Fitness as a catalyst for change in your Divorce Recovery (among other things!) - Markus Wolf || DPTSP #078 || David

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Don't Pick the Scab Podcast, the podcast for sharing my guest's superpowers with my divorced men over 40 to assist them in their divorce recovery. Welcome, Markus Wolf. I am Markus, my no name's. Markus Wolf. His superpower is teaching men to incorporate habit-forming and mindset to use their health and fitness goals to use in all parts of their life with a little bit of self-belief. So we're going to talk about that. And he does work with kids going through divorce, do divorce things like that.

[00:00:30] So introduce yourself a little bit, Markus, and we'll talk and go from there.

[00:00:47] Welcome to the Don't Pick the Scab Podcast with the premise of connecting men over 40 with the tools and community to thrive in their divorce recovery either before, during or after a divorce. Markus Wolf. Markus Wolf. Markus Wolf. Markus Wolf.

[00:01:04] I'm married for nine years, faced a really, really, really tough patch in my marriage and I have two daughters, though it was incredibly, it's still incredibly tough to always navigate that. And I work with men in health and fitness. I help men navigate their health and fitness in regards to losing weight, building self-confidence, building routine, building consistency.

[00:01:28] And in the midst of doing that, I work with a lot of men who have managed their divorce within these goals, manage all those things. And so I really learn a lot from them as much as I teach them. And I'm happy to share a lot of the things I'm working with, with them, learning from them on this podcast. Markus Wolf. So can you share your personal journey a little bit and how your experiences shape your approach to it? Markus Wolf. So my personal journey is I am a high school dropout.

[00:01:57] So at 15 years old, I identified real quick that I am terrible when things get hard. When things got challenging, I left, I wouldn't even show up to schools. I mean, I practically was a high school dropout the moment high school started. And it just continued. Dude, I feel like that devil was following me my whole entire life, at least. Because in my 20s, I was quitting jobs. I actually have a record here. I held 25 jobs in five years.

[00:02:25] So if you're looking like the epitome of a quitter, I would be on that dictionary and my face would be there. But somehow, some way, I found health and fitness from being a very skinny runt, not good at school, not good at athletics. This was not supposed to happen. I was supposed to be the next Jimi Hendrix. That's where my cat was. And I was playing guitar every single day, being on high school dropout. And then I stumbled onto health and fitness. And I have no...

[00:02:51] I still to this day, I have the grace of God got me in this world because I haven't been consistent for the last 19 years. I have the opportunity and impact many men using it. And it really, deep down inside, is so they could believe in themselves and have something to catapult other areas of their life of self-collegue and alcoholics. That's a short way. That's awesome. What are some of the challenges men face after the divorce that you've seen?

[00:03:21] And how can fitness play a role in Oakland? Well, that's a great question. Because I believe, at least the first person that comes to my mind, I won't share his name, but when I first met him, you could tell he always struggled with obviously taking care of himself. Because I mean, I think every father struggles with this, right? It's, you know, got to make sure there's food on the table for the kids. What's required to get food. Got to work super, super hard.

[00:03:50] And, you know, there's just, the person is just not there anymore. Which is funny because, you know, we were just talking about sports before we hopped on here. Our lives were just playing sports, talking with men about sports, or just always shooting the breeze, taking care of ourselves. And then the moment we became fathers, we lost touch of that. And when you lose touch of that, you really start to lose touch on that vibrant, different authenticity, who you were. Right?

[00:04:18] Like that person who smiles, who makes people laugh, who can really show your kids and your spouse who that person was when you first met. Right? And I actually share this with a lot of my men where I'm like, you're not showing your kids the real you. And it's probably the worst thing you could ever do. They said, I'd show them. Like, I'm talking about your 20-year-old you, your favorite stupid movies you used to watch, and your favorite, like, all your problems. They need to see all that stuff.

[00:04:46] Because they need to see what kind of adversity you had to face to get out of here. Because that's going to teach them adversity. So I'd probably say that's the first one. I just deal with men who just, and they fight it too, which is so odd. And when you talk to a man, you're like, you know, you have to focus on yourself. And they're like, yeah, but that's just not how I'm raised. I'm like, I wasn't raised eating broccoli, but I figured that out. You know what I mean? We were, we're false.

[00:05:12] It's that, it's that limiting belief that I work on the most with men. So I don't know if that answers your question. Well, that's definitely not. It does. And I love Brockie. How did you transition from being a high school dropout to running a successful business? What's, what's the mindset? Because you talk about mindset. What's the mindset that men need to have important to see through the forest, anything that happened. That's not optimal. See, that's a good question.

[00:05:39] I've had to reflect on my life a lot because I feel like I was just, I caught on to whatever God was giving me. And I just, I flowed and I never listened and tried to look at the clues. So now I do a lot of that. And the first one is you have to become somebody who looks at the wins. Like you have to look at the positive. You have to look at the gratitude. And it's a really, really, really big deal that it's almost like the same way you have to practice a bicep curl or a bench dress.

[00:06:08] You have to practice your mind to focus on the positive. Because I think it's natural as men. And sometimes it's even logical to use negative as an indicator and direction. We don't want to be afraid of negative. But at the same time too, when you just, in the world it's just seeped with negative. You could literally go on your Instagram or your TikTok and there's something that'll rally you up. And again, that's something you and I were talking about. Like I get real upset about things so easily.

[00:06:34] And imagine something as silly as like your environment on your phone to like change your state. So if you're trying to change your state, you need to do it the same way you lost your state. And I don't think we keep tracking. Like we're going 1% backwards. You sometimes usually when we become a doctor or working from that 9 to 5, we're going 1% backwards, but we don't feel it. So the only way to go forward is you got to start doing that 1% forwards again.

[00:07:02] And if you don't do the 1% forward, you're going to just continue to go backwards and you're just going to become a, you know, I have a, I have a father, love him to death. He is a crappy man. Our conversations, I could tell what kind of household he grew up in. It was just a lot of negativity, a lot of what's wrong with the world and a lot of what's angry at the world. And I've learned to just accept that's just who he is. And I'm okay with it.

[00:07:28] I used to combat with it because what I was trying to do, and if anybody has listened to this right now, maybe even David, you could relate to this. When you combat with people who have negativities, because in your soul, you're trying to avoid it. And you're trying to control their ability to not reflect on you. But that's why you need to, you need to start to add your reinforcements every single day of like, what's going great in your life? What's going, what are, what are you so special about? What can something you do that no one else can do? Like here, I'll share one quick one.

[00:07:58] Some of them may not even know what I'm talking about. I do a practice every single morning where I think about one thing I could do that no one in the world can do, which makes me special. I could cuddle my daughter like nobody else can. Nobody in the world can do that. You're the best cuddler. I'm the best cuddler. And especially like, you know, she'll take any monster under her bed. Like I'm the best. And it's like those type of little reminders that you got to start reminding yourself that there's, there's a lot of great.

[00:08:27] When the goals, the greatness will not, you won't even see it. So in your experience, how does consistent exercise continue to improve mental health for men going to tough times? See, that's a good exercise guy, man. Oh, that's, that's a great one. Well, I, I must be on the spectrum and I say this in the lightest of terms, but I could just focus on one thing in the gym.

[00:08:53] And if I just improved on it from the last time I did it, I'm like, I'm like a kid in a candy store. I'm like, and, and I tell my men all the time, you got to start shifting your mind on the positives inside the gym. There's literally like last week it was on the hundred pound machine. Now you put it on the one 10. You should be like, that's fantastic. Whatever I'm doing is working the sleep, the exercise, the eating, whatever I'm doing is working.

[00:09:22] And that's, that's already that 1% win I speak of. So you have to start to, you have to start seeing that in the gym. And if you don't see that, that's different. How important, since we're going to move on to that, how important is sleep? Oh man, you're going to get me into like a rabbit hole. Yeah. Like a rabbit hole. Like I think, I think the first one is, and then again, I'm not, I'm not a very woo-woo type of coach. Right.

[00:09:47] I mean, I, some of my terminologies might sound a little woo-woo like, but I'm, I'm very much the science guy. But the first thing is, and this is, this is backed by James Clear and Atomic Habit. It's like, the first thing about sleep is a man has to first identify himself as a person who, who sleeps a lot. He has to identify himself. Because again, a lot of men, oh man, oh, I feel fine after four hours of sleep. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure you do.

[00:10:14] I'm sure when you were 20 years old, you drank two, three, four beers at night and you woke up the next day and you were a spring chicken. The last time I checked, we don't use that as an indicator of fine. And the science says, it's not fine. I mean, I'm talking about testosterone levels will drop. You don't sleep in it. And if you're already 40 and above, you already know your testosterone levels have started plummeting the moment you hit like 28.

[00:10:41] So you're talking about like decade, at least into lower testosterone. So that's one. And when you have low testosterone, that means you have low energy. You have just low vigor. Come on. Like we all remember who we were at 18 years old. Man. It was a good back in the day, but not coming back. So we have to almost like reinforce themselves with the nuance. And yeah. So it's like the testosterone goes down. So your energy levels, your fatality, your confidence. The next one is also digestion.

[00:11:09] So if any man's listening and going like, oh man, I get bloated eating a bread. I'm like, let me see your stomach. Let me, let me, let me, let's, let's take a dive deep. All right. There's sleep, stress. And then yeah, of course, then your cortisol level goes up as well. And you're all asleep enough. So then you are already a stressed out human being because you have stress out things. And you're going to have stress in your life. There's, there's, there's absolutely no way of avoiding this. But you're not here to make your life any hard.

[00:11:34] Like God has literally given you the groundworks on how to make your life better by like taking care of yourself. Because if you take care of yourself, now you have the energy, the focus to handle. Again, I'm a, I'm a, I have to stop identifying myself as an angry person, but I have a very angry history. My temper is incredibly bad. I was joking again with you, David, where it's like, I knew when I was playing Nintendo 64 as a kid and I couldn't lose.

[00:12:00] It's like, if you really want to go woo, like losing is a reflection of like your self-worth and who you are and all that stuff. But it's like, that's why it's like, why let yourself down by like you not sleep. I could, I could go blue in the face about sleep. Cause I think I go, I get pretty angry with my plants. He's like, don't value it. Cause I use excuses like, you know, oh, I feel fine. I don't need a lot of sleep or I don't have time for that. I'm like, you have time to watch that chief game. Don't you? Do you like, yes.

[00:12:30] Yes. In priorities. Priorities. Good thing that's only once a week. Or a, or area. What specific habits do you recommend for men looking to rebuild their lives? In addition to what are the things that you see? That's a great question now.

[00:12:53] So the, one of the first things I do is when you go through trauma, cause that's what really it is. It is, it is trauma and it's okay to accept that word. It's okay to realize that's the word. And if you go through that, you have to, you have to let it do process. And most men, including myself did not have a single idea of how to handle when tough, tough, tough things happen. And they're like, and something like, like marriage, I was starting to prepare myself, sorry, divorce.

[00:13:23] I'm starting to prepare myself for divorce. Cause like I said, I was faced down the pipeline that me and my wife were like, I'm on this side. She's on this side. There's a line crossed. Nobody was willing to cross it for years. And it, you know, I felt that battle within. And I remember the very first thing I did, and this is the very first thing I tell my men to divorce is you need to create a habit of talking to.

[00:13:52] To create that social, because we don't look at it like a habit. We look at it like a, oh, to do like, you know, I got to eat. So I got to eat breakfast. So I eat breakfast, but that's a habit. But this habit of like, okay, so I put food inside me because it adheres to my health goals, my fitness goals, my energy goals, my clarity goals, my, my stomach not growling goals, like all that type of stuff. I still, to this day, I'm in a very okay place in my life.

[00:14:18] I still have to see one man and talk with him, real talk with him every week. And I put it in my schedule. It's right there. So that you can't go to work. I mean, it's, it's a realization I had, especially when I became a father's dad. This came to us very easily. Like I said, we go to hang out at bars. We go to hang out with the buddies and just go drinking and go to sports and just hang out at each other's house, play video games.

[00:14:46] You had little notes of hanging out with social men and support in some ways every single day or every single week for a long, for the majority of your, your life before white kids. And then the moment that happens. Hammers down, like literally goes from like to zero. And the 1%, it starts going backwards slowly. The negative 1% goes backwards slowly.

[00:15:14] And that 1% starts to compound because then you start to wonder why I'm like, I'm even edgier. I'm even more desperate for sex. I'm even more like, listen to me, babe. Like I just want someone to talk to me. But it's like, no, you had that person for decades. He's your locker room buddy. He was your guy that in class, when you guys used to like joke around with this, when you, Hey, listen to this one new, um, I'm going to go far. Let's just listen to a new Dre song. Dr. Dre song. The Gen Z, you know?

[00:15:43] And, and, and that's what's really changed. And I'm, I've been doing this for three years. I talked to a man every single week, no matter what, I'll hang out at the gym. Cause that's the most logical one for me. Cause if you want to catch me, you're going to catch me in the gym. And it also is a great way to like test yourself. Like, you know, cause you have like men, push your, push your comfort zone. But yeah, even right now, like the, the string in conversation I have is with a man that opened up to me known for 20 years. He's going through such a struggle. And I said, listen, I'm going through such a struggle right now too.

[00:16:12] Let's talk and let's get like uncomfortable. Don't get nice with me here. Don't get like, Hey, you know, you know, I hope everything's good. No. Tell me if you're not, if you're a six and a below out of 10. Right. So I was going to ask. What does that conversation entail? People generally. So you get down and dirty basically. Something's wrong. You talk. I even have, you know, it's just like any other relationship.

[00:16:41] You have to feel like if the person is not feeling comfortable to challenge you, that you have to ask them to challenge. Cause then I'll go find another group of men. I'll go find another man who's going to check. Cause I know I need it. I can, if I'm in a very, very courageous spot in my life, I'll, I'll just be, you know, just be honest. But 365 days a year, there's going to be times where you just want to, you want to hold back and you don't want to show your vulnerabilities.

[00:17:08] So that's why you need someone to be like, Marks. What are you? 10 out of 10? 10 weeks in a row? Like, what do you think? Life is just like perfect. And I'm like, it's true. Cause there's always something, there's gotta be something that's like gnawing at you. And I mean, there's no shortage of it. So, I mean, yeah, you have to have someone who's willing to talk to you. And I know those relationships aren't easy, but trust them. They won't let me, the leash doesn't go very far. Let's just say that.

[00:17:42] What role does community, let's talk about community and men are part of the community. What role does community play in the recovery process for men and how can they find, be able to support it? You know, you just talked about that, but, but usually community involves more than one man. How do you boost that? That's also a good question. So I've explored first men's group. I went to my first one last year.

[00:18:10] That's, this is the Google is one of your favorite people in the world. Like chat CPT, like, you know, any man who comes to me and there's sometimes they ask me a question and I'm just kind of like, you really need to start putting that little effort. Cause I'm sure you've, you've Google searched some sort of like, you know, who won the football game last night? Cause he didn't watch it. That just takes a six exact same seconds to, to, to put work towards your change. Right. So that's the first one is you could do literally just like Google something in your area. Cause I think face to face is pretty important.

[00:18:40] From my experience, I run a group program. I don't do one-on-one coaching with men. So I run a group program with men and that works really well because the thing is you'll literally see it. Cause like, you know, you have an app and you see all that data. But what I see is obviously people using the app. But what that tells me is that there's the, I'm, I'm believing in this. So take, for example, I just started another one. I start them every month, but it's like, I just started one two weeks ago.

[00:19:07] And two weeks ago, you'll look at that person's app and it's like, they didn't weigh themselves. They didn't go to the gym. They didn't focus on, you know, I even have like reading tasks every single day. Like, you know, self-development stuff. Like I have a whole bunch of tasks. They didn't hit. I mean, it was also during the holidays, but they didn't hit. The day it started, there are some men on there that they're like, they're nipping at each other's teeth. Cause there's like, I even put like leaderboards and challenge boards and more stuff. Oh, I make the, yeah.

[00:19:33] I throw the dogs in there and I'm even in there this, this time. I joined these guys cause I knew like after the holidays, I'm going to just like get really rock and roll. So when I did that, I love when I see, because the thing is, it's kind of, it just shows that the community is what really drives the mess. So one thing I'm answering your question is you can find a fitness challenge. Don't problem. Like you can message me on Instagram, even if you're just like above 40 or something. Right. You just message me on Instagram. Oh, no problem. I'll, I'll share with you exactly how you can join.

[00:20:03] And they, it can be free. It can be not free. Like there's a whole bunch of versions I have. But I think the most important thing is you have to look for it. You have to be in one no matter what. It's almost like what I tell my kids. My kids are seven and five, like I told you. And they have to be in an extracurricular no matter what. So let's say they go into ballet. Hey, ballet, dad. Okay. You're going to have to stick with it for the next three months. And then after three months, we're going to find something immediate. Right. We do this for our kids. We don't do this for ourselves.

[00:20:33] It's like you actively, I am on, I am on like ballet sites for two hours. I'm on then gymnastic sites for two hours. And then you're telling me you can't find a man's group for either health and fitness. Someone to listen to you, alcohol addiction, anger addiction, like anger problems. Like, yeah, that's the first one. Oh man. You got it. It's so funny. How can men effectively set fitness goals? This is part of that too. That align with their broader life objectives.

[00:21:02] You know, like the fitness goals of the gym and the goals of life. How can they parallel? That's a great question. Oh man. I am that guy, but I'm going to, I'm going to first give you a little quick backstory on that. Cause I wasn't obviously that guy and most, most men are. So the first one, let me be most men. When you think of the gym, you think you're going to throw the kitchen sink at it. All right. Like I just ran into a dad. I didn't challenge him enough. So we were close. It's cold. I'm strong. You are in Colorado.

[00:21:31] We're, you know, he's walking his dog and for whatever reason, he's like, I'm going to I'm like, you're going to Brazil. I know the man, you know what I'm like? You're going to Brazil to jitsu. Your kids have extracurriculars. I was like, what are you getting ready for? An Ironman or something like that. And I think a lot of men do this. And the reason why they do this is the same reason why I did it 20 years ago is because you think the more you throw at something, the answer will be solved faster. And right. It doesn't matter. It's like talking to a girl at the bar.

[00:22:01] It's like the first time you ever did it, you're like yapping along. You know what I mean? The less you say, but you say the right things, right? That's how we all know now, right? I mean, I'm going to talk to a bar in a long time. Some of these men are going to be able to take that. They know, they know the difference between the food they were when they were 20 years old talking to a bar versus today. And that's the same thing with fitness. First, you need to align yourself with somebody who's literally saying the lifestyle you

[00:22:29] want because the right fitness coach is going to say the system that they actually follow, not what they're trying to persuade you or manipulate you to buy. Right. Because the thing is, when I remember back when I had my second child, I started personally working out only three days a week for 60 minutes from six days a week. Because I just knew it.

[00:22:55] Like, I remember only like one weekend after having like two kids and I'd have like text messages from my wife being like, where are you? Like, we got to like get these kids ready. And I was like, these are my, this is my anger. So it's like at first I was getting like really angry. And then eventually I was like, all right, fine. I'm just going to, I'm going to figure this out. I'm a healthy affection, man. So then I remember I figured out how to get in shape in three hours a week. And then of course I had this revelation. I was like, holy shit, I could do this in three hours a week. At the time I was really trying to build up my business.

[00:23:24] So I was like, this is great. I have less time in the gym and more times here. So that's the first one to answer your question. You got to find someone who's literally walking the walk, talking the talk of what exactly lifestyle you want. Right. After that. I like starting off. I'm a bit like at this point now, I'm only in the gym for like 30 minutes. Like I am literally like the guy at the bar who knows how to talk to me. He literally goes in there and goes like. Efficient. Yeah.

[00:23:54] Super efficient. Preservation of energy. You get in there for only one. Come on. At this point now, I'm not here to be Arnold Schwarzenegger. My parents told me I wasn't going to be Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first place when I came out. And then I was like, the hell did you guys give me? Where's my, where's my Australia? Really Austrian oak arms. Like where's my person six foot tall? So anyways, I mean, yeah, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta take it slow and realize that you're there for better reasons now than you were when you were there to de-stress.

[00:24:22] I go midday so I could have a nice little focus before my second half of work. I go there also because I like talking to people. I'm probably there talking to more people than I am actually working. Hopefully that answers the question. I got real. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, it's kind of like that one joke where there's a young bull and old bull, and then the young bull says, Hey dad, let's go down and get one of those heifers. And the old bull says, let's walk down there and get them all. All right, man. I'm getting ready for a, a, a brutal word at you.

[00:24:53] Motivation. Motivation is the, that's a, that's a tough one as you get older. How do you suggest guys handle motivation? Well, I'm going to challenge that last thing you said first. I actually don't think motivation gets harder the older you get. Cause like we said, if you're, if you could look at a TikTok and get angry at it, you could look at a TikTok and you could actually get motivated. Right. You could like, you know what I mean?

[00:25:21] You see a, you know, a guy in his thirties, guy in his sport, he's got ripped abs. Or Dwayne Rock Johnson, somebody could relate to and really like. Motivation is not the shortage of things. This is what I wrote you about. It's the self-belief in yourself. Last time I checked, if I kept standing up and falling down a hundred times, I might not want to stand up. And that's the, they don't believe in themselves. And trust me, I don't even blame me.

[00:25:49] Because the thing is, there was even points in my life where I was like, why? This is again, this is why I didn't believe in my marriage to work. I was, I was convinced we were going to divorce because I was like, it just did. It didn't move. It was like, it was like mud, you know, like I was building so much resentment. She was building so much resentment. And then I told her, I was like, I'm sorry, I told her. But I mean, the, the, the, let's go back to now the motivation. So you tell yourself you're not motivated. No, what you're telling, what you're telling yourself.

[00:26:19] I lost the courage to believe in myself. It's 20 year old. You doesn't know that like his elbow from his asshole. Oh yeah. Good night. And the mic, the mic is dropped. I go to a YMCA that is filled with high school kids every day. And I love seeing because I think it's great.

[00:26:46] It's good energy, but their energy is, I am so insecure. I don't know who I am and I'm going to do anything to feel like I fit in. So then if you wrap all of those things together, who said that's different just because you're 30, 40, 50 years old. There is literally no difference. Again, it's like study after study after study. We want to work. We're a community social based human being. That's what we are. We love to be social.

[00:27:15] We love to be accepted. And it's not even necessarily a bad thing because you need to be relatable. But deep down inside, you want more for yourself. I know I do. I can't stop. Like I don't, I don't, I'm not here. I'm not settled for almost anything, but at the same time too, you could focus on other areas to get that dopamine. You know what I mean? Like you could be like, oh, well now my business is making an extra zero than it was last year. So boom, I got this dopamine. And it's because we've always associated the gym for just that.

[00:27:45] Right? I went in there because I wanted to get laid. Like, let's be honest. Like I did that because I didn't have confidence to talk to women. If I get jacked, maybe I'll talk to them. And then you're also doing it because then you have some sort of like, I don't want to say superiority, but you have some sort of like, you know, we're all men. Who got the most touchdowns last year? Who got the most yards? Who got the most like goals? All that stuff, man. Like it doesn't matter what sports you were. We're always like trying to like, you know, push our chest up.

[00:28:13] And it's kind of like, you know, when you go to a bar, you want to be fit. But when you got older, you didn't need to do that anymore. You didn't go to bars anymore. And to be honest, it's not even a healthy way of approaching. So I'm not saying to do that. But what I'm trying to say is that's why you have to reframe what the gym is. Right? Like you have to reframe that. It's kind of like, one, you're taking care of yourself. We talked about that at the beginning. If you don't value yourself, you're not teaching your kids how to value themselves, which is a very, very nasty thing.

[00:28:42] You're also not going through challenges and fighting through the challenges. You think it's easy for me to show up? That was an easy for me to show up. But I want my kids to see it. And I even say it to them. I'll say to them, they didn't want to show up to the gym today. It was so hard for them to get to work. I showed up though. And, you know, I'm trying to plant seed into their little heads, you know, like that. You have to connect hard times with progress and growth. So then if you're not showing them.

[00:29:11] So back to your question again, though. Motivation. Motivation is a very scary thing. Because it blankets the most important thing, like what I'm saying. They don't believe in themselves. So the best thing you could do to start believing in yourself is, like I said, you have to work two things. Two very, very important things. I do this with my coaching class. And the first one is easy. Med are very systematic. They love systems.

[00:29:38] So I give them a system where they get a quick, quick win. Because I know who I'm playing with. I know the game. I know where they're at. I know their current state. And I don't even blame them. So I'll make sure that they lose like 10, 15 pounds in the first couple weeks. Like I want them to have like a chicken face. Taking names. But in the meantime, what I'm doing behind closed doors is making sure they work on the inside. They work on their self-belief. They work on seeing the pause.

[00:30:06] They work on just, you know, getting that, that vigor back that they had in their twenties, but in a so much more smarter, sustainable way than just like, you know, I slept with that girl or something like that. Well, if you got more touchdowns than you, that's low level stuff compared to us now when we're four years old. We need, we need deep stuff, stuff like that. Call parenting or just parenting, man. Screw it. Talk to my men out there. Tell them how important it is to show up being a parent. Either your parenting or your co-parenting.

[00:30:37] Gotta show up. That's, that's your duty. Oh man. Cool. Okay. So I'm going to share something I never shared with you in the, you know, short bio. So I traveled Europe for three months with my kids. This, with the intent, we're going to, we're going to move to Europe. So we were just bedding. We were homeschooling them for the first two months.

[00:31:03] I, I commend anybody who holding schools their kids. Cause I shared this with you at the beginning before we had recorded, which was the kids and marriage will bring out all of your devils. Doesn't matter. Cause this is the part, this is not like your boys and you only see maybe once, you know, back in the day, you saw them once in a while. They didn't really see the real you. I see you on, on, on, on. Boy, yeah.

[00:31:31] When you're edgy on the morning, all that stuff. Like it is, it's pretty nasty. So to answer the question, parent, I had to pull out the arsenal. I had to increase the arsenal of my parenting skills right away because they saw, we're not cool. And now imagine daddy throws you into an airplane, takes you to a completely different culture, completely different household, completely different pattern.

[00:32:01] And every day he's an asshole. He's, he's irritable. He's mean. He's meaner than he was in Toronto. Like, you know, and then, you know, you, you, you, you go back into the room after you, after you yell at him, you want it wrong, man. And he said, and you even go to your wife and you're like, I messed it up again. Like, you know, you talk about it. So you're like an addict. You're like, I'm not going to show up bad with them.

[00:32:31] I'm not going to be aggressive with them. I'm not going to be mean to them and say awful things. And we can go into the room with the coach and your wife and just like, oh shit, did it again. Like, how do I stop this? And I, again, it reached a tipping point where my wife invested in a woman named Dr. Becky. She's kind of popular, but Dr. Becky is a parent coach. And I remember my wife had the information for one whole year and for a whole year, I never logged into that. I got this. I got this. I don't need that. I got this.

[00:33:00] What can you guys hurt? I'm holding it all in. I'm in control. I was not in control. We were already looking at plane tickets to come home. So I look into the app and it, it does one thing that I'm going to share this with a lot of men, because I think a lot of men's going to respond to this because we need a vision for parenting. It's like a game plan. It's like a blueprint on how to be a good parent.

[00:33:26] Because last time I checked, nobody at the hospital gave me a manual on how to be a great father. I left that place and I just had to figure it out on my own. And like I said, all my doubles started to come out. My anger issues, my issues. Like, you know, you're trying to also protect them. Right. I mean, you try to protect the child. You think you're protecting them from the world. You know, it starts very logically. Right. Don't touch that. You might electrocute yourself. Don't touch that. You might fall down the stairs. Don't touch that. You're going to burn yourself. That's a hot stove. Right. It's all this like I'm protecting them from the world.

[00:33:54] And you start to really believe that's all you do. You are really actually trying to protect them from yourself. You're trying to protect it from your real self. I don't want you to see that daddy, daddy's lazy, daddy eats in the cupboard whenever he's stressed, daddy scrolls on his phone whenever he's stressed, daddy's inside and washing his jerking off because he's not connecting with his wife. Like it just keeps going. They don't, you don't want them to see that. No.

[00:34:21] I'm not telling you, you have to share all the things I just said, but, but, but by protecting them, they're actually not getting stronger. They're not getting more confident. They're not becoming more connected with you. And if you don't do this, I think this is actually an issue. So I'm drinking the Kool-Aid. All right. I've drinking the Kool-Aid of this parenting vision because the thing is I am so obsessed now with making sure that my kids are a confident bunch because last time I checked, I grew up in a very terrible area in Toronto. I grew up in a very terrible high school.

[00:34:49] I literally should be, could have been like drug dealer, like either, you know, maybe not in jail, but like penitentiaries, like something. I wasn't at Lillero terrible. So nobody would have ever imagined I would be, and I know you don't know where I live, but I live in one of the most affluent areas in Toronto. But the only way I did that though, was because I had the confidence by, from the negativity of the world. I learned how to fight the negativity of the world and I learned how to like persevere. So if I keep on trying to bubble wrap my daughter, is she going to become a confident

[00:35:20] individual or is she going to be actually quite like so afraid that she doesn't even know how to find courage because, you know, mommy and daddy never showed her the real world, if that makes sense. So yeah, I drank in the Kool-Aid. I drank in the Kool-Aid. My kids are going to be poppy kids. They're going to be connected with me. They're going to, they're going to hear me say sorry. Cause I say sorry a lot. Cause daddy, you know, I don't want to swear, but I do it a lot. I mess up. Right. They're going to know we're pair.

[00:35:49] They're going to know. I'm going to, I want to know about all their stuff. I want to let them, I want to let them share their stuff. And I'm not going to say, that's the hardest part. You know, it's almost like you can't shrink wrap them. You know, you can't bubble wrap them. They got experience. You know, like I'm sharing with you that my kids are 32, 30 and 28. If I would have done it, they wouldn't be able to succeed as they have so far. I'm sorry. I did spend, that had been very interesting.

[00:36:18] So my, my, I was flicking, man. And no clue where this was going, but this was awesome. This was rock and roll. My man have about a 30 minute attention span. So we, that's a little bit, but let the guys out there know where to find you. Absolutely. Absolutely. I hope you just even just say hello. I'm my coach Marcus Wolf on Instagram. That's my favorite place. I will literally have a conversation with you. And yeah, you can find me there.

[00:36:45] Or like I said, even if you want to DM me 40 over, I feel like that's like a little bit more relatable. So I know where you came from. But yeah, 40 over, if you ever want to talk about like how you, you know, what we do, if I can be helpful for you. Cause I'm like a doctor. I do not prescribe unless I, and diagnose, unless I like hear if I can actually help the person. So just feel free to have a conversation with me. If I can be helpful, cool. I can. Matt, I had 25 questions. I only got through like five.

[00:37:14] So, this is great. We'll circle back, man. That was so much blood. You know, you never have to roll. You never know how the podcast is going to get through. This, this, this was a real treat. I just really appreciate it.