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Feb. 16, 2023

How To Overcome Trauma, Pain, & Ego To Become The Best Leader, Parent, Spouse, and Friend w/ Dr. Kelly Flanagan

How To Overcome Trauma, Pain, & Ego To Become The Best Leader, Parent, Spouse, and Friend w/ Dr. Kelly Flanagan

Dr. Kelly Flanagan is an extremely sought after coach that specializes in helping entrepreneurs with their relationships, personal life, and communication skills.

https://drkellyflanagan.com/about/#more 



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Transcript
brian:

Dr. Kelly Flanagan. Finally, brother. Welcome, welcome. How. . kelly: Brian, thank you for having me out. I'm doing fine. Thanks, man. I'm excited. to have you on because you've been over here in the shadows, pun intended, because that's what you help people get out of with GoBundance. A lot of my GoBundance brothers and especially the ones that are really murdering it in the economic game they all are like, Hey, when it comes to coaching, I don't really have as many business coaches anymore, but what I'm really working on is myself, overcoming my ego, helping me be a better husband, be a better father, be a better man in this world that walks and they're like, I use . This guy named Dr. Kelly. Man, you need to check out Dr. Kelly . And I was just like, who is this guy? Is he even real person or is this is an idea of a guy? But nah man, you are real. And I just heard you speak at the GoBundance Tahoe event you definitely live up to all expectations and exceed on brothers. So I'll let you introduce yourself to the audience and give a little bit of your background so we know who the heck is helping them out today in their.

kelly:

Thanks man. Appreciate that. There's only one way to go down, now goodness. Thank you. That's a really generous introduction. I appreciate that. And I just wanna say that I feel so blessed to get to work with so many go bros. Who are just. These bigger hearted, more self-aware breed of entrepreneur than I knew existed. And it's such just such a blessing to get to work with this community. So who am I guess my, I got connected to your community through my first book that I published back in 2017 called Lovable. Embracing what is truest about you so you can truly embrace your life. And I actually, the first time I spoke on the main stage at a GoBundance Mastermind event, I started off by saying, Hey, so my last review of lovable and good read says, great book, just not for men. And I said, so thank you for disproving, , that stereotype that men can't be big hearted and emotionally intelligent and self-aware, and all of those things. My, this book Lovable, got embraced by the GoBundance community. Through a number of channels and it started to get connected more and more with your community. And it's been a blessing. But lovable was really the culmination for me of a lot of my own personal work. I I was trained as a clinical psychologist at Penn State University focused on working with couples, specifically got married, had a couple kids of my own three ultimately, And then just started to watch myself. Like all of the tools I was taught in my clinical psychology training for communication and relationships and emotional intelligence they weren't bearing fruit in my family. Like I was still doing damage to my family. I was holding myself back professionally with the ways that I was showing up. And so I started to do a deep dive into myself and what was going on and came to discover one day in 2008 Father's Day of 2008 actually that this person that I thought I was my whole life was actually my false self. This self that I'd created in order to go out into the world and get me love and belonging and and success and that I was actually the real me was the me. Now looking at that false. or what we call the ego and that was the real version of me, the consciousness that was watching that crafted version of myself. And that just sent me into a deep dive for a number of years into true self and false self. And it all culminated in that book Lovable in 2017. So continue to write books and publish books and and all the help that I give now is about this concept of true self and false self and how to live more boldly from our true self.

brian:

Can we talk about the concept of Johari Squares? Because we talked about that. Yeah. In GoBundance and that, I haven't heard of that concept before, but it was pretty spot on. I actually just sent that out in my newsletter. Can you share that concept? Yeah.

kelly:

Dr. Liz Coleman was sharing that with us at Yep. At the GoBundance events. It was fantastic. dovetailed with my talk beautifully, and I love that they put us back to back. The idea is that there are, there are things about us. If you think of like a four quadrant window. There are things about us that we know about ourselves and that we don't know about ourselves. And then there are things about us that other people know about us and they don't know about. . And a lot of Liz's talk was focused on all that stuff that we know about ourself. that we're keeping hidden from other people. That's what she called the facade. That's the bottom left corner of that Jahari window. Is reducing that facade by starting to make more and more of ourselves and our story known to other people. . And that's where we see that sort of vulnerability happening, authenticity happening. But we keep an awful lot behind that facade, behind that false self that we've crafted. And there's a reason for that. I know we're gonna get into talking about that. . brian: Yeah it was a really cool summarized it in the newsletter, which, Hey guys, it's shameless plug. Go in the show description, hop on there. But no, yeah, so you have your known self, which is known to you, known to others, and then, which is obviously what we're all aware of. Then you have known to others, not known to yourself, which is your blind. , right? Blind self, right? . Yep. And then you have what you're talking about, which is your facade, your false self, which is what's known to you, but not known to others. So it's who you actually are versus who you show up as in the world. And then over on the bottom right, you're talking about the unknown self, which is unknown to you, unknown to others. So the advice that I gave in the yes in kind of summary was I was like, it's a kind of a call to arms to. express more vulnerability so that you can remove that false self explore more new things and new actions and new environments to kill that unknown self as we progress. And then just like really do the work to accept feedback and receive feedback to kill that blind. . kelly: Yeah. And if, if we really wanna demystify the process of personal transformation, you could say that it goes in three stages. So the first stage for most really life-changing personal transformation is moving what I don't know about myself, as you said, from that unknown into actually the facade. Now I know it and no one knows it. And that's what we call moving more of ourselves out of our shadow and into the realm of awareness. So that's the first step. . The second step is that if we do that and we don't learn how to have compassion for those parts of ourselves accept those parts of ourselves, then we'll just, we'll actually push it right back out of awareness. We'll actually push it back into the unknown, believe it or not, back into the shadow. So the first step is bringing it into the realm of awareness. . The second step is learning how to ha hold it in awareness without pushing it away again or rejecting it. And then the third step is that step of vulnerability, making it known to other people. So we see ourselves go from unknown to facade and to being known and to being connected. And so those three steps of awareness and compassionate vulnerability are really important. I wanna

brian:

talk about the concepts of shadow and light, but first I want to preface that concept and kind of intro it with the conversation that you and I just had before where I asked you, I was like, Dr. Kelly, are you more the life coach? Are you an entrepreneurship coach or are you like a couple's relationship coach? I was like, because you help everyone with everything and you had a really po. Response to that, and I would invite you to share that to intro the concepts of Shadow and Light. When I asked you, do you help entrepreneurs with their ego or do you help entrepreneurs have healthy relationships? What was your answer to that? Yeah

kelly:

my answer, the short version of that is they're the same thing. Yeah. That healthy relationships and a healthy relationship with our ego is essentially the same thing, but yeah, I get that question a lot. I'll have that 30 minute discovery call with an entrepreneur who says, I I'm here because I'm struggling in large part with my relationships, whether it's with my wife or my kids, or whatever my associates. And but oftentimes my wife, and do I do individual coaching with you or do I do couples coaching with you? And my answer is that's up to you. But we're gonna be doing essentially the same thing in both of those situations. We are going to be growing in our in, in your awareness. Of how your ego shows up to protect you in relationships. And then we're going to be growing in awareness of what your true self is, what's hidden behind that false self, right? Your wounds and your true self. And we're gonna start to make that more available to your people without the defensiveness and without the protection. So if you wanna do that on your own, I think that's valid. If you want to invite your wife into that process, and she wants to do that for herself as well, so that you're both in the room. Bearing witness to each other's transformation, I think that can be really powerful. But she's gotta wanna do it, and you've gotta be willing to do that. But either way, we're gonna be doing essentially the same thing because, I lost interest in doing traditional couples work, probably a decade ago when I began to recognize that. there's a ceiling on how much you could help couples fix the relationship between them if they weren't, both of them undergoing some sort of personal transformation, and what you discover is when that personal transformation's happening. The stuff happening between two people takes care of itself pretty easily, actually.

brian:

And people, I'm gonna say this in the intro, but if you're 10 minutes deep right now, stick around to the end of this because this is the most important work. And these are the most important topics that you need to cover as an entrepreneur in any stage of your journey. Because the reason that we do all of this, The reason that we buy the house is buy the real estate, do the investments, net worth equity. All these buzzwords is so that we can do what we want, when we want, with who we want. And here's the kicker. If you have a hundred million dollars and you aren't able to share it with who you want, and you're in a house by yourself because your wife left you and she took the kids and you're estranged from your family, what is that worth? I can guarantee you that anybody in that position would give up all their material wealth to be able to. , what we're talking about today and what we're sharing practically for you guys to implement so that you do not have that situation. Because we see that in Beverly Hills, a lot of mansions, a lot of them are empty. So let's talk about ego, let's start there, and then we can branch that conversation into the application of that in relationship. So you I mentioned this kind of statement to you. It's not it's essentially a belief that I have and I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs share. My beliefs are easily changed. when presented with new information, but that belief is that we have a lot of guys that are going and doing like the ayahuasca ceremonies and they're doing the darkness retreats. Aaron Rogers right now is, as we've recorded this, is about to do a four day darkness of silence retreat right before he decides if he wants to continue playing his professional football career. Sure. , and I'm terrified to do that because this chip on my shoulder and this trauma that I wear around is like this badge of honor almost that I feel gave me my drive and big conversation and entrepreneurship is, do I want to do all this peace and love woow woo work, and then realize none of it matters, and then me and my wife and my kids are living under a freeway. How do I pursue these goals and how do I pursue? , the accomplishment of them and doing what it takes to succeed in business while not operating from a place of trauma and shadow.

kelly:

That's so good. What a powerful observation that we can end up almost attaching to our trauma, our shadow, our false self. Because it feels like the superpower that got us, the

brian:

jet fuel, that there's an attachment there. Yeah. Yeah. There's sentimental value. . kelly: Yeah. And boy, there's, we could talk about this for a couple of hours but I have six pack conversation, . Yeah, that's right. It's a six pack conversation. We, I have a few different a few different thoughts about that. Number one, I think one most entrepreneurs will resonate with the idea that what has gotten you here sometimes can't take you the rest of the. . And in fact it begins to work against you if you aren't willing to grow and adapt, right? And so I think the same thing is true of the ego that we built to cope with our story, with our pain, is often the thing that got us to this point of success. . But what if you don't begin to grow further from there is that ego either puts a ceiling on how much success you can have, or it actually starts to erode away at it. It got you here, but it can't take you the rest of the way. . And so the fear is actually if I grow in awareness of this, then I start to heal some of what gave rise to. Will i, will, my values suddenly change and I'll stop being interested in accruing wealth and these sorts of things. And and the reality is it's going to, it's going to create a possibility of continuing to pursue your ventures, pursue your calling and your vocation, but in a way that's more sustainable in a way that is consistent with even higher. . And as you pointed out in a way that doesn't I think it's David Osborn and it said the quickest way to lose your wealth is to get divorced. Yeah. , in a way that, in a way that actually solidifies all these other pillars of your life in addition to your business. So I think it's actually the thing that that takes you the rest of the way rather than feeling like it causes some sort of regression when you start to deal with these parts of your story. The other thing I wanna say about that is, One of the ways I like to think about ego or false self is like if we think of the way that this progresses or develops for us as human beings, basically we come into the world with a true self, right? A version of us that is worthy of love and belonging the way that it is. And then at some point we begin to experience pain or shame or the message that we aren't worthy of love and belonging the way that we are. And so that's when we start to build this false self that's gonna go out and get. Keep us safe, essentially and earn us the love and belonging that we desire. But if you think about the anatomy of that you're 5, 6, 7, 8 years old and you unconsciously start to build a false self what are you building that false self out of? The only raw materials for it are your true self, right? So the ego isn't necessarily a lesser. or a not true self. It's just, it's who you are used for the sake of protecting yourself rather than connecting yourself to other people. And so it's more about a difference in function than a difference in content, if that makes any sense. So in other words, like people are like this is who I've been my whole life. I'm just a fa how do I know my true self? I'm like, let's just look at your false. Because your false self is built out of the best parts of your true self. We're just gonna learn how to repurpose those parts for deeper and deeper connection and closeness and intimacy and peace than rather than more and more protection and defensiveness and aggression. And, I love that. Let's let's go ahead and dissect me, man. Let's go ahead and dissect me cause I feel let's get right into it. No we'll wait. We'll wait for the relationship stuff for the end because I'll probably get pretty emotional with it. We'll stay, we'll stick that to the end. But when it comes to this stuff, I've done some work on this where the awareness is there and now we're moving that from that stage one through the stage two, through the stage three, right? I'm a really driven person and my drive is one of my favorite qualities, and I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs resonate with what I'm about to say which is why I'm sharing it. I come from a household of divorce. . My father never wanted to be a father. He never wanted to be there. He never wanted to be involved. He, it was basically they were just getting up into their mid thirties. They wanted to just be with someone. . So my mom and my dad got together. They had me as just is what you're supposed to do. . My mom was sensational. She was always there. Stay at home mom. My dad was never. , my dad was always absent. I don't talk to him. We've never had a relationship. . So I grew up without the father figure. And so dissecting my need for what began as perfectionism and has now become a less unhealthy version of that to where I allow failure and all that. Now that I've dissected it a bit to try to figure out what makes me. And what makes the secret sauce, because I dissect others a lot on this podcast I realized that the initial need for perfectionism came from me needing to have love and if I could succeed and achieve to where it was undeniable. , then that would keep my family together, that would get the attention that I needed from my family. That would bring me love. And yes, so that's where it initiated from was that trauma of every single year my dad and I've never shared this before, but every single year I've talked to my dad one time. One time a year. In that time of year that I talk to him, he calls me on my birthday every year and that's it. He does not talk to me, I don't talk to him. . And every single year it's basically. Me being like, look at how effing great I am. . Look at what you're missing out on you asshole. Sure. This year, oh, what did I do in 2022? I went and my ego starts flaring up. I went and traveled around the world. I lived in Greece for a month. I built this brand new business and and you're missing all of it. Ha, look at me. I'm successful . And yeah, the, I did that for the last time, this last birthday at 28. , and I don't want to do that anymore. So I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs share this same dynamic with some parts of their family where they had to develop this to receive love or at least attempt to. , can we dissect that a little bit and maybe help me and others that are listening in the same? Yeah, absolutely.

kelly:

I, you're right, it is a very common dynamic. I can't relate to it at all. No, I'm just kidding. . I'm kidding. You're very much relate. Crazy . I can very much relate to that I dynamic. Very much aware of that, like that sense of surely if I accomplished this,

brian:

it'll be undeniable.

kelly:

Yeah. And not that necessarily you've, , you spend all day thinking about that consciously, but it's just become a habit, a way of living. The thing I almost, I drive for the next thing, and surely then I'll get the recognition that I'm, and the attention and interest and presence that I've been hoping for. So I, I can totally relate to it personally. Yeah. I think, and this is in line with what we talked about in Tahoe, I think the place that I come at this from a little bit different angle than most is, , I see us, you know those Russian dolls where you take the top of the big doll off? Yeah. And there's a smaller doll inside of it, and you take that one off. I see us as human beings built like that. And and so what I'm aware of is you have awareness now that you don't want to do that with your dad. You don't wanna keep replicating that annual pattern, but there is going to be a part of you. that always wants to replicate that pattern, right? And this is why entrepreneurs who are oftentimes able to, will a change in their mindset. They'll arrive at certain parts of their experience where they can't seem to do it. So you'll tell yourself after, like a conversation with your dad this year, I'm not doing that again next year. And all of a sudden, at some point next year, you're on the. , right? And you're like, ah, why? I thought I changed my mindset around that. Why? Why? Yeah. Why am I doing it again? And it's because you take off those layers of the Russian doll, there's still a little boy in us that is always going to want that interest and that attention. And if we try to change that, ironically what we are doing is we are telling that younger version of us, I don't like the what you need. I don't like what you. , I don't like that. You still desire that from dad, and so you just need to be quiet and go away. Ironically then we're actually replicating the father wound to that younger part of us. We are now the father saying to that version of us, go away. I don't wanna pay attention to you. So we are pushing that younger hurt version of us back into the shadow. And so a lot of times what we think is that our healing, what we're doing to heal, it's actually pushing a part of us back into the shadow and saying, I don't like it. I wanna be rid. . And so instead, we have to learn how to hold that part of us again, in that place of compassion, in that place of care and love, and to appreciate that part of us, and to be able to acknowledge the importance of that part of us so that when next year rolls around what you do is instead of reaching out to dad, you go, I know how to be dad to that part. I know how to care for that part of me and talk him through this moment where he's accomplished a dozen more things that he deserves to be recognized for. And no one's paying attention. I'm gonna pay attention to that part of me. This year I'm gonna, I'm gonna speak to him rather than hoping that my dad will speak to that part of me. To me, it's essential that we recognize that what we once were never ceases to live on. And and I think for a lot of entrepreneurs that can rub, that there's some that's a little bit

brian:

abrasive cuz it feels like you pissed me off when you said that. Yeah. Not now, but you pissed me off when you said that at the event. And I said, what do you mean? Because I was like, what do you mean you can't kill off parts of you? Because we say that on the show a lot on this show. We say, what parts of me need to die for me to become the new version of. . That's a common phrase that we talk about when it comes. That's right. Especially from going to seven figures to eight figures to nine figures. We're like, what got me here won't get me there. So we commonly say that. And so when you say that essentially broken down, what you're talking about is instead of regression, we're talking about acceptance of the bad parts of ourselves and choosing to embrace that and show compassion for that part. But then, operate through it. How do we go about that? Because all we know and the best operating partners of us, like the best people that do this the best way, I feel like we only regress. Yeah. Or re repress, not regress.

kelly:

So you've opened up the Pandora's box of Dr. Kelly here. It's okay for me to for us to do this,

brian:

right? Dude, so you rip, rip me to shred. Are you aware? I'll probably on here. I don't

kelly:

care. Are you aware that you just called that younger needy part of you a bad part? You used the phrase the bad parts of us. Yeah. And so what we're doing in that moment is we're bringing into awareness some of the ways that we engage in an ongoing self-rejection of that part of us calling it a bad part, calling it a needy part, calling. Immature part of me. And so we bring that part of us into awareness, and then the next thing we do is we bring into awareness all of the ways that we keep trying to push that part back out of awareness, get rid of it, reject it, be free of it, so to speak. And so right there that's a moment, right? Where we would slow down and say bad part. Wow. The, if you are in this helps to. if you have kids. Oh. So if your six year old did something amazing and wanted you to pay attention and you were like I'm gone for a month and I don't really wanna talk about it when I get home, would you say that was a. Bad thing that they were longing for your interest. We wouldn't but in order to keep that pain Yeah. In our shadow and out of our awareness, we call it a bad part and say that we shouldn't pay any attention to it. We should be able to get rid of it or fix it. And so we actually wanna bring that part back into awareness and be able to hold it there without trying to rid ourselves of

brian:

it. So how do we, so let's call, let's put different labels to this part. So we have these parts of us, we're not gonna call 'em. Because that's against the Kelly isms . So we have these parts of us, whether they show up as anger, whether they show up as shame, regret all these different. Parts of us that we aren't fond of and that we willingly want to change because both we don't want to be that person. And other people have demonstrated to us that this person that we were before hurts them. Sure. So how do we hold awareness on this to cement these changes that we're attempting to make instead of repress? These changes and saying, Hey, I choose to label you as bad. How do I sit with that in my stomach and say, I see you. I feel you. , but not today. Like you're not showing up here. . kelly: Yeah. You bring up a great example of there's this really like goodhearted desire. Oh gosh, my angry, defensive, aggressive parts of me. It seems like they hurt a lot of people, and I don't Like why should I accept that? How do I let that be a part of me? Shouldn't we just, I don't wanna be angry anymore. Yeah. I don't want that part sitting in me at all because it's like, it's the same thing where it was God, what was the quote? The quote was something like God, it's like holding a grudge. It's like holding a grudge is like a cancer that only kills you. Yeah. Or something

kelly:

like that. I'll tell you a very, I'll tell you a very personal story. This is me being vulnerable, I was at a conference last September and I was in a great conversation with a good friend, and she was like holding me accountable. You're avoiding something here, Kelly. You're avoiding something. Like basically not letting me dodge. And what I said to her is the truth is I give and I give. because underneath all of that, I know I'm super selfish. I'm a taker, and I just want things for me, and I know that, and I don't want anyone else to see. That I'm a taker. I want people to think of me as a giver, right? So in that hierarchy of art, level of protection, Heider fighter and ruler, my fighter is a taker. I'm gonna compete to get as much as I can, and I don't care what happens to all of you, right? But my ruler is a giver, of covers like an additional more acceptable layer of facade above that, right? Over the course of a journey that. Because it's yeah, being a taker is bad. Being selfish. I remember my roommate my freshman year in college. He said he called a fan that I brought to our dorm room, a me fan cuz it was about that big and it could only be pointed at me. And he is like, how about a fan for everybody else in the room? You selfish, and it was, he was getting at something, he was seeing right. That taker that just take care of me. . And over the course of the journey of that weekend, at that conference I had an a re-experiencing of that selfish taker. Part of me and the voice that I heard inside of me in that moment was Kelly, that didn't originally start your selfishness. It didn't begin as selfishness. It began as having to raise yourself. You were the only one looking out for you. You were the one who needed to take care of yourself. And so all of a sudden there was a compassionate understanding of why I'm such a selfish jerk. , right? . Now the reason that's powerful, as long as I, as long as I keep my selfishness out of awareness and I don't wanna pay attention to it. it runs me, right? Because if you can't welcome it, you can't work with it. As long as I'm pushing it, as long as I'm trying to fix it and telling myself I'm fixing that selfish part of me, then I'm not paying attention to it. I fixed it. It's not there anymore. I can't work with it. The difference in being able to hold it incom compassionate awareness, and to be able to say, Hey, Kelly, you are selfish. There's a very selfish part of you, but it didn't start. It started out of the pain of having to raise yourself, which is a very scary place to be. This is what happens the Monday after I get home from that conference, get outta the shower. There's no towels on any of the racks. My wife wants to snagged them and throw them in the laundry, right? So I'm like, ah. I drip across the bathroom floor, go over to the linen closet, get a towel for myself, dry off and hang it on my rack. And I'm starting to walk outta the bathroom and I'm like, I didn't get a towel for my wife and put it on her. I'm like, I just took care of myself. I was being selfish, but because I now have a compassionate understanding of that, I don't feel bad that I'm selfish. I don't have to feel like I should have fixed it. I don't waste all my energy and all that head trash about it. I can just go, oh, . Yeah. I, no one got me a towel. As a kid. I always had to get my own towel. And now I wanna be the kind of person that gets towels for other people. So I get the towel, I hang it on her rack. And it's three days later and my wife and I have made a pact with each other to, to share these sorts of growth moments with each other so we understand how the other person is working. So we can trust the other person is working on themselves. And . And so a few days later I'm like, oh, I forgot to tell you. I got a towel for myself the other day and realized that was selfish, that I didn't get one for you. And I hung yours on your rack too. And she texted me back. She's oh my gosh. I thought I was losing my mind. Cause I couldn't remember getting a towel. My wife, my poor wife was like, didn't even occur to me. You got it for me. I thought I was going crazy before I would assume that you got me a towel. And now I see these moments happening all the time, right? And because I don't have to fix my selfishness. I can actually just watch it and welcome it when it happens and not feel bad or defensive or about it or anything like that. And I can just correct it when it happens. Oh, I just went and got myself a fork and my wife's at the table too. She needs a fork or the kids, need a fork as well. And so to me that, that's been a powerful personal example for me over the last, like four or five months of this part of me that I don't even like to admit. But if I admit to it, I certainly just wanna fix it by becoming a giver and not even paying attention to it, which is really just a facade. Boy, if I can actually just hold that in awareness and understand where that originated from in my story, then all of a sudden I don't have to feel defensive about it. I don't have to ignore it, and I can actually do something about it when I notice it.

brian:

So a couple observations I have from that are that you share really. Small daily wins and you make notice and you make an effort to share and celebrate those small daily wins because I'm sure there are entire encyclopedia of instances where you and your wife got into screaming and cussing matches, where you showed up as selfish. But for you, what I appreciate about this example that you're sharing is it's the same exercise. that you're doing. , but you're doing it. , you're practicing it with the small things to where the muscle gets built for when the big time comes, right? That's right. You're like, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get that towel for my wife. I'm gonna get the fork for my children so that when the time comes where we're in a knockdown, drag out scream match. That muscle's been flexed over and over again. Yeah. So that by the time that this comes up, I can be able to reel it back in a little bit faster. Yes. I like that. That's exactly

kelly:

right. You're, and yeah, like all of a sudden you're in a, you're in an energy of awareness, compassion, and vulnerability, and you're building that muscle. So that when you get confronted with it in the heat of the moment, in that big moment, that always repeats itself in your relationship. Yeah. Then you can show up with awareness and compassion and vulnerability and rather than that defensiveness and anger for sure.

brian:

Okay. Now I'm gonna take another stab at this. Tell me if this is getting closer to the ultimate truth. Cuz I only, I, we can only operate from frames of reference as they progress. So now I'm viewing. is instead of viewing it's like you're almost viewing these parts of us that we're not fond of that come up. Anger jealousy, envy shame, regret, all these things that pop up, impatience and it's almost you're viewing them as a symptom instead of a disease. Now where you're. This That's right. That you're like, this isn't something that is, isn't like a cancer inside of me, but just if put your hand over a flam and you're like, ouch, okay, like that happened because I did that. Then you have your awareness set, and then that's how you can process it. Is that a little bit closer to what you're talking about? . kelly: Yeah, I was on a Yes, thank you. I was in a couple's coaching call just the other night and and said something that, that the husband blasted out in one of our threads which was, Kelly said to us last night during our couple's coaching call, every behavior makes sense. If you understand the why, if you understand the reason, if you understand the function that it's serving, right? Gosh, I don't understand. . My, my wife does X, Y, and Z. It just seems so silly if she could just change her mindset about. That we could, we have a better life. Guilty. And my response to that is there's no way she's going to change X, Y, and Z until you've truly heard why she's doing X, Y, and Z. Why she's saying X, Y, and Z. There's a function being served there in her, communicating that over and over again until you get it. There's no way that's going away, so you can't. Flip a switch and change mindset on that. There's a relational component to holding space for that. Can we dive on that, dive down that rabbit hole a little bit because another big problem that I see, and then we'll go into dice doing an autopsy of my failed relationship. But is there, so when you have an entrepreneurial couple, maybe one or the. Is super into the personal development world. They're super into growth and bettering themselves, and the other person is like, cool. Great for you, love you, proud of you. I'm not doing any of that shit. . Good for you. Yes. Good for you. You do your work, you go do Dr. Kelly, you go to Tony Robbins, you do the jumping up and down. , all I want to do is me. Like I'm not, they're not, your spouse is not over there. They're not over there. Thinking about their inner child, thinking about why they do what they do. They just operate and they just, cause that's normal. So as somebody that is willing and ready and able to do the work, quote unquote. , how do you get your spouse on board? Because a lot of people, like right now I'm single again, so I can look for that in a partner, but a lot of people are listening to this that maybe have a partner of five years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, and they have multiple kids, and they're like, they've never wanted to do this stuff. They've never been interested in this stuff. How can you lead a horse to water if it doesn't want to? Yeah,

kelly:

and I should preface this by saying I am a, I'm a self-improvement junkie. Like you, I this is what I do for Yeah. This is what I do for a living. , I'm like, if I'm not growing, I don't have anything to talk to other people about. So personally, like self-improvement is really important to me. But I also believe that we have to be very careful because in almost all self-improvement, there is a healthy dose of self reject. that says, until I change this about me, I'm unacceptable. Wow. Until I improve this about me, my life is not worthy, is not having a big enough impact, and so on and so forth. So we have to be very careful because our spouses will often, they'll s they're, we can trust that they're actually pretty good barometers for how much self-rejection is in our self-improve. . Because what they're hearing when they're like, no, you need to go to this Tony Robbins with me, and you need to do this and this with me, is you are not good enough for me, or I'm going to become better than you and then I won't be interested in you anymore. And they're basically going, Hey, hit the brakes here. Like when you say that to me, when you do that to me, you are saying that I'm not good enough the way that I am. And that's painful. That's just shame being passed on to me. And so we have to be, I think if we can reframe it, They're putting their finger on the self-rejection that is in all of our self-improvement, then they're digging in their heels, can actually be a sort of accountability to make sure that our self-improvement is really being done out of a pureness of spirit rather than self-rejection.

brian:

So how do you approach that conversation? And I've been guilty of this to where it's like I come home from like a Tony Robbins or I come home from an event and I'm like, yes. , make your move. Woo. Yep. And everyone else in your life is okay, bud have fun up there on your pedestal. Yes. We watch up from the bottom as you do this. And then they just dig their heels in and they're gonna, there's gonna be a less likelihood of them going to a Tony Robbins or going to a coaching or doing a real estate event. Yeah. So how do we approach this? The right. For people to feel invited and accepted as they are, but also get them freaking pumped to drink a little bit of the Kool-Aid, I guess is what we call it. That's a good question. Yeah.

kelly:

Yes. And by the way, my most current rendition of this in my family is a 13 year old daughter who whenever I say . Oh sweetie, that must have felt really terrible. How could you have handled that? Or something like that. She's dad, no. Therapy sessions. I don't want therapy sessions. She wants nothing to do with emotions or stuff from, not from dad. So I'm like, I'm dealing with that live right now with , my daughter. So we talked about this with a group of good abundance skies here a few weeks ago before Tahoe. . And I, one of the more, more common conversations I will have with couples in couples coaching is about the difference between doing energy and being energy and how they're both valuable energies, but when they get out of balance those energies can become of destructive or stagnating. What I mean by that is doing energy. And this, you could also maybe call it masculine energy if you wanted, by like doing energy better. Cuz women can have plenty of doing energy. My wife does. Doing energy is the energy that says I wanna go from point A to point Z and I wanna go there as quickly as possible. I wanna improve. Just change this fix, right? Like action's. That's right. And that's why that's why entrepreneurs are so good at what they do in the business space, right? Yeah. Is they're doing energy, they're doing muscles are really well developed and that is rewarded in in their entrepreneurialism. Being energy is the sort of exact opposite. It's the energy that says, I just want to appreciate this space. and not go anywhere else. I don't want to do anything to this space. I just want to be with it. I want to be present to it. I want to get to know it better. I wanna see what it has to teach me. I want to, what's that like? yeah. Our wives are was that like

brian:

all of us just listen, all of us are listening to this right now. We all collectively just said, oh, what is that like? You talking about being present? That's right.

kelly:

Huh? . That's right. And so and our wives will try to communicate this in a dozen different ways to us. I just want you to be with me. And ironically, what we as overly developed doers will do is we'll be like, okay, just tell me the three things I need to do to be with you. And they're like pulling your hair out, . They're like, no, be, not do. And you're like gimme a to-do list. What can I do for you to make you feel like I'm being with you? And that's not it. So I think a lot of times, Are doing energy, especially when we come home from an event. This is one of the things I love about I'm part of Front or Dad's Mastermind. One of the things I love about it is we're very conscientious of when we come home from this event with all sorts of doing energy things we want to take action on with our kids and our families and our wives. we cannot walk in the door without doing energy. Cuz if we do, they've been there being right with the family on our behalf while we're away for a week. And if we walk in with that doing energy, they're going to dig in their heels. They're gonna want nothing to do with it. So we have to enter with being energy, right? We have to start by being, and then when there's a sense of, wow, we've really reconnected in the place where you're at, then there's maybe gonna be some more openness to talking about the place where I want to. , but that being energy always has to proceed doing energy if we want it to be received well.

brian:

I think that is very applic. I think that's something that we can really be aware of and utilize. So to punctuate that, and that's gonna serve as a perfect segue into my autopsy here, which I'm dissecting why I'm using that word cuz I find it funny that I'm using the word autopsy over and over again. Just like I had my Freudian slip with regression instead of repression earlier before. There you go. . So that would maybe be you showing up and. Maybe implementing the ways the lessons that you learned from the conference and just being that person. Instead of saying here's all the things that I'm gonna change from this conference, instead of just leading by example and just implementing them quietly.

kelly:

That kinda what you're getting at example? Yeah. I'll give you a quick, like a tangible example from the last event. I realized during the last event that when my daughter gets out of school and I greet her with a doing energy, which is wanting to know all about what happened at school basically. So I can take control and help her with things that were problems or, reinforce things that were positives and all that. Doing energy. She just shuts down. She senses a couple things. Dad's trying to take control. Just doing. . And he's trying to control my thoughts cuz he wants me to know he is an interested dad and I'm not, that's not on my, her agenda for the day, so he is trying to control me in a couple different ways. With his doing energy, he shuts down. I came home from that, got home on a Friday afternoon, picked her up from school first thing and intentionally. My question was, is there anything that you wanna tell dad about school today? And then nothing. just creating a space for her to share under her own control what she wants to talk about. And what she did was she waited, she's no, she waits 15 seconds, 30 seconds. She's waiting to see if I'll jump in with doing energy to try to pry it out of her. Goes about a minute of being energy moving. Okay, cool. We're just driving, listening to music. All of a sudden she's talking. And you don't wanna To now try to use that as a formula to get our people to engage is just doing energy. Okay. I'll practice a little bit of being so you'll start to engage me. You have to sincerely be willing to enter into that being space, knowing she may not decide to reciprocate and that's fine cuz she'll sense that being energy and then why not participate? So that's an example. Yeah. Of leading with being energy. As soon as I walk through the. . brian: Got it. Cool. Cool. So when it comes to doing energy, being energy, we can call it masculine, feminine, exactly what you're talking about. Sure. Man, dude. So I'll share why my relationship ended, which I haven't shared to most of my friends. What was my close friends, but especially not on this freaking podcast because people looked at my relationship from a, from the outside. and everyone was just like, oh my God, they're so happy. They're so in love. They're they're going to Tony Robbins together. We both were really into all of that, and for three years she was with me as I went from corporate from college to becoming the top guy in my corporate job. to start investing in real estate to go on my first go bonus event, to quitting my corporate job, to building this business, to traveling around the world. She was with me through all of it and it was amazing. But I had this vision and once I found that the power of vision and vision casting, I was like, anything I put down on paper becomes, I manifest my own destiny. And so I had it all written out, man. I had it all written out and to go back full circle to what my dad relationship was and my father relationship was, and my family, I was like, that ends here. that shit ends here. , I'm gonna be the change. I'm gonna be the one. Ed. My has this concept where he says every family has the one that changes the course of the family. I was like, I'm going to be the one that my dad's dad was. Probably was terrible to him. I know that. I'm sure his dad was even worse to him and his dad was even worse to him and his dad. So how many generations am I ending here to where I had it written down? I knew, I was like, I've got my. I was like, I'm so madly in love with her and this is such a comfortable love. We communicate well. I was like, we're traveling the world. We're going to Greece. We're going and we're doing this. Oh my God, this is so much fun. I was like, the obvious next step is we get married and have kids. Yeah. Obvious next step. And she said, no, that's not my vision. Yeah. And she was like, for the last couple of years you tried to force me. into your vision over and over and over again. And she's I didn't want to go on this trip. I didn't wanna travel. I wanted to stay in Atlanta. I don't wanna get married. She was divorced. She's I don't wanna get married again. Yeah. At least not to me again. , she was, she loved me. She wasn't in love with me. She loved me. She wasn't in love with me and that she didn't want to have kids. at all. . And I know that a day will come where sh I will, she'll pop up and she'll be married with kids . And it's just it's painful man, because I did, I'm sorry. I made everything happen and, the conversation started because everyone was jokingly asking me, where's the ring? Where's the ring? Where's the. . She was from Brazil. I'm Southern White Baptist I've been dating her two and a half years. Like, where's the ring? You're travel, you're living in Mikonos Man for a month. Yeah. Where's the ring? Yeah. And they don't mean it from a place of hurt. They're like, Hey, obviously you guys are getting married. You're having an amazing relationship. And I asked her, and what initiated all of this was, I said, I want to propose to you. I was like, my family. is on board. Your family is, your dad's already given the blessing. Your family's excited for us to get married. , I feel like if I proposed to you though, you would say yes and then you would freak out and back out and she said that's true. . And that's where the conversation began. That's where we split up and that's where the relationship ended. You put your finger on it. As entrepreneurs we are rewarded in so many ways for taking control of our. and there's one particular thing, creature, entity on the planet that we can't control, which is another human being. Yeah. We simply can't control. And so it's the superpower that we have in our ventures. Entrepreneurial ventures becomes kryptonite back at home, right? This is we believe, , we can shape control and transform our people. And they're just in the meantime asking us to just accept them the way that they are and to appreciate who they are to support them becoming whoever they want to become. And and it requires the development of a new power from us. And it's the power to accept and to support and to hold space for, rather than always be controlling and changing things and, , it'll be true. You're gonna find the person.

brian:

It irritates me so much. . I know you two are gonna be together.

kelly:

I know, man, whoever that person is, but yeah, you won't in my mind, it, what we're doing with marriage is we're choosing a person to learn how to support their becoming, whatever that looks like for them. Or say, I love you enough that I'm going to. Develop the muscle and the power to support your becoming, whatever that looks like. And they're doing that for you. And so often we think like marriage is, this is the person who's gonna be, continue to become like the person I want them to be, to make me feel loved. And it just, selfish never works out that way. Just never. Yeah. There's a hidden

brian:

selfishness in that. Sure. And there I was in the last bit of the retreat, I was in a hot tub with a couple of guys that have been married like 30. and I was talking about it and man, like really bad depression. Like the last couple of months of my trip I had this beautiful Florida ceiling glass window house in the coast of Brazil and I was in there by myself, just crying myself to sleep every night, dude. And there's still, it comes in waves still. Like last Saturday. Last Saturday I was just like, Because it's difficult to to have the simultaneous, like greatest moment in your life also cemented with like that pain, right? Because that's right. All the pictures are That's right. You together, all the videos are you together. So That's right. To wrap that up into how people can take value from this, and it's not just me venting publicly. . Like everyone says, patience, time, surrender. Your person's gonna come. It's gonna be even better than you ever imagined. Like this person, this relationship got you ready for the next relationship to become the person that you are meant to be for, to receive that next person. I guess just tips, man, because ironically people think it's easy. It'd be easier to date. Now, but now I. harder because , I'm like, . The standards are absolutely, the standards are so high now that I'm like, I can't just be with someone that's like normal and

kelly:

Sure. And my encourage to use is that you're now, you're, yeah. You're entering into dating with a whole new level of vulnerability. Last time you entered into it, you entered into it with a sense of I'll be able to get what I want. . brian: In A very painful way, you can't,

brian:

and you know what else, you know what else I've realized was she was healing still from her divorce. And I was attracted to that because I went back to that inner kid like you talk about . And I said, man, that really scratched the itch of that inner child that I had that was 13 years old to 28 now. That was helping my mom heal from divorce where she got cheated on. Yeah. And she got left and I was like, man, this is so familiar and comfortable to me to help this person. You know how to do this? Yeah. Oh yeah. I was, I fit into that slot. I was like, I'm here for you. I'm gonna support you and help get you out. And, but then, . That's what hurt, right? ? I had some anticipation of re reciprocity. Yeah. Which was wrong on my end. Where as soon as she was like, Hey, I did my work and I'm healed now. She's yeah, this isn't the relationship I want. I was like, fuck.

kelly:

Dude, my hardest my, my steepest growth curve as a husband and as a person is and for you, this goes back to that original if I do all the right things and I scale the right heights and achieve the right things, then dad will be interested in me. Yeah. If I do, if I pour into you and help you heal from your divorce, then you. Join me in the life that I wanna

brian:

live. Obviously traveling around the world, . kelly: Yeah. Who would say no? And just like we said with dad who wouldn't be interested in everything that you've accomplished if your son did that? And the steepest growth curve for me is that, and it's the metaphor I use is that I wanna treat people like mending machines. I wanna put certain quarters in and get out the thing from them that I think that I've just, earned, deserved, or, earned yeah. And they're just not. And it is a it's an affront to our entrepreneurial sort of spirit because we run the show everywhere

kelly:

else. I gotta be able pour in and get this

brian:

outta you. It's an roi. It's a return on investment.

kelly:

That's right. That's right. Yep. Which, there's just no correlation there in relationship at all. Yeah.

brian:

So I'm trying to think, couple questions I'm trying to ask myself right now, and like selfishly I'm doing this now, so hopefully you guys are getting some value from this at this point, but I'm trying to ask the question of. How do I, cuz everyone's like, time. Oh, time heal all wounds. Don't worry time. But I'm very impatient. . kelly: For what it's worth, what I hear in So ironically in that urge to do that, doing energy, that masculine muscle is wanting to rush through this phase of being hurt about this. It's actually. It's actually creating more hurt cause it's putting you in dating situations that are just not gonna work out over and over again. And it's asking, it's just the challenges to create some space for yourself to feel this and release it rather than to try to charge through it. You are being called to a deeper being energy. I believe that's, I think that's, and I don't understand how to do that. To bring it full circle when we talk about that, like the tendency to wanna reject that younger version of us that is still longing for something from dad, for instance, and say, get over it. Be, I'd be done with that. I don't wanna have that anymore. What we have to be able to do for that part of us is have a being energy. And not try to change it, not try to fix it, not try to rush it through what it wants, but to just actually hold space for that part of us and go, it's okay to, it's okay to want that. And of course you do. Who doesn't want that from their dad? You will always want that from your dad. I'm here with you in that. So you are being called to cultivate a deeper being energy, I believe right now I'll work on that. Where can people find. . kelly: Ah, thanks man. Dr. Kelly flanagan.com. Dr. Kelly flanagan.com is my website where you can find out about all my books and all my stuff. I'm actually this Saturday I'm starting to publish my next non-fiction book online with Reader Feedback, rather than doing it privately and through a traditional publisher on, at Dr. Kelly flanagan.ck.com, it's called The Inner Gathering. A guided encounter with your original self and its three protectors and I think it's gonna be an awesome experience. You get to write this book with dialogue with readers. It's gonna be a blast. You can go there too to read along. That's awesome, brother. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much for being you and for sharing your light with the world brother.

kelly:

appreciate it, man. This was really a blessing. Thanks. Thank you buddy.

brian:

I'll see you.

kelly:

Bye-Bye.