How to Stop Settling in Love: A Therapist Explains Why You Choose the Wrong Relationships (with Jason VanRuler)

so authenticity, it's simple, it's not easy, but what it allows us to do is to make it really clear to people who we are so they know where they stand.

Welcome back to the How to Get a Girlfriend podcast.

I am your host, dating coach Connell Barrett.

I am here to help you flirt with confidence, get more dates, and get a great girlfriend.

And do this all by being authentic.

No sketchy pickup artist moves no manipulation because basically your future soulmate she's going to like you and love you for you and to help us today we have a guest a very special guest because i think for the first time we have a licensed therapist here i probably need a licensed therapist so thank goodness jason is here today today's guest is jason van ruler he's a therapist a speaker an author and a coach primarily of men in the business world he wrote a book called Get Past Your Past: How Facing Your Broken Places Leads to True Connection.

And Jason helps people heal and thrive in their work and in their personal lives through honesty, compassion, and basically taking ownership of their emotions.

And you can learn more about Jason at jasonvr.com.

Jason, welcome to How to Get a Girlfriend.

Oh, I am thrilled to be here.

I have been looking forward to this for a long time.

I love what you're doing, and I love even just how you started.

Like, how do we show up authentically to have the relationships we want?

Like you nailed it.

That's it.

Exactly what we're going for.

Thank you.

Yeah, to me, I tried everything in the world when I was working on my dating life.

I came from a low place.

I struggled with dating with women.

And I just said, oh, I'll try these pickup artist moves.

I'll try that move.

I'll try this.

And then it was when I really said, you know what, I'm just going to be myself.

as cliched as that might sound.

I'm going to be authentic.

That's when I started to have some real nice success with women who said, hey, I like that ginger nerd.

What are your thoughts on the power of leaning into your authenticity, either in your personal life or work, relationships, life in general?

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of the point.

You know, that's the challenge is somewhere along the line, we are told not to be who we are or that it would be better if we adjusted it.

And it's highly problematic because what we end up doing then is we kind of dilute who we actually are.

And so what the challenge is is it makes people hard to know if there are people or not, right?

And so when we're meeting people and we're always trying to be somebody else, what happens is we're surrounded by people who think we're someone else.

And so, when we think about relationships and the people who love us the most, that makes it really hard for them to love us.

And so, authenticity, it's simple, it's not easy, but what it allows us to do is to make it really clear to people who we are so they know where they stand.

Right.

As a former drinker, currently sober, I still use alcohol metaphors sometimes.

You mentioned don't dilute yourself.

I say

be your version of a straight shot of Jameson.

Be real, be genuine, don't water yourself down.

A woman doesn't want a watered-down wine spritzer.

She wants a straight shot of you if she's your type.

That doesn't mean every woman's going to be your type.

In fact, it's okay to not be everybody's type, but man, if she likes Jameson, she's going to like a quote sip of you.

Yeah, especially around St.

Patrick's Day.

It's going to be great.

Exactly.

are you a beverage man who enjoys a beverage now and then, or not?

You know, that's something I used to do a lot more.

That's really not part of my life anymore.

Just, I don't know, I'm a guy who's always trying to optimize, so I'm always just looking at what's helping me get closer to where I want to be and what's pulling me away.

And I know it's a highly personal thing, but for me, it's just I don't know if that helps me hit my goals the way I want to.

I hear that.

I'm two years sober just recently.

I like that.

Yeah, I'm drunk on sobriety.

How about that?

And And a lot of kettle popcorn.

Okay.

Let's talk a little bit about something that you mentioned.

Your subtitle in your book, Broken Places.

Get past your past, how facing your broken places leads to true connection.

Can you talk a little bit about how those broken places or hidden wounds might show up in a man's love life, relationships, dating life?

How do broken wounds show up and how can we go about healing them?

Yeah, well, they show up all over in our love life, in our business life, just really in our approach to ourselves and others.

And so, it's kind of like if you could imagine being a child and breaking a leg and then just saying, well, we're never going to fix that.

What would happen?

Well, you would grow up, right?

But you would probably limp or you'd probably have some serious problems that would get in the way of functioning.

And so, what happens is that we've all got wounds.

And this isn't a therapist thing about how your parents are terrible.

We'll get there, but we're not there yet.

And I'm kidding, just tongue in cheek there.

But what it's really about is the fact that we all have wounds in childhood.

And those wounds sometimes are just simply even our perception about what happened.

But we internalize that message.

And if we don't tend to that message, we end up projecting it to other people.

So let me give you an example.

If you as a child are born into a household that really values being very stoic and not talking about emotions and not discussing hard things or having conflict, but you are an emotional and passionate kid, they are probably going to tell you you're too much.

They're going to tell you you should stop feeling.

And so the message we receive is, if I want people to love me, I need to feel less.

If I want people to love me, I need to be less communicative.

And so what happens is we end up projecting that on other people.

And then we end up saying in our adult life, well, I'm really stuck.

I don't know why.

I just can't talk about emotions.

Well, maybe it's because you were taught not to.

Wow.

Okay, that's really powerful.

So you're saying that something that happened when you were three, four, five,

that can show up when you're 25, 35, 45.

Yeah, it's unfortunate, but it's true.

And that goes both ways.

I mean, good and bad.

But those early childhood lessons are everything to us at the time because we have nothing to measure it against.

You know, so many people that I talk to, they tell me about their childhood and they just say, well, I always thought it was really normal until I grew up.

And the reason is we don't have context, right?

We just sort of only know the environment in which we were raised.

And so we don't know how helpful that was for us or not unless we actually spend some time thinking through it.

Okay.

I want to come back to that.

I do.

I want to come back to the childhood aspect of this because I think, yeah, we have all these wounds and we don't even know they're there.

that happen at an early age, childhood, or maybe a little bit older, but still when you're young, pre-adult, essentially.

But what I wanted to do, I just thought, oh, wow, I've got a a licensed therapist on my show.

I've got to ask you some questions about looking at some common issues that men have with mindset in dating and see if you have a, well, hear what your take is as a therapist.

Can I throw a couple of situations at you and see what your view is?

Yeah, let's hear it.

Sounds fun.

Let me start by putting myself on the couch, so to speak.

But I think this is actually a very relatable problem.

So the very first night I ever went out to approach women, it was 16 years ago.

I'm in my late 30s.

And my whole life, I've been waiting to say, I'm finally going to start talking to women, the kind of women I'm attracted to.

And I hired a coach to help me do that.

And before I started going up and talking to women on this rooftop bar, this is in the opening chapter of my book, I all of a sudden I had a, I think it was a panic attack.

I went into the men's room stall.

All of a sudden, my hands were shaking, and I was mildly hyperventilating, and I started getting almost like dry heaves.

And at the time, I just thought, oh, stage fright, I'm nervous.

What's going to happen?

But really,

my perception of that has always been, oh, I was about to find out if women were going to reject me or not, if I was worthy of women.

That's my perception on what happened.

Now, that's an extreme situation.

Most guys aren't running into a men's room stall, but so many men listening to this are like, oh, I'd love to go talk to that woman, but just the thought of her rejecting me makes me feel like I might not be enough.

Could you, if you don't mind me putting you on the spot, could you kind of analyze what you think was going on inside of me and what might be going on inside of men who feel something similar.

Yeah, I mean, number one, I would just empathize and say that that sounds terrible.

As a person who dated for a period of time before getting married, obviously I can relate to some of that and just feeling that intensity.

And I think sometimes the intensity comes from past experiences where maybe relationships haven't worked out.

Or maybe we've loved someone more than they've loved us or we've cared more than they've cared.

And so what happens is we end up tying some of our worth into relationships.

And so when we're going to talk to somebody, it's now much more serious than just asking someone out.

It's about proving that I'm worthy.

And if you need someone to prove you're worthy, boy, that's a big deal.

And so you better choose correctly, right?

And if they reject you, well, that's awful.

And so I think a lot of times if we've had a past where maybe relationships weren't easy or they were painful or we were wounded, it can be easy to kind of put those as a placeholder for our worth.

And we can just say, I'm as worthy as my ability to get relationship.

Now, what you and I know is it's not true, but it's how it feels.

And so if it feels that way when we approach that situation, there's so much pressure around it because we're literally trying to prove that we're okay.

Wow, that's hard to do when you're just talking to a random woman at a bar, at a lounge, at a coffee shop.

It's putting a lot of pressure on her and the situation, right?

Yeah, hey, no pressure.

You just need to make sure I'm okay

and that I have value and worth.

And, you know, but this is all casual and stuff right exactly no i that that sheds so much light on what pushes back against a man i like to look at approaching a woman as

a universal thing that most single men want to do at some point in their lives you maybe you're on the dating apps maybe you get fixed up with people but pretty much every single guy at least on some level has always wanted to go walk up to that woman and take a romantic risk.

And what I found pushes back a lot are like those internal stories of, oh, if she doesn't like me, that means I'm not good enough, or that means I'm some kind of a creep.

And isn't that just a story in the mind?

Yeah, yeah, it's, I mean, it's kind of like a soundtrack that we have that plays in those situations about ourselves and others.

And so we just have to stop long enough to say, you know, is this accurate?

And sometimes what's true is that it was accurate in a specific environment, right?

So you might say in high school, yeah, the women wouldn't date me, Jason.

And so there is actually some accuracy to that.

However, it's 10 years later.

And so it's kind of just owning, well, where am I at today?

And in this present moment, what's true?

Yeah.

No,

that's very true about what you just said about what's true.

And to finish that story, so there's a little section that I didn't talk about in my book.

So I had my dry heave panic attack

and laughing now, but it was not funny at the time.

Yeah, you weren't laughing then, I'm guessing.

I was not laughing then.

And I had all this nervous energy.

And I'm curious how you would analyze what's now happening in the PS anecdote I'm going to share, because I want my listener to have the same kind of experience so he can have a big breakthrough.

So

I get out of the bathroom, I get myself together, and I walk up 38 years old, the first woman I've ever cold approached in my whole life, very pretty woman.

I remember she had a cowboy hat on, a white cowboy hat on a rooftop bar, New York City, July 2009.

And I walked up to her and I'm a mess.

And we talked for a couple minutes and it goes fine.

Doesn't go great,

but neither does she say, get away from me, you monster.

How dare you even approach me.

She was just a buzzed woman at a bar.

She wasn't into me, but she wasn't mean.

We chatted for a couple minutes and she just kind of floated away.

I said, well, nice meeting you.

And I remember standing there thinking, That's what I've been afraid of for 25 years is just a drunk chick at a bar just didn't really want to to talk to me.

I was like, I'm still here.

I'm alive.

And that felt so empowering.

And then I was so much more free to talk to two or three or four more women that night.

I don't know if that, is that like the exposure model?

Or is that just my brain seeing, hey, wait a minute, I'm putting way too much onus on what any woman thinks of me.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's both.

And I like that you had that outcome and that kind of thought process because it's true.

At the end of the day, we're all just humans.

And so we can talk to anybody we want to talk to.

And there are people who think they're a big deal and people who don't, but they're all just people.

And so I love that idea with the exposure of, yeah, the thing that I'm really afraid of, I just, I need to lean into and try.

And then I need to see what's true again.

So if you said, well, that ended terribly and she thought I was a creep.

And then I went to another one and they thought I was a creep.

And geez, Jason, you know, 10 people in a row called me a creep.

I'd say, we're going to talk about your approach.

Your approach needs some help, right?

But a lot of times what happens is that we struggle to even validate how we feel because it's just a feeling.

And it's okay to feel a certain way, but understand that maybe the facts don't support that.

Yeah.

On the topic of broken or feeling broken, I'm curious about the time.

I had a call today with a new client who was talking about how he settled.

He

half jokingly said, so

I was briefly married.

I was married for nine weeks.

A joke I've cracked here before is my marriage was over so fast we fought for custody of the wedding cake.

Anyways, that's a line that's in my book.

And I have a new client.

Today he said, oh yeah, I was married for 17 years.

I wish it had been nine weeks.

I wasted years of my life.

He basically said, I settled.

Can you talk a little bit about what causes quote-unquote settling when you decide to spend your life with somebody, maybe for years, maybe for decades, and deep down you might not really feel like this is the right person for you, but you settle.

Can you talk a little bit about what causes settling in men and how to not settle?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a couple different things.

I mean, one of the things that leads them to settle is feeling like there aren't other options.

You know, so if I have limited options, or literally the only option is the person in front of me, and I have to get married.

So, anytime that we have kind of that urgency and limited opportunity, we're going to make a decision.

And nobody wants to be picked last.

No one wants to be left out.

So we say, well, I'll just get married.

All my siblings are married, or my parents think I ought to, or culturally it makes sense.

And so we'll get married.

And so we have that.

We have the anxiety of if we believe we can't find anyone and somehow we manage to get somebody, we go, hey, I'm going to make good on this.

I'm going to take this.

And then the other version of settling is being in a place where maybe you have a lot of potential, but you haven't grown yet, and settling for someone who is actually as grown as they're going to be.

So what happens is that we kind of settle for someone who's reached their advanced point when we're at our starting point.

And then we get into a relationship and we start to grow and we realize that the person we chose isn't growing to.

And we end up being much different than the person we chose.

Interesting.

So they can be a wonderful person.

In all the ways somebody can be wonderful, but if they're at a different phase of their growth or they're not growing the way you are growing, that can be a problem.

Absolutely.

Does it also happen in terms of people's careers?

I'm going to switch topics a little bit from dating to perhaps career success because I know you're involved in coaching of people, men and women as I understand it, in their careers, not just their personal lives.

And I'm curious, do men also settle in their career or in certain other standards?

where they want something better for them, but they take what they can get?

And if so, is it caused by the same issues or is this a different area yeah no i mean i think it's the same right i think it's the same and this is why we you know we have the the typical midlife crisis right is we get to a point where we realize uh time is limited and so we kind of have to decide how are we going to spend the rest of our life and are we going to spend it here and i work with so many people who just say like i i settled and i've got so much more potential but the problem jason is that it would be costly to walk away it'd be costly to start over and so we end up kind of wrestling whether it's in relationship or business, we wrestle with the cost of change versus the cost of staying the same.

And I think both have consequences, but it's hard to know that you're keeping a slow pace when you know you could run faster.

That's a tough life for a lot of people.

You struggle with dating, right?

Sure.

You have a good job and cool friends, but you just aren't sure how to flirt.

The apps don't work for you.

And sometimes women put you in the friend zone.

It's frustrating.

Hey, I struggled with dating too.

As an introvert and a total nerd, I didn't just live in the friend zone.

I owned real estate there.

But I escaped using the dating philosophy of radical authenticity, which I've used to help thousands of men in 17 countries find love.

It's what I wrote about in my best-selling book, Dating Sucks, But You Don't.

And radical authenticity is why Psychology Today called me the best dating coach in America.

And now I want to personally help you attract your dream girlfriend.

So go to datingtransformation.com and book a free call with me.

On our call, I'll tell you how my one-on-one coaching will help you find your dream girlfriend, and you'll be doing it by flirting with confidence and authenticity.

No creepy pickup tricks needed.

So go to datingtransformation.com, book a free call today, and let my personalized coaching help you get a great girlfriend.

Yeah, the cost of change versus the cost of staying the same.

I think with me, and if you have, if there's a client of yours or somebody you coached who you want to use as a case study, feel free to change their name for privacy.

I'd be fascinated to hear if you have any really good examples of somebody who realized they were settling either in their relationship or in their business and then made some changes.

But what happened to me 15 or so years ago, I was settling big time.

in my professional life.

I had a good career as a journalist in magazines and writing about sports, but the truth was I wanted something different.

I wanted to be writing TV comedy.

I wanted to be David Lutterman's head writer, basically.

And I settled for my shadow career, what I think Stephen Pressfield would call a shadow career in his book, The Art of War, I believe.

I think that's the name of it.

And I'm sorry, The War of Art.

The War of Art.

He's not Sun Tzu, The War of Art.

Anyway, very different.

So I believe Pressfield says, oh, people have their ideal careers and their shadow careers.

Like

the man who wants to write plays, who wants to win Tony's, and the guy who settles for teaching how to write playwriting at a school.

No disrespect to teaching, but if his dream is to be a playwright, he's having a shadow career.

That's my Cliff's Notes

encapsulation of Pressfield's point.

Anyway, Back then, I realized, you know what, Connell, you have had a shadow career,

and you are so so effing done having a shadow dating life.

And that's when I said it's time to raise my standards and walk up to my beautiful wow girls and start finally having the dating

results, a growth that I want.

This is my long-winded way of asking you, is this something that's a common occurrence in men, men settling for less than they're capable of in their careers and in love?

And if so,

how do we say time to make a change?

Yeah, well, that's a great question.

And yes, it it is a thing.

It's a thing in business, it's a thing in relationships.

Because I think if we've grown at all, we just realize this, right?

We can't avoid it.

And so, the more that we grow and develop as a person, the more it becomes obvious if we're in a shadow career or if we're in a relationship that's actually not suited to us.

And so, what I found is so many people, myself included, what they just really need is permission to do something different.

And it's very interesting.

I mean, I'll tell you, you know, four years ago,

I think I had a social media following of maybe 20 people.

My grandmother was one of them.

I hadn't written a book.

I'd never spoken on stage to thousands.

I hadn't done any of the things I've done today.

And that was because I just really didn't believe I could.

And I met a person, and this person had done all the things I wanted to do, and I told them all the things that I was passionate about, just sure that they'd say, well, you know, it's going to take about 20 years for you to figure that out.

And they just looked at me and they just said, I think you can do that this year.

And I said, really?

And they said, yeah, I'm just going to give you permission to do that.

And I will tell you, in that year, my life changed.

And it didn't change because I became a different person.

It just changed because I believed that I had permission to do it.

And so I talk about my work and I say, you know, I have the best job in the world, in my opinion,

because a lot of what I get to do is give people permission to be better than they are.

and to reach their potential.

And there's nothing really magical about it other than sometimes we need to hear it from somebody else.

Yeah, you need to change that story you're telling yourself about that capability you have.

It sounds like somebody gave you permission to say, actually,

you know what, Jason, you can achieve some pretty great things in 12 months or less, not 20 years.

And you're like, hey, that sounds better.

I'll take that, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I mean, it was scary.

I was pretty sure they were wrong.

So I had to trust.

And I just said, well, I'm kind of fed up with not doing it.

So I guess let's try it.

And how's it going?

It's working out so far.

Yeah, I mean, it's it's that's the thing, and it's about dating or business.

It's challenging, uh, but it's challenging to govern yourself and hold back when you know you could be doing something else.

Yeah, and and so, yeah, there is fear in taking that next step, but but there's a lot of angst and regret if you don't.

No, absolutely.

The reason I

in part fell in love with

learning about dating and became a dating coach.

I didn't think I was going to be a dating coach 16 years ago.

I thought, oh, I just want to pay this dating guru a few couple grand, go approach some girls, see if I can do it, and then I'll settle down and change my, find a girlfriend and I'll be good.

And then I just got so excited by what I was capable of, not just with women, but how I realized, well, wait a minute, if I'm capable of walking up to a woman this beautiful, of feeling this charismatic, of being so funny and charismatic,

but also authentic.

Gosh, what else can I do in my career and my fitness in other areas too?

So once you start telling yourself what's possible, I just feel like you can open up a whole new world of possibilities in and out of love career as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

I had this thing that I, you know, I've got three kids and I'm trying to teach my kids this and my boys especially, but it's this saying, no gas left in the tank.

And so we talk about, I want to die with no gas left in the tank.

I don't want to get to my deathbed and go, oh, wow, you know, I guess I could have done more, but I, hey, I saved a lot of energy instead.

That's not the goal, right?

I want to end and be empty, and I want it to be meaningful and to help a lot of people.

And so I just go, if that's truly my commitment, then it requires me sometimes to do things that are uncomfortable.

And I'm okay with that.

I love that.

So an image I used to have to motivate myself was

I felt like, imagine here's the afterlife, or here's hell if there was a hell hell is not fire and brimstone

and Pitchforks and ragged clothing it might be Adam Sandler movies but it's not those other things hell would be sitting in a room and you have to watch a movie of what your life could have been if you had met your potential or if you had a different story and really pursued what you wanted basically if you really went after your your ideal sort of dream scenario in a given world.

And man,

that's so motivating to say.

I don't want to look back and say what might have been.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I'm with you.

I mean, I think that is the most painful thing we all experience as we get older is the regret of what we didn't do.

And that's the thing we have to live with.

And so in those moments,

what I try to coach people on is just to lean into it's okay to be uncomfortable and do it anyway.

Those two can coexist.

Do you have any clients, any anecdotes or people you have worked with where you just think, wow, he or she really stepped up and impressed me?

Any moments that just make you think, man, this is why I became a coach?

Yeah, I mean, I get those all the time, which is really awesome as I get a lot of feedback about what works.

And so,

you know, I have had clients who've come to me and they've been super successful and people that people know and revere and look up to, but have just said, I want to do something else.

And in a year, they've gone from being people in the city who did all the city people things to owning a farm and being married and happy, you know?

And so it's just like I have seen radical transformation in people when they're willing to do this.

Because I think it's like you said so well, when you start to see it, you can't not see it.

And so then you start to apply it to your whole life.

And so now, if I can talk to women, and I didn't think I could before, I suppose I could try for a different job.

And I suppose I could talk to this friend.

And I suppose I could travel here.

And the world just becomes very big when maybe we've lived in a world that seemed very small.

Beautiful.

That's fantastic.

Yeah, I love that.

The world can seem a lot bigger.

And it just sort of opens up.

Sometimes all you need is that momentum, the momentum of progress, the momentum of some easy, not easy, but some quick wins, some progress to say, hey, you know what?

I'm seeing growth here.

I mean, did you see that when that friend or that person you know gave you that, you can do this in a year advice?

Did that change your mechanics?

Did it change your strategy?

Did you start saying, hey,

let me take some chances here and see some wins coming your way in the near future?

Yeah, I started small.

So one thing about me is I knew if I aim too high, right, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put all this stock and pressure again into the outcome.

And so I think what's really important if you're going to start this is to get obsessed with the process and how well you do the process.

Because what a lot of us do is we go, okay, Jason, I'm listening to the podcast.

I hear you.

I've got permission.

Thank you so much.

That's great.

Now I, you know, I want to be Letterman's writer.

And so I'm going to be unhappy until I am.

And I go, oh, okay, well, you should get used to being unhappy because it's going to be a little while, right?

And

I was,

hey, because it's my mind.

Because this is exactly, I mean, I was just like, hey, okay, well, today you said this.

So tomorrow I should get what I want.

And so what we have to do is just restructure that a little bit.

And so it's if I want to be a writer, that means that I should start writing today.

And if I want to be a runner, I should run today.

And it's like you said, we stack those small wins, which James Clear talks a lot about, but we stack those small wins and they turn into big achievements and accomplishments.

But if we're not intentional like that, what we end up doing is just focusing on the outcome and being disappointed until we get it.

Right.

No, I drank that poisonous Kool-Aid for a long time.

I was aware I was doing it much of the time.

But it's one thing to know you're too focused on an outcome.

It's another to actually change your mindset.

Speaking of that topic, do you have any advice on whether it's dating or career or fitness, anything?

How do you fall in love with the process?

Any tips on here's how you enjoy the process.

Here's how to keep moving towards something.

You might not be there right away, but here's how to enjoy the journey.

Yeah, I think you have to make it yours.

You know, so we live in a culture and a world where everyone is going to tell you what to do.

And the thing is, they're just reverse engineering what they did.

And so if you're them, it's going to work perfectly.

But there's going to be a big challenge if you're not them.

And so, what I see with a lot of clients is they have a big goal or dream, which I love, but then they attempt to get the dream the way somebody else did.

And there are frameworks and things that definitely help us, and there are tools.

I'm not saying it can't be the same, but I'm saying you're not them.

Yeah.

You're you, and that's awesome.

But to fall in love with the process means that we have to create our own standards and live by them.

We can't just live by other people's standards because they're not ours.

And then when it gets difficult or tough, we have this tendency to quit.

And the reason is, is because we're not quitting on ourselves, we're quitting on somebody else's standards.

That's so smart.

You just reminded me of, so

I help a man figuratively, it feels literal, but it's a figuratively uploading whole new dating software.

Most men go about their dating lives with the Windows 97 software, which is:

if she rejects me, I suck.

Or if I don't have a kiss, or she doesn't want a second date, I'm a failure.

So I'll say to a guy, and if you're listening, those of you who are listening, ask yourself, what has to happen?

What are three or four things that have to happen for you to feel good about a first date, hypothetically?

And a client might say to me, oh, well, I have to get the kiss.

She has to text me first.

She has to giggle at all my jokes.

And

I have to feel like I was the most charismatic man in the room.

Now, those are all good things, things, don't get me wrong, but every one of those things is beyond his control.

These are not process-based things.

And I say, well, those are all great things.

Let's make those some wonderful bonuses when they happen.

But let's fall in love with how you communicate with her, the things you can control, the progress you're making, and not make your sole...

criteria for success the outcome and things that are outside of your control.

I don't know if that resonates with anything that you teach, but that's how I help guys really just fall in love with the process as opposed to being too focused on how it goes.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I get why we do, right?

Is that the process is the thing we brag about.

That's the thing we document and show, you know, that's, or the outcome, I should say.

The outcome is the thing we're all going after.

And so I get the drive to do that.

But in the process, we can be miserable.

And so that's not a fun way to live.

And so one of the challenges I'll give to people is just to ask themselves, whether it's dating or at work, what if this was fun?

If this was fun, how would I act differently?

If I was focused on making this a fun evening, what would I do?

And that usually is the secret, right?

Because if you can think what would be fun to you and you can lean into that, you become your authentic self, you become present, and you become a person in the moment that other people appreciate.

And it starts to feel better, whatever the vehicle is.

It just feels good or feels better.

Absolutely.

And if something feels good, and I do an episode a few episodes ago about what I call the three classes of experience.

I won't go through it all right now, but essentially

there's this aspirational class of an experience where a vehicle you're engaged in feels good, the process feels good, and it's good for you, and it gives to others.

And if we can hit that in dating or other areas of life, your career, wow, all of a sudden you're engaged in something that feels good to you.

You're going to give it more energy.

You're going to give it your whole heart.

And anything we do that feels good consistently and rewards us, we're going to do it all the time.

Right.

Yeah.

At least do it more often.

Sorry, go ahead.

And that's even our flow state, right?

Then we could argue we're getting into that flow state, which is where we all want to live.

Yeah.

Let's talk about the flow state.

I love flow state.

Have you read Flow?

Yeah.

Love that book.

Don't try to get me to pronounce the author's name.

Oh, man.

But yes, I have.

If I say the author's name three times, Beetlejuice appears.

Do not do it.

I'm not.

I can't do it anyway.

I'm going to do it.

You know what?

How?

I think it's,

I believe his last name is pronounced Chiksent Mihai.

Okay.

I'm going to take your word for it.

Chiksent Mihai.

Mihaili Chiksent Mihai.

Sir, if you're listening, I apologize if I butchered that.

But can you talk a little bit about how you get your clients or yourself in a flow state in any area of life?

What's the secret?

Yeah, you have to remember when you last were in that.

You know, and so the thing is, is that we've all been in that at one point, and then it's been covered up by other things.

And so, one of the first things we do is we just talk about, have you experienced that before?

And sometimes it's kind of sad because sometimes I'll talk to a client and they'll say, The last time I experienced that, Jason, I think when I was a kid.

You know, there was this moment when I was playing, you know, soccer in school and I felt that.

And so what happens is at some point that gets covered up and we lose it.

And so what happens is we build this entire life around around supporting what we should do or how we should be and not who we really are.

And so, what I'll challenge clients to do is to start to try some things, to get some data, to figure out what's going to work.

And it's just that curiosity and the willingness to try new things and refine that gets them closer to that place.

Now, what's true is not everybody's going to have a job that's their flow state.

You know, that would be awesome.

It's just not going to work that way.

So, then we have to find it some other place.

Can you give a couple examples of

where

the

typical guy, job is fine, bit of a grind, though, not really the land of flow for him.

Where else might he find flow state?

Yeah, so that can be hobbies, right?

That could be, you know, I've got clients who are runners and they'll say, you know, and that might sound like a sickness to some, but they'll say, that's my flow state, Jason, is running, you know, when I'm mile 15 or whatever.

I've got other people who are artists or people who are musicians and they just say like that, that's my thing.

You know, eight to five, it's not that, but I do as much as I can to be in that place after work.

And I think that's okay.

Sometimes our job provides something that our flow state isn't going to be able to in terms of finances.

And so it's a trade-off.

But we don't want to replace flow state with a job that actually doesn't give us that.

The money just never makes it worth it if we don't have our flow state.

One last dating-related question

that I've never asked anybody here.

You're the perfect person to ask.

I talk a lot on this podcast about the courtship part of dating.

The moves, the tactics, what to say, flirting, all that fun stuff.

But also, there's going to be a time when you really start to connect with a woman and you're on a relationship path.

Can you share some clarity, some wisdom for how a man decides this person, this woman,

she's into me, she wants to keep seeing me.

I could be on a relationship path with her.

Do you have any thoughts on how to make sure you're settling down with the right woman and not quote-unquote settling?

Yeah, that's a great question.

And I think everyone's going to look at it differently because we all have things that matter more to us than others.

So, I mean, I think when we think in terms of principles and values, we want those to be in alignment.

That's really important.

Another question that I'll ask people is: you know, if you're a business person, would you go into business with this person?

So you love them, you think they're great.

Would you start a business?

And if you wouldn't, why not?

Because, in many ways, that's exactly what we're doing: we're starting a business that's really going to be our legacy.

And you know, what research tells us about wealth and finances is that staying married is the best thing we can do for wealth and finances and passing on to generations.

And so, if we're going to make this big decision, how we feel is really important, but so are the facts.

And so, what happens is sometimes we weigh more heavily on the feeling than the facts, and it leads us to settle, right?

Because we say, I'm completely enamored, and I'm in love, and they're amazing, and I just can't think of one bad thing about them.

We need a conversation about the facts, because the truth is, is we're all just a mix of both positive and negative traits.

And that doesn't make us good or bad people.

It's just what's true.

And so what we want to try to do when we're dating is be objective.

And that objectivity is hard to come by.

We usually need a friend or some people around us who can help us see some things.

But we don't want to make a big commitment unless we can objectively look at what are we really signing up for.

And if you could give the listener one final piece of advice, let's assume that the gentleman listening to this, he's going to have some dating options.

He will if he does what I tell him, goes out there, takes some action.

If you could give one last piece of advice to the single

introverted,

probably very business-oriented man who's listening to this.

Maybe he's a software engineer.

Maybe he's logical, analytical, introverted, but having some dating success.

In terms of finding a great girlfriend, any parting words of advice for that guy?

Yeah, so usually the approach that I would take is be yourself and go to the, now this is the hard part for some people, but go to the places outside your house where people are doing what you love to do.

And some people say, well, I have to leave my house.

Yes, you have to leave your house.

But go outside of your house to the place where people are doing what you love to do

and see who wants to come along.

And if you just take that approach to dating, it's very, very easy, right?

It's just, I'm going to be myself.

I'm going to do the things I love around other people and I'm going to see who wants to come with.

And that makes it simple.

Great.

What are some examples of what those things might be, possibly hypothetically, or things you've noticed from your clients?

Totally.

Yeah.

If you like to travel, travel.

right?

Travel with a big group of singles.

If you have

a hobby or something you're interested in, go to a conference about that and look around and say, hey, who's here that likes this too?

If it's a social thing or it's volunteering or whatever those things are, go to those places and see who's there.

What we do a lot of times is we want really an inbound relationship and it's actually got to be outbound, right?

So we say, well, I just want everyone to come to me.

Well, we all do.

I mean, that sounds great.

I would love that too.

But that's usually not how it works.

We usually meet the people we end up with because they're around us anyway.

They don't just come knock on our door and find us.

And so we have to put ourselves out there a little bit to meet those people.

No, not me.

My girlfriend is a Jehovah's Witness.

She just knocked on my door one day.

And she never left.

We were hooked.

She never left.

Hell yeah.

Good for you, my friend.

You have done the undoable.

That is awesome.

I love that for you.

No, that was great advice.

In fact, I have my guys, my clients,

they don't have to do this, but I advise them to choose a passion project.

Go out there and do something that they love, that's going to be enjoyable and enriching no matter what happens, but also make it something where there will likely be women involved in some way, shape, or form.

And I just do this because it worked for me.

I got really into theater and joining a theater community and doing improv.

I dated some wonderful, incredible women who were in my improv classes.

I have met women at cooking schools I went to.

I dated one woman from my bowling league I went to years years and years ago.

So yeah, if you're just out there doing things that you, that light you up and turn you on, guess what?

You're going to meet like-minded people and also you'll get that outbound traffic in case there's not too many women knocking on your door.

Right.

Except for you,

which

you got to sell that.

That's got to be an add-on package to say, I'll teach you how to make this happen.

I'll teach you how to get sexy Jehovah's Witnesses knocking.

We'll list you in a directory.

They'll show up in droves.

This is going to be great.

Okay, now for the dumb questions part of the program.

I'll end with this.

You're a licensed therapist.

Does that mean you're a psychologist, psychiatrist, if I may ask?

Just a licensed therapist.

Yeah, so psychologists would be more on the assessment side.

So they do kind of more personality assessments.

Here's my question for a licensed therapist.

We're going to play, you've heard of the game F.

Mary Kill, I assume, right?

Yep.

We're going to play Friend Zone Mary Kill.

Okay.

I'm going to name a...

famous pop culture therapist, and you tell me if you want to friend zone them, marry them.

Not that, I mean, I know you're not married, but hypothetically, would you friend zone them, marry them, or quote, kill them?

Ready?

Okay.

Here we go.

Dr.

Melfie from The Sopranos.

Oh, man, that's interesting.

Probably Friend Zone.

There would be an interesting story there.

Yeah, but be friends with her.

She'd be a great friend to have.

She'd be a great friend.

She can keep a secret.

It's obvious.

Yeah.

I might marry her from the Dr.

Melfie from Goodfellas.

Oof.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Fiery woman.

Okay.

Friend zone, Mary, kill.

And by Mary, it can become good friends.

Dr.

Frazier Crane.

Friend Zone again.

Easy.

Okay.

That's easy.

Because I'd like to be Dr.

Frazier Crane.

That was awesome.

Who doesn't like Dr.

Frazier Crane?

How about Niles?

How about Niles, his brother?

Friend Zone?

Yeah, I would be friends.

It's not me, but

I would take that as a friend.

Okay.

Who would any quote kill?

Any therapy?

Oh, Dr.

Phil.

Friend Zone Mary Kill.

You know, let's not say kill, but let's say not be friends with, I would say.

That seems like a hard one to make happen.

We'll call it Friends Own Mary Ghost.

Ghost.

I think ghosting on that one for sure.

All right.

We'll end on that.

I always end on a good Dr.

Phil dig, if I can.

Poor Dr.

Phil.

He's just doing his best.

Jason, you've been very enlightening today.

Thank you so much.

For anybody who wants to learn more about you, potentially to work with you, or just knock on your door to see if you know any attractive Jehovah's Witnesses who you can fix them up with,

how could my listener find you?

Yeah, jasonvr.com or jason.vanruler on social media.

Fantastic.

And yeah, I was looking at your book.

It's really good.

Check it out.

If you want a really good book, Get Past Your Past, How Facing Your Broken Places Leads to True Connection.

It's on Amazon with a ton, ton, ton of really good reviews.

So that's worth checking out.

Jason, thank you so much for being here.

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

I had a great time.

It was a blast.

And thank you for listening.

You only have 8 million podcasts out there and you just spent almost an hour with Jason and myself.

Thank you so much.

I really value that.

And don't forget, if you are looking for love, the first thing you need to do is be authentic and go out there and take courageous, authentic risks.

That's what it's going to take because, unfortunately, women won't be knocking on your door, probably.

So go out there, take action, and remember, your future girlfriend is going to love you, but she's going to have to meet the real, authentic you.

Carpe datum.

Seize the date.

Till next time.