Why You Tolerate a Relationship You Know Should End | Gary John Bishop

Gary John Bishop, Glasgow-born author of Love Unfucked: Getting Your Relationship Shit Together and a longtime speaker alongside figures like Tony Robbins and Arnold Schwarzenegger, joins Lewis Howes to discuss relationship breakdown, blame, childhood identity patterns, vulnerability, and the mindset shift that helped him build what he calls authentic wealth in his fifties

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Lewis Howes?

  Everywhere I go, airports, events, walking down the street, people stop me and say, Louis, this show got me through one of the hardest seasons of my life. And it's one of the coolest things when people come up to me. So if you see me, please come up and say hi and let me know how this show, The School of Greatness, has impacted you. It lights me up because our mission at Greatness Media is to impact 100 million lives every single week. So if today's conversation hits home for you, do me a favor and push the follow button right now. It means that the next conversation will be delivered to you and we'll find you exactly when you need it. Again, thank you so much for being here and listening to The School of Greatness. Make sure to follow right now to stay up to date on the latest and greatest.

• 0:49Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to The School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest, Gary John Bishop in the house, my man.

• 0:55Gary John Bishop?

  Awesome.

• 0:55Lewis Howes?

  Good to see you, brother.

• 0:56Gary John Bishop?

  Good to see you too.

• 0:56Lewis Howes?

  You've had a lot of success over the years with many books, but this book, Love on Getting Your Relationship Together is a powerful one. And we were just talking about this beforehand, a lot of people feel stuck in their relationships.

• 1:10Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:11Lewis Howes?

  And they get in their relationships and they'll stay in relationships for years. And then something happens where they're like, it's not working, right? It's not working. Maybe it's a few years, maybe it's 10 years, 20 years. They're thinking, it's not working. They're trying to control the relationship. They're trying to change the person, trying to fix someone. And why do you think that so many people are stuck in relationships in this mindset?

• 1:35Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. First of all, thanks for having me.

• 1:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:38Gary John Bishop?

  But I think, I think there's a couple of things. One of them is most often by the time you're really struggling with it, you're now at the thick end of the wedge. So it started somewhere though. It literally went off in a trail. And what happens whereas in relationships is that trail's kind of okay at the beginning. You know, you're kind of going along, you're like, okay, I can manage this. It's not the way it was, but it's still good. There's still good things in it. We're still, you know, compatible or together, whatever. By the time you're really struggling with it, you've lost sight of where you took the turn. So a lot of the times with people, you gotta, you gotta begin with really addressing how you got where you are, but not in the kind of typical way you would explain that.

• 2:22Gary John Bishop?

  Like, you know, we don't get along anymore, or, you know, I got fired or my business went down. No, there was some fundamental shift in how you related to that other person. Once that starts to go that way, you're down the swany.

• 2:36Lewis Howes?

  Right. Because in the beginning, you're not, you're not in that space. You're in love or you're connected, you're having fun, you're intimate, or you're putting your best behavior on, right? For the first year or two, but then all of a sudden it starts to shift. Why is it, why does that shift happen for so many people?

• 2:52Gary John Bishop?

  Well, at the beginning of a relationship, you're generating it.

• 2:54Lewis Howes?

  You're generating the relationship.

• 2:56Gary John Bishop?

  Right. So you're bringing to the table, right? You're constantly bringing to the table. There is a point though, for many people, where you stop bringing to the table quite as much. You're spending more time looking at what's on the table, which invariably becomes what are they bringing?

• 3:12Lewis Howes?

  What are they bringing to me?

• 3:13Gary John Bishop?

  Right. So then that's when people start talking about, I'm not getting what I need and I'm not getting what I want. Well, it's kind of like standing in a supermarket and waiting for the groceries to jump into your trolley, right? It doesn't quite work that way. You gotta go, you know, make something happen. It's kind of like, you know, having the check engine light on in your car. When the car breaks down, it's too late, you know, you should have, you want to go back and see where that thing started at.

• 3:37Lewis Howes?

  What is that flashing light? For six months, it's been flashing. Yeah. Why don't you take it in?

• 3:42Gary John Bishop?

  Right. And there's people who are like putting black tape over the top of it like.

• 3:46Lewis Howes?

  There's nothing wrong, yeah.

• 3:47Gary John Bishop?

  And that is what people do in relationships. They pretend what's not working is somehow okay. They'll overcome, which all human beings are brilliant at overcoming, but not great at transforming, not great at dealing with what's actually in the way. They're great at overcoming it and overcoming it and overcoming it until it becomes too much.

• 4:04Lewis Howes?

  Or just tolerating it, right?

• 4:05Gary John Bishop?

  Exactly. That's the big word, right?

• 4:07Lewis Howes?

  Maybe not overcoming it and transforming, you're tolerating the brokenness or the stress of it or whatever it might be.

• 4:12Gary John Bishop?

  See, that's the problem with it, that whatever you are tolerating in your relationship, you'll make it okay. You'll make that thing okay, right? It's not great, but it's okay. And human beings have a tremendous capacity for making things that don't work somehow workable. But then again, comes that point where you're looking around yourself and thinking, this ain't it. There's something off here.

• 4:37Lewis Howes?

  It's where people stop investing and bringing something to the table. And then there's a level of, I guess, maybe there's some disrespectful words that are said every now and then, that becomes okay. Or there was an apology, but then it's a continuum every few weeks and then it's every day.

• 4:53Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 4:54Lewis Howes?

  And then you tolerate that.

• 4:55Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 4:55Lewis Howes?

  And then there's, you know, some physical abuse that was once. And then, okay, well, I'm just going to let it slide this time. And then it becomes every month and then whatever it might be, or an explosion of emotions.

• 5:05Gary John Bishop?

  It could be, and it could be simple things like there's no real intimacy anymore. Or you go to the mall together or a movie together and you don't hold your partner's hand. Or, you know, all those little kind of breakdowns become the norm, right? Like there's just this kind of distance and that distance comes from observing. So the more you're observing the relationship, I invite people to take the case you're not in it. You're actually watching it. And you gotta get that really like in an experiential way. You, we spend a lot of time in our relationships, watching what's going on. And an internal mechanism with ourself about how that's doing, which includes keeping score, of course.

• 5:46Lewis Howes?

  Keeping score.

• 5:46Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 5:47Lewis Howes?

  Is that something we should or shouldn't do?

• 5:48Gary John Bishop?

  No, I mean, the only people who are really truly fascinated by the score in the game are the spectators. The people who are on the field, they're just playing.

• 5:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:00Gary John Bishop?

  They're just, and I know they're aware of the score, but they're all about the next play, the next play, the next play, the next play, the next play. And that really is how it is in relationships. It's like, are you actively in it? And the one little caveat that I would add to that is a lot of people are in it and doing what they're doing, expecting something different. So they're looking, still looking over there like, if I do this and I do that.

• 6:24Lewis Howes?

  It'll shift, it'll change.

• 6:26Gary John Bishop?

  This will change.

• 6:27Lewis Howes?

  Right. But they won't change.

• 6:28Gary John Bishop?

  That never works that way because it's, that's not truly authentic. See, it's, it's really a manipulation, which is, people hate hearing that word, you know, like, ah, I'm not manipulating. But if you just sit with that for a moment and say, yeah, I am doing this so that you'll be different or this will be different, and that'll never be the case.

• 6:46Lewis Howes?

  My girlfriend Martha, who's amazing, in the beginning of our relationship, when we just started hanging out, we weren't like officially together or whatever. But we were dating and, you know, seeing other people, but getting to know each other. I said to her at one point, I said, listen, I'm always gonna, in the past, in my relationships, based on the model of my parents and what I witnessed growing up.

• 7:06Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 7:06Lewis Howes?

  I repeated the model where I tried to please every relationship. I tried to change to make someone happy when they were unhappy. And no matter how much I did or shifted or changed, they would still never make them happy. Which made me feel miserable and upset and resentful and all these things. And I said, listen, I've been doing a lot of healing work over this previous year on the inner child and relationships and all these different things, that if we get together and letting you know, I'm never going to do anything to please you. I'm never going to shift or change who I, I'm never going to change who I am.

• 7:38Gary John Bishop?

  I freaking love it.

• 7:39Lewis Howes?

  For you.

• 7:39Gary John Bishop?

  I love it.

• 7:40Lewis Howes?

  I will change or shift because I want to improve or because I'm aware that it's for, or for the betterment of myself and the world, but I'm not going to do anything to please you.

• 7:48Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 7:49Lewis Howes?

  We're going to create agreements and connection and all these things. And I'm going to give you my best, but if you're upset of who I authentically am, then you shouldn't be with me.

• 7:57Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 7:58Lewis Howes?

  You know, we're not a good match.

• 7:59Gary John Bishop?

  You need to get a T-shirt done and it says, it's not my job to make you happy.

• 8:04Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 8:05Gary John Bishop?

  Now, and I want people to get that in its purest sense, right? Not like you don't care for people, you don't love this person, you're not committed to this person. It doesn't mean any of that. It means, and I've really found a lot of freedom for this in my relationship to my own wife. Like where she's at is okay. It's okay. Like if my wife's upset, it's okay. It's not the end of the world. You know what I mean? And even if she's upset at me, it's okay. She's allowed. You know, she's got the freedom to be herself. And that includes for me, I don't make it my wife's job to keep me on an even keel. That's not her job.

• 8:40Lewis Howes?

  That's your job.

• 8:41Gary John Bishop?

  Exactly. Right. So because that's really the only job I can effectively do. That's really the only job you can effectively work and make it work for yourself. Where the real balance comes in for me, and I'm going to look from my own perspective for my wife, but where the real balance comes in for me is like, there's so much freedom in my relationship with my wife because the pressure's off. There's no pressure. It doesn't have to be a certain way.

• 9:04Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing.

• 9:04Gary John Bishop?

  And you'll see how much of that creeps in in your thinking. Like it's supposed to be a certain way. And the real struggle is when you're caught in that no man's land from where it is to how it's kind of supposed to be in your mind. That's where the struggle is. So you're never really there for it. You're always pulling it somewhere or pushing it somewhere. And it's just a recipe for disaster, you know? We're really bad at relationships if I'm going to be straight up about it. You know, we're just bad at them.

• 9:36Lewis Howes?

  We don't have the tools. We've never been, we weren't taught this growing up unless we just remodeled this from our parents. And like you said before, we either loved the model that our parents had or we hated it.

• 9:46Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 9:47Lewis Howes?

  We said, we want to be like that or we never want to be like that.

• 9:49Gary John Bishop?

  Right. And that's all you've got.

• 9:50Lewis Howes?

  That's it.

• 9:51Gary John Bishop?

  Right. So I've kind of pointed out why both of them are flawed in their own way. Cause some people think, well, you know, modeling my relationship on a good one would be, would be a good thing to do. And I say, no, you're constantly holding your relationship to a standard.

• 10:04Lewis Howes?

  To a judgment, right?

• 10:05Gary John Bishop?

  Right. So it never gets to be itself. You never get to have the relationship you've got. And it's a failed policy. It doesn't work. It's like constantly comparing yourself to somebody else. It doesn't work. You have to be able to be yourself in relationship. And one of the things that I always kind of point people towards is say, when you're in relationship, you should be aware, and this is something you and I kind of discussed a little bit earlier. You should be aware, whatever junk is incomplete for you from your childhood, it's coming up.

• 10:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:37Gary John Bishop?

  And it'll, and it's like trying to keep a beach ball under the water, right? Like you can't keep it.

• 10:41Lewis Howes?

  Can't stop it. Yeah, yeah.

• 10:42Gary John Bishop?

  It's coming.

• 10:43Lewis Howes?

  What were the two or three biggest things that were junk for you from childhood that came up in your marriage in the last 26 years?

• 10:50Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah. So your relationship to your parents is all over your relationship, right? And it's all over it in ways that you can't even see. So the big one that always come off for me was. You're selfish, right?

• 11:04Lewis Howes?

  You felt you were selfish?

• 11:05Gary John Bishop?

  No, my partner.

• 11:06Lewis Howes?

  You would say?

• 11:07Gary John Bishop?

  You're selfish, right? Because that was my experience of growing up, one of my parents. Like that they're selfish. Now, that's a perspective of a child. Was it true? When I look back, no. But that's what it was like for me as a kid.

• 11:20Lewis Howes?

  That's how it felt, yeah.

• 11:21Gary John Bishop?

  Right, and I had to really unpack that for myself as I got older, like wow, this is, it's really cancerous in my life, like it's a barrier between me and people, I never, and it became a big barrier between me and, and particularly with my mom, like it was there between her and I through my teens, that when I started to do work on myself, thankfully, I managed to get on the other side of that, and really just love the mom that I had, like fully and authentically love the mother I have. And my teen years, my early twenties, that was not there, like a possibility, it wasn't there. So that was a big one for me. And then, you know, the other one was my searing independence, so I-

• 12:01Lewis Howes?

  You wanted to be independent?

• 12:02Gary John Bishop?

  I'm always like, I'm always trying to figure out my stuff myself, I need to figure it out myself, which if you think of that in the context of a relationship, is completely absurd.

• 12:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 12:13Gary John Bishop?

  Right, like here I am, committed to you, we got a problem, you sit there, I'll work this out.

• 12:19Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 12:20Gary John Bishop?

  You know, I never fully was able to, to kind of be with my own fears, and be with my own perceived inadequacies. Like these things were like ruminating in the background of my thoughts. And, you know, me being stereotypically culturally Scottish, you know, like, you know, I'll sort this out myself, which is a complete crap show, you know? But so, those elements of that kind of, like I said, this kind of driven independent, and this kind of judgment of, you know, the way that you behave, and how you shouldn't be that way, and you should be more like this way, had become a big obstacle. That, by the way, my wife and I were just dancing around it.

• 13:05Lewis Howes?

  You weren't addressing it?

• 13:07Gary John Bishop?

  No way. It's hard to see a relationship in terms of anything other than you and another person.

• 13:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:13Gary John Bishop?

  When you start to see who you are in it, just take a, start from, oh, see, who am I here? Who am I? Take away all your best efforts, and all your positivity, and all your justifications, take away all that away, and just look at it in the cold light of day, say, who am I here? It's hard to tell yourself I'm judgmental, and I'm cynical, and I'm da-da-da. But if you look, you'll see that playing out, you'll see it playing out right in front of your face. And that paradigm, and that way of thinking, my wife never stood a chance.

• 13:45Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 13:46Gary John Bishop?

  Not a chance, you have no hope against what I'm driven to do.

• 13:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:51Gary John Bishop?

  Until I saw what I'm driven to do.

• 13:53Lewis Howes?

  What made you wake up and see that?

• 13:55Gary John Bishop?

  I'd actually started to come to terms with how, one of my endearing traits, if you like, is I'm, I'm hardworking, okay, so I, I will grind it out, you know, I'll just see this thing through, you know? But what I really struggled with was vulnerability and love.

• 14:12Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 14:13Gary John Bishop?

  Like I couldn't, I couldn't love this woman.

• 14:17Lewis Howes?

  Fully?

• 14:18Gary John Bishop?

  I couldn't, all I could do was show her that I cared by working harder, right? Like, you'll never have to worry about anything, I'm just gonna keep grinding it out and grinding, and it was myopic, it was like, you know, there's these blinkers on, and-

• 14:32Lewis Howes?

  How long did it take for you to realize you couldn't love her?

• 14:35Gary John Bishop?

  Oh, I mean, I was convinced I was loving her.

• 14:37Lewis Howes?

  But she didn't feel like you were loving her?

• 14:39Gary John Bishop?

  No, because, you know, she's from a very similar background, and like, so culturally, you're very influenced, you know, you're very influenced culturally. And so whatever you came out of, you're either gonna reflect that, or rebel against it, you're gonna be one or the other. And so I reflected a lot of that kind of Glasgow, kind of cultural-

• 14:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 14:59Gary John Bishop?

  Tough, you know?

• 15:01Lewis Howes?

  That's who I am, yeah. You identified it. It's your identity, yeah.

• 15:05Gary John Bishop?

  Right, and the big breakthrough came for me when I realized, and it was, it was amazing, I'll never get over this, right, and I'm, and it happened 15 years ago, and I'll never get over it, when I realized that I hadn't told my mom that I'd loved her since I was 12.

• 15:22Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 15:25Lewis Howes?

  Why didn't you tell her?

• 15:28Gary John Bishop?

  Because I'd went from being a player in my own family to becoming a spectator. I'd gone from being on the field, and I'd taken one too many knocks, and I thought, I'm coming at, and I didn't consciously do it, it's just kind of where I went. And so telling my mom that I loved her was, like it just, I remember being a kid and telling my mom I loved her, I remember holding her leg, and I remember holding her hand, and I remember all of that stuff, and then I just remember like me here, her there, and now I'm just gonna kind of observe the job she's doing. And it was not a great observation, it was not a great commentary.

• 16:05Lewis Howes?

  It was a judgment.

• 16:06Gary John Bishop?

  Big time, in my opinion, about what she should have been doing, how she should have been parenting me, and how I should be raised, and da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and I'm just a kid, which is all fine, but it had an impact.

• 16:17Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 16:18Gary John Bishop?

  And the impact was, I'm here, you're there, and never the twain shall meet.

• 16:21Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 16:22Gary John Bishop?

  When I realized, not only that, but how that had played out now, who I'd become, I realized, and this was a time in my life, and I used, I'd call my mom every week, but it was, you know, how you doing it? You know, the neighbor's dog's barking.

• 16:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 16:40Gary John Bishop?

  You know, the weather's terrible.

• 16:42Lewis Howes?

  There was no intimacy, there was no vulnerability, yeah.

• 16:44Gary John Bishop?

  Nothing, it was like a check, checking through the boxes. And I called her up, and I said, hey, how you doing? She goes, yeah, I'm good. And I said, I need to talk to you, she goes, okay, you know, she's completely indifferent to whatever the heck I'm saying. And I goes, I said to her, I'm sorry. And there was like a silence. She said, for what? And I said, I judged you.

• 17:08Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 17:09Gary John Bishop?

  For the way you raised me. She's silent. And then I said to her, I never knew what it was like for you.

• 17:17Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 17:19Gary John Bishop?

  She's still silent. And I said, I love you. And I could, like the last word, I'm getting moved by it right now, like the last words are coming out my mouth, and like my lips trembling, and she said, I love you too, baby.

• 17:35Lewis Howes?

  Wow, oh my gosh, did she tell you she loved you in between this time?

• 17:39Gary John Bishop?

  No, we had both had this kind of thing, you know?

• 17:42Lewis Howes?

  How old were you when this happened?

• 17:44Gary John Bishop?

  Forty.

• 17:45Lewis Howes?

  So you spent 28 years not telling her, wow.

• 17:49Gary John Bishop?

  And so it all, I'm like sobbing, I'm like, like it's all coming out, and I really got, like my job from that point, I got how I wasn't a loving man.

• 18:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 18:02Gary John Bishop?

  That was the truth. I wasn't a loving man. I could be your partner, but don't expect me to love you.

• 18:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 18:09Gary John Bishop?

  And then when that just started to gush out, like, now I could just freely love my wife, it was like the gates were open. And I, I started this revolution, and my family, it was crazy, I've got three older sisters, you know, and so I called them all up, I'm like, I haven't been telling you I love you, and I love you, and they're all like, what the hell's going on?

• 18:32Lewis Howes?

  Who are you?

• 18:33Gary John Bishop?

  What's going on with you? And I'm like, I, I just got, like I don't tell the people in my life who matter to me how much I truly love them, not like just, I love you, like, you know, truly love them. And a couple of my sisters, in fact, all my sisters initially were like, ye-

• 18:49Lewis Howes?

  Something's wrong with you, yeah.

• 18:50Gary John Bishop?

  Right, something's up. And one of my sisters actually said to me, I told her what happened to my mom, and she says, what are you on her side now?

• 18:56Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 18:57Gary John Bishop?

  Right?

• 18:58Lewis Howes?

  Man.

• 18:58Gary John Bishop?

  So I got, because there's this narrative, there's this story in my family, about who the good ones are, and who the bad ones are, and all this stuff, and I just said, no, I've, I've really got that I'm a loving man, like I wanna love people, I don't, I'm not interested in who's right anymore, I don't care.

• 19:16Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 19:16Gary John Bishop?

  And that I love you, and so one of my sisters was like, she would stop picking the phone up to me, right? And so, she didn't have a cellphone or anything, it was only her home phone, you know? And I remember like one time I called the woman next door, I called her neighbor, because I had that like an emergency contact, and I told her to go in and tell her there's a, there's an emergency, because she wouldn't pick the phone up to me, and she had to go in the neighborhood, she's like, yeah, I go, it's me, she's like, you know, what do you want? And so I told her at the time, I said, you know, you have no say in whether I love you or not, and you're not allowed to fall out with me over this.

• 19:53Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 19:54Gary John Bishop?

  And she was like dumbfounded, you know, she's like, what do you mean, I can't fall out with you? I'm like, no, it's not allowed, I love you, and that's it. And so now, after all that time, telling the people in my family that I love them, and them telling me that is a regular occurrence, and it spread through the family like wildfire. I, I literally, you know, I talk about it, like I started this love revolution in my family.

• 20:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:18Gary John Bishop?

  You know? And it's real for me now, it's like real for me with my wife, it's real for me with my children, it's real for me in my work, like I authentically love people, and it's not something I have to muster up, it's a self-expression.

• 20:32Lewis Howes?

  What shifted for you after that? What did you start to experience in your life in the last, I guess, 15 years, since you started that journey?

• 20:39Gary John Bishop?

  My life works.

• 20:40Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 20:41Gary John Bishop?

  It works, I'm guided by something, I'm not a skinbag of feelings, like there's some purpose to my life.

• 20:49Lewis Howes?

  Before, was there no purpose?

• 20:51Gary John Bishop?

  It's just hard work, you know?

• 20:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 20:53Gary John Bishop?

  Just work, work, work, work, work, work, work, but there's no me in it, there's only this identity that I've become. And the identity that you become as a human being is a function of all the little subtle decisions you made all the way there, so there's these little movements, you have no sense as a human being of consciously constructing this self.

• 21:14Gary John Bishop?

  But you did.

• 21:15Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, right.

• 21:17Gary John Bishop?

  That's the reality. You made this machine.

• 21:20Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 21:20Gary John Bishop?

  Now, you don't know you made it, but if you can do that kind of work where you start to see like, oh, I did that, I changed my thinking there, I did this, I did this, I've become this. When you're in that kind of thought process, there's nobody to blame.

• 21:36Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:36Gary John Bishop?

  It doesn't matter what happened. Like, it matters to the degree that it matters to you.

• 21:41Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:42Gary John Bishop?

  But if you're really interested in freedom, and I mean like legitimate.

• 21:46Lewis Howes?

  Inner peace, yeah.

• 21:48Gary John Bishop?

  If you're interested in freedom, you'll look at the incidents, okay? But what you should really be looking about what it was you decided after.

• 21:56Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:57Gary John Bishop?

  That's where it turned.

• 21:59Lewis Howes?

  The challenging thing is, most of us don't have the tools to to understand how to process them.

• 22:04Gary John Bishop?

  Right, right.

• 22:05Lewis Howes?

  Until we figure out those tools, and that might be breakdown after breakdown after breakdown, and might be, you know, getting injured or losing relationships, or loss of job over and over, or just feeling like, why is my life feeling stuck? And something's off consistently, where you're like, okay, I need to find some solutions. Unless we're taught this at an earlier age, it's like, we gotta go through this the hard way.

• 22:26Gary John Bishop?

  Yes, for sure. There's only two changes you'll ever make in your life. It's the ones that you've discovered for yourself, or the ones that you're forced to make.

• 22:35Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:36Gary John Bishop?

  That's it. There's nothing else.

• 22:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:38Gary John Bishop?

  It's either what you've seen for yourself, and what you're forced, it's kind of getting shoved in your face, right? Like, it's right there, which is a lot of my work. You know, I present people with something that you're either gonna try and escape from, or you're gonna push through. But you should know that if you're trying to escape from it, it's still there. You know, like, it's amazing how folks, when you confront something as serious as this, they will fight for their misery.

• 23:09Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 23:09Gary John Bishop?

  They'll fight for it. They will argue with you for it. Like, I'll say something like this, I'll say, it's not what happened to you, it's what you decided after. And they'll say, no, no, it's what happened to me. And I'll say, no, it's what you decided after. And they'll say, no, no, no, it's what happened to me. Because if that hadn't happened, then I wouldn't have had that thought after. And I'll say, well, no, there's fifty thousand thoughts you could have had after, you had that one.

• 23:31Lewis Howes?

  And you held on to it.

• 23:32Gary John Bishop?

  And you held on to it, and you constructed from there. The benefit of you seeing something like that is, oh, I made the beast.

• 23:42Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:43Gary John Bishop?

  Now, if I made the beast, then I can, at the very least, come to terms with the beast.

• 23:48Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:49Gary John Bishop?

  But I could create something else. Like, I have a profound ability to create who the heck I am. You can't get there until you confront and deal with the impact of who you've been. If you can't confront and deal with the impact of who you've been, then it's just like shellac on top of nonsense.

• 24:12Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 24:13Gary John Bishop?

  Like that, you'll never have the breakthrough that you really have to.

• 24:15Lewis Howes?

  How did you deal with the impact at that age?

• 24:18Gary John Bishop?

  Well, it was devastating, because it's carnage.

• 24:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:21Gary John Bishop?

  It's carnage, like, what did I do?

• 24:23Lewis Howes?

  Right. Who did I hurt, or how do I impact people in a negative way?

• 24:27Gary John Bishop?

  Right, right. And then, so, if you're not fully responsible in that stage of things, you'll take yourself down another rabbit hole. You gotta be like, you gotta kind of be flat about it. So, one of the ways that I did it is this whole notion of who's to blame. So, it's a massive part of our makeup as human beings. So, if you start with the idea that blame is the anchor to the past.

• 24:53Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 24:54Gary John Bishop?

  So, you're either blaming yourself, or somebody else.

• 24:58Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 24:59Gary John Bishop?

  And that thing, this thing about who's to blame, will ruin you. Like, it will ruin you.

• 25:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 25:08Gary John Bishop?

  Right? And I just got like, there's nothing to blame, there's no one to blame. Everybody was doing what they were doing at the time, given their logic, and I responded in a way that I responded, given my logic. I'm not making that okay.

• 25:23Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 25:23Gary John Bishop?

  I'm not making a case for any of that, I'm just getting, and that's what's so. And when I could get it that flat, like, that's what's so, I noticed there was no charger on it for me.

• 25:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 25:35Gary John Bishop?

  Like, nothing. Even people who have done quote-unquote, really bad things in my life, like, really bad things, that was their logic at the time, as flawed as it was, as messed up as it was.

• 25:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, not saying it's okay, not saying you wish you experienced it again.

• 25:48Gary John Bishop?

  Right, no. And, you know, like, I went through, like, a similar thing in my childhood, you know, where there was sexual abuse involved. It didn't happen, like, a ton of times, but it happened. And I look back and it like, when I could see that person's humanity, you know, I wasn't making an excuse for them, I'm not making that okay, but suddenly, like, they were no longer the devil.

• 26:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and I think it's, it's figuring it away, like you said, not being emotionally charged to a thought or a memory. Because when we are charged emotionally or triggered to a memory or an experience or an event, or we see something that reminds us of that, it pulls us back into fear as opposed to, you know, leading us into love.

• 26:28Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 26:29Lewis Howes?

  Leading us into a vision greater than the pain, or the suffering, or the hurt.

• 26:33Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 26:33Lewis Howes?

  And we have a decision every moment, do we want to be triggered by our past experiences, or do we want to be healed of the past experiences, and focus on a mission greater than the past?

• 26:43Gary John Bishop?

  Right, that's great. I mean, if you were to sit down and write all the stuff that happened, and it filled ten pages.

• 26:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:51Gary John Bishop?

  There's probably only three things in it that are what happened.

• 26:57Gary John Bishop?

  The rest of it is.

• 26:59Lewis Howes?

  Your interpretation of how.

• 27:00Gary John Bishop?

  Your extrapolation, your interpretation, the kind of juice that gets added to it. Most of what's got you.

• 27:07Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:08Gary John Bishop?

  Is all that stuff.

• 27:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 27:10Gary John Bishop?

  The what happened, the like, that thing, that thing, that thing.

• 27:13Lewis Howes?

  The story about what happened is what kind of holds us back.

• 27:17Gary John Bishop?

  Well, yeah, because, you know, you're inextricably linked to that language. So, however you've captured it for yourself, you're, and there's lots of different fields that would break this down for you, but the connection between what you say and how you feel is just there.

• 27:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:31Gary John Bishop?

  Right? And so, you are tied to all of that language, right? Like, I used to say, there was this kid at school who bullied me, and it was relentless, and it was assassin, and it was every other day, and it was cruel, and it was da-da-da-da-da-da-da, right? And then I went with, well, there was this kid who used to say things.

• 27:51Gary John Bishop?

  Which is just, because that's actually what happened.

• 27:54Lewis Howes?

  You can either believe what he was saying, or you don't have to believe it.

• 27:57Gary John Bishop?

  All the damage was in how that was kind of captured for me in language.

• 28:01Lewis Howes?

  Yes, how you held on to it.

• 28:03Gary John Bishop?

  Very good. So, then I got to the point where, like, I really realized how attached I'd become to the narrative. Like, attached to the narrative, because it justified this. That narrative justified and explained this. And so, I was no longer able to get free of this, because I was so attached to that narrative. And so, when I broke that down for myself, and was able to get a little bit of space about it, and really bring a sense of, of nothingness to it, like.

• 28:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 28:37Gary John Bishop?

  Like, you know, as cruel as it might sound, so what?

• 28:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 28:40Gary John Bishop?

  You know?

• 28:41Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think it's so hard for us to be a hundred percent authentic in relationships?

• 28:46Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah. If you were to ask somebody about your characteristics, like, your personality, for instance, what your strengths might be, that's what you've come across, that you feel as if is a good machinery to make it in this life. Right? So, this is like, you know, I'm, maybe I'm charismatic, maybe I'm hardworking, maybe I'm analytical, maybe I'm, you know, competitive, maybe I'm these ways. Somewhere along the lines of your life, you realized, this would be a good thing. And this gets me a little further forward.

• 29:17Lewis Howes?

  It's my resolve, yeah.

• 29:18Gary John Bishop?

  Very good. So, so then there I am in life, being this way, and the more successful it is, the more I'm gonna be this way. So, now I'm more and more and more like this, to the point where there's no distinction between this thing and me, like, we're the same now. It's this, there's no line anywhere. It's just all how you would explain yourself now. What you also realized, though, was that those ways don't work everywhere.

• 29:41Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:42Gary John Bishop?

  And so, what people call imposter syndrome is basically just the realization that your, your shtick don't stick.

• 29:51Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:52Gary John Bishop?

  Like, you're like, my stuff don't work here. And so, people are like, oh, I feel like I'm an imposter. Well, well, you are in many ways, but not in the way you might think. You are an imposter, there's a you there, doing another you. But behind that you really is you.

• 30:12Lewis Howes?

  So how do we get behind that you? How do we break down the thing that's been working for so long? But maybe won't continue to work in the next evolution?

• 30:20Gary John Bishop?

  If I'm for instance competitive, right? And it's a trait of mine. And it's stood me in good stead. And I've created a life from that and maybe some success from that. Or in my case, hardworking, right? But it could be other things, could be analytical, it could be. And this is obviously a kind of, these are ways of being, this is an ontological element, right? Or the element of being a human being. So if I'm competitive, I can point to all the places where that's really done me, done me well, right?

• 30:51Lewis Howes?

  Sports and

• 30:52Gary John Bishop?

  Maybe, or maybe I'm in sales, right? Or maybe I'm, you know, like I'm building my own business, right? I mean, these are, this is a strength here, right? Yeah, try taking that home.

• 31:02Lewis Howes?

  And relationships, it doesn't work.

• 31:03Gary John Bishop?

  It's a crap show, right? Like it's like, this is not going to work for me.

• 31:08Lewis Howes?

  You know what's fascinating? I would say I defined my identity, a piece of my identity, most of my life as a competitor.

• 31:15Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 31:15Lewis Howes?

  Right, being in sports.

• 31:16Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 31:16Lewis Howes?

  And using sports as a tool to make myself feel better, to prove the bullies wrong from childhood, all those things and say, I'm gonna make something of myself.

• 31:25Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 31:25Lewis Howes?

  I'm gonna win at all costs in sports and things like that. I started early in my twenties to translate that into business. And it worked in a sense.

• 31:35Gary John Bishop?

  Yes.

• 31:35Lewis Howes?

  But it left me feeling more, I don't know, against people than it was with people.

• 31:42Gary John Bishop?

  All right, can I ask you a question?

• 31:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:43Gary John Bishop?

  Right, so there you are. And you were having an experience that this competitiveness actually wasn't working for you.

• 31:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 31:54Gary John Bishop?

  Right?

• 31:54Lewis Howes?

  It was getting, it was getting results in some way, but not results in the other ways.

• 31:57Gary John Bishop?

  Right, so you're starting to see something there though, that's really interesting to me. And that is here you are being yourself, but hold on a minute. Is this myself?

• 32:09Lewis Howes?

  And why am I suffering inside and why am I going through these challenges?

• 32:11Gary John Bishop?

  Right, so I want to know is, what's the thing that's suffering then? Like what's that?

• 32:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I guess it was a, the identity that this isn't working, like who I am or the way I'm being, isn't working fully. It's working partially to get certain results, but it's not creating peace inside.

• 32:30Gary John Bishop?

  All right, so I would flip it the other way. I would flip it the other way, look at it from the other direction. That is it's fine for this competitive expression, but not okay for you.

• 32:41Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 32:42Gary John Bishop?

  And it's the you, that you, that I'm interested in. I'm interested in that. Because that thing right there, what matters to that thing? And so you actually pointed to it. So the thing that mattered to you then was people.

• 32:57Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 32:58Gary John Bishop?

  But you see how like that competitiveness was now the barrier between you

• 33:03Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 33:04Gary John Bishop?

  And people.

• 33:05Lewis Howes?

  And when I learned the word collaboration and fully like, was like, oh, you can thrive and accomplish and improve and make an impact through collaboration.

• 33:17Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 33:18Lewis Howes?

  More than through competition.

• 33:19Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 33:20Lewis Howes?

  And you can feel more connected through collaboration and more, and you can experience more love and

• 33:25Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 33:25Lewis Howes?

  Support as opposed to it's me versus the world type of feeling.

• 33:29Gary John Bishop?

  I really just got you there. I just really got you, like your your trajectory, I really got it, like, that was, what a burden you've had to carry.

• 33:40Lewis Howes?

  It was a weight for so long, because it was working in a sense of, it was getting results. But then at the inside, I was like, why am I still suffering or feeling pain or feeling stress or anxiety, or why can't I sleep at night?

• 33:52Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 33:53Lewis Howes?

  So it wasn't until I hit about thirty, when I learned the idea of collaboration.

• 33:56Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 33:57Lewis Howes?

  And shifted from, I need to be number one and the best and grow the fastest and the biggest to I want everyone else to shine

• 34:04Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 34:05Lewis Howes?

  With me.

• 34:06Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 34:06Lewis Howes?

  And how can we all rise together? And that's when I started this show and I said, I'm gonna put the light on everyone else.

• 34:11Gary John Bishop?

  Right. What's interesting about what you're saying though, is what, what's now driving you is who you really are.

• 34:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Service.

• 34:19Gary John Bishop?

  Which always comes down to that.

• 34:20Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 34:21Gary John Bishop?

  I don't care who you are, what you're doing. Everyone's purpose is to be of use.

• 34:26Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:27Gary John Bishop?

  Can I be of use?

• 34:28Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 34:28Gary John Bishop?

  Right, like can I, will I die and say I made a difference?

• 34:32Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 34:33Gary John Bishop?

  Right, and I don't care what you're doing, how you're doing it. If, if you can't take all the layers away and get to that and you need to get to it.

• 34:40Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:41Gary John Bishop?

  Because it shapes everything you're doing.

• 34:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:44Gary John Bishop?

  And if, and you know, to use a well-used term, the rest is kind of like the ego. Ego wants what it wants and what it needs and what and you might get some success with that, but you will never be happy with that.

• 34:58Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:58Gary John Bishop?

  You'll never be settled with that. And it's your job as a human being to actually disappear. And I really mean it like that, like to disappear your addiction to that.

• 35:08Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 35:09Gary John Bishop?

  And to get grounded in you. Where's your true north? Like where are you, what's your expression? If you take away all the fear, if you take away all the armor that you've built.

• 35:21Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 35:22Gary John Bishop?

  And realize that what needs to get out is way more powerful than anything you've, you've put up to protect yourself.

• 35:29Lewis Howes?

  Right, what needs to get out, meaning what?

• 35:31Gary John Bishop?

  You.

• 35:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 35:32Gary John Bishop?

  The you that you started with. See, look, when you started this life, like all human beings like me, like everybody watching or listening to this right now.

• 35:43Gary John Bishop?

  If you go around a two-year-old or a three-year-old or a five-year-old, they're tremendously robust.

• 35:47Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 35:48Gary John Bishop?

  Like robust, like they get upset by things, but then they're like, okay, next thing, right? Like when you get to thirty, you're like wounded, like, oh, for the love of God, you know what I mean? But when you're little like that, like if you've ever been around kids that are like two, ontologically, that is, their self-expression, their ways of being are vast.

• 36:08Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 36:09Gary John Bishop?

  And they can be lots of different ways, like, and it's crazy, you want some like flip from one and you're like, oh my God, that's manic, you know? But you used to be that way. You used to be that, like fully there, over time, one decision after another. It's getting narrower and narrower and narrower, such that by the time you reach your late teens, you're pretty much just heading there now.

• 36:32Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:33Gary John Bishop?

  And a lot of what I've done with people is to get them back to that spot

• 36:38Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:39Gary John Bishop?

  Of like unabashed aliveness. You know, like I'm just here to be alive.

• 36:45Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:46Gary John Bishop?

  Which is what the philosopher Alan Watts said, you know, the, the meaning of life is to be alive. There's nothing else, it's just to go and run with this meatbag, you know?

• 36:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:57Gary John Bishop?

  And make it do some wild things. And then it's over. You know, and you know, people have got their views about the rest of that stuff, but

• 37:03Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 37:04Gary John Bishop?

  But really for me, that's it, it's like to realize first the constraint. What am I constrained by, what am I locked in by? And it's not people, it's not circumstances, it's not that, it's you. What about you? And then beyond that is a life of wonder. And it's not like it's all like, oh, you know, this is amazing and I'm amazing and you're amazing. No, there's still trials and tribulations and all that other stuff and problems and yeah, that's all part of the deal. But what's different is who's now doing it.

• 37:33Lewis Howes?

  Right. Who's doing it?

• 37:35Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 37:35Lewis Howes?

  And how are you showing up differently?

• 37:36Gary John Bishop?

  Right, very good. How am I showing up?

• 37:38Lewis Howes?

  Which part of you is showing up?

• 37:40Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 37:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:40Gary John Bishop?

  Is it the junk or something else?

• 37:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly. You've been in a, you know, you've been in this marriage and relationship for twenty-six years, right? How long were you dating before?

• 37:50Gary John Bishop?

  No, I, I literally asked my wife to marry me after just a matter of weeks.

• 37:54Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 37:55Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 37:55Lewis Howes?

  Then you got married that year?

• 37:56Gary John Bishop?

  A year later, we waited a year, but

• 37:59Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious then, you've been in the relationship for a long time, obviously twenty-seven years total now. I'm assuming you've met a lot of people who've been married and who've been divorced.

• 38:07Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 38:08Lewis Howes?

  And I'm also assuming you probably have some friends who've been married for twenty, thirty, forty years that you're in, in contact with. What do you see is the difference maker for healthy, long-lasting love?

• 38:22Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 38:23Lewis Howes?

  For decades versus those that stay married a long time but aren't happy?

• 38:27Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 38:27Lewis Howes?

  And those that eventually get divorced?

• 38:29Gary John Bishop?

  I think the statistics are something like fifty percent, right? So fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce. The, the illusion is, is that the fifty percent that are left are happy.

• 38:38Lewis Howes?

  No, they're not.

• 38:39Gary John Bishop?

  No, they're not, right?

• 38:40Lewis Howes?

  Maybe fifteen percent or something.

• 38:41Gary John Bishop?

  Maybe, right? And we don't really know, I mean, like if you hadn't polled everybody, you might be even shocked.

• 38:47Lewis Howes?

  It's five percent or

• 38:48Gary John Bishop?

  Maybe, right?

• 38:49Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, why are they so challenging to, to be healthy and happy long-term for so many people?

• 38:53Gary John Bishop?

  Well, I think part of the deal is the bar's very low, so the bar's something like, we get along.

• 38:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 38:59Gary John Bishop?

  Like that's it, I've got t-shirts I get along with, you know?

• 39:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:04Gary John Bishop?

  So then what's it really all about? If that's the struggle, if the struggle is to get along, like I said, that's a very low bar.

• 39:12Lewis Howes?

  Get along with lots of people.

• 39:13Gary John Bishop?

  Right, right, I mean, I get along with a person who, you know, makes my coffee at Starbucks, right? You know, I mean, but really what I've found to be the case, and it's not, I'm not looking at like particular people for examples, right? But I'm gonna look at like, what keeps a human being involved in anything, right? So like, why does somebody, like, so I love to play guitar, why? Right, why? Because I engage with that thing, I'm curious about that thing. I want to get better at that thing. I like how it feels when I accomplish something in that thing. If you take that to any aspect of your life, the same thing holds true. So my relationship with my wife is a function of who I am in it. And I need to keep bringing that to it.

• 39:57Gary John Bishop?

  And that's, there's no time when this is a done deal. You know, I have to keep showing up here, not for like, for longevity, which is I think where a lot of people get messed up. People look at the relationship like, well, I can't do this for the rest of your life, rest of my life. And I'm like, well, you don't have to, you just have to do it right. Right, like, right, it's like being on a diet. I don't need to go on a diet for three months, I just need to be on it right now.

• 40:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Gary John Bishop?

  And it is moment to moment to moment to moment to moment, because that's really all you have. But so what I do notice is that the areas of life where you are flourishing most, there is some profound relationship you have between what you say and what you do. There's a profundity at play.

• 40:39Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:39Gary John Bishop?

  So if you look at any area you're successful, you are literally doing what you said you would do.

• 40:45Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:45Gary John Bishop?

  Even when what? I don't feel like it. Right, marriage is the same. Marriage is the same, marriage, and I talk about this in the book, I say, especially in the western world, but you look at, and I'm using marriage as kind of a model, but applies to all relationships.

• 41:02Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 41:03Gary John Bishop?

  But in a marriage, there's this ceremony, this coming together.

• 41:06Lewis Howes?

  Where you make an agreement, a commitment.

• 41:08Gary John Bishop?

  Very good.

• 41:09Lewis Howes?

  And you use words.

• 41:10Gary John Bishop?

  And it's a vow.

• 41:11Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 41:11Gary John Bishop?

  Right, and, and I talk about the bankruptcy of the vow in a marriage, because nobody vows anything anymore.

• 41:17Lewis Howes?

  Or they vow it, but they don't live up to the.

• 41:18Gary John Bishop?

  Well, because they don't have a relationship to a vow. So we're not going around our life going, I vow to meet you at three o'clock.

• 41:25Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 41:26Gary John Bishop?

  Nobody's saying that, but 200 years ago, when you vowed something, the American Declaration of Independence is just people vowing. They brought something, any existence on the strength of what they said.

• 41:37Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 41:38Gary John Bishop?

  There was no fighting, well, there was some fighting, but they created a nation from words.

• 41:45Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 41:45Gary John Bishop?

  Right, I mean, that's what that is, that's like, oh, it was a declaration, right? That we're declaring we're independent. What would you mean, you're independent? Well, we just declared it, so we are.

• 41:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:54Gary John Bishop?

  And we vow our lives and our sacred honor. And most of those people gave, literally gave their life for that. They literally gave their life to that promise. I bet they were scared.

• 42:08Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 42:08Gary John Bishop?

  I bet they were intimidated, but their word was greater than that experience of themselves. That's the same in any area of your life, but you have to start realizing that what you say is a big deal. And what you say to yourself is a big deal. A lifetime of constantly bending, shaping, and breaking your word to yourself will leave you with a diminished relationship to you. You'll never do great things, because somewhere in there, you think you're full of it. Because you've broken your word to yourself so many times.

• 42:39Lewis Howes?

  You're out of integrity with yourself.

• 42:40Gary John Bishop?

  Very good, there's no, there's no power to those words anymore.

• 42:43Lewis Howes?

  What happens when we are out of integrity so consistently with ourself, or even one time with our word, what happens to ourself?

• 42:49Gary John Bishop?

  Well, I mean, you gotta start relating to what you say like it's important.

• 42:54Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:55Gary John Bishop?

  Just like it's important, start there. Like, I said I was gonna, and this is important, not because the thing's important, but what's, what I said to myself and my relationship to that thing is what's important.

• 43:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 43:10Gary John Bishop?

  So, any area in life, like I said earlier, where you're powerful or successful, you'll see you have a very strong relationship to what you said, very strong one. Sometimes.

• 43:20Lewis Howes?

  You're committed to that thing.

• 43:21Gary John Bishop?

  There's just no question for you, like, it's on like Donkey Kong, you know, you're just doing it.

• 43:26Lewis Howes?

  Why is it easier in some areas of life than it is in others, to be consistent with what you say?

• 43:31Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 43:32Lewis Howes?

  And what you want to do?

• 43:32Gary John Bishop?

  Right, and that's eventually, it's great that you kind of put it that way, because that's the path you'll follow.

• 43:37Lewis Howes?

  Uh-huh.

• 43:38Gary John Bishop?

  But the real strength of you is when you can say something, like, for instance, when I was in my mid 40s, you know, I said, I'm gonna produce authentic wealth.

• 43:50Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference between authentic and inauthentic?

• 43:52Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah, I'm doing it for that, not for anything about me.

• 43:55Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:56Gary John Bishop?

  Which was wild for me, because everything up to that point about money was all about fixing something about me or my wife. And I was just doing it to see if I could do it, which I'd never done before. And I'd never fully given it that attention, like, just for that. And so I put a number on it, which was a crazy number for that time in my life, like, crazy number, like.

• 44:19Lewis Howes?

  In your 40s or what, how much you want to make?

• 44:20Gary John Bishop?

  I was 45, yeah, and, and I was, and I said, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna use my 50s for that, and I'm gonna produce it, right? I produced it by the time I was 52, and I only really started when I was 48. So I did it really fast.

• 44:35Lewis Howes?

  The amount of money that you want to make.

• 44:37Gary John Bishop?

  The amount of money that I said, but, but it was wild, because I had no attachment to it.

• 44:41Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean?

• 44:41Gary John Bishop?

  Like, there was no emotion in it for me, there was no, like, desperation, no, like, I gotta do it, and nothing, no burning. It was just like, I said I was gonna do it, and I'm doing it.

• 44:49Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:50Gary John Bishop?

  So I ended up with this really kind of flat relationship to, between my words and my actions. Like, it was flat, like, there were days when I felt like doing it, and there were days when I didn't feel like doing it. But the interesting thing for me was, when I declared it, when I said I was gonna do it, like, the Declaration of Independence, I had no idea how I was gonna do something like that.

• 45:10Lewis Howes?

  No, you're just.

• 45:11Gary John Bishop?

  Like, I don't know how you even, I'm not a money guy, you know, I'm not. But now it's game on, because I created the top of the mountain in my speaking. So I spoke the top of the mountain and the existence.

• 45:23Lewis Howes?

  And then you figured out how along the way.

• 45:25Gary John Bishop?

  But that's now the game now. The game, people say, well, you know, how do you even do such a thing? Well, that's the first question. How do you even do such a thing, you know? And, and you might have to engage with that question for two years, or three years, or four years, but you've got to be actively resolving some of that stuff for yourself. Well, it's the same in love. Like, I'm committed to the most loving, passionate, and adventurous relationship that's possible. That's the top of the mountain. The top of the mountain speaks to me every day. It's, it's, I can tell whether I'm walking that path or not. That influences this. It's not even necessarily about that, it's more about what that does with this. Well, how does that shape me today?

• 46:10Gary John Bishop?

  How does that, am I lining up with what I said or not? And if I'm not, I might have a lot of reasons, excuses, and justifications for that, but at the same time, am I gonna treat that like it matters to me? Or am I gonna just be like, well, you know, so far, so good, or it's been a tough week, or, you know, there's a lot in my mind?

• 46:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:32Gary John Bishop?

  Or you're being a jerk, why am I loving with you, because I said I would?

• 46:36Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:37Gary John Bishop?

  And that's what matters to me.

• 46:39Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 46:39Gary John Bishop?

  That's what matters, that I said I would matters to me.

• 46:45Lewis Howes?

  Someone once told me that the key to his success in relationships was, 80% of it was who you choose.

• 46:54Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 46:54Lewis Howes?

  80% of the relationship's success is, you know, how you match well with the person you're choosing.

• 46:59Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 47:00Lewis Howes?

  You only spent, I guess, a year with the person that you chose.

• 47:03Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 47:04Lewis Howes?

  Did you know that when you were choosing this person? Do you were like, okay, I feel like we're gonna be in a great alignment with our values and our vision?

• 47:10Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 47:11Lewis Howes?

  And our lifestyle? Or was it more of just a feeling that you felt connected to this person and you've decided?

• 47:16Gary John Bishop?

  I did what everybody does, right? What everybody does is they get in a relationship, because they feel as if this person resolves something about themselves.

• 47:24Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:25Gary John Bishop?

  That's what I did. And so there was something about this woman that I thought, wow, like, being with her, everything seems right. Like, I feel good about me.

• 47:34Lewis Howes?

  I didn't feel good, it's not about her.

• 47:36Gary John Bishop?

  Right, I like, like, there's something getting fixed here.

• 47:39Lewis Howes?

  Uh-huh.

• 47:39Gary John Bishop?

  So, no, I'm, I'm not that pragmatic.

• 47:42Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 47:42Gary John Bishop?

  And I think most people aren't that pragmatic, and I think there's an illusion out there that somehow you'll find the one.

• 47:48Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:49Gary John Bishop?

  And really, I feel as if the job is to explore what's possible between you and this person, whoever that person is, and their potential and your potential, and so it was less about having, like, finding something that matched up with me, which I, I don't know if that would work for me, might work for some people, but I don't know if that would work for me. What was really captivating for me at the time was, being with her had me feel a lot better about me. And I think, I really fundamentally believe that that's what most people go into relationships for.

• 48:22Lewis Howes?

  Is that the right thing to look at, or is it?

• 48:24Gary John Bishop?

  No, that's an absolute.

• 48:25Lewis Howes?

  It's a recipe, because then you're always relying on that person to make you happier.

• 48:29Gary John Bishop?

  Well, because whatever that thing is that they satisfy for you is something you haven't sorted out for yourself yet.

• 48:34Lewis Howes?

  Right, and so eventually, you're gonna have to do that. Otherwise, you're always needing that from someone else.

• 48:40Gary John Bishop?

  Right, so you go in there, and they're the solution, and you end it with the notion that they were the problem.

• 48:47Lewis Howes?

  Ah, wow.

• 48:50Gary John Bishop?

  And what's consistent in all of that is you.

• 48:52Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 48:53Gary John Bishop?

  I mean, I don't know if anybody's ever noticed this, but in every crappy relationship you've ever had, it's got one common denominator.

• 48:59Lewis Howes?

  That's you.

• 49:00Gary John Bishop?

  Right, it's always you.

• 49:02Lewis Howes?

  It's a big awakening I had after my previous relationship ended. I was like, man, it's been 10, 15 years of relationships that, that, that started, and then that crumbled in some way, or that fell apart. And the, the core of all those things was me.

• 49:17Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 49:17Lewis Howes?

  Was my choices, was my getting into, attracting those relationships, was this commitment to those relationships, was the unwinding of those commitments, those relationships. And so why was I choosing these types of relationships? What was unresolved within me that I get to take a look at now? Or I'm gonna keep repeating in this pattern until I address the thing inside of me?

• 49:40Gary John Bishop?

  Right, so what's great about your kind of pathway, if you like, you can't, first of all, you've got to be able to look at that distinct from blind, right? And I know a lot of people just heard what you said and thought, well, but what if it is them, right? I know a lot of people, people sitting there right now going, dang it, I did say that to myself. And I say, well, if you take away, like, who's the blind?

• 50:03Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 50:03Gary John Bishop?

  And so sometimes people say stuff like, why do I keep attracting these kinds of people? And I say, well, what if it's not attraction? What if you are literally looking for them? What if it's, you're seeking something about that person that initially solves what you're dealing with, right? But will allow it to keep perpetuating?

• 50:25Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:26Gary John Bishop?

  Like, it keeps showing up and showing up. I call that an identity relationship. There's something about you, and it's the same for the other person.

• 50:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 50:36Gary John Bishop?

  That when you get past all the stuff, whatever's incomplete will keep getting activated there, or keep showing up. So when you, when you start to see it like, oh, these are just two human beings, doing what human beings do, then it's, it's not personal.

• 50:55Gary John Bishop?

  Which is radical when you get it like that, like it's not personal. It's not personally them, personally me, like these are just two beings trying to work this out and what work what out? Well, essentially work themselves up.

• 51:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:09Gary John Bishop?

  So that's why I insist with people, the greatest work you'll ever do, you'll ever do is to get complete with your first 20 years of life.

• 51:20Lewis Howes?

  So true.

• 51:21Gary John Bishop?

  First 20 years, because everything after that is a reflection of it. I spent 20, I spent 26 years in Glasgow. 26 years, I've been longer here.

• 51:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 51:32Gary John Bishop?

  And I still identify with that like it's me, but I've been longer here. And it's some of the colloquialisms and the traditions and the, like I identify with that because it became so imprinted. You know, and in my second book, I talked about you're the little magic sponge. And you, you're, you're, you're not soaking up all of life, you're soaking up the bits. And then when you hit about 20, that little sponge just hardens. And whatever's in there, that's it.

• 52:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:04Gary John Bishop?

  It's in there. And that's what you use.

• 52:08Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 52:08Gary John Bishop?

  All that logic. And until you awaken to that and realize that all of that that's there is really only a potential you.

• 52:18Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 52:19Gary John Bishop?

  There's so much more, if you think about it like um quantum physics. Right, like multiple universes, endless universes all happening at the same time, multiple potentials. Well, that's every second of your life. Every second of your life, there's a myriad of potential yous that could be talking right now. And what you typically do is the you that you did the second before and the second before and the second, and so it perpetuates.

• 52:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:49Gary John Bishop?

  Until you get aware, until you start to be like, oh, I'm not stuck with this, I could literally be somebody else when?

• 52:56Lewis Howes?

  Right now, yeah.

• 52:57Gary John Bishop?

  Right now, I could be somebody else, right now I could say something else.

• 53:00Lewis Howes?

  So how many things did you realize in your first 20 years of life that you needed to deal with or face? Or integrate a healing journey?

• 53:09Gary John Bishop?

  I think all of it.

• 53:10Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 53:11Gary John Bishop?

  I really think all of it, I think I had to come to terms with, like when I was really young, I felt as if I was too small.

• 53:16Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 53:17Gary John Bishop?

  Built in underneath with that was I'm not strong.

• 53:20Lewis Howes?

  Right, I'm weak, I'm not enough, I'm being picked on, I'm yeah.

• 53:24Gary John Bishop?

  So there's all of that.

• 53:24Lewis Howes?

  And then I'm not lovable and then.

• 53:26Gary John Bishop?

  Then there's a whole, and then for me it was I'm not smart enough.

• 53:29Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm, that was mine too.

• 53:30Gary John Bishop?

  And I'll never be smart enough, so, see that's the thing with these things. At that part of your life, it's not that I'm not lovable, or I'm not smart enough, or I'm not strong enough. It's that I'll never be that way.

• 53:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 53:41Gary John Bishop?

  I'll never be that way.

• 53:43Lewis Howes?

  It seems daunting, like you'll.

• 53:44Gary John Bishop?

  Right, right. So all of your persona and your personality is designed for you to overcome that.

• 53:50Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:51Gary John Bishop?

  But that can't go away. Because if that goes away, if you've based your whole personality on that.

• 53:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, your identity is based on that.

• 54:00Gary John Bishop?

  Now, now you're just facing a crisis because now it's like everything that I base myself on, what if it's not true, then who am I? And people go nuts with that stuff. And I say, well, take a breath and think of it like who you are is a moment of time.

• 54:18Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 54:19Gary John Bishop?

  And in any moment of time, there's the possibility of you expressing something new that you've never expressed before.

• 54:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 54:27Gary John Bishop?

  Something that's not based on anything other than the moment you're in. It's not based on a previous logic, it's not based, it's like literally an opportunity for you to show up as something new of your own creation. Everybody has a possibility, everybody has the opportunity for that. And it is a way of living life, it's, and it's not like, oh, this guy's found the secret to everything, no. I'm a human being too. I'm wired a certain way. It's there now.

• 54:57Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 54:58Gary John Bishop?

  The question is how aware of that am I? And how responsible can I be for that playing out in my life? Am I gonna own that or is that gonna own me?

• 55:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:10Gary John Bishop?

  And that's uh, that's, that's the space we all wanna be in, it's a, it's a space called choice.

• 55:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:15Gary John Bishop?

  And it's a real choice.

• 55:16Lewis Howes?

  What do you wish you would have done differently in the first few years of your relationship? With your wife, would you have had different conversations? Would you have created different agreements? Uh, to cause less kind of friction or pain or stress in the first decade, I guess, until you started to unwind your identity and tap more into this loving being as opposed to this hardworking being that cared for her?

• 55:39Gary John Bishop?

  Well, in the first few years of my life, it was very passionate. So I was, I was crazy about this girl, you know, like it was very passionate and this was a time in my life when I was a musician, so you know, I'm playing in a band. And there's this beautiful woman who loves me. You know, like life is.

• 55:56Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 55:57Gary John Bishop?

  Life is good, man, like, you know, we, we've got three sons now, but the first eight years of our marriage, it was just my wife and I just having a brilliant time together. So this is great. And we were like the antithesis to like married couples, you know, we were like happening, you know, this is all great. But now when I look back on that, there really was no luck down the road. There was no like, what's this about? You know, it's just, it was all very much riding that particular roller coaster.

• 56:24Lewis Howes?

  Living in the moment of fun and adventure.

• 56:27Gary John Bishop?

  The problem was nothing was getting created.

• 56:30Lewis Howes?

  Ah.

• 56:30Gary John Bishop?

  There was no, this is what we're up to.

• 56:33Lewis Howes?

  There's no vision coming to life.

• 56:34Gary John Bishop?

  Right, and but that was in a very personal level, like there was no, there was no thought in my head like, so where does this go? You know, it was just like, well, let's see, you know, as there shouldn't be, by the way, when you're in your twenties and thirties, there's no like um, what would it be like when I'm in my forties or my fifties or my sixties with this woman? You know, it was all just about making my way through where I was. The, the brick wall that I had, like I said a little earlier, was mid to late thirties and I'm like, I don't work anymore.

• 57:03Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 57:04Gary John Bishop?

  Like this.

• 57:05Lewis Howes?

  How did you know you weren't working? Was it a feeling, was it a stress, was it a lack of mission or purpose, was it a lack of love for yourself? How did you know like I'm not working?

• 57:15Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah, there was this kind of very fundamental experience of dissatisfaction, like no matter what I did. Hmm. Doesn't matter what I do.

• 57:23Lewis Howes?

  And the results and the success, it wasn't, you weren't satisfied?

• 57:26Gary John Bishop?

  It's funny because, and there was kind of earlier parts of my life, and I, and I assert this is true for all human beings. You think the next thing is gonna solve it.

• 57:35Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 57:36Gary John Bishop?

  And then you get there and the problem's still there.

• 57:39Lewis Howes?

  And you're like.

• 57:39Gary John Bishop?

  And you might not fully have fleshed out that problem yet, but you know it's there. Like if you look back at the accomplishments of your life, like when you had them going for it, you're like, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. And then you hit it and you're like.

• 57:54Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, now what, yeah.

• 57:56Gary John Bishop?

  Right, now what, right, now what?

• 57:58Lewis Howes?

  So I don't feel the thing.

• 58:00Gary John Bishop?

  The next thing, you do six of them.

• 58:03Lewis Howes?

  Like huh, I'm not feeling what I was supposed to be feeling.

• 58:05Gary John Bishop?

  Right, how, how come I'm not feeling it? Because it never resolves whatever the thing was. And so if there was anything I wish I'd really identified, and, and I don't mean this from a space of regret, I really don't. But it would have been kind of neat to identify the hole that I was trying to fill. You know, it would have been neat to see what I'm doing. I'm just happy that I did identify, it's, people go through their whole life and never, there's no introspection.

• 58:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 58:32Gary John Bishop?

  There's no like, and introspection is a funny thing, cause you can do too much of that too. Right, you can go too deep into your belly button, right?

• 58:39Lewis Howes?

  You need to just kind of relax sometimes and live life.

• 58:41Gary John Bishop?

  Right, you gotta be like, well, it's kind of like, the way I've always related to it since I started to work on myself is, okay, that's a good little insight. How am I gonna use this?

• 58:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 58:52Gary John Bishop?

  So I'm always using it for some thing in my life, for some good in my, in my life, or, or the people that I'm at the impact. Cause you can get, you can start to kind of get off on that, like, oh, that's a great discovery, oh yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But it doesn't actually show up in the reality of your life, you gotta make it show up. Yeah, I guess that's the only real thing, like what was the hole I was trying to fill?

• 59:13Lewis Howes?

  Cause if you could have done that earlier, then what would you have done in those first 10 years?

• 59:17Gary John Bishop?

  There's that kind of forceful life that you have when you're 20. You know, there's a, which gets you by.

• 59:23Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 59:24Gary John Bishop?

  It gets you overcome a lot of hills, you know, a lot of mountains. There's just a kind of forward trajectory that maybe I'd have used it for something else, you know, maybe it would have been, but, but then when I look back, I think the context that I choose for that time now, when I look back on it is like I really had to go through the darkness to realize that, that that wasn't the light.

• 59:47Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 59:47Gary John Bishop?

  Because when you're in that, you think this is the, like I'm going somewhere.

• 59:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 59:51Gary John Bishop?

  You know, and then there's a point where you're like, I'm going nowhere. I'm going nowhere.

• 59:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 59:57Gary John Bishop?

  Um, and so the context that I choose for that now is it was a brilliant learning process for me, real life learning process.

• 1:00:07Lewis Howes?

  I told you before that I always wanted to, in relationships, start a therapeutic coaching, counseling

• 1:00:15Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16Lewis Howes?

  experience in the beginning of a relationship as opposed to two, three, five years in when there's some challenges and let's try to solve something or resolve it and get back to a place of love and peace. And so I'm creating that in my current relationship. It's a beautiful thing because there's not like an issue or a problem.

• 1:00:32Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 1:00:33Lewis Howes?

  And I was asking our coach, I was like, "How many people come to you when there's no issues?" She was like, "It almost never happens."

• 1:00:39Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 1:00:39Lewis Howes?

  It's always when there's like a big breakdown or something.

• 1:00:41Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:42Lewis Howes?

  And so it's kind of build this foundation from the beginning. It's trying to learn from my mistakes of the past 15 years and do it in a different way.

• 1:00:47Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:48Lewis Howes?

  Approach in a different way. How do you wish you would have approached it differently? Or how did you do it that was successful for you? That you would recommend to someone going into their 40s or even in their 20s going into their 30s? But a new decade, how would you approach it?

• 1:01:02Gary John Bishop?

  You've got to make it about something.

• 1:01:04Lewis Howes?

  Like a mission.

• 1:01:05Gary John Bishop?

  It's got to be about something. If it's not about something, you're wasting your time. It's got to be about something, right? And I think that's a great way to split up any decades like that. And you can start your decade at 33.

• 1:01:16Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:01:17Gary John Bishop?

  But if you make it about something, like this is the decade of, right? Personal discovery. This is the decade of making a difference. That's the decade, like for me was authentic wealth, right? For that decade.

• 1:01:29Lewis Howes?

  In your 40s?

• 1:01:30Gary John Bishop?

  My 40s was all about making a difference. This is about my life being about somebody other than me.

• 1:01:36Lewis Howes?

  In your 40s?

• 1:01:37Gary John Bishop?

  In my 40s. And I devoted myself to that, like, and I still do, right?

• 1:01:43Lewis Howes?

  What was the 50s then?

• 1:01:44Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah, we don't, so the 50s was supposed to be about this authentic wealth, which I

• 1:01:48Lewis Howes?

  You did.

• 1:01:49Gary John Bishop?

  scooted through that in two years, you know what I mean?

• 1:01:51Lewis Howes?

  So in your 40s, did you build authentic wealth then?

• 1:01:53Gary John Bishop?

  No, no, it was, I was already in the middle, I'd already said. So it was like the kind of middle of my 40s, tailing it out, setting half. And I'm like, "My 50s has got to be about authentic wealth." Because I'd done so much work on myself. I saw so much of what this identity wanted to do that was inauthentic. It was to fix the identity. It wasn't about me, it was about it. And so then, to say to myself, "I'm going to make my 50s about this." And it was radical because when I took away all the needs and the wants and the attachments and the emotion and it it was such a, it was such a clear pathway.

• 1:02:31Lewis Howes?

  So what was the shift? I guess you started this at the end of your 40s, you said. What was the shift from doing something beyond yourself in your 40s of being in service to saying, "Okay, now how can I do this and generate an abundance of wealth?"

• 1:02:43Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 1:02:44Lewis Howes?

  What shifted in you? And then when did it start flowing?

• 1:02:47Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Lewis Howes?

  With this financial? Was it your ways of being was different? Was your thoughts were different about money? Was it just your efforts, your energy was different?

• 1:02:55Gary John Bishop?

  Well, remember, you can't create a breakthrough in something until you you come to terms with what's already there. Right? So you have to see like, "What's already there for me?" And so everybody has a relationship to something like money. There's already something there. The question is, what is it?

• 1:03:12Lewis Howes?

  And were you good at making money before?

• 1:03:14Gary John Bishop?

  No, I was terrible at it. Yeah, and I never even, because it was never a thing for me, like, it was never an authentic thing for me. It was all, it fell a hole.

• 1:03:24Lewis Howes?

  To like buy something to feel better about yourself or interesting.

• 1:03:27Gary John Bishop?

  And you know, I feel better now that money's in the bank. And then I started to think, "Well, what if it's just a transaction? What if I took me out of it and it's just a thing?" You know, it's just like a way to make something multiply. Like, "How do I do that?" And so what I realized with at the time, well, two things. One was, I lived with a lot of mystery about money and just avoided it. Like, you know, that sounds like a lot of work.

• 1:03:51Lewis Howes?

  You didn't pay attention to it.

• 1:03:52Gary John Bishop?

  Right, like, "I don't need to know that, right?" And I'm looking for lots of short circuits and how to do things. And then the other thing that was pretty massive for me was, I realized that, and this is true in all areas of somebody's life, but if you start with the financial aspect, you're always operating in some paradigm. You're always in some network of thinking. And so identifying what my network of thinking was, like, what was it? And so I realized that there was, believe it or not, a number that I thought that if I did that number, that was, I've kind of done it, right?

• 1:04:25Lewis Howes?

  You feel good about yourself.

• 1:04:27Gary John Bishop?

  Right, but it wasn't even like, in any sense of the word, a massive number. But I thought like, "That's the number." When you kind of peel back some of that, you realize that the number is what you think you can do based on other things.

• 1:04:40Lewis Howes?

  Based on your life and experience and your skills.

• 1:04:42Gary John Bishop?

  And other views that you have of yourself. So I had this magic number. And again, it wasn't like a crazy number.

• 1:04:48Lewis Howes?

  But it was big for you. It was like, "Okay, this is something I've never done before." It made me feel good about myself. I did it.

• 1:04:54Gary John Bishop?

  And what I found myself doing is I'm sitting in front of a laptop and I've got the Excel spreadsheet up. And I'm looking at the number and I'm like, "Where did that come from? How did I end up with that?" You know? And I was about to give the next year of my life to it.

• 1:05:09Lewis Howes?

  To that number.

• 1:05:10Gary John Bishop?

  To that number. And every thought and every strategy and everything was about that number. And then I thought, "Well, what if I doubled it?" And I was like, "Whoa, you know, I can't even be with that." You know, like, it was so crazy. And I thought, "But if I doubled that number and gave my word to it,

• 1:05:31Gary John Bishop?

  that number would demand something of me." Like, it's now telling me that what I'm doing ain't it.

• 1:05:35Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:05:37Gary John Bishop?

  Man, that sent me off on a pathway, like a vein of thinking. Where I started to realize like, everything was happening in this kind of network of conversation that I'm in with myself. And when you change the outcome, it completely short circuits the thinking. That thinking can't produce double. It can't. It won't do it.

• 1:05:58Lewis Howes?

  You have to change the way you think.

• 1:05:59Gary John Bishop?

  I have to change the way I think and I have to, I have to really challenge what I think is possible. Like, really challenge it. And I noticed like, there was a massive emotional attachment to that. Like, "Oh my gosh, so significant." Like, "It can't be done, guys like me can't do that, I don't have the education, I don't..." So I started to think from the future. I put myself there.

• 1:06:21Lewis Howes?

  In the future.

• 1:06:22Gary John Bishop?

  And that's what a visionary does. A visionary doesn't see the future. A visionary is coming from it.

• 1:06:29Gary John Bishop?

  They're coming from the future. And they're standing here and looking at what they're doing right now and asking themselves, "Is what I'm doing right now aligning with that? And if it's not, I need to stop. Stop." Even though like, "Well, none of this could maybe turn out..." If it's not aligning with that, stop. Right in this moment. And so at the beginning, it was a series of that, of stopping what I'm doing. And you know, you've got an attachment to what you're doing because it'll produce that other number. Which ain't bad, you know?

• 1:07:02Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 1:07:03Gary John Bishop?

  But when I doubled it, the first time I ever doubled it, because I did the first year or two, I doubled and doubled. And when you start to hit that cycle, you know, you're realizing like, it's all, the only thing is limiting you is what you're thinking.

• 1:07:18Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:07:18Gary John Bishop?

  Right?

• 1:07:19Lewis Howes?

  So what allowed you to double it then? What was the shift internally or the execution that was different?

• 1:07:24Gary John Bishop?

  It all begins with the right kind of thinking. Not thoughts, it's the right kind of thinking.

• 1:07:29Lewis Howes?

  What's the right kind of thinking?

• 1:07:30Gary John Bishop?

  Right. You've got to be able to hang with an idea without getting attached to it. Right? And that includes the ridiculous.

• 1:07:37Lewis Howes?

  The ridiculous, yeah.

• 1:07:38Gary John Bishop?

  You've got to be able to hang with the ridiculous. Why? Because what you've already determined is ridiculous is based on some other logic that got you where you are. So you've got to, you've got to re-investigate the ridiculous. You've got to kind of go in and be like, "Well, hold on, hold on." And you've got to allow yourself to kind of be with it. So one of the things that I think I've gotten pretty good at is hanging with something without

• 1:08:03Gary John Bishop?

  letting go of the need to answer it.

• 1:08:05Lewis Howes?

  You mean to think of an idea that's ridiculous and not needing the answer on how to make the ridiculous come true?

• 1:08:11Gary John Bishop?

  Right. And so what happens is, when I do that, if I do that for a week or maybe two weeks, lots of stuff will come up in my thinking. I'll wake up with ideas. Like, "Oh my gosh, I never thought about that before." "Oh, what about, yeah, I never thought about that." And then, so the more that I got into it, the more that I, the more I was kind of getting outside of my own logic, my own thinking, which really allowed me to step into things that my identity would not be comfortable with. Like, not comfortable with at all. One of them was, for me, was doing like big speaking engagements, right? So I, you know, I could do 2, 3, 500 people, that's fine. 25,000 people.

• 1:08:56Gary John Bishop?

  Maybe not so much. So I started to kind of put myself out there. And I started to, you know, I started to talk to the right people. Right, which was a big chart. I didn't know anybody.

• 1:09:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:09:06Gary John Bishop?

  You know, I'm like a, especially at that time, one man operation.

• 1:09:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:10Gary John Bishop?

  I don't know anybody. I'm just making a difference. How do you?

• 1:09:14Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:15Gary John Bishop?

  And so I had to knock down some, it wasn't knock down their walls. It was knock down my walls.

• 1:09:20Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:09:21Gary John Bishop?

  About them. And that process, I started to really get connected to. My doing this has got nothing to do with them. I'm gonna make such a compelling case that they have no say. They have no say in this. I'm gonna present what I need to present here in such a way that they're like, okay, just give the guy the microphone and let him go.

• 1:09:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:43Gary John Bishop?

  That is actually what I did. I ended up doing like, you know, massive speaking engagements, you know, be people like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tony Robbins and blah, blah, blah, you know, and I'm out there like 25,000 people like it's nothing. All inside of being of service to them. But in the background includes my commitment to creating this environment of authentic wealth for myself.

• 1:10:03Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:10:04Gary John Bishop?

  And never the twine shall meet. It was never like that this thing here is getting switched up. Never. It was always grounded in making the difference that I'm out to make.

• 1:10:16Lewis Howes?

  Authentic service for authentic wealth.

• 1:10:17Gary John Bishop?

  Right, very good. Anywhere that I sense or experience that this is more about the money than the difference that it can make. I'm not doing it.

• 1:10:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:10:25Gary John Bishop?

  I will not do it. And I've had, my gosh, so many opportunities, so many people present me with, oh, if you would only do this. And I won't because when you mess with the integrity of what you're about, there's no substance to it. There's no substance. So I'm, all of it is guided by, yeah, but does this make a difference? And that includes the people that work with me, you know, like the agents that I have, the people that are involved in my, my, you know, my little team.

• 1:10:55Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:55Gary John Bishop?

  If you're not here to make a difference, we're not doing it. And I won't do it. And I refuse to do it because you're selling out on what it is that makes this thing real.

• 1:11:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:07Gary John Bishop?

  And it's got to be real, not for me. It's got to be real for people.

• 1:11:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:11:12Gary John Bishop?

  You know, because ultimately, like we talked about a little earlier, it's got to be about making some kind of difference.

• 1:11:18Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:11:18Gary John Bishop?

  And if it can't, then I'm not doing it.

• 1:11:21Lewis Howes?

  And how did your relationship evolve as you started to bring more money to the relationship and the family? Cause a lot of the people struggle in marriages or relationships with money conversations. Did you see an improvement of the quality of relationship? Did you see challenges in talking about money? How did you guys address money when it's such a big factor for breakup, divorce, stress?

• 1:11:46Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:47Lewis Howes?

  In relationships?

• 1:11:48Gary John Bishop?

  Somebody once gave me this little nugget and I believe it to be true. When somebody said, what's the difference between wealthy and not wealthy? And somebody said to me, it's just better hotels.

• 1:12:00Lewis Howes?

  Right, yeah. Nicer flights. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:03Gary John Bishop?

  And that's basically it for me. Like I never made it mean anything. You know, my three boys, like, they're very grounded. You know, they're not in any way enamored by money or anything like that. Like my 10 year old thinks if he could spend 10 bucks on his next game of FIFA, like that's a big result. You know, it's like, yay, you know, I just bought that FIFA pack for 10 bucks.

• 1:12:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:29Gary John Bishop?

  It's a good day.

• 1:12:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:31Gary John Bishop?

  And I don't shower them with stuff, you know, I don't, we don't do that. It just seems kind of ridiculous.

• 1:12:37Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:38Gary John Bishop?

  As a family, we're very much about the experience of being alive.

• 1:12:42Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:12:43Gary John Bishop?

  And whatever money we might have or not have is always about that. Like it's always about enhancing that and embracing that and exploring that as a family. I wouldn't say I'm a particularly flashy guy, you know, I don't really do anything like that. It's not really my thing. Like for instance, I'll give a little example. So when I, when I started to do the speaking engagements with those big groups of people, I rarely stay up on the platform. Right, I, I go down and I go to the back and I talk back there.

• 1:13:16Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:17Gary John Bishop?

  And I'll go hang out with those folks. Why? Because I've been in those seats.

• 1:13:23Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:13:24Gary John Bishop?

  I know what it's like to be back there and unseen. And I want you to be seen.

• 1:13:31Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:13:32Gary John Bishop?

  Like that matters to me. That matters. I want the people who bought the 1,200 buck ticket to sit at the front. You're good.

• 1:13:40Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:13:41Gary John Bishop?

  You can turn around and watch me at the back a while. And I think it's that authenticity, that grounding that has never really allowed anything like money to kind of get in the way. I'm, I'm still, I still really relate to, and even you could look at any dedication that's in my books. I always dedicate them to people who are maybe at the bottom of the ladder right now. Like they don't feel as if it's working for them.

• 1:14:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:14:07Gary John Bishop?

  I think in my first book, it was like single moms and unemployed, I dedicated this book to the single moms and the unemployed fathers. You know, like the people who are having a gut at it.

• 1:14:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:18Gary John Bishop?

  And I still, cause that's most people.

• 1:14:21Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:14:21Gary John Bishop?

  Most people are wrestling with something. They're not all sitting at the top of the tree enjoying the bananas. That's what I mean. So I just have never been somebody who like I'm where I'm at and it's great. I want to relate to people who are, who are in the race.

• 1:14:36Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:14:37Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:38Lewis Howes?

  What do you think is the overall key from everything you learned to having a fulfilling relationship then?

• 1:14:42Gary John Bishop?

  It's got to be grounded in what matters. I realized that two things that mattered to me in life were love and adventure. I realized that that was now my job in my relationship to bring it, not to seek it. And to bring it because it's who are you? When you take away the notion that you're seeking it, it's a whole lot easier to actually be in a relationship.

• 1:15:00Lewis Howes?

  Cause a lot of people say, I'm looking for love if they're single. I'm looking for love. I'm looking for adventure. But if you be love, if you're being love and you're being adventurous.

• 1:15:10Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 1:15:10Lewis Howes?

  You will be it. You won't need to find it. You are it's.

• 1:15:14Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 1:15:14Lewis Howes?

  And you'll find, you'll attract other people who are it as well.

• 1:15:17Gary John Bishop?

  What the interesting thing about my wife and I, which was really, has been brilliant since I took on this kind of perspective is she's not always looking for what I'm, or expressing what I'm expressing. She's expressing her expression of what it is to be in a relationship, which is sometimes really different. You know, like she's got a different expression of love than I do.

• 1:15:38Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:15:39Gary John Bishop?

  But I'm not sitting there like, oh, you know, feed me that. I'm more like, this is an opportunity. This is an opening in my life. This is an opening in time for me to get this out.

• 1:15:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:50Gary John Bishop?

  You know, and she's giving it her version, you know? And it really isn't 50 50. It's not like that because I don't, like I told her, you know, I don't, I don't need you to be anyone but yourself. You know, just be yourself.

• 1:16:03Lewis Howes?

  What happened when you shifted that?

• 1:16:05Gary John Bishop?

  It was just like this massive release of pressure. You know, it was like, oh, we're okay. You know, we're okay. Like you can just be you.

• 1:16:14Lewis Howes?

  You don't need to control something. You don't need to fix something. You don't need to change something.

• 1:16:18Gary John Bishop?

  Nothing about this woman. Does that mean like it's all, like if I look at my wiring and the way that I'm wired? No, I got hooked and I get triggered and I get like, one of the things that we did, by the way, that I, that I think is important is we made it okay to argue. It's okay.

• 1:16:34Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:16:35Gary John Bishop?

  Even if it's a stand up argument, fight, and she called me something, or I called her something, it's okay. Right? It's, this doesn't, this isn't all adding up to the exit. It's not. It's like a moment in time. It's like something happened. Okay. Being forgiving is a massive part of my wife. And, and a massive part of my relationship. I don't, I'm, I'm not gonna string you up for something you did or said, like I'm not. Um, you're a human being too. In other words, there's a lot of space that I'm continually making.

• 1:17:10Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:17:11Gary John Bishop?

  I make a lot of space for my wife. I make a lot of space for my children. So whatever way they are, it's got a lot of room. It, I'm not like pressing on it and compressing it and you should be and controlling. No, let me just back off and let that be. It'll dissipate. It's okay. And so there's a lot of that in our relationship.

• 1:17:29Lewis Howes?

  But you probably have to be okay with who you are and comfortable with your own skin in order to create the space of whatever emotions or environment happens, right? You've got to be dealing with that healing journey continuously.

• 1:17:41Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 1:17:41Lewis Howes?

  So that you're not reactive to it.

• 1:17:43Gary John Bishop?

  That's a critical part of it. Like you have to give yourself the room to be a human being.

• 1:17:48Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:48Gary John Bishop?

  Stop holding yourself to some ideal. You're not always going to be perfect.

• 1:17:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:17:53Gary John Bishop?

  There's going to be times in your life when you look at it like, oh, could I even, you know, I was a real jerk there like, oh my gosh, like I wish I could take that back. And I'll initially go there and then I'll be like, hold on a minute. I'm a human being too. And I think that's one of the things that's drawn a lot of people to my work. I'm not professing to have every answer. And I'm not floating around here like, you know, Gandhi or something, you know, I'm not like, this isn't, I'm not a perfect kind of human being on one hand.

• 1:18:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:18:31Gary John Bishop?

  Or maybe I am.

• 1:18:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:18:35Gary John Bishop?

  Maybe this is what it is, you know, to be a human being. It's all of it. It's all the things. It's, I really believe you're just a vessel for experiences.

• 1:18:44Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:18:44Gary John Bishop?

  And some of them are great and some of them are kind of crappy.

• 1:18:47Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:18:48Gary John Bishop?

  And it's okay, you know, it's the more you try and fix it or shape it or move it, you're kind of nailing it down rather than letting it just pass through.

• 1:18:58Lewis Howes?

  This is powerful, man. I've got a couple of final questions for you, but I really love this conversation. And your book, Love Unf- Getting Your Relationship Together is out. People can buy it on Amazon or wherever books are sold. We'll have it all linked up as well in the description in the show notes. But where are you on social media the most or how can we connect with you?

• 1:19:18Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:18Lewis Howes?

  Beyond the book. And it's, I love, I love the short but packed books.

• 1:19:22Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 1:19:23Lewis Howes?

  I can read them. So I appreciate this.

• 1:19:25Gary John Bishop?

  No, that's good. It's, I love that you said that too, because I really feel as if the value in my books is in the thinking you're going to have to do.

• 1:19:33Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:19:34Gary John Bishop?

  You know, it's not necessarily like you're going to take something out of there linearly.

• 1:19:36Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:19:37Gary John Bishop?

  But yeah, I'm on, I'm everywhere, but you know, Instagram's like a favorite of mine. I like, you know, obviously I spend a lot of time on there. I love to give people stuff that they can think about and chew on.

• 1:19:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:47Gary John Bishop?

  But I'm also on Facebook. I'm on Twitter and obviously my website, garyjonbishop.com.

• 1:19:52Lewis Howes?

  There you go. And you've got all the information for your books there and everything else you're up to at garyjonbishop.com.

• 1:19:58Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:58Lewis Howes?

  Love this, man. I've got a question for you. This is called the three truths question I ask everyone at the end.

• 1:20:03Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:03Lewis Howes?

  So imagine hypothetical scenario. It's your last day on earth, many years away. You live as long as you want to live.

• 1:20:09Gary John Bishop?

  Okay.

• 1:20:10Lewis Howes?

  You are the vessel that experiences life to the fullest and you accomplish what you want to accomplish. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you.

• 1:20:19Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:19Lewis Howes?

  On the last day, the books, the content, this interview, for whatever reason, got to go somewhere else.

• 1:20:24Gary John Bishop?

  Okay.

• 1:20:24Lewis Howes?

  So it's not left in the world.

• 1:20:26Gary John Bishop?

  Okay.

• 1:20:27Lewis Howes?

  But you get to leave behind three lessons with the world, three things that you know to be true from your life experiences. And this is all we'd have to remember you by. What would you say are those three truths?

• 1:20:37Gary John Bishop?

  The only truth is the one you've agreed with. The second one would be you are an unlimited potential, whether you believe that or not.

• 1:20:46Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:20:47Gary John Bishop?

  And be kind.

• 1:20:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I want to acknowledge you, Gary, for a moment because you've had an amazing journey and you've dedicated this, I guess, second phase of your life to service.

• 1:20:59Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 1:21:00Lewis Howes?

  To using your experiences, your thinking, your challenges, the pain, and creating work that inspires and serves and educates. And I really acknowledge you for showing up consistently with your perfect imperfections and, and just sharing what you know, sharing what you've learned and putting it in ways that we can understand it that might be confusing at times. So I really acknowledge you for showing up big the way you have. And I think shifting a identity that you, you were so stuck on from the way you grew up.

• 1:21:31Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:31Lewis Howes?

  And being okay with letting it die and also holding on to some of it and transforming, I think, is so hard for so many people. I know it was hard for me. So I really acknowledge you for shifting that and being constantly in a reinvention phase of your life.

• 1:21:45Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:45Lewis Howes?

  And in service to so many people.

• 1:21:47Gary John Bishop?

  Well, thank you for that generous acknowledgement. That was really brilliant. One of the things, I'm going to acknowledge you for a second, if you don't mind.

• 1:21:53Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:21:54Gary John Bishop?

  So I think you're a brilliant example, like a truly brilliant example of what it is to be vulnerable.

• 1:22:00Lewis Howes?

  Thanks, man.

• 1:22:00Gary John Bishop?

  And it screams.

• 1:22:02Lewis Howes?

  Thanks, man.

• 1:22:02Gary John Bishop?

  In a really great way.

• 1:22:04Lewis Howes?

  Thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate it, man. I think, yeah, the last eight, nine years, I've really opened up and allowed myself to be vulnerable at any moment.

• 1:22:12Gary John Bishop?

  Great. I get it.

• 1:22:14Lewis Howes?

  It's not easy. You know, it's not easy, but I think the more I embody vulnerability, the more my heart is open to receiving people, to having intimate conversations, to being able to share things that are sad or scary or

• 1:22:30Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:30Lewis Howes?

  whatever might be coming up for me. So I appreciate it and I receive it, man.

• 1:22:35Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:35Lewis Howes?

  Um, my final question for you, and again, I want to make sure people get the book. We'll have it all linked up. But my final question, Gary, is what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:22:44Gary John Bishop?

  Oh, that's a brilliant question, right? So it's the triumph of the human spirit. It's the opportunity for somebody to go beyond, whatever that might be for you.

• 1:22:55Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:22:56Gary John Bishop?

  And sometimes it's a simple thing like going beyond some old hurt or pain. But sometimes it's going beyond a situation or circumstance. I really do believe in the possibility of people living great lives.

• 1:23:13Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:23:13Gary John Bishop?

  And so it's always comes down to the triumph of the human spirit.

• 1:23:16Lewis Howes?

  There you go. Gary, appreciate you, man. Thanks, brother.

• 1:23:18Gary John Bishop?

  Thank you so much.

• 1:23:19Lewis Howes?

  I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter.

• 1:24:03Lewis Howes?

  And now it's time to go out there and do something great.