2262 - What’s Really Holding You Back in Love and Life with Ray Biancalana

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments.

0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:05With us right now is certified relationship coach, bestselling author, and founder of Coaching with Roy and podcaster, my good friend, Roy Biancolana. Roy, we go back many, many, probably getting on close to a decade, I think. I'd have to look at the timetable again of when we met in a Fox 35 green room many, many ages ago. But it's great to have you on the show. And I'm so excited to talk about this topic. Roy, thank you for being here. Yeah, it's great to be with you again, Josh. And yeah, I think it's been anywhere from 10 to 12 years. Something like that. Yeah, incredible, incredible. And I just want to share to our friend that's listening right now, I deeply respect a lot of what Roy has to say, especially on the topic that I'm really excited to kind of talk to you about.

1:55We'll get to that. But before we talk about, you know, your superpowers and again, kind of the topic of the day, I want to point out that you are you have quite a background in golfing. Do you mind just kind of giving a little bit of your kind of what would be on the back of your your trading card? You know, it's like someone had a Roy Biancolata. Yeah, the way I describe it, I've always had two real passions in my life that have lasted these 60 plus years now. And one is all things spirituality and personal growth and that kind of thing. And the other is golf. So, you know, I grew up playing golf at a very early age.

2:40I was very good at it immediately. Right. Got a college scholarship, turned pro. I played on the PGA tour for about three years. I've played in 10 major championships. I beat Tiger Woods, you know, in his prime. So, and I still compete, you know, I, I shot 66 last week in a tournament and only finished second, but you know, if you're not first, you're last as Ricky Bobby says, but no, in reality, no, golf is a huge passion of my life. I still make some money doing it, but it's kind of a side gig to my coaching and writing and podcasting. Do you mind, Roy, just like real quick on the match that you've played with Tiger?

3:24Well, I wasn't with him. I wasn't in the same group, but I beat him in a single round. That's okay. Listen, then by all means, please embroider that IB Tiger Woods. Right. We'll call it good. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Okay, Roy, so tell me about the work you do. And again, folks, again, your podcast, I should point out as well, it's called the Attracting Lasting Love podcast. But your expertise, I mean, obviously, you know a lot about relationships. But, you know, so much of showing up in a relationship has to do with the work that we do for ourselves. Hence, for a business leader audience, that same thing, the work that we do on ourselves have significant, significant impact on the health and success of our teams, our companies, our impact in the world, our sales.

4:26I know Tony Robbins says, and I forget what the exact number is. I think he's, I think it was 99%, but, you know, 99 % of the success or failure of a business comes down to the psychology of the owner. As a fellow business owner, I don't know if you have any thoughts on that topic. Yeah. Yeah, no, no question, really. You know, so my focus is on helping single people attract a healthy relationship. But when you really get down to, you know, the commitments that a person makes and the kind of inner work a person does to get them ready for something real, it's really not that different than what a professional athlete would do to be ready to perform or what an entrepreneur or business owner would do.

5:11would do to run their own company. Because some of these commitments, which I'm sure we'll get into, some of these commitments that we make to show up in the world in the healthiest way, they transfer from arena to arena in our lives. And so the real work is, and that's one of the messages that I tell my clients who are looking for a partner. It's really not about them and where you find them. It's more about you and what kind of blocks or what kind of sabotaging behaviors or what kind of blind spots do you have in your life that are creating unhealthy dynamics and so forth. And so that just transfers to the business world too.

6:00It's like, what kind of limiting beliefs do we have as leaders or sabotaging behaviors or, or, you know, childhood junk that we haven't dealt with that just holds us back from creating the best life, the best companies, the best relationships we can. So I think all work is similar when we start to focus on ourselves, and then it just gets funneled out into these different areas of our lives. You know, Roy, before we started recording, I know you and I I kind of re-sparked the idea for having this podcast based on a topic that I was talking about on social media. And you have a lot to say on this because I know that's something that you've done a lot of work with your clients with.

6:52And that is this idea of what Carl Jung would call our shadow self. So, and here's how this really became top of mind for me, is that in work, and I've talked to other people, other business leaders, and certainly plenty of friends in my military background who have dealt with these emotions of, I don't understand, Roy, why I feel nervous. I feel anxious. I feel depressed. I feel bad. I feel angry. And I have no logical reason. Like, yeah, I mean, there's some stuff going on, but logically get out of here, man. I'm tougher than that. But yet that pain still sits there and, and it's, and it can get debilitating.

7:42And it's so frustrating because we're just like, I don't get it. You know, why am I, why is my body and my emotions still operating at that level. And so that really provoked me to undertake a lot of discovery in that and, you know, kind of work through that in a professional sense. I did psilocybin and that really helped me become aware of, again, what Jung would call the shadow work and this underlying programming that it's, you know, for me, it was absolutely unfair standards that I had for myself. And that just because this one other thing of which I have no control over happened, and it was probably not a great thing, I internalized that thing, which I have no control over.

8:38And I said, well, therefore, I'm a bad business person or something like that. Now, How ridiculous and unfair is that? But somehow, somewhere, my body created that idea as a function to keep me safe. Roy, can you, I'm rather ineloquent by how I was kind of explaining that. I'm wondering if maybe you can kind of give a quick little one-to-one or primer on that and kind of expand from there. Well, it's been my experience and the experience of people that I've talked to that what you're describing of having emotional experiences, bodily reactions, be it anxiety, fear, depression, things that come up that there's no logical or current reason for feeling that way, that it's not connected to a specific event.

9:29Oh, my wife criticized me yesterday. That's why I'm angry. Or, you know, something happened at work and that's why I'm feeling scared. It feels less defined than that. And what the research shows is that most of us, we go through all kinds of things in our lives. Most of us are not very good at processing them in the moment, feeling the feelings fully and letting it go. And so when we don't do that, those experiences get stored in our body. Okay. So you talk to the Hindus, they'll call them samskaras. You talk to Eckhart Tolle, he'll call it pain body. Right. And so they're just unresolved emotional issues from the past.

10:14And so my guess is when those things happen to you, Josh, and they certainly happen to me, it's like there's old pain that's stored in the body that is trying to come out. It's like it's knocking at the basement door because we've buried it down there. And it's like, will someone pay attention to me? Will someone open the door? Let me out. Let me breathe. Give me some space. Honor me. Right. And so that is the technique that I would suggest when people feel some of this undefined stuff coming up is to sit with it and really give it space. Feel the feelings. You know, on that thought there, it's interesting because I think that the more, and those of us who are just students of personal development, like, you know, and for me, you know, even though, so I was like really getting into, you know, stoic philosophy and I'm like, man, I really like this.

11:09This works for me. And so intellectually, it's almost like my brain was separating itself further and further and further from that stuff that the body was still holding on to. So therefore, it becomes in some ways almost harder to access some of that, you know, those beliefs that I had not fully processed. You know, maybe dad had some tough expectations for me. I don't know where it came from. It kind of doesn't matter to me. There are a lot of ways that we either consciously or unconsciously bypass things. And one of them is by being in our heads and figuring things out and trying to think of it logically.

11:48So spiritual bypassing is a big issue where we just were bypassing some of this repressed emotional pain. Right. But that doesn't make it go away. That just pushes it back down and then it comes up. And when you mentioned shadow work, a lot of what happens with shadow stuff is the shadow is the stuff that's been repressed and pushed down. And very often we all know that there's a part of us sometimes that comes out and says something or blurts something or reacts in some way that's like, man, where did that anger come from? And it can be very sabotaging to our lives. so I do think this is a reality of us human beings that we don't know how to handle pain we're not really taught this especially not taught how to do it when we're four or five six seven eight years old and so this stuff gets stored in us and then around the ages very often 40s 50s we have what's called a midlife crisis which is just where all of our stuff starts coming back to bark.

13:00It's like, you haven't paid attention to me for decades. And now I'm not going to let you get away with it anymore. And that often can lead to all kinds of disasters, unless we know how to deal with some of these feelings consciously and in a sort of an evolved way. I just had an interview with Levi King a few episodes ago, and he talked about that same thing. It's like, why now? Like I've been kicking ass my whole life. And all of a sudden now it's like, I cannot shake this depression. And it sucks. I am a, I am an overachiever guy. Like I have goals, I have plans. I like, I got my stuff together, but yet I'm dealing with this.

13:40And so, and I know the way he explained it, it's almost like, it's like you've been doing damage to your vertebrae or something like that for decades. And then finally you just get to a point where it's almost like that straw that breaks the camel's back, to mix my metaphors. But I think this, quote, midlife crisis can be a real gift from God. If we take it as a wake-up call to move toward ourselves in a more holistic way and try to maybe integrate and value and honor much of the stuff that we have ignored to achieve our goals or things that we have repressed because all that stuff would just get in the way of my success or whatever it might be.

14:29I think there's an opportunity for us to become more fully integrated human beings if we respond correctly to some of these emotional movements that come up at this time of our lives. Roy, tell me about your book that's, and it's out right now. It's on your website, coachingwithroy.com. And of course, you can find it on Amazon as well. You recently published it. Yeah, it's called Quantum Questions, How Answering Seven Radical Questions Lead to Attracting a Healthy, Lasting, Intimate Relationship. And again, to my business owner friends, these principles are universal. Like the, the, the problems that you're able to get clarity on and the work that you're able to do in your personal life, it is absolutely going to impact your relationships and work and beyond as well.

15:26Partners, team members, clients, that sort of thing. I, am I correct? Right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And tell us about the book, please. Yeah. The premise of the book is I've been doing relationship coaching now for coming up on 20 years. And as I've worked with people in any phase of a relationship, they're single, they don't want to be, or they're in a new relationship, or they've been in a relationship for many years. What I have found is people ask the wrong questions about how do I get my love life to be a bit more satisfying? You know, how do I find a partner? They end up asking, they're not wrong questions that, and I mean, I don't mean that in a moral way, but there are questions that point your energy in the wrong direction.

16:15So I've just worked with people and they're, you know, they're single, they don't want to be or something. And, and, and the questions they have are things like, you know, how do you navigate online dating and which platform do you use? Or where do you go to meet someone that would be a suitable partner for me? And if you meet them, what do you say? How do you approach? How do you flirt? Right. And these are, they're reasonable questions. They're just, I have found they're not the right questions to ask. So I wrote a book called quantum questions and it lists seven questions that I feel are the questions that really will lead to producing, um, a quantum leap in your love life.

16:57And the questions are all about yourself, right? There are questions that are about, you know, what are you committed to in life? What's the real reason you're single? What's, you know what I mean? So there are questions that make you introspect and become more self-aware because, I mean, the essence of my philosophy of relationships is best described by an old mystic poet by the name of Rumi. Okay. This guy lived in the 13th century. And he said, your task is not to seek for love, which is a bizarre thing to say. Your task is not to seek for love, but seek instead to find all the barriers within yourself that you've built against it.

17:46Okay, so he's like, no, no, it's not about finding a partner. It's about finding all the barriers and blockages and BS and baggage that you have accumulated that are blocking your ability to connect with someone in a healthy way. And that, Josh, I think, like I say, that dog barks for any business or anything. So it's about asking the right questions, not maybe how do I grow my business or how do I get more customers or more clients? It's like, no, what am I doing to block what life in the universe might want to do through me and my business? What are my blind spots? What are my sabotaging beliefs and behaviors, right?

18:30It's about unlocking and having your own aha moments. Like, oh, in my business, oh, no wonder why I'm single. Because I have had this issue going on, this issue between, you know, like for me, I discovered, because all my work is very personal. I've just been through all this stuff. So my love life sucked. And you know a little bit about my story, Josh. My love life sucked for decades because I had mommy issues and I didn't know it. They were, my dynamic with my mother was playing itself out in my adult relationships over and over and over again. And it wasn't until I saw that and then addressed that, that my love life changed completely.

19:14So that's why I tell people, don't even ask the question about where do I find someone? ask what am I doing or what am I not aware of that's keeping me from the life that I would love to experience. And that transfers to whether it's business or any other part of your life. It's turning the attention from out there to in here, which sounds easy, but it's not because the ego does not like to look at itself in the mirror. It really likes to point the finger and give me a strategy, give me some tips and techniques to grow my business or to meet some hot chick or whatever it might be. It doesn't really want to say, you know, you need to look at some relationship dynamics going on in your life, the way you communicate, the way you handle emotions, the way you handle other people's emotions.

20:11Yeah, the ego doesn't like to do that kind of introspection, but I've just found there's no other way to sustainable success in any part of your life. Yeah. Roy, let's talk about how you work with folks. And I know you work with a lot of high achievers, again, as a professional athlete. I know, you know, just kind of some of our mutual friends that have been, you know, kind of, they've sung your praises. You work with a lot of high achievers and help them do this work. Um, do you mind sharing just like how you work with folks? Like, I know you've got, obviously there's the book, um, which again, it's available right now.

20:56Um, you can just go to coaching with Roy.com and you'll find it linked there. Um, and you can find it on Amazon quantum questions. I had more time. I would just go through all of these questions with you. Uh, so I'll leave that to our friend to kind of dig into, but I do want to give you some time to talk about, um, like how you work with your clients and how you work with folks. I know you have courses and so forth as well. Oh, yeah, yeah. I've got video-based courses, and this is my fourth book, and everything's on Amazon, and it's not hard to find. And my website has links to everything also.

21:29My basic structure of working with people really hasn't changed much over the years because I'm fundamentally committed to creating a relationship with my clients where we spend an enormous amount of time together, and they have an enormous amount of ability to talk with me. So I'm not like a therapist where we talk and make an appointment every Tuesday. When I work with someone, I'm available to them pretty much every day of the week for us to talk about whatever might be coming up, you know, in their personal or professional life. So when I take on a client, I'm making a huge commitment saying, I'm going to do everything within my power to see that what's holding you back is discovered and dissolved so that you can create whatever it is that you want to create.

22:20And I've just found to do that kind of work, to dig around in our souls and to discover things and process things and let things go and rewire our systems takes a lot of interaction between coach and client. So when people work with me, it's a four-month commitment. And there's a lot involved, lots of formal sessions, lots of what I call laser calls where clients can call me for 15 minutes to check with me, ask me questions, process feelings. That's available to my clients five days a week. And then there's a bunch of resources. There's an educational component to what I do. part of what keeps us limited in life is we lack relationship skills.

23:08We don't get much relationship training or at least the kind that would serve us well. Most of us grow up and just see our parents fumble around. They're doing the best they can. God knows what we can get from our culture. It's mostly garbage, TV, movies, school, churches. I mean, one of the things I harp on, Josh, is the two most important or two of the most important areas of our lives we get into without any training whatsoever. And one of them is being married or relating intimately to another human being. We don't have any training for that. And raising kids. You're going to have a baby and you have no idea what you're doing.

23:53No one's taught you anything. So part of my work is providing relationship training and learning about communication and emotions and handling conflict and ending drama and stuff like that. So when people work with me, it's a pretty comprehensive personal development program to help them unlock or break free of whatever is keeping them from either personal success or professional success. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Roy, your website, coaching with Roy.com, your podcast to our friend listing right now, go pull it up, go give it a listen. It's got a lot of positive reviews. I'm a, I'm a content creator. There's a lot of stuff out in the world that I've created.

24:38No kidding. Um, and, uh, Roy, you do, uh, again, more than a couple hundred episodes, and you do hour-long, I'm going to teach you some stuff episodes. Right, right. I would just about make this promise to the listener. If you enter the Attracting Lasting Love podcast show page, no matter what question you have about relationships, I've done at least one episode, if not more, on it. I don't care if it's on conflict or sex or attracting a partner or how to end a relationship or how to function in a healthy way within a relationship, I've dealt with it. And it's one of the things I'm very proud of is the comprehensive, what I call conscious wisdom, for lack of a better phrase, on how to live life in a healthy, meaningful, drama-free way.

25:37I want to throw out a kind of shout out a series that you did finding freedom from where you did the five part series. It kind of spanned May and June. So this is really cool. You've got a again is five parts. Part one, finding freedom from loneliness, insecurities. Number two, three is finding freedom from stress to my fellow high achievers out there. anxiety and finally part five is anger uh i'd say man give give that series a shout that uh likely a lot of bases right aren't those five areas that are man if we need to find freedom from some stuff those are the issues right how do you imagine just i mean where's the last time you heard someone talk on how to manage anger and how to deal with anger in an appropriate way i I mean, that's such an important topic.

26:29You know, there's so much, I think, you know, more of a kind of societal standpoint, too. A lot of these feelings, Roy, they get manipulated. And there are a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of influencers, a lot of folks in power and different levels who exploit a lot of these, you know, I think emotions that we all carry, you know, some level of, you know, loneliness, insecurity, stress, anxiety, and anger. And boy, you know, the right person with the wrong motives can absolutely exploit a lot of those feelings that those are just vulnerable feelings that we all share. You know, we're all, you know, one of the things that, you know, I really discovered about a month ago is, you know, and I really understood this is like, you know, we all carry our we all carry those feelings of insecurity, desire to be safe that, you know, we don't necessarily want to be alone.

27:24Like there's, there's something about connectedness that, that I think, um, I'll just say for myself, I mean, it makes me a better person. Like, I feel like I, it's comforting for me anyway to, you know, kind of with other people, it doesn't have to be a, you know, a complete, you know, partnered situation, but at least connection with other humans, I think is just so vital to our ability to thrive and survive. um but you know again i just i want to shout you out for for doing so much work on this stuff and kind of close it up here roy any any final kind of calls to action that we missed no i guess one thing that just comes up right now josh i want to share how much i appreciate you now i've known you now what 10 12 13 years and yeah i just appreciate the journey that you've been on i mean you've gone through a lot of growth and transformation i mean we don't talk that often, but I see you on social media and stuff like that.

28:20And so, you know, you're a far more evolved, deeper person. The thing I always appreciate about you is you're very curious and you're very interested in learning and you're willing to question long held beliefs and wonder about them and maybe even change your mind and stuff like that. Those are amazing qualities. I mean, my whole book, Quantum Questions, is the whole introduction is developing the value and the commitment to curiosity, you know, wondering about what am I missing? What am I not seeing? I mean, I know what I know, but what about what I don't know that I don't know? Right. I think really successful people are more concerned about discovering what they don't know that they don't know.

29:08Right. I think that is what sets people apart and keeps you on the edge of, I'm always learning. I'm always growing. And it keeps you from the death nail of relationships, which is I'm right and I know everything and you're wrong. When you get in that mentality, you're going to be single and you're probably going to be broke. And your company is going to go belly up because you're not right. You don't know everything. And those of us who can embrace that and not be threatened by it, stay on a path of growth. And I've just seen you do that, Josh, and I appreciate it. Well, that's very kind of you to say, Roy.

29:46I appreciate that. Thank you so much for this conversation. The new book is called Quantum Questions, How Answering Seven Radical Questions Leads to Attracting a Healthy, Lasting, Intimate Relationship. relationship. The podcast is called, sorry, it was wrong. Attracting Lasting Love podcast with Roy Biancolana. And of course, your website coachingwithroy.com. Roy, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Josh.

30:20Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program. Please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from.

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