From Fear To Love: The Shift That Changes Relationships | Larry Bilotta | 188

What if the reason your relationship feels stuck… isn’t because of them but because of what you’re carrying?

In this episode of Manders Mindset, host Amanda Russo sits down with marriage and mindset expert Larry Bilotta for a powerful conversation about emotional patterns, childhood programming, and why it only takes one person to begin healing a relationship. After spending 27 years in what he calls “a marriage made in hell,” Larry shares the internal shift that transformed everything, not by changing his wife, but by changing himself.

Together, Amanda and Larry unpack how unseen emotional “energy” shapes relationships, why fear quietly drives so many decisions, and how moving from fear to love can radically shift not just a marriage but every area of life. Expect bold analogies, deep self-reflection, and practical mindset tools that challenge the way you think about conflict, identity, and emotional responsibility.

Because sometimes the breakthrough isn’t fixing what’s wrong…
It’s choosing a different energy entirely.

💡 In this episode, listeners will learn:

🚂 Larry’s “Energy Train” concept and how emotions silently transfer between partners
 💔 Why 27 years of struggle became the foundation for transformation
 🧠 How childhood programming (“chaos kids”) impacts adult relationships
 ⚖️ The difference between soft-hearted vs. hard-natured personalities
 📝 The 25 Fear Words vs. 25 Love Words exercise and how it rewires decision-making
 🐀 The “Cruise Ship & Rat” analogy for the inner critic and unresolved pain
 👨‍👩‍👧 Clear definitions of a “real” dad, mom, husband, and wife and why clarity matters
 ❤️ Why shifting from “What’s wrong?” to “How can I help?” changes everything

⏰ Timeline Summary

 [4:30] Childhood roots
 [10:40] “Stay married and miserable” the subconscious programming that kept them stuck
 [16:40] The “Energy Train” explained: how mood, attitude, and emotion transfer between partners (even when hidden)
 [27:30] Soft-hearted vs. hard-natured personalities & the “flag page” framework (fun/peace/control/perfect)
 [34:50] The Fear vs. Love word list exercise... choosing a different emotional world to live in
 [45:40] Real dad / real mom / real husband / real wife definitions

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Transcript

Meet Larry And The Mission

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Manders Mindset Podcast. Here you'll find both monologue and interviews of entrepreneurs, coaches, healers, and a variety of other people, where your host, Amanda Roosevelt, will discuss her own mindset and perspective, and her guest mindset and perspective on the world around us. Manders and her guests will help explain to you how shifting your mindset will shift your life.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Welcome to Amanda's Mindset, where we explore the power of shifting your mindset to shift your life. I'm your host, Amanda Roset, and I am here today with Larry Velata. And he is a marriage and mindset expert who spent 27 years in a loveless marriage before discovering the breakthrough that changed everything. He helps people in crisis transform their lives, proving that it only takes one person to begin the healing of a relationship. Thanks for joining me, Larry.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Thank you, Red.

SPEAKER_03 1:03

Who would you say Larry is at the core?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Who am I at the core? I think I am a person who needs to make a difference. Because when I get to the moment when I'm in when I am making a difference, I'm like at the top of my game. I feel really sensational. And that's what I think that's be what I am at the core. I have to make a difference. And when I'm making a difference, I know it. And then when I'm not making a difference, I know that too.

SPEAKER_03 1:33

That's beautiful. Have you always felt like you wanted to make a difference and you needed to make a difference?

SPEAKER_01 1:39

I didn't learn that until I was in my 30s, early 30s. That's when I could, you know, when you're in your 20s, you're at the top of your life and you think you're indestructible. And when I got all that out of my system, and I was really at this place like, oh, 30, huh? Yeah, 30, that seems seems kind of serious. And so when I really got to that point, I actually started to feel like, uh, oh, this really feels good when I'm making a difference, even though I was just making a very small difference. And only like a little once in a cable, an occasional difference for people's lives. And so when I got that first taste of making a difference, I started to realize I I want to find a way to do more of this. And so that's where I am now. I'm starting to make a bigger difference on a bigger scale. And so that's why I wrote this book.

SPEAKER_03 2:35

That's beautiful. Can you take us down memory lane a little bit to tell us about your upbringing?

Childhood Roots And A Tough Marriage

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Um so I grew up in Chicago, and I grew up with an alcoholic and a gambler. Now I say that alcoholic and a gambler, they were very nice people, very nice people. My father was a an off-track or on track better, and he was that was a he was a gambling thing. And then my mother was a drinker, and so that's what the two of them were. They were just a drinker and a gambler, and so that's what they were pursuing. And so they raised three kids, but they didn't really raise them, they just didn't teach them, they were just off in their pursuits, and because they were off in their pursuits, there wasn't really much they could do for us. So, in essence, we had to raise ourselves, and so when I reached my early 20s, I uh was looking for strength, and I married the strongest woman I could find. And I I literally married Marcia, and Marcia was very strong and very quiet, and so you didn't know she was strong, you could just feel she was. So, a woman that was a very strong-willed, strong-willed woman, and then when I married her, I didn't really know what I was marrying, I didn't have any idea because I didn't know what I know today, and I can't couldn't think of it at the time. But what happened is Marcia became my teacher, and she became my teacher because can I interrupt you really quickly?

SPEAKER_03 3:57

Yes, how you said early 20s. How old, if you don't mind me asking.

The 27-Year Breakthrough And Self-Love

The Energy Train Explained

Soft-Hearted Vs Hard-Natured

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Oh, so when I got married, they impeached Richard Nixon. Okay, and so I I say I lived 27 years of a marriage made in hell, and the 28th year I fell in love with my wife. And so what happened in the 28th year, they elected the second bush. So, Richard Nixon to the second bush, that's how long that was, and so that puts you in a historical context. So, what was I doing when I was going through all that? Well, this is a very strong-willed woman, and her the way she was raised was by being angry, by being mean. And so when she was normal, she was normal. When she was something else, she was mean, she was angry, and so she had two settings, normal and angry. And so, what that did to me is it is it upset me because my parents were people who shut down, they stopped talking, and that was the thing I was raised with. And so when I go into a house with a woman who's literally built to fight, I don't have I don't stand a chance, so I couldn't really fight her head to head, I couldn't match her energy, I couldn't match her determination. So I started to realize I gotta do something about this life I have. I've got because I also was programmed by my parents, she was programmed also by hers. And the message was stay married and miserable from both sets of parents. So that was in our subconscious. So we stayed married and miserable, and no matter how bad it got, we had to stay married and miserable because that was the instruction. And so miserable we were. But it was a great learning environment because you know, and by the way, the learning was not learning like in a school, the learning was sloppy, messy, confusing, convoluted, weird, right? Struggling, right? It looked ugly, it looked bad. The learning was not clean and neat. And so that was 27 years of a marriage made in hell. So when I say in the 28th year I fell in love with my wife, is because I fell in love with myself. And when I fell in love with myself, I could see her differently, and when I saw her differently, that's why I say I love I was falling in love with my wife. But that was a two people stuck in a program, stay married and stay miserable, and they couldn't leave. And so something had to change, and what had to change was me. I had to change. And so that's why I teach it it only takes one to heal a marriage. It takes one person to change the environment of the this world that you're living in. And the reason you do change is because I teach this thing I call the energy train. And what the energy train is, it's seven cars. And if you picture seven train cars, and their names are my mood, my attitude, my feelings, uh, my sensitivity, my energy, my frequencies, and my vibrations. Those are the seven cars. And what the cars do is they load up all of your emotion and they carry it over to the person you marry, and then they unload it. And when they unload the feelings and if the beliefs and the values and all the things that are in your subconscious, they unload a set of feelings that the person receives, and they're going, this person goes, Oh, I don't like that. They react, they literally make a decision, like, oh, I want that, right? They make a decision, and so because they make the decisions based on these trains, the trains go both ways. So my train goes to her, unloads my feelings, she feels it, and then her train comes and it loads her feelings on me. And so that's why we have a sense about us. We call it many things, we don't call it the train, we call it many things like I got a I got a sense about you, I got a sense that we know each other, we we know what each other feels, we know each other feels bad, has a bad day, we just know. Well, what's happening is the train's unloading the feeling that are on from that other person. And because the train goes in both directions, we both can feel ourselves conditioned, and we we have our emotional conditions, and because we have the emotional conditions, there's no secrets. Everybody knows what condition you're in. They know if you're hiding something, they know if you're worried about something, they know if you're angry, if you're hiding it. They know all those things. Now they don't consciously think the thoughts of I know you're angry. They don't think that out. What they do is they feel it, and they feel it, and they just can feel like, oh, what's wrong with you? And the person goes, What do you mean? What do you mean? Well, something's wrong, right? What do you mean something's wrong? I'm trying to hide it. I think it's not being published, but the train's carrying it. The train's carrying it, my kids feel it, my husband feels it, my wife feels it, my grandmother feels everybody feels what's on the train. And so I ask the question, what's been on your train for the last three weeks? And when you think that, like, what's been on my train for the last three weeks? Well, oh geez, last three weeks. I don't know. And so some people will say it's been a mix, it's been 50% bad and 50% good. And so, what happens when that person you're married to re receives that train? They go, Well, I'm looking at what's bad about this train. I'm looking at all the emotions that feel bad, and they're dwelling on what's wrong, which is kind of a thing we all do. The train is is just another way of saying there's no secrets between people, and so the more you think about this train, like, oh, it's always running, it's always unloading emotion. I'm I can't hide anything. She's gonna know, he's gonna know, right? So that's the idea about the train. But getting back to my early years, when I was learning to love myself, I was writing on little yellow legal pads, and I was writing out everything. I was writing what I felt, I was writing what happened, I was writing what I thought it meant, I was writing what what the whether it was a good thing or a bad thing or try a right thing or a wrong thing. I was giving all these things labels and ideas, and and because I was writing everything out, I was starting to discover that I had an emotional makeup. And what I learned was I was soft-hearted. And so, what soft-hearted is, is when you're a sensitive person, you're more soft-natured, you're more sensitive, you're more allowing, you're more supportive, you're you're reacting, that you're fearful, you're doubting, you have these negative and positive sides to you as a soft-hearted person. But if you marry a hard person, and that's what a lot of people, a lot of marriages are like that. A hard woman marries a soft man, a hard man marries a soft woman. But when you have a hard nature, you're decisive, you're action-driven, you're interested in results, you're interested in criticism, you're interested in studying everything, you're interested in comparison, that's a big part of what you do as a hard person. And so you're just clear about what you believe in. Soft-hearted people are not clear what they believe in. And the reason they're not clear about what they believe in is they so much care what people think of them. You know, when people always talk about people pleasers, that's real people pleasers are. They're soft-hearted people. And when you're really truly soft-hearted, you really can't make decisions very well at all. And so if you marry a hard-natured person, you're in for a real struggle because something's gonna go wrong with that hard nature and that soft nature in the same house. But I forgot where I was going.

SPEAKER_03 11:23

I'm not sure, but I do have a question. You started you were able to love yourself, and now you mentioned you were writing on the legal pads and whatnot. Is there something sp particular besides the writing that helped you love yourself?

Tools: Flag Page To Dignify

SPEAKER_01 11:39

When you don't love yourself, you don't have a good feeling about where you are in terms of confidence. Because I was soft-hearted by nature, I didn't have a confident feeling about myself. I had uh a lot of doubt about, oh geez, am I good enough? Do I know enough? Am I smart enough? Right? So I have all these doubts about me. And as I was exploring these things on the legal paths, I was realizing, boy, there's a lot of things I don't know. I don't know the answers to a lot of ideas. I don't know what I believe in, I don't know what I care about, I don't know what's important to me. And so as I started to explore more and more of what I didn't know and what I didn't, I even couldn't even conclude. Well, like, what why what is Marcia? What like did I know that Marcia was a hard-natured woman and I was a soft-hearted man? I didn't know that. I had to learn that slowly and carefully, and it took a lot of time to start to come to the conclusion. Like, oh, so I'm soft-hearted because I care what people think about me. I really worry about what people think about me. Their perception of me is a big deal, and so I'm very sensitive, right? And so, because I'm so sensitive, what is she? She is not sensitive because that's not just her, it's all the hard-natured people. Hard-natured men, hard-natured women. They're not sensitive people, and that's not what they're built for. They're not built for sensitivity. Soft people are built for sensitivity, and so understanding soft-hearted and hard-natured is a really valuable way to understand and actually look at people because when you start to separate soft-hearted from hard-natured, you start to go, oh, I wonder what I am. I said, I am I soft-hearted, and so you know, when we talk about the hard, decisive, action-oriented, results-oriented, and hard-natured, you think, oh, they get jobs where they're always in charge. Oh, that's why they're all like that. They're always in charge, they're always calling the shots, they're always the boss, right? No wonder they get that. They get those jobs because of the nature they have, right? It's not because she's got a college degree or he's got a college degree, it's because they've got that nature. And so I invented a tool called the the flag page years ago. And what the flag page did is it divide you up into four countries, which is uh Hippocrates, the four personalities that Hippocrates talked about. But I renamed them as fun and peace and control and perfect. The two soft natures are fun and peace, and the two hard natures are control and perfect. And so when you're a perfect person and you're a control person, you can be the first of one and second of other. I started to do a lot of these flag pages and I started to learn that people are control first and perfect second, or perfect first and control second. But every time they were control and perfect, or perfect and control, they were very, very good with detail and they were very determined, and they knew what they believed in, and they were very confident what they believed in. It's like the nature drove their confidence. And so when I spent time with soft-hearted fun people and peace people, they were more interested in who gets along with who, who's your friend, and who's your enemy, and who's gonna help you, and who's gonna hurt you, and that's what the things they were thinking about. They were thinking about those kinds of things. Is that important to me? Yes, it's very important because I'm a fun piece or peace with fun person. So the world was kind of split between the hard side and the soft side, and so that's what I ended up writing a lot about. You can um you can actually do a thing called the dignify snapshot snapshot today. You can go to dignify.com and you can learn all about this tool that I developed. It's now called Dignify. And what Dignify does is it gives you a way to see yourself and all your strengths, whatever your strengths are. So, in other words, there's no weaknesses in the portrait of what you are. So the big dignified snapshot is built on the idea is you have to give dignity to people, and when you give dignity to people, they're uplifted and they feel like, hey, I believe in myself, and you believe in me. And so that's what the dignify snapshot is about. So that's what's happening today. So when I mention flagpage, that's something that was the precursor, like the earlier version.

Why One Person Can Shift A Marriage

SPEAKER_03 16:04

Now, you mention so it only takes one person to change a marriage. What does that really look like in practice?

Building The Fear And Love Lists

From “What’s Wrong” To “How Can I Help”

SPEAKER_01 16:12

So let's go to the energy train again. So the energy is train is there, you don't know there's a train, but feelings are being exchanged, and we don't know how it happens. But the feelings are being exchanged like as if a train carried feelings out, and that's why I like the illustration of an energy train, because the train is carrying emotion, it carries it, it unloads it. Right? So, how do these feelings get to people? How does that happen? Well, the train carries them, you know, it's almost like a child book story of the train carries your emotion. And so uh why does it take one? It takes one because when one person decides to become a person who changes the emotions on the train. So they were fearful, they were doubting, they were anxious, they were scared, they were nervous, they were uncomfortable, those are all emotion, and so they're all being carried on the train. And so when I asked the question last three weeks, what's your train been carrying? And they'd say all these negative things, and I say, Well, how could he make a decision in your favor if you're sending out all that negative emotion? And he's gonna feel it, and if he feels it, he's gonna make decisions on it, and so you're not helping the cause. So what people feel is like I this is what I feel, and I don't know what to do about it. I'm just feeling it, and it's what's happening to me, but I don't know how to change it. So the idea is it takes one is if you change the energy on the train, and that's a really a concrete idea. I'm gonna create calm, secure, safe, important, valuable, likable, upbeat. I'm gonna put those kinds of feelings on the train. And that's the idea that I can do it. I actually can change the feelings on the train. And that starts with the decision in your mind, you make the decision that I'm gonna change the feelings on the train. And if I do, something's gonna happen over there. Because what happens is the person you're married to is a reactor, the person reacts to everything, and because they react to every single thing, every physical thing, every mental thing, every energy thing, they're always reacting. And because they're always reacting, that's a very good thing. Because what I'm talking about is when you're married to somebody, they don't have to do anything, they don't have to learn anything, they don't have to study anything, they have to fix anything. There's nothing they have to do. Why? Because when you change the check the energy train, when you change what's on that train and you're sending out good stuff, you feel happy as a result. I feel contentment, I feel happiness, I feel satisfaction, I feel fulfillment, I feel enthusiasm, I feel things that I like. And because I feel the things I like, it makes me happier. And because it makes me happier, I'm getting into this happy place where I'm not dwelling on what's wrong. I'm not looking at what's wrong. That's what the world's looking at. What's wrong? How to fix it, what's wrong, how to fix it? They can't stop doing that, right? So, so what we're trying to do is we're trying to change the energy on the train with the idea that if my chain train energy changes, my feelings are gonna change, she or he is gonna feel something. And that something is like when that person picks up those feelings, they feel like, what's this? Well, this is not normal. He's not been he's not like this, he's never been like this, right? And so they start to become a suspicious. That's their first reaction to the change. But the change in the energy train is really the most important change because nothing else matters. Your happiness is the first thing, and you becoming a happy person, because when we talk about a real key idea called the world of fear and the world of love, and so what I did, I teach a little assignment. I say, let's say you take the internet browser and you enter negative words, and when you enter negative words, what you're gonna get is a bunch of lists, maybe a thousand negative words of really kind of sad, bad things. And so you take that thousand words, and your job is to come up with a list of 25 words that are very, very painful, difficult, meant, and they they affect you, they have affected you in your lifetime, and so that's gonna be on your list of 25. So, for instance, I have the word crazy on my list, and this is my fear list. And the reason I have crazy is because I used to say the word crazy a lot. I said it over and over and over again, and I didn't even know I was saying it. And somebody finally had to come and say, Why do you keep saying crazy? Somebody had to say that to me. Why do you keep saying crazy? You know what I said? I said, I don't say crazy, I don't think I've ever said crazy. Have I said crazy? And they said, You say it all the time. I had even no idea that I said crazy all the time, right? A similar thing happened when I used to say the word impossible. And so consequently, impossible became, oh, that's impossible. Oh, that's impossible. And I would say that over and over again, and I didn't even know I was saying it, right? So, so the idea is you make a list of 25 words that are painful for you and really get your attention, and that's called the world of fear. So 25 words that represent the world of fear, and then you're gonna have on a different day, you're gonna enter positive words on the internet, and what you're gonna get is a whole bunch of positive words, like a thousand. And so, what you do is you go through the list, you're looking for 25 that you relate to, things that build you up, make you feel good, and make you feel upbeat. And so, what you're gonna do is write down every word one at a time until you've got all 25 done. So, this is 25 words of fear, 25 words of love. And so, what I did is I had this list and I started to glance, not stare, not study. I just glance like, huh. Wow, this is oh, I don't want to be here. I started to see that I don't want to be here. I don't want to be in the fear list. And what's so great about the fear list is the fear list finally comes out and says, this is how bad it can get. This is how bad a world you can make. You can make a really sad, bad, miserable. They make bad movies about this. This is a terrible world. Right. So I said, I don't want to be here. And so I started looking at the love list. I started to say, This is what I want. I want to live here. I want to be here. I don't want to be there. I want to be here. And so I was making the decision just by glancing. I glance 10 seconds, 50 seconds, 20 seconds, whatever it was, two times a day, three times a day, whatever I glanced at it, it just happened. And then it went like that for three weeks, going back and forth. And then I had to make a decision on a very difficult topic. And when I made the decision, I suddenly made a decision that was a love decision. I actually made a decision that was a love decision. I think, like, how did I do that? Well, I've been staring at the two lists. I've been staring at the list, making the choice. I'm choosing love. I want to live in the love world. And so when you get the two, the two lists are very valuable. They look like something very simple that anybody can do, but nobody can give you a list. Nobody can give you a love and a fear list. You have to make it yourself. You have to relate to every single word on that. So I'll give you some words on my fear list: fail, fear, mean, never, pain, negative, poor, rotten, scared, sad, unfair, upset, angry. That's the kind of stuff that's on my fear list, right? And I handpicked every one of those, right? And then when I go through my love list, my love list has gratitude, beauty, kindness, confidence, positive, forgiveness, laughter, creative, inspiration, divine, friends, hug, creativity, right. Those are the kinds of words that are there, right? Because I picked them and I felt good about them, right? So now when I look between those lists, the contrast between the world of fear and the world of love is so big and so obvious that I can't do anything but choose love list. Because if you think about what happens at Christmas time, what are we interested in? We're interested in love. That's all we think about at Christmas time. Anything resembling love in any way, shape, or form, that's where we go. At no time is there fear in Christmas. There's no fear in Christmas, right? So, but that's a good illustration of how we think about love, right? So, with everything represented in fear as the most horrible stuff in the world, and everything represented in love as the most wonderful things in the world, then it becomes a really obvious thing to live in. I want to live in love all the time, but now I don't know how. So when you start to ask your higher self, show me how I can live in love more often. How can I do that more often? What are more ways I can live in love? And so one of the things I visualize, I visualize these are not words, but these are energies. So we got 25 energies of fear, and the 25 are little balls of energy, and their balls are colored black, purple, and red, and they're just like buzzing around in this little column, right? You picture that, and then the love words are not like that, the love words are energies also, and they're gold and white light, and they're all buzzing around. And they when you step into the energies of love, you feel really good. When you step into the energies of fear, you feel horrible, right? So this is a way to visualize feeling the feelings of the two worlds, and it is two worlds. The world of fear and the world of love is just it's so separate you can't even bring them together on any level. So I bring up the world of fear and the world of love because that's a lot of what I'm attempting to do. I'm attempting to move people from fear to love, and that's the job I've got on my plate all the time, in some way, shape, or form.

SPEAKER_03 26:12

I really love that. From fear to love, I think in every aspect is really amazing, you know. With the way of the world, there there is so much talk about some sort of fear, and even outside of relationships, literally every aspect. This could help in every area of someone's life.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

So you think about in every aspect, talking about every aspect, one aspect of the world of fear is in the world of fear, you think about a problem so you can solve it. So you ask the question, What's wrong? So couple is together, and then she says to him, What's wrong? Well, that's the worst question to ask a man. Don't ask a man what's wrong. Because the answer is like, What's wrong with what? The whole world? What's wrong with my suit?

SPEAKER_03 26:59

What's wrong with what's wrong with his mood?

Chaos Kids And The 10–0 Scale

SPEAKER_01 27:03

His that's what she's trying to say. I've said that before. He says, What's wrong? And so so what a man does is a man thinks in terms of fixing everything because what's wrong, I'll fix it. What's wrong, I'll fix it. So everything in his job, in his family life, every place he's thinking what's wrong, I'll fix it. And because that's a really core idea of this world, that's a fear idea, a world of fear idea. What's wrong, I'll fix it. So when you start to dwell on the idea of what's wrong, I'll fix it. You can't actually get celebratory and excited about fixing anything because what's wrong is such a big thought and such an oppressive, fearful thought, you can't release yourself from it. So you can't find a solution. There is no solution because you're still dwelling on what's wrong. What's wrong with the plumbing? What's wrong with the relationship? What's wrong with the car? What's wrong with the bicycle? What's wrong? And so that becomes a whole way of thinking, a whole way of believing. What's wrong? What's wrong? And it's everywhere. And so that's why I'm illustrating the world of fear contrast to the world of love. Because if you lived in the world of love, you wouldn't ask what's wrong. You would ask, how can I help? You would ask, what else can I do? You would ask, how can I help you solve everything that you're even thinking about? Like, what are you struggling with? What go what can I help you release yourself from? So lighter ideas that are happier and more upbeat. Because the more you that's why I'm talking about it takes one to heal a marriage, it takes one one person to feel happy and to start to feel and dwell on happy things. So now, you know, my wife died in 2019 after 40 years of marriage, and so I stayed unmarried for four years, and then I met my new wife, and now guess what I attracted? Another strong woman. But this time, the strong woman is not mean, and so she's a strong woman with strong opinions, and when she expresses herself, she can express herself in a always kind of a what's wrong, let's fix it way. And because she thinks that way, what's wrong, I'll fix it. I have to think like, gosh, she's doing what everybody does. What's wrong? Let's fix it. And so I'm thinking, what do I want? I want to be happy, I want to be in love, I want to enjoy each other, I want to laugh, I want to have fun, I want to be a happy person, and so I have to change my mind from fear thoughts to love thoughts, and I have to step into love over and over again to get to be a happy person. Because if you're married to anybody, that person is gonna have mood swings, and the mood swings are gonna drag you wherever her mood is going or wherever his mood is going. And so that's not something I want to do. I don't want to be dragged somewhere. I want to be able to be living in love and not living in fear, and so just the thought that I can live in love and not in fear, that's very liberating for me. It's something that makes me feel better and makes me feel happier. And so that's why I bring up that list question of what side are you on? Are you gonna be in fear or are you gonna be in love? And it's that obvious.

SPEAKER_03 30:18

And now, what made you develop this list?

Subconscious Scripts And Triggers

SPEAKER_01 30:21

I teach a woman's course and a men's course, and the women learn together and the men learn together. And the reason I teach these people is these people are coming out of these struggling marriages, and they're all people that are married to chaos kids. No, chaos kids is a term that I coined to sum up. When you grow up in a home with abandonment or abuse or neglect, or all three, that puts you in a chaos home. And so for the last 15 years, I've been interviewing people with that that scale, 10 to 0. And 10 to 0 is 10 is purpose, where you're raised with a 10, a 9, or an 8 family. And when you're raised at a 10, 9, or 8 family, they give you very good values. And because you have very good values, you see what those values are like. And what typically happens is people who are these upbeat, happy people raised in these good homes will be attracted to the less fortunate people and marry the less fortunate. People raised a two at one or at zero, really low on the scale, because they have abandonment, they have abuse, they have neglect, or they have all three. And so that's what I've been spending time with. And I talk about that a lot over and over again. Chaos kids. And so when I was talking about the world of fear and world of love, I was thinking the reason I I developed this is I developed the idea that like there's so many negative ideas we talk about, so many negative words we chose, right? So many we can't stop thinking about negative words. Well, why do we do that? Like so, I I had to sum it up. Like, well, there must be a thousand, a thousand negative words, and that's actually what led me to this 25 exercise, because I had to condense it down to 25, because that's something we can manage. We can manage 25 words, and then the the world of love was just simply entering positive words on the internet, and the internet will give you all the positive words, which gives you the choices to pick from. So now I've got something I can live in, something I can explain, and something people can handle of leaving fear, moving to love. I don't know how to do it. That's really important. We acknowledge I don't know how we're gonna do it, but I want to do it, and just the act of thinking, the thought, I want to move, is a really big thing because the thought begins everything. Without the thought, you're still nowhere. So you've got to think the thought. And so that's what the the two worlds are.

SPEAKER_03 32:47

That makes a lot of sense. I feel like this could shift so much inside a person.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

Well, it it depends on where they grew up, because everybody's talking about childhood all the time, somehow, referring back to it and uh in a joking way and a serious way. But childhood decides how you live, childhood decides how you're married, childhood decides everything, and because what's happening is there's a vat of the subconscious, this big vat that's full of needs and urges and longings. There's no thoughts in there, it's just all messages, and so that's the subconscious. Up at the top, there's a little jar. The little jar is the conscious mind, and in that jar, your personality is, and all the things you think and things you believe and things you like. That's what's in the jar. And what will happen is the ideas that are in the subconscious will come up when you least expect it into the jar of the conscious, and all of a sudden it'll be here. It'll be here right now, and suddenly you'll feel something your parents expressed to you, your father give you that like is a weird thing that you actually struggle with, you don't like and don't want to be. But sometimes it'll come up when you least expect it, and all of a sudden you'll want to do what the father wanted to do, and you'll want to treat the person the way your father treated your mother, and so you'll literally do it without even thinking about it. And this happens with women uh when they become their mothers. Like, what's the biggest insult you can give a woman? You're just like your mother. Now, why would you even say something like that to me? Because you're just like you're the worst of your mother, is what I'm saying. You're the worst of your mother, you're just like your father. That's the biggest insult that people get, especially in marriages. They don't know how to to heal that or to dissolve you're just like your mother, you're just like your father. They don't know how to escape it, and so what they do is they get mad and they get hurt, and sometimes they cry or whatever they're gonna do. But that becomes the biggest insult. But that's all tied to childhood because you're just doing the worst thing your father could do, you're the worst thing your mother could do, and so that became a big insult in marriage. Of course, you're just like your father.

SPEAKER_03 35:02

Oh gosh, I'd love to transition it, Ted. Speaking of parents, what does it actually take to become a real dad or a real mom?

Real Dad, Mom, Husband, Wife Definitions

SPEAKER_01 35:14

So now we're talking about what happens when you're now in the parenting job. And when you step into the parenting job, I remember when I was had the first baby, right? And the first baby comes along, you're like, Well, what am I supposed to do about this? I don't know what to do, and I don't know how to think about it, right? So, what I did is I wrote down a description of what a real dad is, what a real mom is, what a real husband is, what a real wife is, because you have to start with the thought all the time. If you don't have the thought, you have nowhere to go, right? So I always start with a real dad. So I'm a real dad, and this is the criteria for a real dad. I'm consistently tough but fair. I show a genuine interest in the challenges, opportunities, and joys of each of my unique children. Now that's a real dad. So why is that? Because I'm showing a genuine interest in, well, what's what do really emotionally disconnected fathers don't show a real interest in anything. They don't show a real interest in any person because they're emotionally disconnected parents. I show a genuine interest in the challenges, opportunities, and joys. Well, when you start to tune into the challenges, the things your kids are struggling with, the opportunities, the things that that come along, like a trip to a faraway place, right? That's a thing you take an interest in. The joys, like what makes my kid happy, you know, video games or whatever you're really tuned into as a kid. I'm taking an interest in the challenges, opportunities, and joys of my children. As long as I know that's what I'm supposed to do, I'm consistently tough but fair. Oh, well, wait a minute, back up the truck. What what why am I tough but fair? Why am I doing that? Because parents err on both sides. They become too fair and they like give everything away, or they become too tough and they oppress the kids. And so they they're struggling between tough and fair. Sometimes they're too tough, sometimes they're too fair. And so what real dad says is I'm consistently tough but fair. And while I'm doing that, I'm paying attention to the challenges, opportunities, and joys of each of my unique children. And so that's really a real dad. Okay, so I wrote a real dad article, and in the real dad article, I was contrasting the fathers of Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein to the fathers of Martin Luther King and the father of Abraham Lincoln, right? So as we draw those two sets of contrasts, it becomes really obvious what makes a dictator and what makes a great person. So that's real dad. And then we'll go to real husband, and now we got the whole emotional connection of the man the man is now married to the woman. And so I'm a real husband, I'm protective but compassionate, and I do everything in my power to make my wife feel emotionally safe, financially secure, and free to be herself. Those are the three things that women really want. I grow each day in understanding her needs, for they are my first priority. So that's the words of a real husband. And so, why do the words matter? The words matter because if you don't have the words, you don't have the thought. If you don't have the thought, you have no place to go. Right? So having those words becomes really important. So now we'll go to real mom. So, real mom, I'm compassionate but wise. I manage each part of my children's lives by helping them to be safe, educated, and wise. I protect them when dependent and guide them to their independence. Right? That's the whole picture of a really great mom, right? And to be a really great mom, you've got to be emotionally stable. You've got to be able to stabilize your emotions and then actually deliver on this promise because I'm compassionate, but I'm wise, right? I'm compassionate and wise. I'm helping each of my children stay safe, educated, and wise, and that's where I'm taking them. And I'm protecting them to when they're independent, so they're the little kids, and then I'm guiding them to their independence, and that's the mission of a mother is to take them from dependence to independence. So that's real mom. Now we come to real wife, and the real wife definition is I'm a real wife, I'm supportive but wise. I do everything in my power to give my husband respect for his values, time for himself, and intimacy for us. I show the world that my loyalty is first and always for him. Now that is not a chaos kid. That's not that's a normal woman right there. Okay, so so these are the four definitions. I put them all on one page for anybody who's interested. But I want to get that out there as a thought first and then dwell on the definition and keep thinking, what does it mean? What does it mean? This is what it means.

SPEAKER_03 40:00

Now, what made you decide to come up with these definitions?

Meaning Of The Movie: Rewriting Stories

SPEAKER_01 40:05

So I'm working with people in marriages that are struggling. And I'm working with women and they're married to chaos kids. I'm working with men and they're married to chaos kids. So men married to chaos women, women married to chaos men, right? So what I do is I talk to the person who stays in the marriage. I don't talk to the lever, the lever doesn't want to talk to me. The lever is chaotic, right? So I want to be able to communicate these ideas like, well, what is a real mom supposed to be? What is a real wife supposed to be? Well, I got to come up with a definition that really tightens everything up. So it seems like, oh, here's the one place I need to go back to to remember because we keep on forgetting. That's why people go to church. They go to church every single week because we keep on forgetting. If you didn't keep going back to church and hear the sermon, you're like, What was I doing again? We can't remember what we're doing again. So that's why these simple ideas, when you can sum them up and put them in a little graphic form that simplifies what you're trying to do, where you're trying to go. Because when you think the thought, that's what leads you. The thought leads you. Because the wrong thought leads you in the wrong place, the right thought leads you in the right place. And so that's why I was trying to work with fathers who are trying to be real dads and be real husbands. I was trying to work with mothers who want to be real moms and also be real wives. So that's why I had to come up with the definition because I had to give them the thought. They had to start somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 41:38

Very strong definitions. You were very specific, and even your word choice, like I think it was very like on point. Like, even with dad, you mentioned like the kids you and I might butcher this at dad, but you mentioned the word unique, yes, the unique choice. No, and I see a lot of men that I don't consider real dads. That's like you the kids got a unique interest, even as they age, they've got a unique interest, and dad doesn't care.

SPEAKER_01 42:04

Yes, that's right. So when you think about people in life that people who struggle in families, why do they struggle? They struggle because they struggle as children, and so when I start to, you know, I'm talking about generations of people, I've talked to people in their 20s who later are in their 50s and 60s, and I've talked to them years ago, right? And now I'm talking to them now. I'm like, oh, you didn't you didn't learn much, you know.

SPEAKER_03 42:34

Do you say then to them?

SPEAKER_01 42:36

No, that's only if I know them. So the the job of keeping the idea simple, uh in graphic, and people can't handle big long ideas. They can't like uh really big books by big authors. A book is a great big piece of work. Uh, and you know, you maybe could quote a book or quote a line from a book, but you can't really use a book in everyday life, you have to condense it down to something small, and so that's what people are doing on social media. They're condensing down little lines from books and they're trying to spread it around to everybody. But what real dad, real husband, real mom, real wife is a condensation, and you can't even be interested in this if you don't have something inside you telling you, you know, you need something like that. You need to be a real mom, you know, you need to be a real husband, you need to be right, you like that word real sounds like something I probably should pay attention to. And if you have that feeling inside yourself, this is going to matter to you because now those are the words I was looking for, right? That's the thing I want to dwell on, right? But if you're not ready for this, boy, this is just an empty piece of paper. It doesn't mean anything to you because you're not ready for it. And so that's really what podcasts are all about. Podcasts are about bringing people ideas when they're when they're hurting and when they're really. In pain, and when they're hurting and in pain, they're gonna listen to that, and they're gonna start to pick up the idea like, 'Oh, I heard that on a podcast,' which is today's television.

SPEAKER_03 44:12

It is today's television.

SPEAKER_01 44:13

Yeah, it's today's television.

SPEAKER_03 44:15

I really like the definitions, I think that's the great point. Books are not everybody's gonna read them, and it's I feel like it's more memorable and actionable, even these definitions. People will take it away more.

The Cruise Ship And The Rat

SPEAKER_01 44:28

Yeah. So uh, what's the uh the book by Victor Frankel, Man's Search for Meaning? All right, and so that became eventually a very big book, right? Uh, but it's a very heavy book. It's it's a like about life in the concentration camp and meaning and all these things. And so, like, why would that be a big popular book? Well, because when people want to really dive into a big difficult topic like this, they want to come away with something that's gonna be an impact and affect them, right? So you read the whole book and you maybe take a month to do it, right? You're coming in and out of the book, you'll pick up some idea that's gonna mean something to you. And when you pick up that idea, it's got meaning, and now it means something to you, and that's what the title's got man's search for meaning. Well, what is the what's the search for meaning? But that's what begins everything. So the meaning in the movie begins everything, the meaning and the movie. And so, what is the movie? The movie is the five senses, and the five senses are coming in that tells you about a world. I see it, I smell it, I taste it, I touch it. Right? I have all the senses that tell me there's a world here, and now I react to that world, and that's what the movie part of this is, and then the meaning part of this is what does the world mean? When the five senses come in, what does it mean? And the biggest thing people that I see in my course, they struggle to create meaning, they don't know how to create meaning, and so I have to give them ways to create meaning. This is a bad thing, it's a horrible thing, it can't mean anything good. Well, they start to realize, oh, but maybe it does have something good because I can learn something from it, and so that's the beginning of meaning. I can learn something from that, right? That's the very first meaning. But if we don't start to find good meanings, we're gonna find bad meanings, and if we find bad meanings, the thought leads the way, and now we're gonna go in the world of fear, and now we're gonna start going down that great big list of horrible things. So changing the meaning of the movie is the beginning of everything because once you change the meaning of the movie, you now change your feeling, and once you change your feeling, you change your belief, and once you then change your belief, you change your attitude, and then you change your attitude, you change your action, and when you change your action, you're starting to change what's happening in the world. And so that's the whole beginning is the meaning of the movie, and so that the job that everybody's trying to do is they're trying to learn how to change the meaning of everything. Like, what does that mean? And so people will say that, they'll say, What's that supposed to mean? Right? Somebody says something that seems a little off. What's that supposed to mean? Why? Because they're looking for meaning, they're looking to establish meaning. What's the meaning of that? And so that becomes a big part of what people are trying to do in marriages, they're trying to establish meaning that's better and more positive than all the meanings that their their little voice inside their head tried to make it mean, which is another part of what I'm teaching, the little voice inside your head, which everybody's teaching. They're all teaching about the little voice inside your head.

SPEAKER_03 47:38

The little voice inside your head.

Final Segments: One-Word Insights

SPEAKER_01 47:40

Yes, but all the books call it your inner critic. The little voice inside your head is a very critical fault-finding, blaming of a negative source. And so uh the way I dealt with this, I came up with an analogy called the cruise ship. And the cruise ship analogy is that dealing with the little voice inside your head, is you're a cruise ship in the analogy. You're a cruise ship and you have a rat on your ship that you don't know is there. And then you marry somebody, and that becomes a second ship. And that person has a rat on their ship. So we have two ships and two rats. Now the two rats have radios, and they're sending a message back and forth called against energy, and it's so strong and so powerful that it's pushing the ships apart. Now the ships don't know why they're separating because they don't know how they're they have these rats. So your ship goes to a seminar, and you find out that you might have a rat, so you go through the trouble to find the rat and get it off the ship. Now we have two ships, but this time we have only one rat. The rat that's on her ship is pushing as hard as ever, but your ship has no rat to push back. And so it takes two rats to push two ships apart. One rat can't do it alone. So, what is the rat in the analogy? The rat in the analogy is the painful message of your childhood. And so the more painful messages you have, the more you've got a big rat on your ship. And so the rat on your ship becomes the analogy for the voice inside your head, the negative, critical, blaming voice inside your head. And that's the role of the rat. The rat creates the fear, the doubt, all the stuff in the world of fear is made by the rat. And so once you know there's a rat in your life, you've got to get the rat off your ship. And once you get the rat off your ship, the separation slows down. And that's really the important thing. If you really love somebody and you really are committed to them, you really believe that that what you want them to be in your life, you've got to get your rat off your ship, which is a big part if it takes one to heal the marriage. The rat's got to go off the ship. And if you don't get the rat off the ship, you're gonna still have trouble because the rat's trouble. You know, can you imagine a rat on a cruise ship? How bad that would be for business? That would really be bad, right?

SPEAKER_03 49:46

It makes sense, like one can heal the marriage. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 49:50

Yeah. So going back to the energy train, the energy train is another analogy, right? That's emotions are being carried on a train, I'm being unloaded, and the person is feeling everything I feel, and they can't even comprehend it, but they can feel it and they know. And so that becomes like, oh, how do I change the marriage? I change myself, and so that's really what my story is. My story is I changed myself and I changed my marriage. And so I was 27 years of a marriage made in hell, and what was the 27 years of me learning? I'm teaching myself because I have nobody to teach me, and so I had to find ways to learn everything, and so that's what I was doing. I was doing a lot of self-discovery, I think they call it today. Self-discovery.

SPEAKER_03 50:38

That makes a lot of sense, Larry. Wow. Well, thank you so much. This was so informative.

SPEAKER_01 50:46

Well, thank you, Amanda.

SPEAKER_03 50:48

Yeah, absolutely. Have you heard of a man named Jay Shetty?

SPEAKER_01 50:53

No.

SPEAKER_03 50:54

So he hosts a podcast, he's an author, motivational speaker. He ends his podcast with two segments, and I've stolen them or borrowed them, whatever you want to say, but I use them and I give him a little bit of credit because they're not my question.

SPEAKER_01 51:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 51:12

First segment is the many sides to us, and there's five questions, and they need to be answered in one word each.

SPEAKER_01 51:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 51:20

What is one word someone who was meeting you for the first time would use to describe you as?

SPEAKER_01 51:26

Surprising.

SPEAKER_03 51:29

What is one word someone who knows you extremely well would use to describe you as?

SPEAKER_01 51:36

Inspiring.

SPEAKER_03 51:38

What is one word you'd use to describe yourself?

SPEAKER_01 51:42

Certain.

SPEAKER_03 51:44

What is one word that if someone didn't like you or agree with your mindset would use to describe you as?

SPEAKER_01 51:51

Selfish.

SPEAKER_03 51:53

What is one word you're trying to embody right now?

SPEAKER_01 51:58

Inspirational.

SPEAKER_03 52:01

Second segment is the final five, and these can be answered in a sentence. What is the best advice you've heard or received?

SPEAKER_01 52:11

I think the best advice is allow everything. Allow everything. So this is a like all the wisdom teachers, they say allow everything. Everything's perfect the way it is. I think that's the best advice I've ever heard.

SPEAKER_03 52:30

Why would that be the best?

SPEAKER_01 52:32

Because in the pent-up world of fear, you don't allow anything. You want to fix everything, change everything, move everything. You're gonna do something to everything. And this this belief system says everything is allowed, everything's pri everything is perfect the way it is. And so that's what the wisdom teachers teach. They teach everything's perfect the way it is.

SPEAKER_03 52:57

What is the worst advice you've heard or received?

SPEAKER_01 53:01

Get more. Get more for yourself. Like you could actually pull it off. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:10

Why is that the worst?

SPEAKER_01 53:12

It's the worst because it it takes your selfishness and ramps it up on several levels.

SPEAKER_03 53:17

What is something that you used to value that you no longer value?

Closing And Listener Send-Off

SPEAKER_01 53:22

Doubt. There's all kinds of opportunities to doubt everything and anything, and I don't want to take that as my advisor anymore. I don't want to live that way.

SPEAKER_03 53:32

I love that. If you could describe what you would want your legacy to be, as if someone was reading it, what would you want it to say?

SPEAKER_01 53:42

He made a difference for me. That's the the most important thing I wanted to say. He made a difference for me.

SPEAKER_03 53:48

If you could create one law in the world that everyone had to follow, what would it be? And I want to know why.

SPEAKER_01 53:57

Love. Because love solves everything.

SPEAKER_03 54:02

That's beautiful. Thank you so much, Larry. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 54:06

Thank you, Anthony. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity.

SPEAKER_03 54:10

Absolutely. And thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of Mando's Mindset.

SPEAKER_02 54:18

In case no one told you today, I'm proud of you. I'm voting for you. And you got this. As always, if you enjoyed the show, I would really appreciate it if you would leave me a five-star rating, leave a review, and share with anyone you think would benefit from this. And don't forget, you are only one nine step shift away from shifting your life. Thanks guys, until next time.