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Heart First Leadership
Welcome to Heart First Leadership, the podcast that explores a revolutionary approach to leadership. In a world that often prioritizes success above all else, it's easy to find ourselves leading from a space of fear, doubt, and unworthiness. There is a new way!
Join me, your host Ryan Sawyer, and my co-host and wife, Heidi Sawyer, on a transformative journey as we seek to inspire and guide leaders, parents, and athletes to unlock the secrets to a truly fulfilling life—one that resonates from the heart. In Heart First, we challenge the conventional norms and embark on a voyage together, where heart-driven leadership becomes the compass for a life well lived.
Are you ready to redefine where you lead from? Let's dive into meaningful conversations, insights, and practical tips that will empower you to embrace a new paradigm of leadership.
Heart First Leadership
Breaking Free with Bill Tierney: A Story of Rediscovery
Embark on a transformative journey with Bill Tierney, a beacon of change who ventured from addiction to emerge as a leader in heartfelt guidance. His captivating narrative unveils the essence of personal revolution, illustrating how reshaping our inner dialogue can dramatically influence our pathway to fulfillment. This episode peels back the layers of self-perception and digs into the core of emotional intelligence, promising a treasure trove of insights for those ready to lead with authenticity and compassion.
We often find ourselves at a crossroads between the life we live and the life we yearn for, and it's in these defining moments where actual growth takes root. Reflecting on my own metamorphosis, catalyzed by Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, I unveil the shift from a facade of confidence to a genuine sense of self. Our exchange sheds light on the power of vulnerability and the pivotal role therapy plays in continuous self-evolution. As Bill shares his expertise, you're invited to witness how professional guidance amplifies self-awareness and propels us beyond the plateaus of personal development.
Closing our heartfelt dialogue, Bill and I traverse the landscape of recovery, venturing beyond traditional 12-step programs to explore alternative healing modalities. We confront the societal molds that often constrain men's emotional expression and celebrate the liberating journey toward authenticity. By sharing tales of rediscovery and the redefinition of success, we illuminate the path to aligning with one's 'true north,' where passion and purpose converge.
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Welcome back to the show. Today. I am honored to bring you a friend and the man who I first hired as my life coach and also somebody who guided me on helping me understand what it looked like to be a coach as well. So Bill Tierney is a results coach, a certified IFS practitioner. Bill is a prolific content creator and writer and has created several signature programs, including the Self-Led Project and Self-Led Results. Bill does group coaching and also works with people one-on-one. He's also the co-host of a podcast called Not your Typical Leadership Coaching.
Speaker 1:Bill is married to Kathy and lives in Liberty Lake Washington coaching. Bill is married to Kathy and lives in Liberty Lake Washington. They have five children and 12 grandchildren and one great grandson. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation. The two of us always, when we get together, do not spend much time on the surface, so you're going to hear us dive into the depths and really have a powerful conversation of what it looks like to transform, to do the inner work, to be able to come back out to the world and lead with your heart. I hope you enjoy. Welcome back to the show, so excited to be sharing this moment with you. Bill Just absolutely respected everything that you have done with your life. You are doing, and I'm sure I'm going to take a moment here in just a minute to share a little bit of the impact that you've made on me. So just excited for you to be here. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, ryan. I enjoyed having you on my show. It was a great yeah that was a blast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it was. It was a blast, really looking forward to connecting more with Martin. I don't like to beat around the bush. You know that. I don't really like surface level conversations, so we're not going to talk about the weather. I do want to hear from you, though, just if you can, you know, for the listeners who are visiting this podcast right now, you know, give them a, a screenshot, a glimpse into your life that says, like, what was that moment in your life that shifted things to where you began to lead with your heart?
Speaker 2:that has led you to the work that you now do in the world leading with my heart didn't begin until I'd been sober for about 22 23 years. I got sober november 15th because I was scared that my marriage was going to end if I didn't get sober. I didn't believe I had a problem, I just believed that she thought I had a problem and if I demonstrated that I was going to do something about it, she might stay with me. Gotcha, my heart didn't crack open as much as it needed to, probably, I should say, until I'd been sober for about 23 years. By the way, what a disappointment to find that just getting sober and abstaining from alcohol wasn't enough to make my life whole, to solve all my problems and to fix what was broken. I still felt broken. I still felt like an imposter and a fraud, and I was involved in a 12-step program an imposter and a fraud. And and I was involved in a 12 step program where being sober for a long period of time was the measure of success. And and so I would walk into one of the meetings and they would recognize me as oh there's Bill, that's been sober X number of years and and that's all they needed to know about me. But because that was the primary goal was staying sober a long time. I'd achieved that and I was anxious, I was depressed, very fearful. Lots of judgments, lots of other addictions, including those meetings.
Speaker 2:So, after my second marriage ended I'm really intentionally not going into a lot of detail here, not because it's a secret, I'm very transparent about all this stuff, as you know I just want to be conscious of time. After the second marriage ended, um, I will say my first wife died of a brain tumor after I'd been sober for seven years and it threw me into a tailspin that that I, another 12 years later, before I began to recover from that, sure, and it was about that same time, 12 years later, after the second marriage ended, that I desperately was fine, trying to find something somewhere somehow where I could get some, some get my hands on the levers of my own suffering, and I found the work of byron katie. Ironically, the work of byron katie is a very cognitive, intellectual process and it cracked my heart wide open and so interesting you wouldn't expect it, yeah. So, yeah, I can certainly provide more detail about that, but but what it was about that that cracked my heart open was that I realized what she says is true, that when I am suffering it's because of how I'm perceiving what's going on in my life, it's not because of what's going on in my life.
Speaker 2:That was a shocker, yeah, once that landed for me and I and I actually had some experience of realizing, oh yeah. So here's a direct connection to the idea that I'm suffering because of how I perceive something, not because of what that something is that's happening, not because of the trigger, but because how I'm perceiving that trigger. I looked down and I had my hands on the levers down and I had my hands on the levers. I, for the first time I had, I had an idea of what I could do beyond staying sober. That would make it how I felt in here. And as that began to change, I began to realize that I was putting energy out into the world. That was inviting back energy much different than I'd ever experienced before, and I wanted more of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. It makes me think about how I define attitude when it comes to working with athletes, performers, leaders is deciding what we focus on and also deciding what to believe about what we're focusing on. And we just had this conversation this morning with my wife about how to calm the storm and either helping other people calm the storm or the storm within. And and, uh, you know, the interesting piece is, when we do that internal work, then the waves, the wind, the currents, they calm on their own and or at least our response to them, begins to change right. We no longer are suffering because of the external influences and what people think and the pressures and everything else that's happening externally. Yeah, it's really about an orientation shift going from everything outside of me has to be a certain way for me to be okay to, oh, I can be okay, and then things seem to kind of domino in that, in that direction. And I remember I want to tell a quick story just so I don't forget, because I know that this is gonna, you know, go down a rabbit hole here of us just going back and forth is I have kept all of my journals in the last 10, 12 years that I have been journaling on on almost a daily basis and I and I to the point now where I journal for a good 30 to 45 minutes every day, just letting it pour out whatever comes out of me. No judgment, sometimes it seems like a prayer or whatever right. And one of the journals and I have them all in order, stacked up here in my closet right and I revisit them from time to time. A lot of them are just collecting dust, but there's one in particular that I know that I go grab, I know exactly where it is and I revisit it on a regular basis, probably about at least once a year, if not maybe twice, and it's the journal that I was using when you and I began to first work together, and I came to you in two different capacities. The first capacity was to you know this, I'm recognizing that there was something going on in there and that I wasn't okay inside. And then the second capacity was to say you know what? I think this is something that I'm willing to explore. I think I want to be a coach, and so I hired you to kind of help me understand what it meant to be a coach.
Speaker 1:And when I look back at that journal. Every single time it makes me legitimately laugh and every single time it makes me legitimately laugh in the most like open, curious, and yet I don't know if I'm laughing, because it's just how I deal with certain you know things in life because there's other things that I laugh about, but but the end of the day is, when I look at that, I'm like holy cow, how far have we come? And how entangled with our own stories and preferences and beliefs and limitations we once were. Right and and to just to, to just want to say thank you to you here publicly, to say like, absolutely set me on the path of liberation, of freedom, right, because I believe that's any good coach is helping people, helping themselves to be free, as well as helping others to find freedom, whatever they think that next thing is that's going to set them free.
Speaker 1:Right as helping others to find freedom, whatever they think that next thing is, that's going to set them free, right, help them to pursue that and continue that path of that liberation. So thank you in that and um, and it always inspires me the takeaways that I pull from that journal. Whenever I'm needing some inspiration. That's one of my absolute go-tos, so just wanted to share that with you. And I say thank you acknowledgement thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, you're so welcome. I mean, I I was really honored to work with you when we were, when we were working together, and it's been a delight to see you and heidi take it, take off with your coaching practice and see all the people that you're making a difference with. I was just thinking, before I signed on to join you here today, about the idea of how we're both heading for the top of the mountain, but, but you know, since you and I were working together, you've gone your own way and taken your own path, and, and every once in a while we crisscross and we run into each other again and again, and again, and we find that we have a lot of things in common, some discoveries that we've made. You know our.
Speaker 2:I believe that we all have non-physical teams that are helping us out guides I call them angels and that they are kind of pointing me in this direction or that direction. And I have an interest, I have a curiosity, I have a passion, I have a theory, I have a hypothesis, and I really believe that a lot of that gets poked and prodded by my team of guides and angels, and I believe that you have your own team and so they're guiding you in one direction. I know that you're doing a lot, and and so they're guiding you in one direction. You, I know that you're doing a lot of research. You're both. Um, there's a doctor or a psychologist that you're working with that does research around the brain and psychology and, yeah, yeah, neuroscience specialist I really admire and respect the fact that you back up what you're doing with the research, which is not something that I do.
Speaker 2:I, as you know, go from my gut and my experience and I treat myself as the subject of the experiment. And then, once I've done the experiment and I see that it works, I bring it to my clients and I have them try it on for themselves. And so two different ways of going about it, two different ideas on how to support people, but essentially it's the same thing. What do we need to do to go inside and rediscover who we really are and then leverage?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. Actually, it was one of my next questions for you, bill. You just completely primed the conversation. So, within the research that I do, I also take that research and then I make myself an experiment. That's kind of has always been my way of doing things like oh, I learned this, now let's go try it and see if my subjective experience changes, if my objective reality changes based upon these tweaks and adjustments that I'm making from what I'm learning about neuroscience or neuropsychology or epigenetics or quantum physics, or even studying scripture, whatever it is like. Let's play with this and see what happens, right?
Speaker 1:So my question to you is my question to you is what are some of those things that you have explored that have led you on not only your recovery and, you know, staying sober obviously that was one chapter of it but like this next stage of you being cracked wide open beyond the Byron Katie work, now you've ventured into IFS and so what? But what is a daily like? It's always curious. More curious to me like what does it? What does it look like for you to go inward? What does it look like for you to go inward and to stay on this journey? Right, because I think a lot of times we get to a place of a plateau and we kind of think that we know, and we think we've arrived and and and so I'm curious to hear from you what does that look like for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so I don't, it's 2016. I was. I had just come out of a coach training program that I'd spent a year and $15,000 investing in to become a better coach. I enrolled and began that that that training when I was still a part-time coach, and in the middle of that year I gave up my job as a mortgage loan originator and went full-time and just kind of jumped into the abyss and and have been full-time ever since. That triggered a bunch of fear in me and and while I'm in that coach training program, at the very same time I was halfway through that year within the coach training when I quit my full-time job to become a full-time coach and and then six months later, when I completed that coach training, I was so disappointed, discouraged and discouraged that I was ready to get out of the coaching business and try to find yet another career. It would have been number eight, I think.
Speaker 2:At that point I was 50, I don't know how old, 55, 56 years old at the time, and when I went to the trainer and the coach training and said I don't feel like I got what I came here for. In fact, I feel less confident now than the day that I came into the training she said to me some people need therapy and I I at first I felt hurt, offended, insulted by that. I was really angry and I went home and kind of nursed my wounds for two or three months and found that I was in kind of a death spiral. I was sinking lower and lower and lower into depression and fear and worry and anger and resentment. And then the thought popped into my head and maybe this is my team of angels again and guides saying, hey, maybe therapy. So I called Brenda Ofterhart, a therapist that I'd never used before but I knew her well, I liked her, trusted her and had four sessions with her. And that's when I got introduced to the internal family systems therapy model, which introduced me to the idea that who I am is made up of a multiplicity of internal influences that the IFS model calls parts.
Speaker 2:And by the end of that fourth session I not only had I thought that what I was going to get back was my performance-based confidence I'm confident because I know I'm good, I'm confident because I know I can get results. It was replaced by authentic confidence that was not performance-based at all, but just confidence in who I was, and it was more of a sense than an intellectual mathematical process. One plus one equals two didn't come into it at all. I just noticed that something had shifted within me and now I had more access to what felt like authentic competence. That was one of the first big shifts for me that had me getting curious about IFS. But I didn't actually fall in love with IFS until I started the training through the IFS Institute in 2019.
Speaker 2:And through that training, I learned how to open up even more to the process of getting curious about the parts of me that are hurt and the parts of me that are trying to protect me, and began to understand why I put myself in my own way and, and every single time I did this and this was amazing, brian that every single time that I did this, and when it was facilitated by a trained ifs professional that knew what they were doing, I would be surprised about what I would learn about myself from myself. Yeah, it was shocking and and I and I just, I would say, almost addicted to it I got, I got to know more. So your question is how do I, how do I maintain that, how do I, how do I go inside and how do I continue on that path and not get stuck in some plateau. I haven't been on a plateau since 2019. It's been this progressive next step, next step, next step, next step. Learn more, become more aware, work with clients, go inside, check when I get stuck.
Speaker 2:When I get stuck, when I get triggered, when I'm activated by whatever's happening out there, I know without any hesitation it's what's going on in here that I need to really look at Now. Do I do it immediately? No, no, I still want to run down the guy that just cut me off on the highway, I mean, and that might last for five seconds before I get my sanity back again. I still want to blame my wife when she gets in my way in the kitchen for the third time. I still want to blame my wife when she gives me advice on something that I already know how to do that I didn't ask advice for. I want to blame her for how I feel in here.
Speaker 2:But those are all little gifts that show up to remind me. Go inside, see what there is to notice, and that's how I do it. Now, ryan, if I get really wrapped up around the axle, I've got a therapist that I can go to and do. I've got several people that I trained with in the IFS model and I'll ask them to help me walk through and hold what is called in the IFS model their self energy and lend that to me until I can get mine back. What that means is access to the resources that are available to me anytime I can get to them, anytime the parts of me that are upset can relax enough to let the resources and qualities of self emerge. I know I'm using IFS language, so I'm going to stop right now and see if any of that was confusing to you or possibly to a listener.
Speaker 1:No, I don't think it's confusing to me at all. I mean, I've explored it enough and I've experienced it with you. Even so, I have an idea of what you're talking about. I think that one thing I would say is that, um, the thing I want to highlight is that we don't know that we're in our own way, and and this is this is the piece where, like to me, one of the things that I thought of as you were talking there is when I'm working, when I'm talking to the coaches that I work with in the sense that I'm in relationship with professionally I asked them if you knew tomorrow, when you woke up, that you were going to be asleep, which means to me, that means that you're going to go back into your patterns, to your sense of not enough, to your unworthiness, to your limitations, that our brain is wired to conserve energy and it's wired for survival and it has all kinds of mechanisms that limit us and that keep us, uh, hiding. And so if you knew that tomorrow, when you woke up, that you forgot again, like, what would you do? What would you put in place in your life to make sure that you wake up? And so that's the priest, where it's like I'm not gonna assume tomorrow morning when I wake up, I'm gonna have some sort of a reminder, in a way, that I wake myself back up to myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, and because that's just how we have to understand how to overcome the limitations of the mind, of the brain, of the system of the body, of the human experience. And so that's what I heard from you was that there is this, there is this, what we call the. When I talk with people who are performers, right, there's a place inside of you that isn't afraid, doesn't doubt, always knows completely pure, right, and that's your center. And so the more aware of it you become, the greater connection you're able to create with it, the greater capacity you're able to operate from it, with it, the greater capacity you're able to operate from it. And so, uh, it's in whatever realm of personal development you're in, like it's about peeling back the layers so you can actually be like, oh, there is the authentic self, though, whatever the terms, right, it's all just terminology of the same thing, and uh, and it's so incredibly powerful.
Speaker 1:I think that's what becomes addicting, because what the only next option is is to be able to unhide, right, like that's what I believe all of this is about is about unhiding right, and so the mechanisms, like you talked about, of these moments that cause some sort of a disturbance within, is an inspection point to say, oh, here's an opportunity to unhide, here's an opportunity to release something, to heal something, to love something, to grow, so that thing no longer limits me. And that's what I'm always curious about. I tell people we're all limiting ourselves, like how can I no longer limit myself? Like then that's, you know, that's the unique, the unique path. So I love everything that you're saying. I I am curious now, as somebody who comes from a background of recovery. It's like almost like the unhiding and recovery. Like aren't they kind of the same right recovery? It's like almost like the unhiding and recovery like aren't they kind of the same right?
Speaker 1:Right, you know what I mean? It's you know I tell people a lot of times, like whether you're coming out of a deep, dark place mentally and emotionally, like mental, emotional wellbeing and performance are interlinked. So whether you want to be a high performer or whether you want to just get out of the mud, the tools are the same, right? It's just it's the orientation of what you're using them and so your work that you do, who are you working with, and what are you passionate about? You know, besides just your own personal growth? Like you're the experiment you work on yourself. When you turn to others, who is it that you naturally, organically, turn to? To want to, to want to help is? Do you turn back to those people in recovery that maybe need some of this type of support to be able to, to not only stay sober, but yet to then also overcome those limitations?
Speaker 2:I do now. As you know, I've been a coach since 2011. And when you and I were working together, that was around 2015. And that's when we had the 5 am club, which was made up of a group of I want to say five, maybe six men, and essentially all we had in common was that they knew you. You brought these men all into the same group, and so some of them knew you from the football days and some of them knew you from business days, but what they all had in common is that they wanted to become better men and they all recognized that to become better men, they needed to be focused on themselves, and there was varying degrees of capacity for that. Others were still, as you know, others were still kind of stuck in. If the world would change, I'd be okay, but most of us that were there and had a pretty large capacity for being able to own our own experience and not hope that the world was going to change to accommodate that. So I, over the I don't know how long it's been, I I'm guessing in my 14th year as a coach now have been trying to find my niche and the natural seemed like I should be working with people in recovery, but I found that I had a lot of my own beliefs that were getting in the way of allowing me to do that Concerns, I would say, coming from a 12-step background where the attitude is that we give it away for fun and for free.
Speaker 2:So in 12 step, there's no cost to be a member of a 12 step program. They pass around the basket and you give what you can. If you can give anything Other than that, there is no cost, and part of the one of the values and traditions of a successful recovery according to 12 step is to give and help others give back what you got. So, as a coach, to approach the recovery community that's 12 step trained and asked them to pay me to support them was not well received, and I think a lot of that was was projection on my part as well. How do I approach the people that I know that are in recovery and offer them something that they're not getting in the, in the meetings and out of the 12 steps and ask them to pay me for that? Of course, I had to ask them to pay me for it because I'm going full time as a coach and I need to sustain my financial future by making money. So I actually stared away from that and I just started working with whoever was in front of me and at that time, because I was a mortgage loan originator, that was real estate agents. And I cut my teeth on coaching by offering free coaching to real estate agents in hopes that this kind of gets us around to the topic I was wanting to focus on too, in hopes that they would give me referrals of their homebuyers so that I could loan them money, so that I could make a living. That way, I was going to really passively and indirectly support myself by doing what I loved, which was coaching, and then doing what I had to do to make money, which was loaning money. It didn't work out great. Very few of those real estate agents referred. So I wasn't a very good producer as a mortgage originator because I really wasn't into it. All I was in the mortgage business for was to make some money to pay my bills.
Speaker 2:What I wanted to be doing was coaching, so I did that for a while. I built groups around people in the business networks that I was involved in, and it wasn't until recently when I realized so I stopped participating in 12-step about five, almost six years ago now, and as I withdrew, it almost feels and this is no judgment of 12-step, I'm just talking about my own experience here it almost feels like when I withdrew from the meetings and from involvement in 12-step I was pulling myself out of a cult. Don't hear that wrong, please. I'm not saying 12-step is a cult. I made it cultish for myself. I was following the leader, I was following the rules, trying to do everything right, and when I extracted myself from it I noticed that there was room, more and more and more room, within me to consider that other things might be true.
Speaker 2:There may be other possibilities for recovery beyond the 12 steps, and certainly I knew that I had found some of them. But I began reading a lot of other books that were written by people who weren't 12 step people and had different theories and concepts about recovery, and one of them was Bessel van der Kolk, the Body Keeps the Score, and he mentioned in that the IFS model. What I love about IFS is that it's a compassionate, non-shaming approach. I felt shamed in 12 step. I got scared and shamed sober. Shame and fear kept me sober. I was afraid that the disease was going to hunt me down and kill me. That's what I had heard in the meetings. That's what I believed, and when I withdrew from that fear-based motivation and opened up to other possibilities and then began to use IFS as the model to treat my own recovery, then it made sense to approach others, whether they were 12-step or not, who wanted to find something beyond what they could find in the 12 steps for recovery. Yeah, so that's who I work with Now.
Speaker 2:I work with people that are recovering, and recovery to me now means it's not I'm not recovering from alcoholism. I'm not recovering from alcohol addiction. I'm not recovering from anything I've ever been addicted to. All of those were mechanisms that my parts put in place to try to help me. They were trying to help me numb, to escape, to not feel bad, and so what I'm really recovering from is whatever those behaviors and substances were there to cope with.
Speaker 2:What was I trying to cope with? And for me it was trauma, and for most people that's what it is Unresolved past. Yeah, if I can recover from that, if I can resolve what's unresolved, if I can complete what's incomplete, if I can heal what's unhealed, what's been wounded, I don't need the addictions anymore. So I'm recovering from my trauma and what I'm recovering is my true, authentic self, with that framework, with that understanding and a compassionate, non-judgmental approach to whatever we've had to do in the past to get this far, even whatever's happening in the moment because of the habits that we've formed over the years to survive. If we can approach this from curiosity and logic and heart, we can recover.
Speaker 2:Anybody can recover, and recovery means whatever it means to the person that's trying to recover. It doesn't mean I have to be sober every single day. If alcohol has been a problem for me, it means I'm sober every single day, but for someone else it might mean I only drink on the weekends, or I don't I stopped drinking after two drinks or I only drink socially, if it's. If it has to do with alcohol. I no longer am attached to that. You have to stop drinking completely or else you're going to die from a deadly disease. That may be true for some people, but that's for them to decide, not me, right? I can tell I'm on my soapbox right now, so I'm going to step down no, I'm loving it.
Speaker 1:I'm letting you roll, I know, don't step down. Don't step down unless you want to a couple of things that I wanted to. I want to circle back on that you said there. So thank you for that, because I always love it when somebody who's passionate gets on a roll because I, I do the same thing and I don't. Uh, I always love it when I'm like, oh, I hope someone recorded that, because why can't it always pass through? Why can't it always pass through me that easily, right? So I'm glad that we got with, got that recorded for you.
Speaker 1:Um, fear-based right. That here's the thing. It works, it did it works. It works for me. It works in business, it works in sports. You know, when we create egos that are based out of fear, then we go like hell to overcome. The not enoughness. Problem is that there's never anything that you're ever going to accomplish or achieve, or experience is ever going to overcome that not enoughness, right? So you put yourself in this washer machine and the end result becomes either what's the point? Because you think you did something, but you still don't feel the way you thought you were going to feel right, or you fall short in some way, shape or form. So then now I'm not good enough.
Speaker 2:You said something during the Not your Typical Leadership Coaching Podcast that you joined us on. That I've heard you say before, but it's just such a great example of this. You are on the field celebrating, arms still up in the air, confetti still falling on the field. I don't know if you said that, but I'm imagining this in my mind. Sure, yeah, there may have been confetti, I don't know. You've just won the national championship and you noticed the thought all right, let's do it again. And in that moment you caught it. What?
Speaker 2:All of these years I've been working towards this point. It's happened, I've achieved it, I've accomplished it. And there's a voice saying let's do it again. It's because I've achieved it, I've accomplished it and there's a voice saying let's do it again. It's because of what you're talking about right now, because you cannot overcome a false belief with the accommodations that you make to work around it. You can't. The belief itself needs to be destroyed, and by that I'm not suggesting that we go to war, I'm. What I am suggesting is that we have to see that the belief itself is, is a false concept, and once we see and expose it, and once we see that and it falls apart. What happens is it's not replaced by another belief. It's replaced by the truth yeah, my space, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so then you go to work to then buffer yourself because what you're doing is not working right, so you buffer with all kinds of distractions oh, you mean when the belief is still in place, you do when the belief is still in place.
Speaker 1:right then, the buffering you talked about the buffering, whether it be the addictions or, you know, tv, whatever, distraction, social media, I mean, we don't even know that we're distracting ourselves, we're a culture of distraction, you know. I mean so it's so. Yeah, I think that that piece resonates with me so much that how do we, you know, shift as a culture from going from and and we're two men having this conversation, right, and so, like, it's just easy to like, maybe relate it to men in this, in this, in this context, is because we're, we're taught like don't feel, right, we're taught, don't feel. And then we're taught, and we, what we see, what's being modeled, is success, you know, know, is is materialistic, is some sort of achievement, it's, it's a title, it's a role, it's a thing.
Speaker 1:Right, that I'm, that you should be able to see, that you should be able to see, you should know, you should see me walk down the street based upon who I'm walking with, how I'm walking and what the clothes I'm wearing and whatever else, how I'm spending my time and what the clothes I'm wearing and whatever else, how I spend my time. You should be able to witness me in the sense of my success. But what we're talking about I'm going to put a little bit of words in your mouth here and you correct me if I'm wrong is true success is not going to be viewed, it's not going to be in a trophy case, right? It's not something that anybody else is going to be able to see or witness or observe. It's an internal experience, right, where you're no longer operating from fear, but you're operating from love, you're operating from being enough, you're operating from that truth that you talked about, that gets replaced when the fear based belief is exposed. And when it gets exposed, basically it's able to dissolve right, all of that.
Speaker 2:I agree with all of that. And and when you say that it's not something that can be observed, that that also is true. But I, but I want to add into that that there's at some level, we do observe that kind of success in others and we're drawn to it. And when I earlier.
Speaker 1:I may not be conscious, maybe I'm more unconscious.
Speaker 2:It might just be like a vibrational thing, but you know, uh, yeah, yeah absolutely yeah, when I was talking earlier about how things began to shift, and on the inside, and then that changed how things looked on the outside. That's what I'm talking about. It's like I don't get this part. You understand this much better than I do, ryan, but what I noticed in my own experience like I said, I use myself as an lots of them those are modalities that I no longer employ as a coach and I no longer apply to my own life. But those things that I have found that do work, I sure stick with them, because why wouldn't I? And what works is that I'm able to get the results that I want. But what's really working is that I've gotten myself out of my own way, and how that happens is that the beliefs that are held by those different parts of me have fallen apart, because they've now been exposed to reality and the parts of me that have held the beliefs let go of them and embrace the new reality. And when they do that and here's earlier you seemed to be pointing to this question what do I do to maintain it? Here's the really powerful thing about IFS I don't do a fucking thing to maintain it. I just keep doing what I've been doing sorry for the language if you need to cut that out, but it's an exciting thing to to know is that using ifs is permanently healing and brings about lasting results that don't have to be maintained. Yeah, and when it's healed, it's healed, it's exactly. Healed means whole, whole means integrated. I've been disintegrated, I've been unwhole, I've been wounded and I've been injured. I've been in the process now, with ifs, of healing, returning to full integration and and for the parts of me that get fully integrated and return to wholeness and joining up with the true self of me, now they are my allies and they help me in life to honor my values, to honor my purpose, to help me accomplish and achieve anything and everything that I want to do. I'm having so much fun, ryan, being a coach right now and I have been having this for you and I.
Speaker 2:I talked last September. You said how's business? I said it's horrible. I'm thinking I'm doing something else. You remember that? I remember yeah, yeah, and I went away and I did some soul searching and I worked with some of my parts and what my parts revealed to me is Bill, you need to do some marketing. And another part said but I hate marketing. God, I hate marketing.
Speaker 2:There's the conversation, and and so I gave voice to that I let that part of me speak with one of my former clients, someone like you who I trained to be a coach, and she said well, do you ever call? What's Meredith have to say about this? Meredith is a common friend who I'd referred to this person because I thought she could help her get organized. And she said well, meredith is a marketing wizard, why don't you give her a call?
Speaker 2:So I kind of trust that my angels, my guides, my team, the people I've surrounded myself, will give me reflection to help me see myself better, so that when I lose myself, when I lose sight of who I really am and what's really true for me, I can have that reflected back. And I've cultivated an internal environment in such a way that when somebody gives me feedback like that, I receive it openly and I don't push it away because something inside me got offended. No, I want to know how I'm being perceived, not so that I can change who I'm being or who I am, but who. Let me try that again. Not so that I can change who I am, that's not possible but to change who I'm being by having my center, as you say myself, be in the leadership position rather than one of these parts that are still attached and tethered to the past. Be in the leadership position rather than one of these parts that are still attached and tethered to the past.
Speaker 2:So I reached out and I asked Meredith for some help and since then I've had the best six months seven months I've ever had in my career in terms of people being attracted to me. My energy shifted because I got help from somebody that knew how to market accurately and well and within my integrity. And now people are attracted to me. I get to work with them and the more I get to work with the people that match who I can help like authentic men that want to be authentic, people that want to be in recovery even though it appears they already are people that are struggling with those kinds of ideas they're being attracted to me. Now I'm filling up groups. I I practically have a waiting list for one-on-one clients now and I get to have fun. Having my own business and being a coach feels like I'm like in the flow, and it feels like that every single day, ryan awesome.
Speaker 1:So tell me about this authentic man. I know you run groups that are specifically for men you mentioned that in that last little go around there so I want to hear what this means to you. And what are these groups? What are you doing with these men? Who are they, how are you helping them and what's that look like?
Speaker 2:There's such a need for men to be supported and such resistance to it, and it makes sense that men would resist being part of a group, especially if the idea is that we're here because we're broken or that there's something wrong with us. Especially if it means that we're asking for help, because most of us have learned that asking for help means that we're weak. There's something wrong with us. But something about this IFS model makes it possible for men to come together and begin to confront those kinds of beliefs and again in a very curious, compassionate way, and challenge what we've been told must be true about us. As a man, this is true about you. I bring these men together. We challenge those beliefs based on what's happening in their lives now and the difficulties that they're encountering. These men what they almost all have in common is that they give. They have a tendency to give to others so that they can get what they need without asking for it, and it never works and these men end up feeling.
Speaker 2:Men end up feeling resentful and because they have nothing else on in their toolbox for how to be in a relationship with someone, they keep going back to the well and giving, not getting what they hope to get back, getting upset now, being labeled as an asshole and as the problem in the relationship with what they were giving to get, being threatened with abandonment and rejection, re-upping their game to give even more. It's time to bring in the roses, hoping that that's going to work. I mean, it's this vicious cycle. It doesn't work. And when it doesn't work, enough that either the marriage is going to end or the man is thinking of ending his own life or he's going into a death spiral of depression and anxiety and it's affecting his work and his ability to show up and provide the value that we've been trained, that we're supposed to provide.
Speaker 2:My job as a man is to provide the stability and security in the relationship, but if I'm mentally torn up inside with resentment, fear, unworthiness the list could go on and on and on and if I have somehow worked it out in my own mind that the very person that I want to love and be loved by is the biggest enemy in the world and I have to live with her, we got a problem, a big, big problem, and most men have no idea how to solve that. Groups use I use the IFS model to coach these men so that they can, can recognize their inauthenticity and and deal with what it is in them that gets in the way of their authenticity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love, you know, being able to create these spaces where where we're able to come together and have have real conversations that create lasting change. Right, I mean, it's just, it's so needed. And what it makes me think about is the culture that we have that's so incredibly externally focused. I mean, we already have a natural, certain amount of external focus as it is anyway, because of how our brain works, right To try to source a level of safety. And then you add in the information age, you add in social media, you add in extra news and everything else, and now we become what's called overly externally focused.
Speaker 1:This depletion happens. We then try to even over-please, over-strive, over-accomplish, over-whatever right Decreased, even a further decreased sense of self, decreased confidence, less resources to inhibit negative thought, so negativity even has more of a grip on us. And in this it becomes this vicious cycle which, over enough time, anxiety, depression, becomes the end result because, legitimately, we're just giving all of our resources, not only our energy but even our sense of worth and identity, to something that's outside of us, that's, that's conditional right and it doesn't last, right, whatever, whether that be your example that you brought up in my story of the national championship, I had put my identity, my sense of worth, in whether or not we won that game. Yes, right. And even though, legitimately, within five minutes of winning that game, I was like, well, shit, gotta do it again, right, like when does this vicious cycle ever end? Or whether it's putting my sense of worth in a relationship in somebody else being okay, which we've all been there, right, if you're okay, I'm okay, yeah, and then just no longer playing that game.
Speaker 1:So, learning how to legitimately restore right, restoring our center, restoring our sense of self, restoring our energy or resources, so we can reconnect to a sense of self that is of worth and of enough to rebuild our self-concept into a stronger, more supportive self-concept that allows for us to have the resources to, because there's still going to be some negativity that pops up, it's still going to be those moments, right. But now you have the resources to inhibit those moments, right. And then, coming back full circle to our conversation, is if you have those resources, have that the community and the conversations. It's like we got to be in these conversations to create that as a possibility. So then we have the attitude where we're able to decide what we want to focus on and what we're going to decide about, what to believe, about what we're focusing on.
Speaker 1:But if we, if we're just completely depleted and every bit of my sense of self resources in some vehicle or something outside of me or someone outside of me that's going to come and go, that has the potential of changing right, then I'm not going to feel like I have any control over my life whatsoever, over my life whatsoever, right, and so, yeah, any any last bits of peace here. So the, the, the last things that you wanted to you feel like you had maybe haven't shared, that you'd want to share, or you know any sort of advice for somebody who is potentially listening to this, going like, oh, this resonates with me, with me. Where would somebody even start? Like, what's the what's just one step that a man could take to take a step towards authenticity?
Speaker 2:I'll share an exercise that was given to me that I used three years before I met my current wife, nine years after my second marriage ended. Seven of those years I was completely abstinent, trying to protect myself from getting so triggered that I might just land back into another toxic relationship. Someone had suggested, or I read somewhere make a list of what you want and make a list of what you don't want, if you're ever going to be in a relationship again. So what I would suggest? So let me, rather than telling that story and I'll wrap it up by telling you how that went for me let me just tell you what I would suggest. Telling you how that went for me, let me just tell you what I would suggest.
Speaker 2:So if there's a man, anyone, man or woman who would like to recover their authentic self, let's have you. Start by noticing what you're experiencing in your life that you really would rather not be experiencing, and start with a category of life. Start with career, start with a relationship, start with the way you do self-care, or don't Start with fun and joy. Pick an area. Let's just say it's relationship, even more narrowly, that it's your significant other, committed relationship. What is it that you never, ever want to experience in a relationship again, whether it's the one that you're in now, or if you're leaving that one and that one's not going to work out the next one or the next one. What is it? You never, ever, started this exercise.
Speaker 2:I wrote down everything I could think of that I wanted in a relationship and I'd been in several relationships. All of them kind of crashed and burned. All of them did and I came up with 10 or 12 things over the course of 20 minutes that I really knew that I wanted in a relationship. So I switched gears and began to list the things that I didn't want and over the next 20 minutes I wrote over 60 items down as fast as I could that I didn't want. I had full access to the inventory of what I didn't want. I didn't have a lot of access to what I I didn't have clarity about what I did want.
Speaker 2:I took those 60 plus things and I considered the exact opposite and then, for example, on my list, I had I don't want to be in a relationship where I'm constantly criticized. Then I went to the exact opposite. So if I don't want to be constantly criticized, what would be the 180 degree opposite of that. I want to be constantly praised. I don't want that. What do I want? Somewhere in the middle there, I want something, though what is it? Oh, and what I came up with is I want to just feel like I'm respected by her. I want to know that she respects me. So I crossed out on the left side of the page. I crossed out being constantly criticized, criticized, and I wrote in I am respected, and I wrote it in present tense I am respected.
Speaker 2:So I made up that list of over 60 things that I wanted. I think it was even close to closer to 65 or 70 things that I knew clearly that I wanted Absolutely. No doubt I want this in a relationship. I was doubted whether I could have it or not, but I knew what I wanted. Three years later I met my current wife and two months later I looked at the list and all but three or four of those were already evident in that relationship. The list and all but three or four of those were already evident in that relationship. So again, I hadn't done much more than making the list and continue to treat myself as the experiment in life where I can personally develop and heal, and I attracted her into my life and it turns out that I was the man that could attract her and we have this beautiful relationship and we'll be married for 11 years this summer, and that's after a series of nothing but toxic relationships for me. So if somebody wants to get authentic, then and this might come as a surprise I think most people, when they think I need to change, that they're going to have to sacrifice and suffer.
Speaker 2:I need to change, and that means I need to accept the fact that I have to sacrifice and suffer. I need to change. That means I need to accept the fact that I have to sacrifice and suffer. The exact opposite is true. In order for me to change, I needed to point myself in the direction of true north. And true north for me is what is it that I'm here for? And I know what I'm here for when, inside, I feel empowered when I focus on it. That which I'm supposed to be doing has me feeling empowered, inspired, motivated. I've got the energy for it. In fact, it energizes me when I'm pointed in that direction.
Speaker 2:We think that we have to face all the crap, all the negativity, all the crap that we've done.
Speaker 2:We need to focus on that, but the truth is, the more we focus on that, the bigger it gets and the more it takes over when I focus on what it is that I want. It's not magic, even though I don't understanding, understand exactly how it works. I think you do it's. I know that it's not magic. All I know is that when I focus on that and pay attention to how it feels inside and continue to move in that direction and not be distracted by the old habits and the old patterns, that comes to pass, and the more that comes to pass, the more energized I am. And I don't have to restore that center or self. It's there, it's always been there. What's happened is the negativity, the parts of me that are still tethered to the past. They're still back there in the past and they're saying but what about us? And I'm saying, yeah, watch, this is better, you want to come with me? And they do absolutely, I'm on board, yep.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I absolutely love that and I can. If you want to offline, I'll give you the explanation of exactly what you're talking about when it comes to the neuroscience behind that, and there is it's 100% supported. Yeah, I'm going to tell you it's 100% supported in neuroscience.
Speaker 2:I've heard you talk about it, I've read it myself, but I mean, I just acknowledge you for really making sure that that scientific evidence is there to support this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so tell me, tell me, where can people find you Bill. I think the easiest when. Tell me, where can people find you Bill.
Speaker 2:I think the easiest. Where can people find you? Where's the best place? Yeah, just go to my website, billtierneycoachingcom. And there's an opportunity to learn about what I have to offer and how to get ahold of me.
Speaker 1:I will put that in the show notes and just thank you so much for this incredible conversation and everything that you're doing in the world and your influence.
