Welcome back to another episode of The Self-Confidence Project. Today, I’m delighted to bring on Mark Groves, an expert in relationships and self-awareness. We’re focusing on his journey, insights, and advice for men seeking love, especially post-divorce. Mark shares his experiences and motivations that led him to explore relationship education, triggered by his personal breakups and the societal misconceptions about male emotions. He highlights the importance of understanding personal values, self-regulation, and the need for genuine connections over social media interactions. Groves also delves into the impacts of societal conditioning on men, the benefits of joining men’s groups, and the necessity of addressing one’s own woundedness for healthier relationships. The conversation further explores modern dating challenges in the digital age and emphasizes the role of self-worth and alignment with personal values. Groves discusses his community and projects, including his book ‘Liberated Love’ and his upcoming program ‘The Regulated Leader,’ aimed at helping individuals manage their nervous systems and personal growth.
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Kimberly
Here’s the transcript:
If you place your value in anything or anyone, it will need to leave you in order to teach you that your value doesn’t live there.
External Microphone & FaceTime HD Camera: Hi guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Self Confidence Project. I’m your host, Kimberly. And today I’m delighted to bring on Mark Groves, who’s an expert in relationships and self awareness. In today’s candid conversation, we’re going to be talking about his personal journey, his insights and advice for men that are seeking love, especially after divorce.
Now Mark’s also going to share some of his personal experiences and motivations that led him to explore relationship education. course triggered by his own personal breakup and by societal misconceptions about male emotions. He’s going to highlight the importance of understanding your personal values, self regulation, the need for genuine connection, uh, over social media interaction.
And so stay tuned because this conversation further explores modern dating challenges that you’re likely coming up against, especially in the digital age and really just emphasize the role of. our own [00:01:00] self worth and alignment with personal values. So stay tuned. Uh, we’ve got a goodie for you today.
My audience is mainly men, single men that are looking for love and typically looking for love after divorce.
Um, and some of them are trying to get back with their exes. Yeah, that’s a big one. Something you know about and worked out well for you, right? Yeah. Yeah, it has. But, uh, I’d love to know just about like what you’re up to. You’ve obviously built a massive platform around relationships and self awareness.
You’re outspoken as well with your own thoughts and beliefs, but I just love to know, like, how did you Like what I’m a dating coach, but like what spurred you to go down this path? Well, I’d imagine it’s similar for you. I don’t know your origin story, but a lot of my desire [00:02:00] to create relationship education was because I needed it.
So I went through a breakup in my late twenties and I was engaged. And when I got out of that engagement, I thought to myself, Well, when I was got engaged, I thought all my anxiety would go away because I finally met the moment. Yeah. I finally met the moment I was taught to want my whole life. And when I got there, I, I didn’t want it and I didn’t know why.
And when I would go to. People that I knew and say, you know, I’m really afraid to get married. I have a lot of anxiety. People would say to me, Oh, you’re just afraid of commitment. It’s just a classic guy thing. And I thought to myself, wow, we live in this world where we want emotionally intelligent men.
And then when I share people, how I’m feeling, they tell me I don’t actually feel that way. Oh, lovely. Yeah. So I’m like, well, this is a strange conundrum. Uh, so maybe I actually am just afraid of commitment. But when I dove deeper into [00:03:00] wanting to understand. Why I was afraid and why I couldn’t choose the woman I was in engaged to who is an incredible woman.
So that was hard That’s when I started to realize that everything I’ve been taught about relationship, which was nothing but what I had observed unconsciously Was deceptive or a lie or that I thought my value lived in my relationship status And so I was really on a mission when I first started my first mission was to like Remind people that they’re not broken just because their relationship ends and that there is wisdom to your ambivalence, you know, and, um, That’s what started it.
That’s what made me go. I was just like so desperately wanted to understand how to not be lost again And how to not experience devastating heartbreak And so what called you to then like go on that journey? With social media because I know that’s a relationship that you’ve moved [00:04:00] away from now But maybe was helpful when you first began Yeah, I came back to it.
But, uh, when I, when I first started, I mean, like, actually, I was dating a girl who ran social media for like bars and pubs or something, a restaurant. I knew you had a secret hack on how you grew. No, she definitely wasn’t. She was a motivation because when we broke up, right, I started an Instagram account.
Okay. Um, but you know, like the, the only hack I had was I posted every day for like nine years or eight years, sometimes two or three times a day. And to be fair, that was a different time because organic reach was very different. Although now I’d say that. An individual creator has a lot more potential with a small following to go very viral.
Yeah. That didn’t exist back in the day. It was like if you had 100, 000 followers, that kind of determined your reach. Um, right. 200, 300, 400, right? It just amplified. But now that’s not true. You could have 5, 000 followers and get a video to. [00:05:00] That goes, gets 10 million or something. And yeah. Yeah. Overnight growth.
Exactly. So it seems like each post has its own algorithm, you know, it sure does. And yeah, hell trying to figure it out. Just do it. Right. Just post stuff that you enjoy posting and move on with your life. Yeah. Which is, I think, hard for a lot of people to do, especially if they’re, you know, um, frustrated by it, et cetera.
I have a whole other thought line on that. I think a lot of us are playing out our wounds with our mother or father with social media, but that’s a whole other thing. Probably. Totally. Yeah, like the thing we long for, the thing we’re disappointed by with social media is usually a similar like what we want to be, what we want to be seen, what we want to be known, right?
Yeah. Yeah. So I started out that journey of just, I started writing and I had a blog, and then the blog did really well, and then I started coaching, oh God, you’re dating yourself. Then Mark a blog. Right? I know. I’m an original blogger. Blog days. Actually, I’m not. Danielle Deport would’ve been an original [00:06:00] blogger.
Not to throw her on, I’ve her speak. I have one of her books somewhere. Yeah, she’s so good. Her and like Mastin Kipp, Gabby Bernstein, they were all like the original, you know, Super Soul Sunday, Oprah’s top whatever. Yeah. Um, and so, yeah, I started writing that did well. And then when social, I did this girl, she was like, you should start an Instagram account.
We broke up. I’m like, ah, I gotta show you. I’m starting an Instagram account. The revenge Instagram. Exactly. And everyone would say Oh, you can’t post long form content on Instagram. It’s for photographers and pictures and that obviously changed substantially. And uh, then I just had some deep awarenesses in the last couple of years about our nervous system and the relationship to social media and how, you know, if you have a social media account, even if it’s personal or private.
You were never meant to have an aversion, aversion of you available 24 hours a day for social risk. [00:07:00] So your nervous system can’t differentiate a social media platform that is your business or you from literal social risk of being on a stage or in a group and you saying the wrong thing. Now, when you before, if you said a bunch of things and went to bed, you weren’t at risk, but now you could say a bunch of things online.
And that stuff is, the algorithm is always circulating it. Yeah. And you’re constantly getting feedback from the world, positive and or negative. Yeah, exactly. And, and you’re, you’re constantly available to be exiled, which is really what the nervous system is worried about. So when I see comments I don’t like, I just block and delete the people immediately.
I don’t even sleep. That’s the best thing to do. I used to. Don’t even have profile pictures. I know, well there’s this new little feature on Instagram where it says like, right now on my account it says something like 2, 500 of the followers are deactivated accounts. It’s just not even like people anymore, but that doesn’t let you just [00:08:00] take them all away.
You have to like do it one by one. Yeah, so I was looking and I was like, oh, I’d rather just get rid of those accounts But then it’s like well if I sat there for three hours and unfollowed all individually Like then it’s gonna think I’m a bot and might lock out my count. So I’m like, what the hell? It’s all that can’t win.
You can’t have no I have no playing the game with social media is really interesting because When you’re when you’re triggered by it, then you know that there’s still something personal going on and that was me That was that was there was something personal going on that I needed to resolve But when you start to see it as a computer, that’s literally just assessing the perceived value of your content.
Yeah. But if you have a worthiness wound, you not only have people constantly deciding if your content’s valuable or not, you actually have a non human entity deciding if you’re valuable or not, which is kind of wild. Not a good place to put one’s self worth. [00:09:00] In the hands of the robot. No, but it was a required thing to heal low self worth, you know, you have to.
Probably, yeah. Yeah, it would, it’s only, it can only show up because it’s accessible. Otherwise it wouldn’t show up. Right. Well, let’s talk about dating. Let’s talk about relationships. Let’s get into it. What do you think is something about relationships that you believe now that ten years ago you did not believe?
Oh, man. Something that I believe now that ten years ago I didn’t believe. Or more than ten years. I mean, fuck, it doesn’t have to be exactly ten years. I’d say that in a re a thought that didn’t come to me until probably six or seven years ago was really seeing that all of the frictions of my relationships, no matter the kind, including Substances, technology are all material for me to liberate myself and to, um, you know, maybe the language for some people is to like get into my fullest [00:10:00] soul expression, but to really reveal all of me to move out of codependent patterns to move out to like, uh, am I, am I willing to be myself at the cost of being loved, liked, belonged?
And I think all frictions relationally show you where you can get better at communicating. You can get better at boundaries and that your own freedom, let’s say you want to leave a relationship is actually freeing to the other person. And that I think could be hard to be on the other side of, which I have been on the other side of.
Right. So you’re viewing, if I understand you correctly, you view like any kind of trigger in a relationship as just an opportunity to grow and become better versus another reason why it’s not working or like Yeah. And it might, it might head to not working, but that the trigger itself is an invitation to mastery.
That Right. That the trigger isn’t, you know, a lot of people will heal something [00:11:00] perceivably, get in a relationship, get triggered, be like, ah, I thought I healed that thing. And, you know, the real truth is that. You know, as Harville Hendricks and Helen Hunt say that you’re, you’re born in relationship, you’re wounded in relationship and you heal in relationship.
Healing is not complete outside of relationship, but the trigger itself needs to be brought forward so you can actually resolve what’s below it. And triggers are brilliant radars. They’re hypersensitive, hypervigilant ways where you are seeing a pattern that led to pain. So you don’t want to shut it off.
You just want to stop the automation deciding how you respond to the trigger. That’s right. This is a sticky point for a lot of people. They’re stuck in reactivity or they’re very reactive, um, and they’re not giving themselves a chance to process and respond and make a good, good or better choice. Right?
Yeah. I mean, and, and, and what lives next to the openness or the changing of a pattern is vulnerability. So that’s [00:12:00] why it’s such a conundrum because It’s actually through the trigger that you ask yourself, what kind of skill set would I need for you to confidently walk through this in a different way?
It’s a skill set often, isn’t it? Emotional regulation, communication, or could be just what is the skill I need to calm my own nervous system down, right? Yeah, because like dating, even as a process, like when I think about, you know, even in speaking of the concept of divorce or breakups, the majority of breakups and divorces are initiated by women.
And, and it’s usually about two years from the time she or he. Or both say that something’s like, yeah, so like, yeah, let’s, we got some things to look at and then it doesn’t get looked at, which I’d say men really are challenged by this, not because of their own fault, but because of our social conditioning that we don’t really know how.[00:13:00]
Generally, I think it’s changing substantially now, but we don’t tend to have really, um, good language for emotion because the, the, really the two emotions we’re allowed to feel are anger, which is often aggression and desire, right? You’re only allowed to cry men when your sport team loses or your dog dies.
Otherwise, it’s highly inappropriate, as goes society, right? Right. And so like what we desperately most need from men, men have to rebel and go in opposition to where their perceived value is. And also we have a culture that says that men are bad and toxic and shitty and rapists and you know, words like privilege, which I, Hey, I, we can deconstruct all that stuff.
But when it’s not. Acknowledged or explained by an integrated adult. What even that any of that [00:14:00] means a 12 year old hearing this shit doesn’t have someone to say you’re not toxic because you’re a boy. You’re not toxic because you have testosterone. There are unintegrated traumatized men who are spilling their bullshit, which is their responsibility.
But as a culture, we still have to decide. I mean, There’s a whole lot of layers to this because, and this is of course a controversial subject, but even circumcision is such a stupid, it’s not even medical, it’s not even medical based, it’s religious based, masquerading as medicine, and so in the first eight days of a boy’s life, he is experiencing a giant fracture in his attachment, and the world If you look at that conversation, which I, we don’t have to go off the rails on this, but if you like, look at that conversation about females, genital mutilation, that’s instantly, we would say never.
Oh my God. Can’t do. Yeah. But the, the, the [00:15:00] foreskin is actually originates as what, what turns into the clitoral hood is also the foreskin. So interestingly, when it comes to boys, we’ve just normalized. That it’s okay to hurt them and harm them. And I say that because, like, even in studies that looked at the ways some boys responded to getting vaccinated, some of the boys had these exas like, really exaggerated responses.
And when they looked, it was boys who’d been circumcised. So they had a sort of PTSD from it. And so I just think there’s so many A mistrust already built into their nervous system from a really young age. Avoidance, right? Like, all of that stuff. I think, uh, a disassociation that occurs, you know, when that happens.
And so I think a lot, there’s a lot of cultural momentum that is in opposition to men finding emotional fluency. And I think we have to have a lot of compassion for that because we’re not acknowledging the suffering of the little boy. Like [00:16:00] I have a little boy now. Hence why I can see the focus on.
Protection coming out from you. Oh yeah. And my wife said I’ve, I have such another level of her, herself of sensitivity for the boys, like he is so sensitive and sweet and, you know, and so, yeah, I think there’s. I think for men, a lot of the work we have to do individually is to see that we have to dive into our own vulnerabilities and heart and society.
We’re all waiting for society or moms or our partners who we make our moms to finally. see us, know us, choose us. Um, but in order for that to truly happen, we have to go to the depths of ourselves. So let’s talk about that. What does it look like for an average modern man to go to the depths of himself?
And for the audience that’ll [00:17:00] be listening to this is a lot of men that are coming out of Long term relationships or a divorce after 10, 20 years and probably has not considered or faced the depths of himself ever. And may not even know what the hell we’re talking about. Right. Right. And I have so much compassion for that and, um, you know, I think it just, as I said before, it needs to be reflected that in a lot of ways the world has failed men emotionally.
We’re okay sending them to war, putting them in dangerous jobs, but, and, and sending them out to be the provider, you know, et cetera, which now there’s a lot of. Uh, conversation about equality in that space, which is so important, of course. But you know, I, I always think about the 70 year old men who spent their lives doing what they were taught to take care of a family.
And then they come home and they’re strangers in their own [00:18:00] homes. And then they’re left by, um, women who are emotionally intelligent, who have built, empowered, you know, all the things. And so they’re kind of left probably, I would imagine, feeling abandoned. And I thought I did everything right. I was, my value was in my ability to provide and how much money I made.
You know, in my sexual prowess, et cetera. And so I think the first thing is to recognize that, that truth. So we have compassion brought to it. But then the other side is that, um, you know, there’s a saying from Francis Weller where he says, don’t waste a good divorce. And I think about that a lot of like, you have this window of opportunity to look at how you show up to the world and you have evidence of it.
You have your relationship outcome. You do. You have. You have evidence. Actually, one of the first exercises I do with, with men is misunderstanding what even frustrated them in the relationship and how did they deal [00:19:00] with that. And there’s your history there of some of your wounds that you need to deal with.
Yeah, and, and if you do not explore them, they will be repeated, maybe in a different way. No matter what the face of the next woman looks like, and no matter who she is, it’s going to happen again. Without question, and I think, you know, when I was saying that stat about women initiating divorce, what’s interesting is that about 65 percent of women of women when faced with a life challenge turn towards their friends, so 35 to their relationship.
For men, it’s the opposite. They turn towards their relationship more so. So when they lose their partner, they tend to lose their emotional confidant. They tend to lose their emotional support. So men are more likely to get remarried. And I think for a lot of us, that’s because we haven’t built a good community.
We haven’t built a good, that’s why men’s groups are so great that they’re coming out. A hundred percent. I just talked to [00:20:00] a client today about that. Who’s feeling very disconnected from himself and struggling in dating. And I was like, who, who’s your support network? Um, not many people there. No, no. And you know, like men, we have two ways we seem to try to express.
One is that we’re like this emotionally unavailable, broey, like I got everything together. And then we have the other side. I’m the people pleaser. Take care of everybody. I’m the nice guy, which I think is in a lot of ways, the response to. The feminist revolution and witnessing are the many stages of that, but also witnessing our mothers in relationship to in patriarchal structures, maybe trapped in marriages because they didn’t have money.
So we like never want to be like that. We never want to be like we’re taught by the media. But what happens is we end up being people pleasing, codependent, and it’s unattractive. And we need to become the integration of both of those things, which I always think of it like [00:21:00] the, the love of a child is unconditional.
Like a child will love everybody and everything. I mean, a child will get in a van with a stranger. Right? And so, uh, someone, we need to have that access to the openness, but we also need to have a warrior who protects us, who curates our conversations, who says, is this safe? Is it not? But most of us are living in one extreme or the other, not seeing that we need access to both.
So I think if a man is going through a breakup or divorce, he needs to explore which one did he lean to more in, in a context of attachment as maybe a more, uh, Common conversation and maybe for men we tend to like one to be found up here first So if I was to go through their brain We would talk about attachment theory and really the warrior is more avoidant and the people pleaser is more anxious From a nervous system state one’s more fight and the other one’s more fawning I find most men I work with are more anxious because they’re I tend to [00:22:00] find that they’re The ones that are wanting to seek more of the information and wanting to yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They’re coming to you. Yeah, I, I, in the six years I’ve been coaching single men, I have worked with many men that are truly avoidant. Yeah. But not many. Yeah. Well, by nature, you know, my work, uh, about 85 percent of my followers are female. Yeah. Now my work. Yeah. Yeah. And my work is not directed at any gender, but just by nature, women tend to be more anxious.
So they tend to be the ones who seek out emotional information more. Part of that’s evolutionary. Women need to learn the emotional needs and nuances of men to maintain safety in a lot of So, you know, but anxiously attached people tend to be like, okay, I got to figure this out. I got to solve it. So overnight, we’ve got to talk me all the information and what we’re really trying to do is regulate our nervous system a hundred percent It’s you know, usually it’s figuring [00:23:00] out how to help my clone clients slow down in different ways Slow down their texting, slow down their needs, slow down.
It’s like, people believe that when they get to commitment or marriage that it’s like, yay, I have a, like, I think you said it at the very beginning of the show, it’s like you’ve, you’ve finally achieved the thing, and it’s like, no, no, it’s all just starting now. Yeah, and they can still go away, like, that’s the conundrum.
That we try to ignore, you made a commitment, you can’t go and it’s like, actually they can. Yeah. And that’s a gift to know that. So how do you see some of this modern dating and digital revolution and loneliness epidemic we’re all in because we’re all on our phones and everyone’s leaning into dating apps and most connections are taking place on Zoom.
How does a, how does a man face himself and become more integrated and whole and heal when people are feeling so isolated? Well, [00:24:00] I think we’re always going to have stats about the dysfunction of society. And I think it’s getting worse, you know, in that context where we look, you can’t solve nervous system challenges with digital solutions.
And what I mean by that is like, your body knows the difference. You can regulate on a zoom call with a therapist or coach, you can co regulate with that therapist or coach. However I get the sense, like your energy is so calm. It’s so nice because I feel regulated as I brought on a different guests a while back and I was like Super anxious and cutting each other off the whole time.
Oh, wow. Yeah, totally. So it’s like very, you can feel that through Zoom too, you know? Yeah, and so there’s a brilliance to that. And I would say, look, we all have this idea of how love is supposed to happen and how relationship is supposed to happen. And [00:25:00] we get to decide if we’re part of those stories. What I know to be true, being exposed to Unfortunately, millions of people’s opinions and thoughts and feelings, um, on some level, but it’s also an incredible privilege is that people are desperate for in person experience and connection.
People are desperate for farms and homesteads and raw dairy in Canada, which is legal, but you can get cheese. Give a woman, man, I wish we were recording this prior to Valentine’s Day. I would have said to men, ditch the fucking flowers and get her some cheese. Get her some raw unpasteurized, which you got to go to the black market in Canada.
I was explaining to an American friend, cause in Idaho you could just go to the grocery store and buy that stuff. No, it’s under the counter. And he was like, wait, it’s illegal? And I was like, yeah, but he’s like, but wait, can I go to a clinic and get like heroin or something? And I was like, yes. And this is.
But you can’t get raw dairy. This is Canada in a nutshell. So yeah, I mean, all joking aside, I think [00:26:00] there’s a lot of, um,
what do I want to create and what do I want? Because a lot of how we think we’re going to do something, especially for anxiously attached people, is this. Subcontracting of our own authority. It’s not embodied. So if I was working with a man and he was saying, I want to create an epic relationship, it would all be about, okay, let’s look at what are your values?
Like what do you truly value in your life? You’re probably going to have three to five that really matter to you. If you’re anxiously attached, your life is oriented around other people, so you’re probably going to have a hard time knowing what your needs and wants are, you probably made your life about your family, your wife, and that’s why you feel so lost, and that’s maybe why the relationship ended in some level, not because you did that, but because of the The outcome of it, the behavior, well, because self abandonment is toxic to the human body.
It’s physiologically [00:27:00] inflammatory. So you might be dealing with excess weight, diabetes, autoimmune diseases. There’s a lot of things that come with self abandonment and, and high conflict relationships cause more inflammation in the body. So I say all that because we really want to look at, okay. If you, if you have a hard time identifying what your values are, just look at who you admire, because people you admire are people who emulate what you desire, so you can label what their values are.
And then you do an inventory of your life. Okay, let’s look at all the people and choices I have in my life, including my work. Are they aligned with my values? Yes or no? People are so out of alignment, right? Okay, so let’s take a theoretical example of a man. This is an amalgamation of some of my clients.
Works from home. Yeah, goes to the gym or and or works with a personal trainer So it’s very active and fit [00:28:00] But usually is doing one on one or doing the same time at the gym every day And I tend to ask my clients in any given week out of a hundred percent How much of that percent is spent meeting and socializing with new people?
Or spending time alone, and I pretty much always get 90 10, 90 percent alone, 10 percent is probably socializing, and I say out of that 10 percent how many like new micro interactions are you having, and sometimes it’s like 1%. It’s like, yeah, so it’s a small increment. And then these guys are wondering why online dating isn’t working for them, or why they’re struggling to meet or attract high, they call, you know, high quality women.
Right. Well, you gotta be a high quality man. So that’s the first part, you know? Yeah. Like you can’t ask for a woman to be something you’re not. And I would say that at the core of, uh, anybody, but especially men, is that there needs to be a level of self-trust [00:29:00] that you are in integrity with who you say you are.
Mm-hmm . That there’s a deeper value system that you might’ve been running from that has come out in. Maybe toxic ways, self abandoning ways, maybe promiscuity. And again, I don’t care if people want to go bang lots of people, but it’s, are you sourcing worth? Are you sourcing regulation from that? Yeah. Are you doing it with reverence and respect for yourself and the other people?
What’s your relationship to alcohol? Because that’s a lot of ways that men numb and people numb in general. Yeah. Um, and if I was. Talking to someone who wanted to meet a person. Well, first off, I think it’s crazy when I went to a Pilates class with my wife. I was in this class and I was the only dude, other than the instructor.
Yeah. And he was gay. And he was great. I about to say, probably wearing a rainbow unitard. Oh my god. Yeah, he was great. He gave me some, he gave me some great hands on, uh, tutelage on the Pilates machine. He’s like, oh, [00:30:00] you’re new to this. And I was like, I am. Sure. He was sweet. He was really nice. I got it.
Normally I’m used to them like the yoga male instructors focusing on my wife or the women around where I was like, yeah, that was my downward dog, you dirtball. But I, I was in this class and I’ve been to probably like, I don’t know, maybe 10 Pilates classes in my life. I’ve probably been to two or 300 yoga classes.
Okay. And I’m literally always like, This is a no brainer. That’s where you go. Why are single dudes not here? I say it all the time too. Yeah, like Pilates babes. Are you kidding me? I was saying to my wife last night because she was going to a Pilates studio here and I was like. Pilates babes, man. It’s like it’s so if I’m a dude and everyone’s fucking on bumble and tinder and complaining about that shit Mm hmm go to Pilates go to yoga go hike.
I have hiked in North [00:31:00] Vancouver Where I’ve been snowshoeing or hiking when I was in a relationship with my now wife and I remember going with my two buddies And then we were all in relationships and we got to the top. It was actually snowshoeing. I remember this at Black Mountain or whatever it is at Cypress.
Dog Mountain. Dog Mountain. That’s what it was. And we open up our like, we had packed like a hot chocolate or something, I forget, and some other stuff. And we sat at the top and there was probably 15 people at the top and a bunch of super babes were right there and they all sat with us and we had, we shared stuff and a few of them were single.
And I remember thinking like, This is wasted on us three, like we’re sitting here like, man, and I’m just thinking to myself, like when you do stuff you love, when you immerse yourself in nature, when you take leaps, the universe rewards you and does, especially if you’re [00:32:00] enjoying it because you enjoy it.
Because there’s a real difference between going out, seeking that thing, and being hyper focused. Like, me, in my twenties, living in Australia, going out to bars, and like, being with my girlfriends, and ignoring them. We’re all ignoring each other, because we’re all scanning the room for the hottest guy. I used to do that too, yeah.
Yeah, we all did that, and it was just like, I actually look back and I go, Fuck, I missed some great opportunities to make some poor memories with my girlfriends. This is not where I was gonna, that’s not, that wasn’t my real value. I was like, you know, drunk through most of my 20s. And I spent a lot of my 20s, uh, somewhat inebriated too.
Yeah. It’s, I have like no memories of like, Yeah, the time traveling to 25. I’m like, I’m what had happened in those 10 years. I don’t know I think about the way I’ve impacted relationships by prioritizing, you know back then that arousal state and Which was really just avoidance of grief [00:33:00] and you know when you’re spending 90 percent of your time So low and 10 percent public.
It’s a really, um, and you’re, let’s say working, working out. You have all the perfect reasons why you’re, you’re busy. It’s a great excuse to not be available to love. It’s a great unconscious way that you prevent yourself from having to walk towards the thing you’re most terrified of, which is being hurt, which lives next door.
to being loved. And if that’s why if you don’t excavate your divorce and your breakup, you will always avoid walking towards love because what lives next to it is the thing you don’t want to see. It’s fear of abandonment again, right? The fear of vulnerability. So I often I love your insights here is like.
The one little exercise I tend to do with male clients is, is starting with the values because, you know, most people think, oh, our great partners are like, gonna love the same shit as us. Well, they don’t because that evolves over time, right? [00:34:00] When I met my partner, I was not into, um, shooting recurve bows or going hunting or any of that.
I was like, all anti it. Now I’m like, Hey, I have my firearms license and I got a recurve bow on the wall. And I’m like, I’m, we were preppers now. I love it. You’re my people. Yeah 100 percent definitely in more ways we’re each other’s people and um, and it’s like that’s We, we got together because we value things, not because we liked the same things.
And I got him into golfing and I got him into other things and he, he does hotel staycations because of me. He grew up in Salt Spring Island, like hotel staycations was an absolute waste of money for him. But now like he, he enjoys these things because I’ve opened his eyes to them and vice versa. But a lot of people feel.
Okay, when they’re searching for somebody that they’re trying to find almost like the same version of themselves. Yeah. In terms of likes and how they spend their time and they’re really overlooking the fact that it starts with value. So I often figure, okay, what are the person’s values? And [00:35:00] let’s reverse engineer that to say, well, the type of person you’re going to be looking for goes to the places and venues associated with your values.
Yes. Yours, clearly, yoga, top of a mountain. Right? Right. Right. Nature, all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I met my wife on Instagram too. So, you know, that’s uh, that’s another, another, the other unspoken dating app. It is the world’s largest unofficial dating app, isn’t it? For sure. There’s no doubt people drop it in the DMs.
That’s how I, we, we followed each other and then I dropped it in the DMs eventually. Ah, you were a DM dropper. Okay. Back then you had to send a picture with the DM. What? You had to like send some sort of image in order to DM. Oh, in the beginning. Okay. So I sent a sunset. Oh, you. Of Grouse Mountain, actually.
Hopeless romantic. Well, I was like I gotta drop in the DMs better than a dick pic so I dropped in way better than a dick pic Okay, a sunset or [00:36:00] like a puppy dog. Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say okay Labrador off Google and put that in there men are gonna be listening to this and go like Oh, what did Mark say?
When he slid into the DMs because I want to use that. So what do you remember what you said? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I said to her, um, Hey, I was checked out. Like I had just read her blog and seen some of her stuff. And I was like, Oh my God, this woman’s brilliant. And like the way she was expressing herself and what she was saying, she was talking about like the universe and blah, blah, blah.
Physics. And I was like, Oh yeah, this is, this is foreplay. So yeah, I sent her a DM and I said, uh, you know, I’m I checked out some of the stuff that you’ve written and said, and it was, I was really intrigued and I was wondering if you’d be open to connecting beyond the gram. And she wrote me back the next day.
No games. Uh, countered me with another sunset. [00:37:00] Wow, you two bonded over sunsets. And she said, uh, she played zero games, which threw me off. You were expecting it at the time? I was expecting like a little hold back. Yeah. But she was like, uh, something like to the effect of like, Oh my God, it’s so good to get your message.
And I always knew that we’d connect beyond the gram. Whoa, she knew. And I was like, She’d seen you before. Well, that’s yeah, we had followed each other. So I know we’d engaged with each other’s stuff before and she had an identical twin who I thought. Okay. So side note for guys dating who are, have done the excavation on their prior relationship and are ready, follow some hotties for a little while so that you get some subtle exposure.
Yeah, don’t message them the same moment you follow, because that’s No, because it’s too cold. A lot of people are like, so hyper focused on these full on ice cold approaches. And for [00:38:00] most women, it’s like, we have absolutely no idea who you are. And, it’s so easy to just like, shut down and say no. But, with a little bit of exposure, I actually did a little story time on Instagram the other day.
First time I like, did a story. I was so proud of myself. That’s amazing. I was talking about how I was approached by my ex partner in Australia, like, all the wrong ways. Like, he approached me from behind, um, I was wearing earphones and I was in the middle of doing an inner thigh abductor workout. As you do.
So, like, Definitely not the right time to approach a woman. That’s such an interesting. What a vulnerable moment I didn’t in the story times that cut me off at three minutes But what I didn’t share was that after he startled the shit out of me and I took my earphones out I didn’t stay in a state of shock because I recognized him.
I’d seen him in the gym a few times, subtle exposure. We’d never spoken, but I’d seen him. And [00:39:00] so once I recognized the face, I was disarmed, but I got nervous. And the machine was counting how many reps I was doing. So I got nervous and I didn’t realize, but I was like going like, like this with my inner thighs.
And like the machine was going like 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 15, personal best. Yeah. And he was just like, um, you might want to slow down. I don’t think you have enough weight on that. Like, he just said it super calmly, and I was like, fuck, that’s so embarrassing. But I was trying to tell the story to highlight that women aren’t always going to be analyzing your approach, but a little subtle exposure ahead of time is really helpful for familiarity and holding one’s frame and staying grounded and calm despite my chaotic reaction.
is what built the attraction in that moment. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, it makes so much sense. And I think if [00:40:00] A lot of women unconsciously are drawn towards the Andrew Tatey dominant. And so a lot of what men tend to do unconsciously until they don’t is they tend to try to emulate the behavior of men who get lots of women.
Yeah, they do. And women, like there’s this interesting study on speed dating and they asked women what they desired, women and men, what they desired before the speed dating. But then once they had chemistry with people, the desires often went out the window. So who they actually chose as matches were not aligned fully with what they said they desired.
And so we could tell then that a lot of what we’re picking is actually still coming from an unconscious place. Totally. I say that because you’re going to want to emulate men who get lots of women when you’re still seeking those types of women. And I don’t mean that condescendingly. I don’t even [00:41:00] mean it bad, but you’ll notice that like superficial men and superficial women date.
Yep. And I’ve been a superficial man. So I get that. But integrated women are not interested in dominant men. Ecock. Okay. Exactly. It’s like, put your leg down. Yeah. Yeah. I was spreading this. I am so uninterested in your inner thigh. Yeah. Leg hair. The other thing that integrated women are not interested in is fawning and people pleasing and nice guy behavior because neither man is actually trustworthy.
Because the man who does everything for a woman, uh, God Saad is an evolutionary sociologist, calls it sneaky fucker syndrome. There’s this type of fish that would pretend to be friends with, to pretend to be a female fish, to be close to the fish and then would try to bang those fish. Because it couldn’t [00:42:00] compete with the male fish, so its technique was to become a female.
Now, he equates that to a whole lot of gender stuff about the world. Is that what’s going on at the moment? Yeah, he actually equates it a bit to that, that like, male activists who try to move into these spaces who are very effeminate. It’s essentially on an evolutionary perspective. Sneak up. That’s their in, secretly.
Right. But I think about it also. Beware. Yeah, exactly. It’s like, I’m totally on your side. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t know. But you see that as men who become friends. What does that say about me? Whoa. I’m the author. Right. Because I’m I was just like, oh, I’m laughing at this. And I was like, hold on, holding a mirror up.
I’m like, I am a dating and relationship coach for men and I’m very much an advocate of men. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? Yes, but it, but I’m like, is that, was that my tactic to try and disarm men and get a man? Maybe. Did it work? It did. I have one. There you go. Yeah, I think. I [00:43:00] mean, it’s like I wanted to learn how to master relationships so that I could, at first it was like reading when I, before I wanted to teach relationships, I was reading books like the game, how to get anyone to do anything.
I was at sales and pharma so that I could close it all back. And so I was really interested in how to manipulate behavior so I don’t get hurt again. And I think that’s where a lot of men go as we go to these. Pua pickup artistry spaces because we want to figure out how do I become a disassociated. How do I get what I want without really doing the inner work?
Without risking hurt. Yeah, and then Neil Strauss himself, who wrote the game, um, openly admitted how damaging that was for him. Yeah, that book even says it. In the book. I didn’t get to the end. I kind of just felt bad after the first few chapters. I’ll go back to it. I have it on, I have it on Kindle of all places.
Well, his book, The Truth. Like 2. 99 or something. That’s a good buy. The book, uh, The Truth is written by him and it’s one of the [00:44:00] best books I’ve ever read in a relationship. That came out after? Yeah, where he wrote about him cheating on his fiance with her best friend and then him going to sex addiction and it’s a really amazing book.
And actually the house we’re in right now, we’re renting and when I got into the, uh, the office in the house on the counter was the alchemist and the game. Oh, I was like. The opposite. This is the best paradox I’ve ever, yeah, I was like, wow, but, but they’re the same in some way. If you think about it. I love The Alchemist.
It’s such a good book. Well, yes, you’re right. It is all about a journey, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s been a while since I read The Alchemist. It’s just the shadow side of integration. Yeah. You know, it’s the shadow expression of, of masculinity, of sexuality, of exploitation, you know, but it’s really that we’re longing for belonging, you know, longing to be chosen.
We’re all kind of going through life hiding behind a mask [00:45:00] and not really trying to reveal our true deep insecurities and we really don’t achieve the kind of relationship we want until we face those things. Yeah, it’s not. It’s not optional, you know, I heard a, uh, quote from Bill Plotkin recently who writes about the soul.
He’s a psychotherapist. And he said, your core wound is not healable and cannot be healed, but if you’re willing to go into the center of it, it will facilitate a soul encounter. So that might be helpful for people because a lot of people are trying to fix themselves in their self growth journey. Yeah, and that’s an important differentiation because when you try to fix something, it infers that there’s something broken.
That’s broken, yeah. Yeah, and so this is what brings most people to personal growth work. A divorce will bring you [00:46:00] there. Getting cheated on, cheating, lying, someone leaving you. And I, I’ve always said that if you place your worth in anything or anyone, it will need to leave you to show you that your value doesn’t leave that live there.
That’s beautiful. Could you say that again? Yeah. If, if you place your value in anything or anyone, it will need to leave you in order to teach you that your value doesn’t live there. Okay. Yeah. You’ll need to lose it, essentially, even if it’s by your own design. And it’s because there’s still a part of you that believes you’re incomplete.
And so that might bring you to this podcast. And so you’re at this podcast, you’re doing Kimberly’s stuff. You’re consuming her work. You might be working with her, thinking about working with her. That’s so beautiful because what brought you to it is this, I need to resolve something. But the deeper belief is something’s wrong with me that I need to resolve.
Yeah. And so when you actually start to see that the [00:47:00] frictions of your life, the pains, the things you’ve been through have nothing to do with your worth, then the information that they’re giving you about how you show up to the world is actually revealing what’s possible for you, not what’s deficient about you.
Does that make sense? It’s a really healthy perspective to have because we’re often, you know, like, feel like our inadequacies are being reflected back at us and just kind of reinforces the lower self worth, right? So then we try harder and we get into this, like, cycle that just never ends until someone leaves.
Inevitably. Right. And that’s why even within a relationship, what happens usually after 10, 15, 20 years, I think at the seven year itch is the time when most people get divorced is because while one we’ve created relationships from a totally different place. Like we didn’t have clear agreements. We didn’t know who we were.
We chose a relationship because we thought we had to, somebody who was a good on paper, you know, all the reasons. Yeah. [00:48:00] Yeah. Yeah. It just happened. Right, exactly. And in a lot of ways, I remember when I was in my late 20s, I remember thinking, like, how did I get here? Like, I have been making decisions, but who’s making them?
Like, it was a serious reflection I had when I really thought about my life in Australia too, because I was there for six years and then Singapore two years. And I was like, Who was really driving the bus? I don’t know who the fuck was driving the bus, but it was going. I thought the same thing. I was like, damn, we were making like adult decisions.
Yeah, like, and we were going and doing cool shit too, right? Sometimes it really did work out, but it wasn’t a one size fits all strategy. No, Australia though, it’s, it’s a good place to feed the shadow. There’s no doubt. Oh, yeah, you’re gonna feed the shadow do it in the sunshine at least exactly. Yeah, don’t come to the tundra guys Don’t yeah, if you’re gonna like do some deep self work probably like get into a place where like You have some vitamin d in your system Yeah, like go to [00:49:00] mexico baha healing is a real thing.
There’s fucking mineral I swear to god get out of canada to do your healing and then come back My sister says that the uh, the baha shakes loose more than your transmission. That’s so true I’m lucky. My folks are, uh, snowbirds. They retired and bought a beautiful home in the Baja in 2011. And so whether I was living in Australia or Singapore or back here in Canada, whenever I needed to do some healing, off to mom and dad’s in the Baja.
Where were they in the Baja? Uh, in a town called Las Barillas. Do you know it? Oh yeah. Yeah. It’s um, it’s south of La Paz or north of, um, San Jose. Yeah. Yeah, my sister’s place was far from that. I forget what town. You flew into Loretto. Loretto? Loretto. Okay, so on the other side? Like Pacific Ocean side? Yeah, on the bay of Beautiful.
I forget what it’s called. So beautiful. But yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a really [00:50:00] It’s a really interesting conundrum to be in that we, we have no choice but to turn towards our healing, you know, it’s not even optional if we want to have good relationships. And I think if you’re going through a breakup or you’re divorced and you have kids, what really up levels it.
Is that you actually owe it to your children to be aligned. You owe it to your, you owe it to your lineage. It forces it upon people, doesn’t it? Yeah, and that’s why I said don’t waste a good divorce. Don’t waste a good breakup. Don’t waste it because you have this chance to completely Reclaim who you are and date from that place where you’re not seeking a partner in order to resolve or or Put a band aid on the pain that you’re experiencing.
You’re actually choosing her from an embodied place not Using her as an emotional prostitute And that’s, you know, fair. I love it. I’m going to use that as my new, like, tagline or something. Or the next title of [00:51:00] my, like, post email summary to clients. Do it. Do it. Honestly, a lot of them that, like, work with me because they, don’t want to mince words and they appreciate that.
It’s like, what’s going on? I think it’s also important to note though, for anyone listening to this, that like healing is never, there’s no like end point. So I think also too, what I’d love to hear your thoughts on as well as like, don’t waste a good divorce, do your healing, excavate. Make sure you’re in an embodied place that you’re choosing a partner not using one to fulfill you But it’s also important that like healings never done.
So where is the distinguishing time when a guy goes? Well, I I feel like I’ve done my excavation work I feel like like really in alignment with my like purpose and vision my social connectivity is growing and I’m in touch with my own Emotions. Am I now ready? when where is this line of when like I’m emotionally ready.[00:52:00]
Where is that? Where is that? Such a delicate line. Such a delicate line, especially. Well, I mean, I think the beauty of working as a man with someone like you is that you get the reflection of. Of a female’s experience, but also insight into a female’s mind. And let’s be honest, we’re not the same. And that’s a feature, not a bug, you know, that’s meant to be.
Yeah, exactly. And that exists in so many facets of our development and all the things. And, um, once you build that foundation, You go from seeking someone else to tell you if you’re ready or not, which is the externalization of authority, which is probably due to your childhood, um, where you weren’t taught to be able to trust yourself.
So part of the healing is restoring that self trust. That self trust gets restored by keeping your word with yourself and honoring your values and seeing yourself. Yeah, you see yourself to be someone different and then you can just ask [00:53:00] yourself, is me starting to date? A distraction from deeper work or, um, is me avoiding dating here of connection?
Am I wanting to move towards it because I’m legitimately ready or because I am about to uncover another layer? The inner being knows that’s not it. You’ll get the answer. You might not like the answer, but you’ll get the answer. I always think of it like a job. offer. If you got offered a job that was the same and paid the same versus a job that needed you to learn a ton, you don’t know how to do it.
You get paid more and you realize that it’s a no brainer. Like you have to say yes to this because who you have to become to do it. That is what you’re actually after. So I think if you think about it from that place, where it’s, cause men can think about things from a job perspective, no problem. You know, or maybe if you’re in fantasy football, you think about a great trade.
You know? [00:54:00] I don’t live in that world, but I know that the men, my buddies who do fantasy football, are obsessed. Right, or I saw this reel the other day about Drake, someone flew a drone into his penthouse, and he was like, gambling. Oh, that’s funny. And he tried to like Throw a shoe at the drone or some shit.
Who knows? It might have been AI. I don’t know anymore, but I think it’s plausible. He’s probably upset from getting roasted by Kinect. Probably, I think he loses a lot of money. Yeah.
All right. So there’s a bit of a asking oneself, are you running towards something, running away from something, really facing the truth of it. And a lot of men that come to work with myself as a dating and relationship coach are thinking they are going to be taught a lot of dating tactics and they are got to give them a couple of those quick wins.
Of course. Um, but often it’s the deeper work and they’re like, ah, fuck. God damn it. God [00:55:00] damn it. This woman getting under my skin. But I come to her, she would just tell me all the things I want to hear. But they kind of know it deep down because they’re like, well, I chose to work with you because I went on a call with a couple of coaches and they were a lot more like pickup artists.
And I know that’s not what I want, but I don’t really know what you’re going to do with me. I mean, the depths of a male being is sensitive and thoughtful and loving. And you know, that’s just affirming that for them that they’re trusting that. Yeah. Because like pickup artistry is manipulation. And it always, what always lives on the edge of it is your low self worth.
Like you’re having to use tactics to get somebody. Instead of being yourself. Yeah, so it doesn’t mean it’s an absence of skill set. As you said, you have to learn skills to date It’s just that you’re using skill sets from an authentic place, which is what puts the woman’s body at ease so she can trust you people who get captured by love bombing are available to love bombing it’s because they still [00:56:00] have a You know, a fairytale that lives in their system.
It happened to me, but it happened to me right after I got out of a serious long term relationship. And I hadn’t, I hadn’t not excavated, I hadn’t even scratched at the dirt. I told all, I told, no, no, no, like I was out of this relationship before it ended. I’m fine. Like I convinced myself. And then of course I was very, I had, even my dad was like.
I don’t, he’s like, Kimberly, I, I don’t know what you’re doing. He’s like, I don’t know what you’re doing. And I’m like, no, no, no. Like the big speech came out, like alleviate any of his fears. Like, and I was like, holy shit. If I had just had the awareness that that’s what I was trying to convince someone that I’m okay.
That’s probably the first problem. And then of course, that’s funny when I was starting this whole business and um, you know, I got some guy reached out to me on LinkedIn and then it was like, we’re going to make you a superstar. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:57:00] Wow, 60, 000 later and, and, uh, some bad lessons, I realized, Hmm, I think I was making some bad choices for myself because I was in a pretty low place of self worth at the time.
And I can’t blame anyone else really, but myself, because you put, we can put ourselves in positions to be susceptible to this stuff. Especially in the DMs. I mean, think about all the, uh, for sake of a better term, pariahs who are, I mean, my LinkedIn DMs, I think it’s the worst out of all my DMs. I just logged in there, like, for the first time in a couple years and it was like, what are these people saying?
It’s an awesome shit show. It’s on automation, right? It’s like automated DMs or whatever it is. Book in a time to chat with me. Mark, have you ever written a book? Yeah. Great research. I have. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Fucking worse reports. How is your book going? You co wrote it with your wife? Yeah. I [00:58:00] co wrote it with my wife.
Yeah. A lot of the stuff we’re talking about today is in there. Yeah. So we, um, Yeah, we talk about attachment, the nervous system, the mask we wear, uh, we go through this chapter on boundaries called liberation through limitation. Um, but we really talk about this premise called the sacred pause, and that’s actually going into a sacred space of non dating, not relating so that you can reset and recalibrate your system, your patterns, your nervous system.
And um, And like step towards relationship from a totally different place. Okay, so it’s, it’s literally, how long is the sacred pause? Different for everyone? Is it literally physically? The minimum of three months. Minimum of three months. Oh, what? This is not a pause in terms of the Normal definition of a pause.
I’m thinking like, pause. Pause. This is uh, and go . This is like enough of a pause. That evolution can catch up to you in a good way. Gotcha. Can you gimme an example? [00:59:00] So you shift your being of where you’ve needed to take a sacred pause. I took one from Instagram. Six months. Yes, you did. You needed that. I didn’t actually know I was doing that until I did it.
And I was in it. My friend was like, I think you’re in a sacred pause. And I was like, fuck man, I took one last year too. I had cancer last year. I was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer. And, um, and I took a damn sacred pause from social media. Yeah. I bet. And, uh, I’m okay. I got through it. I’m happy to hear that.
Thank you. Yeah. I didn’t know that. Yeah, well, I, you know, I really grappled with how much do I share and I just decided one post and off I went in my sacred pause. And I came back and I told people I’m back and I’m well, and that was it. I didn’t feel this polar desire to document my cancer journey. I just wanted to be with the people I love and go through it and then heal and come back when I’m ready.
And that was that. [01:00:00] Yeah, for the system to heal, I mean, you have to be Yeah. Free from everything inflammatory. It was hard. It took a month to even feel like it was okay to give myself permission to have this sacred pause. Like there was a lot of icky guilt and I should be consistent because people, and I was like, What the fuck am I thinking?
I gotta take care of me here. But it took a while to even Give myself permission to just care for myself, you know, yeah, I mean, that’s the people pleasing masquerading as content creation Yep, exactly. And now I kind of post when I feel like it It’s a great feeling. It’s a great feeling. Following count’s not going anywhere, but I don’t care.
I just, I put content down. I lose followers, I gain followers. It’s, it’s all just part of the racket. It’s just a number, and it’s on a little digital screen, and it could disappear at any moment, so it doesn’t matter a whole lot. Exactly, right. Yeah, but it takes a while to, to learn [01:01:00] that. Yeah. You have to go through it.
I think you have to experience the loss of self, the, um, unwillingness to say things that rock the boat, and then realizing that everything you don’t say just gets trapped in your body. Well, you did that. You’re real outspoken, um, around pandemic and you separated your accounts in a, an effort to. be able to speak your mind and then you probably recognize, okay, I’m need my break now.
Yeah, there was a massive split in there, but a necessary one, you know, but yeah, you have your brand, right? Yeah, but they weren’t different before which it needed to be different. They needed to become differentiated I thought that was a split like a drama split, but I actually see that was, you know necessary and You know, I think, uh, my whole problem during the pandemic amongst the [01:02:00] many pieces of misinformation that were shared by, uh, places of authority, which has been revealed, uh, clearly now is the weaponization of belonging and relationship, no matter what side you’re on anything, uh, they.
They put themselves between us and others, and that to me was a gross violation of ethics. Yeah, that was really tough. There’s many families, communities, and relationships destroyed by that. They were, and a lot of them have not been able to repair. No, because the people who split them, they think they’re mad at the other person, but it’s actually the people who used behavioral modification techniques, shame and belonging, that are actually guilty.
Do you ever watch or follow Chase Hughes? No. You’d like him. He, um, I’m going to misquote, ex CIA interrogation, behavioral analysis, and he taught, he, he [01:03:00] puts YouTube videos out now about how to spot mass manipulation. And yes, he follows me. Do you see him? Are you Googling him? Yeah. Fascinating. So you have a big audience.
You’d easily get him on your show. I invited him online, but. We’ll see. Wow. Yeah. I’m excited. Yeah. You’re going to nerd out. Don’t forget to share it with me when you do. Yeah. Totally. Bring them on because I think you guys would have just a phenomenal conversation because your insights and his like direct experience spotting individuals who are hiding lies.
And it’s, it’s interesting because, um, again, I don’t know his information super well, but he basically takes like a chart, like the periodic elements. And instead of it being, you know, lead and copper and the periodic element tables, it’s different little shortcodes for [01:04:00] behaviors that people do. And they’re weighted to determine, like, if you and I are having a conversation and I had someone else sitting next to me that was just totally examining your behavior and your tone and your, what, everything you’re doing, you’d be able to rank with pretty high certainty whether or not you’re being Truthful or not, based on human behavior.
So he’s very, very good at spotting this. And now I think a lot of his content is talking about how you can spot this on like a mass scale. Fascinating. Oh, I definitely am interested in that. Yeah. I figured as much. Yeah. Super cool stuff. Yeah. It’s amazing what humans are capable of when they’re afraid.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well speaking of that my partner and I just While we’re in the midst of buying a new house and packing and all the stress that we’re going through we’re literally sit down at night And we’ve restarted The Walking Dead. Do you remember that? It went to apparently 11 seasons. [01:05:00] Wow I remember watching it and getting to maybe like season 4 and then like I think I went to season 3 or 4 yeah, so we’re re watching it again and we’re like Examining like what we would do differently and like a world’s gonna go into utter chaos.
Are we prepared? It’s like the show. This is us. I really liked. Yeah, like shit. I think like ten seasons. Oh my gosh Yeah, sometimes we just get sucked into these things. But I’m into Severance. Severance is my show right now. Okay. I couldn’t get past the first couple of episodes. Super weird. Once you get past it goes crazy.
Okay. So stick with it. You got to get past the first two. Fair enough. Okay. Cause I got stuck a bit over Christmas holidays was down with my folks and we just kind of thought we’d put something on and I was like, what is this? It’s so weird. It’s dystopian. Yeah. And I like, I got an icky feeling, but I obviously got to sit through it.
Okay. It’s really good. Okay. I’ll check it out. Um, what do you, what’s going on in your community? You’ve got a community. Yeah. What else is [01:06:00] going on? I’m curious. And then of course, those that have been listening today want to probably find you and what do you have on offer and what’s going on? Your book, obviously.
Yeah. Our book is called Liberated Love and my wife Kylie and I wrote it, um, and it’s about both our journey and also how to walk through the journey of, uh, changing your relationship patterns from like a biological level as well. Um, and. Then I have the community, which is called the create the love community.
And in there is all my courses and everything. And um, we do a couple of live calls a month. I have the podcast, Mark Rose podcast. And then I have, um, a program that I’m going to be launching that is on the nervous system and actually, uh, healing as a leader. A nervous system, how to heal your nervous system as a leader of a family, a leader of a business, a leader of, um, teachings, and it’s called the regulated leader.
And the whole idea of that is just a small group [01:07:00] where all the things I learned from being off social media and then coming back. I got to show you something. I unplugged my mic to grab something. And show you it’s all about This mic is stuck. This clip is stuck in the shirt. The Amazon mic. Okay, and then I weaved it through.
Where is this all about? Where did I put it? Give me one sec.
I love gadgets. I’m not a lot of people in Canada or North America would know about this. Okay, let’s clip this. In terms of regulating nervous systems, it’s called NeuroSim. I’ve heard of it. My friend, who’s a pretty anxious individual in the UK, went to visit her last fall when I got the cancer all clear.
We went to celebrate. And she just showed me this little device. Her [01:08:00] brother is like a football scout. He makes lots of money and he’s like super into biohacking. And so he bought like one for everybody. But they’re like about a thousand bucks. Yeah. And essentially it’s just a little device, think little copper circles that you put right here on your ear.
And um, and then you, it just stimulates your vagal nerve. And you just wear it like twice a day for 30 minutes or once a day for an hour. And it’s just supposed to stimulate, um, stimulate your immune response, supposed to calm your nervous system. It has, it’s one of the most scientifically studied devices.
So NeuroSym, N U R O S Y M. And, um, I’ve been using it like twice a day for a few weeks and I’ve been through obviously a lot of health stuff last year with the diagnosis and treatment and I just find it helps me feel calmer, I sleep better, reduces anxiety, and [01:09:00] if you go on the website it will show you the statistics based on tons of peer reviewed studies and clinical trials, but if you’re into all of this stuff, then maybe you guys would be into the NeuroSim.
Yeah, I want to learn more about this. This is great. It’s a fun little device and I’ll send you after the show. I’ll send you a link to it. Just so you get to the right site and Just something to nerd out on especially if you’re building another course about it. Like who knows maybe you guys have like a Affiliate code or something.
We don’t just try it for yourself. I don’t know doesn’t have to be a business idea But it looks great. Have you checked its impact on your HRV? No, no, I haven’t. I have a, um. You have an aura ring or a whoop? I have the, the, the watch, but I, I don’t know where I packed it. It’s gone somewhere. I know that feeling.
Yeah, like, literally, you wouldn’t want my camera to turn around. Like, this space is like, not good for my nervous system. I’ve moved [01:10:00] 11 times in the last four years, so. Okay, well, okay. Yeah. You totally understand. It’s been my first time doing a big move in five years. It’s the worst. Yeah. I’ve definitely, I’m going to contact this company.
I want to learn more. Yeah. A hundred percent. I think he’d be super into it. I’ll send you the link or you might even have it up already, but um, yeah, in order to order it. You can order, you can deliver it to Canada, you just have to say, um, like, non U. S. And, um, I just, or, like, I, I’ll Google, like, a discount code as well and save, like, a little bit.
But I have a, a referral, uh, link to, could save you, like, 35 pounds or, like, 70 bucks, but it’s about a grand. Yeah, send it to me. Yeah, I will do. Awesome. Okay. So where can people find you? Um, I going to keep chatting, but, uh, I had to move a call that was after this to give us more space. Cause I knew we’d get Gavin.
No, all good. I have one at 345 too, or 245 your time. Um, you can find me at markgroves. com or create the love. com has all my courses. [01:11:00] Uh, I do a lot of speaking too. So if there’s any conferences that you want me to come speak at, I run workshops. That’s how I first knew about you. Five or six years ago, you did a speaking gig and it was all other female speakers.
Six years ago in Vancouver. And I think it was around with, um, Mandy, Terry Cole as well. Yeah. And Danielle. Yeah. So that’s how I saw you. And you were very vulnerable up on stage because I think this was around the time like broke up that month. Yes. And, uh, you had a real big impact on a lot of it. That’s when I started.
seeing your content. So I’ve been following your journey since then. Yeah, I remember that event. That was a fun event. Yeah. Mandy Balick. That’s right. Rise Women’s Summit. That’s what it is. So I went to the Rise Women’s Summit. I was there in the crowd. Yeah, it was so good. Thanks for having me on. I’m so happy.
Of course. It’s a pleasure. I’m glad we had an [01:12:00] opportunity to connect and chin wag and it was just very calming and I know people are going to take some stuff away. So those that have watched it would love to hear your comments on what you learned from the show and go check out Mark if you haven’t already and stay warm out there in Calgary.
Yeah, I shall have a beautiful day. Thank you. Talk to you soon. Talk soon.
