June 7, 2024

317. Think Positive, Act Positive: Manifesting the Relationship You Deserve with Evan Marc Katz

317. Think Positive, Act Positive: Manifesting the Relationship You Deserve with Evan Marc Katz

Happiness Solved with Sandee Sgarlata. In this episode, Sandee interviews Evan Marc Katz. Dating coach Evan Marc Katz is the author of 4 books and has been featured in hundreds of media outlets since 2003. His blog has over 35 million readers, his...

Happiness Solved with Sandee Sgarlata. In this episode, Sandee interviews Evan Marc Katz. Dating coach Evan Marc Katz is the author of 4 books and has been featured in hundreds of media outlets since 2003. His blog has over 35 million readers, his podcast has over 2.5 million downloads and 13,000 women have taken Love U, his video course that helps smart, successful women find love. Evan is happily married and lives in Los Angeles.

 

Sign up for the Happiness Solved Plus Exclusive Membership Site: http://HappinessSolved.Supercast.com

 

Connect with Evan: 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/realevanmarckatz

Love U Podcast on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-love-u-podcast-with-evan-marc-katz/id1091310056   

 

Connect with Sandee www.sandeesgarlata.com

Podcast: www.happinesssolved.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/coachsandeesgarlata

Twitter: www.twitter.com/sandeesgarlata

Instagram: www.instagram.com/coachsandeesgarlata

 

 

00:00:10
This is happiness solved with America's happiness coach, Sandee Sgarlata.

00:00:20
Hello, and thank you for joining us today. I'm so happy you're here. Happiness solved is the place where we explore everything you need to become the best possible version of you. This is Sandee Sgarlata. And today I've got some exciting news for our dedicated listeners.

00:00:37
We've just launched our exclusive members only portal. This is your ticket to a world of additional content designed to deepen your understanding and engagement with the happiness solved mission. To learn more about all of the exciting benefits, stay tuned until the end of the episode, where I will explain in greater detail. For those interested now, head over to happinesssolved dot supercast.com. today is another amazing conversation.

00:01:04
So let's get started.

00:01:10
Evan. Marc Katz, I'm so excited to have you on today. How's everything going? Wonderful. We had such a lovely conversation before we started rolling.

00:01:20
I'm just excited to continue the conversation. I know, right? I know. I always do that. We start talking and I'm like, oh, let's save some of this dialogue for when we're actually recording.

00:01:30
So for our listeners, I have such a treat for you today. We have dating coach Evan Marcatz. He's the author of four books. He's been featured in hundreds of media outlets since 2003. So, folks, this is the man.

00:01:44
He's been doing this a very long time. His blog has over 35 million readers. His podcast has over 2.5 million downloads. And get this, over 13,000 women have taken love u, his video course that helps smart, successful women find love. Whoo.

00:02:04
And I do want to note that Evan is, yes, happily married. So don't get any ideas out there, ladies, but I'm so excited to have you here today. Evan, again, flattered to be here. Have a great conversation. Share some valuable ideas with the women in your audience who are searching for lasting love.

00:02:23
Yeah, it's such a.

00:02:27
So we've got so much to unpack here because, number one, and I want to hear how you got into this. So let's start with that. So how did you become a dating expert? Like, what was it? Did you have a lot of experience?

00:02:48
Did you, like, is this just, like, your superpower? Like, what is it that made you 20 years ago? Be like, this is what I'm going to do. You're a life coach, so you will understand this journey very well. And I don't want to get bogged down in the details.

00:03:09
Necessity is the mother of invention. And so I went to college to be a lawyer. I decided I didn't want to be a funny lawyer, and I moved to Hollywood to be a screenwriter. And I put my heart and soul into that. And I won contests and awards, and I was in film school, and I was in project greenlight with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

00:03:37
And I had meetings at every studio and agency, and I made no money. And so when I turned 30, I was like, I got to figure something else out. While I was in film school, I got a job answering phones at an online dating company just to pay the bills. 30 grand a year getting yelled at by strangers, as one does when you do customer service. And after a year of getting yelled at by strangers on the phone and an online dating company, I was like, oh, my God, I got to write a book about this.

00:04:09
So I wrote a book about online dating in 2003 called I can't believe I'm buying this book. A common sense guide to successful Internet dating. And unlike my whole Hollywood career, the book did well because no one had done that before. Online dating was still kind of in the shadows, and I rode the mainstream wave of it and dropped out of film school, became the dating guy. And that was now 21 years ago.

00:04:36
So my superpower, writing and flirting are my two superpowers, and I've grown into my job over the past 20 years. Well, you know, it's one of those things. You got to go with it, and you did, and I love it. And if you're putting your intention and your focus on what it is that you want to accomplish, you know you're going to be successful at it, right? So I want to talk about the mindset behind finding that lasting love, because so often, and this is.

00:05:20
This is kind of like the big.

00:05:26
The big thing that I always talk, talk about because, you know, I say happiness is a choice, and the choice is yours, and happiness is also a journey. It's not a destination. So when you're looking for that love and finding that love, it's not a destination, right? Because then when you find that love, then. Then you're still left with you, the person that was searching and searching for that thing that you think when you have this thing, you're going to be happy, right?

00:05:58
And lo and behold, you find that great love, and you're like, oh, shit, I'm still. I still got me to deal with. So what do you say? Or is that even part of the conversation. Where, I'm sorry?

00:06:15
Well, because in order to love someone else, you have to love yourself, bottom line. Right? So where do you stand on all of that. I think I just listened to Thomas Friedman the other night. If you are a New York Times reader, he gave a really amazing speech.

00:06:34
One of the things in his speech, you talked about being a both and person. I too am very much a both and person rather than either or person. So while it's true that it's hard to have a successful relationship if you don't have a good relationship with yourself, the act of trying to perfect yourself often becomes a big excuse to not have a relationship. Yes, the people are working on them. So I'm working on myself.

00:07:07
I'm doing the work. I'm in therapy. I've been in therapy for twelve years. How many dates have you gone on? None.

00:07:14
So that's where this gets. As a dating coach, I don't disagree that the inner game matters. I love you. As a six month program, the entire first month is on confidence and mindset and belief. I don't want to throw anybody out there to start dating if they're not in a good place.

00:07:35
At a certain point, you have to start talking to people. And there's an art and a science to it. So that's why I would say the both ends. Yes, of course it matters. But I'll tell you one thing that will help with people's insecurities is having someone who loves you unconditionally.

00:07:53
The whole time when you were saying that, I was sitting here just thinking to myself, oh, yeah. And I can tell you, if it's okay with you, I can share with you your show, my story with that. Because I am married to the man who I consider to be the love of my life. He's my second marriage. And I knew the day that I met him, I knew he was the one.

00:08:23
Now, what I didn't know, because, you know, here at that point, we met in 2012. I had already been a certified life coach for, you know, a number of years and thought I knew it. All right? And here I am all these years later, still working on myself. Because it's a journey, it's not a destination, right?

00:08:46
And what I didn't know when I met him, because I was working on myself, Evan, I had broken up with somebody and was like, nope, I'm gonna focus on me. I'm not gonna date. And I met him two weeks later.

00:09:02
So I had two weeks to, like, work on myself. Right. What I didn't realize was I was so broken, I had no idea how broken I was, because I had come from a 21 year marriage, 25 year relationship with my ex husband. And I hadn't cleaned up all the garbage and baggage that had accumulated from that long term relationship. And I met him and he loved me so much that he would hold my hands because I would, we would get in a little disagreement or something and I would expect him to react the way my ex acted.

00:09:43
Right, right. That's what I would expect. I expected him to behave the same way. And he's, he would hold my hands and he goes, you're having another marcism.

00:09:56
And Mark is my ex husband's first name. And he and I are just, just full transparency. We are very good friends. He knows I talk about him on my show, so it's all good. So this isn't anything he doesn't know about.

00:10:07
But he would hold my hands because I actually told my ex husband about this story. He would hold my hands and say, you're having another marcism. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, you're right. You're not him. You're not going to.

00:10:21
And through that, it took about a year and a half. He helped me to heal my heart, and I don't have those same types of triggers like I did initially. So I'm happy to hear that you say that. And that it's about finding that person that's going to love you enough to work with you. Because we all have our baggage, right?

00:10:45
And it just becomes a reasonable, all excuses are reasonable. Just becomes a built in excuse as to why you never put yourself out there, why you don't smile at strangers, why you don't post an online dating profile, why you don't reach out to friends for setups, why you close your heart, why maybe you'll get involved with someone sexually, but not really open up to real intimacy. There's lots of levels of what people lower the bar to, and all in service of being alone. Why? Because falling in love is scary.

00:11:23
It's burned you before. And so then the safest thing to do, the most rational thing to do is avoid love if love is the thing that hurts you.

00:11:33
Except then you can never have love. Right? So what is it that you recommend? And it's so funny because I say this, no matter what type of conversation I'm having on my show, I always come back and say this. My favorite saying is, in order to grow, you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable.

00:11:53
And what you're saying is, right, falling in love is very uncomfortable, especially if you've been burned before, you've been hurt before. So what are some tools that you can sit to offer the listeners to help them have that trust. Right. Because it really is like just trusting. It's trusting that the thing that we're talking about here, the thing that you have that I have with our marriages, trusting that it's real and it's available to them, right.

00:12:23
This isn't a fantasy, no different than anybody else. And so people have lost their faith. And that's, that's the thing. It's like trying to convince someone who doesn't believe in God to believe in God. Every relationship I ever had was toxic and damaging and left me bereft.

00:12:39
So why would I ever do that again? And so you're asking someone to believe in something that they have no proof of. That's why, again, that's why I have this course. And then I'm basically a guide. I joke.

00:12:53
I'm like a personal trainer at the gym. So you could look in the mirror on New Year's Eve and say, gosh, I'm still 25 pounds overweight, not liking what I'm seeing. You know, I might read shape magazine. I might get on the peloton once a month. But if you really say, this is the year, I want to do something differently.

00:13:14
I'm at the emotional place where I've got an empty nest. I have a little bit of freedom, a little bit of money, and I'm lonely. My friends are partnered up. I work in a small office or I work remotely. There's a whole bunch of people who just stay right where they're at because they just don't know what to do.

00:13:33
So then folks like me just say, here, I'll hold your hand. I'll walk you through the entire process the same way a personal trainer will be like, okay, we're going to work on your sleeping, sleeping, and you're eating and your hydration and working out your backs, back, and bys and chest and tries and really just customizing a workout to suit you where you're at and then holding on to your hands so you can get results and you don't get hurt, because that's everybody's fear is getting hurt. So once you take all this sting out of the scary, oh, there's actually a process, just like there's a process for anything in the world. There's a process for finding love. And it's not just random that for most people's kind of heartening.

00:14:17
Yeah. Yeah. Is there any, like, generic steps that people can take before jumping? Maybe they're like, you know, I'm not ready to take a course. Sure.

00:14:29
What is what is something that they can do to maybe get them ready to be open to, like, reaching out to someone like yourself? Yeah. I'm not worried about anybody reaching out to me right now. If anything, we'll. We'll talk about what you.

00:14:44
What you led with, which is the. The inner peace, the fear you probably talk about on your podcast, the concept of limiting beliefs. So, beginning of my course, I have an exercise. I'll give you the exercise here. It's not a terribly complicated one.

00:15:02
The short version of it is to think of any limiting belief that you might have about dating, relationships, men, or yourself, and just write it down again. We could spitball here. I'm not worthy of love. No one has ever loved me unconditionally. There are no good men out there.

00:15:24
There are no quality men in my area. There are. Guys at my age aren't attractive anymore. They're all looking for younger women. I'm too old.

00:15:37
I'm too heavy, I'm too damaged. Any of those things resonate with. Right, right. These are all limiting beliefs. And the acknowledgement of the limiting belief is that it is partially true.

00:15:52
We don't want to deny the feelings that people have. Those feelings are real. But then we have to shoot those limiting beliefs down. How do we do that? By the fact that there's tons of evidence otherwise.

00:16:06
All you have to do is look around. Anything that I just shared with you, we can shoot down quite easily. Online dating is terrible. Well, 40% of people get married from online. All men are just looking for one thing.

00:16:20
My brother's been happily married for the past 30 years. Like, we can do this all day to refute these limiting beliefs. And so that's where I would begin, is to write down all the things that you believe and then try to contradict your own belief. I love that. Yeah.

00:16:42
And, yeah, you're so right, because before we hit record, I was telling you, I haven't had that many guests on that where we've actually talked about dating. But I do talk about limiting beliefs a lot, and it just wasn't even something that I thought of. But of course you're gonna have limit. If you have any limiting beliefs, it's gonna flow forward into any other area of your life. I like to say, you know, I'm not good enough.

00:17:12
Ask yourself, is it true?

00:17:17
Right? Because they're making assumptions. Like, people are making up a story that there's no good men in, that are interested in someone my age, or they're all looking for younger women. Those are stories that you're making up. Right?

00:17:31
You don't know that. Well, again, let's. Let's add on to it. Let's do both. And is it a story that's completely made up?

00:17:39
There are. There are plenty of crappy guys online. There are plenty of men who would not date a woman their own age. Those are real things. It's not fantasy.

00:17:49
How many men do you need to be happy? One. Right. So we're just talking about the existence of one man who refutes this. So it's not that all these things that you feel bad about, you ever, if you're a woman and you're listening right now, you ever say, why me?

00:18:06
Why is this so hard for me? I know. Shelly Shelley is a nightmare, and she's married.

00:18:16
How is that even possible? Also proves the point. So however bad you think you are, there are plenty of people who find partners, and all you need is one. So the more you stay cloistered, just living your life, doing your work, watching your netflix, hanging out with your two girlfriends, there's a certain point, and it usually happens to women. Either my clients either turn late thirties, oh, my God, I forgot to get married and have kids.

00:18:54
Divorced, starting over early fifties, empty nest. Or even widowed. I have no idea what I'm doing. Where do I begin? And so I get clients in certain pockets, but there's usually an internal thing that's going on where this story of I love my freedom, I love my independence.

00:19:21
You know, when your head hits the pillow at night, you're actually lonely. Yeah. Yeah. And it, you know, regardless of what they say, how, like, for me, like, I value my alone time, and I want my alone time now. Having said that, I'm married, so it's easy to say I need my alone time, but I'm married now.

00:19:41
If I was not married, it'd be a whole different conversation. So, yeah, I mean, you have to put it into context of. Of your situations, for sure. So, you know, there's. You're talking a lot about comparing.

00:19:58
Comparing yourself, comparing your situation to other people's situations. And while that's very true, it can be a dangerous slope. Right. Because if you're comparing yourself to Susie, who's a mess, who's got it all, like, we don't know what's going on behind her closed doors. Right?

00:20:19
So we don't know. He could. You don't have. So. So I.

00:20:24
What do you think about that? Like. Like, well, yes, you can compare that there's lots of other situations out there, and that's not necessarily going to be the case for you. Right? I mean, what about, like, where does, like, manifestation come into this?

00:20:45
Right. Do you go down that path or. I am not a manifester. I will not speak. I'll be neutral on the topic, my understanding, and again, understand my limitations.

00:21:02
The law of attraction is great in as much as, if you are positive, you believe you can do things, you exude positive energy, et cetera. People want to be around you, and that goes for work, and that goes for friends, and that goes for love. And so regardless of whether the universe is listening to your vibrations, I could say that being positive has downstream rewards in terms of how you show up in the world and how people relate to you. Sure. Sure.

00:21:38
For sure. And I, and I'm.

00:21:43
It's probably a good thing that you don't go down that path because I think that it could. I'm just thinking out loud here, like, it could, it could serve people in a way that they don't fully understand. Right. Because there is a lot of, there's a lot more to it than just thinking and feeling positive. So, yeah, as I said, I'm, that's not my area of expertise, so I'm not going to.

00:22:10
No, no. And I get that. I get that for sure. It's one of those things that I really believe in. But we'll table that conversation because I want to hone in on your expertise.

00:22:24
So tell me about some success stories that you've had. I'd love to hear about some of the success stories that you've had with some of your clients. I mean, do they tell you, you know, I've taken your course and now this is where I am. If you go to Evanmarkcats.com and click on love stories, you could see, you could just scroll down and see hundreds of women in wedding dresses telling their stories. It's been the most meaningful thing I've ever done.

00:22:58
And. Wow. And so the best stories tend to be the most challenging stories. Right. It's the people who overcame the greatest odds, you know, and there's things, there's a lot of women don't want to share it.

00:23:13
A lot of people don't want to admit they had a dating coach. And if you go to my website and you see the wedding photos, you should imagine the number of people who don't want to post their photos online and say they had a dating coach. So I've had clients in wheelchairs. I've had clients who are blind. I've had clients who were 80 pounds overweight.

00:23:32
I've had clients who were sexually abused as children. I've had clients who were 70 and never married. These are success stories. These are like. That's just a laundry list of people I've helped.

00:23:46
So most people, again, have issues, but their issues aren't as extreme. College educated, upper middle class women just grew up in households where they didn't see healthy relationships modeled, and so repeated that pattern throughout their whole life and didn't know that they can do anything differently. And so it's bad guy after bad guy. Incompatible, narcissistic, selfish, whatever. The thing you're drawn to is, if you're too close to it, it's hard to see it.

00:24:23
So, you know, again, it's. It's not like one success story. When you've been doing this as long as I'm. I've helped sisters both find people. So, um, you know, I want to knock your socks off with an anecdote, but it's just a.

00:24:40
It's a 20 year laundry list of people who came to me feeling the same thing that your listeners are feeling. Bullshit. That's impossible. It can't happen for me. It's such laugh there.

00:24:52
Evan, you don't understand. Everybody starts in that same place. Yeah. And I love that you talked about your course, and that's where you start in the beginning, is that mindset. And that's so important because just recognizing, you know, we started out talking about.

00:25:15
You had people that say, oh, I've been in therapy for twelve years. I was probably in therapy for 15 years dealing with my childhood trauma. And little did I realize that that was one of the biggest problems in my marriage, was because I didn't have that guidance growing up. Right. And then you.

00:25:38
But the therapy didn't bring it out. Right. But just having that awareness, like, oh, wow. Like, I never really put it together, and that's okay if you haven't. Right.

00:25:47
So. I love that. So this has been such a great conversation, Evan, and I really hope that you'll get some traction out of this interview and that some people will reach out to you, because there's nothing better, as you can attest to, than having that person by your side. And it can happen, folks. It can.

00:26:09
Please, please don't be cynical.

00:26:14
You know, um. Well, I have a gift. I wasn't sure how long the interview was. I thought. I thought we had more time.

00:26:23
So, uh. We do. We've got plenty of time. We've got plenty of time, you know. Yeah, there were.

00:26:28
There's a whole bunch of things that I. That I would love to talk about. And, uh. Well, then let's, let's talk about them. Yeah, I get about it, but it's your, it's your, it's your show.

00:26:38
Um, so I want to make sure that you're, you're doing the thing that you want. If anything, I'm kind of Evangelical about this, not in like, I'm a cult leader type way. It's that I've gotten to see so much success from women over the years that it's hard not to want to give some of the best advice I could give in the limited time that we have. So let's start with just two things. If I can only say please, I.

00:27:10
Would love for you to. Yes, whatever information you want to give, please, please do. There's only so much we could do in this context. Number one, you don't attract the wrong man. You accept the wrong man.

00:27:28
Everybody believes they attract the wrong man. We believe we're magnets. Again, I don't want to get into an argument about the law of attraction, but we believe that we're magnets. In fact, we make choices, some of our unconscious choices, but we're making choices. If you grew up in a household with a father who was unavailable to you or was callous to you and you can never feel like you could win his love, it would not be terribly surprising if that's the kind of man you choose over and over, the guy where you have to win his love over and over and over again.

00:28:03
So whether that's, whether you think you're choosing it, you may not be. That's what you're drawn to. That's what's familiar, but you don't attract them. Other women meet those guys and like, oh, this guy's trouble. You find it familiar, so you stay and you double down.

00:28:22
Why is my boyfriend so emotionally unavailable? Why is my boyfriend so selfish? Why is my boyfriend so insensitive? At any point in time, you could cut him off. So lots of women are attracted to guys who are attractive, but the ones who are healthier turn them away.

00:28:42
So don't worry about the wrong guys existing in the universe. They'll always exist in the universe. Your power is in saying no, not accepting this behavior. And I help people do that in weeks rather than years. Right?

00:28:59
That's one. And the flip side of that, especially for people who have difficult relationship histories, is that the story that everybody has told you about love and marriage is wrong and it's counterintuitive. And I know people are going to roll their eyes and I don't care. Good relationships are easy. Everybody's told relationships take work.

00:29:28
You know what relationship takes a lot of work? A bad relationship. Every bad relationship you've ever had took so much work, so much fighting, so much communication, so much couples therapy, so much work. Think of your closest relationships in the world. Think of your best girlfriend.

00:29:50
Is that a lot of work? Why should your marriage be that different? So I want to just reorient and have a new north star. Good relationships should feel fundamentally easy. You agree on, like 90% of stuff, and then 10% is negotiable, right?

00:30:10
So we listen to our feelings. Our feelings don't lie. And then the 10%, that's negotiable, right. That's what other people would call work. Call it effort.

00:30:20
Yes. You have to water the garden. Right. But it's not like working in a coal mine. Bad relationships are working in a coal mine.

00:30:28
Good relationship says, I got to go out and water the garden, tend to it, make sure it flourishes. How does that feel for you, Sandy? I'm just sitting here with a big smile because I love everything that you just said, and I can see that there will be people rolling their eyes. Yeah. I was in a 21 year marriage.

00:30:50
That was a lot of work. Yeah. My marriage. Now we celebrate nine years next month. And it is easy.

00:30:59
It's so easy. It's just easy. And, yeah, there's some effort. Absolutely. There's effort on both of our parts.

00:31:08
Yeah, for sure. And this is the thing that I think happily married people need to talk about more to let people know what's possible. If your relationship requires so much work, it's just not that good. It's just not worth preserving. So let it go.

00:31:23
You are better being alone than being in a bad relationship. That feels like work. Relationships should be additive. They should buoy you. They should lift you.

00:31:31
If your relationship is dragging you down, what is the point of it? So people. So people have basically anchored and is this a video or is this just an audio? It's going to be both. It'll be both.

00:31:43
Okay. Right. People have determined, I don't want to be in any more bad relationships. So I'm going to be like, get out of relationships. Done.

00:31:53
Now my baseline goes up. At least I'm not in a bad relationship anymore. What do they forget? A good relationship is a higher claim. But they're so afraid of being in a bad relationship, that drags them down here.

00:32:07
They just stay single and never avail themselves to the possibility that a relationship could take care of you make you feel safe, heard and understood in a way that perhaps no man has ever made you feel. So that's what I believe in. I've seen, and I devote my whole life to helping women get that thing that they don't even think is possible. Oh, my gosh, I love it because it's. You're so right.

00:32:35
I mean, it just, and I think with my, like, for me personally, I had so much trauma in my childhood, and there's just like, for so long, it was just comfortable for me to have that drama in my life, right? Because that's all I knew. Back to normal, right? It was just normal for me. And so I know that there's times in my own mind, I create drama with my husband and then I bring myself back down.

00:33:05
I'm like, wait a second. I'm just creating this because it's like, too good. And you're like, oh, you know, like, when's it gonna drop? Right? That's like the flip side of it.

00:33:14
What I tend to do.

00:33:19
Can I tell another story? Do I have permission? Absolutely. The other shoe. Yeah.

00:33:26
So I was a penniless screenwriter in my twenties. Clinically depressed, hard to escape. It was really, really dire for a time.

00:33:38
Wrote my first book at 31. Got a little lucky, wrote a second book, made up this job, got married. So I'm 35 years old and my career is going well. I'm married, and I run into a friend from my twenties, and he says to me, hey, man, I heard through the grapevine you've been doing well for yourself. I'm really happy for you.

00:34:00
I said, yeah, but I'm really worried the other shoe is going to drop.

00:34:07
He says to me, did you ever consider that the first 35 years of your life was the other shoe?

00:34:15
And I was like, that. I will never, ever forget that. Maybe all the bad stuff had to happen to get you to this point where you could finally relax and enjoy yourself. And he was right. I've had a great 20 year stretch since I thought I was done.

00:34:37
So, yeah, I mean, again, I get to see this all the time. I just recently saw my mom. My mom is 77, married for the third time. This relationship is the combination of her two husbands. It's the best one she's ever had.

00:34:55
She met him. She was 69 when it came together. So, yeah, I just think a lot of people are. The easy thing to do is to give up and say, no. Dating's not for me.

00:35:08
Online dating is not for me. I don't know. There's all these sociological studies. Every Harvard longitudinal study says the best predictor of your happiness is the quality of your relationship. Wow.

00:35:23
I loved your story about the other shoe dropping, and it brought tears to my eyes because I know that was me for a greater part of my life, always waiting for that shoe to drop. And you're right. It already dropped. Yeah, we got to let that go. It's not easy.

00:35:45
But that's, again, that's why there's people, people like you, people like me out there who provide advice on our podcasts and courses and books and coaching and, you know, again, I'm just very grateful to be here. I gave a gift. I've got a gift for your readers if you go to Evanmarkkatz.com comma Evanmarckatz.com happiness. It is just a 25 page gift called the Seven Massive mistakes you're making in dating. Maybe you're not dating, but we have one for people taking a break.

00:36:26
You can go to Evanmarkkatz.com break, and if you're taking a break from dating because you don't have the confidence to put yourself out there, that's also a gift for you as well. So I just want to make sure that I'm leaving everybody with something tangible that you could take home, and then I'll send you free advice in your inbox. And if you ever need support, that's what I'm here for. Oh, my gosh. I love it.

00:36:47
And I just checked because to make sure that we are, we do have those links, and those will be in the show notes for anyone that would like to take part in that. So thank you so much. I love it when my guests offer free gifts. Anything else that you want to add before we finish up?

00:37:09
I think the thing that I want to add is that ultimately, the only thing that can get you the love that you want is action, right?

00:37:26
I've had anxiety problems. I've had depression problems. I've been in therapy. People don't arrive at this without having gone through some form of personal pain. Staring at the problem could only get you so far.

00:37:43
Talk therapy, validation, positive affirmations can only get you so far. The only way to get good at dating and relationships is to date, which, again, is a hard concept for people. People just want to find love. But what else in the world do you think you could be good at without doing it? You wouldn't pick up a guitar and think you could play an Eric Clapton guitar solo.

00:38:13
You wouldn't think you could play tennis. You wouldn't think you could design a website. So we all want to be good at dating and relationships without doing it. So if we look at dating, oh, it's a skill set. I actually have to do it more.

00:38:26
The more I do it, the less I'll be afraid of it, the more comfortable I get. So experience leads to success, success leads to confidence. Confidence leads back to success. So there's a doing component again. Instagram is great.

00:38:42
Podcasts are great. Until you do something differently. You'll fill your head with lots of ideas, and you still won't have anybody to hold you at night. You're speaking my language because my big thing is happiness is a choice, and the choice is yours. And happiness is a practice.

00:39:01
Just like dating. Dating is a practice. I play tennis. I've been playing tennis for eight years. I'm still out there practicing.

00:39:08
Right. You know, in my head, I think I'm going to, you know, make it to Wimbledon, but, you know, but like, yeah, you got to just keep practicing and, yeah, I love that because that's just, again, because I'm not in your world. I hadn't really thought of dating like a practice, but of course you have. To as a life coach, it makes sense that these ideas overlay onto anything. That's why it's so.

00:39:35
It's so universal, what you do. What I do? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I never even thought about it.

00:39:42
Evan, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you for giving me a little bit extra time to share my. Yeah, absolutely. This has been great.

00:39:52
And folks, visit Evanmarkats.com and if you would like his free gift, you go to Evanmarkats.com happiness. And that will be in the show notes as well. So thank you so much. Check out his website if you're ready to take the step. Check out his course.

00:40:09
Love it. His podcast is love you, podcast. Great title. Check that out as well. All right.

00:40:17
Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you having me, Sandy. This was fun.

00:40:34
I hope you enjoyed today's conversation, and as promised, I'd like to give you more details of what you can expect as a member of the happiness solved exclusive community. First, you'll have access to a treasure trove of extra podcast episodes. These episodes dive deeper into the topics we discuss, featuring additional expert interviews only found here. But that's not all. As a member, you also get access to a series of mindset training sessions.

00:41:01
These recordings are tailored to help you understand the how and why your mindset is the most important asset you have empowering you to achieve your personal and professional goals. And for those of you looking to find a moment of peace in your busy lives, we've got something special, exclusive guided meditations. These sessions are crafted to help you relax, refocus and recharge. Whether you're a meditation guru or just starting out, there's something here for everyone. Becoming a member is more than just accessing extra content.

00:41:33
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00:41:55
Again, that's happinesssolved dot supercast.com and it will also be in the show notes I am so grateful you're a part of our happiness solved family and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your continued support. Again, I am so grateful for you and I hope that you and your family are helping, healthy and safe, and that your lives are filled with peace, joy and happiness. Take care, everyone.