Jim Fortin (00:00.084) 
You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This is another interview with a former TCP student. name is Luke Layman. And what we’re going to be doing in our time together today is talking about some of the things that changed in his life when he was a student in TCP. Keep listening. Hi, I’m Jim Fortin, and you’re about to start transforming your life from the inside out with this podcast. I’m widely considered the leader in subconscious transformation. 
 
and I’ve coached super achievers all around the world for over 25 years. Here, you’re going to find no rah rah motivation and no hype because this podcast is a combination of brain science, transformational psychology, and ancient wisdom all rolled into one to take your life to levels you’ve never thought possible. If you’re wanting a lot more in life, to feel better, to heal, to have peace of mind, to feel powerful and alive, and to bring more abundance and prosperity into your life, 
 
then this podcast is for you because you’re going to start learning how to master your mind and evolve your consciousness. And when you do that, anything you want then becomes possible for you. I’m glad you’re here. Luke, thank you for being here today. 
 
to be here, Jim. I think it’s about five years in the making, so I’m excited for it. 
 
Yeah, it’s been a while, right? When did you enroll in TCP? 
 
Luke Layman (01:23.406) 
I was looking at it today, I think it was 2019. I started kind of going through some of the old notes. It’s been quite some time and I will say that I don’t want to foreshadow all of it, but I continue to go back and think about a lot of the concepts from both the B Do Have series and also TCP that I’ve continued to apply to this day. 
 
Yeah, B2Hab is coming up in the next 10 days or so. This is, what is it, February the 22nd? And B2Hab is coming up in early March. We haven’t done that in about a year and a half. We literally changed a lot of our marketing. We’re changing it back to the old way, but we’ve had literally, I think, 265,000 people go through that series over the years. So 2019, holy mackerel, time flies. Let’s talk about your time in TCP because when I put out a call, 
 
for people to want to share time with me and to be interviewed about their experience in TCP, I was really surprised at what you said. So the Transformational Coaching Program, generally when men come in, I had a guy one time say, when you’re in TCP, it’s either going to make your relationship better or it’s going to hasten what is inevitable. How would that apply to you? 
 
Well, Jim, I was probably on the hasten what was inevitable track, but I think it’s a little bit germane. You know, I’ll share with the audience because I think it’s important. TCP was not the start for me. Be Do Have was really the start. And it’s interesting. I’ll tell you this story because I think it’s an interesting story is I was in Florida. I remember it very specifically. And I was listening to one of your good friends podcast, James Wedmore. And he had a guest on the show named Marissa Peer. 
 
Marissa was talking about fear and projection. And at that point I was going through some marital troubles and a lot of my own life was kind of being interwoven into what I was listening to. And Marissa Pierce said, you project upon others the things that you most fear in life. And I’m like, well, that’s not possible. It can’t be possible because I’m a fighter pilot. And although I’m afraid of heights, I’m not able to project that on someone else. And she continued in the show, 
 
Luke Layman (03:32.48) 
And she said the two things that people fear the most are inadequacy and judgment. And at that point, Jim, I had already been going through a little bit of marriage counseling and it hit me like a ton of bricks because I realized that even despite all of my success from fighter pilot to entrepreneur, that I still had a significant amount of fear of inadequacy. And that’s where I projected. And the connection point was that the 
 
therapist had told me the weeks prior, she said, have you ever heard of have, do, be? And I said, nope, never heard of have, do, be. And immediately I, it was an advertisement or maybe some of them James Webmore said, and I listened to the first introduction of the concept of be, do, have, and it reframed the way that I thought, the inverted thinking that we think about from have, do, be. And for those listeners that haven’t heard it before, there’s lots of content on this show to go listen to, you the be, do, have construct. 
 
So it really started for me from diving into that series. And for those of you that are listening right now, if you’ve got anything in your life that you’re ready to release, change, grow through the Be Do Have series is gonna be that starting point as it was for me. But the punchline, Jim, and we can dive into it today is that the result of that culminated for me in 2024 in a divorce. It’s a very gracious and loving now divorce. But part of what happened in the relationship series was that 
 
I began to create boundaries in my own life and reframe a lot of the way that I was thinking about personal responsibility and where I wasn’t showing up where I needed to be. that then accelerated the end of the marriage. And the punchline for that, Jim, is that now with the 11 year old and a nine year old child, that I am now a better version of myself and I am in greater service to the world. It’s just not in the marriage. 
 
Yeah, that’s interesting. Let’s go back there. You said a whole lot. B2Half. You know what’s crazy is when I learned B2Half back in 2012 or so, I learned it from a good friend of mine named Rich Schaffran. I think you might know who he is. He’s an online marketer. And I started working from B2Half. You’ve got to be before you can do, before you can have. Most of us work backwards, have to be. I want to have it first. It doesn’t work that way. But you know what’s crazy is I now own the trademark. 
 
Jim Fortin (05:57.932) 
to be to have. I would have thought many years ago somebody would have trademarked this. No one ever did. And I own the trademark now to be to have. So I thought that was crazy. But you had mentioned your ways of being because everything comes down as I talk about in the be to have series and TCP being is a genesis of what we create in life. It’s the beginning. If you’re comfortable sharing, how are you being in your relationship? 
 
prior to the divorce and years leading up to that. And then how did you change? 
 
Who am I at the identity level? At that point, you you got to go back in time. I began to fly airplanes in 2003 when I went to pilot training and spent a decade of my life as a fighter pilot. And it became an identity for me about what does it mean to be decisive, courageous, the words that we would use to describe a fighter pilot. And then those continue to manifest themselves into entrepreneurship. 
 
as I grew through seven and eight figures inside my company is that I began to carry the identity of an entrepreneur. And beyond that, was also a father and I was also a husband to a spouse. But the challenge was a lot of those characteristic traits merged themselves between the two. And things that served me as a fighter pilot, being super decisive to the degree that I wasn’t considerate of others. 
 
But with an engine on fire, I don’t have a whole lot of time to be considerate of others. But the problem there is that I began to carry that identity and it was a badge of honor. And I think that, you know, a lot of us do that, whether we’re sales professionals. I know a lot of the folks that listen to the show are coaches, high performers, light workers, you energy workers is, is that we carry these things. And what really happened for me in TCP was that I began to unpack some of those characteristic traits about who I was. 
 
Luke Layman (07:58.06) 
that weren’t serving me in the best capacity. 
 
Contextually, they served you very well. Like you said, if your engine’s on fire, you don’t have time to assemble a committee to find out what to do here. So a big part of your identity was somebody who is decisive. You take action being decisive. You make decisions. You calculate. You’re very analytical. But if I’m having to guess here, and you haven’t said this and we’ve not talked about it, that probably did not play too well in your personal relationship. 
 
No, you’d have to back it up just a little bit. And I don’t want to spoil the surprise for everyone in TCP for those that may be like, what’s TCP if they’re new to the Jim Fork. Early, we talk about responsibility. And the words that I use a lot surrounding that are efficacy and agency are the two. But individual responsibility is how am I at cause for what’s happening in my environment. 
 
or whatever you’d like. 
 
Luke Layman (08:57.1) 
And a lot of times we operate in a receive mode and that we’re receiving the effects. Things are happening to me. And there’s an analogy that I use and Jim, I’ll say this, I’m gonna share this and it’s a super edgy little bit that I’ve done when speaking and I speak to very large audiences. And I gave this analogy. I said, if I walk out of this convention center today and I get hit by a car and die, whose fault is it? 
 
and the audience immediately says, it’s the drunk drivers, the driver’s fault that’s at fault for that. And there could be some merits to that, whether it’s an empowering belief or a limiting belief is the truth is that I made the decision to be in Sedona, Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona, to walk into the convention hall. I made the decision of the rental car that I was going to choose. I made the decision to choose when I was going to leave or perhaps whether or not I was going to navigate off of my iPhone. And 
 
Being able to take that responsibility then into the relationship. And I know a lot of your listeners are females, but I’m really talking to the men right now is that we get tied up in a lot of arrogance and ego and hubris that says that I’m doing my best. I’m the one earning the paycheck. I’m the one that’s putting food on the table, the roof over our heads. And the responsibility for me, Jim, leading into the relationship component was that I was at 
 
cause for a lot of the conflict that I was having in the relationship. And it was soul-bearing to be able to say that, I take responsibility for what’s happening in my life. 
 
Let me add there. So you mentioned James Wedmore. I coached him one to one back in 2017, I believe. And towards the of our coaching, he was saying that he checked into a hotel with his wife and the room next door was really loud. They had kids and he was really tired. And he said that the kids were up really early, like six o’clock in the morning, making all this noise. And he said something along the lines of he was pissed off about it or 
 
Jim Fortin (11:07.244) 
I wish those kids would be quiet so I could rest or whatever. And he recognized, wait, I’m the one who chose to stay at this hotel. I could have stayed at other hotels. I could have stayed at other places. I’m the one who chose this. I am partly responsible for me not getting any sleep this morning. But let’s dig into that for a moment because I want to talk about that in your relationship. I remember in 
 
probably 1995 when I was waiting tables at Roofs Chris in Atlanta. And I used to have the old Sony Walkman, you know, the cassette tape. Are you old enough to cassette tape and all that? Okay, I’m not sure. You looked really young. One day in pre shift, I was getting my station set up and I was listening to Brian Tracy. And he said, you have to accept personal responsibility for everything in your life. And I was like, right on. Yet that night I was like, I hate this fricking job. I want to stop waiting tables. 
 
I hate, you know, all these kinds of things I went into and looking back years later, I’m like, I liked the concept of being responsible, but I was not being responsible. So in your relationship, were there ways that you were not being responsible that fostered and grew the relationship? And not that you have to answer specifically or personally or any of that to reveal anything. I’m just curious for people listening. 
 
They might be wondering how to better their relationship. 
 
Well, I think at the root of it, and I will share, and actually, Jim, this is the first time that I’ve shared this in a public forum, but the ways that I was showing up was as a victim. I allowed myself to be operating from circumstance that said that I can’t have my way, that this is out of control, this is chaotic. And I applied behavior patterns that 
 
Luke Layman (13:03.22) 
served me extremely well in other capacities. When things were chaotic, if I just came over the top and I was dominant, I could force enemy forces to yield to the power of my weapons. I could force friendly forces to maneuver into a place that I knew would put them into safety. And this is where that leftover behaviors, and it goes pretty deep, Jim, into childhood relationships. And I spend a lot of time on 
 
brain science, understand how our neural pathways were formed and how we got to where we are. But the truth of it and the confession for me in 2019 to my then wife was I’m bringing into the relationship behaviors and characteristics that are unbecoming. And it was was confession. was a moment of vulnerability and collaboration. But the way that it manifests for me was a lot of anger. And I was frustrated. was frustrated that I couldn’t control things. I was frustrated that 
 
I wanted something or my needs weren’t being met. More importantly, in the masculine capacity that I was being disrespected. And so much of that allows you to get into a place of giving that power away that when you come back to it and say, I am at cause for this. I need to take responsibility. I chose the partner that I’m with. 
 
I chose the decisions that I made. I chose the house that we bought that created financial stress or what, you know, to bring the children into the world and to then take that responsibility. And this is where really the agency comes in. this, the two words for me that are so important are efficacy and agency. And I think it’s so empowering. Efficacy being the belief that you can change something. And the alternative to the efficacy is the agency, which is the action that you can drive to change some. 
 
And TCP was really the enabler for me that says that you’re operating from a place of doubt or a place of lack. And when you operate from a place of responsibility instead of anger, you’re saying now to yourself, Luke, you’re choosing anger. You’re choosing frustration. You’re choosing to let this circumstance control you. And there is an alternative path. 
 
Jim Fortin (15:16.782) 
of all places, and I’ve talked about it in the podcast and of course in TCP, my brother-in-law being a shaman and his mentor was a shaman and he used to channel his mentor every full moon and his mentor’s name is Don Juan. I remember one time, it took me a long time to get it, but he sat in the channeling, blame no one for nothing. And it was just very solemn, solemnity when he said it, blame nothing on no one. 
 
I literally go back and listen to a lot of the old recordings that are 25 years old and I heard that even recently. And when I heard it 25 years ago, it didn’t sink in. And I listen to it now and I’m like, yeah, that’s 100 % responsibility because how easy is it to blame someone else when there’s no one to blame? Let’s go to your relationship because 
 
probably 80 % of people that listen are in relationships. How is 100 % responsibility, how did it foster or help be a catalyst for you to get out of the relationship? I’m wanting people listening to say, okay, I can use responsibility in my own relationship. What would that mean to them? What would it look like? 
 
First of all, say that I’m not a psychiatrist or a therapist, and I think that there’s some people that do amazing work. 
 
By the way, Luke, I’m sorry to interrupt, but a lot of people in UC and in TCP are therapists. And many times their relationships are pretty jacked up because they’re sharing in TCP how they’re a therapist, but yet they’ve got this world of problems. So a bigger point is, is that we’re all humans just doing our best to get through this life. Please continue. 
 
Luke Layman (17:08.43) 
There’s a few places that I would go with that. First of all, 2019 was a banner year and into 2020. 
 
And in a good way, banner year, not a bad way. 
 
Good way. Yeah, the behavior change when you begin to take responsibility in a relationship is wildly empowering to your partner for things that they’ve been frustrated with and they see the behavior change in you that it relieves a burden. It takes the pressure off of pieces of the burden in the relationship that had been putting so much pressure and so much constraint on a relationship, marriage, partnership, that it’s freeing. 
 
and it’s releasing and we went then into COVID and to 2020 on a high. But what ends up happening, I believe on the responsibility and to be able to take accountability of it is, and I’ll share a little bit more on my own journey is probably no surprise to anybody that listens to my show is that I have some version of undiagnosed ADHD. There’s something there. 
 
And it’s only useful for me because it helps to inform some of my decision making. that serve me extremely well in other capacities still do, as an entrepreneur, become limiting in other capacities. One of those is reactiveness. to be able to take responsibility for the reactiveness, but what was the fast forward to the demise, right? To where we released… 
 
Luke Layman (18:38.796) 
And it’s so hard to say things about divorce and end of relationships. And, you know, people always say, I’m sorry, you know, how can I help? But what if there’s an alternative that says that you’re actually able to be in a more loving and generous capacity in a different version of your life, especially for the children. But the agency and the responsibility piece for me, Jim, was at the end, I began to be super clear about how I was showing. 
 
and where I was responsible, but also then for the boundaries, for the way that I would expect to be respected and where I wasn’t receiving reciprocity. you know, Jim and TCP would talk a lot about values. That’s another thing that we share. And there’s a fun values exercise that you do. One of the values for me was fairness. And it actually makes me a terrible negotiator because I look at you, Jim, and I’m so concerned about you winning. 
 
as much as 
 
person that you’re not being a great negotiator. 
 
Yes. A hard hitting one, yeah. Yeah. would not be a hard hitting negotiator because I need for things to be fair. But in a level of reciprocity, what I found in my relationship was that I wasn’t getting in return what I was giving. And then when I became expressive with my needs and said, these are the things that I’m looking for in a relationship and hope became lost, is that now I could enter from a place of responsibility that’s absent anger. 
 
Luke Layman (20:07.102) 
absent the control, absent the frustration, but truly in a giving and loving capacity that says that we need to end this portion of our journey together. So the foundations there for responsibility then got to a healthier version years later that says that the core of their relationship is no longer compatible with each other and we need to take a different direction. 
 
Thank you for sharing that. And I want to add something that you said that I want to build on. When I used to coach one-to-one, this was 2017, I had a client of mine. And after our coaching call, I would not send him homework. That’s back when I was a solo, that’s worked alone. I would not send him the next week’s homework till like a day later, maybe two days later, whatever it might be. But there was a reason for that. The reason was I was recognizing how expectant he was. 
 
in the coaching calls. So he said one day about week number four of coaching, he’s like, Jim, I don’t feel like you value me. And I said, what’s causing you to say that? And he goes, well, he goes, I expect that when we’re done with our call, like on Tuesday at noon, you would send the next module immediately and you don’t do that. And I said, would it be fair to assume that you want things in the way that you want them when you want them? 
 
And he started laughing and he goes, my wife says that all the time. Now back to you, would it have been fair to say that the old Luke wants things in a certain way and the way that he wants them or wanted them. 
 
Yeah, I think the death of happiness comes with unmet expectations and uncommunicated expectations. And that’s the real catalyst, I believe, was that I was very disingenuous about communicating what my needs were. And they’re very basic human needs, the need to be respected, the need to be desired. There’s some intimacy needs there. And it’s not about 
 
Luke Layman (22:08.418) 
Are we going to go on vacation together? Can we buy nice homes? Can we plan for our lives together? It’s some very rudimentary components there. And as I became expressive with those things after TCP, it’s a freeing, it’s releasing to be able to say that I know that I am now operating from a place of responsibility and I can be clear with what my expectations are. But Jim, you have to then be empathetic to the other side of it. 
 
to know that the other person also has the same, the same level of choice, the same level of responsibility. And it is possible that two people who fell in love at 28, 29 years old are just different people at 43. And we’ve evolved in different directions. 
 
Let me add something there because I can relate a former version of me. I can’t tell you where I got it. I’m sure I got it somewhere in childhood. And when I start tracing it back, I know it’s from my parents because I wasn’t allowed to be a dissenter. I grew up in a different generation. The end of the baby boomers. Whatever, 1965, everything changed from like, I think the baby boomers were right prior than I was the beginning of the next generation. 
 
But we still were the generation where you respect your parents and all these kinds of things. And so I wasn’t allowed a lot of voice in my relationship with my parents. And what I learned was not to communicate what I need, my needs. So for many years, I would be in a relationship and I would bottle up my needs and not share my needs. And then what that would do for me is turn into anger and frustration because I had expectations. 
 
And that was a very damaging way to be in relationship because it just didn’t work. So what do you suppose, what do you think, what do you postulate was causing you not to share your needs? Because many times people are afraid they’re going to be left alone if they share their needs with their partner. 
 
Luke Layman (24:07.298) 
Yeah, Jim, there was, again, I’m speaking to the men, is there was a portion of my life where I wouldn’t cry. I would not allow someone to see that emotional state for me because of a perceived sense of weakness. And there’s no one that’s ever fed it back to me, you know, in an ugly crying face that said, Luke, you’re weak. I think less of you. And 
 
There are some interesting things there. I’ll share this. There was an accident when I was flying airplanes and it was an F-15. The pilot and the weapon systems operator in the back of the airplane made an error. They set an altitude in the airplane wrong and they flew into the side of the mountain. There was nothing left. And I showed up with my wingmen. We were responsible for combat search and rescue. 
 
And there was nothing there. It was easy to see. There was nothing to be found. And a few days later, we did a memorial. And I remember standing there in formation. And there was probably 30 or so fighter pilots. And they did a flyby. And I could see the American flag at Bagram Air Base. And I was overcome with this sense of emotion. It was a lot. was gratitude for being there, being alive. was sadness, for pit bull and lag. That was the pilots there, Mark McBowell and 
 
a lag grammoth. And it was the first time that I allowed myself to cry. And I don’t know why there was a sense of shame there. And Jim, you mentioned kind of therapy. I’ve done a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy as a recipient of it, and to try to understand some of the usefulness. But I think that that’s what’s most empowering for folks to hear is that a lot of the ways that we make the connections inside our brain, and this gets into some of the neural pathways stuff, realizing that the neural pathways are set inside our 
 
inside the womb and then again at three and eight and then finally around 28 years old, your neural pathways begin to get set is that a lot of the stories that I was telling myself were really the version of stories that a young Luke was saying. They were connections that I had made. one of those, and it took me a long time to get to the, to the understanding of this. And if my mom listens to this episode, then this will be the first time that I’ve shared this with her. 
 
Luke Layman (26:32.192) 
is that I connected something, I’m the oldest of five children, and I connected something that when the third child was born, which is about eight years younger than I was, that where Luke and my brother had been the primary center of attention, that my mom then had to divert her attention to a new child, like any mother would, and to be a caring and attentive mother, but that meant that Luke got less attention. And it manifest itself very, 
 
later in life in my own marriage when my wife was expressing her desire to have a third child. And I didn’t understand subconsciously what was happening at the point, but what the connection meant for me, what I made it mean was that the presence of a third child means there’s no affection available for Luke. And the challenge then, Jim, is the stories that we continue to tell ourselves. And again, listeners can go back to. 
 
many of your shows and hear these things is that we look into the world and we see something and then we create a belief about what we see and then we use the stories to hold that together. So to bring that all back together was that there were behaviors inside my relationship based on stories that had nothing to do with my partner and things that were happening at the subconscious level that I had to then go back and revisit and go with those 
 
those two things, if-then statements, the cause and effect statements weren’t congruent because that’s not what it meant for a 43-year-old man. 
 
I have a new program out called Becoming Unstoppable. It’s all based on neuro research and et cetera. But there’s a module in there. I don’t recall which module it is, but where I tell that we learned our survival strategies at the ages of two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. And the survival strategy is we’re wanting love. We’re wanting to be accepted. You had mentioned James’s podcast and somebody said you’re two biggest fears. 
 
Jim Fortin (28:32.406) 
Similar, as I’ve understood, your two biggest fears are the fear of inadequacy, you’re not good enough, and the fear of abandonment or rejection. We’re gonna kick you out of the tribe. So as a child, we learned these coping strategies that literally dovetail with our parents’ because we want their love. And then like you, once we get 30 years old, we’re still using strategies that we learned and they worked when we were four, five, six, seven, eight years old. 
 
What we do is when we’re four, five, six, seven, eight, we create these strategies and then, and we’ve expanded that portion in TCP a lot. The homework in week number three, which is all about stories, is about 40 pages long because we dive deeply into all the stories that we learned and we tell ourselves. So what was your story in the marriage that if we have a third child, I won’t 
 
get the affection that I need that I’ve never really expressed that I do need. 
 
I wish Jim that I had the clarity then to be able to articulate that it was more arrogant. And the statement, I don’t want to hurt him. 
 
Was it bravado? Like just the male masculinity and like you tend, I can relate to a lot of your story because I’m not that person now, but I used to be all fricking figure it out. I will get it done. Give me the ball. I don’t know how I’ll get it across the line, but I will get it done. And I would just run through things just to make sure it happened. You’re like that, but took a different life path, but you’re like that. And that can be, I want to talk about context for a second. And the context of a fighter pilot. 
 
Jim Fortin (30:10.316) 
That serves you very well. In the context of a husband, it didn’t serve you so well. So if you remember your thought, please continue. 
 
A lot of it is around the stories. I wish that, again, I wish I could go back to a 28. Sometimes I wish I could have my son at nine years old listen to some of these things and to be able to grasp and contextualize them. The stories are extremely important. There’s two concepts. The first, and let’s go back to the third child, is I wish that I had a level of depth of understanding. No, we didn’t. We have two children. Yeah, but the depth of understanding now is to go, why? 
 
Wait, so you had the third child? 
 
Luke Layman (30:49.422) 
What’s causing you to say that? And a lot of the way that we communicate, Jim, is we talk about the map of the territory and we look at the way that we see the world. And I explain it as the box and I’m happy to share the box and the way that we view the box and how to think outside the box. But what was happening for me was I was telling myself some stories and I was holding together my beliefs about, and it doesn’t have to be a child. It can be around a stay at home mother. 
 
It can be around a vacation you want planned. It can be around some expectations. But the truth is very simple for me, is that when I was looking at the stories that I was telling, and part of the way that I operate now as a business owner is I put it through a litmus test of very simple is, number one, is it true? And how do I then make it more true? And the second component then is it empowering or disempowering, empowering or limiting? 
 
And if I can slow down long enough to look at it and go, is it true? The very first thing that I can do is I can usually make that be more true and I can understand what my beliefs about something are. And in the marriage to bring it back, because I know we’re talking a lot about relationships is that I made a lot of things be true that just weren’t true. I made overtures about being late to dinner mean that I wasn’t loved. 
 
or not receiving a text message within some amount of time mean that I was being disrespected. And when you move so fast through life as a high performer, then oftentimes that you don’t stop to really observe what your beliefs are and then what your stories are about those. And unfortunately, in the 2019-20 timeframe is that I had reinforced those stories. I had created those beliefs that weren’t true that needed to be unpacked and restructured. 
 
couple of things I read many years ago, that’s a bit of a conundrum, but there are no true beliefs. Then I look at many years ago also, Don Juan said to me, he was talking about beliefs and he said, beliefs are archaic. He goes, don’t believe anything, observe the world. So when you believe, you look, which is what you were doing, your confirmation bias, you were observing the world through your confirmation bias filter. 
 
Jim Fortin (33:12.544) 
So your filter said, if you don’t text me back in 15 minutes, you don’t respect me. What your belief was is that you needed to be respected. So then when you actually take the confirmation bias away and you just observe what’s happening, you’re making all that crap up in your mind in the first place. None of it’s real. It’s all made up. And this is what I tell myself when I got sick in 2020, this has helped me tremendously. And it’s so banal that people miss it. Whenever I find myself where I don’t need to be mentally. 
 
I simply say this one phrase to myself, you’re making this shit up in your mind. That’s literally what I say. You’re making this shit up in your mind because you know what? That is a truism. I am making it up in my mind, whether it’s true or not true or helpful or not helpful. It’s all made up. When I ask you a question, we do have a lot of women, probably 60, 65, 70%. I don’t want to forget this. 
 
You’ve probably heard me, if you’ve listened to the last year or so, interview Gary Zukov. You remind me, you would like his work if you haven’t looked into his work. He was a special forces guy also, and he’s not that person anymore, obviously. I mean, he’s in New York Times, four times New York Times bestselling author, but he’s all about spirituality and the managing of the yin and the yang, the male and the female energy. You would probably really enjoy his work, and he’s an amazing guy. 
 
A question I want to ask you here, because we have a lot of women, is what do women not know about their husbands emotionally? 
 
I think that there’s a very easy answer, there always is. And there’s a deeper answer. The first, and where I’d like to go is the discussion of masculinity and femininity. Because I think that we’ve done ourselves a disservice as a society now, where we’ve begun to blend the roles of the masculine and the feminine. And we’ve accepted some levels of toxicity associated, the toxic masculine. 
 
Luke Layman (35:18.732) 
which is the bravado and the arrogance and the ego. The masculine is the hunter, you know, that’s the provider. And we’ve begun to really put some toxicity out into it. But at the core of masculinity and femininity is that a man needs to be respected and a woman needs to feel safe. And we begin to violate those in so many ways. 
 
with our words or the sharpness of the way that we communicate with each other, the levels of hurt that we put into each other. And they store like throwing rocks into a backpack and you begin to carry them around and they carry such burdens for you for so long. But what women get stuck in is they get into a place of disrespect. And I’m talking primarily a feminine masculine relationship there is that the women begin to disrespect the men. 
 
And conversely, the same true for men is that they begin to violate the foundations of safety. And we tell ourselves stories. We say, you are safe. And mostly when men say that is we mean it in a physical safety. I’ve provided you the roof over your head. I’ve provided you the food on the table, the car that you drive. I have, I have, I have. And what we’re neglectful is we’re neglectful of the emotional capacity. 
 
that the little digs that I’ve done, the places that I’ve violated your trust have began to create cracks in the foundations of our relationship that need repair. And the masculine is almost dismissive of that. And I can see that in pretty big hindsight, but where I would go in the deeper capacity is that behind the strong man is also the young boy. And we didn’t always outgrow. 
 
And there’s a expectation and a stigma that says that we got it. That as the provider of our family, that we are strong. And oftentimes we are scared. And it shows and it manifests in other ways. It manifests in anger a lot as an emotional state. But what I would ask of a partner is to exhibit that feminine empathy to go, what’s causing that? What’s at the root of that anger? What’s underneath it? 
 
Luke Layman (37:40.012) 
And I think a lot of relationships are sabotaged by that violation of respect and safety. 
 
Beautiful answer. Seriously, I was talking to Don Javier one time and he said the most fundamental thing in a relationship is respect, mutual respect that each partner has for each other. And this comment you mentioned here, a good friend of mine, he literally is in the midst of a divorce right now. I’ve known him for about 15 years. And when I was visiting the state that he lived in, I would stay in his house. And I didn’t say anything, even though we’re really close, but 
 
I noticed that he and his wife were talking a bit tersely one time and he was saying, I buy you the home, I buy you the cars, I buy you this. The kids go to private school, you get five star resort visits, go on trips with your girlfriends. I give you everything you want. But what I noticed is what he was not giving her was the emotional security that she needed. And she used to constantly say, because she would talk to me too, I don’t feel like I’m loved. 
 
Whereas he would be showing the love through what he would consider to be security, but she wasn’t getting the emotional nurturing. But here’s where what I was hoping would come out did. When I would do hypnosis in New York City 25 years ago, we had an intake forum and basically it was like 20 questions to get to know this person a bit before we did the session. And one day I recognized if they typed their answer, meaning, cause you can kind of tell from the handwriting if it’s a male or a female. 
 
If they typed their answer, would I know which intake form belonged to a male or a female? I would not. Why? Because they’re both full of fear, male and female. But here’s the thing I think a lot of women don’t understand about men. And you said it, your exact words, I wrote it down. We’re scared. And many times I think that’s scared of what if I can’t provide? What if I’m not this? What if I’m not that? 
 
Jim Fortin (39:45.186) 
But I don’t think women really have or understand the gravity of how emotional men really are. It seems like you’ve become in touch with a lot of your, what I would call your feminine energy, your feminine side, and you’re learning to balance it. And you’ve come into contact with that and touch with that. But a lot of men have not gotten there. And a lot of women don’t understand that men are as emotional as they are, just different. 
 
There’s so many places to go there. 
 
We’ll finish up on this side. What’s the thought you want to add there and we’ll tell people how they can find you. 
 
When we talk about agency and efficacy, do I believe something’s possible for me? And resignation is, okay. You can throw in the towel. Sometimes relationships can end and should end, but how do I create agency for myself? And I, I, and I told you, I’d share, you know, my theory around the box. since somebody says, think outside the box, Luke, my call sign was psych flying, flying calls. I’m a psych. I said, what’s that mean? 
 
I don’t understand what does it mean to think outside the box? And I began to define it for myself and the box has four sides. The bottom, the foundational side is your learned and lived experiences. That’s the foundation for the way that you see the world, the way that your parents interacted. It could be your socioeconomic norms. It could be the places that you were raised. If you were in the Middle East or the United States, we have different views of the way that we view the world. The left side is the emotional state. And I don’t have to tell you, but 
 
Luke Layman (41:20.736) 
when we are angry or frustrated or in a heightened negative emotional state, we can’t see very far. We see very narrow, short-term. The top is the values. And when I articulate the values, there’s one place in my life that the values change significantly. And I think it happens for men and women, though, to a different degree. When women are pregnant, they begin to connect with the baby in utero for 10 months. 
 
But for a father, that connection happens instantaneously when the baby is born and your values change. once I valued freedom and adrenaline rushes and energy exchanges, now I value safety and I value reliability. So the top of the box is values and the right side of the box is the most empowering is the expected outcomes. And if I’m coaching high performers, this is the place that I focus the most is what do I believe is possible for me? 
 
could happen. And inside the relationship structure is could I also return to a happy and loving capacity? Yeah, I could. Equally as much as I could dissolve the marriage and we could divide our assets as well. But there’s something about the box that’s the problem is that with your learned and lived experiences, your emotional state and your values and your expected outcomes is that you cannot change the way that you see the world. And the easiest way is to simply borrow. 
 
and listen to someone else. And I think, you I came into your sphere many, many years ago, Jim, for those of you that may be new to Jim’s podcast, as I think I began listening in 2018 or 19 timeframe, and I borrowed someone else’s worldview, someone else’s learned and lived experiences, values, and the expected outcomes, and then realized that what I’m responsible for is my own emotional state. And the quicker that I can turn to one of the 
 
more empowering emotional states, the more rapidly I can see the world more broadly. And my advocation now is that the prize goes to the person who can see the world the most broadly. 
 
Jim Fortin (43:31.746) 
That’s an NLP concept called requisite variety. The person that can actually have the most flexibility in their thinking has the most power. And then you talk about in the B2HP program, and then becoming unstoppable program, I talk about resilience. And I’ve coached athletes before, and when it comes to resilience, the most successful athletes are the ones that can change their emotional state the quickest. The ones that fail as professional athletes are the ones 
 
that get into emotional state, they miss a point, goal, whatever, and they stay in their head about it. I mean, I have such admiration by watching him psychologically play Tom Brady. I’ve watched that dude pull out like three Super Bowls with two minutes left on the clock, and they’re down by two touchdowns, and they still win the Super Bowl. And I’m like, what is his subconscious identity about quitting? What is his subconscious identity about 
 
when it’s under pressure, he probably plays better under pressure. it just anyway, it aligns with what you’re saying. And I appreciate you sharing that. 
 
Jim, I’ll share with you one of the most harrowing experiences in the airplane. Flying low, whatever, that’s all fine, is air to air refueling. Taking my 41,000 pound airplane and rejoining on another airplane is harrowing. And I did it in Afghanistan one night, in the weather, at night, in enemy territory. And I could barely see the airplane. And I felt the palms beginning to sweat. And I felt these chills and these goosebumps because I was 
 
wildly uncomfortable. And I remembered an instructor going through pilot training that says, when you begin to feel those sensations, just wiggle your fingers and toes. And here I am, ham-fisting this airplane, trying to stay on the back of this boom in the middle of the weather, there’s storms, lightnings going off all around me. And I began to wiggle my fingers and toes. It has continued to be in service to me throughout the rest of my adult life is that when I get into those challenging situations where I feel threatened, I simply say, 
 
Luke Layman (45:35.714) 
just wiggle your fingers and toes. And it’s a reminder to me to calm my emotional state and return to a place of calmness and think critically using those prefrontal cortex components that help me with my analytical thinking. 
 
And the reason it does that also is because I say this in TCP all the time and people don’t get it. Six words. You are where your attention is. And when you’re wiggling your fingers and toes, your attention is no longer on. my God, look what I’m doing here. Your attention is on your fingers and toes. When you move your attention, everything changes. Luke, thank you for your time today. Where can people find out more about you? 
 
My website’s the easiest lukelayman.com and they can find everything from there. 
 
What do you do? said they know. 
 
I spend a lot of my time as an entrepreneur. I lead multiple businesses, eight-figure businesses. I invest in other businesses. And I do coach some high performers in a very limited capacity, which is some of the most fulfilling work that I do to help others lead a truly intentional life that’s full of alignment and to be the best versions of themselves. 
 
Jim Fortin (46:41.038) 
All right, guys, you heard it here. So Luke Layman, I assume we’ll drop your domain address in the show notes. What’s the domain address? 
 
lukelayman.com 
 
It’s pretty simple, lukeLayman.com. All right, Luke, thank you again for being here today. I really appreciate it. And hopefully people listening got a lot out of our time together, which I’m sure they did. And thank you for being so vulnerable and open. I really appreciate it, my friend. Stay well. 
 
Thanks, Jim.