131. Building Relationships to help you THRIVE!

This week Eric and Kate share their thoughts on relationships beyond their own. 

Topics:
➡️ The importance of being in a healthy relational environment
➡️ Focus on doesn't mean Cutting out.
➡️ Why being a lone wolf puts unhealthy pressure on your marriage.

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Eric MacDougall
We're talking about your relationships beyond just your marital relationship. We're talking about the people you surround yourself with, we're gonna talk about why that's so important. How to really engage with people that inspire you, motivate you lift you up, and what to do with the people maybe that are lifting you up without necessarily just cutting them out of your life. That's not always something you want to do. Right. And so, for us, we understand this concept of like, the people you surround yourself with had massive impact your life, we are always in relationship, and therefore our relationships typically dictate the quality of our lives. And so if you can be surrounded by other healthy people, and as well Jim Rohn quote around you know, you're the average of the five people closest to you, etc. We'd like to say you typically level up or level down to your environment and people are part of that environment. Right? So if you think about it, if you go to a certain gym, and everybody at the gym who works out there is maybe out of shape or overweight etc. There's not necessarily going to be any push to belong like to really get in shape. Right because the standard is set by the masses. A lot of studies scientifically done around this. But if you go to a gym and this actually happened to me one time for instance, I joined I went to a gym in kind of the downtown core and holy crap Everyone was super fit wake up. Super good look.

Kate MacDougall
That's like the gym I go to now I know it is like next level everybody there has like holes in there but like I'm talking like the muscle hole. I know it's wild and abs, they have like eight abs.

Eric MacDougall
I know. So, anyways, just to say, Well, clearly, you understand that we admire very good looking people. But

Kate MacDougall
one day, we're gonna be

Eric MacDougall
the other idea of what we really want. You know, we're not trying to pass judgment, anybody here, but what we're really trying to help people understand is that you level up to the people around you. Yeah, that's what we do as human beings, right? We are tribe, animals. And so, you know, if you are surrounded by a whole bunch of people who have great marriages, and are focused on being awesome parents, you most likely will naturally fall in line with that, yeah, right. If you want to be very successful and, and make a lot of money, and you're hanging out with people who make very little money, or you have the option hang on people who are billionaires, or you want probably to hang out with the people who are making more money, if you yourself, that's a priority for you to make more money.

Kate MacDougall
Yeah. I think that as a woman, I can talk about the girl Good girl. But I think it's, it's there, there's this initial thought of, okay, like, I'm gonna go through all my friends, and I'm gonna kick all these people out that don't do this. And don't do that. And I don't think that's necessarily what we're trying to get out of this episode, we're not going to, at the end of this episode, be like, kick all your BS friends out of your life, like, that's not at all what we're trying to say. What we're trying to say is, if you're trying to get somewhere, you know, like, I've, I'm going through this now, I've been through it before, where I'm kind of at a standstill in my life. And I kind of feel like I'm like, What am I going to do with my life, like, I feel I have this bigger calling for me. And I'm not really living that I'm not doing anything to go towards that, find a passion or go towards that calling. But I do have this feeling of like, Hmm, what's going on for me right now, is not really doing it. For me, it's kind of not the way I want to keep going. So I have a choice, I can stay in this perfectly well rounded life that I've created for myself, right now, if I stay here, it's fine. But if I want to level up, I'm going to have to bring new people in my life who are also leveling up, who are also driving towards change, who are also driving towards bigger and better things.

Eric MacDougall
It's kind of like who can model exactly what it is that you want as well,

Kate MacDougall
exactly. So people that are that I admire, people that inspire me, people that are going to lift me up to follow my dreams. Because if I had friends and family who were like, Oh, I don't know, if you should leave teaching, because you know, XYZ could happen, like, I most likely will say, You know what, never mind, I'm gonna stay right in this perfectly good life I have now and never tried to level up my life. But if I have people who are like, I did it, you got this, you've got to do this, like, it's gonna be amazing, like, I'm behind you, no matter what happens like, then I'm probably going to feel a lot safer and a lot more motivated to move towards those streams. So it's very important that when you're, you know, thinking about the people that you surround yourself with currently. So if you sit down right now and make an inventory of the people in your life, and what they bring to your life, and maybe what they're trying to not take from your life, but how they're keeping you where you are now, you might discover that you may need new people in your life, or maybe I can spend more time talking to this person and less time talking to that one. So having that knowledge of who is in my life right now, currently, that I could, you know, use to have these conversations with to drive myself to a different place, or, you know, like, I have a ton of friends who just they all went for job interviews, they all change jobs lately, and I'm like, Oh my gosh, they're so brave, like, maybe opening up those conversations with them and being like, what was the push? What was the push for you to go through that change? What was the push for you to do that? And what did that interview look like? And how did you get past that fear? And all of those things, you know, having those conversations Yeah, just

Eric MacDougall
opening the door to those conversations then introduces new possibility new potential. Exactly. And I really love that you said in terms of like, it's not about cutting people out or kind of going through your phonebook and deleting our friends. What I really want to kind of put a red flag around or maybe a boundary around is this idea that people are just tools to get you where you want to go. Right? That is not what we're saying here. And please do not take this podcast as like, Oh awesome, I'm only going to be surrounded by people who helped me and get me where I want to go I'm gonna become

Kate MacDougall
friends with only been billionaires and all the poor people in my life are just gonna go and be poor by themselves. That's

Eric MacDougall
right. Like Kate and I, we, we enforce and love and champion relational living, right even when we go to the sense of like, when we're visiting our kids, teachers, when we're like, we don't see them as just like, you are just a teacher who helps my kid like know, you're a human being, you have kids, we have kids, you're a person, you have hobbies, like you are a complex human being that goes beyond just this purpose that serves me. And so that's kind of a red flag I want to put around this is, please don't take this episode to go through this and be like, oh, this person can get me where I want to go, and this person can't. What you want to think about is, and I love the analogy of like the fish in the pond, right. And so when I played sports, when I took on challenges, I often say I want to be the little fish in the big pond. That's what I want, I want to be surrounded by a lot of big fishes. Now, that takes a lot of courage, right? And that taps into my insecurities. And I've kind of done a lot of that work to be like, Hey, I'm the little guy here. And I'm okay with that. Right? I'm in groups where wealth wise parenting, well, people are way ahead of me, right. And I think that's great. And I'm happy to be the little fish there. And I own that. But what I realized is that I have to go into those places and be humble. And that doesn't mean that I'm better than them or less better than them or that the people who are not in that group that I met or anything like that. It just means that I want to be surrounded by people who inspire me to take action who model what I want to create as well.

Kate MacDougall
Yeah. And that doesn't mean that you necessarily need to seek out new people. And I think that's what I was trying to say you don't necessarily need to seek out new people, maybe you need to seek out different conversations. Maybe you need to ask different questions to the people who are in your life. So, you know, what is it that you have in the relationships you currently have? That is lifting you up inspiring you, you know, are there people that you've been avoiding talking to because maybe you're intimidated by them? I know for me, there's a lot of people I'd love to get to know better or hang out with or get, you know, become a start a relationship with them. But I'm nervous because I'm like, Oh my gosh, like, what if they don't think I'm cool? Yeah, absolutely. Like making friends as a kid seemed a lot easier.

Eric MacDougall
You know, and it's so funny, you mentioned that because to me, like, there was a time in my life. And I had a lot of success with this where I would literally go to people and say, like, I want to be around you like is that? Okay? Is it okay that you mentor me and we can talk and you can kind of help me and, you know, really grow my life and serve people in the world. And what I realized is most people said yes, right. Because maybe as a mentee, I was really good. And they like that, or whatever, for whatever reason. But I get what you're saying, sometimes it can be scary. And I remember sometimes I would reach out to people and I was like, this person's never gonna respond to me, you know, like, either podcast guests I've had on people, I have communication with people I'm friends with now. And I'm like, This person is like a big deal. Like, I'm, they're never gonna give me the time of day. And they responded. And now we have a friendship. Like, this is awesome. You know what I mean? But I had this idea of you that was not human, right. And now what I'm realizing is I go through all this, everyone's just a human being, doing their own thing. And in the end, we're all insecure, we all want to connect, we all want to better our lives. And so not only is it important for you to surround yourself with people, but think also about the energy that you bring to these relationships.

Kate MacDougall
Yeah, exactly. And I love that. And I think that it's, it's very important for you to look at the friendships you do have now and the relationships you do have now not necessarily just friendships, it could be family, relationships, work, relationships, whatever, whatever it is. But, you know, where are you putting most of your energy? And is that energy? I want to get away from the idea of saying, like, is it bringing you something? So I don't really know how to

Eric MacDougall
say that. Because it's like serving the life you want to create?

Kate MacDougall
Exactly. Is it serving the life you want to create? Is it taking time away from you working towards those dreams, or those aspirations or those, you know, you know, those ideas that you have going on in your life? Are these people trying to pull you down? And to be like, No, don't dream? No, don't do this. Because we we do have those people in our lives. And so it's very important to see like, where is your energy going? And to be very aware that when you say yes to something, you're always saying no to something else. And when you're saying no to something else, you're saying yes to another thing, right? Yeah. So by saying yes to this person who is not lining you up who is not encouraging,

Eric MacDougall
like sitting around the lunch table at work and gossiping and About work, if you decide to say yes to that, well, then you're saying no to 30 or 40 minutes where you could walk in nature work on this passion project, have a phone call with somebody you love cetera.

Kate MacDougall
So and when you don't have these healthy relationships, that's where you find yourself in this like standstill in your life. So if you're sitting there thinking, you know, like, I'm not happy, every day I wake up and I'm unhappy, I go to work, I hate my job, I can't find happiness in my life, I can't have find happiness in any of my relationships. A big part of that might be the people you're surrounding yourself with. Maybe they're not pushing you to aspire to different things, maybe they're not pushing you to follow your dreams, maybe you're not even having conversations with anyone. And that's, that's what I, once I was there once where I wasn't dreaming with anyone in my life, I was in talking about the things I could possibly do. I was very reserved about those things, these were things I would think of very personal thoughts that were just mine. And it was all one day maybe, but I would never talk to them about anything. And then when I did finally start opening up about my dreams, and my aspirations and my ideas, I started seeing a different side of some of the people that I surrounded myself with. And then I started giving more time to those people, which kind of just naturally happen that the people that were pulling me down and telling me you can't do it, don't do it, this is wrong, this is bad. I just had less time for and those relationships kind of faded off, or I still have them, but I give a lot less energy to those relationships. And instead, I focus a lot more energy to the relationships, where the people are inspiring me are pushing me to be stronger and better and do things differently in my life.

Eric MacDougall
Yeah, I absolutely love that idea. And I really think you know, if you're reflecting listener on your life, you don't want to go to, like Kate said, the immediate idea of like cutting people out of your life. And I think it's what people think, like, oh, where's my energy being cut off a lot of my life. And what we often advocate for is, move to words, or create the relationships, that that really are inspiring you and help you create the life you want for yourself and the people you love. Right? So instead of saying just like, you know, I'm going to call these people out be like, Well, who do I want to spend time with? And how can I meet these people? Right? Maybe I need to go to a different gym, or maybe I need to, you know, go on a forum to connect people in the city or whatever, right? And so once you make a commitment to meeting these people, trust me, they will show up, right? This idea, like, there's nobody around and nobody's that like, no, that's not true. There's literally 7 billion people in the world. And now with the internet, we can literally connect anybody, right? I have a global community of men who talk to each other who all live in different countries. And we support each other and we're open and some of these guys have probably never been vulnerable with anyone else like this in their lives. And this is happening online, sometimes we're meeting in person, etc. But understand that these people are out there, but it's up to you to reach out everyone is a stranger before they're a friend. Right? This is what we kind of don't realize is we have to cultivate these relationships, and it takes effort. And I get the insecurities. You know, you were talking earlier, Cade about kind of like isolating myself and kind of keeping everything in. I really want everybody to understand that there was a time in Canada's life where we were each other's only people. Yeah, right. We had cut everybody out of our lives, and had put in so much pressure on our marriage to be our everything. And so what would happen is we created such a codependent model in our relationship where it's like, whatever case like, Oh, I'm gonna go ahead with this friend, I would feel threatened because I was like, Oh, what, like, I know, it's us, like, it's us against the world here. It needs to be with us. And so what was happening is we were isolating ourselves from the world. And that was very detrimental to our relationship, and the health of our ecosystem. And so, you know, if you are isolating yourself, if you're not, you know, connecting with other men or women or individuals, and you're only putting this pressure on your partner to be your everything, understand that that's not sustainable for a relationship, right. And so what you want to do is you want to expand the circle, you want to put yourself out there, and you want to start thinking about cultivating relationships. That's what legacy is about. Right? Because when you're gone, and you know, you're, you've had your last breath. Well, anything that's left is the memories that are left in your relationships, and start thinking about that. Now. How do you want to be remembered? Who do you want to connect with? What do you want to serve in the world? And I know that's kind of really big thinking. But that's the idea here of being on this rock in the time that we're in. And so, think about your circle. Think about the people you want to spend time with. Think about people that inspire you and be bold, and ask to spend time with them, invite them out to things and get uncomfortable. So over time, you can start growing into the person you want to be so you can serve the world at the highest level.