ahead, you know, tell me, that’s not tell me that’s not a human trait. Otherwise, why would anybody go into coaching? One of the most stressful and health destroying jobs out there, but there’s something about helping other people to accomplish greater things that is just rewarding. And so your money can help you to help others accomplish greater things. I love it. I love that. And so I would say for anybody listening out there, who, who wants to do it now, I will tell you, if you want to find happiness and be filthy stinking, rich, the old saying holds true, do something as be the best at something and provide such a service that people can’t live without it.
Dr. Hans 00:23:49 And they will happen. You look at Elon Musk, everybody’s like, Oh, why does he want to go to space? Well, you know, at the end of the day, you do realize Elon Musk is providing Starlink satellites. These are basically saying, doesn’t no matter where you live. You can have gigabit is what they’re talking about now, internet service. And literally, if you can see the sky, you can, you can get this service. So he’s going to revolutionize the internet. He already revolutionized. He said, I want to make a difference in the environment. And he’s already revolutionized it with Teslas and anybody who knows me personally, they know I am in love with the Tesla cyber truck. I think it looks hideous, runs the quarter mile, like a super car. I’m going to get me a super car. One day that is called a cyber truck. He just keeps doing these things. That’s why he’s finding happiness is because these are hard things.
Alex 00:24:43 Can I expand on that? Go ahead. So, so I love how you connected it to, to a goal, but I’m going to take it even one step farther that when we can attach our money, our financial, you know, situation to our values, that’s even more powerful, right? Because a goal can come and go, right? I reached the goal. Okay, Don, moving on to the next goal. What are our values will stay consistent if I can connect, okay. My money is going to allow me to be even more compassionate. It’s going to allow me to be even more generous. It’s going to allow me to live a more adventurous lifestyle. It’s going to allow me to be, spend more time with my family, right? When we can connect it to our values, the things that are most important to us, then that’s, that’s an endless infinite road.
Alex 00:25:31 Right. But a goal like it’s like, okay, I want to make the, make the cyber truck. Well, I’ve made the cyber truck. Okay. Now, moving on next, next goal. Right? But a values oriented lifestyle around finances and money can go endlessly because there’s no limits to how generous you can be, how compassionate you can be, how adventurous you can be. You know, those that you can connect to your values. I think it takes it even farther. I really like that. Alex and I got to jump in here real quick. because, w one of the things I really liked that, that I’ve been told before, or that I’ve heard before is a saying that nigga was something. If I can remember it correctly, something to the effect of, most of us spend money. We don’t have to buy things. We don’t want to impress people.
Alex 00:26:18 We don’t like. And I think a lot of times, if you ask the unhappy, wealthy people, what their goals are or why they have those goals, it’s not tied to those values that you’re talking about. Alex it’s it’s goals. Like, well, I grew up trying to impress my dad. I could never impress my dad. Now I’m trying to impress other people. And, and they’re constantly feeling unfulfilled. Their goals are never delivering what they really want. They’re doing things for, for other people or for the wrong reasons. It’s to show up the Joneses it’s to do better than somebody else. And so I love how you tie that in, because I think you’re both saying the same thing, but you’re right. Like, you can have goals that are not tied to your values. And, and, that’s probably something you didn’t even think about hands, because I know your goals are very value centric, but I think that’s a fascinating clarification that at least for me, that just a light bulb just went off and I was like, Oh my gosh, you’re right.
Alex 00:27:30 I love what you’re saying about this. Because it connects to values in our culture, money in our culture. Right. Where if you look at certain, you know, social, economic status, right. A lot of times our values get messed up a little bit and our goals get good, messed up. Right. A lot of times we will look at money as a status symbol. Right? Like my self worth is not enough unless I, my bank account is enough. Right. People won’t like me unless I’m driving the newest fanciest car and have the most expensive watch. Right. And those things, right. When, when we put so much emphasis on those aspects of, of finances, then yeah. Nothing can make you as unhappy as money. Okay. You know, because somebody is always going to have the newest version of the phone or the latest, you know, most up to date, uh, car.
Alex 00:28:25 Right. There’s, there’s always going to be something better because that’s how the free market works. Right. It’s always the next, the next, the next, and then the next right. But if you didn’t take a step back from that rat race, that the Dominic treadmill, then we can go, okay, how am I going to, what kind of life do I want to live? You know, what kind of at the end of my life, what do I want people saying about me that I owned, you know, a fancy car, or do I want them to say, Alex was a crazy, generous, compassionate, loving, caring, adventurous person. And he took a whole bunch of people on those adventures with him, right? He surrounded himself with people of likeminded values and really spread that message across the world. You know, if we can look at our life in the values lens, then we don’t have to play the rat race. We don’t have to keep up with the Joneses because we can look at the mirror and be happy with what we see.
Dr. Hans 00:29:14 I think I love what you said there, as I’ve worked with, uh, uh, I’ll put it this way. You know, a lot of us as we’re growing up and I’m in this boat, I grew up thinking, man, if I could make six figures, I would, I will have arrived. Now I’ve worked with many people who make seven figures a year. So this six figures I thought was such a big deal. And I still it’s a big deal. Don’t get me wrong. But now I’ve, I’ve worked with people who are ultra successful in the financial realm and they make seven figures and you just hit the nail on the head, Alex, every single one of them, one of the main things we would do is we would create a vision. Any vision has to be built on your values because a vision, isn’t a simple goal here or there.
Dr. Hans 00:30:07 I thought that James, Claire did a fantastic job of that in his book, atomic habits. And I absolutely loved that book here. I am name all day here trying to look important, baby. But I think he did a great job of showing that that vision, which is built on your values brings happiness. And so, I want to point out we’ve, we’ve come up with two things. So if you’re, if you’re listening to this and you say, okay, I want to, I want to be happy and I want to be able to make money and still be happy and still do. So the first thing would be tie your money to values. And those values will drive goals. Goals should help you complete your values. Second thing is don’t fall for the counterfeit and the counterfeit to happiness and overcoming things that are hard for you, which helps you accomplish the vision and helps you to grow that. Counterfeit is things will bring me happiness. No things only bring you happiness. If they represent you having overcome something hard, a new phone will never bring you happiness. If a new phone represents you having done something great or created a milestone or something, now that new foam can bring you happiness because of what it represents. But the item itself never. And I will say that never can an item alone bring you lasting happiness.
Alex 00:31:28 So I’m, I’m actually going to, I’m going to challenge that a little bit. Do you mind go for it? Yeah. So I think you’re, you’re spot on right? Items. Things do not bring us lasting happiness, but what does is experiences? Okay. So if I say, you know, I’m like, uh, uh, like you said earlier, right? Like let’s say I’m a skier, right? And I buy a new set of skis and I’m like, I’m going to go ski the Alps on my new skis. And that will lead me to greater happiness. Cause I’m excited for the trip. I’m excited to take my new skis on the Alps and ski. I’m excited to actually do it. And I’m excited like afterwards to reminisce about it and be like, yes, look what I did, but it’s not necessarily,
Dr. Hans 00:32:11 I love what you’re doing, but now tell me the why behind it. Let’s get into the psychology. What’s the why behind that continues to bring you happiness.
Alex 00:32:19 The, the why of like how experiences continue to bring happiness. Well, it’s because it’s, it’s a, it’s a continu right? Where, uh, an object will give us happiness for that brief little moment. Right. The new phones, all exciting. But then within a week it’s like, okay, it’s just like my old phone. Like, there’s no big difference, but it’s tying into the memory, tying into our timeline. Right? It’s like the, you know, the excitement right before the trip. And in fact, most people are happiest before they go on vacation. Right. They’re planning the vacation and they’re like, Oh, that’s going to be fun. That’s going to be exciting. I’m looking forward to lounging on the beach. They’re happy while they’re on vacation. So they’re happy on the present moment. Right. And then they’re happy afterwards because they go reminisce about and like, remember those awesome experiences. Do you remember the very first iPhone you bought now? I don’t think anybody does. They were like, yeah, whatever. Right. But it’s that timeline? It’s the darn memory around it.
Dr. Hans 00:33:17 You’ve just brought up a perfect distinction that I, that I bring up in my resiliency course that I give to people. And, and one of the things you just described to us, one of those activities reinforces you as a person, your mantra, it reinforces the, you are somebody who can accomplish hard things. And just that knowledge of. So for instance, it took me a long time to get in a financial place where I could save enough money to buy some skis and afford a trip to the Alps and then go skiing. And it’s not the trip to the Alps that necessarily continues to, to cause the, the nucleus accumbens to go off. But every time something hard comes up, you’re thinking yourself, yes, this is hard, but do you not realize who I am? I saved up. And I went through the hard thing of getting new skis and going to the Alps and even the skiing itself. And I became a good skier. Do you see how this is now establishing an identity, a persona, and that persona of knowing I can overcome hard things. That’s the foundation of confidence, which confidence, breeds, self esteem and self esteem, breeds, happiness. I love that you made that distinction. Whereas I get a new iPhone. It doesn’t necessarily reinforce that I am somebody who can do hard things. It doesn’t help that persona as much as somebody who sacrifices and creates an experience.
Alex 00:34:48 Absolutely. I love that because again, we tie it back into the values work, right? Remember values are just like adjectives, right? How would people describe me? And if I want to be described as an adventurous person, well, then I better start doing adventurous things. Right? I’d better have adventurous experiences in my life. You can’t say that an iPhone is adventurous. Right. It’s just a thing. But I can say like, man, I, I sailed the Pacific ocean or I climbed this mountain top or, you know, I visit all seven continents, you know, whatever. And that reestablishes that’s who I am. That’s my identity. That’s, that’s how I see myself. And that’s how I want to project myself into the world. Right. And so I think it’s really valuable to tie it into that sort of self identity and resiliency and, uh, the idea of like, who do you want to be?
Alex 00:35:35 You know? And that’s why, you know, we a of, there’s a lot of talk about like vision boards and things like that. And I actually encourage clients to create experiences boards. Right. What experiences do you want to have in life? You know, if you’re, if you value romance, do you want to have a kiss on the Eiffel tower? Right. If you want to, if you value adventure, do you want to, you know, hike the great wall of China, right? Like what experiences do you wants to have based on your values. And you know, when clients put that together in a habit in front of them, and it’s a visual, tangible reminder that like some places that they can see every day, it’s a constant reminder that not only am I, this person, I’m an adventurous person, but I am moving towards being even more so, and of course money can help us do that.
JF 00:36:22 I’ve got a question for you guys. Let’s look at the flip side of this because what I’m thinking about while you’re describing these things, and we were describing the happiness we gain from going out and accomplishing hard things is I’m, I’m considering some, some of the people I know who are maybe, really depressed. They’re not accomplishing these hard things. And when you try to get them to accomplish hard things, that’s, that’s almost, it pushes them further in the direction of, depressed. Oh, I’m not good enough. You’re telling me I’m worthless. I’m not doing anything. And so how do we, if, if the solution to unhappiness is accomplishment and feeling like you can, have something to be proud of for yourself, have something to respect yourself and, and be pleased with, with yourself. How do you get from that point where, where people are saying on a can’t even try not even going to get out of bed to having them say, Holy cow, look what I did, or look at themselves and say, wow, look what I did. How do we, how do we get from way over there to even moving in the direction to get over here?
Alex 00:37:58 Hans, do you want to tackle that? Do you want me to tackle it? Oh, why don’t you go ahead and then,
JF 00:38:03 Well, I disagree with you. I can, I can make fun of you.
Alex 00:38:06 Okay. I’ve got a spot. Okay. Pop quiz, pop quiz with the neuropsychologist. so I think this goes back to everything. It needs to be placed in the right context. Right. And when we say, at least when I say, you know, doing hard things is good for us. It makes us happier, more resilient, and it makes us proud. And that feeling of, of, of accomplishment, you know, it’s important to keep in relation food, right? Cause to someone who is depressed, you know, getting out of bed can be the hardest thing they do all day long. Right. Right. And so to remind people that you get to decide what is a hard thing or not, nobody else gets to decide that just because I’m using examples of like skiing down the Alps or sailing the Pacific and things like that, that doesn’t mean that that’s your version of what’s hard.
Alex 00:39:02 And I think that’s really, really important to clarify that you and only you get to dictate what is hard and what’s not hard because it’s all relative. Right. And so when you can identify, okay, this was hard for me today. Just getting out of bed was an accomplishment was hard for me. And then he can take the time to actually celebrate that. You can take the time to go. Yes, I did that. I didn’t get out of bed for a week. And I got out of bed today. I’m going to celebrate that. I’m going to feel good about that. If you let other people or society or social media or anything else tell you that that’s not an accomplishment, then you have to be really selective in who you’re listening to and who you’re comparing yourself to. So I think that this is all about just sort of that. Where, where are you in relation to the hard thing? And are you defining what’s hard for you or not? Right.
Dr. Hans 00:39:52 I love what I love what he said. And I want to add to that. I’m completely agree if you do find that your still experiencing sadness and depression, and you’re not able to find a way to push yourself to accomplish things that will bring you happiness. That’s where a professional comes in. That’s where you need to find somebody, somebody like Alex wri, where you come to me and sometimes you’ve been depressed for so long. Your brain is no longer stimulating those hormones to release. Like they should such as the serotonin, the norepinephrine, and you actually need a medical intervention to where I would get you on a medicine to help jumpstart that while we do that. And then the other thing there is you get a guy like Alex or I we’re going to help you to make goals that are safe for you.
Dr. Hans 00:40:44 That’s, that’s what we do for a living. Uh, you know, to be honest, almost anybody could prescribe the meds I give, well, that’s maybe an oversimplification, but many people could prescribe the meds I give. But what they can’t do is say, and here’s how we get you to your Bill’s best self safely without, and that’s where it needs to be. Just like Alex. And I do a customized plan for each individual. You will go to some people that aren’t that seven point provider. And sometimes they’re going to give you the same thing that they give every patient. But you go to a seven point provider. You’re going to get a customized plan that says, here’s what we’re going to do. First. It may be, you got to get out of bed for five minutes a day. I’ve had depressed patients that were that bad, that eventually they got to the point that they were hard things getting degrees that they’d always they’d always ran from. But that’s the key there is if you aren’t seeing progress and you’re not sure how to do it, that’s when it’s time to get a professional, you call Alex, you call me, you get to somebody that can help you safely push outside your comfort zone while not getting into the danger zone.
JF 00:41:55 So if Instagram is simply not working as my voice of reason and that expert authority on what’s hard for me, what I should, what standard I should be living up to. You’re saying that maybe a true professional can kind of assess where I’m at and what those baby steps are that are going to take me to that Instagram worthy lifestyle perhaps, or whatever is in fact, right for me. But I think a lot of people, you probably jumped to that, comparing themselves to what they’re seeing out there, where people are putting you, you know, that they’re only showing the best to the best little 1% of their life. That that makes them look like their lives are amazing. And like, they are amazing. And like everything’s great and MPG about their lives. And I’m having a hard time just getting out of bed, thinking, how am I going to climb Mount Everest? I can’t even get my socks on.
Dr. Hans 00:42:58 And that’s the goal is to get you to a point
JF 00:43:00 Where you start saying,
Dr. Hans 00:43:02 I have people around me who have the same values that I do, and it becomes contagious. You start to, so you can gain some strength by hanging around other people that are doing things you want to. One way that I wanted to become a great therapist and a great psychiatrist, or I started hanging around other people who were great psychiatrist and great therapists. And it started to rub off. And I started to pick up a tip here. I didn’t immediately become, become somebody like I am today, but I discovered one thing they did. And I said, I could start doing that. And I started building and I started going. I was so that’s, that’s the other thing they can do. Maybe you don’t need to come to a professional yet, but are you, if you’re somebody who wants a good marriage, are you hanging around a bunch of divorced people? Well, you’re never going to pick up good tips on how to stay married, hanging around a bunch of divorced people. You’re instead want to hang around other happily married people and you have to keep in mind, I’m making progress to be more like them. I need to be happy with the progress I’ve made and continue to move forward. That’s that’s where true happiness. And I’ll give Alex the last word, cause we’re about out of time with this and then Jared can sign us off. I love
JF 00:44:18 She said about, you know, surround yourself with the people you want to sort of emulate and be more liked because I think that’s absolutely true, right? Birds of a feather flock together kind of kind of mentality. But I also people to don’t compare yourself to them. Okay. That’s just going to compound any type of depression or apathy or stagnation. Right. I encourage my clients to compare yourself to the version of you. That was yesterday. Okay. That’s it, are you a little bit better than you were yesterday? If not that’s okay. How can you be better tomorrow? And if yes, then celebrate that, right. And again, better is subjective. Better is like, am I leaning into my values? I might. Did I get out of bed right. Better as, not necessarily, Oh, I climbed Mount Everest. Right. And so only compare, surround yourself with people you want to emulate and want to be more like, but only compare yourself to the version of you that was yesterday.
Dr. Hans 00:45:15 I love it. So Jeremy’s sinus off and tell them why we are now. We are now concluding that money can yes. Bring you happiness and no, it cannot.
JF 00:45:25 Yes. Yeah. I don’t think I can sum that up as well as you guys did, but I think it was pretty clear in there that, yes. When, when, when you’re working towards, value based goals that brings happiness and, and money is often a part of all that that can empower you to accomplish those goals, to make the world a better place, to, to have an impact on the world and, to, to have your impact, ultimately kind of bring that happiness and those experiences, that you’re able to have with friends and family. And, so I just want to thank you guys. I think the biggest takeaway that I got came just right in those last few seconds, Alex, that, that we should learn from people who have what we want, but not compare ourselves to them or anyone other than our ourselves, from the day before and taking it one day at a time as, as Hans often teaches, in resiliency that, uh, that just one day at a time we can build from literally not being able to get out of bed to climbing our Mount Everest, whatever that might be.
JF 00:46:45 And, so thank you guys so much for participating in this. I think this has been a fantastic podcast. Alex school, we’ll go ahead and throw a link to your website in the show notes on this. If, if you,
Dr. Hans 00:47:01 They contact you Alex, if, if somebody wants to get in contact with you, how can they get, get ahold of you?
JF 00:47:07 Uh, probably the, the easiest way is through my website, loom hyphen recovery.com, uh, or, you know, that that website has all my phone numbers, all my email addresses and things like that. So, bloom hydron, recovery.com. Awesome, great. And like I say, we’ll put that in the show notes as well. If you’re listening to this while you’re driving, go to university elite.com, uh, after, uh, you know, when you get a chance to look up our podcasts and we’ll have all that information for Alex in there as well, as well as, the marriage podcast that was mentioned and our resiliency course. So as you can take online, so a lot of really good information there. Thank you guys, both for your expert opinions, for your advice and counsel. I think this has been really good and, uh, I’m thinking this is going to have a lot of impact in people’s lives out there. So hope you’re happy with that. I’m certainly happy with what we’ve done today. thanks so much and we’ll see you all on the next episode. Thank you.
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Speaker 1 00:00:08 Welcome to the university lead mental health podcast, where your host, dr. Hans Watson helps you to learn the why behind mental health issues that you or someone you love may be facing. Dr. Watson is a nationally renowned psychiatrist who is also an expert in psychotherapy, a war proven leader of the U S military. And the only person we know to be an expert in psychiatry, psychodynamics diet is leadership, trauma, addiction, marriage education, and more. That’s why he was the expert that was flown in to the other side of the country to train the therapists, treating the victims and their families. After the recent mass shootings you heard about in Florida, we are excited to help you to understand the why behind some real life situations. And now your host, dr. Hans Watson, D O all right. We want to welcome everyone to another university, elite mental health podcast.
Speaker 1 00:01:12 We’re going to forego the questions, and we’re going to be talking about resiliency because we have a very exciting resiliency workshop coming up. We want to give you a taste of what is going to be in that workshop from dr. Hans Watson and how impactful focusing and building resiliency can be in your life. And so I’m very excited about this because I haven’t heard a whole lot about it yet. I’m excited to see what I can learn. So, dr. Watson, what is going to be in this exciting workshop? Thanks, Jeremiah. Really excited about what we have coming on here, you know, for years now, um, I’ve been, I’ve been using resiliency to help people out. I, uh, I’ve worked with a lot of people who are put into military situations where they’re deployed. Um, and they, they had to learn resiliency. I’ve worked with a lot of people who come into psychotherapy outside of the military, and they’re, they’re actually, um, one of their big things is they’re just overwhelmed with all the adversity they have in their life.
Speaker 1 00:02:23 And if we’re going to be honest, many times, they can’t get rid of that adversity. There’s just no way out of it. Maybe they have a critical illness. Maybe their marriage is failing and they have a spouse that’s not willing to change. Maybe they, they have such poor coping and it’s going to take years to change. How can they start to build some resiliency so that the anxiety, the depression don’t overwhelm them while they endure this hard thing? For me personally, it was going to war. I had to go to war. I had a job to do. It was a life threatening. How could I endure without becoming overwhelmed by anxiety and without becoming depressed enough that I was actually unable to function and a danger to not only myself, but those I was serving with. And how could that on top of that? How then could I find some happiness in my life when I was having to endure this adversity?
Speaker 1 00:03:22 And so that’s why that’s why resiliency is so important in us to learn how to overcome it. And so I, this was one of my favorite ones and I love being able to share. I oftentimes, in these seminars, what I do is I do bring some pretty dramatic examples that I’ve gone through, as well as sharing other people’s examples. And we give the people a step by step approach on how they can start to build ring, uh, resiliency, how they can overcome anxiety to where it’s no longer has the capacity to overwhelm them and even start finding relief and healing from the depression that people feel when they become just overwhelmed. And so this is one of my favorite ones to do because it just changes lives, what a fun thing to do. So that’s kind of what the overview of the big picture of what we’re going to expect with the, uh, with the resiliency seminar that I’m putting on it.
Speaker 1 00:04:17 And, uh, you know, I’ve had many people, many people both come back from war, come back from, from a difficult marriage, uh, and talk about how this was the start of them being able to actually enjoy their life for the first time, in spite of all the adversity they have, the first time they’d ever been able to finally overcome their anxiety and not let it control them, or the first time they felt in years, a relief from the depression they’re feeling. So it’s just, it’s a game changer. I just absolutely love this one. It’s so much, so much fun to be able to make a difference in people’s lives.
Speaker 2 00:04:54 You know, as you’re describing that, um, for some reason the, um, the whole concept of the wage gap and the financial disparity, um, in our country, it keeps coming to my mind and I’m thinking how, how we’re focused on that, where, um, we’re saying some people have all the wealth and some people have none, and there’s this huge gap in between there. And I feel like we’re kind of, um, we’re, we’re fostering the same kind of gap in resiliency and not to pick on anyone in particular, but I see that there are some people who have this focus on just man up top and up, you know, um, be resilient. And, and sometimes they come across in somewhat of a harsh way about that. And then there’s a counter argument. Um, that’s, that’s advocating for safe spaces and we shouldn’t have to confront anything that offends us or anything that, um, is difficult in life.
Speaker 2 00:06:01 And it feels like there’s this huge gap in between those two concepts. And I see value in both of them. And I see errors in each of them. How do we bridge that gap? And am I even accurate in saying that that’s kind of similar to our, our wage gap, that there’s this disparity between, this feels like there’s this massive divide, and we’re trying to get along in life where we have to interact with other people. You mentioned marriage several times. And it feels like if people come from two different backgrounds where, where one was like really pushed and hardened and, and, you know, uh, just treated in a way that forced them to build resilience and the other was kind of coddled and, and all that, then that can make a, a marriage or a relationship difficult as well.
Speaker 1 00:07:01 Excellent point, you know, there is truth to that, to what you say there. And the point I want to reiterate is the safe place in anything to do with, uh, mental health is there’s going to be an extreme, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and work hard, right? And then there’s going to be the other end of the extreme, which is eliminate any adversity. And either end of that extreme is extremely unhealthy. You know, that’s, that’s kinda like saying, saying, judging other people. It’s okay to, to judge as long as we’re in that middle ground, where we’re willing to hear both sides and willing to think about it. But if we’re on one end, Hey, I’m only this, or, Hey, I’m only that, that’s what racism, all these other types of, of bigotry, all that comes in is either end of the extreme, the middle is where we want to be.
Speaker 1 00:07:53 And it’s no different with this resiliency thing. Yes. There is a place to say, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, work harder. This is good, but there’s also a place to say, I need some time to find relief to recharge. Now, if you do one or the other, you know, we talked about, um, oftentimes for instance, the other over here, that’s what we talked about when we did our podcast on the queen bee. These are people, uh, men and women who want to just have nobody ever challenged them in life. And that we see just how it is pure emotion. They get away with it. And then you have those people who have no emotion. And they just say, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Well, the truth of the matter is there’s physiology in between here that needs to be looked at. And that’s part of what we’re going to talk about there is, is the physiology that goes on how somebody that is currently struggling can actually use a little bit of this and a little bit of this to build a really healthy place here.
Speaker 1 00:08:55 It’s it reminds me of the story. You know, there is this wives tale out there, um, a little lie that we all tell ourselves. And the idea is that person was so lucky. They were born confident. They were born with that trait. It was a congenital trait. They were just born with the confidence gene. I didn’t get that gene. And so, you know, I’m not one of the lucky ones, and that’s the why we tell ourselves the truth of the matter is there is a little bit of this, let me work through it and overcome it. And there’s a little bit of this. Let me be smart enough to find ways to avoid some of the adversity that I don’t need to do right now. And that’s where that confidence gene comes up. And that’s exactly what we teach in these resiliency seminars. And we do it in fact, I’ll I’ll um, uh, I’m sorry, how does that answer your question before I launch into a story I’m so excited to talk about. Does that answer your question?
Speaker 2 00:09:54 I think so, I’m very excited to hear your story, but basically you’re saying that that, um, the extremes are bad and w w regardless of the, so what side it is, and we really need to focus on a balanced approach and on, on that lie that you’re talking about, I think that, um, sometimes there’s, there’s a backup lie, you know, like, like lie plan B is that, Oh, well, if they weren’t born with it, it’s how they were raised. And I wasn’t fortunate to have that parenting. And so are you saying that well, first of all, I want to reiterate that, that focusing on resiliency, it sounds like can help you in your marriage and your work in basically your own personal life, but also in all relationships that you have to interact with, um, through life.
Speaker 1 00:10:49 Absolutely. The thing that involves adversity, anything, if there’s a Firstie involved, this resiliency that we’re going to teach you, it will help that. So you can overcome that and learn to enjoy your life in spite of it. So,
Speaker 2 00:11:04 So anyone from, um, walking age to potty training and, and beyond basically needs
Speaker 1 00:11:15 For a parent, you tell me if you’re a parent and I teach you how to somebody builds adversity, and I teach you how this helps you to overcome anxiety and depression. You tell me this won’t make you a better parent. You won’t be able to, because I’m going to tell you right now, I’ve had many, many, many, many parents come to me and say, thank you so much. I am such a better parent, thanks to your resiliency, uh, class that I took, I now know how to help my children to build the same thing. And so, so you’re right. In many times, there are parents who don’t teach their kids how to be in a certain area, just because there’s an area that a parent hasn’t taught their kids doesn’t mean they didn’t teach them resiliency in other areas. It just means, guess what? You’re not perfect.
Speaker 1 00:12:06 You’re neither Jesus, Buddha or Mohammad. So you’re not perfect. So there is an area you can improve, but it doesn’t make you a bad parent just because there’s an area you can improve. That makes you horrible. It makes you human. And so if, if you come to that realization that, yes, this was an area that I never learned. The parenting didn’t cover that, that doesn’t make them a bad parent. It means, guess what? They couldn’t cover everything all at once. That’s why it’s called growing up. And that’s why parenting is all about becoming a good enough parent and not a perfect interview.
Speaker 2 00:12:41 Right? And if your parents truly did fail you in teaching resiliency, or didn’t teach you as much as, um, maybe your life requires because life has changed, let’s face it. Our parents grew up in an area where a certain level of resiliency was probably very adequate for the challenges that they faced and for the barrage of information and digital connectedness that we have. And now are, my kids are certainly growing up where a situation, I feel that they will need more resiliency or more focus on resiliency than was required for me. And so I guess what I’m getting at is am I able to take the initiative now and say, well, then I’m going to develop the resiliency that I need and that I need to pass onto my kids, regardless of what I was born with, regardless of what my parents gave me.
Speaker 1 00:13:42 Yeah. And the simple answer is, yes, I’m in these seminars. I get, I get tons of, uh, I get tons of teenagers and early, early adulthood, Y one of the things about resiliency that work that we do in this course, we actually teach you how to build real self esteem. So I get tons of people who come in and they say, look, if I’m looking in the mirror and I’m really honest, I am not happy with what I see. I have a low self esteem. And so they come and they, they come out shocked and they say, I never knew you were going to give me a roadmap to building self esteem and confidence. And so we do get a lot of young kids, everything, I would say, you probably need to be 14, 13 or 14 years old, a mature 13 year old, or a 14 year old to be able to tolerate this any younger than that is probably not going to be great, but I do get a lot of them.
Speaker 1 00:14:36 And then I get the parents and they’ll come in, or sometimes just the parents or sometimes just to get, but the whole purpose there is they can see how this is going to benefit. And the parents, then they love it because they say, I can see how I can change just tiny little bits of my parenting so that this has a world of difference for my children. And I can be there. And they’re going to come out saying, Holy cow, I am now prime to be a success. Thanks to the way my parents taught me, thanks to how they helped me to develop resiliency, thanks to the support they were. And they knew when to push me. And they knew when not to. And that’s the, that’s the real thing. And they had examples and they could talk them through it and they can. So that’s where you can see why this is one of my favorite things to teach.
Speaker 1 00:15:23 Is it just from 14 on up? And I’ve had grandparents that came in grandparents that came in and said, no, this is for me. And then later they said, and I was able to help my kids when they called. And I was able to help my grandkids when they came crying, saying grandpa, grandma, and they were able to talk them through it. It reminds me of a story. Uh, uh, my mother was, uh, on a, on a church mission and their mission was to go out and, um, be in charge of a youth group in Utah. You call it an Institute. And what this is is college age students who, the, the religious, the church, there has a place where they can, the kids can comment. It’s a, it’s kinda like a YMCA for a religion. They have different sports and fun things they can do.
Speaker 1 00:16:12 They have some study rooms where they can study. But the thing that my parents ended up doing the most of was they would have these young college students coming in and it was in a different country and they would come in and they would just talk to them like it was talking to their grandma and their grandpa. And mom was just a wonderful person. She she’s been an educator for years and, and wonderful. And she would work with these people and they would come out and then they would say to her, how, how did you know to help me with I’ve gone from struggling in school to I’m happy in school. And, and I had a lot of long conversations with mom. She was, she was quite instrumental in me learning early on about this stuff. And then once I, I started putting in psychodynamic and, and my, my knowledge is a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst.
Speaker 1 00:17:02 All of a sudden, it just exploded to where you get what we have today. But she told me she would oftentimes have these young men and young women come in and they were ready to quit. They, the thoughts of suicide had entered their mind. These, these were people who are doing it. And she didn’t. She said, I was very careful not to get mental health care, but what I did was support them enough to be able to help them to start to develop that resiliency. And by the end, suicide was not on their mind. They were no longer using self harm coping. They were no longer doing these things and they would come in and they would say, Oh, I am struggling today. But just like you told me, I know I can do this. I just need somebody to complain to. And she would say, Oh dear, come on.
Speaker 1 00:17:45 And she was often cooking for these, for these youth. One of the activities did, was they would cook food and they’d have these, these community dinners there. And she was a good come feel, these potatoes, why you tell me about it? And they would work right alongside her. And it got to the point. She said that sometimes there was a line of people waiting to help her cook because they needed to talk about this. And she was helping them with many of the principles we’re going to talk about and teach you. We’re going to go a lot more advanced than that, but she was able to help them because she had a lot of the knowledge that I’m sharing with these people. And she was able to judge build them up to the point that they would leave confident, happy building a self esteem. They’d gone from no self-esteem to now.
Speaker 1 00:18:31 They had established some, and they knew how to continue to build more. And she said, it was interesting. She watched these youth and many of them would come in dating a very unhealthy person. And as they started to improve, suddenly that relationship was no longer working out. And she watched them then find a very healthy person. They would start dating and they found such happy relationships. And she told me, I never once talked to them about who they were dating or that relationship when they became healthy, they started selecting a healthy relationship themselves. And it was all that resiliency. So you can just see how many things for a parent, a grandparent, or even that, that youngster, how this is just life changing.
Speaker 2 00:19:20 Wow. That’s awesome. Um, let’s jump into it then. Let’s, let’s give people a taste of what this three hour workshop is going to have. Obviously let’s get as much of that into this podcast as possible. We can’t cover it all, but what are some of the things that, um, that you can give people right now so that they can go out and actually improve their resiliency and get some benefit out of, out of just this podcast?
Speaker 1 00:19:49 Oh, very good. So, um, you know, one of the things I like to, and I’ve had people come back to me and say, you must always tell this story. So, uh, based on popular demand, I tell a story. So, um, I was a college student. Oh, probably. Uh, and well, I won’t worry about the age. I was a college student getting ready to apply for medical school. I had just decided I wanted to go to medical school. And so I had taken kind of a circuitous route to get there. And, um, as I was getting her to apply, uh, I had my first child, my first child was about two months old. And, uh, my wife, um, was there. I had, I had that. We were getting ready to apply to med school. And wouldn’t, you know, I was in the military in order to pay for college.
Speaker 1 00:20:36 I didn’t have enough money. My parents didn’t, I didn’t want to strap them with a bunch of debt to pay for my college. So I had joined the military when I was in high school and, and, uh, or shortly thereafter, excuse me. And, and then I went, um, and so I went and was in the military, had served for four years. They’d paid for college. I had been enlisted, I’d done ROTC. And that’s where I was. Well wouldn’t, you know, one of my friends came to me and he said, Hey, Hans, I need to talk to you. And he happened to work at the headquarters in there as one of the, um, administrative people. And he pulled me off to the side after we were, we were doing a training and he said to me, Hey, handsome heads up. Uh, this unit over here just got a call to go to Afghanistan.
Speaker 1 00:21:22 And I said, wow, thank goodness. I’m no longer in that unit. I’m glad I changed units. I, I, you know, and they said, well, there’s the rough. Um, they went to the general and they requested you specifically by name. And I grew up in a little farm town called Fillmore. And they said, Hey, so a farm town, you, you grow up in a community. You know, everybody, you work with everybody, you actually work on the farms. So you had to learn to think outside the box and solve problems and work with animals, which are all oftentimes require critical thinking. And what have you. And he said, yeah, the Colonel actually went to the general and said, I want to take hands. He’s a good Fillmore boy. And I said, no, I don’t want to go. And he goes, well, you really don’t have a choice.
Speaker 1 00:22:07 The general already gave the thumbs up. You’re headed to Afghanistan with this unit. I’m like, I left that unit for a reason at the time. I couldn’t see it. So here I go to Afghanistan and I’m an Intel officer at this time and I’m an Intel officer and we go there and we roll in and they tell me, don’t worry, you’re going to be, we’re going to be working with the Afghan army. And so you will have yourself and an interpreter and sometimes a Sergeant, an American Sergeant, and you’re going to live with this Afghan unit and essentially do what the green Berets usually do, which is teach them how to be, um, uh, better at their jobs. And I said, Oh, okay. I can do that. I’m, I’m quite a competent Intel officer. I’m I feel very confident. I have some extra training. I can do this.
Speaker 1 00:23:00 And so we’re turning up and the whole time, there’s actually this group of 16 guys who I’d grown comfortable with. I knew which ones I would, uh, I know which ones I would trust to do training and which ones I would probably want to be there because they may or may not be quite as competent as their peers. I, I knew who I trusted, who I didn’t all that stuff. So we train up for many months, um, and they send us into Afghanistan. The first day we get into Afghanistan. Wouldn’t, you know, they, they say, Oh, by the way, we’re glad you’re here. And we get to this little base in Kabul. And we were like, this is awesome. We can do this. They had a TV. They had, they had a w we actually, the first day we got there, they had these giant barbecues and we look out and there are T-bone steaks on the barbecue.
Speaker 1 00:23:50 And I’m like, what is this? And they’re like, Oh, this is dinner. And I’m thinking I can handle this. This is going to be okay. So we roll in there that night, they had lobster and steak for us to eat like an idiot. I’m thinking, this is the way it’s going to be. They’re giving us. And then that night something interesting happened. They came in and they just start giving us all kinds of really fancy wartime equipment. Like a, I had a little, the guns. They gave us, they gave us new attachment store. They had all these, they call them rails where you can put flashlights and all kinds of doodads and scopes and stuff, all hanging off your gun. Like you see the green Berets half. And I’m like, this is awesome. They’re giving us all kinds of equipment. Still not realizing why would they give us this equipment?
Speaker 1 00:24:37 This, they don’t give this equipment to the, every average soldier, what is going on here? And so, and I’m taking, we had steak and lobster and there were all kinds of vegetables and there’s all the soda. You can drink it. You know, just I’m feeling like this is good. They give us this stuff. And the next day they come in and they say, okay, good job. Alright, Lieutenant Watson. And I, at the time, I wasn’t a doctor. This was before medical school, of course. And they say, Lieutenant Watson, here’s your Sergeant here? And the Sergeant, Hey, good to meet you there, Sergeant here’s your interpreter. Alright, good to meet you, interpreter. This is your Afghan infantry company that you’re going to go out and fight alongside, and you’re going to kill or capture any terrorists in this entire state in Afghanistan. And I said, Oh, hold on, hold on, hold on.
Speaker 1 00:25:26 I think there’s been a mistake. You see, I’m not an infantry officer. I’m an intelligence officer. I do Intel analysis. I do counter-intelligence interrogation, that type of thing. And they, they looked at me and they smiled and said, well, that could come in handy. Here’s your infantry company. Here’s your interpreter. This is your Sergeant. You’re to go out and kill and capture. And I said, Oh, I I’m sorry. I must not be communicating clearly. Just let me, let me explain. What’s going on here. You see I’m trained. And one of the top Intel officers, you’re going to meet in the country. I’m actually trained in human intelligence and they kind of did one of those. They hold up their hand to stop. You. That’s really good Lieutenant. Here’s your infantry company. Here’s your interpreter. Here’s your Sergeant. Now come over here. You’re going to sign for this machine gun and the equivalent of an <inaudible> there’s machine gun.
Speaker 1 00:26:24 On top of it, we’re giving you a scope that has infrared and as well as thermal imaging combined in one so that people can hide from you. That goes right on top. And I’m thinking I’ve never seen one of these much less, and you’re signing for an entire Humvee, armored Humvee, and inside it, you’re signing for the satellite stuff. And I’m thinking, wait a minute, this was my new role. So number one, not only had you pulled me away from my wife and my new child, you’d stopped me from applying to medical school. Something that I’d want a very bad day. I had already taken the end cats for crying out loud. Then you stop. You take me and you say, okay, we’re going to put you into a foreign country. You’re now going to be not living with Americans with Afghans. You’re going to be fighting in a job that you aren’t trained specifically to do.
Speaker 1 00:27:18 And so you’re going to do it. And we’re pulling you away from those 16 people you had trained with. I didn’t know the Sergeant. I met him for the first time and all of this. If you screw up, you lose your life. Now you tell me that’s not adversity. You tell me that. And here’s the, here’s the rub in our seminar. And then we can’t go into it much more because of time. But you tell me what kind of adversity was I staring down now, knowing I had a four month old child at home. This was not a game. This was really deadly. People were dying. People were getting blown up. People were dying, people were doing it. And sometimes it was from the Afghans having a Taliban member who had joined the military, just waiting for their chance to kill an American. So I had to worry about the Afghans.
Speaker 1 00:28:06 Then I had to worry about us getting attacked. Then I had to worry about just the danger of roadside bombs and my wife’s home. Spoiler alert. We, we ended up being pushed out that one day of eating steak and lobster. That was our one day we were gone the next day. And I’m out in the middle of nowhere, living with just the Afghans. And I didn’t get to call home about every six weeks. I get a shower about every three weeks. I’m wearing body armor and doing dismounted patrols. And I am just going crazy. We get through, we run out of food that we could tolerate. So we had to start eating the Afghan food. Of course, I get sick there, there were just so many things that happened here. You tell me which one of those were adversity. Was it that my, I had missed that I was no longer able to talk to my wife.
Speaker 1 00:28:59 What was it that I knew that I had a brand new baby at home and a wife at home. And that I was in one of the most dangerous jobs in all of Afghanistan and all of the war. Was it that, that I no longer got to talk to them? Was it that I didn’t get showers? And for me a shower is a big deal. That’s where I worked through a lot of my problems. That’s my Zen zone. Very worked through my problems. And now I don’t get every three weeks. And I’m dismounted patrol sweaty every day. You can just feeling grimy and dirty, or was it that now I had all these people’s lives under my hands that I had to had to help them with. And I was expected to train them how to be better. And I was a trained Intel, not infantry officer, tell me which of these Jerem, which one do I choose as adversity? And this wasn’t even the worst of it in the seminar. I’m going to tell you how it got 10 times worse. And I’ve done a lot of talking. Tell me, tell me which one of those should I focus on first?
Speaker 2 00:29:56 Well, I don’t think that you can, um, compartmentalize like that. It’s all adversity. You have to, to be able to handle all of it. And I mean, tell me if I’m wrong, but I come from a, a lot of people don’t know, but I had cancer when I was 14. Um, my leg was amputated. I almost died several times and then got into adaptive sports where other amputees and other people with paralysis and different things come and, and compete against each other and skiing and rock climbing, different things. And one of the things that was always interesting to me is that people would always sit around and tell their stories and you’d hear what happened to get other people into the situation they were in. And everybody was sitting here saying, Oh, wow, I could never handle that. I could never survive what you went through, but they’re looking back saying the same thing too.
Speaker 2 00:30:50 You know, somebody got ran over by a train is saying, Oh, I can never go through cancer for three years and, and do this when I was this age. And they’re saying, Oh, I can never be hit by a train and get totally mangled and left there for hours before anybody found me. And so I think the, the message I’m hearing is that resiliency, um, can, can kind of, it can get you through things that you didn’t think you could ever make it through until you’re actually faced with it. But it sounds like everything that you’re saying is all, all resiliency. And I don’t think that, um, or that it’s all a challenge. I don’t think that you can just pick out one thing and say, yeah, I’ll be good. If I can just deal with that. Everything else can still crush me. But, uh, you know, it’s, it’s shocking and is sad. Um, the, the rate of suicide that has gone up with the common pressure that we have in our nation right now with COVID-19 and with a lot of things that are happening, we’re seeing a lot of people not having the resiliency to, to carry on through these new unexpected trials that they’re facing. And so let’s go back to your unexpected trials there. And if we do have time to talk about just one of them, um, that sounds like an awful lot to me.
Speaker 1 00:32:27 It was an awful lot. And, and if, you know, if we did,
Speaker 2 00:32:33 It did get to the point where I was overwhelmed. I started to experience some depressive symptoms.
Speaker 1 00:32:41 It got pretty severe, and I realized really quickly, if I don’t do something, this is going to start affecting my ability to be able to successfully operate in war time. And if I don’t do something, it is going to result in me getting killed. And so I had to start to try something. And, and I honestly, to be honest with you, it got to the point where I didn’t feel connected with these Afghans. They were so different and I didn’t feel connected with this mission. It wasn’t what I was trying to do. I did it, of course, I worked with these Afghans. I put my life on the line next to them. I did the mission because that’s what I was expected to do. And I took my responsibility very seriously. But what did that do to me, even though I hadn’t quit, it started to beat me down to lower and lower to where it got to the point that I started losing my appetite.
Speaker 1 00:33:37 I wasn’t sleeping. These are not good things when you need to be alert and aware in combat. And so, and so I had to find a way, and that’s what we’re going to teach that we don’t have time today. Cause, uh, it’s hard to fit everything I have in a three hour seminar. Oftentimes we go over, but that is exactly what we’re going to be talking about. There are specific things that you can do and you can come in and start saying, okay, here we go. Here we go. Step one, step two, step three. And you can do this. And the neat thing is you don’t have to overcome everything. Once you overcome that first step, it gives you a little confidence and you can use that confidence to give you energy and strength to attack the second thing. And then once you overcome that second thing, you’re now going to have a little more confidence in your drops of confidence in your confidence jar.
Speaker 1 00:34:36 This imaginary confidence generally, you know, think of the old oil in the lamps that the old proverb from the Bible tells us a little more. And pretty soon once you’ve gotten three or four and all of a sudden you’re starting to get more confidence. That confidence becomes the entire foundation of self esteem, because now you’ll say, yeah, I screw up and there’s a lot wrong with me, but do you realize what I’ve overcome already? Do you realize I’m somebody who overcomes what’s difficult now suddenly can you see how you’re building resiliency? That results in confidence, which is the foundation for self-esteem, which is the opposite of being depressed and anxious. And so that’s how we’re going to do it. We’re also going to talk about anxiety. We’re going to talk about what’s going on the neurobiology of anxiety in your brain and how we can undo that.
Speaker 1 00:35:29 It’s really, really a powerful thing. It’s, there’s so much packed in there. Normally I could do, if you gave me two days, we could fill two days with this. Normally we have to power back it into a couple of hours, simply because there’s just not enough time to do all the different seminars that people need and the difference we can do. So, so we pack it in there and we give people the tools they need to. But if you look at it, you’ll hear here, I’ll jump to the end in Afghanistan. I did start to find the way something I could enjoy. And that one thing I could enjoy led to people wanting to do that fun thing with me. I made some friends, Afghan friends that led to suddenly us understanding each other better. I soon developed relationships that were wonderful. I look back and just, I’m so grateful.
Speaker 1 00:36:24 I got to get to know and love these, these people, these Afghan people that allowed me to feel safe enough with them to where they were with me. And we’re in the stinking, uh, countryside, interacting with the people. And they’re helping me say, this is a good group of people. Let’s go interact with them. And I got to experience the culture and learn to love the culture in Afghanistan. And other times they’d say, it’s not safe here. We are not interacting with the, with the culture here. And these were the locals who knew what was safe and what wasn’t. And so just from that, and it got to the point where I accomplished things that nobody else had. And in fact, it’s funny you say that because as we came back over, we all got to come back in for Christmas. Um, from the field that all my friends had been, those 60 they’d been scattered out.
Speaker 1 00:37:15 And there was about six of us that were stationed on the tiny little base, the fog where we were there in Qubole. And we all got back in on Christmas Eve and it was an quite an emotional time to see these brothers of mine. I hadn’t seen. And we got together and we talked and it was amazing how, as we were telling each other stories, essentially we were working through in a safe, trusted environment. We were processing terrible things that we had had to endure in war time. And we started working through it, which increases resiliency. And as we did that, it was amazing. Like for instance, I had one where there was a police station where we get a call at four in the morning. I hear this little knock on my door and the interpreter girls, sir, they are shooting. And we said, what, sir?
Speaker 1 00:38:02 They are shooting. And I said, Oh, okay. Just tell him. And I was thinking, he was saying, the Afghans want to test fire. One of the weapons they’ve just repaired. No, no, no, no, sir. They are shooting. They’re attacking. And we said, what is he talking about? And finally he said, sir, at the police station and he named the little town it’s called NERC, the police station and NERC, the Taliban are shooting and killing all the people. They need our help. They are, they are dying. And I was like, Oh, they’re under attack. And so I woke, my Sergeant said, dude, NERC police station, they’re under attack. They’re going to die if they don’t. And he was like, give me five minutes. I’m ready to roll. And the five minutes was to put the machine gun on the truck, you know, to put bullets in there.
Speaker 1 00:38:45 And the Afghans were already lined up. They were ready to go. And we were the only ones we were like, why didn’t somebody wake us earlier? You know? And we use that as a learning opportunity a later. So we roll out there and we get there and there was a bunch of people shot up. And so I rolled in and I said to my Sergeant, you’ve got to put a tourniquet on that man’s leg. We re first we repelled the, the attack. We repelled the attack. Then we said, you’ve got to put a turn to kind of like, I’m going to go see this other guy that shot in the calf. And so we started doing medical triage and I wasn’t a doctor. I just received some first aid courses and the Sergeant. Okay. And he ended up putting it on. I went and looked at this other guy, the bleeding is stopped.
Speaker 1 00:39:24 He was shocked, clean through the, the calf. We worried about that. So then it was get them to get them to medical care and that type of stuff. And so we did that. And so we come back on this Christmas Eve, we were all there and they said, what, what story do you? And I told them that story, and these guys all said, Holy cow, I couldn’t do that hands. Oh my gosh, I can’t believe you endure this. This is tough. Well then what does battle tell next battle tells us a story where they knew there was a trail at the low end of the mountain where the Taliban would come in attack and run out. So he said, we went halfway up the mountain and we set in to ambush them when they were coming. And they had received Intel that they were going to come along this bottom trail and attack them.
Speaker 1 00:40:07 Well, wouldn’t, you know, that day he said, we sat in there, we got hidden. We were in there and they started coming down and we started shooting. And then suddenly we would notice pop, pop, pop around us. Well, the Taliban had seen them coming in or somehow been tipped off. Well, there were people on the top of the mountain now shooting down. And there were the people that had been ambushing. We’re now shooting up. So these guys were now being ambushed. He tells me they actually started to converge the Taliban to overrun them and kill them all. So what did he do? He had to call mortars in, on his exact location. So he would call a mortar in and they would say, that’s danger close to you and say, we’re dead either way. So he would call mortars in. And what he would do is he’d say they would shoot the first one in and he would call it on his exact location.
Speaker 1 00:40:56 And as he would tell them, tell me when you’re going to fire, I need 10 seconds heads up and they give him 10 seconds heads up. So he, when he said, they said 10 seconds are firing. He would yell now and all of his Afghans, and then they would jump up and just start running back towards the base. And as these Afghan, these Taliban came to envelop and to overrun them, they would now come into the place where they were. These guys just were, and they were just running back to the base and mortars were landing where they were and killing some of these Afghan Taliban in the place. And as soon as the first round would hit, he said, we’d hit the deck. We’d just, we would just hit the ground. That way. Shrapnel was left, likely to hit us and more likely to hit the Taliban.
Speaker 1 00:41:40 And then as soon as they do that, they call in their new grid square because the Taliban would sit down for just a second. They said, we had about a minute before. They’d be like, okay, I think they’ve stopped shooting. And then they would get up and try to develop them again. So they’d repeat this. And he called in his new grid square, and they’d say 10 seconds. And he’d yell now and he’d get up. And they just start running. And he said, they were shooting at us, but we were dead if we didn’t do this. And so they had to be walked back in with mortars and he tells me, and I could never do what you did, which is go in there and do that medical care for me, the medical care, I was already thinking I wanted to be a doctor. This was what I wanted to do for him to do the mortars.
Speaker 1 00:42:20 That was no big deal, but the medical care, I could never stand to do that. And it was interesting how we each had resiliency in a different area and we eat, tend to build resiliency in a new area. And so this is the kind of thing we’re going to use to show you and to point it out to people just because somebody’s good at something. And you have resiliency in one area, doesn’t mean that you’re not going to have to learn in a different area. And it’s not as hard to learn. It’s just hard to do the, the work that allows you to build that resiliency, but we give you a game plan that makes it doable. And so, uh, you know, even though we don’t have time to do much more, these are the stories to where just like you were talking about, yes, this person got through this and this person, you know, one of them had cancer and had his leg amputated.
Speaker 1 00:43:08 Another one was hit by a train. I’m sure there was others. Or, or whether it’s this guy had to deal with the horrors of people that were injured and, and killed in war. And this one had the horrors of being attacked and having call in mortar, fire on their own position and still other things. And each of us is uniquely placed into a position where we can succeed. And that’s the cool thing is I teach you how you can succeed regardless of where you’re placed, where you don’t have to, you don’t always have to run away. Sometimes we’ll teach you so you can distinguish when is it appropriate to run? And when is it not? Because if I had to, we’ve told battle, just stay there and fight. He would have been massacre. That was an appropriate time to run. My time was not appropriate. So these are the things we’re going to teach and, and, and what have you.
Speaker 2 00:44:00 Awesome. Awesome. Um, it’s reminded me of a quote that I, I’m not 100% sure on the origin. So I’m going to say a known, but, um, as you’re talking about building that resiliency, you mentioned something about it doesn’t necessarily make the thing easier. And the quote, if I can remember it properly, I’ll probably butcher it, but it said something to the effect that that, which we persist in doing becomes easier for us. Not because the nature, the thing has changed, but because our capacity has increased and I’ve always thought that such a powerful quote, that that wife can get easier, but never because you just asked for it to be easier. Oh, just, just, just make my life easier. I think all of us ask at times why, why can’t life just be a little bit easier? Why is it so hard? And I’m getting the impression that that life can be easier.
Speaker 2 00:45:05 It can be more enjoyable. It can be something that we can handle, um, without so much stress and anxiety, some depression, some of those things that you mentioned, but only through us increasing our own capacity to handle life as it is, because life itself is only going to get harder. And so we need to get stronger. And, um, I was, my son was showing me a gym yesterday after we swam, he really wants to get in a gym and wants to lift weights. And I grabbed this a 70 pound, um, barbell, or, and, um, I picked it up and set that on the floor. I was like, okay, can you pick this up? And he’s sitting there with both hands just trying to lift this. And it was like, it was welded to the floor. It was really fun to see, but, uh, he was like, wow, how can you do that, dad? And I was like, it wasn’t easy for me, but I was like, yeah, I can lift a 70 pound weight with one hand. And, um, you know, someday my child will get to that point that, that he’ll be able to do this as well. And, um, so really seems to be what it’s all about is us increasing our strength and making it to the point that, that, uh, the weight that we do have to lift is easier for us. Not that it’s gotten any lighter, just that we’ve gotten stronger.
Speaker 1 00:46:35 And it’s amazing how much easier it gets when somebody teaches you the correct form and way to do it. The plan we give our people is what allows them to overcome adversity with half the effort that it would normally need. Right? It’s amazing. The old saying work smarter, not harder. That’s what our goal is. Our goal is to teach you and give you the clothes to say, if you do it this way, that, that same amount of weights,
Speaker 2 00:47:07 Right? It’s almost like applying a lever. Now, all of a sudden, it’s like, Oh, you could lift way more because now you have the tool that gives you leverage and it gives you a strategic advantage.
Speaker 1 00:47:19 And that’s where we come in. We come in and we teach exactly this. We teach you how to maximize your, your, the neurology, the biology, and the psychology, so that you come away ready to do it. And then we teach you how to use that strength you’ve built in the future so that you come in already being the big, strong muscle man. The next time somebody throws adversity to everyone, they throw out and they say, here’s a 40 pound dumbbell. You’re going 40. I’m used to 70. This doesn’t even phase me, you know? And now what has changed. And so that’s where I’m so excited. And I’m really excited for this resiliency seminar. We have coming up, the people that come they’re good, they’re going to get a tree. This might is my gut impression. They’re going to come away going Holy cow. And it’s, it’s not only entertaining.
Speaker 1 00:48:09 It’s fun. We do interactive. But on top of all that it is life changing. And how do I know that? Because I’ve heard it hundreds, maybe even thousands of times from the people who I’ve done this for the military has been very fortunate. They got this for free for years, for years. The, the it’s amazing to me, how many times I hear the kids coming back, repeating the point of my story saying, you know, one of them is I’m going to teach you and we don’t have time today. I’m going to teach you how to find your torch. And it’s amazing to me, how many kids I see in there. And I would see them just in the grocery store and they would say, Hey, sir, sir, sir. And I, Oh, Hey, can I help you? You know, I don’t know who they are. And they say, I came to that talk.
Speaker 1 00:48:55 You gave, and they’re talking about the resiliency seminars that I put on. And they said, I just want you to know. I found my torch and I have never been happier. Thank you so much for helping me to find a torch. And I tell him, thanks. And half of the time the kids will say, can I give you a hug? Oh, okay. All right. You know, it’s life changing. And this is why we’re so excited. And, um, and this is why if you’re, if you’re somebody who realizes I’m not up to my full potential or even doubts, you have a potential come to these resiliency seminars, let’s teach you that you do have a potential. Let’s give you the tools to overcome what, what things are there and, and give you the tools to become your best self that’s. The idea is I make you so good.
Speaker 1 00:49:42 You no longer need mental health care. And if you do, it’s not going to be to do everything. It’s just to fine tune something. And so, so they can do that. Jeremy, why don’t you tell them about our upcoming, uh, upcoming, uh, seminar, where we’re so excited about this? When I can’t tell you what a fun thing is going to be? Absolutely. So the best way to get all the information is to go to university elite.com/live. And first you’re going to see our, um, our marriage retreat, which is happening on August. First down below the marriage retreat is the information on the resiliency seminar. That’s going to be on July 31st. The one that we’re talking about right now, and typically
Speaker 2 00:50:28 Your prices hands are $300 an hour for one on one counseling. And this seminar, we’re looking at three plus hours. So we’re basically looking at $8,000. If we were to get this one on one with you right there. Um, I know you typically offer this three hour seminar for $500. And for this particular one, if you’re interested in able to come on July 31st, um, you can find out, uh, any ongoing seminars that we have at that URL that I gave earlier. But, uh, for this particular one on the 31st we’re giving a 90% discount. We’re only charging 10% of that price is $50 to attend the full workshop. And the reason for that, just so everybody knows is that we will be filming this to create an online course so that this can be available to more people who can’t attend. And they will be paying about $500 for that, for the online version, but because we will be filming it, we’ll need to have you sign a media release form in case you show up for a second here or there, and it shows your face on that.
Speaker 2 00:51:43 And, um, we would also like a testimonial when you’re leaving. And so we’re offering a massive discount on that. Basically just covering our costs to, um, put this all together, to bring Dr. Watson out from Montana, to Lehigh, Utah, where this will be held. And, um, that will be in the evening of July 31st. So coming up pretty soon, you can register for that at that URL university, elite.com forward slash live. And you can also check out the marriage retreat, which is a full day retreat the next day. And, um, you can register for both of those there, if you’d like, there’s just going to be, um, really incredible information on both of those. And both of them are really going to, um, increase your capacities for every situation in life. So if you’re married, please check out the marriage retreat as well. If you have kids or you feel like you need more resiliency in your own life, if life just feels like it’s been getting hard, it’s been getting you down during all the coronavirus stuff that has been affecting so many people in so many ways, um, then invest $50 in yourself for this and, uh, come be with us on the 31st, check it out and see what you can do.
Speaker 2 00:53:09 Will you tell them about how we’re limiting the space so that we, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:53:14 Yup. Yeah. So, um, I mentioned coronavirus restrictions that is in place right now at the time of us booking the space that this be done in. And so we have, um, social distancing restrictions where, where we need to honor that and make sure that it’s safe for people to be in the same space, but not crowded and not too close to each other. We need room to, um, get around with cameras and to get different shots and things. So, um, we’re going to be making sure that the safe, that, uh, that there’s room and that everything is comfortable for you there, that, uh, that, that means that we have to pay full price for a larger space and limit the number of attendees who are able to, um, to come into that. So, um, it is limited to, um, 40 participants and maybe even less, because that actually hands, I need to talk to you about, um, we’re able to take 40 couples for the marriage retreat, but they told us that the couples can sit together because they’re arriving, they’re coming in the same car together. They sleep in the same bed together. Um, for the resiliency workshop, we might have to space that out a little bit more. So, um, that may be limited to 30, even 20 people that were able to take in that workshop.
Speaker 1 00:54:45 So if you’re interested in this, get in early, that’s the that’s the point he’s making is, is once it sells out, it sells out guys. I’m so excited to come back to Utah. This is my home state. This is home for me. And I love to, I love to participate back home and do this for people. Uh, I don’t have a lot of time. I’m flowing around the nation to give a lot of these seminars, to people, to train actual therapists, to do some of the advanced stuff I’m doing. And so there’s not this isn’t going to be as common as some people might hope. Um, these are kind of, uh, these are kind of when they’re there, you gotta jump on them, cause you don’t know when they’re coming back. Um, and so, uh, I would encourage you if you’re interested, this is, this is something you’re going to want to do, and you’ll probably never see these prices again, this is, this is a, a onetime deal that I think many people are going to realize Holy cow. Um, that was, that was the best deal I could have ever gotten.
Speaker 2 00:55:46 Awesome. Great. Well, thank you, dr. Watson, I’m excited for all of this. Again, go to university.com new university, elite.com forward slash live for all our live events and, uh, get registered early because space is limited and it’s going to fill up quick. Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:56:06 Bye now.
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Speaker 1 00:00:08 Welcome to the university lead mental health podcast, where your host, dr. Hands Watson helps you to learn the why behind mental health issues that you or someone you love may be facing. Dr. Watson is a nationally renowned psychiatrist who is also an expert in psychotherapy, a war proven leader of the U S military. And the only person we know to be an expert in psychiatry, psychodynamics, diet, the leadership, the trauma addiction, marriage education, and more. That’s why he was the expert that was flown in to the other side of the country to train the therapists, treating the victims and their families. After the recent mass shootings you heard about in Florida, we are excited to help you to understand the why behind some real life situations. And now your host, dr. Hans Watson, D O
Speaker 1 00:01:10 Welcome back everybody to another podcast by university elite, where we’re here. Uh, you get to sit in on Jeremy and I having a conversation and answering a question that was asked to us. So let’s, uh, let’s jump right in Jeremy, somebody popped on and they’ve, they’ve come to the university elite.com website and they scroll down to the ask the doc. So what’s our question we were talking about today is how do I heal when I have been betrayed in my marriage? What a good question, but, uh, what a fun topic, uh, uh, fun for us to talk about, not quite as fun to live through. Um, and so, uh, there’s a couple of different areas that this could take. Uh, do you know, did they specify in there, or do we need to hit both? I can think of two different ways to look at this.
Speaker 1 00:01:56 The first would be, how does the individual heal? And then the second would be, how does the merit shield did, did they specify in this or do we just need to hit both or something else? They said, how do I heal? But in my opinion, I think both are, are important to an address. Okay. Everybody, Jeremy has made the executive decision. We’re going to address both because of that. So, so, um, you know, this is, this is a really true statement. I remember working with, um, I remember working with one individual who, uh, had had a, had a spouse, or there was some infidelity in their marriage. Um, and I still remember them saying, how can I heal from this? And to the surprise, I was just young. And my trainee to the surprise was it wasn’t the, it was the cheater who was asking how to heal from having been unfaithful and year had been forgiven. And so it’s important to recognize, first of all, it’s not just one side that is affected by such a, a difficult thing as betrayal. And so, so, uh, that story really opened my eyes up to just how a betrayal, um, can do that. And, and, um, I guess
Speaker 2 00:03:21 It’s just hard to wrap your head around right now that that feels like it would be kind of difficult to, to understand or to, to see that when you’ve been victimized, it’s hard to see the other person as any sort of a victim.
Speaker 1 00:03:39 And, and I’ll, I’ll use one simple saying that everybody’s heard a hundred times to demonstrate this point, who is our harshest critic.
Speaker 2 00:03:49 Right. Okay. That makes sense.
Speaker 1 00:03:55 Yeah. Yeah. That you think you have a hard time forgiving somebody else when you can see they’ve changed, but it’s even more difficult to forgive ourselves. And so how people react to that is incredibly different. Some people become isolated, some people become angry, some people become overly kind towards, it’s not even natural. Um, other people get into therapy where they actually can receive some help and do it in a healthy way. So there’s, there’s many different ways they can do that. So, so, uh, and I think we ought to, um, a lot of people immediately say betrayal is something that happens when there’s infidelity, when somebody has an affair and I want to break down infidelity. Yeah. I want to break that myth. In my opinion, that’s just the most severe form of infidelity and betrayal. But I want to talk about this and talk about it to a level that we can help anybody who is wondering about this, to have an idea of where to start and how to improve. So, so let’s, let’s define that sometimes, um, uh, betrayal could be as simple as, as a couple who have made an agreement to stick to a budget. What if one, couple, uh, one individual in that couple doesn’t keep the budget. Is that a betrayal?
Speaker 2 00:05:14 Yeah, I would say so.
Speaker 1 00:05:17 Absolutely. Absolutely. Without a doubt, betrayal simply means my trust has been broken on some level. So as we do this, keep in mind, we’re not just talking about emotional, uh, emotional or physical infidelity, cheating, and having an affair. We’re talking about, you had a responsibility because you had given your word to do something you failed in your duty to do that. And, um, sometimes it can even be betrayal when your partner did nothing wrong, but you had an unspoken expectation and they didn’t meet it. And you were sure they were going to meet it. And for some reason, in relationships, many people have this belief that the other person can magically read their mind. They don’t consciously have that, that belief, but unconsciously, they think, well, I gave you hints all along, only a blind man. Wouldn’t see this or a blind woman for that, that, uh,
Speaker 2 00:06:18 Okay. So, so who’s the betrayer in that situation, then
Speaker 1 00:06:22 You can be a betrayer without actually doing something wrong because you have not fulfilled something they trusted you to do. Does that make you guilty of doing something wrong? No, but can it still feel like a betrayal to that person who thought I trusted you to do this and you didn’t.
Speaker 2 00:06:47 Okay. So you’re saying that it’s not actual betrayal committed by the betrayer, but it feels to the, to the person with the expectation, like they have been betrayed. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:07:02 Yes. And that goes back to the definition of betrayal trail, which is breaking trust. You had trust in somebody that they were going to do something that trust has been broken.
Speaker 2 00:07:12 Okay. So my question real quick would be, what about that person not expressing or not clearly communicating that expectation? Isn’t that affordable
Speaker 1 00:07:21 The trail as well? Yes. Yes. This is very good. And oftentimes in therapy, that’s some of the more advanced stuff we’ve worked with people on is you betrayed them by not expressing what your expectations were. You essentially didn’t give them the answer key to what a win was going to look like. So you left them with no option except to disappoint you and loose. And that is a betrayal in somebody that says, well, for instance, if they’re married, if I’m married, you it’s for better or worse, you’re supposed to help me to see what better or worse for you looks like. And if you haven’t done that, which most average people, haven’t, it’s only elite, uh, relationships that do that. Suddenly you could betray somebody by simply not sharing what your vision is and working out with them. But that’s dangerous because if I do that unconsciously, now I’m on the hook and I have a responsibility to then hear your expectations and live up to your expectations. So you’re raising the bar. And so sometimes that betrayal is a failure of one party to explain what success will look like to the other party. But that’s some pretty, pretty intense unconscious stuff there. And the reason we avoid it, because it actually makes us accountable and that’s harder than floating along, hoping happily ever after will happen.
Speaker 2 00:08:59 Right. Wow. Wow. This gets really deep. And it feels like it could almost be an escalating situation because I, as you’re describing that, I’m even seeing other layers of betrayal where if one partner says, I want to express my expectations, I want to make that clear. But then their partner is not receptive of that. It’s kind of like, you’re, you’re putting yourself out there and trusting that they will value what matters to you. And that can be shot down as well. And so you’re explaining though that, um, they should hear was valuable to them, but that also gives them the right to explain. What’s valuable, um, on their end and somewhere, you need to work to meet somewhere in the middle and honor those things and may not be able to say yes to everything that the other person expects, but that’s like give and take a go relationship, right?
Speaker 1 00:10:09 That’s the dance of a relationship. I always call it. So I do marriage retreats and marriage seminars. And I I’ll tell, I’ll give you a hint. We have one coming up here for, for some people. And I’ll tell you about that here in a minute, but I want to make my point first. And that is, you know, in those seminars, I spend a decent amount of time just explaining to people why that vision is necessary and explaining why it’s normal. That most average couples will never do that. And we talk about the unconscious reasons. Why, because you got to remember at university elite, I’m not about making you comfortable. I’m about making you so strong that you get to be comfortable without me, that you no longer need me in the future. I want you to get so good that you no longer need to see a psychiatrist.
Speaker 1 00:10:59 And so when you’re with me, that is not the time I’m trying to make you comfortable. That’s where I’m trying to make you strong. And so one of the things we do there is we explore why people would want to avoid that shared vision, because it’s a lot more pressure and you actually have to actually then sometimes abandon your family traditions and make new traditions with this person you’ve chosen to marry who came from a different family. And so you can see how that brings up so many emotions, but I love my mom and dad and the way they did it, are you telling me that’s wrong? No, it just, I’m not your mom or your dad. And you know, we’re not going to have an intimate relationship with either of those people. So we have to do it. Something that’s going to work for our relationship, not theirs that worked for them and your family.
Speaker 1 00:11:50 You’re no longer part of their immediate. They are now extended family. And now if you want to be strong, not comfortable at this moment, but strong, then you are going to have to sit down and do a shared vision with me here. What I am expecting here, what you’re expecting. And then we fight about it. And I use the term fight, not as in be mean to each other, but negotiate and work through until both of you are off your comfort zones and somewhere in the middle where you could live with it, but it’s worth it because that person you love.
Speaker 2 00:12:24 Well, it also takes away the excuse of saying, Oh, I didn’t know that’s what you wanted. And that’s another reason I could see that this would be hard.
Speaker 1 00:12:34 You know, I had, I had a couple, uh, I don’t remember if it was late in my training or just after my training had a completed. And I had a couple that came in. And by this time I had kind of figured things out and I was really starting to hone my craft. And I was, uh, it was the point where even sometimes some of my supervisors, I still remember the one supervisor. And I asked a question about this and the supervisor had no clue and said, I don’t know, let’s both read and come back. And I, I had an idea. And so I talked with my good buddy who he and I had been the ones that had just put our heads together and work. And we came up with an idea and then I found some actual books on this. Uh, the Salvador Minutian was a big one and we were dead off.
Speaker 1 00:13:15 Well, excuse me. I had to sneeze there. So, um, yeah, so that couple though, they came in and they, um, and they came in and the first thing is, I said, I need to know your vision. And in this couple, the gentleman said, okay. And he laid out his vision and it took the full hour. And I said, that’s fine. The next hour, um, your wife there gets to lay out her vision. And I think I was probably the third one to do over the last 10 years to do marriage therapy. And they came back in that second time and they, she laid hers out and he was so uncomfortable having her expectations hurt. And she, he just to be quite honest, um, he was a bit of a spoiled brat and, and he just couldn’t handle it. And it was funny. They met with me one more time after she laid it out.
Speaker 1 00:14:08 And on that time, I kept saying, okay, this fits yours, sir. Your expectations, how were you reciprocating her expectations to make it equal? Cause I’m a marriage. It doesn’t have to be, everything is the same, but you do need equal. Meaning it may be that I enjoy, uh, playing a video game. And so if I get an hour of video game we’ll, then she may enjoy shopping. So how is he going to enable her an hour of shopping? And so, so, you know, it doesn’t have to be the same, but it needs to be equal and he could not tolerate that. And you just watched his buddy and he, he started getting angry and they started it. And then I got a call the next week saying, you know what we think we’re doing so well, we no longer need therapy. Wow. And immediately of course I said, Oh, well, would you come in for one more session?
Speaker 1 00:15:03 And she said, yeah, I think we would. And then I heard in the background, we’re not going back there from that gentleman, actually, I think we’re good. We don’t need to come back. Thank you for your time. And I thank them for their time. So you’re always welcome back. Um, and then they ended up not calling back, uh, but you looked at it and what was clearly what’s going on there. They are struggling with betrayal, right? But they weren’t willing to do one party was not willing to do the hard work of being on the hook to be accountable for what the other person is doing. And so what can I say about that? Where that marriage, it was already on the rocks. And if, if it continued like this, it ended that person would have left the marriage because it was, it was just too hard to be married.
Speaker 1 00:15:52 I want to be, have my way all the time. So, so you can see how that’s a betrayal, the marriage, cause you say better or worse that infers you’re coming in. So, so, um, interesting how that works. Yeah. It really is fascinating. So with that, I guess we get to the point of saying, all right, so now we have kind of a view of what of a trail looks like, and it can be anything you think from I’m failing to give you the answers to what a success looks like. Or I’m failing to give you equal privileges in this marriage. I’m failing to, uh, I’m failing to give you 50% of the control. We’ve talked about that before. We about that a lot in our marriage retreats. Hey, if you want to go ahead and get married and have a healthy marriage, not an easy marriage, but a healthy and reward marriage.
Speaker 1 00:16:50 Guess what you’re committing to? When you get married, this is the one, a lot of people don’t like, but sorry, this is reality for healthy marriages. And that is you are seeing 50% control of your life over the person you are marrying. And they are seeing you to control 50% of their life. Now, which 50% D are you going to control? That’s where the debate happens between the two that’s where you work it out and find out what works for you. And so that’s, that’s, uh, something that, that we talk about in that class. And that is where you start getting in there and you, you start saying, Oh boy, how does this go forward? And so the first thing I always tell people when we’re in this Mitch merit seminar, when we’re talking about betrayal and how we get healed from it, first thing we have to do, and anybody who’s watched the podcasts or read the stuff from the website, university, elite doctor, they already know where I’m going. You have to understand why that a betrayal to you.
Speaker 1 00:17:52 There will be times where a couple would be willing to share their expectations. They’ve just never seen an example of such that that might mean that their parents worked it out long before they were old enough to observe it. That might mean that their parents never did that. They have parents who are just a tight suit whenever they fight, they isolate and run away and pretend that problem doesn’t be there or parents who just blow up and yell at each other and become very angry at me instead of working through it and saying, okay, wow, I didn’t have any clue. That was your expectation. Let’s talk about that. Let’s navigate let’s, let’s find something some way of being able to compromise on what the expectation is. And so they may come out and they’ll say, I had no idea, but that doesn’t make it any less of a betrayal to them emotionally.
Speaker 1 00:18:44 And so how can they do that? The first way is recognize why it’s a betrayal. If you recognize why it’s a betrayal, oftentimes then you’ll realize, wow, this person who has hurt me, they didn’t try to hurt me. They, my emotions told me they were really coming after me and they didn’t care for me. And now I’m realizing it may not have been any of those things. It felt that way, but maybe they’re, they weren’t quite as harsh as I thought, maybe this was just a problem of us not being on the same page with expectations. And then that this represented a, B or C. And then we talked about why does that individual therapy? Why would that represent a, B or C? And suddenly they become, Oh my gosh, it’s because of an experience I had when my parents were growing up and that formed this, this opinion in me, wow.
Speaker 1 00:19:40 That doesn’t fit at all to this scenario. We’re talking about, you can see why immediately learn the why that it feels like a betrayal. And some of these are going to be obvious, okay. This person went and had sex with somebody. Who’s not me. That was pretty obvious, but you still need to dig deeper. What does that say? What does that mean? What are they saying about you? Oh, okay. And what emotions that bring up, what fears does that, does that wake in? You do. And so understanding, first of all, the why that, that is a betrayal to your deeper than just because it’s wrong because my religion says no, no, personally, what does that say about you? What is that communicating? If you’ll do that, that’s the first step in being able to heal, because then you’re able to say this and this, and it’s going to give you a benchmark to what, what would be a repairing, what they can do to a tone for that, how they show you that they are worthy of forgiveness. And it’s not necessarily letting them off the hook or saying, Oh, this is okay, because it’s just
Speaker 2 00:20:48 The way I was raised to view this wrong. It’s actually identifying why it legitimately was wrong and harm to the marriage so that they know what building blocks are broken and where the foundation needs to be repaired.
Speaker 1 00:21:07 And even if it’s not a harm to the message, why that was harmful to the patient, to the, to the individual. Cause maybe they’re not a patient. Maybe they’re watching this and they’re, they’re just getting good tips off of here. And the key there is yes. Why? Because if I understand why that was harmful to you, not only does that help the individual to then be able to, uh, check their emotions and see if it’s reality or just emotions. And here’s a hint. Most of the time, emotions are not very accurate, but they’re very quick to come to conclusions. And then secondly, that allows them then to not only understand themselves, it allows their partner to understand why they now, once you have that understanding, now they can have some of that share in some of that emotion. And so they’re less likely to hurt you because once you share an emotion, if I hurt you, it’s actually going to hurt me too. Cause I’m sharing with you that emotion. And that’s where it’s part of that. Learning to forgive yourself comes in because now you’ve hurt your spouse, who you care for deeply. That’s also hurt you. So after you have a tone to your spouse, now you have to tell it to yourself and you don’t understand why that hurt them. How are you going to look and say, how can I ensure I don’t hurt them again? And, and secondarily hurt myself again like this.
Speaker 2 00:22:35 Right? Okay. And so what if both parties, maybe I’m jumping ahead or opt to the side here. This is a conversation. Okay. Well, what if both parties legitimately feel like they have been betrayed? And so they’re not able to see the hurt that they’ve caused the other person because they’re, I don’t know, maybe using this as an excuse to say, wait, hold on. Don’t tell me that I betrayed you. You did this to me. And I don’t know.
Speaker 1 00:23:12 So that would make you, if you could, this type of a situation in your relationship, do you know what that would make you normal? Every relationship that’s fighting to grow together, experiences this some way. It’s not an indication of good, a bad partner is not a good indication of a good and bad marriage. It’s an indication that look, you haven’t worked everything out yet. So let’s not pretend it means anything more than that until we know the exact circumstance of that. So how do you do that? So the first thing you have to do is if the two of you, if you cannot stand to hear what the other person sees as a betrayal in you, you need to get professional help to where it will feel safe to hear somebody else’s critique of you. Because if you’re in a marriage, here’s the spoiler lower.
Speaker 1 00:24:07 Once again, you are committing to being somebody that has said, I am going to allow you, let me, let me rephrase that. If you are in a healthy marriage that is strong, you are committing to being critiqued by this person who you love. And if you thought I can’t stand to be critiqued by them, then either a, you aren’t mature enough to be married when you got married, which guess what many of us have successful healthy marriages? And we married when we weren’t healthy enough. That’s why it’s called growing up. And we never saw, but secondly, you may not be somebody who has learned to trust another person and have it. You may not. And what is the foundation of all trust self-confidence. So what if you haven’t built the self esteem and that self confidence enough to be able to tolerate hearing critique of yourself and then be able to say I’m still a worthwhile spouse and individual, even though I’ve screwed something up, I can hear that.
Speaker 1 00:25:16 And I’m not so fragile that I, that I have to defend against that. If you are, don’t worry. That doesn’t mean anything. It just means you’re in that place, right there, get professional help so that you get to a place. And if that therapist, as you know, on the, uh, on our, um, evaluating your therapist, uh, podcasts that we put, that we give the secret website to on the end of the three false beliefs, a webinar that’s found on the website, as you know, one of the criteria there is, does your therapist push you to look at yourself? That’s one of the things that you must do. If, if, if one party cannot look at themselves, it feels too devastating. We’ll often see that come across as no, no. Well you, and, and then the other will you. And what they’re both saying is, okay, after you hear me, I not going to be able to hear you out.
Speaker 1 00:26:13 This person does not have the maturity to have a healthy marriage. That’s kind of a brutal truth. And it’s not meant to call anybody that many people that have worked with me come out of it on the backend after months. Sometimes it takes them years, but many of them it’s months. And guess what? They have developed an ability, at least on some level to start looking at themselves. So if one party, can’t sorry, your marriage can’t be healthy, but that doesn’t mean it’s over. It means time to get to work with somebody like doc Watson or university league, where we are actually going to pound that. And we’re going to get you so comfortable with being discomfort in discomfort that you’re actually going to realize you’re still an okay person, even if you’re being critiqued. And so does that answer your question or did I talk a lot and maybe
Speaker 2 00:27:06 No, that was fantastic.
Speaker 1 00:27:08 Okay, good. Now that we bring up a couple of things there. So how do you build resiliency? A remind me at the end, and I’ll tell you about a resiliency seminar that I’m putting on here shortly. Um, but how do you build resiliency? Well, the key with resiliency is you got to work through some things that are hard for yourself. And we did a full podcast on resiliency. I actually went on to the number one parenting podcast and they’re releasing, I believe next week I resiliency podcasts that I put on with them. And it’s, it’s actually really hard to do easy to explain, but that’s what you do in therapy. I’ve never built. Resiliency helped me to do that doc and we build resiliency and it doesn’t come from the, do you remember? Saturday night live? We had a guy named Stuart Smalley and he would say, I’m good enough.
Speaker 1 00:28:00 I’m smart enough. I’m handsome enough. I don’t remember the exact one and doggone it. People like me. And do you know what that does for resiliency, but nothing. There’s a reason they’re making fun of it because bad therapists will tell you. That’s all you have to do is positive reinforcement. Just say good things. No, your unconscious isn’t stupid. It may not be as smart as your frontal lobe. It’s not stupid. It knows. And so does your frontal lobe? It knows that we have weaknesses, warts, emotional inadequacies, and to pretend to be like, hi, I’m smart enough. I’m good. No, that’s just a silly as the Saturday night live character. And so we don’t do that in resiliency. It’s how do we confront things that we’ve been avoiding forever?
Speaker 2 00:28:46 Interesting. Okay. I was just going to say, cause I’ve, I’ve heard many times in many different places that the subconscious can’t tell the difference between truth or a lie that just takes whatever you tell it for a fact. So you’re saying that no, in fact, it’s smarter than that. It’s a little smarter than that. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:29:09 Very quick. And, and here’s the other thing your, your unconscious gets very good at doubting those emotions come up very quickly to where they’re saying, Holy cow, I I’m wondering if
Speaker 2 00:29:24 This is worse than it really is. Right?
Speaker 1 00:29:28 So that part right there is very powerful. And so anybody who, who doesn’t get in there to where they logically can work through that with a therapist, shoo, why would you ever want to do that? That just sounds hard. And what if I, what if I have come to grips with something that I hate about myself,
Speaker 3 00:29:44 Right? Well,
Speaker 1 00:29:45 You have a choice. You can either come to grips with that and realize that it may not be as true as your emotions tell you are, you can have an unhappy marriage, but you can’t have both. You can’t have comfort right. This moment and a happy marriage.
Speaker 3 00:30:00 Okay.
Speaker 1 00:30:01 It’s kind of brutal when we get in there. And why does this matter? Because marriage is the one thing and family are the one thing that builds our self esteem, our competency, our confidence, many of our abilities, our cognition there is I’ve not found anything that is a stronger influence on it.
Speaker 3 00:30:21 Any of those. And so
Speaker 1 00:30:23 This first one that we’re talking about, that we’ve been talking now for many minutes, if you don’t understand the why behind,
Speaker 3 00:30:29 Hi, how are you?
Speaker 1 00:30:32 You’re going to work on the thing that’s making you feel inadequate so that you have no self esteem, right? Are you going to work on a and then the second part there is, how are you going to learn to do this? If you don’t go there. And so if you have a, if you have a therapist and as we’ve talked about before, if you’re a bad therapist, where is the place that oftentimes you will retreat
Speaker 3 00:30:56 Per my observation, um, your own experience, marriage therapy,
Speaker 1 00:31:03 Right? In marriage therapy, because there’s extra people in the room. We can distract too. When we feel overwhelmed, when we’ve exceeded our competency, now we can just let them fight in the room and act like, somehow we know what’s going on. And how do I know this? Because I work with the therapists who come to me and say, doc Watson, I want a peer consultation. And we will, we will take, and we will, um, they will talk about what happened in the session. They’ll do D identify everything. So I don’t have a clue who they are, the patients are, and we’ll talk about it. And sometimes they’ll even bring in YouTube videos and we’ll watch the YouTube videos. And how do I know? Because they’ll say, okay, what’s going on right there. And they’ll say, I don’t know. And then we have to stop and say, stop.
Speaker 1 00:31:50 What’s the why behind this person, what they’re doing. And I say, I don’t know. And we use our whole time just helping them see that. And they said, I had no clue any of this is going on. And when they see the why suddenly go, that means he did this because of this. And she responded because of this and that’s their pattern. And then they get in that pattern and they just fight that’s right. So what’s the root of the, why the, why was because he couldn’t tolerate it using our first couple. Therefore he finds an excuse to not come back. And she’s an enabler because she’s afraid she has low self esteem. So she’s afraid if he leaves, she’ll never get another guy.
Speaker 3 00:32:24 And so now
Speaker 1 00:32:24 They do that codependency thing.
Speaker 3 00:32:28 Right?
Speaker 1 00:32:29 Can you see there? How, how, um, so it’s sad, but my experience has been, if you are a terrible therapist, you’re going to net, you’re going to eventually find yourself doing couples therapy.
Speaker 3 00:32:43 Interesting. Wow. So if you’re looking for couples therapy,
Speaker 1 00:32:48 Be where you need to be very careful who you take. Now, one of the first things you should do is say, is this person forcing both individuals to hear hard things about themselves? If they’re not, you want to question whether they have the competency to be doing it,
Speaker 3 00:33:09 Work with you. Wow. Talk about a betrayal. Yes.
Speaker 1 00:33:14 And, and sadly then say, say, you’re the person in therapy. So you’re that young lady who I had late, late in training, early after training. And you’re that lady who was willing to come in and talk about expectations and talk about how she may be failing them. And then to have your husband say, I’m not going back because they’re wanting you to have equal expectations as I have. And I have to meet them. You tell me she wouldn’t feel betrayed on the back end of that. When she finally realized he’s not willing to meet me halfway.
Speaker 3 00:33:45 Absolutely. And so you, you see how this betrayal happens. And so
Speaker 1 00:33:51 If we understand the cause, then we can start assigning faults when necessary. And this is scary for a lot of people. You notice. I said, when necessary, this is incredibly terrifying to many people, because what if the person I was assigning fault to wasn’t actually at fault for everything I said, they were just the ones closest to me that weren’t willing that weren’t going to reject me. If I blame them,
Speaker 3 00:34:27 Explain that, okay.
Speaker 1 00:34:30 Sometimes
Speaker 3 00:34:32 When we’re angry and we all do it
Speaker 1 00:34:35 Unconsciously, we know, Hey, my wife or my husband is with me no matter what. And I have slow furious with the way they’ve treated me at work, what do we do? We come home and the wife or the husband leaves the light on, but they’ve relieved through. And we’ve set an expectation. We need to turn the light off when we leave the room so that we’re saving the planet so that we’re reducing the power bill. And so that it shows that we are people who clean up after ourselves. We pick all the reasons you want, right. But there’s an expectation to turn out the light and we fly off the handle just absolutely caught on glued to them. This is the end of the world. You’ve left on a light, actually, that, that happened to me. And that’s probably where the thought came out. I came home from Afghanistan and immediately when the light was left on, I was flipping out and my wife was going, I haven’t seen you for well over a year, pushing on a year and a half.
Speaker 1 00:35:35 And I leave a light on and were flipping out and it was causing marriage problems. And this was before I was a doctor. And so I didn’t have a clue it’s happening. And I’m just saying, I know it’s just a light left on, but it’s, it’s important. And so we finally went to, to a guy who actually did pretty good marriage therapy. He was a chaplain and he just said, you don’t need therapy. But I would like to explain what’s going on to you guys for just a minute, because normally I don’t know I would send you, but in this case, I do know what’s going on because I spent so much time dealing with soldiers who were returning from war and their spouses. And so he said, this is the one little sliver I’ve been trained on. And I feel comfortable giving you. Let’s just talk about it for less than an hour.
Speaker 1 00:36:20 If you need more than that at the end, I need refer you to a professional. We said, perfect. And he hit the nail on the head with this one sliver of an area he was good at. And he actually said to my wife, now you are probably looking at him going. I cannot believe that you would freak out so much. When that baby of yours, I had a little baby who was just, uh, she was four months old when I left. She was two when I came home. So if that tells you and that little baby, when she cried, it just sent me buzzard too. I just had to get out of there. And then the light switch, they leave a light on. And it just, it just w and then it was unacceptable that she wasn’t taking this light seriously. That was a betrayal to me.
Speaker 1 00:37:09 So he then talked about that. And he said to my wife, what a big trailer. He freaks out when that child cries like that, or that he freaks out. When I I’ve been doing this for, for a year and a half alone. And suddenly he comes home and he’s going to get mad at me for just leaving a light on. And then he said, and that we were, we were mad at each other. We were so incredibly happy. And it wasn’t like our marriage was breaking apart, but we were angry. We both felt betrayed. So he had the insight to teach us. He said, Hanse, you’ve just come from a year and a half of being in combat. What happens when somebody makes a tiny mistake in combat? I say, people die. That’s life and death. And he said, yes. And your mind for a year and a half has kept you alive by watching for tiny little mistakes, because it made a difference on the battlefield.
Speaker 1 00:38:00 And soldiers started crying. What did that mean? That meant they were no longer capable. They were out of the fight. They had become overwhelmed. And now, whatever sector they were covering was a place. The enemy could overrun us and become a liability rather than an asset. Yes. Life is on the line again, he’s explaining. And my wife goes, well, I didn’t understand that crying, represented. There’s a liability. We’re no longer safe because they’re no longer covering their sector. Right. And did you understand that leaving a light on represented a mistake that could kill somebody? And she was like, no, that sounds terrible. Oh my goodness, what have you gone through? And I’ll be honest. I had PTSD. Then he said to me, Hanse, are you aware? She has had to learn to live with you out you for a year and a half. And she has done a great job and showing you a lot of love.
Speaker 1 00:38:58 What’s it like for her now to have somebody come back in and say, yeah, good job. You did it for a year and a half, but I’m home. Now. I’m here to take over. And the way you did it, it may not be very good. Well, I didn’t mean to, I never meant to, to, to communicate this. And, and of course now suddenly both of us in their head completely changed. And I was thinking, I am so sorry for freaking out over crying. I just need to retrain my emotions. That crying does not represent an uncovered sector where we’re going to die and leaving a light on is not a mistake. That’s going to result in death. And she then said, I need to be patient when he sees a light left on this. Wow. I never had any clue that sort of how detailed his survival instinct to become, I’m going to be patient while he learns to flip out less on turning out.
Speaker 1 00:39:51 Like, and I’ll be honest with you. If you ask my kids, they’d probably say that I still am a night, turn off, uh, uh, drill sergeants, if you will. And one 10th of what it used to be, but can you see how we, by understanding why that mattered to us? How suddenly neither of us had betrayed the other per person, right? Both of us felt betrayal. That’s what I’m trying to explain is many times in good marriage therapy. We don’t need to blame somebody. We need to help them to understand what’s going on and why it matters in each of their lives. And now suddenly my wife and I combined a vision of when you’re feeling that way, would you pay attention to your emotions and tell me if it feels something dangerous now, work through with you, whether this is life and death, whether this is something from Afghanistan that you’re, you’re still working through.
Speaker 1 00:40:49 And I said, if it feels to you, like I am flipping out about something that is insignificant, will you tell me? And I will work on re reorienting my mind to say, this is not Afghanistan. That’s my past. It’s not my present. And suddenly we grew so much closer through that. And I now had an ally who understood me. And you wouldn’t believe how grateful I was when she’s that started working with me, right? From being betrayed by each other to saying our betrayal is not, my betrayal is not your fault, but we’re going to have to work together to overcome it. I know it’s not fair, but I will take on the burden of helping you to become better. Even though I didn’t cause this and that made me grow so much closer to my wife. And it made her grow so much closer to me that she could serve me in this way.
Speaker 1 00:41:45 And then, then, then I could reciprocate it. And in many ways it became the start of us trying to always say, I owe so much to you. I’m going to serve you so much and make your life so great to where then she’s, Oh, you want to make my life great. I’m going to one up you and make your life great. I’m going to serve you even more. And I’m like, Oh no, you don’t. Then you see why it was uncomfortable for us to do this and why it was uncomfortable that we lost our crutch of having somebody to blame, but losing that crutch was what made it so that we can then grow together and become stronger. And I had to admit that I was freaking out about something that was insignificant. And I had to admit that she was neglecting, uh, understanding where I was coming from and what I had been through. And I had to, and we both had to admit we had fault in this, but neither of us was to blame.
Speaker 2 00:42:43 Right? So the fascinating thing is, you’re explaining this as I’m trying to picture how this could have gone differently. And what I’m sensing is that you were in your fight or flight mode, you’re functioning in the lizard brain. And if someone had just come and said, pants, that’s absolutely inappropriate. That’s absolutely not reasonable that you are behaving in a horrible way towards this person that you claim to love. How would that have affected that fight or flight mindset? But yet they would’ve felt like a threat and I would have attacked them. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:43:27 It was only when I got to somebody, I trusted like that chaplain. I knew he had nothing, but my best intentions, there was no ulterior motive. He didn’t make any different money. His job didn’t change his entire focus with everything he does was to help me. It had to be a trusted individual. It couldn’t be somebody else before I could hear that.
Speaker 2 00:43:51 And they weren’t just saying, this is just unreasonable. You were delving into why is this happening and understanding what was going on
Speaker 1 00:44:02 In a safe place? Where I knew, if, if he told me I was being ridiculous, I knew it was a safe place where he would still have brotherly love for me, and that he would still see me as a worthwhile individual. So I could hear that. That’s the key. That’s why it must be a competent therapist who, you know, loves you in an inappropriate way and still sees the positive in you. Even if they see your warts and your emotional scars, that’s what a good therapist has to establish. And I’m going to be honest with you, a therapist who then betrays the very ethics of doing psychotherapy and chooses a side ruins that they destroy that ability. And they can make that worse. Cause now it feels like you’re being attacked by a second person. And they’re probably using their credentials to defend against you pointing out that they are being unfair and attacking you.
Speaker 1 00:45:04 Wow. Wow. And so that’s, that’s a lot of heat, isn’t it on, on, on, but here’s the, here’s the truth. What have I seen over and over and over? Why is it that people tell me they 30, 40, 50 years, not actually, I don’t know if anybody’s ever come to me at 50 years, 40 something years is the longest I’ve had in a couple company. And, but what do they tell me? Why is it that I keep hearing? Why didn’t somebody tell me this decades ago, after months with you, we have figured out more than anything else. All of these multiple providers before, till because the single place where I’ve noticed that people who have inadequate skills in psychotherapy go-to is they get out of being one-on-one in the room because now it’s evident and they need somebody else to distract and they’ll go into marriage.
Speaker 1 00:45:53 And this isn’t to say, there are many good marriage therapists, right? But there are also, it goes back to my old saying, there’s a lot of marriage therapy out there. And if you look hard enough, you can actually find some that’s good. Right? So that’s where you want that seven point provider to be your marriage therapist, not six, not five. This is way too in depth. There’s way too much. You need somebody with a great psychodynamic and systems understanding they’ve got to have that it’s necessary. Otherwise they’re probably going to make things worse. I seen Marin many marriages that could’ve survived, lost because of this.
Speaker 1 00:46:35 I know because I’m the one who tutors, who mentors these people to get better. And they go, I wish I would’ve known this. Why didn’t they treat it, teach me this. And I have to tell them, this is tens of thousands of hours of learning that I’m sharing with you. You’re getting the benefit of my obsession with knowing what’s the why and understanding this is good. And so, uh, all right. So does that, does that help us so first understand the why behind what it’s doing? And then second is we have to understand where the fault lies and that doesn’t always land with a person, right? That’s the important thing. And that allows us to then feel like we’re not being blamed and hear critiques and change. And it becomes a safe environment in our marriage to do that. Now, sometimes there are things to buy, but I’ll, I’ll be honest with you. I have worked with many victims of rape victims of, of infidelity, many victims of these terrible things. And you know what? I’ve never found one single person that didn’t have something they can improve on that doesn’t make it their fault. That doesn’t make them less of a victim, but can they grow stronger if they improve something? Yes, I’ve never, I’ll even go one further. I’ve never seen an affair where there wasn’t some sort of betrayal by the victim first.
Speaker 2 00:48:06 Wow.
Speaker 1 00:48:08 So, so does that make the affair any less harmful? And does it take away any of that guilt or culpability of that cheater? Not one I ODA, but it takes two to tango. And that’s where you’ve got to establish. You’ve got to get a good person in a safe environment. If you want to find strength and, and improvement in your marriage, if you just want comfort, pick anybody, there’s a lot of people that will put you in that comfort cocoon and tell you who are you? You’re a victim and you may be a victim. And sometimes that’s okay and never push you is where that comfort, who could, is to look at yourself and say, okay, even though it’s not my fault that I’m a victim, what could I improve? I had, here’s a simple example. I had one young lady had been a victim of multiple rapes, multiple, and it was a terrible situation.
Speaker 1 00:49:05 And I worked with this young lady and do you know what she had a habit of doing whenever she became emotionally overwhelmed, very attractive individual. And she would put on short shorts, a tank top, both of which showed a lot of skin running shorts and a tank top. Um, and, and then would go running at one or two in the morning in very, very dangerous neighborhoods. And every one of her assaults had happened on in nights where that happened. So we had to get into the psychodynamics of why would you go running in a neighborhood? You know, it’s dangerous in the middle of night. Other people they’ve been assaulted, moderate size. Why would you drink in excess, Annie at a party or something where, you know, this is a high likelihood and we get into that. And then we help them. We don’t blame them. That it’s their fault. Nobody should ever be assaulted. Nobody should ever be harmed, but was there something they could do to reduce the risk? That’s what we look at. It’s not your fault, but you can improve,
Speaker 2 00:50:11 Right? Why are you putting yourself in a dangerous situation where a undesired result is potential or even likely
Speaker 1 00:50:21 Yes. And so, do we blame them? Heck no. Anybody who says they are no, that’s terrible and you’re wrong and you should stop. Is it my job to get them strong enough? They don’t have to worry that they are not going to be in this situation again. Yes. And that’s why we look at it is because I’m not here to make you comfortable. I’m here to make you so strong. You never need me because the rest of your life is going to be filled with comfort. That’s why I do that hard thing. That’s why. And so if you’ve been betrayed in your marriage, I’m sorry. If you want to heal from it first, understand why it hurts you so bad and what inadequacies that brings to the top many times that requires a professional, a seven point provider. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go watch our video, uh, the three false beliefs at the end of it, we give you the seek secret website where you get an assessment on how to assess whether a provider is elite or whether they’re average or less and right. Point system. So
Speaker 2 00:51:22 You have that university of <inaudible> dot com slash webinar, correct?
Speaker 1 00:51:27 Yeah. And so if you do that, and then the second thing there is learn to see where the fault is and be open to the idea that it’s not the person in this case, part of the fault with this terrible assault that happened to those young ladies was that they went running at two in the morning. And the one went running at two in the morning in revealing clothing, in a terrible neighborhood. You want to run into in the morning. Why aren’t you running in there right next to the police department? Right. You know, and, and that was actually one thing we did, it was say, what’s a better neighborhood. You could run. It was such a simple thing. And then while they did that, so they would be safe. We worked on it, we got to it. And that individual ended up realizing some very hard things, strengthened them and was a totally different person.
Speaker 1 00:52:15 After, after working with me, it was you, you wouldn’t have known it was the same person, just totally different. Um, and so that is why we do this. That is how you heal from betrayal. It’s not by talking good enough. It’s not by telling yourself you’re, you’re wonderful. And those things don’t work. You have to teach yourself and actually have real evidence that you’re wonderful. And most of us have it. We just need a professional to help us see it so we can recognize it. And then we need to assign fault where it’s at. Even if that’s not blaming an individual ourselves or anybody else, there’s always a place where there’s fault. And if we do that, you can heal to the point that, that it no longer has the ability to derail you and overwhelming that. And it doesn’t take long. It really doesn’t. I’ve seen marriages heal and become stronger after the fact than they were ever before.
Speaker 2 00:53:13 Wow. That’s so
Speaker 1 00:53:16 Did we answer our question here?
Speaker 2 00:53:19 I think so. So we first need to identify why we feel betrayed. What’s going on ourselves, that this feels like a betrayal and
Speaker 1 00:53:30 It’s not just the using the depression. It’s not just, Oh, because it’s a chemical imbalance who cares? Why is there a chemical imbalance? So what’s the, what’s the deep, why that emotionally we’ve been hiding. So good. Keep going. I’m sorry.
Speaker 2 00:53:43 Okay. No, no, that was good. And then, um, second, I feel like I got so focused on that first one, right there fault that’s right. So, um, identifying where the fault lies and accepting that that fault may not be assigned to a person.
Speaker 1 00:54:06 And then also, uh, you know, that’s really important to realize that it may not be assigned to a person just because we feel anger towards our spouse. Doesn’t always mean they did something wrong. Sometimes it means that’s the only person we trust enough to be able to give this anger off and know that they’re still going to love us. Perfect example we’ve used before. And I steal this from a wonderful book called why do I do that by a guy named Joseph Burgo? I, I love that book. Um, and so, uh, one of the things that he shares in there is an example. And then I, I took it to the next step. I went into the deeper way and he talks about, um, he talks about displacing anger or projecting it onto something else. And, and he talks about mothers. When they have a baby, they are just absolutely wrecked physically from delivering a baby, whether it’s via sectarian, section C-section or vaginal birth, they’re just wrecked.
Speaker 1 00:55:06 And it takes weeks for their body just to heal up the actual tissues. Secondly, now, if you have a child, a newborn who is, who is waking you up every two hours, because their body needs nutrients to grow. And so now, now you’re tired and absolutely just beyond yourself, because you’re healing from, from a traumatic experience of giving birth. And second you are now, um, having to interrupt your sleep all day long to breastfeed or bottle feed, whichever it is. And third, if you’re breastfeeding, what happens? If can that husband breastfeed that child? No. So he can’t even take turns with you much less to say, if you have, if you’re a single mother, that’s a whole nother thing, but so now you don’t even have somebody to breast to take turns breastfeeding so that you can get more than two hours of sleep. You rightly have earned every reason to be angry at your situation. Yeah. What a jerk, but it’s a complete, well that baby is causing this situation,
Speaker 2 00:56:16 Right? No, but I mean, as, as the husband,
Speaker 1 00:56:19 Well, I’m not helping them get to that. So if we were honest with what’s truly going on in our unconscious and our emotions, that mother is absolutely with the baby. Okay. She, it’s not, it’s not acceptable. Be furious. Do to a baby. It’s not their fault. Art is the baby causing this. Yes. Yes. The baby caught, it caused the damage to the mother’s body by being delivered. Right. It’s the baby waking the mother up every two hours. Yes. Right. But it’s unacceptable. And I will say right now it is unacceptable to act out that rage on a child. And if it’s true rage, you eventually will get so tired. It’s true rage. It doesn’t mean you love that child any less. It does not mean there’s anything wrong with you. If at times your emotions are raised towards the child, when you feel that overwhelmed and tired and just exhausted.
Speaker 1 00:57:15 So what does a healthy wife do in that moment? She displaces that anger and rage onto the husband who is asleep. Is he doing anything wrong by being asleep? He can’t do anything to help breastfeed. Now, if you’re like me, I often would wake up and bring the baby to my wife. But is that really helping her to get much more sleep? No, it’s nothing more than a, a small gesture that really doesn’t even matter. And half the time my wife would say it doesn’t even help me. I have to breastfeed in the chair, knock it off. Just keep sleeping. She was wonderful. I’m married up. Let’s just say that way.
Speaker 1 00:57:57 That is a healthy coping mechanism. So now she gets angry at the husband for something, how dare he be asleep in there? And the next day, when he leaves the light on, what does she flip out of that? You leaving the light on this as a big deal and what she’s really saying, and she’s not aware of it is I feel so much rage to that child. I need somebody to displace this rage on two. And once as they become aware of that, cause I’m, I pride myself on working to be a seven my provider, always because I can do that, that I helped the mother see that. And then the mothers actually can talk it out and their husband grows closer. I am so angry that I have to wake up. I love this child more than anything. I love you. I am so angry right now.
Speaker 1 00:58:44 And many times the husband says, let me get home and why don’t I take the child? And you, can you get an extra nap this evening? Right? Hot dog. Right? Notice how understanding that, why leads to that? That’s why you want to set up good point provider right there. Because when mother becomes aware of this, wow, wow. Now what happens if that husband isn’t aware of this and then were betrayed by their wife, attacking them for something? I think it was insignificant, right. Or attacking her child or attacking her children, not feeling as warm as they want them to. Right. And does husband, does he have every right to say, I didn’t do something that deserves this attack. Yes. Right. Is the wife have every right to be frustrated at something and she’s not consciously displacing that. That’s an unconscious
Speaker 2 00:59:38 Thing that she’s doing, right.
Speaker 1 00:59:40 Is she to blame, even though she’s doing that, is she to blame for what’s going on there? No, it’s that new,
Speaker 2 00:59:48 Right?
Speaker 1 00:59:50 Oh, assigned fault to the newborn and said, but that doesn’t make the newborn wrong, but now we can deal with it in a more healthy way, because we have a understood why B understood where the true fault lies. And that allows everybody to come together and work for each other. And if the couples who have done that to have worked through so many problems where they thought that our marriage was over because of the kids, and then they just realized, actually this is the closest we’ve ever been because we’re working together. I’ve never felt closer to my husband or my wife as I can serve them or I’m being served by them. And then I get to reciprocate. You just see how that leads to a healthy marriage and healing from,
Speaker 2 01:00:34 From betrayal. Right. Absolutely. Well, and as you say that, I feel like betrayal is generally a distance in the marriage. One person does something. Well, I guess not in every situation cause you’re explaining sometimes it’s, it’s actually actively engaging with the other person in a way that feels like betrayal, but with the sexual betrayal, um, that always, typically, it seems to be one person saying I’m gonna go over here. So it’s still pulling together and working together as a team, they are going and they’re getting, um, uh, emotional fulfillment elsewhere or they’re getting the physical fulfillment elsewhere. And so as you’re talking about creating a, um, Hey, marriage vision together and communicating in a way where you start to understand why the other person texts the way they tick and it just, it all makes sense of that would strengthen a marriage. And that’s really what the core of a marriage is. And it’s just amazing to me, there’s so many marriages don’t understand that. And so they never land on that tool that would hold a thing together. Yeah. And they’re just fighting to stay together with power that, that common anchor. Yeah.
Speaker 1 01:02:06 And, and you’ve hit the nail on the head. There’s a reason. Um, we do many, uh, marriage retreats with our couples effect. Um, it, we’re excited. Uh, we’re excited to announce for anybody that didn’t know down in Utah, we’re actually doing a marriage retreat, um, first week in August. And they can go to university elite.com and find all the details on there for, for that marriage retreat. And, and we’re limiting it so that we can, this is actually one of those where we’re actually going to be recording this and using this as part of our, uh, online seminars for people that, uh, that live in States where we’re not licensed yet. Um, and so they can come in and, and, uh, get a, uh, by that content online. But, um, so we’re excited to announce that, and we’re going to spend a full day going over this.
Speaker 1 01:02:55 We also have some where I’ve done a marriage retreats where we go really in depth and we actually work through some problems over multiple days. And we, we helped the couples and they worked through things, uh, different things. And so, um, those are coming up, but we do have a full day one coming up, uh, uh, the first week of August. And, and we’re also doing another one in that first week of August on resiliency, how to build real resiliency instead of this Saturday night, live Stuart Smalley. Uh, I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And Doug on it, people like me. And, and, uh, if you haven’t watched that, I would encourage, um, I it’s been years since I watched, I hope it’s clean enough that I can recommend it, but, uh, but, um, I remember it being cleaned, but I don’t know that my memory from childhood an accurate portrayal.
Speaker 1 01:03:42 So, but yeah, they, they should look at that. Um, and then, then, then it’s a, there’s only limited seating. So if you are interested in attending one of those retreats, you’re, you’re welcome to come to where we’re holding there in Utah. And, but you just got to get in early because, uh, they sell out very quickly. Um, and we tend to have couples. Uh, we get a lot of repeat, um, because couples just say it helped us so much. And so, uh, jump on that early. We’re, we’re really limiting the seating so that we can spend a lot of time, um, getting some, some of that content onto our website, recording it and stuff. So, so both of those, if you’re interested in resiliency or, uh, being part of an actual marriage retreat, where we go much more in depth, too much more of this and help you to understand many more of the why’s in a marriage, um, everything from children to getting married to how your parents and the in-laws and all that, we, we cover it, um, intimacy and sex communication, it’s all there. Um, and so, uh, you could go to university league.com and, and look in there and you’ll, you’ll be able to find some information on that.
Speaker 2 01:04:47 Right. Great. And that’s going to be a full day retreat and the entire day, right?
Speaker 1 01:04:51 So the reason the resiliency building seminar, it’s going to be a half day, three to four hours. Um, and then the, uh, the marriage retreat. Yes, it’s a full day plan on anybody who wants it. You better plan on having a daycare for your children because you will be gone in the morning until late in the evening. And most couples, uh, they use this as kind of a staycation, if you will. I have many of them who will stay in a hotel and they’ll make a weekend out of it and it’ll be on a Saturday. And so they’ll go up there Friday night, stay all day, Saturday, and not return home until Sunday and get a break from the kids and, and actually get some information. That’s where they learn how to make their merits go from, from average to elite, they do, they, they talk about why didn’t somebody teach me this 20 years ago, uh, newlyweds come in and they just say, this is awesome. Everybody knows this. And their marriage starts off on the right foot and stuff, so,
Speaker 2 01:05:52 Right. Okay. So that’s actually going to be, you can find that@universityofleadx.com forward slash live, cause it’s a live event. And, um,
Speaker 1 01:06:05 Having my web guy as my conversation here, right.
Speaker 2 01:06:11 University elite.com forward slash live. And that’s where we’ll always have the current live events listed. So you’ll find any live events, um, including these upcoming events that we’re talking about now that are July 31st and August 1st of 2020. Um, but as we pass that, then they’re all live events will be listed at that URL. So
Speaker 1 01:06:41 Can we have them, uh, those who want to buy a ticket to it and get to pay for the tuition for it? Um, uh, where can they go? I know I discounted this one. It’s a pretty much literally I’m, I, I just counted to about a 10th of what we normally charge.
Speaker 2 01:06:58 Right.
Speaker 1 01:07:00 And so I w I wanted to give people a chance that normally couldn’t afford it to get in on this. And, and, um, so where would they go to book all that? I, I have Jeremy setting all that up for me. So where would they book that,
Speaker 2 01:07:13 That will all be right on that page. So university of LA elite.com/live, and we’ll have information about what they’ll be getting out of the retreat, what they’ll be learning, the materials that they’ll receive and all that. They’ll also be able to book it right there. And as you mentioned, um, we are filming this, and so we’re offering a substantial discounts. Um, but people, you must sign a, uh, a media release form that says that you’re okay with, if your face shows up momentarily on any of the, uh, any of the video, and we’ll be turning around and selling the, the recorded course of this online for almost the same price as what people are going to be able to be able to get this for live potentially even three times what we’re charging for it live, um, what we’re still looking at the value on that and what, uh, the market value is on that. But, um, and it’s definitely an incredible value to, to be able to attend live and in person and get all these messages.
Speaker 1 01:08:29 And I’m going to be honest to the demand that I’m getting around the nation is high enough that, um, if you think you’re gonna, if you think this is something that’s gonna interest you, jump on it. It’s kinda like when I go to a Sam’s club, if I see something, I really, really want it, I have to buy it. Then cause many times they don’t get that back in, in the future. This may be one of those deals because we’re getting so much demand. And I have so many requests going around the nation and I live at how much I’m willing to travel away from my family that you’re going to want to jump on this, if it interests you. And if it doesn’t, that’s fine, university leave.com and, and get all the online content or our YouTube page, all that stuff. So, so I’m very good. So I feel like we’ve done that as, as always. We always appreciate people’s questions as they, as they put it in there. If you have a question, feel free to go to university.com, scroll down the page and ask the doc and submit it. And, and I actually get those myself. And, um, and then, uh, if we just made do a podcast for you and otherwise we’ll respond to you and email. And so, uh, until next time, uh, we look forward to it. And any parting words, Jeremy,
Speaker 2 01:09:42 This has been fantastic. Thank you, dr. Watson.
Speaker 1 01:09:44 Okay. So until next time you guys out there, everybody keep doing what you’re doing and be well.
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