E320: How to keep your word to yourself with Keith Yackey | Trauma Healing Podcast

Michael: Hey! What's up, Unbroken Nation! Hope that you're doing well wherever you are in the world today. I'm very excited to be back with you with another episode with my friend Keith Yackey who is the creator of marriedgame.com. Keith, my friend how are you today? What is happening in your world?

Keith: I'm excited to be here, honored to be here and excited to get in some of this juicy goodness that you and I both love.

Michael: Yeah, same man. You and I connected, I guess almost a year ago and I felt your energy I was like this, dude is about this life, about creating something good and powerful and being a person of the world. Before we dive into things, I would love you tell us a little bit about your backstory story and how you got to where you are today?

Keith: I'm currently involved in helping guys, get their wives to want them again and to be an attracted and do them again and how that kicked off was five and a half almost six years ago my wife left me. And we about ready to move into our dream house and she said hey, I'm going to help you move in but I am not staying and it was the light bulb and the light switch that really flipped for me, I was like oh my gosh, this lady who I love and adore that would my rider died, till death us part, from here on out who I had a beautiful daughter with that was only about two years old at the time and now she's walking out of my life and that was when I really woke up and realized I'm the problem or at least I was ninety five percent the problem. I hired three coaches immediately to try and get her back and I had to basically learn how to change me to become the partner, to become the husband, to become the dad that they deserve because I literally came to the realization that I pushed the greatest human being I've known out of my life and it was all on me. So, that was where I had to start the work of saying, do I wanna be right in my brain or do I want to actually change and become a great dude so that the people, that are closest to me my wife and my daughter rather than what she did say which was basically my life would be better without you in it, she now says, I'm so glad that you're in my life and things have changed. So, drastically over the last five and a half years that I felt touched on the shoulder by my creator and say, hey you have a map, you have a blueprint to help guys who are struggling with connecting and intimacy with their wives which I believe the punch is the wife is no longer attracted to them, you have the recipe on how to help these guys get that back for one reason and that is to keep marriages together so kids don't have to start making an acting like adults that even adults can like because now we've got this mom and the dad who the kids are sitting out having dinner with and their love next thing you know now their enemies and the kids having to pick sides they're going to and they're having to make decisions that adults can't even make, they're having to make decisions of who they're picked there. And I just feel like eighty percent of divorce don't need to happen and if the dude steps up, he can save that and he can live a life of harmony and joy which is what most guys that's the reason why they got married and I know that you we talk to a lot of women on here but a lot of the women here the story and oftentimes will forward it to their husband and say hey man, I want to love you but you're making it really difficult for me. So, that has been the journey, it's why we started marriedgame.com and we've been able help out hundreds of guys you know re spark the flame and I just feel like, I'm just this dude to figure something out and I call it the gospel of married game, I'm just sharing it with the world, here's the good news you couldn't get lower than me, you couldn't have been a bigger piece of shit than me, you couldn't have been a worse of a father or a husband to me and now my friends would tell you like who's got the best relationship around? I’m like, oh Keith and Jesse dude that's relationship goals.

So, that's the story in the nutshell, I was at rock bottom and now I feel like, I'm living at the peak and there's a path and I just hey, guys do this and we can get there.

Michael: Man, that's beautiful and so powerful and also congratulations because I look at what your mission is and when you understand the statistics that three and six children are being raised by single mothers that tells you everything that you need to know about this country. And everything that I am obsessed with and the reason why we created Think Unbroken and we do the podcast and the speaking in the books is to end generational trauma in our lifetime through education and information. One of the things that is incredibly important and I would contend that I would agree with you is like creating relationships that where eighty percent of them don't have to end, I would agree, I think probably contextual twenty percent definitely do but I can't speak to that as someone who's never been married. I'd love to start this conversation and dive into is at that rock bottom because I think that's so often, we come through these experiences of life and I can't see the forest for the tree’s kind of scenario until you're in this position where you're like holy shit, my life is a disaster. What really became the turning point like in that moment when you're sitting there and she's telling you I'll help you move in but I'm not living with you. I think that most people would crumble and succumb to that pressure and what was next and inevitably where your life is just not to pass for them, what happened for you that you were like no, I'm gonna do; three coaches dude that super intense like what happened in that moment and what transpired to lead you down that path?

Keith: One of my coaches expressed this to me and they said because I asked my wife, I'm like, I felt blindsided, a lot of guys do feel blind, when their wife like hey by the way, I'm thinking about divorce where I'm thinking about leaving or I'm out of here and my wife was like dude, I've been trying to tell you two years and literally I didn't have years to hear, it didn't have to see but as soon as she's like, I'm gone, I know her so like this wasn't like hey, I'm thinking about this it's like no, I'm done like we are over. The light switch went on and it was as my coach explain it to me as if you're in a dark room and then the light finally goes on and you see everything in the room that was what happened to me. So, I couldn't deny the fact that dude, you cause this and she gave me some pretty clear examples like, you're such a bad dad, I don't wanna have another kid with you, you're such a bad debt I don't even wanna leave our daughter with you for an hour, you're such a horrible partner to me I feel alone in this marriage, I don't even feel like, I'm even a priority to you, because you work on your business, you come home and talk about your business and you follow asleep on the couch and we deserve better on that, your daughter deserve better, that's not what you promised us, you're not doing what you said you were gonna do and who cares about this big huge house and that's really nice cars that doesn't matter. So, that was I felt so empty and if I'm being really honest, I felt really stupid, I felt like how did this happen like, how I was so blind to not be able to see this so you're sitting there and you're realizing well, who knows you better than your wife like and at that point dude, we had four and a half almost five years under our belt, she knew everything, she'd seen some ups and downs financially, she'd seen me build a business or two had done very well, she seemed me made some mistakes like, she knew the inner workings of who I was. And for her to say, my life would be better; our life would be better without you and it that was where I was like, okay dude, you can deny it even though the evidence is really clear and you can find somebody else finding another woman wouldn't have been hard, I proven I could do that before I met my wife, I've been with hundreds of women before that but there was only one that you wanted to keep and she doesn't wanna be around you.

So, do you wanna go back to being with a bunch of women or do you wanna actually deal with this so that you can change? And there was no promise that I was getting her back, I actually didn't think I was going to get her back when I had those coaches, I was super desperate.

What do I do? I don't want my daughter to grow up in a broken home, I didn't want that to happen but here I was realizing well, I just did it, that was the big realization either change or this is gonna happen again to me.

Michael: I feel so often when people are at the precipice of change, they're faced with an identity shift and that did shift is one that in reality is unbelievably cumbersome because here you are faced with crossing this chasm of who you were to become who you want to be in trying to reconcile the truth of the person that you want to be is a person that you are not good enough yet to be. And most people quit on themselves the moment that they come to that realization in that truth and you use that word change a couple of times going through that scenario just now, what did you want to be come? Because the reason I'm asking this is because I think so often people who have come from backgrounds where there's chaos or trauma or anything of that nature, we kind of solidify this idea, this is who I am, this is fine. One of the things I think is the most devastating term that a person could use is this is just who I am and so as you're going through this process you're facing the pain, the chaos, the struggle of becoming the Keith that you are today what did that look like for you? How did you define that? How are you putting yourself in a position to honor who you wanted to be but more importantly keep your word to become that person?

Keith: Well, my wife gave me some very clear examples, she's like, we don't have fun anymore. When you and I met we had a lot of fun, we would go on dates, we would go to concerts, her and I have been almost every major city in the country like me, I mean we're talking like, you pick a major city we've been there and had a good time there and not everyone but like do you start in main and we drove all the way down to Maryland and then we hit we flew a bunch of other cities all the way down to Florida so we hit all the east coast, we've been all everywhere, all these really cool spots having a good time and she's like we don't do any anymore and you don't even take me on dates, she's like you know, I you won't even take me to a concert, so she's like, she lost her identity in me and she's like, I'm the fun girl like who I used to be? And so, she gave me some really good examples of how I wouldn't even just ask her about who she was and when she left, I realized oh my god this lady was absolutely amazing, I had a lot of contexts to determine whether she was a great gal or not because I've been with so many other ones. And I was like dude all she wanted like get human with for somebody to pay attention for a little bit and actually listen with intent to hear that was a very, very clear one. She gave me some great examples of what a horrible parent I was and I was like, he doesn't not even fair to this little girl that I brought into the world, I couldn't get up and change any diapers, I couldn't be there for my lady and be like hey, you sleep and then I'll bottle feeder let me take, like very clear examples that when you hear you like that's I felt so stupid because it's like it was so obvious. And who I wanted to be was the guy that his wife would be like, he's the greatest dad, you know what he watches the daughter so, I can go out with the girls every so often so I can feel like a woman again rather than just always being stuck in mama. So, it was like very crystal-clear examples where I was like, what was I so busy doing that I couldn't have done any of those things? So, it was a very stark contrast and I'm like well shit where do I want my best friend to think I'm the best human in the world? Okay, well, clearly, she does it and she gave me really great examples and I realized that change is not all the way from black to all the way to white, it's very small decisions in the moment that make the change, dude you can't eat chocolate, don't eat three snickers’ bars have like a half a one, it's those little things do you see what saying? That was the realization is oh my god, this actually isn't gonna be as hard as I thought because I think that's the big thing is I gotta a change and it's like oh, it's this huge thing as opposed to no, it's very small decisions in strategic spots.

Michael: So, it became very incremental for you?

Keith: Yes.

 Michael: I think that's practical too right because you know I look at my own journey finding myself that twenty five, twenty six years old, I'm three hundred and fifty pounds, smoking two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep and you're like but wait a second, I can't not be that tomorrow but I can be a little bit less of that tomorrow and a little bit less, a little bit less, a little less and then on this long enough timeline and it'll be different for everyone, you start to shape and meld into this idea of the person that you thought you could be. As you were going through this process like, how are you reconciling these actions that had led you to this place to be able to step into what was next?

Keith: Well, I wanna give you a quick little example. So, I was coming into the house and you know all my friends call to grandpa Yackey because I go to better, I'm eight eight thirty and I don't really stay at late much anymore and my friend of mine's like hey, you wanna come over, hadn't caught up with in a while it was Jeremy, you know Jeremy and staying with Gary on stage that day and he's like hey, I got this new pool table you wanna come him shoot pool like do I'd love t. So, I grabbed my cigars, I head to reduced house and I get back around like ten which is late for me and I took my shoes off and rather than bend down and put them on the rack my brain immediately goes, Jesse will understand you got home late, so just leave him in the middle of the garage where she might trip on and it was like no, I'm gonna take one second pick them up and put him in the rack, I then walk down the hallway into where gonna put the cigars but I kinda grabbed it, I left a cigar or kinda all muddled up and shit everywhere, right? And I go that's okay, it's late, I can clean it tomorrow and then I'm like well, let's see how long it would take to actually leave that door cleaner than when you left it and I sort counted it loud one thousand, two one thousand, three with them it took me thirteen seconds to leave that drawer cleaner than when I left it. And that's what I mean by that small chain so, I starting to make the smallest adjustments and realize dude, the difference between being slag and being clean is between one and thirteen seconds, I hope that lance very practical basically for the audience because it's like that's all it is. It is nope, I'm gonna put him back, no I'm gonna make everything, I'm gonna one of the things that Jesse used to bust my boss on the time is like how do I always know where you've been in the kitchen? Because I've left a trail whether it's crumbs, a little bit of protein powder, whatever is she's like, I know where you've been, she was you're like a child and I was like, dude it takes me one swipe of the hand to get clean the camera off put it in the trash that's less than a second and I started realizing that change is not this big long road but it's a very short, it's a half a second, it's a second that just says, no, my standard is you will never know where I'm at because everything that I touch is cleaner than when I found it. So, that was the biggest shift for me and like, oh my god, it's so easy to say, hey going a date night this week, let's figure out a babysitter, let's figure out somewhere to go and I could spend five minutes organizing then it's on the books, then it's just easy okay, I'm going on date night.

So, that was the biggest shift for me throughout this entire journey was oh my god, I'm thinking everything is this massive herculin effort, it’s not, it's very, very small, did that answer the question, did I go off pick on track?

Michael: I think that's a great answer and you're so right like, I look at my apartment sometimes I'm like, I love how clean it is, I love how clean it is because I have made myself accountable to creating that lifestyle growing up for me our house was always disheveled, total chaos like unbelievably disgusting because of you know having a drug addict alcoholic parents and as an adult I've looked at I go okay, this is mine, I own this my responsibility, this means that I get to have control over it. And I think what I hear this is you taking ownership in this moment whereas in the past you hadn't and when comes to those past experiences Keith I'll circle a little bit back to that question like was there forgiveness for yourself like what actually happened for you emotionally as you've stepped into this journey? Because I look at this as a healing journey man, this isn't just Keith did some shit and he put some stuff away and his wife wanted him back?

Keith: Yeah, and a little piece of context, I had been divorced six years before this to my previous wife and I had three kids with her. So, this was starting to become a pattern I'm like oh, here's number two and you're the problem again, you don't fix this, it's gonna be number three and number four and number whatever and so, this is not a term that people really, really like but it's the only one that I know how to use and I had to kinda look at myself in the mirror naked and go this is reality or you can't believe fantasies anymore, nobody's buying into your bullshit, are you willing to stop buying your own bullshit and deal with the truth? And that was the reality of saying, I'm the problem okay. But what I realized is when you're the problem, you're also the solution and so, it gave me hope honestly the hope was oh my god, I don't know if I can change enough, fast enough for me to get Jesse back but I know given enough time, I can become this person that Jesse would never leave and I said these words and this I think will tie this point home, I told Jesse, I honor you, I respect the hell out of you for league because it wasn't like she had the source of income even though leaving me she would have something, I said it is such a bummer that some other woman is gonna cash in on all your hard work and I apologize for that because that's what I realized but was happening is oh my god, I can change, I can do this, I can be a good husband, I can be a good father, I can be a good dude, it's gonna take me some time to work on some of these selfish things that came about but it was having the audacity maybe would be the word to actually call my bullshit what it really was and that is this is some bullshit. So, for me, I've always been a good talker and I had talked myself into lies and I had to call myself on it and be real with myself. I would have never done it though had she not done it.

Michael: Yeah, I think unfortunately sometimes we do need that outside stimulus to wake us up, I certainly have been there myself speaking of talking yourself in your own bullshit you know, we all play that game with ourselves, I don't think anyone's innocent of this, I've never met a single person who's ever got away with anything because at the end of day it always is gonna sit with you, your truth is gonna be there. And what I'm wondering is as you started to go through that process of like sitting in your own bullshit like you're stew in it, you're having this moment I won't put words in your mouth but what I will say is, I've had those moments where I'm looking at my life and I'm like holy fuck dude, this is a disaster and there are people who just will further destroy themselves and fall deeper into deceitful of that moment. What advice do you have for people who are listening right now and they're like, I need to take this hard look at my life something is a mess, something is a skew, I know it, I rationalize it hell, I might even like up applaud myself for being in it at times because you're like, wow. How do they move through that like, what do you actually do to start to get to this place like, yeah, here's my fucking bullshit now do something?

Keith: Well, I would say my first step was grieving. I had to grieve the loss bro, I was in the gym like six hours a day for like three weeks and I wasn't lifting weights the whole time, I was swimming laps, I was in the sauna, I was on the bench next to the son of crying my eyes out, I was doing chest day three times on a Monday, I mean and I felt so much regret that I had really messed up my life and there was a lot of pain. So, it's not like, I just went from oh, she left, I gotta change shoes in the thing like, there's so much deep pain that brought through my heart that I would cry like three or four friends I just would call and said say, hey man, can you talk to me through this again and let me know that I'm not the biggest piece of shit in the world even though I felt like it like that? I had my Pete Vargas and Dan Martell, a couple of these are my buddies that they would just sit don't listen me and that was really the first step was I admit it, I'm so ashamed by it, I'm an idiot, I can't believe I did this and okay, well if I'm the problem, I'm the solution. And then said, okay well, here's the other thing that I didn't really like, I didn't like being held accountable for what I said I was gonna do so, I'd always slip out of things and I always had a good reason for it and that's when I was like, okay if you're gonna say you're gonna do something, you're actually gonna have to do it because you're not gonna get what you want unless you do and that became the smallest little of step if I said go to the gym, I don't have to be there a long time I just have to get to the gym because I said, I was gonna do it.

If I said I was gonna call my daughter who is now in a different state, I've got it doesn't matter how long it, it's just a minute for two minutes, it's okay, I just have to call it because I said, I was gonna do it, that's where all the actual, that's where kinda all that started to come about where like wow, you're just a dude that can talk and you bought your own bullshit and you don't actually do what you say you're gonna do because if I did say when I was doing what gonna say we're gonna do and my wife. And it's actually what I teach guys now Michael is most women aren't worried about their men cheating but they're women don't trust their men that they're actually gonna do what they say they're gonna do, it's where I came up with the phrase when the trust goes up the lush goes up because now my wife goes whatever Keith says he's gonna do, you can put money on it's gonna happen, he's human, he makes mistakes but he never will dodge out of it. And so, that's where a lot of guys and gals and the relationship is the life is just like, he said he was gonna do the dishes and then he's like, oh yeah, I'm gonna leave him for tomorrow but why that's not what you said you were to do? I felt like, I went off track on that one Michael, I apologize but I got to the main.

Michael: No, your good man, there's no off track in life, the time is now my friend. You know, as you're going through this, I'm thinking to myself like just reconciling some of these memories of my own experiences in the beginning of shift and what I'm meaning by this is that place in which you are like this is who I am now and you're battling that old version of you. When I wrote my first book, I put a line in there, I said I took the old Michael out behind the woods shed and I killed him. And that was a necessity in my life because what I had to do was let go of that but there was always still that like little bit of a twin of like impostor syndrome, right? That little bit of a twin of like is this really me and am I lying to myself about doing good things which is like such a crazy juxtaposition? So, as in this shift man, you're starting this process and I think whether you're talking about just little things like accountability and doing what you say or a big giant thing, I feel like there's always this place in which you're at war with yourself initially, did this hold true for you?

Keith: Yeah. You know, we aren't what we say, we are what we do, right? Like we are what we repeatedly do because that's how you show up in the world and I can only judge you by your actions, right? Your words will suffice until your actions are different from that and the phrase that I always had to keep going on my head is you are what you do, you are what you do, you are what you do. So, even if I didn't feel like it, I'm gonna go do it and then usually in the doing of it you start to realize oh, wait I'm doing it and it kind of was a shock for me and I think it's a shock for anybody who's doing new things you're kinda like, oh, I'm actually doing it and it's only by doing the action and not even having to do it very pretty, very eloquently or very graciously, a lot of times when you're doing new stuff it's very, very clunky but you're like what I'm doing it.

My buddy here at night we surf every day and we have a phrase we call surfers surf, doesn't mean you're good it just means you surf.

So, waves are small, they're big, they're choppy they're hollow, they're whatever, surfers-surf and if you surf you're a surfer doesn't mean you're a good one but you surf and that is a phrase that it has always just hey marketer markets, sales guy sells, a speaker speaks, like broken down into that simplest thing I go, oh, I might not be good at it yet but I'm doing it, I might not be good at date nights back in the beginning like okay, we're implementing the one she did come back and I'm like alright we're going out once a week so we can stay connected so that we know that our intimacy will be good because I'm gonna give you all of the greatest asset I have which is my energy. I used to believe that time was my greatest energy now I believe it's time is my greatest assets and I believe it's energy because I've had all the time in the world but no energy, you're just vegetable doesn't mean anything. I think time is close and so, when people say they want your attention what are they saying? They want your focused energy right on them. And so, that's where I started going okay, where I need to start focusing on what I want, what I'm gonna become and then just go, do that without all the complications.

Michael: Yeah, I love that and I'm sitting here thinking myself like, writers right? That's like you mind me, I'm always a writer first, podcaster podcast, you know, runners run whatever that might be. I love the simplicity of it and I don't know anyone ever in history who has been proficient at something the first time they did it like it's implausible, it's not a thing and I believe that we hold ourselves to such a huge court about being great all the time and it's like dude like, I'm not, I don't know anyone who is like this entire journey is this really consignment back and forth of like fall down, get up, fall down, get up, fall down and get up and just continue to go forward. You know, prior to us hopping on here you and I were talking about accountability and keeping your word and you said something I thought was really, really beautiful that I'd love for you to go into about your journey over the last six months and most importantly this concept of what keeping your word has meant to you?

Keith: Yeah, it's everybody wants to feel powerful, they wanna have the power to do something or they want to they wanna become something more but they don't feel like they have the power to do it. And for the last three years either privately teaching guys for two of those years and then this last year being really heavily out in the marketplace, doing my work with guys, I found out that power and attraction are very, very similar things and here's what I discovered is that power and attraction is like a balloon filled with air, you don't pop it and it goes away. You can like you know if you cheat, you can break trust and those and things but normally for everybody it's a very small pin hole that you can't, it's imperceptible to the human eye whether you're growing or whether you're regressing in a twenty-four-hour period of time. You can't see it like if you go hey, I'm gonna wanna and diet, then the very next day or if you look in the mirror you probably won't see anything next, there might be a move on the scale but if there's no metric or no number to see anything it's to the human eye everything looks the same over twenty-four-hour period of time for the most part. And so, I realized holy shit actually having power means you're not looking for any external thing to validate you, to help you, to approve of you, to give you anything, to assist you no because you have your own personal power. You are you make it for you and I wear like oh, my gosh, the only thing that made me believe in me more than anything else was this very one simple thing it's the only thing that I think that gives anybody power and can help anybody actually do anything and that is keeping your word to yourself do what you say you're gonna do, when you say you're gonna do it, zero compromise, zero modifications, zero bullshit; that started for me October fourth of this last year about I guess we're talking six or seven months ago now. And that one simple thing is the only thing and so, like I'm gonna do this today, these are the three things that are important to me, I've gotta do these three things. If I don't do anything else, I'm gonna accomplish these three things. I noticed, I felt proud of myself, I felt powerful that I did that and I can start stacking on top of okay, not only gonna do those three things , I do these four things, I'm gonna do these five things, do I get to thing like, I'm doing this every single day whether it's raining, shining, whatever so, I did seventy five hard which was the process that I use, that was the tool that helped me to realize keeping my word to myself was the only thing that would give me the respect in myself and my respect for myself. And it hit really hard I was in Vegas, a lot of people don't understand that las of Vegas kids really, really cold it's the desert and when I lived out there sometimes it would smell I mean it's windy, it can be cold and I was there doing comedy at the wise guys have you've done you were you've heard wise guys in salt lake, they just opened the place about six months ago in Las Vegas they have a showroom now in Las Vegas and I went there to do a show, I was on seventy five hard which has a bunch of things you cannot do and I was about maybe four weeks into this process of keeping my word to myself every single day for like four weeks. And I go downstairs to work out the day after the show and like you gotta wear a mask, I'm like oh, I'm not doing that like well and you can't work out here like okay, no problem but I had like just a sweater, my short shorts and like my Nike tennis shoes, so well, I better head outside it's the only place I can work out and it was like, I wanna say like thirty seven degrees of thirty eight degrees out and I start running in front of the Bella hotel and there's these bumps out there and they're like, why boy you are crazy, do you know cold is out here? And I looked him, I go, not in here and I kept running, that wasn't my planned response it just came out of me and I was like oh shit, you kept your word yourself.

Michael: That's beautiful man and I think so, important there's always an excuse, there's always a reason why you can't, there's always a space to negotiate, there's always the other thing that will stop you from having the life that you wanna have. And I fear that so many people they hear conversations like this and they go yeah, but that's you Keith or that you Michael or that you whomever I'm listening to but that's not me, I can never do that, I'll never be able to do that. And I sit and I go, yeah, you can but you've gotta be willing to do it. For those who hear you and they're like yeah that's great but it'll never work for me, I'm never gonna be able to have an accountability, I’ll never have a healthy relationship, I'll never have a great body, I'll never feel good about myself like what are those people do Keith?

Keith: Start small everything is and I say starts small, everything actually is small. Once you realize it, you're like these are just small actions but say you know what, for the next five days I'm not gonna drink soda and watch what happens on day five when you keep your word yourself or hey for the next seven days, I'm gonna get up and take a ten-minute walk. One of the things I started after October fourth was, I used to never run and so, when I'm like you know, my buddy made fun of me he goes, hey Keith, that if shit ever happens here, I'm gonna have to throw you in my back because you can't run very well, you might be able to lift more than us but you can't run very well and it was joking because like you know guy friends we just talk shit to each other like we do. But it kinda started to I'm like dude, I'm a liability, I can't even run.

So, what I did was I said, okay, well I'm not good at running, how I gonna do it? So, I just started literally running the shortest hills down just downhill like, I'm just gonna run downhill and I have a hill out my backyard you know in my back out here and I'm just gonna run from here, maybe a football field long and it had a little bit of a slope down and like I'm just gonna run that today and then the next day I'm like you know what I'm gonna run it once and then walk it up walk up the next one and then run it down run twice I'm gonna do it twice; see if I can do it twice. It's the smallest thing even David Goggins who a lot of people have heard of when he said, he was so heavy, he said he could only like run a quarter mile then he has to stop. I think what happens is that people forget that rip people used to be most people used to be fat, most people who didn't run or most people who are better running used to that run, there's this weird thing in human beings that think that when they see somebody who's good at something, for some reason believe they started out good at it. But ninety-nine-point nine percent of everybody who started anything were was horrible at you're a great podcast host but I would venture to say, your first episode looks nothing like this one. Look, oh my gosh dude, you're lucky, you've got this podcast, that gets all these downloads and all this and you're like oh dude.

Michael: I'll show you the stats nobody listened episode one, nobody for years, nobody listens. So, thirty or sixty or eighty-five or one fifty or two hundred or two fifty you know when it's like how bad do you want it? You know and I think that there's something innate about the experience of choosing yourself that for me at least it's been it's not even only about the podcast but it's like what you said to Keith, I decided to keep my word to myself, we did two things this year when I sat down with the team at the beginning of the year I said one, we're releasing a show every day, it's basically may we have not missed a day, two we will have the number one show in the mental health and personal development space in the world. And we were number eight in Ireland last week and number forty in the US, number thirty-eight in Canada. And to me, I look at this and I go, I don't negotiate with my dreams, I don't negotiate with my goals and but I will say this there was a very, very, very long period of time in my life where all I did was quit.

 Keith: Yes, me too.

Michael: What is it feel like for you to not be that anymore?

Keith: I wish I could implant this feeling in someone's heart for a minute if they could feel it for a minute they would never go back, they would they would go oh my god, it's the accomplishing something that you thought was difficult and you actually did it.

I'll give you a very real-world example.

I was doing these five-minute cold-water plunge for thirty days and my daughter would watch me do it because it was out in my pool, my pool during the winter was cold about fifty-two, fifty three degrees and ice bath is about fifty to sixty degrees so it was on the lower end and it would like your skin would start to tingle and we have a mantra and we've had it for a long time but I didn't really understand it up until this last six months where we do hard things. And my daughter would watch me do five minutes and when I finished my thirty days of five minutes, she goes, dad at it's not even hard for you anymore, what are you gonna do next? And I said well maybe, I should just hang out in the deep and tread water for five minutes and she watched me said, okay, let's do it.

So, I'm tread water for five minutes, she goes that wasn't that hard for you, said well what do you want me do, she goes why don't you double it and do she's seven by the way, she would why don't you do ten minutes? And said deal. I will tread for ten minutes in the deep end of this pool for the next thirty days, it was just something between her and I. For the next thirty days, well three days into it I'm like well, I gotta do a forty-five-minute workout out here, I wonder if I could tread water for forty-five minutes, I was so scared no lie, I told my wife, hey will you come check on me? I will not call your name unless him about ready to drown she goes dude, the deep of our pool is only six foot and you're six feet you're not gonna drown bro, I go but I don't know if I seize up if it's cold whatever. I tried to water for forty-five minutes and that cold I had to work my way up to it I finally did it. You couldn't convince me that I hadn't won the super bowl, you couldn't convince me that I had it one game seven of the world series down by three bases loaded, two outs, two pictures of the bottom length and I knock it over the left field fence. The feeling of accomplishment and oh, my god, I did this, was greater than anything I've ever felt in my entire life, that is the feeling I wish I could implant in somebody because then they would go oh my god, it's not even that, it's not even that I can say, I tread water for forty-five minutes, it's that feeling of not being lazy, of not being so intimidated that I wouldn't try it, that was the craziest feeling of my entire life.

Michael: Man, so beautiful. I wish the same thing dude, I mean I've had these moments in my life where I just I crossed that threshold into doing the thing I said I was gonna do and I just felt so amazing and the more that you do that, the more you have to level up that's kind of a tricky game of it but that's what makes life so interesting and then throwing. Keith my friend this has been an amazing conversation before I ask you my last question, can you tell everyone where they can find you?

Keith: You can find me at keithyackey on Instagram or if they're interested like if there's any guys listening like hey man, my wife isn't initiating or enthusiastically participating or she's more into the spreadsheets than she is the beds sheets and I wanna learn how to get my wife to want to love me more or if there's ladies listening this and like man, I want my husband to really step up and be a good parent and partner and really have fun in our marriage again. I would send them to go to marriedgame.com and I have a video there for you that you'll wanna watch, that will explain the attraction between I've learned a lot since my wife left me and I got her back and now we've got taught hundreds of guys how to fix this. I think they'll find it to be very intriguing.

Michael: Brilliant, and of course we'll put the links in the show notes. Keith, my last question for you my friend what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Keith: I think to be unbroken is to say, I am going to take who it is that I am right now and I'm going to give my best and I think that the unbroken spirit of man says I'm gonna do my best and if you can really say I've done my best, you don't feel broken.

Michael: Simple. Brilliantly said, my friend, thank you so much for being here.

Unbroken Nation, thank you so much for listening.

Please like, subscribe, comment, share.

Tell a friend.

And Until Next Time.

My friends, Be Unbroken.

I’ll see you.