Have you ever wondered if you're the kind of person you'd want to date? This thought-provoking question launched me on a transformative journey that reshaped not only my relationships but my entire approach to life. Join me as I share intimate details from my own struggle with insecurities and the dangerous game of seeking approval from others. I'll walk you through the 'date for one' checklist—a strategic guide to foster a healthier relationship with yourself—essential for anyone on the road to self-discovery and personal growth.
This episode isn't just about asking hard-hitting questions; it's about facing the answers with courage. We dissect the significance of self-validation in all walks of life—from personal relationships to career ambitions. I get real about the power of journaling, a practice that's revolutionized my perspective, and the critical importance of self-care in maintaining one's best self. Tune in for unfiltered conversation and actionable advice that could help you become not just a potential partner's dream, but your own best companion.
Learn How To Discover Who You Really Are, What You Want From Life & Where Your Fit In.
Have you ever wondered if you're the kind of person you'd want to date? This thought-provoking question launched me on a transformative journey that reshaped not only my relationships but my entire approach to life. Join me as I share intimate details from my own struggle with insecurities and the dangerous game of seeking approval from others. I'll walk you through the 'date for one' checklist—a strategic guide to foster a healthier relationship with yourself—essential for anyone on the road to self-discovery and personal growth.
This episode isn't just about asking hard-hitting questions; it's about facing the answers with courage. We dissect the significance of self-validation in all walks of life—from personal relationships to career ambitions. I get real about the power of journaling, a practice that's revolutionized my perspective, and the critical importance of self-care in maintaining one's best self. Tune in for unfiltered conversation and actionable advice that could help you become not just a potential partner's dream, but your own best companion.
Learn How To Discover Who You Really Are, What You Want From Life & Where Your Fit In.
Would you date you? Powerful question I was asked when I was being broken up with, and one that has actually made me into the man that I am today, and it's something that, 12 years later, I've only just appreciated. That question, before we dive into today's episode. I want to thank you guys for last week's episode. If you haven't checked it out on YouTube, it did really bloody well, and I don't know whether it was because of the content I would assume it is, but I was also at my buddy's lake house and just recording it out there with nature, so that could have been it as well. Could have grabbed a few people's attention. But nonetheless, regardless of what platform you're listening on, if you could take a quick second to hit the subscribe button, it really helps me grow the show, get episodes like this and the incredible guests that we have on the show to be able to be heard by more men all around the world who need messages like this to improve their own life.
Speaker 1:
Now let's dive into it. I'm not going to lie. This is my second take of this episode. I just recorded it. I was over there getting ready to upload it to the newsletter and the sound wasn't on. That could have really pissed me off, but for some reason it didn't, and I'll talk about more of that in this episode.
Speaker 1:
But what I know you'll walk away with from this episode is I want to give some examples, some benefits and my date for one checklist that will help you improve your relationship with yourself and live a better life. You see, the problem that a lot of men face is we are insecure, we don't feel worthy and we don't really have an idea of who we are. We don't have a good relationship with ourself and for a long time this kept rearing its head in my life. I still remember 12 years ago when I got that text message from my ex and she sent me the message. I was on the job site. I was a builder at the time. She sent me a message and I've looked at it and it says where did you stay on Saturday night?
Speaker 1:
As soon as I read that, my heart rate elevated, the hairs on my arms stood up and I just started going into overwhelm, like this panic state of thinking of excuses, because I knew full well where I was that Saturday night and I knew I shouldn't have fucking been there and I went into that panic mode. That was like I need to save my relationship at all costs, okay, and the problem with that is I wasn't worried about how I'd hurt her, I was worried about losing something and I was worried about how I was hurting in that moment, which is a very selfish thing. And as the dust settled, that question she said to me was would you date you Like with how I've treated her? Would you date you like with how I've treated her? Would you date you? Would you expect you to hang around? And I want to frame why I'm using at as would you date you as opposed to would you be your best friend, because both are great questions and both probably lead to a similar outcome. I believe the person that you end up dating or marrying or spending a life with knows you better than anyone apart from yourself. They spend more time with you. They see you behind the doors when no one's watching. They hear your challenges, your fears, your excitements, okay. So they get a good understanding of you as an individual. And that's why I chose to say would you date you? Because it's a similar process to go through to really build that relationship with self.
Speaker 1:
The big problem that I was facing in that time, once the dust settled and I started to reflect upon things and this is once again when I'm talking about this. It may seem like this happened overnight. It definitely didn't. I've been working at this since around 2013, 2014, so coming up 10 years, and I'm still just making sense of some of these things. Like I said, this question I was asked 12 years ago and I've only really thought about it recently, so it didn't happen overnight. Don't expect this to happen overnight for you and don't be overwhelmed by that. Be patient and understand. The goal is to live a better life. It's to be a better man.
Speaker 1:
So, once the dust settled, I started thinking about that. Would you date you? It brought up a lot of stuff because for so long I'd been passing blame. I never wanted to take responsibility. I'd put my head in the sand, and this wasn't just in intimate relationships. This was with friends on sports teams. I just couldn't deal with the responsibility. I wanted the recognition, I wanted the validation, but as soon as things didn't go to plan or I fucked up, I didn't want to carry that responsibility. My biggest belief is, as a man, we need to be able to carry both. If you want the success, if you want the recognition, you better bloody well be prepared to take on the hardships, the stress, the criticism, the failures. Okay, and own your mistakes when they happen, because they will happen.
Speaker 1:
So once I started thinking about this a little bit more and I started breaking it down, the biggest problem was that I was always seeking things outside of myself. The validation was from other people, not from myself. The pats on the back needed to be from other people, not from myself. I needed to be told by other people that they loved me, not that I loved myself. Everything was external and the problem with chasing external things is you don't have control over that. You can't just wait for people to validate you and praise you.
Speaker 1:
And I noticed there was a big transition. When I was at school and I was doing well at sport, I got it a bit more regularly, but as I moved on to the next phase of my life life and I guess my perceived success wasn't as big I wasn't getting it as much and that really destroyed me to a point, because that's what I felt made me worthy. When people were patting me on the back, I felt worthy and as that time sort of started to increase between the moments that I got validated. I was constantly searching, which is why I believe I cheated, which is why I believed, or believe I lied, because I was trying to get validation in quick moments, couldn't experience delayed gratification. I couldn't put in the effort, so to speak.
Speaker 1:
And a lot of men are doing this in their life now and it's a big issue because it's causing issues in marriages, it's causing issues in their careers, it's causing issues with their health, because we want to be validated now. No one wants to go to the gym as the overweight guy who can't lift much, but that may be a starting point for some people in the place that they have to start to get to where they want to get to. Some people might be in a shit marriage and they either got to walk away from it or they need to start investing in the relationship to get it to where they want to be. No one wants to admit that they're in that situation, but that is a situation you need to own in order to move through it. Okay and same with your finances.
Speaker 1:
None of this can be done unless you have a good relationship with yourself, and that was what I was realizing. I was trying to get the external to make me feel better internally, and I was trying to build relationships with people that were better than the relationship that I have with myself, and that is why they kept failing, because you can only wear a mask for so long before you get exposed, and what that proved to me was that I needed to start working on this relationship with myself. I needed to start thinking about hey, if at the moment, I'm always waiting on other people to validate me, what would it look like if I approved myself? If I went back to that initial question, would I date me? Who would the man be that I would date? I'm not saying I'd date a man, you know what I mean, but who would be your best mate, right? What would that look like? What would be the character, traits, the values, the beliefs, the way that you show up?
Speaker 1:
That's what and how you build out that, and it's something that we do in our self-discovery program, which you've heard me speaking about a lot recently, and at the moment it's $27 US, it's about to go up and it's about to be an online cohort as well, which would be really cool, but that's maybe five months down the track, but within that, we started the most important part, which is the awareness phase right, being aware of what you want from your life. You know you will have to go back and think about, almost sketch your timeline out what are the negative experiences that you've had, what are the positive experiences, and build out on that. But I'm not going to dive into that just yet because we will talk about that on the date for one checklist, which is something that you can use and you can find this over at themanditcanprojectcom Go to the newsletters, go to the Would you Date you newsletter and it's going to be written out there so you can go through that. But with that, we want you to start understanding that if you aren't self-aware, if you haven't built a good relationship with yourself, you're never going to have personal standards, you're never going to set boundaries in your relationships and your relationships will never thrive. You'll skip from surface level relationship to surface level relationship, always avoiding the depth that most relationships require to be successful. So if you're seeking validation from your friends, from your family, from your partner or even husband or wife, that's only going to get you so far.
Speaker 1:
And I realized that, and I recognized that that I was extremely insecure, I did not feel worthy and I was always trying to validate myself, even if that meant that I was going to be the loosest guy partying, right. I didn't like partying Well, I did actually, that's a lie but I didn't enjoy it as I got older. But because people said, yeah, he's a dude doing the shots or scaling the beers, that gave me what I was looking for, but I didn't recognize that the way that I was getting it wasn't benefiting my life. It was detrimental to my life, and that's a big thing. That I feel is very important to establish is we all have wants, needs and desires, and you can fulfill them in a positive manner or you can fill them in a negative manner, and you need to be aware of that, and that's where this self-awareness comes through.
Speaker 1:
This is where this checklist for date for one becomes very powerful, because you become aware of these things. When you're more aware, you will make better decisions, you will succeed more, you will have more enriched relationships and you will live a better life. I can promise you. I'm living proof of that. So the goal of this process is to help you become your own best mate, or be the man that you would date right, the version of yourself that you would want a lady to date or a man to date, and in order to do that, we need to get clear on what that actually looks like. We need to set goals, we need to develop skills, characteristics, maybe change beliefs. So the process is this and the date for one checklist is this Number one get to know yourself.
Speaker 1:
As I said, it's like write down all of your interests, write down your experiences from life, write down what you're curious about, Write down what your fears are or your stresses are, write down what you want to experience in life that you haven't yet. When you start doing this and the reason why I say write is I believe the best way to get to know yourself is to write. If you think about how a relationship with a person, another person you can speak, you can go for coffees, you can hit a gym session, go for a run right Create experiences, and the cool thing about that is you're always getting feedback from the other person. You can read their body language and the way that they communicate with the words. Whether they're paying attention gives you feedback. If you're like me, if I were to have a conversation with myself in my head, man, it's absolute chaos. So that's where writing it down becomes a much more clear and probably fucking stable way for me to do that right. When I'm writing down, I can make sense of it, I can process it, I can file it away, I can do all of those sorts of things. So definitely get to know yourself. The best way I've found is journaling. I can file it away, I can do all of those sorts of things. So definitely get to know yourself. The best way I've found is journaling. I have been doing it for the last probably six years. I've got tons of journals that I can reflect over and it's a hugely beneficial thing, something that if you're, I guess, struggling with how to do that, go get started in that self-discovery program. I promise you it'll walk you through it and really help you get a lot of value from that and become, or build a better relationship with yourself.
Speaker 1:
The second one make time for yourself. Like relationships, you need to make time for the relationship. You need to make time for yourself, right? I believe you need to do it every day. It doesn't need to be hours upon hours. You know people say but I'm always with myself. Yeah, you are, but you're also always distracting yourself, whether it's by smartphone conversations with others, etc. So for myself, I like to do it in the morning because I know that the day, can you know, turn to shit and if I don't get that time for myself, you myself. It's something that I value and something that I believe I need to be the best version of myself to build my best quality of life. So if you don't believe that, then you probably won't do it.
Speaker 1:
And it goes back to that first point around get to know yourself. You may need to change some beliefs. I believe that it makes me a better man. So some mornings I'll sit out on the balcony here and just drink my coffee and I'll have a podcast in, or I'll read or I'll listen to some music. Other times I'll just have my coffee and just look out and see what's happening and watch the sunrise. Right, there's no method to it, but it's just like what would you like to do with your friends or what would you like to do with yourself, right? That moves into point three, which is embrace new experiences.
Speaker 1:
I believe one of the best things about life is experiencing things for the first time. As we get older, as we have more life experience, it's harder to come by those things, but I believe that is only because we tend to stick to routine. We tend to gravitate to what we know. Not many people like change as we get older. If you can be mindful that, hey, new experiences bring curiosity, it brings emotions that are great for you. It brings dopamine hits you're going to learn things that you don't like, things that you want to explore more in and it brings this richness to life that a lot of people lose.
Speaker 1:
So, whether you choose to do it monthly, I do it monthly personally and, once again, my life is different to potentially how yours is set up. You may be in a different season where you have children, or you may be younger and you're trying to figure a few things out. I'm in a season where my business is going well, I'm living overseas, I don't have children yet, so I can set my life up in a way that works for me in this moment, with the frameworks that I can give you, or even just thinking about new experiences. Adapt it to your life. That's going to be how it's going to be most effective. So for me, I'm either trying to have a new experience every month or have a new activity with someone that I've never met before. Both sort of give me that same feedback. I know some people do it quarterly. Both sort of give me that same feedback. I know some people do it quarterly, bi-monthly, some people don't do it at all. I would highly encourage you, at worst, to do it every quarter. You'll get that same experience, that same dopamine hit. You'll continue learning more about yourself and you'll be able to start piecing experiences together and reflect on the values of it, take learnings, etc. It's just going to make you a lot more self-aware because you have to be present in new experiences, whereas habits and routines you sort of stop thinking and you're just on bloody autopilot. So that's number three embrace new experiences.
Speaker 1:
Number four practice positive self-talk. This one probably doesn't need explaining, but you wouldn't talk poorly to a mate. They wouldn't be mates with you for too long. We seem to talk terribly to ourselves and continue to show up. It's wild. What I've recognized is I cannot always control my first thought, but I can control my second thought and if in the beginning you find it hard which I know I did I remember my coach at the time, maybe 10 years years or eight, nine years ago, and you need to speak to yourself that I was so negative. I was like dude, I don't believe it and I just find it really hard. And he said to me any change in standards personal standards is challenging will be met with resistance. So if you're struggling to do it, you need to push through the resistance to build a new standard. A standard is going to change what you accept in your life and if you continue to accept crap, you'll have a crap life. But if you choose to have a standard where you accept only good things, you will have a good life or a great life. So think about that with that positive self-talk Once again.
Speaker 1:
I listen to positive content. I hang around people who challenge me but also empower me and do give me validation and I validate myself. I am grateful when I do an episode. I am grateful when I get off a call with a client. I am grateful when I go for a run, when I spend time with my wife. I appreciate that about myself, that I do that, and I pat myself on the back because I know a lot of blokes aren't doing that and I feel good that I'm doing the things. That I believe is for the best version of myself and gonna make me a great husband and everything else that I do. So think about that.
Speaker 1:
Number five is define who you want to become. Read last week's newsletter or listen to last week's podcast we dive more into that but when you define who you want to become, once again it's going to help you with, I guess, getting to know yourself and your future self. Right, there will be things that you will pop up when you are getting to know yourself that maybe you want to change whether it's beliefs, habits, relationships and defining who you want to change whether it's beliefs, habits, relationships and defining who you want to become will help you make better decisions and really highlight what skills you need to learn, what environments you need to be hanging around in, what habits you need to develop, and that's why that is so powerful. Number six allow yourself to be seen.
Speaker 1:
One of the most common things that I experience when I'm speaking to blokes whether they're coming to me because their relationship or their marriage is struggling, they're overweight or they don't have enough money is they don't feel valued and they don't feel heard or understood, and I know from my own experience and from working with a lot of men that most people will never feel valued, understood or heard, because they don't allow themselves to be valued, understood or heard, aka, they don't allow their true self to be seen. They are so frightened that they're not good enough. They are so frightened that they're not good enough, and if you resonate with that, I did and I still go through bouts of that. But if I wanted to be accepted and heard by my wife or by my mates, I have to allow them to get to know me. I had to be vulnerable, I had to stop being sitting on the surface and I had to go deep with those relationships, and you're the only person who can allow that to happen. Once again, it's something that you need to develop and I had to go deep with those relationships, and you're the only person who can allow that to happen. Once again, it's something that you need to develop through conversation, communication, being put in a right environment. It's why our men's circles were so powerful. It's why our Strong Men of Value Academy is so powerful, because the environment is set up to help men develop in that way. And once again, going back to that program, we can help you get clear on the self-awareness, the planning, and then the next phase of that will be like okay, what environment do you need to be in order to achieve that? And for the right people who get accepted, they are welcome to join the Strong Men of Value Academy.
Speaker 1:
Now I wanna recap the date for one checklist. So, one, get to know yourself. Two, make time for yourself. Three, embrace new experiences. Four, practice positive self-talk. Five, define who you want to become. And six, allow yourself to be seen.
Speaker 1:
The benefits you're going to experience as a result of that is improved self-worth, right. So it's going to help you with your decision-making and so many things in your life, from what goals you want to set, what you want to have on your bucket list and, once again, all of these things. I just want to keep recapping it because I am so proud of the program that I've built. We help you with all of that. You literally follow through. There's no order to go through it, but if you do that, you're going to be on top of all of that stuff.
Speaker 1:
Right, you're going to know what your next goals are, what you want to be doing for your embracing new experience pieces. Make sure you check that out. But as a result of getting to know yourself better and working on those things. Your self-esteem and your relationship with yourself will improve, which will have a positive ripple effect into the areas of your life that matter, so your marriage or your relationships, the mates that you hang around with your work colleagues and with yourself. You're going to wake up so proud of who you are, and when you're proud of who you are, you take more pride in what you do, meaning you get better results. People who are lazy with things and don't take pride in what they do, they don't have enough self-respect to do that properly. That's why this work is so important. Finally, your overall mental and physical well-being is going to improve. When you love someone, you give more to it. You foster a more healthy environment, and that's what you're going to be able to do as a man the benefit of you being your best self and making better decisions and building a better life. The people that you care about most will get to benefit from that.
Speaker 1:
My name's Lachlan Stewart. Thank you for listening. I do ask one thing of you before you wrap up If you got value from this episode, please share it and please be part of the mission to help more men improve their quality of life by building a better relationship with themselves. I know that if you can do that, the quality of life is going to improve for so many men, and you guys are going to help me on this mission. Finally, make sure you hit subscribe with whatever platform you're listening on, and I will see you next week. As always, do something today to be better for tomorrow.
