Why Did You Stop Trusting Yourself?

Brother, it’s Dan with Good Guys to Great Men.

Thanks again for watching today.

I’m just going to do a short video around two simple concepts, but they’re so important. They make all the difference, both in life and career, but also in relationships. This totally relates to relationships.

The example I’m using today is football.

I played a lot of football when I was younger. I always ended up being the captain at some point or another with the teams I was playing for.

I was always responsible for a lot of what happened in the match. Not just myself, but also the other people on the team, how we performed together, and how we responded to things that happened, whether they were positive or negative.

How we kept that going together as a homogenous unit.

And what we did going forward.

The two things I want to talk about today are positive regard and positive intent.

When we’re talking about football, whenever we stepped onto the field, every game was a new game. Every day was a new day. Every moment in that game was a new moment.

So you had to have positive regard.

You had to put aside the stuff that had happened in the past.

You had to put aside who you were playing against. Even if it was a team at the top of the league or a team at the bottom of the league.

Sometimes we would win against the top team and lose against the bottom team.

You never knew.

You had to put aside all those preconceptions. What you regarded as that situation, or the people in that situation, how they were going to be, what they were going to do, what it was going to be like, and all that sort of stuff.

You had to put that to one side and create a clean slate.

Something you could then use and go in any direction.

And then positive intent was, how am I going to show up in this situation?

Thinking just about me.

What am I going to bring to this situation?

Who am I going to be?

Can I trust myself to show up in this situation and allow my body, my mind, my physical attributes, who I am, my tone, my trust in myself, can I allow all that stuff to work together?

And do I believe I’m able to create something?

Almost like, am I able to create a little bit of magic in this moment?

There are points, and lots of you guys will recognize this, when it’s almost like you can see a fraction of a second before the ball comes to you, or before a certain thing happens in the game.

You can see what’s going to happen.

And you can feel it in your body.

You know what’s going to happen. You know exactly what you need to do next. How you need to move your body. What you need to say. What you need to do.

You know that.

And it’s almost like it’s pre-described.

Strange experience.

I like to describe that feeling as the knowing of trusting yourself.

It’s a feeling of trust in yourself.

You could call it confidence too.

So when we’re talking about positive regard and positive intent, positive regard clears out all the crap.

All the need for certainty.

All the need to know how something’s going to go and protect yourself so you get the outcome you want.

Positive intent is, can I clear out all the doubts in myself and be able to just trust myself to deal with this moment right now in the best way possible and create something?

Create something positive.

Create something juicy that I want to happen in this moment.

Enjoy it.

Can I enjoy it?

That’s a great way of looking at it.

Can I have the positive intention of just enjoying this moment, bringing all of myself to it, and seeing how it goes?

And it totally relates to relationships.

Absolutely relates to relationships.

We have seen so many guys have completely different interactions in their relationships when they employ these two things.

Positive regard.

I’m going to let you be however you are being right now.

And I’m going to accept that.

And I’m going to do that because it allows me to then be however I want to be.

And that means whatever happens in this interaction between us in this moment, today, this week, this month, this year, whatever happens is going to be something clean.

It’s going to be something real.

It’s going to be something true.

It’s not going to be dictated by the things that have happened in the past, or my need to control and have certainty around what’s going to happen in the future.

Whether we end up disconnecting and going toward divorce or separation, or what that means for us and the kids and all the rest.

Of course you have to think about that stuff.

But moment to moment, that stuff stops you from being able to create a more fun, more connected, more enthusiastic, more passionate connection with each other.

That’s the stuff that gets in the way.

The doubt sneaks in there in all these different ways.

So can you practice positive regard?

Cutting away those things that might come in and cause those doubtful thoughts, and the insecurity, and the tentativeness.

And just bring who it is that you are.

Who it is that you enjoy being.

The guy you enjoy bringing into those interactions with her.

There’s no certainty.

There is no certainty, just like in a football match.

There is no certainty that what you do and how you show up to that moment is going to create the kind of outcome you want.

But that’s not why you do it.

Go and play the game because you like to play the game.

That’s kind of what I want to bring to you today in this video.

You play the game of being with somebody, not because it’s a game, but because it’s fun and you enjoy those interactions and you want to see what comes out of them.

Ultimately, underneath that, there has to be a sense of trust.

Trust in yourself.

That who you are, when you’re clear about that, when you’re clear about how you want to move through your life, who you want to be, and what you want to create in your future, that will create the kind of future and experiences you want to have.

So that’s what I wanted to bring to you today.

We’d love to talk to you more about this.

If you’re interested, come to the website, goodguystogreatmen.com. Fill in the application form on the Contact Us page.

We’ll have a free call. An hour, an hour and a half.

We dig into what’s going on in your situation and how you want it to be different.

We talk about anything and everything.

It could be your relationship. It could be your kids. It could be your parents. It could be family disputes. It could be your career.

We talk about all of the stuff.

And we go deep into it and find out what’s the belief, what’s the little doubt in there that’s stopping you from being able to be confident in yourself and leading things in the direction you want it to go.

Can you have positive regard for the situation and how it could go in any direction?

And positive intent that however you choose to show up in it, you’re going to create what it is that you want.

Okay, that’s it for today.

See you, brothers.

Take care.

Bye.