In this episode I speak with Dale Valor about his book, Inner Game.
https://www.risingphoenixdivorcecoach.com
Michael
Joining me today is Mr. Dale valor. Dale, let's just jump right into it wants to tell us a little bit about yourself.
Dale 2:28
First and foremost, Michael, I'm glad to be here. Listen, anytime I get the opportunity to chop it up, you know with a fellow podcaster. And, you know, like, you know, obviously, we've spoken before and you were on my podcast, what was that a couple months ago? Two or three months ago?
Michael 2:50
About three I think it's okay. All right. Yeah. And, and you're returning this is the second time you'll be on? Yep,
Dale 2:56
yep, yep, yep. So I always enjoy the opportunity to, to do something like this. And, you know, hopefully, I should even say hopefully, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that your listeners will be like, there one or two things is gonna happen. They're gonna be they're like, What the fuck am I listening to? Or they're gonna be like, Man, that guy knows what the fuck he's talking about.
Michael 3:26
I'll make the assumption that it will be the second one because because we're having you back and I'm excited to have you on to talk about your book really. And that's is that you just released? Yeah. Which is I'll let you kind of go through that but but we're gonna essentially kind of focus on a little bit of the meat of that book and and some of the topics in it. So let's talk about the book a little bit. Yeah. So inner game.
Dale 3:49
The book you know, like you said, it came out very recently. And the reason I wrote that particular book, is because I see so many people struggle with, they're like, Oh, well, you know, it could be a million different excuses, but we'll just pick a couple you know, like, oh, whoa, you know, all all women are out for my money. Or, you know, you can't trust anybody, you know, like, they're just gonna, they're just gonna cheat on you or whatever, you know. And there's all these reasons and rationales and things like that and I'm not even going to say that it's not necessarily warranted to you know, to a degree anyway, you know, but what's the common denominator in every relationship, every date that you've ever been on? Anybody that you've ever been interested? In? What's the common denominator if you
Michael 4:50
meet a man?
Dale 4:51
And so what I find is that a lot of people, guys, you know, that's my audience, you know, but so men specifically in this case and who I'm talking to, you know, very few know, really at the core of who they are. Okay. Now, you might have some type of, you know, vague idea and like, oh, you know, I'm the type of guy that you know, like, I'm chill or I'm energetic or I'm funny or whatever. Okay, cool. You know, but that's, you know, that's very surfacey Okay, for a lot of guys just don't know who they are. And second to that, they don't know what they want, you know, and so it's like, they're, they're good at knowing what they don't want, you know, like, oh, you can't you know, like, Oh, if I then this is something that kills me. And I know that you've seen this as much as I have. But like you know, if you ever look in the comment section of like, my shit like anybody with modern success, you know, the company I'm with any of the coaches you look through there, and you get a gang of dudes that are like, oh, you can't go approach a girl. That's the fastest way to end up in jail. Right? Like, are you approaching the police like? No, like
Michael 6:16
Yeah, exactly. Like every
Dale 6:18
county jail just must be filled to the brim with guys who went up and talk to a girl. Like, give me a break, you know, like, so what I'm driving at here is this. If you don't know who you are, and you don't know what you want, what are you? What are you going to end up with? Right? A guy who knows who he is and knows what he wants is a dangerous man. Unfortunately, most guys don't know either. You know, and so, that's really what the book is predicated on to a large part is the fact that you know, your inner game let's let's define that. Okay. inner game the way I define it, there's somebody else might tell you different I don't know if there's inner game is in the dictionary or not. But if I was to look, if I'm Daniel Webster, I'm right. The dictionary when I get to the eyes, and I put the inner game in, when I'm putting in is this the relationship that you have with yourself? You know, if that relationship with you suffers if that relationship with you sucks, as an extension, how are all the other relationships in your life going to be? You can't even have a relationship when you are you going to have a relationship with anybody else, it's going to be fruitful or fun or exciting or anything like that, you know? So that's, that's my thing is, look, work on yourself. If you look, if you know who you are, you know what you want. Now you have a starting point. You can start working on the things that you don't like about yourself and start accepting the things that you can't change about yourself and start having better self esteem. Start you know, once you start accepting things, you can't change and changing things that you can not to sound like we're at the AAA program here but
Michael 8:06
but solid advice. Yeah, it is. You
Dale 8:08
know, if once once you have that kind of dialed in, now, you can start attracting the people that make sense the women that make sense for you, the women that you know, like one of the examples that I love is, you know, you get in see guys complaining very often about like, oh, you can't find you know, I can't find a good woman. I can't find the types of women that I really want to be with. Okay, cool. Where do you go? Oh, you know, I go to the bar, you know, I go to the club. You know, it's like, Well, okay. You know, if I'm like, Look, Michael, I've been saving my money. I'm gonna go get me a Ferrari. Like, I've got the money. I gotta go get it. Right. You're like cool. Man's be awesome. Yeah, gonna be great. Unfortunately, every time I go to a Chevy dealership, I can't find one. You know, like, you'd be like Dale. Why don't you go to where they sell Ferraris? You know what I mean?
Michael 9:21
A great point. Let's let's talk a little bit about that guy. There's so much here because I think they're, I think, I think you're spot on. First of all, I think I say this all the time. If you're not right with yourself. You accept whatever and you're and you're needy and you're just looking for someone else to to sort of soothe your wounds or to make you feel good about yourself and you'll take any scrap or crumb you can get your hands on like I said this the other day if you're starving like letting I'm not talking like damn i i skipped breakfast starve. I'm talking like you hadn't eaten in three days and someone hands you a can of fucking dog food. You're gonna eat that shit. Right? Right so but it's so if you're not starving, if you're not desperate, if you're right with yourself, then you can be more choosy and you can reject what's bad for you but but that's that's that's really fucking hard for guys to do. Do you have a recommendation in terms of, you know, obviously divorce is a topic here, but maybe you just got out of a relationship. Period. Do you? Do you recommend this? And I know everyone's like, Oh, everyone's different. But do you recommend any kind of a time period for for this sort? of inner game work? Do you think? Six months a year? Like?
Dale 10:33
I think, you know, well, I mean, like you said, Everybody's different. Right? But, but on top of that, though, you know, I see a lot of people who, what they and I get where the mentality comes from, you know, and it's not. It's not something that I would suggest is like a negative mindset or anything like that. I understand. But a lot of times what people want to do is they want to kind of build a foundation and then go from there. Okay. And which makes all the sense in the world. However, there's something also to be said about multitasking, you know, and so, um, I don't think it's a thing of it depends on the one. Let me take a step back. Now if you have a very traumatic experience, you know, like, where you really need, you know, to sit down with a therapist or something like that and get things sorted out, okay. That I that I can I can get behind, all right, but it was just like, hey, man, I just broke up with my girlfriend of, you know, three months. And it just, we just didn't get along. I'm not gonna be like, bro, you need therapy, you know? I'm not gonna suggest to that person that they need to take the next year to, you know, reverse engineer that relationship and see what happened and pick it pick it apart and all that kind of thing. Now, there's something to be said for reverse engineering it and picking it apart. But I'm not saying that. That's all they should do. What you should do is work on yourself and get out there and start meeting new people. You know, and because here's the thing, you can have what you think, is the strongest inner game, I'm playing it or oh, I'm super confident, myself, man. I'm the shit man like my self esteem is through the roof and took it to the dirt man but a lot of the times that type of mentality and that type of mindset, man, you're nothing but a sunshine soldier, man, you know, like when the heat's on, because you don't know what the heat is. When the heat sign, man, that confidence that self esteem and all that kind of stuff goes right out the window a lot of times, you know, and so that's a way that you can kind of start doing both in building your your inner game and your outer game at the same time. So like, I'll give you an example. Um, the way that I structure my in person boot camps, okay? Is it's not like a an approach. Marathon. Okay. Like a lot of coaches and I'm not suggesting this is wrong, by the way. But a lot of coaches what they do is it just like go go go go, like approach approach, approach, approach, approach approach. And it there's there's a place for that for sure. But the way the way that I personally like to do it is doing a debrief after each interaction, so it's more quality over quantity. Now, if you got a guy who's just simply afraid, like to the core of walking up and starting a conversation, yeah, they need that approach machine mentality because they got to numb themselves to that. You know, and that's our having better interactions and things like that. But for a lot of guys, it's like a thing of, you know, I want to get a gauge on how they're feeling about each interaction. And so, the guy walks up, starts talking to this girl, as soon as that wraps up, I don't care if it's three minutes or 30 minutes. I'm going to have a conversation with them. Okay, where's your head? How do you feel right now? You know, and that way, each individual person in that boot camp, what they can do is they now know what the trigger is. Like, okay, I came onto that interaction, and I don't feel good about myself. Okay, well, what happened in that interaction? Well, she really wasn't showing me any kind of like real attention. And it just seemed like they were just kind of tolerating me, and I don't like that. Okay, cool. So here's how to fix that. Okay, maybe give them a little something to sort that out. Now, that person knows next time something like that happens. It doesn't throw them off for the rest of the evening or the rest of the day or something like that. It just like okay, when I feel like this, this is what I have to do to get myself back to where I need to be, you know, so, yeah, man. I mean, that's a really long winded way of answering yes, but I don't think that, you know, for most guys, it's like a thing of like, okay, get your inner game. 100% right, because here's the deal. It's never gonna be 100% Right? Amen. Yeah. Never. So are you just gonna keep working on that for infinity? You know, because, like, look, you know, it's much is, you know, we could probably look at somebody like, Dwayne Johnson, right. And we could say, Man, that dude, that guy's arrived. You know, he's a movie star, famous wrestler. All the money in the world. Women love them. Um, it's charismatic as hell, you know, like, all that. He's a rock. I can almost say No, I don't know this for sure. Because I've never talked to him. But I can almost say with 100% certainty, that if you were to ask him, has he arrived? He would tell you no. You might not man. There's so much stuff I want to do. There's so many things I got on my plate that I want to get to and all that kind of Nah, man. I'm not even half done with what I'm trying to do. You know? And so if, if he hasn't arrived, you certainly have
Michael 16:22
so yeah, I can't argue that at all. I think I think the work you know, we talked about doing the work and talk to us all the time. I think it's an ongoing never ending process and that's not to say that you're a broken fucked up human being although I think we all are to certain degrees it just to say that nobody's perfect and we all have shit to work on because this type of stop this work and then we're going to cover some of the self esteem competence and loneliness things that guys deal with. solving these issues are lifelong things. Typically, and they don't happen overnight. If that was the case, I wouldn't have a podcast because everybody would be fucking fixed and perfect and you wouldn't have a job because everybody, nobody would be ever breaking up because they're all perfect and everything's good. And that's just not possible. But I do want to sort of hone in on sort of around what you're talking about. And that is self esteem. Because I see this a lot, especially guys that get out of divorce, or go through divorce. And there's so and I can tell you, I speak I speak because I know your self esteem is shattered your self worth is in the fucking toilet because the person that you loved is basically saying you're not good enough anymore along with also you're gonna lose access to your kids half the time potentially more and you're gonna lose a whole fucking lot of money. And continuously perhaps there's there's there's a lot of negatives there that really kick you in the balls and make you sort of look in a mirror and go I'm a giant piece of shit. So my question, we share this gift of gab, my friends, my long winded question is how does a guy build some self esteem up? After any any kind of scenario that just kicks him in the nuts? All right, so
Dale 17:54
let's let's let's take a look at this. So, you know, the short answer is this. If you want better self esteem, do what's the mobile X, you know, and now that sounds maybe a little overly simplistic, but that doesn't make it wrong, you know? So here's the deal. I'll give you an example. So my birthday, okay, no different than divorce. I totally get it but just about here. Okay. My birthday is the day after Christmas. Okay. And it is about the worst time that an individual can have a birthday I call it birthless you know, because it's just imagine it's a day or homogenous 48 hours of Christmas and birthday. So what happens is a kid who was fine, my parents made a really good effort to distinguish the two days okay, but as an adult, you know, I'm, man, my birthday gets glossed right over, you know, I mean, like, first of all, it's the day after Christmas, like, Christmas was just yesterday. Yeah. Secondly, you know, I'm in Detroit, man. The weather sucks around that time of year you know, so people just don't really want to go do things, you know. Thirdly, New Year's is less than a week away. All right. Fourthly, because of Christmas, people are either out of town or they got family in town, you know. So, outside of social media, you know, like, I may get three or four texts of somebody saying happy birthday, it just gets and I get it. I don't take it personal. You know what I mean? But it just gets put on the back burner, you know, um, so, you know, my birthday has never been a big thing. So, now I could sit back and say, Well, you know, if I was more impactful in people's lives, you know, if I was if I contributed more if, if I was special, it wouldn't matter. Like, you know, they people would reach out to me people will come to a birthday party people would, you know, go out of their way. If, you know, I really meant something to them. You know, I could say that, sure. But instead I choose to reframe it. Okay. I understand why. So, it's my is me being here on planet Earth. Is my purpose to just get things on my birthday? No, you know, what I mean, my purpose, which why I was born, you know, the day of my birth. You know, I look at I choose to look at it like this. Let me make a reminder to myself why I'm here, you know, so on my birthday, generally, what I'll do is, you know, say if I'm at the grocery store, I'll just randomly pay for somebody's food, you know, their groceries, you know, if I'm in line at McDonald's or something, I'll just get the car behind me. You know, when me and my wife when we go out to dinner. I'll just pick a table and I'll tell the server I got their bill, please don't tell them that. I paid for it, you know? And that's to remind myself that I'm here to give value. You know, and so it's not about me getting stuff and getting attention. I'm here to give it you know, so that being said, somebody that's coming out of divorce, that's like, Man, my self esteem is just in the dumps and, you know, got all these mounting things to deal with now and you know, I can't see my kids as much as I would like to and all this net, that that's none of that is a commentary on you, as an individual. You know, what that is is a commentary on your circumstances. Now, you know, let's call it what it is, you know, you know, not every guy coming out of a divorce is necessarily blame free, you know, like, maybe there's some things that you did that to propel that situation, you know, maybe there was some bad decisions you made. But even in those decisions, you know, you're you are not your actions. Okay, you are you the actions that you do are the actions that you do. Okay, so what I mean by that is like, look, depending on the perspective of a person, you know, a serial killer could be a good guy. I know it sounds crazy, but look, serial killers hold the door. Open for old ladies too. Right? You know, and that old lady looks at that serial killer now she doesn't know he's a serial killer, but what a nice guy, right? You know what, I really appreciate that person. My day is better because that guy opened the door for me. What little does she know he opened the door because he's going in there to grab somebody to take him back to his house and lock them up and kill them. So, you know now from that person's vantage point, the guy kidnapped and that's such a nice guy, you know what I mean? So, the actions are not indicative of who you are. As an individual. What, what defines who you are as an individual. That's kind of going back to what we were talking about before knowing who you are. Once you really know who you are. Now, you could have a moral compass, you know, a code of ethics, that is in line and congruent with you. Now, if you do an action, we all do it, you know, from time to time, we all do actions that are contrary to who we are as a person, you know, absolutely. But at least you can define that. And so like I did that and it was wrong, and I apologize, okay. But you know, that that's not you as a person, that was just a, you know, a, I guess a error in judgment or whatever the case might be. So to define who you are, and by the way, I got a breakdown of of an exercise to get this figured out. And free gift from dale.com, which you can also download the first chapter of my book for free. You know what I mean? Just to kind of get an idea of what sort of my writing style and it's something that speaks to you, and even if it speaks to you just a little bit, man, it's something that it's something to check out because if that just makes you a little bit, that's just the tip of the iceberg. You know, there's a whole lot under that. We've all seen those like those memes, right? Like, yeah, that is, like goes down forever, you know, and that's what it is. Because defining who you are as an individual, man, everything is predicated on that everything. And, you know, one of the ways to really lock that in and really get a handle is even just defining how do you even know what a person is at the core of who they are at the core, right? So the way I look at it is there's a few fundamental elements here. You got nature and nurture. Okay, so, you know, nature, you're predisposed to certain genetic things. You know, if you come from a family of alcoholics sure you if you're not watching yourself, you'll probably be wanting to, you know, um, you know, if you got good genes, you know, it's genetic, like your parents probably had good genes, right? So, um, so that's one part of it. Another part of it is the nurture part. So you got two puppies, okay? Puppy A gets raised by same litter, okay. So the genetics are the same, essentially. So, Puppy A goes and lives with this family. And this family takes care of it loves the dog, you know, takes it for walks, plays. with it. You know it what's gonna happen, it's gonna be a good dog. Puppy B, on the other hand, gets adopted by somebody who could really care less you know, leaves it outside all the time never pays attention to it. You know, that dog is going to be the scourge of the neighborhood, you know, like to be barking all the time biting people, you know what I mean? And just simply on the way that it was raised. Another thing, environmental, being a product of your environment. You know, the example I like here is like this, you know, I was raised it's funny. To say, but, you know, I was raised primarily, with and around black people, you know. So that being said, that's going to that clearly influenced the way that I present myself that even the way that I talk and my tastes and interests and things like that, because of my foundational years growing up around who I grew up around. Now, if I was raised, like way out in the sticks, right? I probably wouldn't be a different person than I am right now. I might like mutton and write country music. But, you know, but I didn't grow up like that. So it's just not my thing, you know. So, lastly, your intrinsic value. You know, the things the personality traits, the qualities characteristics about you, that you respect in like about yourself, you know, and by knowing that now you know, what your worth is, you know, what you bring to the table. And so by knowing that when you go talk to some girl or whatever, and she's just not, she's just not with it. Look at all this dope shit that she missed out on. Right? You know, now there's something to be said about how to communicate that. But at the end of the day, if she doesn't want to get on board with everything that you're bringing to the table,
Michael 27:57
her loss? Yeah. So I think what we're talking about is really knowing yourself and knowing your values, right? Yes. Something that I that I coach, I think that I learned from a program I went through, it's really important. You know who you are, you know your values specifically. Like for instance, mine, one of mine is contribution, I'd like to contribute. And so obviously, that's what I'm doing with this right, contributing to the world. And so when I take actions aligned with that value, it does increase his self esteem. So, it is about I think, he said taking, you know, things that that provide, you know, actions that provide a steam, it's really about taking action, but making sure that those actions are lined up with who you are, then you can start feeling a little bit better about yourself. But I think and the other component of you talking about sort of your environment is being mindful of who you surround yourself with what content are you consuming? What are you doing when you have free time? Those kinds of things. Also can because if you do if you're if you're someone who's, who likes to connect with people and you're staying in your home, then you're not taking an action that is alignment with your values, right? So if you start getting yourself out there you're doing things that connect, I want to talk a little bit about this a little bit more in depth in terms of connection and loneliness and stuff like that. Then once again, you're gonna raise your self esteem because you're taking action that are in line exactly with who you really are. That's kind of what we're saying, right? Yeah, it's really Yeah,
Dale 29:21
that's what makes you feel good about yourself is when you're being genuine, when you're being sincere, authentic, congruent with who you are, you know, like, that's, that's what makes you feel good about yourself. That's that self esteem, you know, and if you're doing everything that's contrary to, to those factors, of course, of course, you don't feel good about yourself, you know, and unfortunately, a lot of people don't do that. You don't and, and it is so easy, man. Like, it's easy, but not easy. Let me put it this way. It's easy, but it's not simple. Alright, so it's easy to go out there and contribute and give value and things like that. But it's not simple, because you have to actually do the action steps to do it. You know what I mean? It's not, you can't, you can't raise your self esteem by sitting up doing nothing. Right? You know, you gotta go out there you got if you got to kind word for somebody, man. Look, check this out. Quick story. So I don't know man, probably six months ago, something like that. I'm at I'm at the grocery store. And, and I put something in my cart and this guy walks up to me. And it was very clear that he was like a whole student. You know, it's very obvious to me. And he comes up and he says something to me. I don't even really remember what he said. But I was like, I said, I complimented him on something. You know, I was like, Do you know and I can't even really remember what it was, but I complimented him on something. And that guy almost started tearing up, man. You know, he's like, do you know that I haven't gotten that nobody's ever been. I haven't had like a kind word. Or somebody compliment me on something in years. You know, and, like that simple gesture. It meant nothing for me. It meant the world for that dude. You know, and but I come out of that like feeling better about myself that I like, what I mean, think about this, you literally literally have the power to impact people's lives. Their day, whatever. You have that power within your hands. Unfortunately, most people don't access that power. They'd rather they'd rather keep their hands in their pockets and not deal with anybody. Then, you know, give somebody a helping hand say something nice tool, you know, whatever. You know. Yeah. Anyway.
Michael 32:12
Well, it's true. I think. I think it's actually a nice reminder for myself because I've been struggling with doing this podcast recently. It's been almost three years and not so much this stuff and coaching and running Facebook groups and all that but other areas of my life had become very stressful particularly from my my real job. And it makes me sort of question sort of everything and try and find sources of the stress. I feel like I know it's the job but but I can't, it pays the bills, right? What I do here makes me feel good, but it doesn't pay the bills. And sometimes I look and go, Well, maybe I should stop doing this. Or maybe I'm not helping as much as I think or maybe I'm not making a difference or maybe I'm wasting my time and and so I questioned myself and what I'm doing and of course I put that in episodes I talk about it because that's just kind of who I am. And of course I get good feedback. I don't do it for that reason, but it does happen. Yeah, but it's still it doesn't I still it doesn't hit home always because the those compliments and nice words smack up against you know, my inner child and my self esteem. And I sort of discard them in a way. So it's nice to hear reminders that one kind word or one one gesture of camaraderie or you're not alone connection. It can really go a long way in someone's life. And I I think I forget that myself. I think we all do because I think we're all egocentric, right? Not good, bad or indifferent as humans we're egocentric, but, but I want to talk about loneliness because this is something for other I see it's so very much and I think the question is, what do guys do when they after a breakup after a divorce and they're there, they lost their family. They lost some friends through the divorce and because everyone picks aside and all that kind of shit in there and they're lonely. What do they do? What do you recommend? Like how do you combat loneliness?
Dale 34:15
Can I circle back to one thing you said? Yeah, sure. We're jumping into that. Sure. So my, just my thought based on what you were just saying about work and stress and this and all that kind of thing. You know? If I was asking my What is your purpose? What would you tell me?
Michael 34:40
I wish I had a I know the answer that I should. I
Dale 34:45
don't. Yeah, don't give me your give me the real answer.
Michael 34:48
I don't
Dale 34:50
know. Okay. Well, you kind of you alluded to it earlier, you said contribution. Okay,
Michael 34:56
I mean, that's one of my values. Yeah. Okay, so,
Dale 34:59
now, here's the thing. I understand that work can be stressful, you know, like me, who doesn't know that, you know? But here's the thing. I would, and this is just my own personal take. My thought is that if it was me, I would double down on what you're doing on this side of things, you know, with what you're doing here. Instead of saying, well, maybe I should take my foot off the gas because of you know, work stress. What are you really essentially saying you're saying that stressful work is more important than you contributing and being impactful in people's lives? Like I would rather do this stressful thing, because that's the only thing else left to do is do that. Then do the thing that is actually helping people and impacting their lives and making their lives better. You know what I mean? And you don't know. You don't know who I necessarily affect because you don't hear from everybody you know, and that's
Michael 36:01
so that's a weird thing too. And I I'm glad we're kind of having this conversation because timely but I just got a message on Spotify. I guess now they're letting people comment on I don't know how recent this has been but I got an email this morning, someone commented on a recent episode on Spotify, and I didn't that's never happened before. I don't know that's a new thing. It seems like it's a new thing. But But anyway, I got a really nice compliment comment from someone. And and it kind of reminded me of that, but I think for me, it's I sort of look at everything in totality and feel drained and go well what can I What can I cut out? And but to your point, I mean, this is there's nothing better than for me then then knowing that I'm making an impact. Yeah, but I'm getting
Dale 36:51
here's the thing you don't know what you don't know.
Michael 36:53
I don't know. That that sorry. I got lost in my own thoughts. That's what I wanted to talk about. So why is it that this is definitely a rabbit hole? Sorry, fellas. Why is it that people don't comment and interact as much? Like like I probably have. I have 1000 followers across I it's more but across the ones that I know, across Apple, Google and Spotify. And they're the comments are few and far between. Why do you think that is why why do men like or people but mostly men, obviously for my audience, but why do people not like, comment or reach out more or whatever? Well, just out of curiosity.
Dale 37:27
I mean, it could be a litany of different reasons, but I think the main ones are, you know, either they don't know what to comment. They know they liked it, you know, right? But they don't really know how to articulate necessarily, what they what they would like to say sure to another reason is a lot of times, man, you know, and I think this is very common of, of men is they don't engage on social medias and things like that as much as women do. You know what I mean? So it's like, like, for instance, man, you know, I'll give you a case in point like, just before getting on here. I probably watched three or four YouTube videos. I didn't comment on any of them, I enjoy them all.
Michael 38:17
The same, how did the same you know, so,
Dale 38:19
you have that. Then another thing is in terms of reaching out to people, like like, you know, I'm a listener, I want to reach out and talk to you, well, maybe they're very introverted, or they feel like they're bothering you, you know. So it could be any number of reasons but one thing that this happened to me a little while back, a guy sends me a DM. I had no idea who this dude was. And he sends me a DM. And he was just like, hey, man, I just want to thank you. I've been married now two years and my wife's about to give birth in a week. And, you know, I met her through following your content. And I'm like, I know I like I've never seen that name before. You know, and you don't so you don't know who you're impacting. And like he said he'd been following me for years. You know what I mean? Like
Michael 39:22
doesn't that make it difficult sometimes again, rabbit holes fellas, but we'll get back to the topics but this is for me dammit. Because it doesn't that make it difficult sometimes when you when you put your self out there and you don't get that feedback. Isn't that doesn't that make it really hard? Sometimes it can become
Dale 39:36
I think for a lot of people, it can become frustrating, you know, because they're like, Man, I'm putting in all this work and I'm doing this and like, and I'm seeing minimal return on you know, attention, you know, the currency of attention, you know, and the thing is, is that really, man, you know, one that boils down to comparison, you know, like, I'm seeing this guy over here who's doing something similar to me. And by his his shits blowing up, why isn't mine, you know, which can be a fair question. If he's doing something differently that you're not doing. You know, like, that could be it could be just one simple click, you know, and he's just doing something different, you know? So it's a fair question, but on the other hand, you know, Comparison is the thief of all joy, man. If you're like, I know because we, I think we talked about it on my podcast, you know, like you had just gotten over the 100 mark, if I remember correctly, and, you know, like, man, you know, and I'm know that over the course of from episode one to Episode 100, I know that you have seen growth. Oh, 100% No, no. So like, if, if today's growth is better than yesterday's growth, that's a win. And you really only need one man, like, the way I look at it is it's kind of like, um, you know, it's kind of like baseball. You know, the more at bats that you get, even if you're a poor hitter, not suggesting you're a poor hitting but but, you know, the more at bats you get, the, the better the odds are, sooner or later you're something's going to happen either. You're gonna get on base you're gonna get a hit, you're gonna hit a home run, something's gonna happen the more times up at bat that you are, you know, man, you only need one thing to just break through the fray. You know what I mean? Once that one podcast episode, once that one social media post once that one thing, tops. Now you'll start seeing it really start to really start to take off. I remember, um, my, my last Instagram account that I had before I got hacked, you know, like, Man, I I was working that thing to death, you know, like trying to get trying to get some momentum trying to get an audience on there and things like that much like anybody else. And so, um, one day I had a post. That meant for whatever reason, like I don't know why it was no different or better or worse than anything else. Man, it just took off, you know, and like, within a week, like I went from, like, 5000 followers to like 15,000 like the the notification you know, like when you click the notification, Mark? Yeah, it just it was it looked like a stock ticker or something. It was just like, oh, like, I couldn't even keep up with it. You know, it's just like, it just kept moving and roll and moving and rolling. And I was like, What the fuck is going on? You know, that post just had like, 10,000 hearts and like, and then from there on out, everything that I was posting now, maybe didn't get to that level, but it was 100 times more than what my average posting was, you know? And so that's what I mean is it only takes one thing for it to pop and then you're like, okay,
Michael 43:15
yeah, I think I mean, it's a marathon right? It's a longevity game that's that's certainly a part of it. And and I got to do things differently. There's some things that I shouldn't need to do differently and all that but, but anyway, we're very much a rabbit hole. So let's get back to the topic of loneliness. Yeah, what do you what do you recommend? Because I see this all the time. And I experienced it a little bit, but I don't it doesn't bother me as much as it used to and or I'm more comfortable with who I am or whatever it is. It just doesn't I don't get I don't it doesn't I don't it's not a focus of mine. But some guys that's it is their focus. It's like I'm just so lonely. So what do you what do you say that guy would recommend?
Dale 43:52
Let's let's diagnose why you're lonely to begin with. Right? Because, man, you know, people, we we're creatures of habit. We look for patterns in things like what why do we freak out when we don't know what's going on? It's because we don't know what the outcome is going to be. We don't know what's happening. It's a situation that we're not used to, you know, and so, but if it's a situation like, you know, you go into your job, you've been there a million times before. It's nothing, you know what I mean? So but but for the first day that you walked in, you're probably nervous, anxious, whatever, you know what I mean? So it's because it wasn't a habit yet. It wasn't a pattern. So if you're lonely because you're coming out of divorce, or you just, you know, got out of a relationship or whatever. There's a void, you know, like, you're used to this other person being a part of your life that isn't there, you know, so now it throws you off kilter. Right? Because that's what you're used to. And now it's it's not happening. So the way to in our big advocate of owning how it is you feel not being resistant to it, okay. You know, like, a lot of times, guys, when it comes to things like loneliness, you know, they they're trying to resist the loneliness because they're like, one it doesn't feel good, but to I shouldn't even be feeling like this. I'm a bit I don't want to be a bitch. You don't push that away. Well, all you're really doing by pushing it away. It's kind of like this. Say, um, say you're walking towards me, right? And like you're walking like almost like, I'm not even there like walking right at me. And I put my hand up, right? Bam, right in the middle of your chest, but you keep walking, but you're not going anywhere because my hands right there, right? But sooner or later, my arms gonna get tired. You know what I mean? And all that resistance that I had put up, now when I put my head down, now you're gonna fall into it. Because just physics you know, so I'm being resistant to it and in in feeling bad about feeling bad and then feeling bad about feeling bad about feeling bad, and then feeling it. All you're doing is you're you're making a like a negative loop in your head. You know what I mean? That's all you're doing is creating a loop. I feel bad about feeling bad about feeling bad. I feel bad about feeling bad about feeling bad, feel that you're not really that's not going to be helpful. And so to alleviate that loneliness, if you're lonely, you're like, got nobody around, you know, like, maybe we'll just say for instance, a guy, you know, he moves to a different state, you know, maybe closer to her she wanted to live closer to her family or something, whatever. But, yeah, and so they go to a different state or 1000 miles away from work, what they're used to, and things like that things fall apart. But you know, they've got this house and you know, he's got a job, so he can't, he can't just be like, well not here, you know what I mean? But maybe they got kids and he doesn't want to be away from you know, that far away from his kids. So, any number of reasons couldn't make that happen, right. So, if you're going through something like that, you know, first and foremost, to alleviate that loneliness. I think it's, um, I think it's smart to start just start getting involved with stuff. You know. There's a there's a website, you're probably familiar with it, but maybe some guys aren't called meetup.com. All right. I'm a huge advocate of that website. You know, like, Whatever, whatever your interests are, you should if you live in a big enough city, you should be able to find whatever it is that you're looking for, you know what I mean? Whether that's golf outings, wine tasting events, working on cars, board, game nights, you know, whatever, whatever you're getting down is, you'll be able to find it. And even if it isn't there, man, that's even a better opportunity. Because you can start it. And now once you started it you're the leader, you're the de facto alpha, if you will, you know what I mean? Like, you're everybody has to come to you. If they want to be a part of that group, you organize an outing doing some people have to talk to you. You know, you're the straw that stirs the drink here. And so what are you really doing? You're building a social circle, you're building a network, your net worth is what your network is, you know, and if you're around people, they're high value, you know, like, don't don't just go to the bar because you're lonely. You know, you're just around a bunch of other lonely people, you know what I mean? But that's not a recipe for success. You know, like, that's just going to be a bitch fest. You know, everyone's complaining about their problems, you know? So, get around high value people. When I say high value, I don't necessarily mean money. I'm just saying they got things going on. In their life, their life is together. They're fun, they're outgoing, they like to do stuff, you know, like, high value. Okay? So, start getting around those people. meetup.com is a great way to do that, you know, and then, you know, you may have the person that suggests like, Well you know, I'm cool. I've got friends and everything. I'm just lonely when it comes to the dating department. You know, I want to get back out there and things like that, but I don't even really know where to start. I'm lonely. And a lot of these guys, what happens is, they're like, Okay, well, you know enough time has went by, let me you know, me I got a little bit baggage or whatever, but who don't. So I'm gonna get out here. I'm gonna jump on Bumble and hinge and, you know, see what happens. And then what inevitably happens is they have zero success on the dating app. And then they're like, you know, oh, well, you know, maybe a friend of a friend will hook me up or something, and then that doesn't happen and then they're just like, well, now we're back to square one self esteem in the toilet. I'm a piece of shit you know, like, I'm apparently I'm not worthy enough for any kind of for attention. You know? And in that study, even if that goes back again, you are not your actions. Well, if your dating life is suffering, and you're feeling lonely, you know, we're, if you're the kind of guy that anytime you're out somewhere at the mall or whatever, and you're seeing a couple that's holding hands together. It just feels like a big old knife twist in your gut. You know what I mean? If you're that guy, then why not go into when you're starting to get back into dating? Why not do it from a vantage point of knowing what you're doing? Knowing how to set up a dating profile? You know, like, we've all seen the we've all seen the memes I don't know. I assume you probably have, but you know, like the old guy selfie, you know, like like the sixth year on Tinder and it's like this angle. And they're just like, looking at the camera like What results do you think that you're gonna gain? Like, that picture is horrible. You know, like,
Michael 51:34
what and that stuff always kind of baffles me a little bit because I mean, I understand it, but like, gosh, Google's a thing, right? Just use that. At the very least if you're like, how to set up a dating profile. You can Google that. I'm sure you can get lots of tips and stuff, but I'm always sort of struck by that. That guy's sort of giving you half efforts and expecting like full results, right? No, not really. Yeah,
Dale 52:00
I mean, what in what like, Okay, think about it like this. Say you go to a job interview. Right? And you're looking like you look in that Tinder profile picture. You go in there looking and acting like how you are presenting yourself in that picture. Man, you ain't getting that job. Right. You know, like, right? What so if you're not gonna get that job, what makes you think that a girl is going to be like, Oh, no, let's go. Yeah, So make no mistake, man. You are a walking billboard to planet earth. Unfortunately, sad but true. People make snap judgments, but it's also human nature. I'd rather deal with human nature than deal with um, what should or shouldn't be? I'd rather deal with the reality. The reality is people make snap judgments. I do it you do it. anybody listening to this doesn't you know? Absolutely. And so, um, think about it if you're driving down the street, right? On one side of the street, you got a guy, you know, chest out, shoulders back, chin up, confident stride and you know he's moving with purpose. He's got somewhere to be right on the other side of the street. You got this guy hand in his pockets, you know, looking down walking off throw kicking the ground. You know what I mean? Like, what what happened to this? Do you know like his dog die or something? Like now, the kicker is, maybe the confident looking guy. It's the most unconfident guy on planet earth. And the guy over here that looks depressed. Maybe he just won the lottery. You know what I mean? I don't know. But the thing is, by the way, that they're presenting themselves, I know that I would rather be friends with the confident stride guy, then the guy that just, you know, trudging along, kicking rocks, you know, like, and we all do that. So, if you like, whether it's something on like a dating app, or in person, maybe you go to an event, maybe a conference for work a birthday party, or you're just simply going out for the night, you know, like, hey, look, the way that you present yourself. That's how people are going to take you you know, and so if you're not presenting yourself in the best light, that's something that you got to work on. It's not an again, it's not you like I've seen it, man. I've seen people in my comment section all the time. It's like, like, oh, well, you know, you wouldn't be as successful with dating and stuff like that. If you were a big fat guy like me. And I'm like, okay, one. I'm like 30 pounds overweight, so I don't know what he's talking about. But, but to guess what? Great news man. You can work out if you think that you're not getting the dates that you want. Because you're a big fat guy. That's something you can change. You know, so, you if you think that's the problem fixing Yeah, I mean, not, you know, like, it's not gonna hurt you. You know what I mean? Like, even if you don't get any dates because you got thinner, at least your health is better if nothing else,
Michael 55:16
your true. So yeah. What are the other things that sort of popped in my head that I think would be good, good to touch on as rejection. So if we're, if we're putting ourselves out there in in conjunction with working on self esteem, so in other words, you know, part of the assignment or whatever the goal is to just get out there and like you were saying earlier, like approach approach, to varying degrees or whatever. But obviously, when you do that, regardless of how frequent or what the intent is, it whether it is to learn or whether it is to actually get some dates you're gonna get rejected, right? You're not everybody's cup of tea. Right? I mean, there's a whole lot of folks that that find certain people attractive to blow my fucking mind. So, right I mean, you know, everybody has their thing, right? Everybody has their thing. And so so it's inevitable, you're gonna get rejected. So I guess I guess the question for me is sort of a two parter. One is is it going into it being mindful that you could be rejected? Is that a part of it? I'm assuming that it probably is. That's Is that something you teach and then two is what do you do afterwards? Do you analyze that rejection or you do do you just move on like, what are when you work with guys? What is your recommendation around rejection? Great question.
Dale 56:33
So firstly, I think it's much like a lot of things in life, man, it's a mental reframe. You know, like I tell people all the time, I never get rejected. I don't get rejected. Does that mean I date every girl I talked to, of course, you know what I mean? All I'm doing is screening. Okay, that's it. I'm screening if this is a person that I would want to spend any amount of time with, okay? Because you don't know. Until you know, right? Like, okay, here's this pretty girl over here. Okay, what do I know about her? Well, I know that she's attractive looking and all that much, you know, what would she know about me walking up to her? Nothing. You don't even know my name. You know? What I'm saying? I don't know her name. would say like, Okay, I'm gonna go talk to this very attractive girl. Turns out her breasts thinks like rotten fish.
Michael 57:28
You know, like, right.
Dale 57:30
I don't want to spend time with that person. You don't want a man. So now if a girl like if she blowing me off or whatever, same thing that to me, that's like rotten fish, man. I don't want to spend time with somebody who doesn't want to spend any time with me. You know? So it's not that I got rejected. I just screened. Okay, she's not for me. Fine. You know, another way to look at it too, is it's a learning experience. You know, I'm, I'm not I'm not getting rejected. I'm just learning to see what I could do differently next time. If you treat the world as a as a social laboratory. Then what happens is, you know, it enables you to do experiments, you know, and do all experiments workout. No, you know what I mean? Not at all. But in doing so you're learning on what not to do in order to know what to do. You know? And so, if, for instance, you go in, you go up and start talking to 10 Different women, okay. And of those 10 times seven of them. They, you know, made an excuse to leave or just wasn't you know, you lost them at some point you know, and if you can pinpoint where that like, man, you know what every, every time I say or do this, it just seems like it just dissipate. Okay, now, you know, not to do that thing, you know. So because you have data points to work off of. So that that's the second part of the question. Yeah, take a look. Like yes, move on. But also take a look at like, what, what am I? What am I doing consistently? That is, things just aren't working out? Conversely, what am I doing that is working, you know, so, you know, like, I see, I see guys, it'll be like, Oh, well, you know, I can't even approach a girl because you know, every time I do I walk up and I say hi, they you know, like they don't they don't pay me no mind. It's like, okay, maybe don't say hi. How about that? I'll say something else. Anything else? Because AI isn't working for you. You know, or, you know, they walk up like all unconfident look in shoulders, sunken in and stuff and like, huh, like the girl to do, you know, like, so, yeah, maybe straighten up, maybe present yourself in a better light you don't like so there's a lot of things to look at. But at the end of the day, it's like, okay, what isn't effective? Let's get rid of that. What is effective? Okay, what's essential? Wait, that?
Michael 1:00:22
Yeah, no, I agree. I think it's sort of around, you know, sort of being mindful, right. Being aware of being noticing the things you're doing and, yeah, I don't want to I don't want to say you know, analyze it to the nth degree, but But you got to take a look at it. Yeah. That what you're doing and whether or not it does anything that's that's the B that's being effective or not. Because you're right, if I think we kind of said this earlier, you know, nothing changes, nothing changes essentially, like if you don't keep doing the same things then the same thing is gonna keep happening so you're gonna have to to pay attention to what you're doing and and how you're doing it make some some kind of determination. But, brother, I want to thank you. It's been great. I can't believe it's been an hour already. It doesn't Yeah, I know. Right. So let's let's I want to do two more things. The words of wisdom question but let's I want to put you on the spot a little bit but but also give you an opportunity to sort of pitch the book. Who is this book for and and and why Why should someone pick it up?
Dale 1:01:27
All right, so here's the deal. Um, inner game, how to fix your dating life by fixing the relationship you have with you. If you feel like that you're the type of person that you know, falls into the category of self sabotage. Or maybe you've dealt with a lot of trauma in your past and I'm not going to define what trauma is. For you for everybody. It's different, you know, but if you feel like that you've been through traumatic experiences. If you buy into that into like a negative monologue inside your own head, you know, it's funny, a lot. A lot of times people because they thought what they thought they think that's the truth. I thought it so therefore it must be true. My response to that is oh, okay, cool. So you've never been wrong about anything. You know? So just because you think something doesn't necessarily make it true, right. So if you're buying into that, if you're suffering with self esteem, you know, if you're suffering with self confidence, you know, if you're suffering with self discipline, you can't set boundaries, you fall into the nice guy trap, you know, and by the way, I saw your post about Robert Klein. Yeah.
Michael 1:02:38
Oh, yeah. Thank you. I was gonna I was gonna gonna bring that up. That's all thanks to you, my friend. Oh, no, seriously? Well, I got I, you gave me the email, which, oh, maybe, maybe it's out there. But, but I hit it up and then you think your comment was, you know, I was persistent. That's how I got and I was like, alright, well, I guess I got to be persistent here. So So thank you, my friend. So yeah, that's actually I'm recording that on Saturday morning, and I go, Yeah, super good, man. Yeah, I'm excited.
Dale 1:03:08
Um, but yeah, gratulations because great host great book, you know, all that. But anyway, so but if you're the type of guy that falls into that nice guy, trap, you know, anything like that, where you are shooting yourself in the foot, you are holding yourself back from having not only the type of relationships that you want, but I mean, look, this falls into health, wealth and relationships, you know, so if professionally, you have issue with negotiating out for a pay raise, if you have difficulty confronting that coworker that's taken advantage of you, you know, anything like that, man. This is not just for dating, you know? I mean, it skews that way for sure. But this is fundamental. It is a part of life. You know what I mean? Like, these are things that help you improve your life to a degree that scalable. I mean, every chapter has an action step, you know, and, like, if you're not going to do the action steps, then don't get the book. Plain and simple. You know, like, yeah, it's great to have the information but what good is that information going to do you if you're not, you know, you're not implementing it into your life, you know, so? Yeah, I mean, that's who it's for is anybody Well, men specifically, but you know, anybody that is going through anything like that, and they just feel unsure themselves, they don't know where they're going and they feel rudderless and like, hey, maybe, maybe you woke up one day at 45 years old and you don't recognize the person anymore, you know? Like, man, that's who the book is for.
Michael 1:04:48
Awesome. What where can people find the book, my friend?
Dale 1:04:51
It's on Amazon. I'll get you the link.
Michael 1:04:53
Okay, nice. And then as far as you and socials and websites and how can people get the best get in touch with you?
Dale 1:05:00
Oh, the best way to get in touch with me is that free gift from dale.com? That's the best place
Michael 1:05:05
Awesome. Well, again, thanks for doing this man. And as you know, the last question I asked everybody is what words of wisdom would you impart to a man who's just beginning his divorce journey?
Dale 1:05:16
Man, you know, like, are you wait, let me let me just make sure I'm clear. So are you saying like they just got divorced? Or they're in the process of getting divorced?
Michael 1:05:26
Um, good. Good question. I think someone who just started the process,
Dale 1:05:33
just started the process. Okay. My words of advice to that person is don't let the circumstances define you. It's not it's not a commentary on you as a person. It's a commentary on your situation. situations change, you know, situation like, man, you know, if you're, if you're having a great day, guess what your time's coming, man. You know what I mean? Like, oh, yeah, you're gonna have a bad day, sooner or later. It's just a matter of time. You know, the ebb and flow you don't have to say in the situation is going to change it may feel and maybe is super life altering. But at the end of the day, you are the one that is in control of your actions. Inside of the life that you have. You have the wherewithal you have the power to be able to make that life better. Now, it might go down a little bit. You're not happy about what how things are going. But guess what, you have the agency to change that. If I fall in a hole am I going to be like, well, I guess I live here now. No, I'm gonna climb out of it to improve my situation.
Michael 1:06:46
Hey, man, hey, man, again. Thanks, brother for doing this. Thank you, man. We will definitely do it again sometime. And we'll stay in touch. I appreciate you.
Dale 1:06:56
Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. That's what's up, man. Thank you again for having me on. And yeah, man. super appreciate it.
Michael 1:07:04
Yeah, you're welcome. Take care.
Dale 1:07:06
You got it.