Embark on an emotional journey with Curtis Morley, an entrepreneur and author who reveals the transformative power of differentiating between genuine emotions and their deceptive counterparts. Discover the art of recognizing true peace, the emotion that cannot be imitated, and navigating through "counterfeit emotions." Curtis shares his personal transformation following a lifetime of being the "nice guy". He sheds light on how to identify authentic feelings that foster meaningful connections with ourselves and others. Delve into the dynamics of relationships, where distinguishing between being "nice" and being "kind" exposes the difference between manipulation and genuine love. We also explore Curtis's five-step process for crafting conversations that not only connect but also facilitate healing and growth.
Take these lessons to heart and let the power of authentic kindness guide you in cultivating deeper, more fulfilling relationships in both personal and professional spheres.
Check out the show on any of your favorite platforms and give us a like and follow if you like our content!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the gentlemen project podcast.
I'm Corey Moore and I'm KirkChug.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Today, curtis Morley joins us in the podcast studio.
Curtis and I met about sixmonths ago when he came to a
men's group that I belong to andhe presented an amazing
presentation that really spoketo me and it made sense.
As he was saying it, I thoughtyes, yes, yes, yes.
And so right after the meeting,I asked him if he'd be on the
(00:25):
podcast.
He got married.
He's been on his honeymoon andwe've got him in the podcast
studio now.
We're happy to have him.
He is the author of theentrepreneurs paradox and
working on multiple other booksthat are on the bestsellers list
and not like the Amazonbestsellers list.
These are the real bestsellerslist, the Wall Street Journal
(00:48):
bestseller.
He is an expert on the subjectmatter that he talks on.
He hosts retreats and businessconferences where he teaches the
things that you're going tohear about today.
We couldn't be more excited tohave Curtis Morley with us here
today.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Welcome, curtis, thanks so much for having me on
the show.
Guys, Tell us quickly you justgot married.
Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
A month ago.
Yes, and like you're glowing.
If you follow Curtis on socialmedia, you'd see like all of his
posts with his new bride andthey look like like a blissful
couple.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
It is amazing.
I couldn't even be happier.
So tell us about your familyfirst.
So yeah, like you said, justgot married to Patty and she is
the love of my life.
She is incredible, kind, sogood, just a pure, pure heart
and beautiful.
She's just everything that I'dever even imagined.
(01:44):
She has seven kids.
I have five, so together we'vegot 12.
Wow, brady.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Bunch.
Here we are, man.
How's that going a month in,there's only four left at home.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
So okay, so not quite , not quite the chaos of 12, but
you got 12 kids there Stilladventurous, that's cool, that's
awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Well, you were telling us, well, you're going
to be great for the podcast.
You have so much experiencewith lots of kids, which is
great.
You were telling us, when westarted the podcast, a little
bit about your background.
You really started as anentrepreneur, it sounds like,
and then moved into teachingwhat we're going to talk about
today and writing these booksand having masterclasses.
(02:25):
Give us a little bit about yourbackground and how did you come
to where you are today?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, thanks, I did not expect to be here.
I had, like you said, I've beena five times entrepreneur.
I started multiple companies.
I wrote the entrepreneur'sparadox as I really wrote it for
the 26 year old Curtis, becauseI made all of the mistakes that
I teach people how not to make,and some of them I made two or
(02:54):
three times just to make sure Igot it.
And it hit the Wall StreetJournal bestseller list and my
publisher.
They said this is great, let'sdo a three book series.
And so I was in the middle ofwriting my second business book,
called the Timeline of Business.
What I find is, as I mentor andcoach entrepreneurs to turn into
(03:15):
rapid growth companies, is notonly does everybody make the
same mistakes, they actuallymake it at the same time, that
there's a timeline that's laidout, that if you tell me where
you're at, what mistake you'remaking today, I can pretty
accurately predict what's comingnext, because we all make these
mistakes in order and we makethese.
(03:37):
I call them inflection points.
There's these inflection pointsthat can either skyrocket the
business or sink the business,and they happen in a particular
sequence.
And so I was in the middle ofwriting that and, like we talked
about.
I just got married and thereason I wasn't previously
married is because about fiveyears ago, I got divorced and
(03:59):
that that rocked my world and itwas.
It was the hardest thing I'veever gone through and and I I'm
incredibly grateful for it,because it gave me a chance to
say who is Curtis, who do I wantto be?
It gave me a chance to reallyevaluate me, like dig into my
(04:20):
soul and say, oh, I have made somany mistakes throughout my
life.
Who do I really want to be?
And?
And I started learning theseprinciples and I thought you
know, why are these principlesnot out there?
The principle, specifically, ofcounterfeit emotions?
Why isn't this out there?
Why did I not learn this athome, at church and school, in
(04:43):
the community?
You know how?
How is it that I've neverlearned this?
And I researched and researched, and researched, and the reason
why is because it's not outthere.
They're the closest thing Ifound is a Buddhist teaching
called near enemies and farenemies, and and the.
It's okay if we just dive intoit Go straight to counterfeit
emotions.
This is the some of the adjoinmy seat of what?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
I've been excited for .
Speaker 3 (05:06):
So the premise of counterfeit emotions is that
every authentic emotion, orevery emotion that serves us,
has a counterfeit, except forone.
There's only one emotion thatdoesn't have a counterfeit, and
is that love close like acharity.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
No, no, it's peace.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Peace.
Okay, peace is the only emotionthat has no counterfeit and
every other emotion.
And let's talk about love.
You know, we were taughtthroughout our lives opposite
emotions.
We're taught love, don't, hate,right.
But we're not taught about thatemotion that slides right up
next to the original motion thatputs on the clothing and
(05:48):
masquerades as that emotion.
So love and hate right.
Hate is so easy to see becauseit's the opposite of love.
But what about love and lust?
You can put your lips tosomeone else's lips in the
spirit of giving, in the spiritof unity, in the spirit of
togetherness, and you can do theexact same action in the spirit
(06:10):
of taking or objectification,etc.
And so it's really easy to seethe opposites.
The reason counterfeit emotionsare so dangerous is because
they look, act and feel like theoriginal, authentic emotion,
but they create destructivepatterns of disconnection in our
lives.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
So talk to us about some of the the ones that we
face most, maybe especially inthe family.
You know atmosphere like what's?
What are some of thecounterfeit emotions that you
would want our listeners to knowabout?
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Yeah, the.
I think one of the key ones,and one that that we're pretty
chronically, chronically unawareof when I say this one, it
often just like shatterspeople's brains is the, the dyad
, or the pairing of kind versusnice.
It turns out that nice isactually the counterfeit of kind
(07:05):
and I'm excited to dive intothat.
Some of the other ones areguilt versus shame.
Guilt is actually a beautiful,healthy emotion.
It's one of the most healthyemotions we can fill, and it's
getting a bad rap in today'sworld.
Guilt is getting such a bad rap.
People are like oh, don't lethim guilt you, and what a guilt
trip.
And what the really talkingabout is shame.
(07:27):
Guilt says I did somethingwrong.
Shame says I am wrong.
Guilt said I made a mistake.
Shame says my whole existenceis a mistake and it's so
damaging.
If you look at the frequency,every emotion has a frequency.
When I learned aboutfrequencies and motion, I'm like
(07:48):
this is fascinating.
The lowest emotion that you canfeel, the very bottom, is
apathy.
That's the very lowest emotionyou can feel right up Well, not
right above that, but fairlyclose is shame.
It's it's on the bottom of thespectrum, in the negative zone.
Believe it or not, guilt isactually in the positive.
(08:09):
And if you look at the wordguilt, guilt actually comes from
an old English word.
The etymology of guilt comesfrom 1400.
The word comes from the 1400sand it comes from the word
gilden, which actually means torepay or make whole.
So the feeling of guilt is tomake someone whole.
The feeling of guilt is to isto say I did something wrong,
(08:33):
I'm going to make reparations,I'm going to make it right.
That's what guilt is.
It's so, so healthy.
Shame is the opposite.
Some others that I lovesurrender versus resignation.
Surrender says do your best andgive God the rest.
Resignation says that's notworth it, I'm not even going to
(08:53):
try.
But do you see how they feeland act and look like each other
?
Yeah, they're so close andthat's why they're so dangerous
is that they are these sneaky,sneaky emotions that turn what
you're feeling into thismetastasized emotional cancer
inside of your body and insteadof feeling that enlightenment,
(09:16):
feeling that beauty that comesfrom that, how many pairings of
these are we got?
Speaker 2 (09:20):
nice versus kind, go versus shame, love versus loss,
like how many?
How many are in this list thatyou have identified?
Yeah, is every emotion.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I?
I well, as you know, when we,when we originally got together
with with the group that you'repart of, we did the sticky note
experiment, where we identifiedemotions.
I literally have thousands ofemotions.
I store all of my emotions in ashelf in my office.
I have thousands of emotions onsticky notes and I said, okay
(09:51):
for a book, what are going to bethe most critical?
And I've narrowed it down to 32.
So there's 32 dyads or pairingsof emotions, yeah, like we
talked about.
Another really important one ispain versus misery and and
understanding the true nature ofpain.
I didn't know this my wholelife.
It took me till I was over 40.
(10:13):
Before I started understandingthe nature of pain and if I can
share just a little bit more ofmy backstory, please do I was in
the middle of writing thesecond book, this business book,
and it still hurts my reallygood friend all the way back
(10:33):
from college I think it'simportant to say his name Jerry
Williamson.
He ended up taking his life andhe had gone through sorry, he
had gone through a divorce likeI had, and he didn't understand
the difference between pain andmisery and guilt and shame.
(10:55):
He didn't understand that and Ibelieve that if he did, he
would still be here today.
I believe if he understoodthose two not even any of the
others, just those two I thinkhe would still be here.
And I'm not okay with how heleft us.
And that's when I called mypublisher and I said you know
(11:16):
what?
I need to write a differentbook.
I need to write a verydifferent book.
It has nothing to do withbusiness, it just has to do with
what's going on inside.
And today, in today's world,it's, it's insane, because we
are right now, today, we're thehighest recorded level of
(11:36):
suicides ever in US history,greater than the Great
Depression, greater than anyother time.
And I said I've got to dosomething, there has to be a way
.
And I believe that, withunderstanding these counterfeit
emotions, that well, not Ibelieve.
I know for a fact as of lastSaturday, the previous Saturday,
(11:57):
we did a conference.
We do this conference calledSafe to Feel, and there were
three people.
There were three people thatcame to that conference that
came up afterwards and saidtoday I was thinking of taking
my life Thank you, I'm stillhere.
(12:20):
And one was on a bridge thenight before Looking over the
freeway, condom lighting,jumping, and my partner, christy
Holt.
She runs a company calledVibonix, which is the coolest
thing ever.
It's an app that you canmeasure your emotions, you speak
(12:44):
into it and it tells you whatyou're feeling.
Because we as a society, we as aculture, have you know, for
years we were told shut ourdoors, shut our offices, shut
our businesses, shut ourchurches, even cover your smile
right.
For years, we were told that,and what happened when we did
that is we started to shut allof those things and shut our
(13:07):
hearts.
We stopped feeling, we startedshutting down, and I believe
that's one of the major reasonsthat we're where we're at today,
and so so, yeah, that's that'spart of my mission is to is to
help people get into theirauthentic selves, help people
understand this is authentic,this is the real me, and push
(13:30):
aside the counterfeits that areso dangerous in their lives.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
So you said that nice versus kind is going to be the
number one thing that is goingto change the relationships we
have inside the four walls ofour homes.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Of the counterfeit emotions, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
And so let's talk.
Can we talk a little bit moreabout that, like, how do we
identify that?
What are the characteristics ofnice and kind, and put some
scenarios out there of why, whyit's important and what we can
do to make sure that we'reexperiencing the genuine emotion
and not counterfeit?
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yeah, I'd love that and it's.
It's so funny because all ourlives were taught to be nice,
nice, right, and I think it'simportant even before we get
into nice versus kind is toidentify the four criteria, to
know if you're feeling anauthentic emotion or if you're
feeling a counterfeit emotion.
(14:26):
And there's there's fourcriteria.
They all in and shun, sothey're easy to remember.
The first is connection.
Does this emotion connect me?
Does it connect me with myself,my true self, not my ego self,
not my titles and my cars andhouse and fancy stuff and status
, but does it connect me with mydivine self, my true self?
(14:47):
Does it connect me with God?
Does it connect me with others?
Does it connect me with thetruth?
So the first criteria isconnection, and connection in
those four ways.
The second criteria isdirection when does this emotion
take me?
Where does it take me?
And if you look at all theauthentic emotion, it plays out
(15:08):
true in every case, that there'sthree directions.
An authentic emotion will takeyou.
It'll take you forward, it'lltake you upward or it'll bring
you together.
Those are the the direction ofa counter or, excuse me, an
authentic emotion, notcounterfeit, but this is
fascinating.
When, when I realized thisabout counterfeits.
(15:29):
If you look at the direction ofa counterfeit emotion I did not
expect this when I did theresearch counterfeit emotions,
they only come back tothemselves.
The only direction acounterfeit emotion brings you
is back to yourself.
Anxiety breeds anxiety, youknow.
(15:49):
Suspicion breeds suspicion.
Misery, misery I mean you thinkmisery loves company, right?
Misery loves company.
That's exactly it.
It has to have more company orelse it dies.
Misery will die on its ownwithout more misery.
So it has to feed itself, ithas to fuel itself, and the only
direction that it that it movesin is a circle and it comes
(16:13):
back to itself over and overagain.
Pain, you know.
No pain, no gain, right,because pain takes you somewhere
.
Misery loves company because itjust has to have more of it, of
that destructive self, or elseit just dies.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
It's fascinating to think about that Like and that
we've never heard it before.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Well you're giving you're giving a language to your
emotion so that you can talkabout them appropriately is
really what you're doing,without actually acting.
And taking the words and sayingwhat am I feeling and then
changing your feeling orunderstanding what you're doing
so you can move forward right,so you can be appropriate.
The words mean nothing.
Who cares what misery versuspain, unless you take those
(16:57):
words, you understand thedifference and then you act on
those differences right.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
I think of the five love languages and it just gives
you a language to talk to yourspouse about.
I don't know if you know thatyeah, yeah.
It just gives you a languagethat this is much deeper than
that.
Yeah, this is like taking thatto the next level and really
trying to figure out how do Ibecome the best person I can be.
It gives you a vocabulary to dothat and it kind of allows you
(17:28):
to look inward and say what am Idoing, what am I feeling and am
I, am I being counterfeit rightnow?
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Yeah, if.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
I'm being counterfeit .
Let's change that into adifferent, appropriate, positive
, for lack of better word.
You can talk about this waybetter than I can.
Positive emotion that allows meto move forward up, etc.
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
So we have connection direction.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Connection direction and you hit on it perfectly is.
The third is motivation.
Okay, is what is my motivationbehind this emotion?
And all of the authenticemotions are based in love and
surrender, and those are twometa emotions, meaning that they
flow through the otherauthentic emotions.
You look at the counterfeit.
(18:10):
The motivation behind acounterfeit emotion is fear and
control.
Fear and control.
Every single time.
It plays true in every one ofthe counterfeit emotions.
Why am I in misery versus pain?
It's because I'm scared and Iwant to control this situation,
because I don't know what to dorather than just accepting the
(18:33):
pain and even honoring the pain.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
And yeah, what you just talked about is huge for
leadership.
Quite frankly, all the I alwaystell our guys like the worst
leaders are leading out of fearRight Fear or or they don't have
self confidence.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
They have to control everything.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Right.
In fact I had a general.
George Casey gave a speech tous at Cornell one time and he
was talking about I said he gaveus this huge list of what are
the best leaders have.
I said, well, what are theworst?
He said All the worst leaders.
Don't have self confidence.
The worst leaders, you're goingto make mistakes, but you got
(19:14):
to have like a inner sense ofconfidence, not fear.
Anyway, fascinating stuff, keepgoing.
I'm interrupting you.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
The motivation motivation.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
So number one connection to direction.
Three is motivation and fourthis valuation.
Is what is this emotion valueme at and what does that value
you at?
And if you look at theauthentic emotions, the value is
divide and worth it is.
It's not just, hey, I have ajob that pays this much or I
(19:48):
have a house that's been thisbig, has nothing to do with that
, it's worth that extends beyondthis world.
It's divine worth.
And the counterfeits?
The counterfeits they, it'sworthless.
You are worthless and you'reworth less.
Meaning the comparison oh, I'mnot, I'm not as handsome as
(20:10):
Corey, or I'm not, as I don'tdrive the coolest car, or you
know.
It's this constant comparison,and comparison is the thief of
joy.
Absolutely, comparison is thethief of joy and that's what the
counterfeit emotions do.
Going back to guilt versus shame, if we talk about guilt, that
(20:30):
valuation, you know, if I comeand do something that hurts you
and I say, you know what myvalue is divine, but you know
what Kirk's value is alsodivided, and so I have to value
you.
The base emotion of guilt isactually empathy.
If I do something wrong to you,I have empathy enough for you
(20:53):
that I say I don't want you tofeel that way.
That's why it's a highfrequency of motion, is because
it's based in empathy.
You cannot have guilt withoutempathy.
And so Getting into that, itsays I value me enough to not do
that and I value you enough toapologize and Like, if we just
(21:14):
go through the four criteriaconnection, if I'm feeling guilt
, I have to connect to you toapologize.
I can't apologize withoutconnecting right.
I can't do that.
I Connect to myself, I connectto God and then I connect to you
and I say I am so sorry forwhat I've done.
And it also connects you to thetruth, because shame says, well
(21:37):
, it's his fault anyway, youknow, I kicked him in the shins,
but he was.
He was wearing a suit without atie.
How dare he do that?
Whatever silly thing it is, butthat that Truth is also
connected in guilt.
The truth is I kicked you inthe shins, you know what I Did,
that I take responsibility forthat and we move through that.
(22:01):
And Brené Brown, as well as astudy out of Switzerland and
University in Switzerland, bothhave done the research on this
shame.
It has a direct correlation toaddiction, to bowling, to Sexual
promiscuity, to I mean, youname the vices.
Shame has a direct connectionand that's not groundbreaking.
(22:22):
That research has been done foryears and years.
The shame is that way.
But these two groups did theother side, they did guilt, and
what they found was guilt had adirect connection to get out of
addiction, get out of bullying,get out of that.
It was fascinating to to readthis, because you would think,
(22:45):
wait a minute, shame gets me andguilt gets me out.
That's amazing because all of asudden, now I'm connecting, now
I'm moving forward, I'm nolonger, I'm no longer stymied by
that thing that's weighing downon me because you don't get rid
of it.
It lives inside of you untilyou make reparations, you know.
(23:07):
And and then with theMotivation, my motivation is
because I love you, I'm sorry,because I love you, I love me
and I love you and then thevaluation says we're both of
divine worth.
Shame says the opposite.
Shame says well, anybody thatdoesn't wear a tie with their
suits, they're, they're jerksand I hate them.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
And BMW drivers, and yeah whatever it is, yeah the
crotch deal man.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Yeah, yeah, that says you're not of worth.
All the authentic emotions sayyes, you are of absolute worth.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
I like what you said about addiction because, if you
think about it, you have to bein the shame cycle.
If, if you're in the guiltcycle, you do everything you
just said, in the guilt cycleyou can get out because you're
gonna you can't you're not.
You're not gonna connect ifyou're in the same shame cycle.
Yeah, and most people don'twhen they're in, when they're
(24:02):
doing that kind of stuff, right,yeah, and you're not going to
feel empathy.
And so, yeah, I would say, mostpeople who in, who are in some
kind of addiction, whatever itis, could be anything.
You can't get out of the shamecycle, like you said, and get
into the connection, moveforward.
You can you explain it waybetter than I do, but I can.
(24:24):
It just makes it so obvious andso easy to talk to, right, in
my mind, everyone has to listento your stuff and read your book
when it comes, because it'llgive them a language to talk
about this super important stuff.
It'll make you a better person,a better husband, a better
parent, a better leader.
So this is awesome.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
I want to go back to to because you gave us the four
criteria right, mm-hmm, beforeyou talked about nice and kind.
I want to go back to nice andkind because we didn't talk
about nice and kind, yet and Ithat one, you know a guilt and
shame or like on what you wouldperceive as like the negative
side of things.
But what's wrong with beingnice, right, Right isn't that?
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I mean Bambi's best friend, ever since we were
little kids, told us you know,if you can't say nothing nice,
then don't say nothing at all.
Right, and what it?
You know?
All my life I bought into that.
All my life I was like, okay,if I can't say anything nice,
well then I'm gonna shut up, I'mgonna repress my emotions, I'm
(25:27):
not gonna advocate for myself.
I mean, you think how damagingthat statement is if you, if you
can't say anything nice, wellthen shut up, like no, that is
not, that is not healthy.
But yet we think it is.
You know, we're taught thatfrom Disney movies.
We're taught that as we grow upalways being nice and and it's
(25:48):
so interesting because Nice is,if you can imagine a pendulum
swinging right and the ball atthe end of the pendulum comes
all the way up to the apex on Onthe left side, that's nice.
And if we, we try and hold thatup there for so long, we just
we keep that and we use all oureffort to be nice, we put on the
(26:09):
smile, we don't express ourtrue feelings, we're not honest
with ourselves, we're not honestwith others.
It's fake in my case.
I'm just gonna introduce myself.
I'm Curtis.
I'm a recovering nice guy.
In my case it was manipulative.
My niceness was manipulative.
I was creating covert contractswith people.
(26:31):
I'm gonna do something nice foryou and guess what?
You better do something niceback.
I'm going to try and controlyour emotions with my niceness.
I'm gonna be so dang nice toyou that you can't be mean back,
because I don't want thatconfrontation.
Nice always leans out, but itdoes it with a smile.
(26:54):
You know, you got this greatbig smile.
Hey, way over there.
Hey, you over there.
I'm smiling, we're happy.
Okay, we're not gonna make aconnection.
See, ya, yeah, you think of theused car salesman.
How nice are they?
Small talk, yeah, yeah, it'sall surface, it's small talk,
it's.
You know, if you would askanybody 10 years ago who is
Curtis, they'd be like oh, he isthe nicest guy you will ever
(27:15):
meet.
I don't want to be nice anymore.
I am choosing not to be nice.
I'm choosing to be kind becausewith that ball that is hung up
in that pendulum and we'rekeeping all that effort, well,
as soon as we don't have anymore effort to keep that nice up
there, what happens?
It swings all the way to theother side.
(27:35):
The opposite of nice is mean.
And now that pendulum swung andyou know, you hear about people
breaking or cracking, or youknow this super nice guy and all
of a sudden now he yelled andoh wait a minute, I thought he
was a nice guy.
And we think in this, in theseit's very black and white,
(27:56):
thinking that you either a niceor your mean.
But the truth is, is there's away to prevent the swings of
that pendulum?
And if we find that we stopswinging that pendulum from nice
to mean, when we're fine,center, that's where kind is
kind is centered, because theopposite of uncentered is still
(28:19):
uncentered.
The opposite of nice is mean,you're still uncentered, you're
still having to keep all thateffort.
But when you find center andyou find kind, you don't have to
have that effort To keep thatball hanging up in the air on
either side.
You, just you.
Yeah, it's authentic if it'sreal.
It's, it's who you really are,and you don't have to try and
(28:41):
and put on this persona of thenice guy.
To translate this to parenthoodand Time with your spouse.
Yeah, so one thing, that niceguys, nice girls are chronic
with Is not leaning in, nothaving hard conversations Nice
(29:03):
says I don't want to rock theboat.
I'm gonna appease you.
I'm gonna be the doormat.
I'm not gonna share my feelings, I'm not gonna advocate for me
and I'm especially not Going toGoing to share feedback with you
that might upset you, becauseI'm nice, translated to, I don't
(29:28):
have the courage right now todo this kind Says.
I'm gonna have a hardconversation with you in love.
It's gonna be an absolutely inlove, but it's gonna be a hard
conversation.
And and in my we talked alittle bit about the
masterclasses I do a 21 daytransformative masterclass when
(29:53):
at the end of the masterclass,we have what's called the big
kind conversation.
And and Previously, before Ilearned the model, there's a
five step model of how to gofrom the counterfeit into the
authentic of nice versus kind,and in each of the dyads, each
of the pairings had their ownmodel, so a different model for
each one.
In nice versus kind, the.
(30:17):
The first step is to know yourboundaries and there's on on the
website, there's a nice typeassessment.
You can actually figure outwhat type of nice you are.
How nice are you?
What kind of nice are you Are?
you, the people pleaser, are youboundary lists?
Are you the doormat?
You can find out what flavor ofnice you are and and the first
(30:40):
criteria in the model of how toget out of being nice and into
kind is know your boundaries.
And it's fascinating.
I've done this exercisemultiple times.
I'll go into a room and I'llask you know dozens, hundreds of
people who can tell me one oftheir boundaries?
And I did an event with about30 people the other day.
One person raised their hand.
One person raised their hand.
(31:03):
I'm like great, what's one ofyour boundaries?
He's like well, only one.
Really Like okay, what's that?
I won't do drugs.
I'm like awesome.
You got that in junior highright the egg on the frying pan.
Don't do drugs right on.
Yeah, what are some of yourother boundaries?
It's so rare to find someonethat actually understands their
boundaries.
It's so rare and we're nottaught this when we're growing
(31:26):
up.
We're not taught what is aboundary.
A boundary is something thatsays this is where I stop and
you start.
This is you know, you think ofthe boundaries of the United
States.
We have our borders, we haveour boundaries, and
understanding my identity, myindividuation, understanding who
I am and knowing the boundariesof what I will and will not do
(31:51):
Are so important.
To give an example of what ahealthy boundary is.
One of my boundaries now.
Again, I'm a recovering niceguy, did not have this boundary
in the past.
One of my boundaries now isthat I won't engage in
destructive conversations.
I won't, I refuse to do it andand so understanding that that's
a boundary of mine Is sohealthy for me, but it's also
(32:17):
healthy for others, because,truly, we train people how to
treat us, and if we'reconstantly nice, remember the
direction, how it spins back toourselves.
We have to keep being nice to,to have that persona.
If we don't, if we don't keepthat placating behavior, we
don't get to, we don't get to beperceived as nice, and so.
(32:41):
So, really understandingboundaries is so critical, and
one thing that's important toknow about boundaries Is you
cannot set a boundary forsomeone else.
This is absolute human nature.
Like this is absolute humannature.
Like If you do this, then I'mdoing this.
That's trying to say like, hey,canada, we really want Calgary,
(33:05):
we're just going to swoop uphere and now it's part of the
United States.
That would cause a war.
Right, you can't do that.
You can only set a boundary foryou.
And so, going back to theboundary of destructive
conversations, I won't have aconversation that's destructive.
So if it starts to get to that,if there's name calling or
raised voices or manipulation oranything like that, I'll call
(33:30):
it out and I'll say, hey, I cantell that this conversation is
not going to help ourrelationship and so, until it
can.
I'm going to need to excusemyself.
Notice, I didn't say you needto shut up, you need to be quiet
.
I'm making a choice for me.
My choice is not to engage, andso that's.
(33:54):
The first one is boundaries.
The second one is listen andvalidate.
And this one it is so hard todo and this is one of the pieces
that turns every conversationinto a beautiful, connecting
conversation is you can listenand validate anyone, even the
(34:18):
emotional vampire, even to thechronic complainer, even to the
bully, even to any of thosepersonality types.
You can listen and validate,and it's really important to
know what you're validating.
You don't validate thecomplaint.
When somebody comes in and says, oh, can you believe Joe did
this?
Oh, come join me and, let's youknow, get on the bandwagon,
(34:42):
let's beat up Joe.
You can still validate thehuman behind that.
You don't have to say I'm goingto.
Yeah, let's go beat up Joetogether.
Let's you know, I'm going to.
No, you don't validate that,you validate the person.
You can say things like oh, Ican see how that affected you, I
(35:02):
can see why that's so hard.
It doesn't say Joe was rightand I'm wrong, and you know it
doesn't do any of that it justsays I see you, I see you in
your pain, so I'm going tolisten to you, I'm going to
validate you, I'm going to hearyou, and so listening and
validate Stephen Covey says hehas a quote that says most
(35:24):
people listen in order torespond rather than to
understand.
And it's so true.
It's so true.
That was me, 100% is you?
You know you talk and I'm readywith my response as soon as
you're done, and you might haveonly said a few words and I
already have my response, ratherthan just trying to understand.
(35:44):
And so nice.
Nice doesn't sound like kind atall.
Kind sounds like hey, tell memore.
Even when somebody sayssomething hard or something
against you, can you imaginelike somebody's coming to say oh
, you're a jerk, and you say hey, tell me more.
And they're like wait what?
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yes, and tell me more about that.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
I want to understand you.
I want to understand why you'rehaving this emotion.
Because inside there's thatdivine worth and I know that you
are divine, I'm divine.
So let's get to that, let's getto that piece of it.
So the second step is listeningand validating.
The third step is invite.
(36:30):
And this one you thought steptwo was hard, the invite stage.
And I say hard and jokinglybecause upfront it is upfront.
It's so outside the nature ofthe nice guy or the nice girl to
do these steps, but when youget into it it actually turns
every conversation into abeautiful connecting experience,
(36:53):
like I used to.
You know, I've been anentrepreneur.
I would have these hardconversations and I'm going to
put some titles on it hard,nasty conversations, you know.
And I would just have this pitin my stomach, like you wouldn't
know that from the outside youthink, oh, he's got his
composure and he's all puttogether all that.
Inside I'm just tied up inknots and I'm just saying, oh,
(37:14):
this is another one of thoseconversations.
Now, I'm excited about theseconversations because I know
every single one is going to bea connecting conversations.
It's going to be a big, kindconversation instead of a big
nasty conversation.
And I'm truly excited because Iknow, at the very least, very
(37:34):
bottom, that they are going toknow that I heard them, that I
saw them, that I understood whothey were.
And I'm going to dig.
I'm going to say tell me more.
I'm going to say I want to hearmore about that, I want to
understand.
You, dig deeper.
You know, I'm going to saythings like that, that they're
going to be like oh, youactually want to hear me.
(37:55):
How cool is that?
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Pretty hard to fight with somebody like that.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Yeah, and I use this analogy, this is the super one
of the boxing ring.
Yeah, you walk into thebuilding, right, and there's a
boxing ring there, and theperson has the gloves on,
they've got their belt, theirshorts, they're ready to go, and
they just taunt you.
They're like get in the ringwith me, get in the ring, put
your gloves on.
And it's so easy to slidebetween the ropes and go toe to
(38:22):
toe.
And here's my argument boom,here's your argument, boom and
punch, punch, punch.
And there's a better way, andthat way is to invite them out
of the ring where they're tryingto get you into the ring.
You invite them out of the ringand even though I'm horrible at
(38:42):
yoga, I imagine, like, here'sthe boxing ring and over here is
the yoga studio, right, thisplace of peace, of growth, of
abundance, of health.
And instead of saying, yeah,I'm going to jump in and I'm
going to toe for toe, punch forpunch, argue with you.
I'm going to invite you into aplace of safety and peace and
(39:03):
health and I'm going to stayhere.
And step four is surrender.
So I'm going to invite you outof the ring.
And at step four says surrender, I don't get to make your
choices for you.
I don't get to own youremotions, I don't get to do any
of that.
I get to invite you and if youaccept that, wonderful, we're
(39:24):
both going to be now in thatspace.
We're both going to be in thatspace of health and safety and
peace.
And and that's the coolestthing, because you can do this
with anyone, any personalitytype, even that dominant bully
personality, you can do any ofthis.
The final step is repeat orrelease.
(39:46):
So again, the steps are numberone know your boundaries.
Number two is listen andvalidate.
Number three is invite.
So invite them into a store.
Give us, give us the how on theinvite yeah, thank you, we
didn't, we didn't go into that,thanks.
So the how is there's?
(40:06):
There's three steps in theinvite.
One is I'm going to invite youinto the conversation, so saying
things like would it be okay ifwe talked about this or would
it be okay if we connectedaround this?
So notice I'm, I'm askingpermission from that person.
And if they say yes, then starthaving that conversation,
(40:27):
listening and validating everystep of the way.
And once they know that youhear them, that you see them,
that you love them, that's whenyou invite, not before and not
after you've gone into theboxing ring.
Definitely don't do it.
Then there, you're going tohave no luck.
If you were in the boxing ringand you make an invitation,
they're going to be like punchthe nose, punch the nose, you
know uppercut and and so.
(40:49):
But once they know, once theyknow you've they're seen,
they're heard, then you can gointo that and you can say okay,
now that you've accepted theinvitation into the conversation
, now I'm going to invite youinto a healthy behavior and a
really good analogy.
I was sharing this with afriend, this principle.
I also do running clinics.
(41:10):
I love to run, it's a passionof mine, and I do these clinics
to teach people how to, how torun properly.
You think, well, you just putone foot in front of the other
right.
And, but there's a, there'sdynamics that make it so much
easier to run faster with lesseffort.
It's, it's incredible.
So we're I live down in UtahCounty and we're on the Murdoch
(41:32):
Canal Trail, this beautifulrunning trail, and we just did
this running clinic.
My friend is running by me andI'm evaluating her form and all
the different pieces, and comingthe other way was this heavy
set guy with the worst runningform I've ever seen in my life,
like horrible, horrible runningform.
And you know the cartoon movieswhere the giant is lumbering
(41:56):
back and forth from side to sideand he's just like.
I thought for sure, the closerwe approached that his kneecaps
were going to explode and we'regoing to be pelted with patella,
shrapnel, and and he, as he'srunning up to us and we're
running up to him, my friendlooks over and she goes.
So, going to be nice, we'regoing to be kind.
(42:22):
And I'm like, yep, okay, herewe go.
And you think about what wouldnice do?
Right, nice would see this guythat's literally damaging his
body, the you see, thisamazingly damaging behavior and
maybe habit that he's involvedin.
What would nice do?
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Just say hi wave and keep going.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Yeah, big smile, wave hey have a great day, great run
, see ya and zip on by.
That's nice, that's like theepitome of nice.
I see that you're hurtingyourself.
Right now.
I don't have the courage, or Idon't care enough about you, to
actually stop and have that hardconversation with you.
(43:03):
And Kind kind says you knowwhat.
I'm gonna invite you into thisspace of safety and peace and
growth and Then I'm gonna giveyou, I'm gonna surrender, step
four, surrender.
I'm gonna surrender whateveryou choose to do with that.
And so so I did.
He was wearing this shirt thatsaid Timpinogas half marathon
(43:27):
and in my mind I'm thinking youran 13 miles and like this, like
how is that even possible?
And so I had run that same halfmarathon and I'm like, hey, did
you run that?
And and he stops and he bendsover.
You know, hands on his knees,he's like oh, and just breathing
heavy, and I could see thevisible relief on his face.
He's like, thank heavens he'snobody.
(43:48):
Talk to me.
Yeah, he's like whoo, I'm soglad.
And I started building, Istarted listening to him and
Validating him as a human.
They are not validating hisrunning behavior, but validating
him as a human and his effortand the goodness inside of him.
And it was so funny because, asI'm right about to make the
invitation to a healthier way,my friend goes hey listen, he
(44:12):
does running clinic.
You want one?
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Could be invitation for you.
Yeah, I was like two secondsaway.
He's a super nice guy.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
And so is.
This guy's name was Andrew.
He was gonna go to medicalschool the next day in Chicago.
He was gonna get on a flightand he looks up from his, you
know, bent knee position and helooks up and he's like he goes.
You would do that for me.
And I said, yeah, we could justdo a little mini clinic right
here on the trail, take 10, 15minutes you know it's usually 45
(44:46):
, but let's just do a littlequick one right here.
And we did, and he Acceptedthat invitation.
I said would you like that?
And he said yeah, and he goes.
Nobody has ever Taught me howto run.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Nobody has ever told me how destructive the way I've
been running is, kind, stepsinto that space, makes the
invitation and invites thatperson in, nice smile and wave
and hey that one guy, that onetime that yeah, that's nice, but
(45:24):
then also surrenders to,because I think a lot of people
struggle with well, I dideverything I could and they have
to help themselves at somepoint.
Yes, and you think that, well,maybe I did it wrong because
they're not accepting myinvitation.
Yeah, right, but the surrenderpart is the repeat or surrender
(45:44):
part is the surrender leaves theresponsibility for their own
actions in their court, and thenyou are okay with whatever
decision they make, because youdid your part right.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
Exactly that's.
I'm so glad you brought that up, because once I made the
invitation hey, would you liketo do a little mini-rank, like
it was no longer mine?
I gave him the gift of aninvitation.
You think you don't take giftsback.
You don't say, here, here'sthis gift and now I'm taking it
back.
Yeah, it's here's yourinvitation, it's yours.
You get to do with it Whateveryou want.
(46:21):
You can punch me in the noseand say you call me fat and keep
running.
Or you can say, yeah, I wouldlike to step into that space
with you.
And the key is is that you dosurrender that and then you
repeat and or repeat or release.
So the repeat part is ifsomebody isn't in the space, if
(46:44):
they're not ready for thatinvitation, even after you've
validated them and said this is,you know, I see you if they're
still not in that space, thenyou repeat it, you come back to
it, you repeat it and if, aftera certain number of times, you
see that that person is notgoing to accept that invitation,
then you need to release.
And it's so fascinating becauseyou know I do these master
(47:09):
classes and we've done itseveral times and what behavior
that other people do when aperson transitions from nice to
kind, it's.
It's absolutely predictable.
The people that were takingadvantage of you as a nice guy
or a nice girl, they hate it.
When you start settingboundaries, when you start
(47:32):
inviting them out of the ring,they absolutely hate it.
And what happens every singletime this is just predictable
every single time is that thatperson will either come on the
journey with you or they'llleave your life and they want to
stay in those unhealthybehaviors.
(47:53):
And so they're either going tosay, okay, I see that you're
making this change, you knowwhat, I'm gonna come with you on
that journey.
And a lot of times people sayI'm not going to.
And it's fascinating becausethe feedback I get after my
master classes is that I didn'trealize how Toxic my group of
friends were and how toxic I wasin that group of friends, that
(48:17):
I was playing the victim.
Another name for the nice guyis the victim.
And you think wait a minute, no, they're the happy.
Oh, no, no, no, under thecovers, the nice guy is the
victim every time.
Oh, I'm being taken advantageof, oh I'm.
You know, I'm doing all thisstuff and nobody's repaying me
for all my niceness.
You know, the victim is huge inthat.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
So you technically girls don't like the nice guy,
they like the kind guy.
Yes, there's a difference hugeand nice guys really do finish
last.
They do finish last.
You have to be a kind guy, andthen you're good.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
Yeah, I love so.
True, actually it's so true.
Yeah, it's so true, because Imean perfect nice guy Be could
become the victim in anyrelationship quick.
Speaker 3 (49:02):
Yeah, and they do, and they're like well, how are
all these women getting the?
You know they're hooking upwith these jerks and they're you
know they're connecting withthese.
You know, and they go into thatvictim statement of you know
I'm so nice, why aren't they?
Oh no, no, stop being nice.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
We're not.
So we're not talking aboutbeing mean.
No, go out with the mean guy,but they should find the kind
guy.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Yeah, yeah, that's good exactly and this topic is.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
But, like, I think I could say for hours and talk to
you about this, if people wantmore of this topic and they want
to explore the differentcounterfeit emotions, the 32
core ones that you haveidentified, because, like, walk
us through, like real, realshort, I'll tell what I remember
(49:50):
of the exercise that we wentthrough.
Like we wrote down Every goodemotion that we could think of
on a sticky note, yeah, right,every positive emotion.
And then we wrote down everynegative emotion and then we
stuck them on the wall and therewas like what, maybe 10 or 12
of us there, yeah, yeah, and thewhole wall was covered and
(50:11):
stuff.
Well, there were only so manyemotions that we could come up
with.
And now you've got thousandsand thousands of these sticky
notes and you keep them andCatalog them as like, oh, that
might be a new emotion, and thenyou study that emotion.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
So If they want more of these like 32 core emotions
because we've only touched onguilt, shame, nice kind.
That was really the two that wecovered today and almost an
hour oh wow, look at that I knowit doesn't feel as feels like
it's been about 15, 20 minutes.
(50:49):
How do they, how did they checkin Like have you got a website?
Where did they buy the book?
You're working on thecounterfeit emotion book right
now.
It's still being written, rightyeah, so how can they check in
with Curtis Morley?
How can they get more of thiscontent?
Maybe we need to just have youback on the podcast like
(51:11):
multiple times, and we can justbe like we're going to tackle
two more emotions today.
Let's do it, let's do it.
How do they do that?
Speaker 3 (51:17):
Yeah, the best way is to go to counterfeitemotionscom
and you can sign up for themaster classes as well.
We're doing a conference calledSafe to Feel and it's
specifically targeted at youthand young adults and their
parents, and that's going to beJanuary 20th at Utah Valley
University.
So it's free.
(51:37):
It's completely free for teensand young adults.
It's $20 for parents.
We've got some amazing speakerslined up.
It's going to be incredible.
So, yeah, for sure, safe toFeel conference.
The Facebook group is wherewe're most active.
So if you go to Facebook andlook up counterfeit emotions,
you'll see the counterfeitemotions logo.
(51:58):
It's a blue and black logo and,yeah, that's where you can
really get involved.
But, yeah, to make thesetransformative changes because
we're creatures of habit andwe've developed habits over
years and years, our entirelifetime the best thing that
anyone could do is to join oneof the master classes.
(52:19):
Our next master class is goingto be belonging versus fitting
in, and that'll be November 29thand so, yeah, that'd be good
for every teen in the world.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
I wish we had more time.
I want to talk.
I want to tackle that one todaybecause I think so many of our
teens deal with that like the,the epidemic of loneliness.
Yes, that a lot of our well Ithink a lot of adults feel, but
so many of our kids feel likethey just want to fit in Right
and we say that and that justrolls right off our tongue.
Well, I just want to fit inRight, but what's the difference
(52:51):
between fitting in andbelonging?
Speaker 3 (52:53):
in just a couple sentences.
Belonging requires you to beyour authentic self.
Fitting in requires you to bejust like everyone else.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
There you go.
No, he's so precise.
I told you he was articulate,very good at making his point,
and anyone who studies.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
This is going to be better at living their life
whatever they're doing so.
I'm excited.
I'm excited to go check out themaster classes.
I'm super excited for the book.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Thanks.
Do you have an ETA on the book?
Speaker 3 (53:28):
I actually was going to publish it earlier.
It was, it was planned to bepublished earlier, and I decided
to take more of a Stephen Coveyor an Adam Grant approach with
their, their books and likeAtomic Habits, and I'm going to
actually be testing each one ofthese dyads in outside of my
(53:51):
research.
So research is one thing, myown experience is another thing,
but then testing it as we dothese master classes to see how
it plays out in the real worldand and fine tuning.
So right now, the the book isjust in that phase of testing
and we'll probably launch it inMay, either next year or the
(54:11):
following year, just becausethat's Suicide Awareness Month
and and so we want to make surethat we yeah, we help as many
people as we can, that's.
Do you do anything forcompanies?
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Like do you come in and speak to companies you know
outside of the master classes?
Speaker 3 (54:30):
Yeah, yeah, I do.
Actually, it's funny.
You asked that I was having aconversation with the CEO of a
billion dollar company the otherday and and he, he, we were
talking about nice versuskindness.
Like Curtis, where were youlast week?
I just had all of my executivesin the boardroom saying stop
being nice.
You guys, we have to stop beingnice.
(54:51):
Nice is indirect, nice beatsaround the bush.
Nice is destructive to acompany, kind as beautiful, hard
conversations that are done inlove and done with power and
courage, because that's wherethe company needs to go.
And so the answer to that isyes, often I get with different
(55:15):
companies and and do mentoringand coaching that way, awesome.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
At the end of the podcast, we ask everyone the
same question, which is whatdoes it mean to you to be a
gentleman?
So maybe you could give us youroff the cuff answer to that.
Speaker 3 (55:30):
To be a gentleman would definitely be to be kind.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
That's kind of what I was hoping you were going to
say the short answer because wepretty much talked about the
whole podcast and I'm like, yeah, we've touched on that, but we
didn't ask the question.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
So thanks for this is probably one of my favorite
answers because we did talkabout it the whole podcast, but
it is a really good example ofwhat a gentleman is as the hard
conversations just isn't kindRight, and I was.
One of my favorite favoriteways to think about a gentleman
would be the way that Curtisexplains being kind, because you
actually care about people,you're being a gentleman.
(56:09):
Yeah, you're being bold in love.
You're, you're kind of people.
You're not a jerk in any way,shape or form.
You're not going to fake iteither.
Yeah, and to me that reallysits well with me as it relates
to being a gentleman.
So thank you, curtis,appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (56:24):
You're welcome, thank you.
Speaker 2 (56:25):
What a cool subject matter is something that we have
not talked about on the podcast.
Thank you for joining us.
We're entering our fourth yearof the podcast.
That blow anybody else's mindbut mine.
It's awesome, Very cool of youto stick with us.
I know a lot of you listen toevery episode that there is and
look forward to our releases.
(56:46):
We appreciate you sticking withus.
We would love it if you could goover to iTunes and drop us a
rating and a review.
That helps the algorithm wherepeople find a good quality
podcast that they can kind ofcheck into and listen to on a
regular basis.
That's what you could do for us.
(57:07):
We would love it if you woulddo so and share this with
somebody.
If a name popped into your headwhile you were listening to the
podcast today and you thoughtthey could really use this
subject matter, make sure thatyou act on that prompting.
Send them a link to the websiteor the podcast and make sure
that they get to hear this too,because there's a reason why you
(57:29):
thought of that person.
Curtis, thank you for joiningus today.
Thank you so much, guys.
Thanks everybody.
Have a great day.
Speaker 1 (57:36):
Go out there and be kind.
Welcome to the gentlemen project podcast.
I'm Corey Moore and I'm KirkChug.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Today, curtis Morley joins us in the podcast studio.
Curtis and I met about sixmonths ago when he came to a
men's group that I belong to andhe presented an amazing
presentation that really spoketo me and it made sense.
As he was saying it, I thoughtyes, yes, yes, yes.
And so right after the meeting,I asked him if he'd be on the
(00:25):
podcast.
He got married.
He's been on his honeymoon andwe've got him in the podcast
studio now.
We're happy to have him.
He is the author of theentrepreneurs paradox and
working on multiple other booksthat are on the bestsellers list
and not like the Amazonbestsellers list.
These are the real bestsellerslist, the Wall Street Journal
(00:48):
bestseller.
He is an expert on the subjectmatter that he talks on.
He hosts retreats and businessconferences where he teaches the
things that you're going tohear about today.
We couldn't be more excited tohave Curtis Morley with us here
today.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Welcome, curtis, thanks so much for having me on
the show.
Guys, Tell us quickly you justgot married.
Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
A month ago.
Yes, and like you're glowing.
If you follow Curtis on socialmedia, you'd see like all of his
posts with his new bride andthey look like like a blissful
couple.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
It is amazing.
I couldn't even be happier.
So tell us about your familyfirst.
So yeah, like you said, justgot married to Patty and she is
the love of my life.
She is incredible, kind, sogood, just a pure, pure heart
and beautiful.
She's just everything that I'dever even imagined.
(01:44):
She has seven kids.
I have five, so together we'vegot 12.
Wow, brady.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Bunch.
Here we are, man.
How's that going a month in,there's only four left at home.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
So okay, so not quite , not quite the chaos of 12, but
you got 12 kids there Stilladventurous, that's cool, that's
awesome.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Well, you were telling us, well, you're going
to be great for the podcast.
You have so much experiencewith lots of kids, which is
great.
You were telling us, when westarted the podcast, a little
bit about your background.
You really started as anentrepreneur, it sounds like,
and then moved into teachingwhat we're going to talk about
today and writing these booksand having masterclasses.
(02:25):
Give us a little bit about yourbackground and how did you come
to where you are today?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, thanks, I did not expect to be here.
I had, like you said, I've beena five times entrepreneur.
I started multiple companies.
I wrote the entrepreneur'sparadox as I really wrote it for
the 26 year old Curtis, becauseI made all of the mistakes that
I teach people how not to make,and some of them I made two or
(02:54):
three times just to make sure Igot it.
And it hit the Wall StreetJournal bestseller list and my
publisher.
They said this is great, let'sdo a three book series.
And so I was in the middle ofwriting my second business book,
called the Timeline of Business.
What I find is, as I mentor andcoach entrepreneurs to turn into
(03:15):
rapid growth companies, is notonly does everybody make the
same mistakes, they actuallymake it at the same time, that
there's a timeline that's laidout, that if you tell me where
you're at, what mistake you'remaking today, I can pretty
accurately predict what's comingnext, because we all make these
mistakes in order and we makethese.
(03:37):
I call them inflection points.
There's these inflection pointsthat can either skyrocket the
business or sink the business,and they happen in a particular
sequence.
And so I was in the middle ofwriting that and, like we talked
about.
I just got married and thereason I wasn't previously
married is because about fiveyears ago, I got divorced and
(03:59):
that that rocked my world and itwas.
It was the hardest thing I'veever gone through and and I I'm
incredibly grateful for it,because it gave me a chance to
say who is Curtis, who do I wantto be?
It gave me a chance to reallyevaluate me, like dig into my
(04:20):
soul and say, oh, I have made somany mistakes throughout my
life.
Who do I really want to be?
And?
And I started learning theseprinciples and I thought you
know, why are these principlesnot out there?
The principle, specifically, ofcounterfeit emotions?
Why isn't this out there?
Why did I not learn this athome, at church and school, in
(04:43):
the community?
You know how?
How is it that I've neverlearned this?
And I researched and researched, and researched, and the reason
why is because it's not outthere.
They're the closest thing Ifound is a Buddhist teaching
called near enemies and farenemies, and and the.
It's okay if we just dive intoit Go straight to counterfeit
emotions.
This is the some of the adjoinmy seat of what?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
I've been excited for .
Speaker 3 (05:06):
So the premise of counterfeit emotions is that
every authentic emotion, orevery emotion that serves us,
has a counterfeit, except forone.
There's only one emotion thatdoesn't have a counterfeit, and
is that love close like acharity.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
No, no, it's peace.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
Peace.
Okay, peace is the only emotionthat has no counterfeit and
every other emotion.
And let's talk about love.
You know, we were taughtthroughout our lives opposite
emotions.
We're taught love, don't, hate,right.
But we're not taught about thatemotion that slides right up
next to the original motion thatputs on the clothing and
(05:48):
masquerades as that emotion.
So love and hate right.
Hate is so easy to see becauseit's the opposite of love.
But what about love and lust?
You can put your lips tosomeone else's lips in the
spirit of giving, in the spiritof unity, in the spirit of
togetherness, and you can do theexact same action in the spirit
(06:10):
of taking or objectification,etc.
And so it's really easy to seethe opposites.
The reason counterfeit emotionsare so dangerous is because
they look, act and feel like theoriginal, authentic emotion,
but they create destructivepatterns of disconnection in our
lives.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
So talk to us about some of the the ones that we
face most, maybe especially inthe family.
You know atmosphere like what's?
What are some of thecounterfeit emotions that you
would want our listeners to knowabout?
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Yeah, the.
I think one of the key ones,and one that that we're pretty
chronically, chronically unawareof when I say this one, it
often just like shatterspeople's brains is the, the dyad
, or the pairing of kind versusnice.
It turns out that nice isactually the counterfeit of kind
(07:05):
and I'm excited to dive intothat.
Some of the other ones areguilt versus shame.
Guilt is actually a beautiful,healthy emotion.
It's one of the most healthyemotions we can fill, and it's
getting a bad rap in today'sworld.
Guilt is getting such a bad rap.
People are like oh, don't lethim guilt you, and what a guilt
trip.
And what the really talkingabout is shame.
(07:27):
Guilt says I did somethingwrong.
Shame says I am wrong.
Guilt said I made a mistake.
Shame says my whole existenceis a mistake and it's so
damaging.
If you look at the frequency,every emotion has a frequency.
When I learned aboutfrequencies and motion, I'm like
(07:48):
this is fascinating.
The lowest emotion that you canfeel, the very bottom, is
apathy.
That's the very lowest emotionyou can feel right up Well, not
right above that, but fairlyclose is shame.
It's it's on the bottom of thespectrum, in the negative zone.
Believe it or not, guilt isactually in the positive.
(08:09):
And if you look at the wordguilt, guilt actually comes from
an old English word.
The etymology of guilt comesfrom 1400.
The word comes from the 1400sand it comes from the word
gilden, which actually means torepay or make whole.
So the feeling of guilt is tomake someone whole.
The feeling of guilt is to isto say I did something wrong,
(08:33):
I'm going to make reparations,I'm going to make it right.
That's what guilt is.
It's so, so healthy.
Shame is the opposite.
Some others that I lovesurrender versus resignation.
Surrender says do your best andgive God the rest.
Resignation says that's notworth it, I'm not even going to
(08:53):
try.
But do you see how they feeland act and look like each other
?
Yeah, they're so close andthat's why they're so dangerous
is that they are these sneaky,sneaky emotions that turn what
you're feeling into thismetastasized emotional cancer
inside of your body and insteadof feeling that enlightenment,
(09:16):
feeling that beauty that comesfrom that, how many pairings of
these are we got?
Speaker 2 (09:20):
nice versus kind, go versus shame, love versus loss,
like how many?
How many are in this list thatyou have identified?
Yeah, is every emotion.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I?
I well, as you know, when we,when we originally got together
with with the group that you'repart of, we did the sticky note
experiment, where we identifiedemotions.
I literally have thousands ofemotions.
I store all of my emotions in ashelf in my office.
I have thousands of emotions onsticky notes and I said, okay
(09:51):
for a book, what are going to bethe most critical?
And I've narrowed it down to 32.
So there's 32 dyads or pairingsof emotions, yeah, like we
talked about.
Another really important one ispain versus misery and and
understanding the true nature ofpain.
I didn't know this my wholelife.
It took me till I was over 40.
(10:13):
Before I started understandingthe nature of pain and if I can
share just a little bit more ofmy backstory, please do I was in
the middle of writing thesecond book, this business book,
and it still hurts my reallygood friend all the way back
(10:33):
from college I think it'simportant to say his name Jerry
Williamson.
He ended up taking his life andhe had gone through sorry, he
had gone through a divorce likeI had, and he didn't understand
the difference between pain andmisery and guilt and shame.
(10:55):
He didn't understand that and Ibelieve that if he did, he
would still be here today.
I believe if he understoodthose two not even any of the
others, just those two I thinkhe would still be here.
And I'm not okay with how heleft us.
And that's when I called mypublisher and I said you know
(11:16):
what?
I need to write a differentbook.
I need to write a verydifferent book.
It has nothing to do withbusiness, it just has to do with
what's going on inside.
And today, in today's world,it's, it's insane, because we
are right now, today, we're thehighest recorded level of
(11:36):
suicides ever in US history,greater than the Great
Depression, greater than anyother time.
And I said I've got to dosomething, there has to be a way
.
And I believe that, withunderstanding these counterfeit
emotions, that well, not Ibelieve.
I know for a fact as of lastSaturday, the previous Saturday,
(11:57):
we did a conference.
We do this conference calledSafe to Feel, and there were
three people.
There were three people thatcame to that conference that
came up afterwards and saidtoday I was thinking of taking
my life Thank you, I'm stillhere.
(12:20):
And one was on a bridge thenight before Looking over the
freeway, condom lighting,jumping, and my partner, christy
Holt.
She runs a company calledVibonix, which is the coolest
thing ever.
It's an app that you canmeasure your emotions, you speak
(12:44):
into it and it tells you whatyou're feeling.
Because we as a society, we as aculture, have you know, for
years we were told shut ourdoors, shut our offices, shut
our businesses, shut ourchurches, even cover your smile
right.
For years, we were told that,and what happened when we did
that is we started to shut allof those things and shut our
(13:07):
hearts.
We stopped feeling, we startedshutting down, and I believe
that's one of the major reasonsthat we're where we're at today,
and so so, yeah, that's that'spart of my mission is to is to
help people get into theirauthentic selves, help people
understand this is authentic,this is the real me, and push
(13:30):
aside the counterfeits that areso dangerous in their lives.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
So you said that nice versus kind is going to be the
number one thing that is goingto change the relationships we
have inside the four walls ofour homes.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Of the counterfeit emotions, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
And so let's talk.
Can we talk a little bit moreabout that, like, how do we
identify that?
What are the characteristics ofnice and kind, and put some
scenarios out there of why, whyit's important and what we can
do to make sure that we'reexperiencing the genuine emotion
and not counterfeit?
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yeah, I'd love that and it's.
It's so funny because all ourlives were taught to be nice,
nice, right, and I think it'simportant even before we get
into nice versus kind is toidentify the four criteria, to
know if you're feeling anauthentic emotion or if you're
feeling a counterfeit emotion.
(14:26):
And there's there's fourcriteria.
They all in and shun, sothey're easy to remember.
The first is connection.
Does this emotion connect me?
Does it connect me with myself,my true self, not my ego self,
not my titles and my cars andhouse and fancy stuff and status
, but does it connect me with mydivine self, my true self?
(14:47):
Does it connect me with God?
Does it connect me with others?
Does it connect me with thetruth?
So the first criteria isconnection, and connection in
those four ways.
The second criteria isdirection when does this emotion
take me?
Where does it take me?
And if you look at all theauthentic emotion, it plays out
(15:08):
true in every case, that there'sthree directions.
An authentic emotion will takeyou.
It'll take you forward, it'lltake you upward or it'll bring
you together.
Those are the the direction ofa counter or, excuse me, an
authentic emotion, notcounterfeit, but this is
fascinating.
When, when I realized thisabout counterfeits.
(15:29):
If you look at the direction ofa counterfeit emotion I did not
expect this when I did theresearch counterfeit emotions,
they only come back tothemselves.
The only direction acounterfeit emotion brings you
is back to yourself.
Anxiety breeds anxiety, youknow.
(15:49):
Suspicion breeds suspicion.
Misery, misery I mean you thinkmisery loves company, right?
Misery loves company.
That's exactly it.
It has to have more company orelse it dies.
Misery will die on its ownwithout more misery.
So it has to feed itself, ithas to fuel itself, and the only
direction that it that it movesin is a circle and it comes
(16:13):
back to itself over and overagain.
Pain, you know.
No pain, no gain, right,because pain takes you somewhere
.
Misery loves company because itjust has to have more of it, of
that destructive self, or elseit just dies.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
It's fascinating to think about that Like and that
we've never heard it before.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Well you're giving you're giving a language to your
emotion so that you can talkabout them appropriately is
really what you're doing,without actually acting.
And taking the words and sayingwhat am I feeling and then
changing your feeling orunderstanding what you're doing
so you can move forward right,so you can be appropriate.
The words mean nothing.
Who cares what misery versuspain, unless you take those
(16:57):
words, you understand thedifference and then you act on
those differences right.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
I think of the five love languages and it just gives
you a language to talk to yourspouse about.
I don't know if you know thatyeah, yeah.
It just gives you a languagethat this is much deeper than
that.
Yeah, this is like taking thatto the next level and really
trying to figure out how do Ibecome the best person I can be.
It gives you a vocabulary to dothat and it kind of allows you
(17:28):
to look inward and say what am Idoing, what am I feeling and am
I, am I being counterfeit rightnow?
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Yeah, if.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
I'm being counterfeit .
Let's change that into adifferent, appropriate, positive
, for lack of better word.
You can talk about this waybetter than I can.
Positive emotion that allows meto move forward up, etc.
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
So we have connection direction.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Connection direction and you hit on it perfectly is.
The third is motivation.
Okay, is what is my motivationbehind this emotion?
And all of the authenticemotions are based in love and
surrender, and those are twometa emotions, meaning that they
flow through the otherauthentic emotions.
You look at the counterfeit.
(18:10):
The motivation behind acounterfeit emotion is fear and
control.
Fear and control.
Every single time.
It plays true in every one ofthe counterfeit emotions.
Why am I in misery versus pain?
It's because I'm scared and Iwant to control this situation,
because I don't know what to dorather than just accepting the
(18:33):
pain and even honoring the pain.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
And yeah, what you just talked about is huge for
leadership.
Quite frankly, all the I alwaystell our guys like the worst
leaders are leading out of fearRight Fear or or they don't have
self confidence.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
They have to control everything.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Right.
In fact I had a general.
George Casey gave a speech tous at Cornell one time and he
was talking about I said he gaveus this huge list of what are
the best leaders have.
I said, well, what are theworst?
He said All the worst leaders.
Don't have self confidence.
The worst leaders, you're goingto make mistakes, but you got
(19:14):
to have like a inner sense ofconfidence, not fear.
Anyway, fascinating stuff, keepgoing.
I'm interrupting you.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
The motivation motivation.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
So number one connection to direction.
Three is motivation and fourthis valuation.
Is what is this emotion valueme at and what does that value
you at?
And if you look at theauthentic emotions, the value is
divide and worth it is.
It's not just, hey, I have ajob that pays this much or I
(19:48):
have a house that's been thisbig, has nothing to do with that
, it's worth that extends beyondthis world.
It's divine worth.
And the counterfeits?
The counterfeits they, it'sworthless.
You are worthless and you'reworth less.
Meaning the comparison oh, I'mnot, I'm not as handsome as
(20:10):
Corey, or I'm not, as I don'tdrive the coolest car, or you
know.
It's this constant comparison,and comparison is the thief of
joy.
Absolutely, comparison is thethief of joy and that's what the
counterfeit emotions do.
Going back to guilt versus shame, if we talk about guilt, that
(20:30):
valuation, you know, if I comeand do something that hurts you
and I say, you know what myvalue is divine, but you know
what Kirk's value is alsodivided, and so I have to value
you.
The base emotion of guilt isactually empathy.
If I do something wrong to you,I have empathy enough for you
(20:53):
that I say I don't want you tofeel that way.
That's why it's a highfrequency of motion, is because
it's based in empathy.
You cannot have guilt withoutempathy.
And so Getting into that, itsays I value me enough to not do
that and I value you enough toapologize and Like, if we just
(21:14):
go through the four criteriaconnection, if I'm feeling guilt
, I have to connect to you toapologize.
I can't apologize withoutconnecting right.
I can't do that.
I Connect to myself, I connectto God and then I connect to you
and I say I am so sorry forwhat I've done.
And it also connects you to thetruth, because shame says, well
(21:37):
, it's his fault anyway, youknow, I kicked him in the shins,
but he was.
He was wearing a suit without atie.
How dare he do that?
Whatever silly thing it is, butthat that Truth is also
connected in guilt.
The truth is I kicked you inthe shins, you know what I Did,
that I take responsibility forthat and we move through that.
(22:01):
And Brené Brown, as well as astudy out of Switzerland and
University in Switzerland, bothhave done the research on this
shame.
It has a direct correlation toaddiction, to bowling, to Sexual
promiscuity, to I mean, youname the vices.
Shame has a direct connectionand that's not groundbreaking.
(22:22):
That research has been done foryears and years.
The shame is that way.
But these two groups did theother side, they did guilt, and
what they found was guilt had adirect connection to get out of
addiction, get out of bullying,get out of that.
It was fascinating to to readthis, because you would think,
(22:45):
wait a minute, shame gets me andguilt gets me out.
That's amazing because all of asudden, now I'm connecting, now
I'm moving forward, I'm nolonger, I'm no longer stymied by
that thing that's weighing downon me because you don't get rid
of it.
It lives inside of you untilyou make reparations, you know.
(23:07):
And and then with theMotivation, my motivation is
because I love you, I'm sorry,because I love you, I love me
and I love you and then thevaluation says we're both of
divine worth.
Shame says the opposite.
Shame says well, anybody thatdoesn't wear a tie with their
suits, they're, they're jerksand I hate them.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
And BMW drivers, and yeah whatever it is, yeah the
crotch deal man.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Yeah, yeah, that says you're not of worth.
All the authentic emotions sayyes, you are of absolute worth.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
I like what you said about addiction because, if you
think about it, you have to bein the shame cycle.
If, if you're in the guiltcycle, you do everything you
just said, in the guilt cycleyou can get out because you're
gonna you can't you're not.
You're not gonna connect ifyou're in the same shame cycle.
Yeah, and most people don'twhen they're in, when they're
(24:02):
doing that kind of stuff, right,yeah, and you're not going to
feel empathy.
And so, yeah, I would say, mostpeople who in, who are in some
kind of addiction, whatever itis, could be anything.
You can't get out of the shamecycle, like you said, and get
into the connection, moveforward.
You can you explain it waybetter than I do, but I can.
(24:24):
It just makes it so obvious andso easy to talk to, right, in
my mind, everyone has to listento your stuff and read your book
when it comes, because it'llgive them a language to talk
about this super important stuff.
It'll make you a better person,a better husband, a better
parent, a better leader.
So this is awesome.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
I want to go back to to because you gave us the four
criteria right, mm-hmm, beforeyou talked about nice and kind.
I want to go back to nice andkind because we didn't talk
about nice and kind, yet and Ithat one, you know a guilt and
shame or like on what you wouldperceive as like the negative
side of things.
But what's wrong with beingnice, right, Right isn't that?
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I mean Bambi's best friend, ever since we were
little kids, told us you know,if you can't say nothing nice,
then don't say nothing at all.
Right, and what it?
You know?
All my life I bought into that.
All my life I was like, okay,if I can't say anything nice,
well then I'm gonna shut up, I'mgonna repress my emotions, I'm
(25:27):
not gonna advocate for myself.
I mean, you think how damagingthat statement is if you, if you
can't say anything nice, wellthen shut up, like no, that is
not, that is not healthy.
But yet we think it is.
You know, we're taught thatfrom Disney movies.
We're taught that as we grow upalways being nice and and it's
(25:48):
so interesting because Nice is,if you can imagine a pendulum
swinging right and the ball atthe end of the pendulum comes
all the way up to the apex on Onthe left side, that's nice.
And if we, we try and hold thatup there for so long, we just
we keep that and we use all oureffort to be nice, we put on the
(26:09):
smile, we don't express ourtrue feelings, we're not honest
with ourselves, we're not honestwith others.
It's fake in my case.
I'm just gonna introduce myself.
I'm Curtis.
I'm a recovering nice guy.
In my case it was manipulative.
My niceness was manipulative.
I was creating covert contractswith people.
(26:31):
I'm gonna do something nice foryou and guess what?
You better do something niceback.
I'm going to try and controlyour emotions with my niceness.
I'm gonna be so dang nice toyou that you can't be mean back,
because I don't want thatconfrontation.
Nice always leans out, but itdoes it with a smile.
(26:54):
You know, you got this greatbig smile.
Hey, way over there.
Hey, you over there.
I'm smiling, we're happy.
Okay, we're not gonna make aconnection.
See, ya, yeah, you think of theused car salesman.
How nice are they?
Small talk, yeah, yeah, it'sall surface, it's small talk,
it's.
You know, if you would askanybody 10 years ago who is
Curtis, they'd be like oh, he isthe nicest guy you will ever
(27:15):
meet.
I don't want to be nice anymore.
I am choosing not to be nice.
I'm choosing to be kind becausewith that ball that is hung up
in that pendulum and we'rekeeping all that effort, well,
as soon as we don't have anymore effort to keep that nice up
there, what happens?
It swings all the way to theother side.
(27:35):
The opposite of nice is mean.
And now that pendulum swung andyou know, you hear about people
breaking or cracking, or youknow this super nice guy and all
of a sudden now he yelled andoh wait a minute, I thought he
was a nice guy.
And we think in this, in theseit's very black and white,
(27:56):
thinking that you either a niceor your mean.
But the truth is, is there's away to prevent the swings of
that pendulum?
And if we find that we stopswinging that pendulum from nice
to mean, when we're fine,center, that's where kind is
kind is centered, because theopposite of uncentered is still
(28:19):
uncentered.
The opposite of nice is mean,you're still uncentered, you're
still having to keep all thateffort.
But when you find center andyou find kind, you don't have to
have that effort To keep thatball hanging up in the air on
either side.
You, just you.
Yeah, it's authentic if it'sreal.
It's, it's who you really are,and you don't have to try and
(28:41):
and put on this persona of thenice guy.
To translate this to parenthoodand Time with your spouse.
Yeah, so one thing, that niceguys, nice girls are chronic
with Is not leaning in, nothaving hard conversations Nice
(29:03):
says I don't want to rock theboat.
I'm gonna appease you.
I'm gonna be the doormat.
I'm not gonna share my feelings, I'm not gonna advocate for me
and I'm especially not Going toGoing to share feedback with you
that might upset you, becauseI'm nice, translated to, I don't
(29:28):
have the courage right now todo this kind Says.
I'm gonna have a hardconversation with you in love.
It's gonna be an absolutely inlove, but it's gonna be a hard
conversation.
And and in my we talked alittle bit about the
masterclasses I do a 21 daytransformative masterclass when
(29:53):
at the end of the masterclass,we have what's called the big
kind conversation.
And and Previously, before Ilearned the model, there's a
five step model of how to gofrom the counterfeit into the
authentic of nice versus kind,and in each of the dyads, each
of the pairings had their ownmodel, so a different model for
each one.
In nice versus kind, the.
(30:17):
The first step is to know yourboundaries and there's on on the
website, there's a nice typeassessment.
You can actually figure outwhat type of nice you are.
How nice are you?
What kind of nice are you Are?
you, the people pleaser, are youboundary lists?
Are you the doormat?
You can find out what flavor ofnice you are and and the first
(30:40):
criteria in the model of how toget out of being nice and into
kind is know your boundaries.
And it's fascinating.
I've done this exercisemultiple times.
I'll go into a room and I'llask you know dozens, hundreds of
people who can tell me one oftheir boundaries?
And I did an event with about30 people the other day.
One person raised their hand.
One person raised their hand.
(31:03):
I'm like great, what's one ofyour boundaries?
He's like well, only one.
Really Like okay, what's that?
I won't do drugs.
I'm like awesome.
You got that in junior highright the egg on the frying pan.
Don't do drugs right on.
Yeah, what are some of yourother boundaries?
It's so rare to find someonethat actually understands their
boundaries.
It's so rare and we're nottaught this when we're growing
(31:26):
up.
We're not taught what is aboundary.
A boundary is something thatsays this is where I stop and
you start.
This is you know, you think ofthe boundaries of the United
States.
We have our borders, we haveour boundaries, and
understanding my identity, myindividuation, understanding who
I am and knowing the boundariesof what I will and will not do
(31:51):
Are so important.
To give an example of what ahealthy boundary is.
One of my boundaries now.
Again, I'm a recovering niceguy, did not have this boundary
in the past.
One of my boundaries now isthat I won't engage in
destructive conversations.
I won't, I refuse to do it andand so understanding that that's
a boundary of mine Is sohealthy for me, but it's also
(32:17):
healthy for others, because,truly, we train people how to
treat us, and if we'reconstantly nice, remember the
direction, how it spins back toourselves.
We have to keep being nice to,to have that persona.
If we don't, if we don't keepthat placating behavior, we
don't get to, we don't get to beperceived as nice, and so.
(32:41):
So, really understandingboundaries is so critical, and
one thing that's important toknow about boundaries Is you
cannot set a boundary forsomeone else.
This is absolute human nature.
Like this is absolute humannature.
Like If you do this, then I'mdoing this.
That's trying to say like, hey,canada, we really want Calgary,
(33:05):
we're just going to swoop uphere and now it's part of the
United States.
That would cause a war.
Right, you can't do that.
You can only set a boundary foryou.
And so, going back to theboundary of destructive
conversations, I won't have aconversation that's destructive.
So if it starts to get to that,if there's name calling or
raised voices or manipulation oranything like that, I'll call
(33:30):
it out and I'll say, hey, I cantell that this conversation is
not going to help ourrelationship and so, until it
can.
I'm going to need to excusemyself.
Notice, I didn't say you needto shut up, you need to be quiet
.
I'm making a choice for me.
My choice is not to engage, andso that's.
(33:54):
The first one is boundaries.
The second one is listen andvalidate.
And this one it is so hard todo and this is one of the pieces
that turns every conversationinto a beautiful, connecting
conversation is you can listenand validate anyone, even the
(34:18):
emotional vampire, even to thechronic complainer, even to the
bully, even to any of thosepersonality types.
You can listen and validate,and it's really important to
know what you're validating.
You don't validate thecomplaint.
When somebody comes in and says, oh, can you believe Joe did
this?
Oh, come join me and, let's youknow, get on the bandwagon,
(34:42):
let's beat up Joe.
You can still validate thehuman behind that.
You don't have to say I'm goingto.
Yeah, let's go beat up Joetogether.
Let's you know, I'm going to.
No, you don't validate that,you validate the person.
You can say things like oh, Ican see how that affected you, I
(35:02):
can see why that's so hard.
It doesn't say Joe was rightand I'm wrong, and you know it
doesn't do any of that it justsays I see you, I see you in
your pain, so I'm going tolisten to you, I'm going to
validate you, I'm going to hearyou, and so listening and
validate Stephen Covey says hehas a quote that says most
(35:24):
people listen in order torespond rather than to
understand.
And it's so true.
It's so true.
That was me, 100% is you?
You know you talk and I'm readywith my response as soon as
you're done, and you might haveonly said a few words and I
already have my response, ratherthan just trying to understand.
(35:44):
And so nice.
Nice doesn't sound like kind atall.
Kind sounds like hey, tell memore.
Even when somebody sayssomething hard or something
against you, can you imaginelike somebody's coming to say oh
, you're a jerk, and you say hey, tell me more.
And they're like wait what?
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yes, and tell me more about that.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
I want to understand you.
I want to understand why you'rehaving this emotion.
Because inside there's thatdivine worth and I know that you
are divine, I'm divine.
So let's get to that, let's getto that piece of it.
So the second step is listeningand validating.
The third step is invite.
(36:30):
And this one you thought steptwo was hard, the invite stage.
And I say hard and jokinglybecause upfront it is upfront.
It's so outside the nature ofthe nice guy or the nice girl to
do these steps, but when youget into it it actually turns
every conversation into abeautiful connecting experience,
(36:53):
like I used to.
You know, I've been anentrepreneur.
I would have these hardconversations and I'm going to
put some titles on it hard,nasty conversations, you know.
And I would just have this pitin my stomach, like you wouldn't
know that from the outside youthink, oh, he's got his
composure and he's all puttogether all that.
Inside I'm just tied up inknots and I'm just saying, oh,
(37:14):
this is another one of thoseconversations.
Now, I'm excited about theseconversations because I know
every single one is going to bea connecting conversations.
It's going to be a big, kindconversation instead of a big
nasty conversation.
And I'm truly excited because Iknow, at the very least, very
(37:34):
bottom, that they are going toknow that I heard them, that I
saw them, that I understood whothey were.
And I'm going to dig.
I'm going to say tell me more.
I'm going to say I want to hearmore about that, I want to
understand.
You, dig deeper.
You know, I'm going to saythings like that, that they're
going to be like oh, youactually want to hear me.
(37:55):
How cool is that?
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Pretty hard to fight with somebody like that.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
Yeah, and I use this analogy, this is the super one
of the boxing ring.
Yeah, you walk into thebuilding, right, and there's a
boxing ring there, and theperson has the gloves on,
they've got their belt, theirshorts, they're ready to go, and
they just taunt you.
They're like get in the ringwith me, get in the ring, put
your gloves on.
And it's so easy to slidebetween the ropes and go toe to
(38:22):
toe.
And here's my argument boom,here's your argument, boom and
punch, punch, punch.
And there's a better way, andthat way is to invite them out
of the ring where they're tryingto get you into the ring.
You invite them out of the ringand even though I'm horrible at
(38:42):
yoga, I imagine, like, here'sthe boxing ring and over here is
the yoga studio, right, thisplace of peace, of growth, of
abundance, of health.
And instead of saying, yeah,I'm going to jump in and I'm
going to toe for toe, punch forpunch, argue with you.
I'm going to invite you into aplace of safety and peace and
(39:03):
health and I'm going to stayhere.
And step four is surrender.
So I'm going to invite you outof the ring.
And at step four says surrender, I don't get to make your
choices for you.
I don't get to own youremotions, I don't get to do any
of that.
I get to invite you and if youaccept that, wonderful, we're
(39:24):
both going to be now in thatspace.
We're both going to be in thatspace of health and safety and
peace.
And and that's the coolestthing, because you can do this
with anyone, any personalitytype, even that dominant bully
personality, you can do any ofthis.
The final step is repeat orrelease.
(39:46):
So again, the steps are numberone know your boundaries.
Number two is listen andvalidate.
Number three is invite.
So invite them into a store.
Give us, give us the how on theinvite yeah, thank you, we
didn't, we didn't go into that,thanks.
So the how is there's?
(40:06):
There's three steps in theinvite.
One is I'm going to invite youinto the conversation, so saying
things like would it be okay ifwe talked about this or would
it be okay if we connectedaround this?
So notice I'm, I'm askingpermission from that person.
And if they say yes, then starthaving that conversation,
(40:27):
listening and validating everystep of the way.
And once they know that youhear them, that you see them,
that you love them, that's whenyou invite, not before and not
after you've gone into theboxing ring.
Definitely don't do it.
Then there, you're going tohave no luck.
If you were in the boxing ringand you make an invitation,
they're going to be like punchthe nose, punch the nose, you
know uppercut and and so.
(40:49):
But once they know, once theyknow you've they're seen,
they're heard, then you can gointo that and you can say okay,
now that you've accepted theinvitation into the conversation
, now I'm going to invite youinto a healthy behavior and a
really good analogy.
I was sharing this with afriend, this principle.
I also do running clinics.
(41:10):
I love to run, it's a passionof mine, and I do these clinics
to teach people how to, how torun properly.
You think, well, you just putone foot in front of the other
right.
And, but there's a, there'sdynamics that make it so much
easier to run faster with lesseffort.
It's, it's incredible.
So we're I live down in UtahCounty and we're on the Murdoch
(41:32):
Canal Trail, this beautifulrunning trail, and we just did
this running clinic.
My friend is running by me andI'm evaluating her form and all
the different pieces, and comingthe other way was this heavy
set guy with the worst runningform I've ever seen in my life,
like horrible, horrible runningform.
And you know the cartoon movieswhere the giant is lumbering
(41:56):
back and forth from side to sideand he's just like.
I thought for sure, the closerwe approached that his kneecaps
were going to explode and we'regoing to be pelted with patella,
shrapnel, and and he, as he'srunning up to us and we're
running up to him, my friendlooks over and she goes.
So, going to be nice, we'regoing to be kind.
(42:22):
And I'm like, yep, okay, herewe go.
And you think about what wouldnice do?
Right, nice would see this guythat's literally damaging his
body, the you see, thisamazingly damaging behavior and
maybe habit that he's involvedin.
What would nice do?
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Just say hi wave and keep going.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Yeah, big smile, wave hey have a great day, great run
, see ya and zip on by.
That's nice, that's like theepitome of nice.
I see that you're hurtingyourself.
Right now.
I don't have the courage, or Idon't care enough about you, to
actually stop and have that hardconversation with you.
(43:03):
And Kind kind says you knowwhat.
I'm gonna invite you into thisspace of safety and peace and
growth and Then I'm gonna giveyou, I'm gonna surrender, step
four, surrender.
I'm gonna surrender whateveryou choose to do with that.
And so so I did.
He was wearing this shirt thatsaid Timpinogas half marathon
(43:27):
and in my mind I'm thinking youran 13 miles and like this, like
how is that even possible?
And so I had run that same halfmarathon and I'm like, hey, did
you run that?
And and he stops and he bendsover.
You know, hands on his knees,he's like oh, and just breathing
heavy, and I could see thevisible relief on his face.
He's like, thank heavens he'snobody.
(43:48):
Talk to me.
Yeah, he's like whoo, I'm soglad.
And I started building, Istarted listening to him and
Validating him as a human.
They are not validating hisrunning behavior, but validating
him as a human and his effortand the goodness inside of him.
And it was so funny because, asI'm right about to make the
invitation to a healthier way,my friend goes hey listen, he
(44:12):
does running clinic.
You want one?
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Could be invitation for you.
Yeah, I was like two secondsaway.
He's a super nice guy.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
And so is.
This guy's name was Andrew.
He was gonna go to medicalschool the next day in Chicago.
He was gonna get on a flightand he looks up from his, you
know, bent knee position and helooks up and he's like he goes.
You would do that for me.
And I said, yeah, we could justdo a little mini clinic right
here on the trail, take 10, 15minutes you know it's usually 45
(44:46):
, but let's just do a littlequick one right here.
And we did, and he Acceptedthat invitation.
I said would you like that?
And he said yeah, and he goes.
Nobody has ever Taught me howto run.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Nobody has ever told me how destructive the way I've
been running is, kind, stepsinto that space, makes the
invitation and invites thatperson in, nice smile and wave
and hey that one guy, that onetime that yeah, that's nice, but
(45:24):
then also surrenders to,because I think a lot of people
struggle with well, I dideverything I could and they have
to help themselves at somepoint.
Yes, and you think that, well,maybe I did it wrong because
they're not accepting myinvitation.
Yeah, right, but the surrenderpart is the repeat or surrender
(45:44):
part is the surrender leaves theresponsibility for their own
actions in their court, and thenyou are okay with whatever
decision they make, because youdid your part right.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
Exactly that's.
I'm so glad you brought that up, because once I made the
invitation hey, would you liketo do a little mini-rank, like
it was no longer mine?
I gave him the gift of aninvitation.
You think you don't take giftsback.
You don't say, here, here'sthis gift and now I'm taking it
back.
Yeah, it's here's yourinvitation, it's yours.
You get to do with it Whateveryou want.
(46:21):
You can punch me in the noseand say you call me fat and keep
running.
Or you can say, yeah, I wouldlike to step into that space
with you.
And the key is is that you dosurrender that and then you
repeat and or repeat or release.
So the repeat part is ifsomebody isn't in the space, if
(46:44):
they're not ready for thatinvitation, even after you've
validated them and said this is,you know, I see you if they're
still not in that space, thenyou repeat it, you come back to
it, you repeat it and if, aftera certain number of times, you
see that that person is notgoing to accept that invitation,
then you need to release.
And it's so fascinating becauseyou know I do these master
(47:09):
classes and we've done itseveral times and what behavior
that other people do when aperson transitions from nice to
kind, it's.
It's absolutely predictable.
The people that were takingadvantage of you as a nice guy
or a nice girl, they hate it.
When you start settingboundaries, when you start
(47:32):
inviting them out of the ring,they absolutely hate it.
And what happens every singletime this is just predictable
every single time is that thatperson will either come on the
journey with you or they'llleave your life and they want to
stay in those unhealthybehaviors.
(47:53):
And so they're either going tosay, okay, I see that you're
making this change, you knowwhat, I'm gonna come with you on
that journey.
And a lot of times people sayI'm not going to.
And it's fascinating becausethe feedback I get after my
master classes is that I didn'trealize how Toxic my group of
friends were and how toxic I wasin that group of friends, that
(48:17):
I was playing the victim.
Another name for the nice guyis the victim.
And you think wait a minute, no, they're the happy.
Oh, no, no, no, under thecovers, the nice guy is the
victim every time.
Oh, I'm being taken advantageof, oh I'm.
You know, I'm doing all thisstuff and nobody's repaying me
for all my niceness.
You know, the victim is huge inthat.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
So you technically girls don't like the nice guy,
they like the kind guy.
Yes, there's a difference hugeand nice guys really do finish
last.
They do finish last.
You have to be a kind guy, andthen you're good.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
Yeah, I love so.
True, actually it's so true.
Yeah, it's so true, because Imean perfect nice guy Be could
become the victim in anyrelationship quick.
Speaker 3 (49:02):
Yeah, and they do, and they're like well, how are
all these women getting the?
You know they're hooking upwith these jerks and they're you
know they're connecting withthese.
You know, and they go into thatvictim statement of you know
I'm so nice, why aren't they?
Oh no, no, stop being nice.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
We're not.
So we're not talking aboutbeing mean.
No, go out with the mean guy,but they should find the kind
guy.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Yeah, yeah, that's good exactly and this topic is.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
But, like, I think I could say for hours and talk to
you about this, if people wantmore of this topic and they want
to explore the differentcounterfeit emotions, the 32
core ones that you haveidentified, because, like, walk
us through, like real, realshort, I'll tell what I remember
(49:50):
of the exercise that we wentthrough.
Like we wrote down Every goodemotion that we could think of
on a sticky note, yeah, right,every positive emotion.
And then we wrote down everynegative emotion and then we
stuck them on the wall and therewas like what, maybe 10 or 12
of us there, yeah, yeah, and thewhole wall was covered and
(50:11):
stuff.
Well, there were only so manyemotions that we could come up
with.
And now you've got thousandsand thousands of these sticky
notes and you keep them andCatalog them as like, oh, that
might be a new emotion, and thenyou study that emotion.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
So If they want more of these like 32 core emotions
because we've only touched onguilt, shame, nice kind.
That was really the two that wecovered today and almost an
hour oh wow, look at that I knowit doesn't feel as feels like
it's been about 15, 20 minutes.
(50:49):
How do they, how did they checkin Like have you got a website?
Where did they buy the book?
You're working on thecounterfeit emotion book right
now.
It's still being written, rightyeah, so how can they check in
with Curtis Morley?
How can they get more of thiscontent?
Maybe we need to just have youback on the podcast like
(51:11):
multiple times, and we can justbe like we're going to tackle
two more emotions today.
Let's do it, let's do it.
How do they do that?
Speaker 3 (51:17):
Yeah, the best way is to go to counterfeitemotionscom
and you can sign up for themaster classes as well.
We're doing a conference calledSafe to Feel and it's
specifically targeted at youthand young adults and their
parents, and that's going to beJanuary 20th at Utah Valley
University.
So it's free.
(51:37):
It's completely free for teensand young adults.
It's $20 for parents.
We've got some amazing speakerslined up.
It's going to be incredible.
So, yeah, for sure, safe toFeel conference.
The Facebook group is wherewe're most active.
So if you go to Facebook andlook up counterfeit emotions,
you'll see the counterfeitemotions logo.
(51:58):
It's a blue and black logo and,yeah, that's where you can
really get involved.
But, yeah, to make thesetransformative changes because
we're creatures of habit andwe've developed habits over
years and years, our entirelifetime the best thing that
anyone could do is to join oneof the master classes.
(52:19):
Our next master class is goingto be belonging versus fitting
in, and that'll be November 29thand so, yeah, that'd be good
for every teen in the world.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
I wish we had more time.
I want to talk.
I want to tackle that one todaybecause I think so many of our
teens deal with that like the,the epidemic of loneliness.
Yes, that a lot of our well Ithink a lot of adults feel, but
so many of our kids feel likethey just want to fit in Right
and we say that and that justrolls right off our tongue.
Well, I just want to fit inRight, but what's the difference
(52:51):
between fitting in andbelonging?
Speaker 3 (52:53):
in just a couple sentences.
Belonging requires you to beyour authentic self.
Fitting in requires you to bejust like everyone else.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
There you go.
No, he's so precise.
I told you he was articulate,very good at making his point,
and anyone who studies.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
This is going to be better at living their life
whatever they're doing so.
I'm excited.
I'm excited to go check out themaster classes.
I'm super excited for the book.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Thanks.
Do you have an ETA on the book?
Speaker 3 (53:28):
I actually was going to publish it earlier.
It was, it was planned to bepublished earlier, and I decided
to take more of a Stephen Coveyor an Adam Grant approach with
their, their books and likeAtomic Habits, and I'm going to
actually be testing each one ofthese dyads in outside of my
(53:51):
research.
So research is one thing, myown experience is another thing,
but then testing it as we dothese master classes to see how
it plays out in the real worldand and fine tuning.
So right now, the the book isjust in that phase of testing
and we'll probably launch it inMay, either next year or the
(54:11):
following year, just becausethat's Suicide Awareness Month
and and so we want to make surethat we yeah, we help as many
people as we can, that's.
Do you do anything forcompanies?
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Like do you come in and speak to companies you know
outside of the master classes?
Speaker 3 (54:30):
Yeah, yeah, I do.
Actually, it's funny.
You asked that I was having aconversation with the CEO of a
billion dollar company the otherday and and he, he, we were
talking about nice versuskindness.
Like Curtis, where were youlast week?
I just had all of my executivesin the boardroom saying stop
being nice.
You guys, we have to stop beingnice.
(54:51):
Nice is indirect, nice beatsaround the bush.
Nice is destructive to acompany, kind as beautiful, hard
conversations that are done inlove and done with power and
courage, because that's wherethe company needs to go.
And so the answer to that isyes, often I get with different
(55:15):
companies and and do mentoringand coaching that way, awesome.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
At the end of the podcast, we ask everyone the
same question, which is whatdoes it mean to you to be a
gentleman?
So maybe you could give us youroff the cuff answer to that.
Speaker 3 (55:30):
To be a gentleman would definitely be to be kind.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
That's kind of what I was hoping you were going to
say the short answer because wepretty much talked about the
whole podcast and I'm like, yeah, we've touched on that, but we
didn't ask the question.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
So thanks for this is probably one of my favorite
answers because we did talkabout it the whole podcast, but
it is a really good example ofwhat a gentleman is as the hard
conversations just isn't kindRight, and I was.
One of my favorite favoriteways to think about a gentleman
would be the way that Curtisexplains being kind, because you
actually care about people,you're being a gentleman.
(56:09):
Yeah, you're being bold in love.
You're, you're kind of people.
You're not a jerk in any way,shape or form.
You're not going to fake iteither.
Yeah, and to me that reallysits well with me as it relates
to being a gentleman.
So thank you, curtis,appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (56:24):
You're welcome, thank you.
Speaker 2 (56:25):
What a cool subject matter is something that we have
not talked about on the podcast.
Thank you for joining us.
We're entering our fourth yearof the podcast.
That blow anybody else's mindbut mine.
It's awesome, Very cool of youto stick with us.
I know a lot of you listen toevery episode that there is and
look forward to our releases.
(56:46):
We appreciate you sticking withus.
We would love it if you could goover to iTunes and drop us a
rating and a review.
That helps the algorithm wherepeople find a good quality
podcast that they can kind ofcheck into and listen to on a
regular basis.
That's what you could do for us.
(57:07):
We would love it if you woulddo so and share this with
somebody.
If a name popped into your headwhile you were listening to the
podcast today and you thoughtthey could really use this
subject matter, make sure thatyou act on that prompting.
Send them a link to the websiteor the podcast and make sure
that they get to hear this too,because there's a reason why you
(57:29):
thought of that person.
Curtis, thank you for joiningus today.
Thank you so much, guys.
Thanks everybody.
Have a great day.
Speaker 1 (57:36):
Go out there and be kind.
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Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.