How to Have a Successful Marriage: 7 Honest Truths Most Men Never Hear #691

I put these 7 things on Instagram a few weeks ago. It hasn't stopped getting comments and notifications since. So I brought it here, because this is a conversation every man needs to have.

If you want a successful life and a great marriage, most men are focusing on the wrong things. They're building the career, hitting the goals, ticking the boxes, and slowly letting the most important parts of their life slip away without even realising it.

This episode covers the 7 honest things every successful man needs to hear:

1. Prioritise your marriage: your wife isn't a box you tick after work and the gym
2. Look after your body: it's the vehicle that carries everything else
3. Don't take criticism from people you wouldn't trade places with
4. Learn one high-value skill and get world-class at it
5. Commit: cut the options and go all in
6. Remove negative people: distance yourself from small minds and cynicism
7. Work your mind: a chaotic mind creates a chaotic life

I also share the honest truth about how I've taken my own wife for granted when building my business, and why the relationship bank account matters more than most men think.

This is the episode your mates need. Share it.

Take Free Life Performance Scorecard and see where you stand at strong body, calm mind, confident life and clear purpose (under 4 minutes) → https://scorecard.lachlanstuart.com.au/

Transcript

Why Marriage Sets The Tone

Lachlan Stuart 0:00

Seven things every successful man needs to hear if you want a successful life and marriage. This is a really important one and it's a post that I put up on Instagram a number of weeks ago and it just still keeps getting notifications and comments. So I thought, why not put it here on the YouTube channel for everyone to listen to, and maybe you'll take away one or two things that is going to improve your life and more importantly, your marriage, right? I think the marriage is something that so many men experience a breakdown in that doesn't get spoken about enough. And I know firsthand with the men that I work with and have worked with in workshops over the years, marriage is a really important part. They say one of the most important decisions, if not the most important decision you'll ever make in your life, is who you choose to spend the rest of your life with. Because that will determine the quality of your life. I want to give you seven things that I believe will improve that. If you're tuning in here for the first time, my name is Lockman Stewart and I am a life performance coach based in Brisbane, Australia. You can probably hear it in the accent, but I appreciate you stopping by. What I focus on is helping men like you take ownership of your life and see what you're capable of by going through the core four, which I call the strong body, calm mind, clear purpose, and confident life. Today's topic is really going to dive into those last two around confident life and clear purpose. We're going to help you dial in on these ones, but let's

Prioritize Your Marriage Daily

Lachlan Stuart 1:22

get into it. First one, probably the most direct one we've got. Prioritize your marriage. Now, as I said on the thing, I said, easier said than done. Your wife isn't a box that you tick after work, the gym, and your goals. She's the foundation everything else stands on. Get this wrong, and nothing else really matters. Think about it like this. I have seen so many blokes who are willing to do whatever it takes to win their wife back. But they're not doing whatever it takes to continue growing their marriage. Because when it appears like it's going well, that's when we tend to neglect things. And I don't want to sit here like I'm on a white fluffy couch like I am. I want to be honest because I know this happens in my own life. When I'm focusing on growing my business or I'm training towards something, I definitely neglect and take for granted my wife. And I know that if I hadn't been built up enough deposits in the bank, meaning I continue to invest in our relationship regularly, that occasionally you've got to withdraw some of that when you sacrifice time or you're stressed or you're in a bad mood, that I wouldn't have the marriage that I have. And so every single day I'm continuing to do things that I've always done that I believe in the first place made Amy fall in love with me, but also make me love the relationship as well. Ask yourself, are you doing similar things in your marriage? Or are you letting your wife sit on the sidelines while you pursue your career or whatever it is that you're working towards? Because I can tell you, mate, that if you ever reach out to me and it's because your relationship's falling apart, we'll probably have a conversation and ask at what point did you feel that it was slipping away and you might say, Oh, it's only been recent. But if we dig deeper, it probably started years before you even realized it. It just got to the boiling pot where you know the water flew over the top of the kettle and she's all over. So I don't want that for you. So make sure you prioritize it not only in time but energy. Don't spend all your energy throughout the day at work and then come home and give your wife the low energy version of you because you know so well. Well, I'm hoping you know, if you don't, this may be news to you, but you get to create your energy, right? I make all my clients wear a whoop, and people go, Well, what about wearables? They're so inaccurate, etc. The reason why we use wearable is you get enough data that we can go, hey, your sleep is really going to impact your mood, right? If we don't get some rhythm there, if we don't get enough volume, you're gonna be dragging your ass through the day. And your phone, for example, you plug your phone in every day, you hope that it gets to 100% by the morning because you know throughout the day it's gonna drain. What happens if your phone is only getting charged to 50%? Well, if you want to keep using it, you have to find a way to charge it. The problem is with ourselves, we don't find a way to recharge during the day, we just get snappy or or you know irritable. So I want you to think about that. Make sure you prioritize your marriage.

Build A Strong Body

Lachlan Stuart 4:21

The second thing, look after your body. No brainer, you've heard me speak about it a lot. Your body is the vehicle, your mind is a driver. So if you don't invest enough in your body so that it can do and complete the demands that your life puts on it, you're always going to be dragging and falling behind, and you're gonna go, Oh, I can't do that because my sore back, or I wouldn't be able to experience that or go on that adventure because my health, or you might walk past the mirror enough and just start telling yourself a poor story, like I'm not good enough. So work on the body. And what I said here is this it's much easier to be a great husband, father, and operator when your body is strong. Eat clean, train hard, recover well. Once again, Whoop allows great data for that, but so does other decisions that you'll make. People treat you differently when they know you look after yourself, but you've got to earn it first, and that's true. Like, whether you want to admit it or not, if you look strong and healthy, people will treat you differently too if you don't. And people may go, that's so wrong. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but that's just reality.

Choose Whose Criticism Counts

Lachlan Stuart 5:28

Third one, don't take criticism from people you wouldn't trade places with. What I wrote was everyone has an opinion on what you should do. Very few of them ever ask what's actually what you're actually building or what matters to you. Take advice from people whose lives you'd swap. That's the fastest way forward. And I'm very honest with you guys. I don't think there's a single person on the planet I would trade places with. There are elements of people's lives that I would love to have more of. You know, that I would always love to have more wealth, I would love to have some gnarly experiences, I would be love to be invited to hang around certain people. But if I look at the overall part of someone's life, I'm like, maybe I wouldn't be prepared to do what they had to do to get there, the sacrifices, the hard work, etc. And that's what we need to think about is the consequences of our decisions and actions. So when people are giving me feedback and advice, and there's a lot of people who chime in, there are people that I respect their opinion and I appreciate their opinion, and they're the ones that I choose what my next steps will be from that. I definitely still from time to time take on board other people's opinions, some people bashing me on social media or otherwise people just pointing out things. So I think it's always good to be have your ear to the ground. But when you're making a I guess a big decision in your life, you should really be clear on who you want to take criticism from because generally people who are more successful than you are never going to belittle you.

Learn One High Value Skill

Lachlan Stuart 6:55

Fourth one, learn a high-value skill. Money isn't the point, but what money buys you is time with your family, freedom to choose, the ability to say yes to things that matter, not to the things that don't. Get world-class in one thing, and everything else can compound from that. Quick little story. When I first started in business, I started in network marketing and I watched all these successful people living awesome lives. You know, they showed it on social media. That's what drew me to it initially because I wanted that. When I decided, hey, how do I get around those people? Because I knew proximity and being around the right people would help me fast track my success. I get said, well, my goal is to be a millionaire. So I want to get around millionaires. How do I get around them? They didn't want to spend too much time with myself because I didn't offer any value. And it's not that they were better or worse than me, it's always just a value exchange. When you hang out with people, you always want to spend more time with the people who make you feel valued, seen, and heard and add value to your life and whatever that looks like. But then when there's people who don't, you're probably not going to spend time around them. And in terms of a business relationship, the value does come through skills. It's like, well, what can this person add to my life that I don't already get from the people that I spend time with or the mentors and colleagues that I have in my life? And that's where it's important to really dial in on that high-value skill so that you stand out. One thing that I did, you know, I learned sales, I learned marketing, I learned to be just be a better person, and I built the Man That Can project. That eventually put me on the radar to have other highly successful men reach out to me and ask more about how I could help them in their own lives. And then when I started mentoring them and people saw that, it got me into different networks. And that was from the high value skill and the high value community that I created.

Commit And Cut Other Options

Lachlan Stuart 8:47

Number five, commit. You gotta be committed, the world is changing fast. There has never been more opportunity in front of us like right now. The only real question is, will you commit? Most men won't, and that's why exactly why there's upside for those who do. I've spoken about this a lot, right? When we have a choice and a commitment, it just means we're just removing every other possibility. If you want to make money, if you want to save your marriage, or if you just want to have a great marriage, be a great father, experience great things, you've got to go all in. The reason I was able to pull off the 58 to 58, and not just physically, but the logistics, getting sponsors together, getting an audience to follow was because I committed. Nothing else was going on in my life at that time. That was everything to me. From the moment that I woke up to the moment that I went to bed. Every decision was it will this move me closer towards my objective here? And if it didn't, I wasn't doing it. So make sure you commit.

Distance Negative People

Lachlan Stuart 9:44

Number five. Number six, easier said than done, but remove negative people. And how often have you heard this? An easy thing to do is just audit your social circle, the people that you spend your time around. Do they make you feel better? Do they empower you? And do they challenge you to hold higher standards? And are they fun to be around? If they don't, it's probably worth looking, and I hate that I say probably, it's worthwhile looking at distancing yourself from them or completely removing yourself from them. I used to be like a hardballer, hardliner in that you should just completely cut them out. I disagree with that now. I would just say distance yourself and enhance your time with those who are gonna bring uh pull you towards where you want to be. So small minds, constant complaint, cynicism dressed up as being realistic. Anyone who's done something great isn't realistic. Like, how the hell did I pull off the 58 marathons in winter across two countries? No one thought that was possible. But you have to dream big and you have to build the team around you. It's one of the chapters in my book called Believe or Leave, and it's a state of desire, uh state of oh, I'm forgetting the chapter, but anyway, state of excellence, I think it was. Where it's believe or leave. If people don't believe in you, it's time for them to leave if you're working towards something important. So one of the most powerful things I ever did was walk away from negative people and walk towards the optimistic ones. Not the like completely airy fairy ones, but the ones who had runs on the board and just who always looked at things as an opportunity. And if there was a problem there, they would find a solution.

Train Your Mind For Calm

Lachlan Stuart 11:16

Now, finally, number seven, work your mind. A chaotic mind creates a chaotic life. Your thoughts shape your beliefs, your beliefs shape your behavior, your behavior shapes your results. And if you're not actively running your mind, it's running you. I talk about that a lot with the coaching that I do in my full capacity intensive with the blokes that I'm working with one-on-one. We help you create a calm mind because you're either feeling overwhelmed or anxious. And they can be one and the same, but they're also very different in how you solve them and get your mind calm underneath that. So that is going to be an important one. None of it's complicated. The thing is that you just need to slow down enough to go, well, what needs my priority here? And the things that I'm doing, am I doing them to the best of my ability to get the results that I want? It's very easy to go, well, I'm not getting the results, so I need to add more, I need to do more. But quite often, all you need to do is get honest with what you're actually doing and ask yourself, is this the best thing I could be doing, or should I remove that and replace it with something else? Because I know you want to be better. You wouldn't be listening to this if you didn't. You wouldn't want to have a better life and you wouldn't have want to have a better marriage.

Final Reminders And Farewell

Lachlan Stuart 12:24

Now there's so much more we could dive into around that, but this is a short, sharp one for this week. I might even drop a second episode. Thank you for being here. My name is Laughlin Stewart, and I will see you in the next episode.