Have you ever felt your self worth was determined by constantly performing at one hundred percent, that failure wasn't an option? That was what Craig Bennett and is actually believed by many men. Let's review the misconceptions surrounding this belief and uncover strategies for improving our self worth, overcoming perfectionism and limiting beliefs. He opens up about the challenges he faced in his early marriage, feeling unhappy and unfulfilled in his corporate career and the choices that led him to take bold steps towards change.

Craig emphasizes the power of showing up consistently — whether it's through daily routines or practical exercises like journaling and affirmations. In completing a 75 Hard challenge, Craig rebuilt trust with himself. You might wonder how someone cannot trust themself, but when you make promises to yourself, are you keeping them? It was through his self improvement journey that Craig found himself dramatically changed, his relationships healthy and discovered the cheat code to life is a strong marriage.

In this episode, you will be able to:

·     Strengthen your marriage for a lifetime of love and support.

·     Overcome struggles of self-worth and unlock your full potential.

·     Discover the importance of personal growth in developing healthy relationships.

·     Implement the cheat code for life and experience lasting happiness and fulfillment.

·     Release beliefs of perfectionism and quit playing small within your life.

The key moments in this episode are:

00:03:34 - Balancing Work and Personal Life

00:10:30 - Awareness of an Unfulfilled Corporate Career

00:19:40 - The Power of Personal Growth

00:22:46 - Learning from Failure

00:27:04 - The Importance of Consistency in Self Development

00:32:27 - Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

00:38:53 - The Cheat Code of a Strong Marriage

00:40:25 - The Relationship Between Marriage and Personal Development

Connect with Craig Bennett

Websites

www.roadoflifecoaching.com

LInkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredithandcraig/

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/RoadOfLifeCoaching

Connect with Mike Forrester

Podcast Website

https://LivingFearlessTodayPodcast.com

Coaching Website

https://www.hicoachmike.com/

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hicoachmike/

Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/@hicoachmike

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/hicoachmike

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/hicoachmike

This is the Living Fearless Today podcast, a show that helps men like you and me who are struggling to get unstuck and overcome fear, to live confidently and courageously.

I'm your host and transformation coach, Mike Forster, helping you create the change you want.

Now join me as I interview men who've conquered their challenges and soared to success as they spill their secrets on how they live.

Fearless today.

Well, hello and welcome back, my friend.

And today I've got Craig Bennett with me, and Craig and his wife Meredith, have a podcast on marriage, and they're.

They're reaching out and helping people to find that strength to heal the wounds, to strengthen the foundation in our marriage.

And for many of us, myself included, that foundation just felt like it was hit by a sledgehammer or a jackhammer, even, and just broken apart.

And so Craig and Meredith are working to bring about and set a different pattern and help people to, as he puts it, have the cheat code for life from that solid marriage and the relationship that goes there between a husband and a wife.

So I'm excited to jump in with Craig and talk about how patterns can be broken, that we're not stuck with the struggles of self worth and identity and that changing our mindset, man, just makes such a.

A difference, regardless of what age and where we're at in life.

So, Craig, how are you doing today, my friend?

I'm doing awesome, Mike.

Thanks for having me.

This is awesome.

Absolutely.

Yeah, we've.

We've had a little bit of time to.

To chat and share stories, and it's like, man, just the shift that you've shared in your life, dude, that's.

That's a lot of transformation.

And I commend you on the fact we're going to get into talking about going from corporate to entrepreneurship, and that is like jumping out of an airplane, you know, with.

Without the parachute, without the preparation and just going.

I will figure it out as I'm going along.

So that is.

Hats off to you, man.

Thanks, man.

I appreciate it.

Absolutely.

Well, Craig, let's start off and what is the professional life?

What does that side look like for you today?

It's.

Every day I get to wake up and I get to make a difference in the world.

Honestly, five years ago, me, this is what I want it to be doing.

I found.

So my wife and I, we get up every day and we make an impact and we try to help married couples who are struggling in their marriage reconnect, find that, like you mentioned, it's a cheat code for life.

We stand by that.

Anyone who decides to be in a relationship, they do that for a reason.

They want companionship, and they want a partner to go through and do life with.

And there's no greater feeling than having that solid foundation of that.

That teammate right next to you.

That's, you know, that you have that rock solid foundation when you go through life, that no matter what life throws at you, you've got that person in your corner right there with you, shoulder to shoulder, fighting those battles.

So we get to wake up every day and help people have that marriage.

So we, you know, we're on podcasts like this, trying to spread the message.

We're, you know, providing valuable content online for people.

Just like, that's.

That's our days, is, you know, we get up and we.

We do a little bit of work.

We send out our emails and go on our podcasts and.

And connect with our clients.

And then the other part of the day, we spend on.

On us, you know, our health and fitness and our connection, we go for walks.

And so that's.

That's kind of our day, if you will, in a nutshell.

Gotcha.

Well, and you've touched a little bit on the personal side there of, like, what you guys are doing.

What does it look like beyond, like, the work and the habits and routines?

What does life look like on the personal side of things for you guys?

It's interesting.

We've got a relationship where we do, because of our business, we have a lot of time together, like.

And so we do have to be very intentional about making sure that because we were entrepreneurs, we work different hours.

They're weird hours.

They're all different times.

It's whenever a client needs something, we hop on a call.

It's an interesting, different way of life than we're used to.

So we spend a lot of time in the business together.

So we have to be very intentional about also making time for ourselves and for our marriage and for the things that aren't business related.

So we're filling that bucket as well.

So we spend an ordinant amount of time together, probably more than most couples do, because of the life we've designed for ourselves.

Well, we wouldn't have it any other way.

And so I would say we get in our walks in nature every day, whenever we can fit them in between meetings and calls and those sorts of things.

We schedule date nights.

We go on date nights.

We have family that's close by.

We've got some nephew nieces and nephews down the street that we, you know, we go to their I.

Their soccer games, and we go to their, you know, baseball.

Like, there was a run this weekend.

We did a run with our nephew.

We, you know, went to our other nephew's soccer game the other day.

Lily has a volleyball game.

We just.

It's family time.

It's us time.

And, yeah, that's.

That's kind of just a dream, I guess.

Yeah.

And, like, some people look at it and go, that is my dream.

Like, I want to be, you know, to be able to be in a position where I'm working alongside my wife, and then you've got other people, and they'll look at my wife and I.

I'm sure you and Meredith probably hit this as well, where it's like, I don't want to be with my wife that much, but it's almost one of those, like, maybe this is the same way for you.

My wife is my best friend, and I want to hang out with my best friend as much as possible, you know?

Are there rough times?

Yeah, 100%.

There's times where I don't see her perspective.

She doesn't see mine.

We work through it.

But in spite of that, do you guys go through that and do you also kind of navigate those times intentionally and on purpose just to say, hey, we're not going to go away mad or anything like that?

Is that kind of how you guys work it out?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, we're humans.

Like, you cannot go through life with another human being, sharing a bathroom with another human being for decades at a time and not have some form of disagreement.

Like, it's.

It's just the way it is.

And so, yeah, we disagree like anybody else, and, yeah, we're very intentional, but we've got some rules and different things that we implement in our marriage that, you know, we always.

I would say one of the biggest things is always assume positive intent when there's an opportunity to take a situation either negatively or positively, always default to.

Positively, always default to best case scenario, if you got hurt in some sort of disagreement, like what someone said maybe came off and.

And it kind of just, ooh, that that kind of that.

I felt that that stung a little.

If you think about it from the perspective of, there's no way she tried to hurt me, there's no way that we're going through life together, and we're shoulder to shoulder and we're building our dream life over here and we're on that trajectory.

There's no way that she tried that.

So is there an alternative viewpoint that I can take here?

Or is there some other way I can look at this that sheds a different light on it?

I would say that's one big thing that, that we've learned over the last few years, is to always give the benefit of the doubt.

Is that something that you're doing just with your wife, or is that something that you extend to, like, other relationships where it's like, oh, they were being malicious and they're trying to hurt me, or are you, you know, is it global and you're giving everybody the benefit of the doubt?

It's global.

It's not always easy, though.

It's a lot.

I find, personally, I'm a human being.

I find it a lot easier to do with my wife.

And the reason is, is because we've got a relationship where there's a history built there, there's a bond that's been built there, and that we've had some very intimate conversations and we've gone on this journey together that no other person has.

I have that relationship with, like, to that level.

And so, yes, we try to, I try to extend the benefit of the doubt in all my relationships, but I'm certainly not perfect in it.

And there are times where I get it wrong and I take something personally and maybe I don't see it.

And so, yes, try execution.

Still a work in progress.

Yeah, I think that goes for all of us.

We're still a work in progress regardless of.

I heard, I actually heard something really cool.

A friend of mine said it.

She said, you can be a work in progress and a masterpiece at the same time.

I thought that was really cool.

That is.

That's really powerful.

Yeah.

Because it's like you're not expected to be perfect, but you're still, you know, working to make progress in the, in the whole scheme of things, so.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Well, let's go back a little bit.

Before you began doing the coaching and the podcast, you were actually in corporate, kind of sitting there unsatisfied, unhappy, unfulfilled.

Take us back to that time.

What got you there?

And then you made a jump and just said, I'm done.

I've had enough.

I want more out of life than what I'm experiencing, and I know there's more for me.

Take us back to what, like, who Craig was at that time and, like, what got you to that point of making the jump?

Because that's a large jump to make.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I grew up believing that there was a default life path that you, everyone around me lived basically the same kind of plan.

And so I was raised to believe that you went to school, you got good grades, you worked hard, and you got into university, got more good grades, went and found a corporate job, and then, you know, you kind of climbed the corporate ladder, and eventually you retire, and you might have a few good years at the end to, to kind of, you know, live out the, the beach life or whatever.

And so I was on that path.

I did all those things, and I got in the corporate job, and I found myself absolutely miserable sitting in cubicles, doing the, sitting in front of a computer.

And I'm not even a good typer, so I'm, like, chicken pecking the whole day, like, it's taking me forever.

But.

And so I was miserable.

I was unhealthy.

I I I was in a marriage early on in my corporate life.

So, you know, years and years ago, I married a young woman, and I was unhappy in my marriage, I was unhappy in my life.

I was unhappy with my health, and a little bit resentful about, why.

Why am I so unhappy?

Like, I'm.

I should be happy, I'm supposed, like, by all accounts, when you look at the surface, I'm successful.

Like, I've got a decent career.

I get paid a pretty good salary.

I don't have any, like, sort of debts or any, like, I'm not.

It's not like I'm worried about where my next meal is coming from or if there's going to be a roof over my head or any of that.

So it felt, on the surface, like I should be happy, but I just was not.

I couldn't have been further from happy.

I was.

I was miserable, and I didn't realize it all along.

Like, looking back now, I see little hints along the way of the universe, you know, speaking to me in different ways that maybe this isn't the life for you.

Maybe you should go into different, you know, entrepreneurship or try real estate or.

There were different things that along the, along my path that I remember, you know, buying a, a personal growth book way back in the day, but I didn't read it.

But, but the inkling was there, like, that.

The hint was dropped that there was something deep inside me somewhere that knew there was more.

But I bought it, looked at it, and was like the inspiration had passed when it came time to read it.

And so it went on a shelf, and I never.

And I didn't look at it.

And then eventually, one day, I woke up and Oprah Winfrey has a quote, and I'll probably butcher it, but it's something to the effect of life will always whisper to you first.

And when you ignore the whispers long enough, eventually it'll scream.

And so there was a long time where it was whispering to me different, dropping hints along my life of different things that I should, you know, maybe look at that are more destined for me, make me happier.

And I ignored those.

Until one day I woke up and looked myself in the mirror, and I had these dark circles and, you know, I just, I looked, I wasn't, I wasn't, you know, diagnosed as sick, but I looked, I looked sick, I looked unhealthy, I looked tired.

I was wearing that unhappiness and that resentment and everything in my body and on my face.

And I just remember thinking to myself, I woke up this one morning and I looked in the mirror and I was just like, I'm miserable and something has to change.

And I was in this marriage that wasn't going well.

We were constantly fighting.

It was just a untenable situation as well.

So I'm feeling it at work, I'm feeling it at home.

And I had to make a decision.

I had to, like, you get.

I realize that you get one shot at this, and this is not what I want my one shot to be.

If, if I.

If everything were to end today for me, would I be happy with how I lived my life?

I absolutely would not have been.

So some changes needed to be made.

And so that day, I decided that we're going to make some changes.

And so then I had a difficult conversation with my then wife.

And, you know, over the course of that wasn't the one conversation, obviously, that was over.

You know, it took some time, but over time, we realized that neither one of us is happy.

And this, we're going to go our separate ways.

And we ultimately did, and we're both happier for that.

And then a little while later, I met my current wife at my job, and life got a little bit better.

You know, at least that part of my life was starting to feel a little bit more me.

We had a lot more in common.

We were able to, we weren't fighting.

Like, it was just a different energy, a different dynamic.

It was completely, you know, going in the right direction.

And I.

Most of that's on me.

I apply.

I learned a lot from the first marriage that, no, I'm 50% of that, right?

Like, I.

I didn't show up as the husband and the man that I needed to be for that to be successful.

Obviously, there's 50 50 there.

And so my part that I played, I learned a little bit.

And I'm constant.

I'm still learning.

I'm still constantly trying to change and better myself for Meredith and to keep this thing going strong.

But implementing a lot of those changes early on helped with that relationship.

And so then I had that in my life, and that was really powerful for me for a while.

And then fast forward a couple years, we're together at the same company, and Covid actually happened.

And Covid was a real turning point for us because that's when we had.

We were in this office together.

We had just moved across the country to this specific office, and the company going through Covid, everyone was up and down.

We didn't know what was going to happen.

Everyone was, you know, panicking, you know, cutting costs.

And so our company was going to close the office we were in, and they said, we have a job for you, but you have to move across the.

Back, across the country, further from everywhere you want it, further from all your family, further from everything that you want to be, you know, close to.

But if you want to do that, we have a job for you.

And that was when we really said, is that what we want for our life?

Because keep in mind, I'm still.

I'm still unhappy in that job.

I made a change in the relationship, but I'm still.

I'm still unhappy in the job.

I'm still not fulfilled.

I'm still doing.

Showing up in the cubicles and chicken pecking and doing the work that I don't love, it doesn't fill me up.

It's not.

It's not what I see as my potential in giving back to this world.

There's something more I want to provide for the world, and that wasn't doing it for me.

And so when that opportunity came from the company to say, look, you want the job, come across the country, and we have it for you.

Meredith and I took a long, hard look at that, and we said, you know what?

Neither one of us is extremely happy here.

This is likely the universe giving us the off ramp that we've been looking for.

This is an opportunity where we can now start to look at what is our gift, what do we want to give back to the world?

How do we want to.

What do we want this to look like at the end of the day?

And so that's when we decided that we're going to leap.

Have no clue what we're doing.

But to your point, we jumped out of the airplane with no parachute.

We didn't even know how to make one stitch, one on the way down.

So we were.

We were.

We were hooped.

We thought we were gonna, you know, crash out of this thing.

And it's interesting because at that moment when we were trying to make that decision, we were on the fence with whether we were going to or not initially, because it was a big shock to us and we still had to decide what we were going to do.

But it's funny that.

Not funny, but Meredith's dad, actually, he got.

He got sick at that moment, and it put into perspective what really meant, what was really important to us and her dad.

So we drove home that Christmas because flights were.

It was Covid.

Flights were no go.

And so we drove 17 hours to be with him on Christmas because we actually thought it was going to be his last Christmas.

And it put into focus what was really important for us.

And it was actually that trip that made us decide that, no, we're going to figure this out.

We're going to do it our way.

And the funny thing is, as soon as we made the decision, her dad had some treatments and.

Completely healthy now, like, it's almost as if, like, the universe, like, just had to intervene to get us to do the thing that we were meant to do at that moment.

And so super grateful.

And, yeah, we made the decision to jump into entrepreneurship, and that's where we're at now.

Yeah, that's great.

And it's interesting to see how things can be subtly occurring around us.

If we're self aware, watching what's going on, being mindful of where we're going, then I think we can pick up on those things a lot more than being in that chaos and just that turmoil and overwhelmed by the moment.

Instead of looking at the long term perspective, I do want to jump back.

And you talked about doing some self development, working on your worth and your identity when you were in corporate.

Did you see that that stuff helped to make the job a little bit more satisfying, or did that kind of go the opposite direction?

And as you became, you know, you realize your worth and you found your identity.

Did that make it harder to be there, pecking away on the keyboard in a cubicle?

So I would say that the more evolved the evolution of me in corporate was more on the relationship side.

At that point, I would say the real growth on an individual level, like on a self worth level, happened when we decided we were going to go into entrepreneurship.

So I would say that the growth that I had from my previous marriage, working on kind of being a better human better husband, better man.

It wasn't necessarily related to a lot of reading books or listening to podcasts as much as reflecting on my past.

And do I want to repeat that and.

Or repeating patterns that, you know, my parents and grandparents who also went through divorce, you know, looking back and just seeing all of that and do I want that for myself again in this new relationship?

So that was where that real growth happened while at corporate.

And so I would say it didn't really impact.

I mean, obviously, it made me a happier version of me because I've got a relationship that fulfills me a little bit, right?

That fulfills me a lot.

But it didn't take away.

The sting of this job isn't meant for me.

I know that I'm still not where I need to be in my career or in my vocation.

There's something still missing here.

Even though my relationship's going well and life in general is better because of it, there was still something inside of me that was saying, yep, great, you're making moves.

That's a.

That's a really big one.

Really important one.

There's still more to.

There's still more to do here.

So it was when I jumped out of the plane, Meredith and I jumped out of the plane, and we fell flat on our face.

Our first company was a real estate investing company because we jumped out of the plane and we panicked and we said, we're both leaving corporate jobs, both decent salaries.

How do we replace this, like, yesterday?

Like, how do we get income coming in and make this as easy as possible?

Easy and entrepreneurship are two words that do not go together.

They just do not go together.

We tried to jam them together.

They do not go together.

So we fell flat on our face in the first company.

We invested tens of thousands of dollars in a coach and marketing, and we had this business, and there was an altruistic side to it where we were going to help people buy their first home in a housing market that was crazy booming, that it was pricing people out.

And we thought we had a really great strategy to help people get into the housing market so they could have their first home.

And we were kind of blinded by that altruistic side of entrepreneurship.

And because we knew that there was something inside of us we wanted to give back to the world, and this has to be it.

And it wasn't.

And so we fell flat on our face, lost tens of thousands of dollars in that, but the wouldn't change a thing.

It was one of the best things that happened to us because it really made us do the work that we should have done before we jumped into entrepreneurship, which was one, what is it that we actually want?

Because if you don't know what you want, you can't actually make a roadmap to get there.

And so if you don't have a destination, you're just going to be a ship lost at sea, just floating around.

And so we needed to understand what it is we really wanted in life.

Obviously, this is the thing we want, but who do we have to become to get that thing?

And who are we now?

Who are we now, and who do we need to become?

And we didn't know the answers to the question, so we had to go on a bit of a journey.

And that's where we really said, okay, let's put we're okay.

Financially, we're good.

We've got some Runway.

Let's pause.

Let's do this intentionally, and let's put some focus on us as individuals, who we are, what we want, and who we need to become.

And so we set out on a journey of personal growth.

And that's where we went on all kinds of retreats and different events and books and podcasts and really dove deep on who we are, our limiting beliefs.

Well, for me, it's perfectionism and, you know, wanting to never fail.

Like, I don't know about you, but how many, like, how many times have you failed today?

Like, how do you go through life without failing?

The only way is if you don't try.

It's the only way you don't fail is if you just don't show up and don't try.

And so I didn't realize that until going through this process.

And so that's, that's the journey we went on.

That's how we really got invested in personal growth and got to the point where I realize that almost everything in my life when I look back, all of the limiting beliefs boil down to a version of worthiness, some version of me not feeling as though I'm worthy of whatever it was that I was going after, that dream life, that life of impact and service.

And I know being able to wake up every day and live my dream with my dream person, my dream goals, and I never felt worthy of those things before, and so they were completely out of reach for me.

So how did you go from that place of not feeling like one, hey, I'm worthy, but then also not feeling you're worthy of the life you're wanting?

How did you change that?

Through the personal growth to say, yes, I do have worth, and I'm worthy of the life that I'm dreaming of.

Right.

You and Meredith laid this out that you see, like, yeah, that is a life that I can step into, and it's for me.

How did you change that perspective?

Showing up consistently, for one, is doing the work, going to different events, learning from.

Sometimes you go to event and you hear a message and it doesn't land free for whatever reason.

Like, there's been a couple times where I've heard the same message two or three times, but I heard it a little differently.

And so, for example, we went to one event where I had heard before that, you know, doing, you know, you hear the things, like, you know, look yourself in the eye in the mirror, fist bump yourself, like, little things like that that seem weird, actually were helpful.

And it wasn't until a certain event that it landed for me.

So I had heard personal growth a lot of times.

You hear the same message a lot of times, and it's because it works.

And it wasn't until I went to a certain event and a guy said, you know, there's a reason why when you go to these events, you hear some of the same stuff over and over and over again.

And the reason is, is because it actually works if you do it.

And so I can remember thinking, being at an event and a guy had me stand up, pat myself on the back and look myself and told me to look myself in the mirror and write down some different things in my journal every day.

I was like, I get it.

Intellectually, I get it, but do I actually really need to do it?

It's weird.

I don't, like, I don't need to do it.

I get it.

Intellectually.

I'm worthy.

I get it.

I'm worthy.

But it wasn't until I started doing the things, I literally started to look myself in the mirror every day and tell myself I love myself.

I literally would fist bump myself in the mirror or high five, whatever you do.

I would literally, while brushing my teeth, say the words to myself that I love myself, I wrote in my journal.

But it's not until I started doing something called 75 hard that I really started to see a huge difference.

Because 75 hard, it's a discipline.

I'll say it's a discipline challenge for 75 days.

There's six things you do every single day for 75 days, and it's not easy.

It's called 75 hard for a reason.

It's, you know, you drink a gallon of water every single day.

You read ten pages of a personal growth book.

Every single day you take a picture of yourself, a progress picture of yourself every day in the mirror.

There's three more.

Oh, you work out.

You work out twice a day for 45 minutes.

One of them has to be outside.

And you stick to a diet.

You pick a diet and you stick to that diet.

And then there's something else that I can't think of right now.

But there's six things.

If you don't stick with it, then you have to start over from day one, even if you're on day 74, correct?

Yeah.

And so going through that and showing up for myself every single day built a trust in myself, and it showed that I was actually worthy to show up for.

And so I attribute 75 hard as a big tool for my journey.

Like, it's not something that I do consistently all the time.

I actually still drink a gallon of water every day.

Do I try to drink a gallon water every day?

Do I actually hit it every single day?

Not always, but do I read ten pages of personal growth book every day?

Absolutely.

We've still stuck to our diet, so some of the things have carried forward into the rest of our life because we're worthy of it now, and we built that discipline of showing up for ourselves.

So I would say 75 hard and just consistently showing up and doing the little weird things that people tell you to do in books and podcasts and different events that you attend, they work.

If you do theme, you're not special in that you're any different than anyone else, that you're unique, that they don't work for you, but they work for everybody else.

So that was the message I heard that resonated for me.

So I would say those were the things that really helped me start to see myself differently and show up for myself differently.

Cool.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And 75 hard is called hard because it is hard.

It's definitely one where if you show up for yourself and keep with it, you do build that trust muscle and see that, hey, I'm accountable to myself and I've kept my own word, which there's so many times we'll jump in and say, I'm going to do this, and you don't follow through.

And that is definitely one where it's like, if you don't follow through, you start back and you build that trust.

If you stick with the process, just like you talked about, totally.

You had talked about, like, limiting beliefs and how you had to ditch those and really adopt, like, a growth mindset to look for what is true and changing your perspective.

What are some things that you replaced as far as beliefs that you've now found out?

Hey, those were lies that I bought into because I was, you know, taught them or heard them from somebody.

I would say the biggest one is that I hinted at it earlier, I think, is that I had to be perfect.

Like, I had to always show up and I couldn't make mistakes.

Like, I always had to be perfect because I don't know where it came from either.

Obviously, childhood, I can't pinpoint specifically.

I know that I do have one memory of my dad, and God love him because he was a great dad and he had all great intentions, but I can remember coming home with a test, whatever test it was, and I had scored like a 90 or 95%, and so I was proud of that mark.

That's a decent mark.

90, 95%.

Where's the other 5%?

That's great.

Congratulations.

Where's the other 5%?

What happened to the other 5%?

And I think he was coming at it from an angle of, you're capable of getting 100, and maybe, but on that day I wasn't because I got a 95.

But the message, I guess I took from that Washington, I gotta be perfect.

Hundred is.

I didn't, I didn't get the reaction I was looking for.

The pat on the back, the atta boy.

The 95.

That's amazing.

Let's go get ice cream.

I didn't get that.

I got the 95.

What happened to the other 5% to motivate me?

And then in sports, I was, I was in sports when I was younger and, and I got limiting beliefs like I was okay, I was, I was a decent athlete in Indan ice hockey and basketball and different things.

And I, I always, I think, got the, the message from coaches and, and my parents that, you know, got to make the team, you got to make the shot.

You got it, like.

And so I always had this, this feeling of perfectionism and it really, looking back, I, in that corporate world, unless I knew I was going to be successful with something, I wasn't looking to raise my hand to take on something that was going to be, uh, this has a chance of not going well for me, or I missed out on opportunities in life.

I missed out on things in life, experiences in life, because I was afraid to fail, because I was afraid that I wasn't going to show up with 100% perfectionism.

And it was at one of these events that I realized that it was a personal growth event we were at.

And they had us you know, an ex, they walked us through an exercise, and that's what came up for me.

It's perfectionism.

I can't be wrong.

And, you know, we did a really cool exercise where he had an arrow, like a bow and arrow arrow, and he had us write the limiting belief on the arrow, and we went through this process, and then there was a.

You put the.

The, what do you call it?

The pointy end of the arrow right there on your.

On your neck, and you.

Someone was holding the back end of the arrow to your neck.

So it was kind of like holding it, I don't know if you can see it, but holding it to your neck, and you had to take a confidence.

You had to let the world know your limiting belief and then replace it with this new empowering belief.

And mine is that I.

It's okay to be wrong.

I'm actually learning and growing as a human being, as, you know, is my new empowering belief to replace that living belief.

And so you just announce that to the world, and you take a confident step forward, and you shatter the arrow, and with it, you shatter the limiting belief.

It was a representation of getting rid of that, that limiting belief, and it was a really cool exercise.

And Meredith and I actually, it was a really emotional experience because we both went through that, and we both got to learn a lot about each other and some living beliefs that we both had held about each other.

And it's funny because I hear her limiting belief, and I'm like, what?

How can you possibly think that about yourself?

There's no possible way.

And her, the same thing with me, but it's just this deeply held thing that we were programmed with from, you know, when we were five, six, seven years old or even younger.

And.

But, yeah, that was really cool that we.

So that I would say that was the biggest one.

Another one is nobody cares about or wants to hear my story was another limiting belief that I had.

Like, my story isn't worthy of being told was another limiting belief that I've now, since getting over, obviously, I'm on a podcast telling my story, and so it's a work in progress.

I'm working on that.

And now my empowering belief to replace that is.

Is that I have a story.

I've gone on a journey, and I will help somebody.

There's somebody out there that if they hear my message, it's meant for them.

And they will now make a decision to change their life and have a better second half or a better future, because I was courageous enough to tell my story.

And so that's the new empowering belief that I've replaced that belief with.

And so I would say those are the two biggest.

Yeah, those are both very powerful, both in keeping us imprisoned.

But also the flip side, like you're talking about, is setting us free to find grace and the energy, the drive, almost the permission to step into the life we've wanted and take the action that's needed to get there.

So I love how you've shared that and framed it up.

As we wrap up here, I want to touch on one thing that we had talked about earlier, briefly, and just saying that having a solid marriage is a cheat code.

What do you mean and what does it change?

Is it cheat code to getting a better marriage or changing my life?

What, what does it do when I implement that cheat code?

We say it's a cheat code for life, because if you've got your marriage dialed in and it's just on maintenance, like, you're not putting out fires because you've done the work and, you know, you give the benefit of the doubt and you've got all the.

It's in a great place.

One, you've now, two heads are better than one.

You've got two great superhero versions of you working together on your marriage, and now you're attacking life together, but you're able to expend more energy on the other parts of your life because your marriage is dialed in.

You're not.

You're not.

If you think about when you have a marriage that's not working for you, it drains you.

You're exhausted.

Like, you just don't have the energy to put forward to the world to attack your goals, your dreams, the things that you really want to do in life because you're drained.

You're, you have nothing in the tank, and you're exhausted from putting up this bite, this, this fire.

And so when you've got that dialed in, not only does it give you more energy, but now you also have two people with more energy, and it's just an exponential, you know, push towards the other parts of your life.

And I would say, you know, also your health is another one.

If you don't have your health, you're going to be drained and not have, you know, the energy to put forward towards your goals.

And so I would say, and if your marriage isn't dialed in, you're not going to want to, you're not going to have the energy to go work out and go, you know, do the things that, you know, you need to do for your.

For your body.

And so that's what we mean by it's a cheat code for life.

If you can get that dialed in, it's like jet fuel for the other parts of your life to go attack the dream life, the goals, the altruistic side of giving back to the world, the things that you really want to do, the things that really fill you up, your why, why you show up every day in the world gives you more juice and more energy to go attack those things and go execute on your why.

And as I'm sitting here just going, there is a much deeper rabbit hole in talking about how we create that marriage to get that cheat code.

I'm going to say, people jump over and listen to your podcast to kind of get that information because that is a much deeper and expansive topic to really cover because it's involving, like, you've talked about changing who we are and then that changes our relationship.

And once that relationship has changed, it then feeds back into the energy that we can expend on our personal development.

And it's almost like this self perpetuating engine, I guess, that moves us forward when we really get those two working together in unison.

Yeah.

Do you want to share the podcast and how guys can connect with you outside of living fearless today?

Yeah, absolutely.

So it's the Road of Life podcast.

It's with my wife and I, Meredith and I.

We host an episode weekly and people can find us there.

And we also have social media.

So we're Craig on Instagram, and then we each have Facebook profiles.

You know our names, Craig Bennett and Meredith McKay.

And we have a Facebook group that it's facebook.com forward slash groups.

Forward slash Meredith and Craig.

So those are, those are probably the best ways to get ahold of us, get in touch with us, for sure.

And those will be listed in the show notes as well to make it easy for people to connect rather than having to type everything out.

We'll have the shortcut in the URL link.

So, yeah, Craig, I appreciate it.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, sharing your story and then the encouragement that, hey, where we've been isn't, you know, what we're confined to.

And that when we work on ourselves and work on our marriage, it's like jet fuel to move us forward.

So I appreciate it, my friend.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Mike.

I really appreciate it.

Absolutely.

Thanks so much, my friend, for joining me on another episode.

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Have a great one.