August 28, 2025 • 59 mins
Co-Host Frank Kermit (https://mountaintoppodcast.com/franktalks) He's Frank because he has to be. After years and years, I finally have my long-time friend Frank Kermit back on the show. He has always been about straight talk when it comes to women, men, sex, dating and relationships...which is probably why he and I made friends immediately and that friendship has endured. In this long-overdue episode, we talk about the strange rise in bitter, hurt, resentful people--both men and women--and how so many of us got this way. Resentment is the quiet poison that eats men alive. It wrecks your masculine presence, makes you unattractive to women, and slowly destroys your edge in life. Naturally, we kick off the conversation with a searing discourse on self-imposed limiting beliefs, and how the media actually reinforces them. And then, what's with all those long checklists women schlep with them on dates? And on the other hand, why is it that the less success with women a guy has had, the "pickier" he might become? And what's up really going on when we play "Whack-A-Mole" with one excuse after another for not succeeding with women, to the point where we just get angry rather than actually doing something about it? Why is it so true that 'hurt people hurt people'? And what if 'Mr. Nice Guy' really has something pent up under the surface? As it turns out, getting over any resentment that's built up within us--especially toward our family and women--has to come from a place of genuine desire, not to mention raw, masculine courage. Does that mean actually confronting those who have hurt you? That's for you to decide. If you've been into men's dating and relationship stuff for years, you might wonder why you haven't heard from Frank in a few years. Well, as it turns on he was on one hell of a personal journey...losing 260 pounds (!) You'll get the lowdown on that as well. Have you checked out the new Substack channel yet? https://mountaintoppodcast.com/substack
=== HELP US SEND THE MESSAGE TO GREAT MEN EVERYWHERE ===
The show is now available as a VIDEO version on YouTube. For some reason, the episodes seem funnier...if a bit more rough around the edges. If you love what you hear, please rate the show on the service you subscribed to it on (takes one second) and leave a review. As we say here in Texas, I appreciate you!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Alright gentlemen, this is your main man, Scot McKay coming at you again with anotherepisode of the world famous Mountain Top Podcast.
And today we're going to talk about that resentment that can kind of creep in when thingsaren't going quite well for you, especially with the women in your life or, know, even in
your careers also, before we get started on that, I want to remind you that you can catchme on most social media outlets at Scot McKay with the exception
(00:28):
of instagram which is @realscotmckay and the website is mountaintoppodcast.com Andgentlemen if you aren't on the facebook group just yet It is the Mountain Top Summit on
facebook and I hope to see you there My guest today is someone I first interviewedprobably 18 years ago.
And he and I are pretty much part of the group of OGs back in the men's dating space Andit has been way too long
(00:55):
since I've interviewed him, even since I talked to him, we were catching up before westarted with the actual podcast recording here.
His name is Frank Kermit.
And he likes to say he's Frank because he has to be.
And, that is a fact for sure.
He's up in Montreal, Canada.
And some of you guys may know Frank from his Frank Talks site and the persona he had backup in the pickup artist era.
(01:20):
These days, like most of us, he's married with a family
and things have changed for him.
And he's also uh undergone a bit of a personal transformation that he's going to talk toyou about.
But the topic du jour is definitely about resentment, something we haven't covered enoughon this show.
uh Frank Kermit, man...
welcome.
It's great to see you, buddy.
(01:41):
It's so great to be here.
You and I haven't had a chance to sit down and talk in years.
You were one of the first people, one of the first podcasts that I was on when I venturedinto the world of becoming a dating coach.
And here now almost 20 years later, you're one of the first people who interviews me asI'm slowly getting back into it after taking a hiatus and focusing on my health.
(02:05):
Yeah, man, there's a lot to talk about here.
Let's go ahead and talk about the journey you've been on uh for the last several years.
You you and I are both guys who aren't just naturally skinny dudes who can inhale food andbunch of burgers and fries and still say still stay "flaquito".
We can't do that.
You and I both have it in our genetics that it's a constant battle.
(02:27):
So I don't know if a lot of the guys
who know you from dating advice, know exactly what happened over the course of the lastseveral years.
So just bring us up to speed on that, because I think it's a fascinating story, Frank.
Alright, well one of the things that distinguished me as a dating coach is that I wasalways a much bigger guy.
And I still went out of my way to connect with women.
(02:49):
I still had a very active social life and active sex life.
I just made do with what I had and wherever I was limited, I worked around thoselimitations.
And it was not easy.
I faced a lot more rejection.
I faced a lot more hardships and I just overcame it
and still managed to have a social life, eventually getting married, having a family.
(03:12):
Over the course of the last 15, 20 years, my health got worse.
I eventually ballooned to 460 pounds.
Yeah, and it was a very unhealthy, unhealthy time.
And in 2020, I got a call from my doctor saying,
(03:36):
Frank, you have diabetes.
Now I had been obese for so many years without getting diabetes, which that alone waspretty remarkable.
But the day came when I got that phone call, yeah, you've got diabetes now.
That was the day I said, okay, I need to conquer obesity.
And that began a journey involving surgeries, therapy, a lot of my own personaldevelopment, trying to get to the source
(04:05):
of my food addictions.
One of the things I learned on this journey is that the world of dating and the world ofgetting healthy is a multi-factorial battle.
It's never just one thing.
Okay?
It's never just one thing.
I'm struggling with women.
It's because it's because I'm not rich or it's I'm not this and I'm not that.
(04:26):
Those and those are legitimate concerns.
Okay?
Those are legitimate factors, but it's very rarely the one factor.
There's usually multiple factors and in order to accomplish any of these journeys, youhave to battle every single factor at the very least, figure out how to work around those
factors.
And battling obesity was also something that I realized obesity is the symptom of theissue, not the actual issue.
(04:54):
Before you continue, I'd like to jump in here real quick and underscore something you saidthat I think probably would be worth its own podcast in and of itself.
And that's, I'm going to scapegoat one factor that keeps me from being successful withwomen or being successful in my career.
You know, you know, I'm not very tall.
A lot of guys will come to me and they've read, you know, too many articles out theresaying that women want tall guys.
(05:21):
That's the first thing they want.
It's the first checkbox.
at the top of the list.
if you're under...
I mean, I heard one that said, if you're under 6'2", 85 % of women don't even want you.
And here I am, know, five foot five and three quarters.
And you know, I had wonderful women and the women I really wanted all through my datinglife.
Once I got everything together and I would argue it's because I didn't scapegoat myheight.
(05:44):
I mean, as soon as I stopped worrying about it, it seemed like everybody else stoppedworrying about it.
I don't even get short jokes from my peers nowadays, perhaps because
I carry myself differently and well, you know, that reminds me of the simple fact thatmost women don't like short guys, not because of their height, but because of how short
guys feel about being short.
So it's kind of like a meta level death spiral we send ourselves into.
(06:08):
But indeed, whatever it is, we're going to scapegoat this one thing that usually I feelhelpless about.
It's not something I can change.
You know, I was born dirt poor and
I'm to stay that way.
I'm not very tall.
Can't do anything about it.
Um, you know, I'm ugly or, you know, I've got this, uh, affliction of some sort and nowoman would ever want a guy like that.
(06:33):
And I've heard guys come up to me and, and admit, okay, admit straight up.
I bet you've never heard this one before, but here's my limiting belief.
I have this.
And because of that, no woman wants me.
And I'm thinking like, well, yeah, I,
That's a new one on me.
I don't hear a whole lot of guys going around saying because I've got this exotic issuethat pretty much is invisible to the rest of the world, no women are ever going to want
(06:59):
me, but we do this.
We find something about ourselves that is a pre-disqualifier in our minds and we projectto the world.
You're not going to want me.
You're not going to aid and abet any of my success.
I might as well just throw my hands up in the air and forget about it
because I have this one thing going on.
(07:20):
And in many ways, like I said, usually, first of all, it's our attitude about thatlimiting belief and the limiting belief itself, rather than the actual state of affairs
that's keeping us from getting the success.
And then like you said, and I believe very eloquently and correctly, it's usually not onething.
I mean, it may be a cascade of things based on this one thing about ourselves we dislikeand resent so much, right?
(07:47):
But a lot of guys are not doing any self work at all.
They're sitting around lazy, getting fat, right?
Not taking care of themselves, not even taking a shower.
And either they're saying to themselves, well, you know what, if it's meant to be, it'smeant to be my own private supermodel is going to walk through the basement of my mommy's
house and take my Cheeto fingered hands, you know, and take me away from all this.
(08:12):
It's not going to happen, Captain.
But by the same token, a lot of those guys are going, you know, I could work and work andwork on all these other things.
And at the end of the day, I'm still going to be short or I'm still not going to be amulti gazillionaire.
And what happens is guys will go from, you know, not being very wealthy at all, not havingany...
not even making quote unquote good money, you know, in the Robert Kiyosaki sense.
(08:35):
And then they'll go to making $150,000 a year.
And you know what they'll do, Frank?
You know what they'll do.
They'll go, well, I'm not making $250,000 a year yet.
So women still don't want me.
We just drive these limiting beliefs, don't we?
And it just starts making us into very resentful dudes.
There is so much that I wanna say based on all that commentary.
(08:57):
So I'm just gonna try to pick, I'm gonna try to pick them as they come up to my brain,because there was a lot there.
The first thing is that the higher a person's standards, when they're skill level, doesn'tallow them to actually be with anybody at that level, okay?
That's a fear of intimacy.
So when you see a lot of women talking about he has to have this and this and this andthis and they're stacking it up, but she's not able to get a commitment from a guy at that
(09:26):
level.
Why does she have all those standards?
It's not because she's delusional.
It's because she likely has a fear of intimacy.
And as long as she keeps her standards high, and it's a standard that she cannot attractlegitimately for commitment, it keeps her away from what she's really terrified about.
she's built a wall of standards.
Exactly.
And we see this with men too.
(09:47):
My biggest uh coaching base is still adult male virgins.
Men who have never had a girlfriend, who are starting at a base level where they have nosocial skills, no nothing, and slowly building them up to figure out how to understand
women, how to communicate to them, how to address their emotional needs, which is myparticular forte, and getting their first girlfriends, getting their first sexual
(10:11):
experiences.
Well,
what's a common trait amongst adult male virgins?
They say the girl that I end up having to date has got to be and they start listing all ofthese traits and characteristics, but they have no ability to attract that.
Okay, and
not to be missed, she also has to be a virgin like him.
Not...
not always that can that can be there but for each guy that list of criteria is going tobe different because it's whatever list that he believes on some level is unattainable.
(10:41):
I also want to make something clear for men and women their lists are going to bedifferent because how we measure that fear of intimacy is different.
For men it's whether or not he can get sex with the woman of the list he's looking for.
For women it's whether or not she can get his commitment.
A woman who's getting sex from the kind of man that she would want still may have a fearof intimacy and still may not achieve what would be, let's say, relationship success.
(11:09):
Because getting a man's sex isn't very difficult.
It's getting a man's commitment.
Now, if she can get a man's sex, but she can't get his commitment, that is the equivalentof a guy not being able to even get sex.
So, that's something I know...
this is probably going to get a lot of hate for that, but that's the way to think aboutit.
(11:32):
on board with you around here on all that stuff.
Yeah.
This audience is a pretty well-evolved group of guys.
Okay.
Now getting back to that, whatever that thing is, and you you mentioned it clearly, youknow, somebody says, I'm not rich.
Well, what happens when he becomes rich?
He'll find some other reason.
I'm not rich enough.
I'm not this enough.
I'm not that enough.
(11:52):
So I'm just going to put this out there.
Generally speaking, when we're looking at reasons why people are still single because theydon't feel they're enough and no matter what it is they achieve, they still never feel
they are enough.
They still never feel they're enough.
It usually comes, and I've been doing this now for over 20 years.
Okay.
(12:13):
I'm not a psychologist.
I've got a few certifications in trauma counseling and whatnot, but I'm just professingthis.
I'm a coach, not a doctor in psychology, but I work with real people and I have doneextensive hours and hours of coaching getting into the core of this.
(12:33):
Most people never felt loved enough.
in their developmental years as children.
They were made to feel that love is conditional and that they were not enough.
Well, you also have situations where parents
put a lot of expectations on kids.
(12:53):
And as long as the expectations are being met, everything's copacetic.
But as soon as that, that kid falls short of even the slightest of those expectations, offto a child psychiatrist we go; there's a problem and we got to fix it.
So anything that would qualify as success is business as usual.
We're not going to throw a party.
You know, there's not going to be any hand pounds and huzzahs for a guy who just did whathe was expected to do.
(13:18):
And what was expected was
top tier excellence.
So those are the kids who grow up being people pleasers, uh being the ones who areconstantly looking for approval from others because they've never gotten it.
They've never gotten across that finish line where they can say, I've won.
It's always been, well, the status quo is perfect.
(13:41):
That's what's to be expected.
Don't ever let it deviate from that.
And it's not that parents are evil, horrible people.
It's just kind of...
I call it The Baby Jesus Syndrome.
They get their kid...
especially if they're an only child, you know?
It's like they kind of fail forward with that.
You know what I mean?
It's a, the parent has a child and all of sudden they've got this wonderful baby and theypractically frankly worship this baby and the kid grows up and they want only the best for
(14:06):
the kid and they want the kid to succeed.
And then they project onto that kid these high standards that the kid can't possiblysustain even if they meet them sometimes.
And you know, but
as the siblings are born, the parents tend to back off on that.
So by the time you're up to your third or fourth kid, you know, they're basically feralchildren, you know, free range and they can do whatever they want.
(14:27):
And if they want to grow up and be a plumber or something, not even go to college orsomething someday, I mean, we need, we love and need plumbers because that's hard work,
but I think, you know, what I'm getting at it, The Baby Jesus Syndrome falls to thewayside.
So it's not that parents are horrible people.
It's just that their parenting is misguided in a way that's that's psychologically
harming the child as they grow into adulthood.
(14:49):
I've worked with people who were not baby Jesus.
I've worked with people who legitimately felt hated by their parents.
And the trauma of growing up in an environment where you're not feeling safe and you'renot feeling loved by the very people who are supposed to love and protect you can create a
(15:11):
lot of challenges with being able to form intimate emotional connections with other humanbeings.
And one of the things that I try to communicate to every man who comes to me with thosetype of pains, and that is if you really want to make the world a better place, go home
(15:31):
and love your children.
Go home and be a good parent.
And sometimes...
This is not all, okay?
This is not across the board, but sometimes what I have seen in true healing is that whena man becomes a father and has his own kids, in the process of raising his kids,
he breaks the repeating behavior patterns of the generational trauma in his family line.
(15:56):
And he heals through being a better parent to his children than his parents were to him.
And that is one of the ways to battle a lot of the resentment.
And knowing that...
like again, when a guy's coming to me saying, how do I get motivation for dealing with allthis thing?
Well, if you do have the intent at some point of wanting a family,
(16:18):
you need to heal so that you are a better parent to your children than your parents wereto you.
And for some people, that is a wonderful motivation to push them to do the things thatthey're uncomfortable doing so that they can heal from that resentment.
You know, a lot of people throw a blanket over that whole concept saying, guess what?
You know what?
It's genetic.
You're going to be just like your parents.
(16:40):
You didn't like your parents.
You didn't like what they did to you.
Forget about it because you're going to grow up and you're going to be just like them.
A pox on that.
It doesn't have to be that way.
It doesn't have to be that way.
ah As someone who's had to go through that process, the instinct is always there.
The instinct is always to repeat the behavior pattern that you grew up with.
(17:01):
And it takes a lot of conscious effort, initially, to break that pattern and to establishnew patterns.
It's challenging to become a really good parent when you didn't have the example of what agood parent was.
And
I mean, I'm grateful for the fact that I watched so much television as a kid because a lotof the sitcoms I would watch and a lot of the educational programs I would watch gave me
(17:27):
the example that I didn't have at home.
So I luckily had that example, but even so the instincts to repeat the behavior pattern isthere.
It's when that instinct kicks in and we do something different
in that moment.
That's how we break the pattern and that's how we find a certain level of healing from it.
(17:49):
And getting back to the main point, resentment ain't it.
I mean, if you're going to wallow in resentment your whole life, what you're doing is inand of itself furthering that pattern of failure.
One of the challenges of dealing with resentment is that on some level, resentment makesus feel safe.
Okay?
People resent, but they feel safe when they resent because they're thinking, Well, it'snot just that.
(18:14):
It's not just about not reaching out because I'm resentful, so I'm not gonna do it.
Resentment keeps us safe because it doesn't allow us to take chances.
And as long as we remember what we're resentful about, we're
less likely to let it happen to us again.
Well, I would say that is all about risk.
You know, I'm nice and safe in my little cocoon of resentment.
(18:35):
Nobody can touch me.
If I were to say to myself, well, I'm sick of being resentful, I'm going to branch out andtry to break this.
Well, someone may smite me in a way that forces me right back into that resentment cocoon.
And that would be possibly twice as painful as it was if I wouldn't have ventured out atall.
Another challenge with resentment as you just brought up is that inevitably you're goingto get hurt on this process.
(19:02):
when you break...to use your analogy, when you break out of that cocoon of resentment andyou give it a shot and you try, you must go in with the expectation that you're going to
get hurt.
Things are going to blow up in your face.
Bad things are still going to happen to you, but you're going to learn how to cope withthose bad things in a different way.
(19:23):
And it's learning those coping strategies that helps you claw out of that canyon ofresentment.
You know, I get about 10 to 12 pitches per day from people who want to be on this show.
And, you know, I only do one show with a guest per week, so you can do the arithmeticthere.
I would say a quarter of them are from resilience coaches thinking that they've come uponthis incredibly unique and powerful topic nobody's talking about.
(19:53):
But the truth is, Frank, everybody's talking about resilience nowadays because we all lackit...
or most of us lack it.
I mean, we're too hurt.
We get butthurt.
We get offended over relatively small things.
And it's because we live in a society where we're blessed.
A lot of those Maslovian needs closer to the bottom of the pyramid are met.
(20:16):
And we start talking about things like self-actualizing and so forth, things that, youknow, people who are in the Third World don't even get around to even knowing about,
right?
Or even considering.
But if someone's blocking us from
our perceived need to self-actualize in some way, we get resentment building up in us overall sorts of things.
(20:37):
And yet what you're talking about is generational, familial.
I would argue, you were mentioning how basically a kid can grow up feeling hated.
uh There's Scapegoat Syndrome, which is a very real thing.
Narcissistic parents, not to drop the N word again, but clinical narcissism, first of all,
(20:59):
can be genetic.
And what happens is these parents, the kids are there to serve their needs.
To look good in front of, you know, the rest of my family or my friends.
If my parents...
if my kids shame me, if their behavior or their lack of performance shames me, then thatchild will be punished, know, Mommy Dearest stuff, right?
(21:22):
But what happens is when that kid gets scapegoated, they can't do anything right.
They feel hated.
They're the kid who was the lightning rod for everything in the family because the parentsdecided I don't like that kid as much and they grew up and they're damaged people.
But at the same time, a lot of those people do grow up as genetically narcissistic.
(21:42):
So when they reach out to a coach like you or me, or even get into the, you know, hiring atherapist, it's still all about them and they lack boundaries.
And it's like, well, if you don't want to help me, I understand because I'm a terribleperson.
You don't have to talk to me again.
And you know,
a lot of manipulation by weakness and that just feeds this resentment.
It feeds this fear.
It doesn't help them heal from it.
(22:04):
So there's a lot of nuances to how people arrive at this place in their life, just likeyou're saying, frankly, and literally so, um that they, they're just really resentful.
And some of it, yes, it may be because someone did this to me, but at some point in life,no matter
(22:27):
what your road, whatever road you travel to get here at some point in your life, Frank,you've got to decide I'm not a victim anymore.
And the vulnerability in the strong sense of the word where I'm going to face what I haveto face to get back out there and beat this resentment down with a shovel until it stops
twitching is going to involve perhaps getting hurt.
(22:50):
It's going to perhaps get bloody sometimes.
People may not respond to me the way I want them to respond and
I'll have a choice to make at that point, which is either to go back into my shell and gointo Schleprock mode again and say, poor me and not live my best life.
Or I'm going to go, yeah, you know what?
None of us get out of this alive.
(23:11):
I got hurt.
I took my lumps.
I didn't get first place this time.
You know, I don't care whether my parents were the ones who said you have to get firstplace all the time or there's something wrong with you.
I have to put all of that in the past, look forward, stop being victimized, letting myselffeel like a victim and say, I'm going to go from victim to victor somehow.
(23:34):
These are...
Anytime you show me someone who's got a lot of resentment, they're just Negative Nancyabout everything, right?
I agree the patterns are almost exactly the way you've described them.
Something has gotten them to that point.
They didn't...
They weren't born that way.
No, usually people who carry a lot of resentment, they have reason to.
(23:58):
Okay?
They've been betrayed.
They've been betrayed.
uh When we look at, especially in a society that does not particularly treat men verywell, there's going to be a lot of resentment and a lot of that resentment is legitimate.
And when I'm working with somebody who has that level of resentment, and I understand itbecause I was there.
(24:22):
We have to make a choice as an individual.
And anybody who grew up in that kind of environment, anybody who's been betrayed by thesystem or betrayed by people who are supposed to have their back, we have a choice.
We can either A.
be the one to break that pattern.
(24:42):
We can say, I don't want to make anybody else feel the way that I felt.
And we start adopting a way of taking care of ourselves so that we are in a position totake care of other people who at some point we will care about.
Now there's a second choice and this is what most people may fall into if they're notactively and consciously making that decision.
(25:03):
And that is they contain that cesspool of core hurt.
And the only way that they can feel any rapport with the world around them is to causeother people to go through the same hurt that they went through.
That in the essence is the spirit of the bully.
Because usually every bully has been bullied at some point.
(25:27):
And the only way that they can feel normal and connected to the world is to bully others.
So as long as everybody else is feeling the same level of misery and self-hatred that theyfeel,
they feel a sense of balance.
And that's not an easy thing to break because once again, the resentment at the core ofthat, that is what makes people feel safe.
(25:50):
So when you see, yeah, it is.
And the same way that, know, when I was obese ah and I didn't want to process the intenseemotions that would come up, eating, overeating was a great way
to block out those feelings and reaching a point where I'm not as obsessed with food.
(26:15):
I'm not, I'm still, I still have another year on this hard journey of healing fromobesity.
I still have another year to go.
I've got a major surgery coming up in a couple of months from now and going to food inorder to deal with all of that resentment and negative emotion.
I mean, that was my drug of choice.
(26:38):
So I get it, but if I don't conquer this and if I don't heal from it, all I'm going to dois pass on that negativity to my family, my friends, the people I care about.
And it has to stop with me.
That resentment may feel good in the moment.
(26:58):
You know, like we were saying, it's kind of like junk food.
It feels good when you're eating it, but it makes you unhealthy.
Listen, when you get resentful about something in that moment, you feel powerful.
That's why I'd say it's related to having someone feel safe.
Because when you're resentment, you're angry, you're focused, and you're going to makesure and whether it be going after revenge or whether it's building up a wall, whether
(27:21):
it's coming up with standards, whether it's finding some way to punish somebody else forthe bad things that happen to you.
ah
find other people in their own little echo chambers online and build groups of themselvesto encourage each other, encourage each other in that.
One of the things that I did on this journey uh in healing from my obesity is that Iidentified people who had really hurt me.
(27:49):
And one by one, I reached out to them and I confronted them.
And that was not an easy thing to do.
What did that look like?
Give me an example without mentioning any names.
Okay, I reached out to a former elementary school teacher who because of a uh incident, Iwas 11 years old and it was the first time in my life I had contemplated suicide.
(28:24):
And I had walked along a train track and I laid my neck down on the track
waiting for the next train to come.
This was before the internet, so there was no way to know when the next train was coming.
I mean, I was 11 years old.
I didn't know any better.
And by 9.30 at night, no train had come.
(28:46):
And so I figured I'd better to get home before my parents get mad at me.
Ironically.
And yeah, so it's like, well, I better get home.
My parents are gonna be mad at me, because no train had come.
I got the idea from watching an old black and white movie where I saw someone do that.
And it was something I carried with me for over 40 some odd years.
(29:14):
And as part of the healing journey, was like, I really gotta get closure on this.
So I reached out.
tracked down that elementary school teacher, had an interaction with him.
And I just let him know that what he did caused an 11 year old boy to want to killhimself.
How did that go?
(29:34):
Um, it was an online interaction.
And at first, you know, we had a little pleasant thing and I said, well, I don't know ifyou remember me.
And, you know, we had a little interaction.
And then I wrote to him and I told him everything that had happened.
And I even said something along the lines of, look, I really hate you.
(29:55):
And I'm letting you know that I hate you.
And he never responded after that.
No apologies.
No nothing.
He completely disappeared, but that's okay because I got it out of my system.
I finally confronted somebody who hurt me and then when the person that had put ustogether, because I had reached out and says, do you know where this teacher, this person
(30:24):
is?
yeah, here, I'll put you in contact.
I let that person know about the whole story and that person was no longer interested incommunicating with me and that's okay.
Well, do you feel maybe as if you offloaded that resentment onto your elementary schoolteacher and now they resent you for bringing it up?
(30:47):
It's possible, but that's their problem.
And I didn't say anything like, want you dead or anything like that.
I just wanted to say, you know, had you done something like that in today's day and age,you probably would have lost your job.
But that's one example.
(31:10):
OK, one example.
Now, not everybody has the opportunity to confront
those people.
That's right, some of them have passed on or some of them are just not going to be able tobe found at all.
So I was fortunate in the sense that I had the chance to confront that particular person.
(31:31):
But part of what I'm learning on this journey too is that that's not always necessary.
Sometimes you can find peace in other ways.
There's therapeutic methods.
Talking to the empty chair is one of them.
And I'm not trying to push that as one of the only options.
I'm just pointing out.
(31:52):
that the resentment I carried from that, the absolute hatred, the fear, all of that.
That is the core of most of the challenges we have.
We carry things from childhood that fill in that resentment.
(32:15):
let's be clear here.
You can be an adult man who has been horribly betrayed by the system, horribly betrayed bythe people who you were loving and taking care of, and you're entitled to your resentment.
You're not wrong for being angry.
You're not wrong for being hurt.
we have to be careful that in the process of trying to protect ourselves and trying tomove forward in life, that we're not further limiting ourselves because of the bad actions
(32:44):
of other people.
And that...
something.
I couldn't agree with you more that people who are resentful or even hateful or bitteroften have very good reasons for it.
Like I said before, we're not born this way.
And I do think if you try to talk somebody off of that proverbial ledge of being bitterand just tell them to buck up little buckaroo without giving them any substance behind it,
(33:12):
they're just going to probably start pointing that anger and bitterness towards you.
You know, especially if you haven't you being the person who's speaking to them, tryingto, you know, actually frankly be helpful when we wish you weren't so bitter.
We wish you weren't so resentful.
Please stop.
If the person speaking to them hasn't gone through anything of the sort of what they'vegone through, what they're going to feel is alienated.
(33:38):
They're going to feel like, this person doesn't get me.
They don't understand me.
Whereas if you, if you say to them, look, I validate your reasons that you have.
for being bitter and being resentful.
Man, I've never had to go through that.
If I would have gone through that, I might feel just like you.
I completely validate and understand that.
That's actually a very, that's like a healing balm for a person who feels like that.
(34:03):
Cause finally someone is taking them seriously.
Someone is hearing them.
When people who are very deeply bitter and resentful aren't being heard, they startrioting.
They may throw rocks and get violent.
and you know do things they later resent that might even land them in jail if no onesystemically ever hears them but well yeah one thing i do want to let you finish but i i
(34:27):
want to i want to i want to say the yes and to that
It is probably more likely than not, if this happened to you a long time ago, you're notgoing to get that opportunity you got that you got.
They're not, no one is going to get that opportunity you got with your elementary schoolteacher on a regular basis.
(34:48):
So you can talk to an empty chair, but here's what I've always told people.
And I'm wondering what you think about this.
Look, there are people in the world who are evil people.
There are people in the world, like even people who were elementary school teachers, youknow, not to go out and Pink Floyd the wall on you, but I mean, there are teachers who
(35:09):
just think it's really fun to pick on little kids.
And that's why they got into the teaching profession.
And that's messed up.
And I think nowadays there's more transparency and hopefully those teachers don't get tohold a job.
And they can be women, by the way, too, female teachers.
And it's like when you hear people give victim statements before someone who did somethingto them is sentenced and thrown in jail, there's always a lot of resentment and lot of
(35:38):
bitterness, it seems, in those victimhood statements.
You did this to me and I hope you rot in hell.
And what I don't think those of us who are good, decent people who aren't psychopathsdon't understand is those people think that's hilarious.
They think it's freaking great that you're still being hurt and you're still going to beinjured for the rest of your entire natural freaking life because of what I did to you.
(36:03):
Good suffer because I don't like you.
And I think it's hilarious that you're suffering.
And somehow we think that the person is going to find some sort of compassion in thembecause we're we've had this chance to tell them what we think of them.
But I would argue.
You know.
(36:24):
One of the reasons perhaps that your elementary school teacher didn't offer you an apologyand just ghosted you is to leave that loop open just to spite you.
Quite possibly.
Yeah, but again, now it's their problem.
It always will be their problem, but we're not going to change those people.
So now what?
What do we do?
Well, what I tell people is if you give this person who did unto you, caused you to bebitter, because let's face it, it may be systemic, it may be a whole bunch of women, it
(36:56):
may be one woman, but all these women who rejected you or wouldn't go out with you, maybe
You do need to do some self work before you're attractive enough to deserve getting thekind of woman you want.
You alluded to that very well and very accurately.
But as long as we're giving someone who did unto us all of that headspace and all of thatresentment and we're letting it ruin our lives and keep us in a victimhood state instead
(37:25):
of going out there and rising above it and succeeding anyway.
We're granting superpowers to that person in a way that they're the least of people onearth who deserve to have that power over us.
Because they do.
They still have power over us.
If we're resenting them, if we're bitter because of them, then they've got us right wherethey want us, suffering.
(37:49):
So that one statement, that one reframe of one's mindset has changed a lot of lives ofpeople I've talked to.
And indeed I've had to eat my own dog food as they used to say at Cisco Systems, you know,I had to, I had to go put my own stuff to the test.
And there are people who've done wrong to me.
And the best thing I can do is forget about them and just not give them any head spaceanymore.
(38:13):
There's people who are dead and gone who abused me.
I could let them continue to ruin my life, ruin my ability to have relationships, ruin myability to think well of myself and to succeed because they told me I would fail or they
assaulted me or whatever they did.
But no, uh-uh.
If I keep letting them have the ability to run rampant...roughshod in my mind, I'mgranting them a superpower they don't deserve over me.
(38:40):
When I cut ties and say, you know what, dude, literally forget you.
Not as a euphemism for the other F-bomb, but I'm literally just going to stop
ruminating on this I'm gonna stop focusing on this and I'm gonna move forward That to meis the most liberating thing and the and the best part is it doesn't need the person to be
sitting in front of you.
(39:01):
At all.
You...
if you could forget someone without their direct intervention in the process, you can youcould say look, see ya wouldn't want to be ya.
One of the reasons the MGTOW guys don't like me very much is because I'm living a greatlife with a woman who cares about me, and I've beaten the system that they say doesn't
work.
Well, I'm not a unicorn.
(39:23):
My first wife was a crazy woman who wrecked my life.
I have every right...
And this is why I agree with you so much.
Look, I have every right to say women are crazy.
They're terrible.
This woman seemed wonderful the day I married her and then just went Jekyll and Hyde on myass and turned into someone I didn't even know and ruined me.
(39:44):
And I'm never going to risk that again.
I'm going to stay in my bubble.
I'm going to stay single.
I'm going to watch porn.
I'm going to get fat.
I'm going to become a bitter old bastard.
I'm not going to take a shower just to make sure women don't touch me or my life.
I'm building a freaking brick wall between me and the outside world.
But you know what?
My ex-wife would continue to win every single day by making me miserable if I let thathappen.
(40:09):
Win after win...just racking up wins on a daily basis, because I'm putting up with thatattitude.
Uh-uh.
No, my best revenge
was saying, I'm not going to be a victim anymore.
And in fact, after my divorce, I'm going to get better with women watching myself getbetter.
Because when people told me, hey, look, this wasn't your fault.
She's crazy.
You know, what could you have done?
(40:29):
You were a great husband, great father.
You know what?
Forget that.
Forget her.
I'm going to do better because I want to do better for me.
And I can tell you my ex-wife was not very happy when I met Emily, not very happy when Ihad two more kids and they're happy and healthy.
Not very happy at all that I'm doing what I do for a living, shouting it out from therooftops.
(40:54):
But I also haven't talked to her or really thought about her much...
know, I know that sounds ironic because we're talking about it right now.
I don't even think about her much.
I haven't talked to her in seven years since my daughter turned 18.
I moved on, which means, you know, I'm not giving her head space.
I'm not giving her any space in my life for her to contribute to
(41:17):
my lack of well-being or to mess with my sanity anymore.
So, I mean, we as guys, you know, the takeaway here, Frank, is we've got to do something.
We've got to do something if we're starting to feel this resentment because it will eat usfrom the inside.
It will harm us.
Whatever we're resentful towards, chances are they not only, you know, they may not care.
(41:42):
They may not even know we're resentful unless, you know, you
get in touch with them 40 years later and tell them like you did.
But they may think that's hilarious that we're resentful.
The best revenge is to get past it and live your best life.
You know, that's the best revenge.
Okay, A couple of things I do want to bring up here.
(42:02):
Are there evil people in the world?
Absolutely.
There's no question.
Is everybody who harms us an evil person?
No.
And sometimes you might be dealing with somebody who is not evil, but they made mistakes.
And it's important to make that distinction because part of the resentful frame of mind isjust to categorize somebody
(42:28):
as they hurt me, they made a mistake with me, they're evil, when in fact they just mightbe not very bright, they made mistakes, they're trying to figure out their way through the
world and they obviously messed up and we were the consequence of that.
So let's make those two distinctions.
(42:49):
If you're dealing with a truly evil person, then nothing you do to
to connect with them or appease them or even communicate with them...
It's gonna have...
It won't have a resolution other than giving you the chance, yeah, other than giving youthe chance to just get something off your chest.
(43:09):
With that said, part of dealing with resentment is understanding that it doesn't matter ifthe person was genuinely evil or if they're messed up people making mistakes.
The harm that you felt is legitimate.
But how you process that harm is a reflection on the kind of life you're going to buildfor yourself.
(43:32):
Well, I would argue that no matter how you deal with it, as long as you're giving thatperson headspace in your life and letting that play over and over and over again in your
life, you're feeding the bitterness rather than moving on from.
with that said, that life experience might be a good turning point and a motivation for anindividual to say, I never want to be like that person.
(43:57):
And I don't think of that as giving that person headspace.
I think of that as saying, this is what happened to me.
I never want to be the type of person that they were.
And I'm going to go forward in my life not doing certain things.
Now, I, some people may say, well, that's them still taking up headspace.
I look at it as I had an opportunity to learn from that about what not to do to otherpeople.
(44:24):
I would agree a thousand percent that's a completely different frame of mind and that'sthe right frame of mind to have.
Like let me put that in absolutely perfect perspective with an absolutely direct exampleand I can pick up on the one that I was just talking about.
Yes, I had a crazy ex-wife who ruined my life.
Now that I've had that experience, I'm a better dating coach because I can be ofassistance to guys who are going through something like that right now.
(44:51):
You've also learned how to spot the red flags.
You've learned how to spot red flags.
Yeah.
Now I'm helping someone else, just like you said at the beginning of this whole show, youknow, I can be there to help someone recover because I've healed from it in many ways.
Am I going to pronounce myself a hundred percent healed from it?
I don't know.
I don't really think I'm particularly wallowing in the damage from it anymore.
(45:15):
I mean, I've had a wonderful woman and a wonderful marriage to keep me warm all theseyears.
You know what I mean?
So to speak.
But yeah, I understand where you're coming from, and I agree.
19 years.
19 years.
That's pretty remarkable.
Yeah, and I, you know, I think these guys are sick of me saying this on the show, but Ihave not had one day in those 19 years that was like most days with my ex-wife in terms of
(45:40):
the misery.
But yeah, I understand where you're coming from, and I think it's an important point tomake.
First of all, not everybody who did unto us is flat out straight up evil.
But the effect of what they did on us is still there, causing that resentment.
And either way, I can't ruminate on what was done to me, either the who that did it or thewhat that happened.
(46:01):
I have to take it and learn from it.
And, know, just like the best revenge is not letting them live rent free in my head anddestroy me.
If I take that and I kind of twist it around.
You know, like ironic humor almost, and I go into the world and say, Hey, look, because Ihad this experience, I can help you.
(46:22):
This is a positive now
that I know about this, that I've felt this, that I've experienced it, that I cancompletely relate to you if you're coming to me with something similar, that is a gift.
And when you treat it as a gift, voila, what's happened is your mindset has indeedflipped.
It's not negative, resentful wallowing.
(46:42):
It's, look man, I have gone through some stuff in my life.
How can I make the world a better place because of it?
I want to add something here.
One of the motivations to deal with your resentment, and in the case of dating, dealingwith your resentment against women, dealing with your resentment against people,
(47:03):
resentment, like any behavior pattern, is habit-forming.
And when you give in to a lot of resentment, you are training yourself to be in the habitof resenting people.
Yes.
You're retraining yourself to give in to all of those emotions of resentment.
And like I said, resentment can feel good because it makes you feel safe.
(47:26):
It makes you feel strong.
It makes you feel powerful.
It's a way of protecting yourself.
And those are all good attributes.
Unfortunately, when it comes to resentment, all it can do is create more resentment.
And then you start applying that to situations where it doesn't actually apply.
(47:47):
Yes.
In other words, you start looking for reasons to resent people.
Yeah.
a just a common example here that comes up with my coaching.
Somebody comes to me and I'm coaching them for dating and relationships and they had a badday at work because they made a mistake at work and their boss came in and had to correct
them.
And when they're describing this story, I'm looking at it and I says, well, what you didwas was not really acceptable on the job.
(48:15):
So, yeah, your boss is going to tell you, look, you can't do that.
You have to do this.
And they describe the situation, and I don't find it particularly ominous.
I think that, you know, the manager was just doing their job, but a person who's alreadyvery exercised in being resentful can then apply those same visceral emotions to a
(48:40):
situation that it really does not need to apply to.
the next...
a good test.
Am I avoiding having a confrontation or a potentially difficult conversation with someone?
Because my assumption is they're going to resent me as the messenger because I gave it tothem.
(49:00):
If I'm projecting that result out onto other people, it may mean, it may be more about methan them.
That might be because I have problems with resentment.
And so I'm worried people will resent me if I have a difficult conversation with them.
So I shy away and I become Mr.
Nice Guy.
No wonder Mr.
Nice Guy is often very resentful underneath, right?
(49:25):
It can happen.
It can be that somebody who's very nice is nice not because they're being nice for thesake of being nice.
They're being nice because they're holding back what they would really want to express.
And it's...
vortex of resentment and potential resentment.
It's ugly.
(49:45):
And look, it's understandable.
It's especially depending on how you were brought up.
If you were brought up where any expression, positive or negative, was met with a lessthan friendly or less than pleasant attitude, it can be a very, very hard habit to break
(50:09):
until finally you end up exploding.
Being a people pleaser, sometimes they explode and then they freak out and oh no, now...
you know, and then that just reinforces the belief.
You see, I expressed myself and now people are angry at me.
Hold on, let's process this.
It's not that you expressed yourself.
(50:29):
It's the way you exploded on the person.
That's what's making them weary of you.
Not the fact that you communicated, look, I'm really not happy with this situation.
It's...
you came out of, from their perspective, you came out of nowhere with all of this anger.
And that's one of the reasons that some people don't like expressing themselves because intheir experience, every time they do, they're afraid of losing control when expressing
(50:56):
themselves.
So they keep it bottled up and they keep it tighter and they go on and on.
And then they get resentful that they can't express themselves.
Well, Frank, I'll tell you what, this has been a fantastic conversation.
think you're right on in everything you say.
Um, I do want to bring to light that you are still going onward with your weight lossjourney.
And because of the massive amount of weight you've lost, which I mean, and that, is justincredibly inspirational to a lot of us out here.
(51:26):
I mean, 260, 240 pounds.
No, I started at 460 and I have lost half of that 230 pounds uh I have a I have a I nowhave a lot of hanging skin and I'm getting that surgery done uh, sometime in the next two
months maybe sooner.
(51:48):
when you lose that much weight, you've lost the fat, but literally your skin is an organand to accommodate that extra mass over the years, you've developed more skin and that
stays even though you've lost the fat.
yeah, have about 30 pounds of hanging skin that needs to be cut off.
I have a surgery coming up.
(52:08):
I did set up a GoFundMe.
So to ask anybody listening to this, if my work has inspired you in any way from the timethat Scot interviewed me nearly 20 years ago, ah if my YouTube videos, my interviews, any
of my books or whatnot, if anything has made a difference in your life, ah
(52:29):
I've set up a GoFundMe and Scot will have the link in the description of this podcast.
If you'd like to contribute, uh it would be very appreciated.
And I'm hoping that this is gonna be my It's A Wonderful Life moment where people that Ihave helped and inspired throughout my life will be able to come and help me now.
(52:51):
Even on this podcast, lots of these insights that you've given today, Frank, are going tobe very meaningful to lot of these guys.
So, you know, especially a lot of you guys with means out there, if you would give alittle bit towards what Frank's going through here and help him to kind of, you know,
punctuate this journey by getting the surgery he needs...
I want to, I want to go ahead and clarify, Frank is in Canada.
(53:15):
You know, and there are good things and bad things about national healthcare.
um This would count as an elective surgery in Canada, wouldn't it?
part of the surgery is covered.
Okay, part of the surgery is covered.
What's not covered is the anesthesia that I have to pay for myself and the plastic surgeryuh for uh reconstruction.
(53:40):
Now, yeah.
And it's basically they're slicing off 30 pounds of hanging skin.
If you visit the website, you'll actually see a picture where I have a towel under thehanging skin and I'm lifting it up and that's the part they're going to slice off.
ah Once that slices off, the way the surgeon explained it to me is that I may have uh anirregular looking body and I've already told them, look, you don't even have to save my
(54:07):
belly button, okay?
I really don't care.
I just want to be able to move forward with my life.
uh The surgeon has encouraged me to consider this.
Now if I do the surgery and it's not necessary, then they're going to do a minimal amount.
They're only going to know after they open me up.
uh
can't imagine someone going through such a surgery without anesthesia, first of all.
(54:30):
I mean, I think you could just put a period on the end of that sentence.
So these guys definitely should uh go contribute whatever they can to your GoFundMe.
The URL that I've set up guys is mountaintoppodcast.com /franktalks.
F R A N K T A L K S where you will be uh
(54:52):
sent to a website that'll tell a little bit more about Frank's story, show the pictureshe's talking about and where you can contribute.
Frank, man, it has been way too long.
And I'm so glad we had this conversation today.
Good back and forth on it.
It's an important conversation and, um, you know, not to be missed, we definitely talkedfrankly about it.
So thanks again, my friend.
Thank you, Scot.
(55:12):
This is one of the first interviews I've done getting back into this.
it's, as always, you were one of the first people who interviewed me so many years agowhen I first became a dating coach.
And now that I'm on the tail end of this health journey, you're one of the first people tointerview me again.
So thank you very much for your support.
(55:32):
You're quite welcome and back at you, man.
It's always been good times.
You know your stuff.
You know, women, you've been around the block.
You're not a silver spoon guy.
Like I'm not a silver spoon guy.
Everything you've learned about women has been hard fought.
So it's always a pleasure.
Yeah, man.
I hope you'll come back and let us know how it went after the surgery is over, and you'vehad some time to convalesce.
(55:55):
I look forward to my return here.
I got a one in 13,000 chance of not waking up from this surgery, and...
Yeah, those are good odds in my favor.
I'm going in there as healthy as possible.
I don't have diabetes anymore.
My asthma has been removed with the lifestyle changes.
uh I'm not on the number of medications I used to be on.
(56:18):
So everything is good, but there's always that chance and...
if I'm alive on the other end of it, I'll definitely be back on the podcast.
man, I think we have a one in 13,000 chance of something else getting us before thesurgery.
I would take those odds.
I mean you know, you're going to spend 30, 40,000 days on earth.
I mean, one in 13...
one in 13,000 every day.
(56:39):
You know, I'd take those odds.
Excellent.
Excellent stuff, man.
Just the fact that you can reverse diabetes is also probably the subject of an entireseparate show.
That's powerful.
But yeah, man, great stuff.
And once again, I appreciate you.
Yeah.
And guys,
Go to mountaintoppodcast.com, check out our three main sponsors, Jocko Willink's companyOrigin in Maine, thekeyport.com and Hero Soap.
(57:03):
Man, I've been using the Honey Bourbon uh Hero Soap and it just makes you smell like aman.
I don't know how else to describe it.
It's like this translucent, caramel colored soap and it just feels old school.
You guys ought to try it.
Get some of that from Hero Soap.
Whether you deal with Hero Soap, the Keyport,
(57:23):
or of course, Jocko Willink's company Origin in Maine, use the coupon code "mountain10" toget an extra 10% off your order.
Also guys, look, get on the phone, talk to me.
Um, I don't play a fictional character.
I'm exactly who you think I'm going to be.
Get on my calendar, schedule some time...
25 minutes for us to talk.
Give your feedback on the show.
(57:43):
If I can help put a plan together that supercharges your effect on women and the effectwomen have in your life and
gets you the right girlfriend or wife.
Hey, let's do that too.
All of that is there for you and more at mountaintoppodcast.com.
And until I talk to you again real soon, this is Scot McKay from X & Y Communications inSan Antonio, Texas.
(58:07):
Be good out there.
Alright gentlemen, this is your main man, Scot McKay coming at you again with anotherepisode of the world famous Mountain Top Podcast.
And today we're going to talk about that resentment that can kind of creep in when thingsaren't going quite well for you, especially with the women in your life or, know, even in
your careers also, before we get started on that, I want to remind you that you can catchme on most social media outlets at Scot McKay with the exception
(00:28):
of instagram which is @realscotmckay and the website is mountaintoppodcast.com Andgentlemen if you aren't on the facebook group just yet It is the Mountain Top Summit on
facebook and I hope to see you there My guest today is someone I first interviewedprobably 18 years ago.
And he and I are pretty much part of the group of OGs back in the men's dating space Andit has been way too long
(00:55):
since I've interviewed him, even since I talked to him, we were catching up before westarted with the actual podcast recording here.
His name is Frank Kermit.
And he likes to say he's Frank because he has to be.
And, that is a fact for sure.
He's up in Montreal, Canada.
And some of you guys may know Frank from his Frank Talks site and the persona he had backup in the pickup artist era.
(01:20):
These days, like most of us, he's married with a family
and things have changed for him.
And he's also uh undergone a bit of a personal transformation that he's going to talk toyou about.
But the topic du jour is definitely about resentment, something we haven't covered enoughon this show.
uh Frank Kermit, man...
welcome.
It's great to see you, buddy.
(01:41):
It's so great to be here.
You and I haven't had a chance to sit down and talk in years.
You were one of the first people, one of the first podcasts that I was on when I venturedinto the world of becoming a dating coach.
And here now almost 20 years later, you're one of the first people who interviews me asI'm slowly getting back into it after taking a hiatus and focusing on my health.
(02:05):
Yeah, man, there's a lot to talk about here.
Let's go ahead and talk about the journey you've been on uh for the last several years.
You you and I are both guys who aren't just naturally skinny dudes who can inhale food andbunch of burgers and fries and still say still stay "flaquito".
We can't do that.
You and I both have it in our genetics that it's a constant battle.
(02:27):
So I don't know if a lot of the guys
who know you from dating advice, know exactly what happened over the course of the lastseveral years.
So just bring us up to speed on that, because I think it's a fascinating story, Frank.
Alright, well one of the things that distinguished me as a dating coach is that I wasalways a much bigger guy.
And I still went out of my way to connect with women.
(02:49):
I still had a very active social life and active sex life.
I just made do with what I had and wherever I was limited, I worked around thoselimitations.
And it was not easy.
I faced a lot more rejection.
I faced a lot more hardships and I just overcame it
and still managed to have a social life, eventually getting married, having a family.
(03:12):
Over the course of the last 15, 20 years, my health got worse.
I eventually ballooned to 460 pounds.
Yeah, and it was a very unhealthy, unhealthy time.
And in 2020, I got a call from my doctor saying,
(03:36):
Frank, you have diabetes.
Now I had been obese for so many years without getting diabetes, which that alone waspretty remarkable.
But the day came when I got that phone call, yeah, you've got diabetes now.
That was the day I said, okay, I need to conquer obesity.
And that began a journey involving surgeries, therapy, a lot of my own personaldevelopment, trying to get to the source
(04:05):
of my food addictions.
One of the things I learned on this journey is that the world of dating and the world ofgetting healthy is a multi-factorial battle.
It's never just one thing.
Okay?
It's never just one thing.
I'm struggling with women.
It's because it's because I'm not rich or it's I'm not this and I'm not that.
(04:26):
Those and those are legitimate concerns.
Okay?
Those are legitimate factors, but it's very rarely the one factor.
There's usually multiple factors and in order to accomplish any of these journeys, youhave to battle every single factor at the very least, figure out how to work around those
factors.
And battling obesity was also something that I realized obesity is the symptom of theissue, not the actual issue.
(04:54):
Before you continue, I'd like to jump in here real quick and underscore something you saidthat I think probably would be worth its own podcast in and of itself.
And that's, I'm going to scapegoat one factor that keeps me from being successful withwomen or being successful in my career.
You know, you know, I'm not very tall.
A lot of guys will come to me and they've read, you know, too many articles out theresaying that women want tall guys.
(05:21):
That's the first thing they want.
It's the first checkbox.
at the top of the list.
if you're under...
I mean, I heard one that said, if you're under 6'2", 85 % of women don't even want you.
And here I am, know, five foot five and three quarters.
And you know, I had wonderful women and the women I really wanted all through my datinglife.
Once I got everything together and I would argue it's because I didn't scapegoat myheight.
(05:44):
I mean, as soon as I stopped worrying about it, it seemed like everybody else stoppedworrying about it.
I don't even get short jokes from my peers nowadays, perhaps because
I carry myself differently and well, you know, that reminds me of the simple fact thatmost women don't like short guys, not because of their height, but because of how short
guys feel about being short.
So it's kind of like a meta level death spiral we send ourselves into.
(06:08):
But indeed, whatever it is, we're going to scapegoat this one thing that usually I feelhelpless about.
It's not something I can change.
You know, I was born dirt poor and
I'm to stay that way.
I'm not very tall.
Can't do anything about it.
Um, you know, I'm ugly or, you know, I've got this, uh, affliction of some sort and nowoman would ever want a guy like that.
(06:33):
And I've heard guys come up to me and, and admit, okay, admit straight up.
I bet you've never heard this one before, but here's my limiting belief.
I have this.
And because of that, no woman wants me.
And I'm thinking like, well, yeah, I,
That's a new one on me.
I don't hear a whole lot of guys going around saying because I've got this exotic issuethat pretty much is invisible to the rest of the world, no women are ever going to want
(06:59):
me, but we do this.
We find something about ourselves that is a pre-disqualifier in our minds and we projectto the world.
You're not going to want me.
You're not going to aid and abet any of my success.
I might as well just throw my hands up in the air and forget about it
because I have this one thing going on.
(07:20):
And in many ways, like I said, usually, first of all, it's our attitude about thatlimiting belief and the limiting belief itself, rather than the actual state of affairs
that's keeping us from getting the success.
And then like you said, and I believe very eloquently and correctly, it's usually not onething.
I mean, it may be a cascade of things based on this one thing about ourselves we dislikeand resent so much, right?
(07:47):
But a lot of guys are not doing any self work at all.
They're sitting around lazy, getting fat, right?
Not taking care of themselves, not even taking a shower.
And either they're saying to themselves, well, you know what, if it's meant to be, it'smeant to be my own private supermodel is going to walk through the basement of my mommy's
house and take my Cheeto fingered hands, you know, and take me away from all this.
(08:12):
It's not going to happen, Captain.
But by the same token, a lot of those guys are going, you know, I could work and work andwork on all these other things.
And at the end of the day, I'm still going to be short or I'm still not going to be amulti gazillionaire.
And what happens is guys will go from, you know, not being very wealthy at all, not havingany...
not even making quote unquote good money, you know, in the Robert Kiyosaki sense.
(08:35):
And then they'll go to making $150,000 a year.
And you know what they'll do, Frank?
You know what they'll do.
They'll go, well, I'm not making $250,000 a year yet.
So women still don't want me.
We just drive these limiting beliefs, don't we?
And it just starts making us into very resentful dudes.
There is so much that I wanna say based on all that commentary.
(08:57):
So I'm just gonna try to pick, I'm gonna try to pick them as they come up to my brain,because there was a lot there.
The first thing is that the higher a person's standards, when they're skill level, doesn'tallow them to actually be with anybody at that level, okay?
That's a fear of intimacy.
So when you see a lot of women talking about he has to have this and this and this andthis and they're stacking it up, but she's not able to get a commitment from a guy at that
(09:26):
level.
Why does she have all those standards?
It's not because she's delusional.
It's because she likely has a fear of intimacy.
And as long as she keeps her standards high, and it's a standard that she cannot attractlegitimately for commitment, it keeps her away from what she's really terrified about.
she's built a wall of standards.
Exactly.
And we see this with men too.
(09:47):
My biggest uh coaching base is still adult male virgins.
Men who have never had a girlfriend, who are starting at a base level where they have nosocial skills, no nothing, and slowly building them up to figure out how to understand
women, how to communicate to them, how to address their emotional needs, which is myparticular forte, and getting their first girlfriends, getting their first sexual
(10:11):
experiences.
Well,
what's a common trait amongst adult male virgins?
They say the girl that I end up having to date has got to be and they start listing all ofthese traits and characteristics, but they have no ability to attract that.
Okay, and
not to be missed, she also has to be a virgin like him.
Not...
not always that can that can be there but for each guy that list of criteria is going tobe different because it's whatever list that he believes on some level is unattainable.
(10:41):
I also want to make something clear for men and women their lists are going to bedifferent because how we measure that fear of intimacy is different.
For men it's whether or not he can get sex with the woman of the list he's looking for.
For women it's whether or not she can get his commitment.
A woman who's getting sex from the kind of man that she would want still may have a fearof intimacy and still may not achieve what would be, let's say, relationship success.
(11:09):
Because getting a man's sex isn't very difficult.
It's getting a man's commitment.
Now, if she can get a man's sex, but she can't get his commitment, that is the equivalentof a guy not being able to even get sex.
So, that's something I know...
this is probably going to get a lot of hate for that, but that's the way to think aboutit.
(11:32):
on board with you around here on all that stuff.
Yeah.
This audience is a pretty well-evolved group of guys.
Okay.
Now getting back to that, whatever that thing is, and you you mentioned it clearly, youknow, somebody says, I'm not rich.
Well, what happens when he becomes rich?
He'll find some other reason.
I'm not rich enough.
I'm not this enough.
I'm not that enough.
(11:52):
So I'm just going to put this out there.
Generally speaking, when we're looking at reasons why people are still single because theydon't feel they're enough and no matter what it is they achieve, they still never feel
they are enough.
They still never feel they're enough.
It usually comes, and I've been doing this now for over 20 years.
Okay.
(12:13):
I'm not a psychologist.
I've got a few certifications in trauma counseling and whatnot, but I'm just professingthis.
I'm a coach, not a doctor in psychology, but I work with real people and I have doneextensive hours and hours of coaching getting into the core of this.
(12:33):
Most people never felt loved enough.
in their developmental years as children.
They were made to feel that love is conditional and that they were not enough.
Well, you also have situations where parents
put a lot of expectations on kids.
(12:53):
And as long as the expectations are being met, everything's copacetic.
But as soon as that, that kid falls short of even the slightest of those expectations, offto a child psychiatrist we go; there's a problem and we got to fix it.
So anything that would qualify as success is business as usual.
We're not going to throw a party.
You know, there's not going to be any hand pounds and huzzahs for a guy who just did whathe was expected to do.
(13:18):
And what was expected was
top tier excellence.
So those are the kids who grow up being people pleasers, uh being the ones who areconstantly looking for approval from others because they've never gotten it.
They've never gotten across that finish line where they can say, I've won.
It's always been, well, the status quo is perfect.
(13:41):
That's what's to be expected.
Don't ever let it deviate from that.
And it's not that parents are evil, horrible people.
It's just kind of...
I call it The Baby Jesus Syndrome.
They get their kid...
especially if they're an only child, you know?
It's like they kind of fail forward with that.
You know what I mean?
It's a, the parent has a child and all of sudden they've got this wonderful baby and theypractically frankly worship this baby and the kid grows up and they want only the best for
(14:06):
the kid and they want the kid to succeed.
And then they project onto that kid these high standards that the kid can't possiblysustain even if they meet them sometimes.
And you know, but
as the siblings are born, the parents tend to back off on that.
So by the time you're up to your third or fourth kid, you know, they're basically feralchildren, you know, free range and they can do whatever they want.
(14:27):
And if they want to grow up and be a plumber or something, not even go to college orsomething someday, I mean, we need, we love and need plumbers because that's hard work,
but I think, you know, what I'm getting at it, The Baby Jesus Syndrome falls to thewayside.
So it's not that parents are horrible people.
It's just that their parenting is misguided in a way that's that's psychologically
harming the child as they grow into adulthood.
(14:49):
I've worked with people who were not baby Jesus.
I've worked with people who legitimately felt hated by their parents.
And the trauma of growing up in an environment where you're not feeling safe and you'renot feeling loved by the very people who are supposed to love and protect you can create a
(15:11):
lot of challenges with being able to form intimate emotional connections with other humanbeings.
And one of the things that I try to communicate to every man who comes to me with thosetype of pains, and that is if you really want to make the world a better place, go home
(15:31):
and love your children.
Go home and be a good parent.
And sometimes...
This is not all, okay?
This is not across the board, but sometimes what I have seen in true healing is that whena man becomes a father and has his own kids, in the process of raising his kids,
he breaks the repeating behavior patterns of the generational trauma in his family line.
(15:56):
And he heals through being a better parent to his children than his parents were to him.
And that is one of the ways to battle a lot of the resentment.
And knowing that...
like again, when a guy's coming to me saying, how do I get motivation for dealing with allthis thing?
Well, if you do have the intent at some point of wanting a family,
(16:18):
you need to heal so that you are a better parent to your children than your parents wereto you.
And for some people, that is a wonderful motivation to push them to do the things thatthey're uncomfortable doing so that they can heal from that resentment.
You know, a lot of people throw a blanket over that whole concept saying, guess what?
You know what?
It's genetic.
You're going to be just like your parents.
(16:40):
You didn't like your parents.
You didn't like what they did to you.
Forget about it because you're going to grow up and you're going to be just like them.
A pox on that.
It doesn't have to be that way.
It doesn't have to be that way.
ah As someone who's had to go through that process, the instinct is always there.
The instinct is always to repeat the behavior pattern that you grew up with.
(17:01):
And it takes a lot of conscious effort, initially, to break that pattern and to establishnew patterns.
It's challenging to become a really good parent when you didn't have the example of what agood parent was.
And
I mean, I'm grateful for the fact that I watched so much television as a kid because a lotof the sitcoms I would watch and a lot of the educational programs I would watch gave me
(17:27):
the example that I didn't have at home.
So I luckily had that example, but even so the instincts to repeat the behavior pattern isthere.
It's when that instinct kicks in and we do something different
in that moment.
That's how we break the pattern and that's how we find a certain level of healing from it.
(17:49):
And getting back to the main point, resentment ain't it.
I mean, if you're going to wallow in resentment your whole life, what you're doing is inand of itself furthering that pattern of failure.
One of the challenges of dealing with resentment is that on some level, resentment makesus feel safe.
Okay?
People resent, but they feel safe when they resent because they're thinking, Well, it'snot just that.
(18:14):
It's not just about not reaching out because I'm resentful, so I'm not gonna do it.
Resentment keeps us safe because it doesn't allow us to take chances.
And as long as we remember what we're resentful about, we're
less likely to let it happen to us again.
Well, I would say that is all about risk.
You know, I'm nice and safe in my little cocoon of resentment.
(18:35):
Nobody can touch me.
If I were to say to myself, well, I'm sick of being resentful, I'm going to branch out andtry to break this.
Well, someone may smite me in a way that forces me right back into that resentment cocoon.
And that would be possibly twice as painful as it was if I wouldn't have ventured out atall.
Another challenge with resentment as you just brought up is that inevitably you're goingto get hurt on this process.
(19:02):
when you break...to use your analogy, when you break out of that cocoon of resentment andyou give it a shot and you try, you must go in with the expectation that you're going to
get hurt.
Things are going to blow up in your face.
Bad things are still going to happen to you, but you're going to learn how to cope withthose bad things in a different way.
(19:23):
And it's learning those coping strategies that helps you claw out of that canyon ofresentment.
You know, I get about 10 to 12 pitches per day from people who want to be on this show.
And, you know, I only do one show with a guest per week, so you can do the arithmeticthere.
I would say a quarter of them are from resilience coaches thinking that they've come uponthis incredibly unique and powerful topic nobody's talking about.
(19:53):
But the truth is, Frank, everybody's talking about resilience nowadays because we all lackit...
or most of us lack it.
I mean, we're too hurt.
We get butthurt.
We get offended over relatively small things.
And it's because we live in a society where we're blessed.
A lot of those Maslovian needs closer to the bottom of the pyramid are met.
(20:16):
And we start talking about things like self-actualizing and so forth, things that, youknow, people who are in the Third World don't even get around to even knowing about,
right?
Or even considering.
But if someone's blocking us from
our perceived need to self-actualize in some way, we get resentment building up in us overall sorts of things.
(20:37):
And yet what you're talking about is generational, familial.
I would argue, you were mentioning how basically a kid can grow up feeling hated.
uh There's Scapegoat Syndrome, which is a very real thing.
Narcissistic parents, not to drop the N word again, but clinical narcissism, first of all,
(20:59):
can be genetic.
And what happens is these parents, the kids are there to serve their needs.
To look good in front of, you know, the rest of my family or my friends.
If my parents...
if my kids shame me, if their behavior or their lack of performance shames me, then thatchild will be punished, know, Mommy Dearest stuff, right?
(21:22):
But what happens is when that kid gets scapegoated, they can't do anything right.
They feel hated.
They're the kid who was the lightning rod for everything in the family because the parentsdecided I don't like that kid as much and they grew up and they're damaged people.
But at the same time, a lot of those people do grow up as genetically narcissistic.
(21:42):
So when they reach out to a coach like you or me, or even get into the, you know, hiring atherapist, it's still all about them and they lack boundaries.
And it's like, well, if you don't want to help me, I understand because I'm a terribleperson.
You don't have to talk to me again.
And you know,
a lot of manipulation by weakness and that just feeds this resentment.
It feeds this fear.
It doesn't help them heal from it.
(22:04):
So there's a lot of nuances to how people arrive at this place in their life, just likeyou're saying, frankly, and literally so, um that they, they're just really resentful.
And some of it, yes, it may be because someone did this to me, but at some point in life,no matter
(22:27):
what your road, whatever road you travel to get here at some point in your life, Frank,you've got to decide I'm not a victim anymore.
And the vulnerability in the strong sense of the word where I'm going to face what I haveto face to get back out there and beat this resentment down with a shovel until it stops
twitching is going to involve perhaps getting hurt.
(22:50):
It's going to perhaps get bloody sometimes.
People may not respond to me the way I want them to respond and
I'll have a choice to make at that point, which is either to go back into my shell and gointo Schleprock mode again and say, poor me and not live my best life.
Or I'm going to go, yeah, you know what?
None of us get out of this alive.
(23:11):
I got hurt.
I took my lumps.
I didn't get first place this time.
You know, I don't care whether my parents were the ones who said you have to get firstplace all the time or there's something wrong with you.
I have to put all of that in the past, look forward, stop being victimized, letting myselffeel like a victim and say, I'm going to go from victim to victor somehow.
(23:34):
These are...
Anytime you show me someone who's got a lot of resentment, they're just Negative Nancyabout everything, right?
I agree the patterns are almost exactly the way you've described them.
Something has gotten them to that point.
They didn't...
They weren't born that way.
No, usually people who carry a lot of resentment, they have reason to.
(23:58):
Okay?
They've been betrayed.
They've been betrayed.
uh When we look at, especially in a society that does not particularly treat men verywell, there's going to be a lot of resentment and a lot of that resentment is legitimate.
And when I'm working with somebody who has that level of resentment, and I understand itbecause I was there.
(24:22):
We have to make a choice as an individual.
And anybody who grew up in that kind of environment, anybody who's been betrayed by thesystem or betrayed by people who are supposed to have their back, we have a choice.
We can either A.
be the one to break that pattern.
(24:42):
We can say, I don't want to make anybody else feel the way that I felt.
And we start adopting a way of taking care of ourselves so that we are in a position totake care of other people who at some point we will care about.
Now there's a second choice and this is what most people may fall into if they're notactively and consciously making that decision.
(25:03):
And that is they contain that cesspool of core hurt.
And the only way that they can feel any rapport with the world around them is to causeother people to go through the same hurt that they went through.
That in the essence is the spirit of the bully.
Because usually every bully has been bullied at some point.
(25:27):
And the only way that they can feel normal and connected to the world is to bully others.
So as long as everybody else is feeling the same level of misery and self-hatred that theyfeel,
they feel a sense of balance.
And that's not an easy thing to break because once again, the resentment at the core ofthat, that is what makes people feel safe.
(25:50):
So when you see, yeah, it is.
And the same way that, know, when I was obese ah and I didn't want to process the intenseemotions that would come up, eating, overeating was a great way
to block out those feelings and reaching a point where I'm not as obsessed with food.
(26:15):
I'm not, I'm still, I still have another year on this hard journey of healing fromobesity.
I still have another year to go.
I've got a major surgery coming up in a couple of months from now and going to food inorder to deal with all of that resentment and negative emotion.
I mean, that was my drug of choice.
(26:38):
So I get it, but if I don't conquer this and if I don't heal from it, all I'm going to dois pass on that negativity to my family, my friends, the people I care about.
And it has to stop with me.
That resentment may feel good in the moment.
(26:58):
You know, like we were saying, it's kind of like junk food.
It feels good when you're eating it, but it makes you unhealthy.
Listen, when you get resentful about something in that moment, you feel powerful.
That's why I'd say it's related to having someone feel safe.
Because when you're resentment, you're angry, you're focused, and you're going to makesure and whether it be going after revenge or whether it's building up a wall, whether
(27:21):
it's coming up with standards, whether it's finding some way to punish somebody else forthe bad things that happen to you.
ah
find other people in their own little echo chambers online and build groups of themselvesto encourage each other, encourage each other in that.
One of the things that I did on this journey uh in healing from my obesity is that Iidentified people who had really hurt me.
(27:49):
And one by one, I reached out to them and I confronted them.
And that was not an easy thing to do.
What did that look like?
Give me an example without mentioning any names.
Okay, I reached out to a former elementary school teacher who because of a uh incident, Iwas 11 years old and it was the first time in my life I had contemplated suicide.
(28:24):
And I had walked along a train track and I laid my neck down on the track
waiting for the next train to come.
This was before the internet, so there was no way to know when the next train was coming.
I mean, I was 11 years old.
I didn't know any better.
And by 9.30 at night, no train had come.
(28:46):
And so I figured I'd better to get home before my parents get mad at me.
Ironically.
And yeah, so it's like, well, I better get home.
My parents are gonna be mad at me, because no train had come.
I got the idea from watching an old black and white movie where I saw someone do that.
And it was something I carried with me for over 40 some odd years.
(29:14):
And as part of the healing journey, was like, I really gotta get closure on this.
So I reached out.
tracked down that elementary school teacher, had an interaction with him.
And I just let him know that what he did caused an 11 year old boy to want to killhimself.
How did that go?
(29:34):
Um, it was an online interaction.
And at first, you know, we had a little pleasant thing and I said, well, I don't know ifyou remember me.
And, you know, we had a little interaction.
And then I wrote to him and I told him everything that had happened.
And I even said something along the lines of, look, I really hate you.
(29:55):
And I'm letting you know that I hate you.
And he never responded after that.
No apologies.
No nothing.
He completely disappeared, but that's okay because I got it out of my system.
I finally confronted somebody who hurt me and then when the person that had put ustogether, because I had reached out and says, do you know where this teacher, this person
(30:24):
is?
yeah, here, I'll put you in contact.
I let that person know about the whole story and that person was no longer interested incommunicating with me and that's okay.
Well, do you feel maybe as if you offloaded that resentment onto your elementary schoolteacher and now they resent you for bringing it up?
(30:47):
It's possible, but that's their problem.
And I didn't say anything like, want you dead or anything like that.
I just wanted to say, you know, had you done something like that in today's day and age,you probably would have lost your job.
But that's one example.
(31:10):
OK, one example.
Now, not everybody has the opportunity to confront
those people.
That's right, some of them have passed on or some of them are just not going to be able tobe found at all.
So I was fortunate in the sense that I had the chance to confront that particular person.
(31:31):
But part of what I'm learning on this journey too is that that's not always necessary.
Sometimes you can find peace in other ways.
There's therapeutic methods.
Talking to the empty chair is one of them.
And I'm not trying to push that as one of the only options.
I'm just pointing out.
(31:52):
that the resentment I carried from that, the absolute hatred, the fear, all of that.
That is the core of most of the challenges we have.
We carry things from childhood that fill in that resentment.
(32:15):
let's be clear here.
You can be an adult man who has been horribly betrayed by the system, horribly betrayed bythe people who you were loving and taking care of, and you're entitled to your resentment.
You're not wrong for being angry.
You're not wrong for being hurt.
we have to be careful that in the process of trying to protect ourselves and trying tomove forward in life, that we're not further limiting ourselves because of the bad actions
(32:44):
of other people.
And that...
something.
I couldn't agree with you more that people who are resentful or even hateful or bitteroften have very good reasons for it.
Like I said before, we're not born this way.
And I do think if you try to talk somebody off of that proverbial ledge of being bitterand just tell them to buck up little buckaroo without giving them any substance behind it,
(33:12):
they're just going to probably start pointing that anger and bitterness towards you.
You know, especially if you haven't you being the person who's speaking to them, tryingto, you know, actually frankly be helpful when we wish you weren't so bitter.
We wish you weren't so resentful.
Please stop.
If the person speaking to them hasn't gone through anything of the sort of what they'vegone through, what they're going to feel is alienated.
(33:38):
They're going to feel like, this person doesn't get me.
They don't understand me.
Whereas if you, if you say to them, look, I validate your reasons that you have.
for being bitter and being resentful.
Man, I've never had to go through that.
If I would have gone through that, I might feel just like you.
I completely validate and understand that.
That's actually a very, that's like a healing balm for a person who feels like that.
(34:03):
Cause finally someone is taking them seriously.
Someone is hearing them.
When people who are very deeply bitter and resentful aren't being heard, they startrioting.
They may throw rocks and get violent.
and you know do things they later resent that might even land them in jail if no onesystemically ever hears them but well yeah one thing i do want to let you finish but i i
(34:27):
want to i want to i want to say the yes and to that
It is probably more likely than not, if this happened to you a long time ago, you're notgoing to get that opportunity you got that you got.
They're not, no one is going to get that opportunity you got with your elementary schoolteacher on a regular basis.
(34:48):
So you can talk to an empty chair, but here's what I've always told people.
And I'm wondering what you think about this.
Look, there are people in the world who are evil people.
There are people in the world, like even people who were elementary school teachers, youknow, not to go out and Pink Floyd the wall on you, but I mean, there are teachers who
(35:09):
just think it's really fun to pick on little kids.
And that's why they got into the teaching profession.
And that's messed up.
And I think nowadays there's more transparency and hopefully those teachers don't get tohold a job.
And they can be women, by the way, too, female teachers.
And it's like when you hear people give victim statements before someone who did somethingto them is sentenced and thrown in jail, there's always a lot of resentment and lot of
(35:38):
bitterness, it seems, in those victimhood statements.
You did this to me and I hope you rot in hell.
And what I don't think those of us who are good, decent people who aren't psychopathsdon't understand is those people think that's hilarious.
They think it's freaking great that you're still being hurt and you're still going to beinjured for the rest of your entire natural freaking life because of what I did to you.
(36:03):
Good suffer because I don't like you.
And I think it's hilarious that you're suffering.
And somehow we think that the person is going to find some sort of compassion in thembecause we're we've had this chance to tell them what we think of them.
But I would argue.
You know.
(36:24):
One of the reasons perhaps that your elementary school teacher didn't offer you an apologyand just ghosted you is to leave that loop open just to spite you.
Quite possibly.
Yeah, but again, now it's their problem.
It always will be their problem, but we're not going to change those people.
So now what?
What do we do?
Well, what I tell people is if you give this person who did unto you, caused you to bebitter, because let's face it, it may be systemic, it may be a whole bunch of women, it
(36:56):
may be one woman, but all these women who rejected you or wouldn't go out with you, maybe
You do need to do some self work before you're attractive enough to deserve getting thekind of woman you want.
You alluded to that very well and very accurately.
But as long as we're giving someone who did unto us all of that headspace and all of thatresentment and we're letting it ruin our lives and keep us in a victimhood state instead
(37:25):
of going out there and rising above it and succeeding anyway.
We're granting superpowers to that person in a way that they're the least of people onearth who deserve to have that power over us.
Because they do.
They still have power over us.
If we're resenting them, if we're bitter because of them, then they've got us right wherethey want us, suffering.
(37:49):
So that one statement, that one reframe of one's mindset has changed a lot of lives ofpeople I've talked to.
And indeed I've had to eat my own dog food as they used to say at Cisco Systems, you know,I had to, I had to go put my own stuff to the test.
And there are people who've done wrong to me.
And the best thing I can do is forget about them and just not give them any head spaceanymore.
(38:13):
There's people who are dead and gone who abused me.
I could let them continue to ruin my life, ruin my ability to have relationships, ruin myability to think well of myself and to succeed because they told me I would fail or they
assaulted me or whatever they did.
But no, uh-uh.
If I keep letting them have the ability to run rampant...roughshod in my mind, I'mgranting them a superpower they don't deserve over me.
(38:40):
When I cut ties and say, you know what, dude, literally forget you.
Not as a euphemism for the other F-bomb, but I'm literally just going to stop
ruminating on this I'm gonna stop focusing on this and I'm gonna move forward That to meis the most liberating thing and the and the best part is it doesn't need the person to be
sitting in front of you.
(39:01):
At all.
You...
if you could forget someone without their direct intervention in the process, you can youcould say look, see ya wouldn't want to be ya.
One of the reasons the MGTOW guys don't like me very much is because I'm living a greatlife with a woman who cares about me, and I've beaten the system that they say doesn't
work.
Well, I'm not a unicorn.
(39:23):
My first wife was a crazy woman who wrecked my life.
I have every right...
And this is why I agree with you so much.
Look, I have every right to say women are crazy.
They're terrible.
This woman seemed wonderful the day I married her and then just went Jekyll and Hyde on myass and turned into someone I didn't even know and ruined me.
(39:44):
And I'm never going to risk that again.
I'm going to stay in my bubble.
I'm going to stay single.
I'm going to watch porn.
I'm going to get fat.
I'm going to become a bitter old bastard.
I'm not going to take a shower just to make sure women don't touch me or my life.
I'm building a freaking brick wall between me and the outside world.
But you know what?
My ex-wife would continue to win every single day by making me miserable if I let thathappen.
(40:09):
Win after win...just racking up wins on a daily basis, because I'm putting up with thatattitude.
Uh-uh.
No, my best revenge
was saying, I'm not going to be a victim anymore.
And in fact, after my divorce, I'm going to get better with women watching myself getbetter.
Because when people told me, hey, look, this wasn't your fault.
She's crazy.
You know, what could you have done?
(40:29):
You were a great husband, great father.
You know what?
Forget that.
Forget her.
I'm going to do better because I want to do better for me.
And I can tell you my ex-wife was not very happy when I met Emily, not very happy when Ihad two more kids and they're happy and healthy.
Not very happy at all that I'm doing what I do for a living, shouting it out from therooftops.
(40:54):
But I also haven't talked to her or really thought about her much...
know, I know that sounds ironic because we're talking about it right now.
I don't even think about her much.
I haven't talked to her in seven years since my daughter turned 18.
I moved on, which means, you know, I'm not giving her head space.
I'm not giving her any space in my life for her to contribute to
(41:17):
my lack of well-being or to mess with my sanity anymore.
So, I mean, we as guys, you know, the takeaway here, Frank, is we've got to do something.
We've got to do something if we're starting to feel this resentment because it will eat usfrom the inside.
It will harm us.
Whatever we're resentful towards, chances are they not only, you know, they may not care.
(41:42):
They may not even know we're resentful unless, you know, you
get in touch with them 40 years later and tell them like you did.
But they may think that's hilarious that we're resentful.
The best revenge is to get past it and live your best life.
You know, that's the best revenge.
Okay, A couple of things I do want to bring up here.
(42:02):
Are there evil people in the world?
Absolutely.
There's no question.
Is everybody who harms us an evil person?
No.
And sometimes you might be dealing with somebody who is not evil, but they made mistakes.
And it's important to make that distinction because part of the resentful frame of mind isjust to categorize somebody
(42:28):
as they hurt me, they made a mistake with me, they're evil, when in fact they just mightbe not very bright, they made mistakes, they're trying to figure out their way through the
world and they obviously messed up and we were the consequence of that.
So let's make those two distinctions.
(42:49):
If you're dealing with a truly evil person, then nothing you do to
to connect with them or appease them or even communicate with them...
It's gonna have...
It won't have a resolution other than giving you the chance, yeah, other than giving youthe chance to just get something off your chest.
(43:09):
With that said, part of dealing with resentment is understanding that it doesn't matter ifthe person was genuinely evil or if they're messed up people making mistakes.
The harm that you felt is legitimate.
But how you process that harm is a reflection on the kind of life you're going to buildfor yourself.
(43:32):
Well, I would argue that no matter how you deal with it, as long as you're giving thatperson headspace in your life and letting that play over and over and over again in your
life, you're feeding the bitterness rather than moving on from.
with that said, that life experience might be a good turning point and a motivation for anindividual to say, I never want to be like that person.
(43:57):
And I don't think of that as giving that person headspace.
I think of that as saying, this is what happened to me.
I never want to be the type of person that they were.
And I'm going to go forward in my life not doing certain things.
Now, I, some people may say, well, that's them still taking up headspace.
I look at it as I had an opportunity to learn from that about what not to do to otherpeople.
(44:24):
I would agree a thousand percent that's a completely different frame of mind and that'sthe right frame of mind to have.
Like let me put that in absolutely perfect perspective with an absolutely direct exampleand I can pick up on the one that I was just talking about.
Yes, I had a crazy ex-wife who ruined my life.
Now that I've had that experience, I'm a better dating coach because I can be ofassistance to guys who are going through something like that right now.
(44:51):
You've also learned how to spot the red flags.
You've learned how to spot red flags.
Yeah.
Now I'm helping someone else, just like you said at the beginning of this whole show, youknow, I can be there to help someone recover because I've healed from it in many ways.
Am I going to pronounce myself a hundred percent healed from it?
I don't know.
I don't really think I'm particularly wallowing in the damage from it anymore.
(45:15):
I mean, I've had a wonderful woman and a wonderful marriage to keep me warm all theseyears.
You know what I mean?
So to speak.
But yeah, I understand where you're coming from, and I agree.
19 years.
19 years.
That's pretty remarkable.
Yeah, and I, you know, I think these guys are sick of me saying this on the show, but Ihave not had one day in those 19 years that was like most days with my ex-wife in terms of
(45:40):
the misery.
But yeah, I understand where you're coming from, and I think it's an important point tomake.
First of all, not everybody who did unto us is flat out straight up evil.
But the effect of what they did on us is still there, causing that resentment.
And either way, I can't ruminate on what was done to me, either the who that did it or thewhat that happened.
(46:01):
I have to take it and learn from it.
And, know, just like the best revenge is not letting them live rent free in my head anddestroy me.
If I take that and I kind of twist it around.
You know, like ironic humor almost, and I go into the world and say, Hey, look, because Ihad this experience, I can help you.
(46:22):
This is a positive now
that I know about this, that I've felt this, that I've experienced it, that I cancompletely relate to you if you're coming to me with something similar, that is a gift.
And when you treat it as a gift, voila, what's happened is your mindset has indeedflipped.
It's not negative, resentful wallowing.
(46:42):
It's, look man, I have gone through some stuff in my life.
How can I make the world a better place because of it?
I want to add something here.
One of the motivations to deal with your resentment, and in the case of dating, dealingwith your resentment against women, dealing with your resentment against people,
(47:03):
resentment, like any behavior pattern, is habit-forming.
And when you give in to a lot of resentment, you are training yourself to be in the habitof resenting people.
Yes.
You're retraining yourself to give in to all of those emotions of resentment.
And like I said, resentment can feel good because it makes you feel safe.
(47:26):
It makes you feel strong.
It makes you feel powerful.
It's a way of protecting yourself.
And those are all good attributes.
Unfortunately, when it comes to resentment, all it can do is create more resentment.
And then you start applying that to situations where it doesn't actually apply.
(47:47):
Yes.
In other words, you start looking for reasons to resent people.
Yeah.
a just a common example here that comes up with my coaching.
Somebody comes to me and I'm coaching them for dating and relationships and they had a badday at work because they made a mistake at work and their boss came in and had to correct
them.
And when they're describing this story, I'm looking at it and I says, well, what you didwas was not really acceptable on the job.
(48:15):
So, yeah, your boss is going to tell you, look, you can't do that.
You have to do this.
And they describe the situation, and I don't find it particularly ominous.
I think that, you know, the manager was just doing their job, but a person who's alreadyvery exercised in being resentful can then apply those same visceral emotions to a
(48:40):
situation that it really does not need to apply to.
the next...
a good test.
Am I avoiding having a confrontation or a potentially difficult conversation with someone?
Because my assumption is they're going to resent me as the messenger because I gave it tothem.
(49:00):
If I'm projecting that result out onto other people, it may mean, it may be more about methan them.
That might be because I have problems with resentment.
And so I'm worried people will resent me if I have a difficult conversation with them.
So I shy away and I become Mr.
Nice Guy.
No wonder Mr.
Nice Guy is often very resentful underneath, right?
(49:25):
It can happen.
It can be that somebody who's very nice is nice not because they're being nice for thesake of being nice.
They're being nice because they're holding back what they would really want to express.
And it's...
vortex of resentment and potential resentment.
It's ugly.
(49:45):
And look, it's understandable.
It's especially depending on how you were brought up.
If you were brought up where any expression, positive or negative, was met with a lessthan friendly or less than pleasant attitude, it can be a very, very hard habit to break
(50:09):
until finally you end up exploding.
Being a people pleaser, sometimes they explode and then they freak out and oh no, now...
you know, and then that just reinforces the belief.
You see, I expressed myself and now people are angry at me.
Hold on, let's process this.
It's not that you expressed yourself.
(50:29):
It's the way you exploded on the person.
That's what's making them weary of you.
Not the fact that you communicated, look, I'm really not happy with this situation.
It's...
you came out of, from their perspective, you came out of nowhere with all of this anger.
And that's one of the reasons that some people don't like expressing themselves because intheir experience, every time they do, they're afraid of losing control when expressing
(50:56):
themselves.
So they keep it bottled up and they keep it tighter and they go on and on.
And then they get resentful that they can't express themselves.
Well, Frank, I'll tell you what, this has been a fantastic conversation.
think you're right on in everything you say.
Um, I do want to bring to light that you are still going onward with your weight lossjourney.
And because of the massive amount of weight you've lost, which I mean, and that, is justincredibly inspirational to a lot of us out here.
(51:26):
I mean, 260, 240 pounds.
No, I started at 460 and I have lost half of that 230 pounds uh I have a I have a I nowhave a lot of hanging skin and I'm getting that surgery done uh, sometime in the next two
months maybe sooner.
(51:48):
when you lose that much weight, you've lost the fat, but literally your skin is an organand to accommodate that extra mass over the years, you've developed more skin and that
stays even though you've lost the fat.
yeah, have about 30 pounds of hanging skin that needs to be cut off.
I have a surgery coming up.
(52:08):
I did set up a GoFundMe.
So to ask anybody listening to this, if my work has inspired you in any way from the timethat Scot interviewed me nearly 20 years ago, ah if my YouTube videos, my interviews, any
of my books or whatnot, if anything has made a difference in your life, ah
(52:29):
I've set up a GoFundMe and Scot will have the link in the description of this podcast.
If you'd like to contribute, uh it would be very appreciated.
And I'm hoping that this is gonna be my It's A Wonderful Life moment where people that Ihave helped and inspired throughout my life will be able to come and help me now.
(52:51):
Even on this podcast, lots of these insights that you've given today, Frank, are going tobe very meaningful to lot of these guys.
So, you know, especially a lot of you guys with means out there, if you would give alittle bit towards what Frank's going through here and help him to kind of, you know,
punctuate this journey by getting the surgery he needs...
I want to, I want to go ahead and clarify, Frank is in Canada.
(53:15):
You know, and there are good things and bad things about national healthcare.
um This would count as an elective surgery in Canada, wouldn't it?
part of the surgery is covered.
Okay, part of the surgery is covered.
What's not covered is the anesthesia that I have to pay for myself and the plastic surgeryuh for uh reconstruction.
(53:40):
Now, yeah.
And it's basically they're slicing off 30 pounds of hanging skin.
If you visit the website, you'll actually see a picture where I have a towel under thehanging skin and I'm lifting it up and that's the part they're going to slice off.
ah Once that slices off, the way the surgeon explained it to me is that I may have uh anirregular looking body and I've already told them, look, you don't even have to save my
(54:07):
belly button, okay?
I really don't care.
I just want to be able to move forward with my life.
uh The surgeon has encouraged me to consider this.
Now if I do the surgery and it's not necessary, then they're going to do a minimal amount.
They're only going to know after they open me up.
uh
can't imagine someone going through such a surgery without anesthesia, first of all.
(54:30):
I mean, I think you could just put a period on the end of that sentence.
So these guys definitely should uh go contribute whatever they can to your GoFundMe.
The URL that I've set up guys is mountaintoppodcast.com /franktalks.
F R A N K T A L K S where you will be uh
(54:52):
sent to a website that'll tell a little bit more about Frank's story, show the pictureshe's talking about and where you can contribute.
Frank, man, it has been way too long.
And I'm so glad we had this conversation today.
Good back and forth on it.
It's an important conversation and, um, you know, not to be missed, we definitely talkedfrankly about it.
So thanks again, my friend.
Thank you, Scot.
(55:12):
This is one of the first interviews I've done getting back into this.
it's, as always, you were one of the first people who interviewed me so many years agowhen I first became a dating coach.
And now that I'm on the tail end of this health journey, you're one of the first people tointerview me again.
So thank you very much for your support.
(55:32):
You're quite welcome and back at you, man.
It's always been good times.
You know your stuff.
You know, women, you've been around the block.
You're not a silver spoon guy.
Like I'm not a silver spoon guy.
Everything you've learned about women has been hard fought.
So it's always a pleasure.
Yeah, man.
I hope you'll come back and let us know how it went after the surgery is over, and you'vehad some time to convalesce.
(55:55):
I look forward to my return here.
I got a one in 13,000 chance of not waking up from this surgery, and...
Yeah, those are good odds in my favor.
I'm going in there as healthy as possible.
I don't have diabetes anymore.
My asthma has been removed with the lifestyle changes.
uh I'm not on the number of medications I used to be on.
(56:18):
So everything is good, but there's always that chance and...
if I'm alive on the other end of it, I'll definitely be back on the podcast.
man, I think we have a one in 13,000 chance of something else getting us before thesurgery.
I would take those odds.
I mean you know, you're going to spend 30, 40,000 days on earth.
I mean, one in 13...
one in 13,000 every day.
(56:39):
You know, I'd take those odds.
Excellent.
Excellent stuff, man.
Just the fact that you can reverse diabetes is also probably the subject of an entireseparate show.
That's powerful.
But yeah, man, great stuff.
And once again, I appreciate you.
Yeah.
And guys,
Go to mountaintoppodcast.com, check out our three main sponsors, Jocko Willink's companyOrigin in Maine, thekeyport.com and Hero Soap.
(57:03):
Man, I've been using the Honey Bourbon uh Hero Soap and it just makes you smell like aman.
I don't know how else to describe it.
It's like this translucent, caramel colored soap and it just feels old school.
You guys ought to try it.
Get some of that from Hero Soap.
Whether you deal with Hero Soap, the Keyport,
(57:23):
or of course, Jocko Willink's company Origin in Maine, use the coupon code "mountain10" toget an extra 10% off your order.
Also guys, look, get on the phone, talk to me.
Um, I don't play a fictional character.
I'm exactly who you think I'm going to be.
Get on my calendar, schedule some time...
25 minutes for us to talk.
Give your feedback on the show.
(57:43):
If I can help put a plan together that supercharges your effect on women and the effectwomen have in your life and
gets you the right girlfriend or wife.
Hey, let's do that too.
All of that is there for you and more at mountaintoppodcast.com.
And until I talk to you again real soon, this is Scot McKay from X & Y Communications inSan Antonio, Texas.
(58:07):
Be good out there.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.