#104 How One Man Rewired His Marriage by Changing His Mind

What if the fastest way to heal your relationship is to change the environment of your mind? Larry Bilotta joins us to unpack a counterintuitive truth: a marriage can pivot when even one person moves from fear to love. Not as a platitude—but as daily, trainable energy you carry into every moment. Larry’s story runs through 27 hard years before he fell in love with his wife by first learning to like himself. He shows how a simple writing practice, clear self-inquiry, and two personal word lists—fear on one side, love on the other—can rewire choices, tone, and presence.

You’ll hear practical steps to shift your state—writing to make meaning, building love-word lists that you actually feel, and learning to admire love more than fear so behavior changes naturally. We also talk about the role of spiritual foundations in holding these practices together under stress, and why “childhood makes marriage” is a powerful lens for understanding both friction and repair. If you’re a man wondering whether you can lead change on your own, Larry’s insights, including the 21 signs you’re losing her heart and his book “This Is Not the Woman I Married,” will give you direction and hope.

If this conversation helps you, share it with someone who needs it, hit follow, and leave a rating or review—then tell us: which love word will you practice today?

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Larry Ballotta
• 0:50 Marriage Made in Hell to Self-Love
• 5:46 Writing, Meaning, and the Inner Voice
• 8:26 Fear vs Love: Building Your Word Lists
• 13:29 One Person Changes the Environment
• 17:25 The Cruise Ship and the Rat
• 20:37 Chaos Kids, Courts, and Reconciliation
• 21:37 How to Move Out of Fear
• 22:55 The Book: 21 Signs You’re Losing Her Heart
• 24:28 Midlife Crisis Triggers and Buckers
• 30:07 When Buckers Snap: The Stayer’s Path
• 33:36 Training the Mind: Pinballs vs Environment Changers
• 35:24 Childhood Makes Marriage
• 36:53 Practicing Love with Daily Lists
• 38:44 Spiritual Foundations and Lasting Change
• 40:03 Closing and Ways to Get Help

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome to the Straight from the Sort of Mouth podcast, where I talk about sex and dating. Hello, Tamara here. Welcome to the show. Today's guest is Larry Ballotta. He specializes in relationships, marriage, mindset, and midlife crisis. We'll be talking about transforming loveless relationships and saving your sanity. Thanks for joining me, Larry.

SPEAKER_00: 0:22

Thanks, Sarah.

SPEAKER_01: 0:24

Yeah, things as we talked about this is good for the men this time.

SPEAKER_00: 0:28

So this is good for the men.

SPEAKER_01: 0:31

Yeah, for sure, stay tuned if you're a guy. And I always think it's good to learn about the other side too. So as a woman, yeah. So but yeah, so I think the biggest thing when I read about your bio was that you transformed your own own marriage and you did it by yourself, meaning you didn't have to both do something about it. You you kind of took the reins. So uh if you want to just share about that or how you even discovered so so so picture that um that when they impeached Rich Richard Nixon that year, they impeached Rich Richard Nixon.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02

That's the year I married Marsha. And the year I married Marsha, I discovered that, whoa, this is a big, immovable rock. This is a woman that's very powerful and very determined, and she's gonna get her way no matter what. And so I'm this soft-hearted man. I was raised by soft-hearted people, and she's a really big fighter. And so as very determined, a very strong woman, uh, and she's the strongest in her family, and as the strongest woman in her family, uh, everybody comes to her for advice. You know, I should have I should have seen that. But in my 20s, I couldn't know things like that. Right? But she's a very strong person. As a very strong person, there was no wiggle room, there was no place where she could like give up her ideas and stop being this way, stop thinking that way. Uh, and what she wanted was she what she wanted. And and she couldn't really communicate it, so she she would yell it, she would scream it, right? And as a very strong person, she became an immovable rock that I started to realize well, this is not gonna move. This this is gonna be something that I can't uh change. And and remember, I'm programmed to stay married and miserable. She's programmed to stay married and miserable. That program is built in everything we do, and so we think about choices and freedoms and options. The the program comes back and says, stay married, stay miserable. And so that's why we stayed. We stayed because the program built us that way. And so we're staying and uh and we're fighting, and so uh I started to realize I had to learn about myself. Because did I know anything about myself? No, because my parents didn't teach me anything about myself, teach me like self-awareness and understanding of yourself and uh not reading self-help books or those kinds of things. I didn't know any of that, right? Uh I think my father had the power of positive thinking when I was like 10 years old. I think, I think that's the only self-help book I ever saw. Uh, but then I didn't know what to do with it, right? So I I couldn't read it and understand it. Uh so I find myself in this marriage with this really strong woman, and I start had to start to discover what is happening to me. Why am I thinking this way? And I had to, uh in essence, I was writing on yellow legal pants trying to find out who I was. And so this is like uh what's the the year they impeached Richard Dixon? Is that 1974? Yeah, that's so it it goes it goes year after year, 74, 75, 76, right? It's a long, long, sloppy, messy process. Uh, because she is strong and I am not. And as I'm trying to discover uh what I am, I I go through what I call 27 years of marriage made in hell. And why was that at Marriage Made in Hell? Because for 27 years, I was learning. And when you're learning, you're not sharp, you're not cool, you're not doing super good things, you just are making messes and discovering things, and then, oh yeah, I'm not gonna do that again, right? You're doing that kind of thing. And so that's just 27 years. And so winding down to that last year, that 27th year, uh, I think the big revelation is I I finally realized I could like myself, I could love myself. And that was new for me, really new. And as I started to love myself, I could love her. And so that's why I say I had 27 years of a marriage made in hell, and the 27th year I fell in love with my wife. Why did I fall in love with it? Because I fell in love with myself. I started to really like myself, which is a very, very different feeling. And and when I think start thinking and looking back, I'm thinking, how did you even do that? How did you even discover that? Well, there was no one thing. There is no one thing, like uh the big thing was you can't say that because it's a long, long time. And because it's so long, so many things happen, so many realizations and and conclusions happen uh that you can't really pick anything out. Uh but all I know is that I felt good about myself for really the first time in my life. And when I really knew who I was, I started to treat her differently. Now I wasn't trying to treat her differently, I just just kind of naturally did. I treat her, I tried, I I would treat her better, I would listen to her and and just I kind of could sense what she what she needed from me. And so I was able to do more of that. And prior to that, I couldn't do more of that. Uh, because I, you know, there's a little phenomena we know about uh called the little voice inside your head. And when the little voice inside your head is talking to you, everything's wrong and and and everything's bad, and and you can't know anything, you can't can't realize anything uh because the little voice in your head is talking to you and telling you these terrible things. So uh when I got to the 27th year, that's when I started to realize that this is different. This is really different, and it's different not because I made something happen, it's because I evolved into loving myself, and I evolved into loving her. And I wish I could say it happened overnight. I wish I could, but I can't say that. Um, but there's a lot to be said for writing to yourself. Because when you write to yourself, what happens is you write a sentence and then you can ask yourself a question, and then you can write another sentence and ask about what that means, right? So that was a really big thing is learning what things meant. Uh and when you think about meaning, meaning is a big deal in your life. When you realize what something means to you, especially if you can spell it out in words, uh, writing forces you to do that, forces you to really say, well, what happened and why did I do it? And so you end up discovering things on the paper. And the other nice thing about the paper is it doesn't go away, it stays there, right? Whereas thinking is electric, it's just coming and going and changing all the time. And so writing is a really big uh thing that uh like I I've I've I've done it for years, and uh so when I talk to people about what really pulls you out of the the stuff you're in, because you when you're when you're raised in a chaos childhood, uh what I call chaos kids, uh you have chaos in your subconscious mind. And so if we see the subconscious, it's a big vat. And the big vat is this big place where there's all kinds of thoughts that happened in your childhood. And thoughts and feelings and emotions are all down there. And then at the top of this, there's a little jar. That little jar is your conscious mind, and the conscious mind uh suddenly gets thoughts from the subconscious, and suddenly you're you're now aware of something, and maybe you you have an urge to do something. What's that urge coming from? It's coming from the subconscious, it's coming from the subconscious to the conscious, and now you're aware of it, and now you actually want it. And why do you want it? Because that's the way you were built, that's the way you were raised, that's the messages in your childhood. And so um one of the things that uh that that helped me a lot is start realizing that, you know, we talk about negative thoughts as a bad thing, uh, positive thoughts are a good thing, and we talk about that in general terms that, you know, that's well, that's a good thing. Oh, that's a right, that's a bad thing. And we make that comparison all the time. Um so what I started to do is start to realize that um when we're talking about fear, everything under the category of fear is a bad word. It's a negative, negative word. So if we if we went to the internet and we entered in Google uh negative words, you'd get all kinds of lists of really bad words. Anxiety, doubt, fear, hatred, right, bitterness, all the negative things that are there in the world. And I started to think about that that list, I said, there's there's like a thousand words that are negative. A thousand words. Like we can't handle a thousand words. And so what I did, I started to make a list of fear words that I could pick, hand pick out, and I said hand picked 25. And so the handpicked 25 words is the world of fear. And so when we read the world of fear as a list, it starts to feel like, wow, that feels so bad. That just like, ooh, that's terrible. And I started to realize in my early years, I was living in fear. I was living in fear because not because the words were here, but because the energies of fear were here. The energies are here. So, like, let's let's uh let me let me uh let me say this in a way that uh uh is simple enough to to understand. If we if we made the two lists side by side, they would look like this. Okay. So two lists. So the words of love, the world of fear, world of fear and world of love. And so when you have this done, what happens is you remember these are words that you handpick that fits you. That's why nobody can give you this list, because it doesn't matter, it doesn't mean anything to you. But when you handpick these fears, these sphere words, and you handpick these love words, they are all relevant to you. And so when I glance back and forth, the the overall overall impression I get is I don't want to be here, I want to be there. I don't want to be here, I don't want to be there. Oh, I don't want to be here, I do want to be there, right? And so what happens is you start admiring love, and you start really not having an interest in fear. And so when you don't have an interest in fear and you have an interest in love, the more you scan this day after day, week after week, the more you start realizing I'm really drawn to love. I'm drawn to love words. The love words make me feel good, they make me feel positive, they give me more energy. And so now I have something that is like a physical representation of energy. And so uh at the world of fear at the top of the list, I have crazy. Now, why do I have crazy there? Because years ago, I used to say that word a lot. Like, oh, that's crazy. Oh, you're crazy. That's the craziest thing I ever heard. I used to say it a lot, and so people would sometimes call me out why are you always saying crazy? And so when they asked that, I was like, Do I say that? I didn't even know I was saying it. I didn't even know. That's what happens when you get deep into fear, you don't actually know what you're doing or why you're doing it. So when you've got that list of fear and you've got that list of love, uh people don't make a list like that. They don't make these two lists and they don't put them side by side, ever. So the lists have never been, fear and love have never been together on the same page. Ever. So once you finally put fear and love uh on a on a list and you can read them and you can scan back and forth, uh, you're gonna start finding that your decisions in life start moving towards the the energy of love. And so when I say uh love, I'm talking about words like uh positive, uh confidence, joy, kindness, right? These are these are words of love. But what are they really? They're not just a word. If you look up the word and then say synonyms, I wouldn't need the synonyms for this, you can find like uh four or five, six words that are like that word. And what are those? Those are synonyms. And so if we take those synonyms and surround the main word, what we're doing is we're saying we have an energy around that word. So there's an energy around confidence, there's an energy around kindness, there's an energy around thoughtful, there's an energy around forgiveness. That energy is the energy you're living in when you have the word, when you're feeling the word, you're feeling the energy. And now you start to think, well, what did I do before? Well, I was in fear, I was in mean, I was in never, I was in rotten, I was in scared, I was in all these terrible words that are so destructive. But what was I in? I was in the energy of those words, the energy of like a ball, a three-dimensional ball of energy. That three-dimensional ball of energy is what you're actually living in. And it does things to you. You don't even comprehend what it does to you, but it does a lot of destructive things. Well, likewise in the fear in the love list, uh, there's a lot of really positive energy there. And that when you're stepping into word after word after word, you step into uh like a let's call it a pool of energy. That pool of energy is like gratitude, is a pool of energy. And when you step into the pool of energy of gratitude, you like soak in it, and it affects you, it makes you feel things. And so when you go from the pool of gratitude to the cool pool of uh friendship, let's say, now you're in a different energy. But it's also really good. And so that's how what the when you go down the list, you're not just going down on an item. It's not an item, it's a world, a world of energy. And that's what the synonyms represent. But the synonyms represent the complete ball of energy of that word. And so that's why I mean uh when I talk about the the list, it's not like a check off of the list kind of list. It's a list that you literally live in the energy of it. And when you live in the energy of it, you feel it and you feel it better and better and better. And as you start to do that, you start to change the way you decide on things. You start to change the way you feel about things, you start to change your opinion on things. It's all because you're moving from fear to love. And that's really really that's that's uh and I I'm explaining something that I had I ended up uh explaining much later. Uh, but I started to see that uh that 27 years is really what I was doing. I was leaving fear and I was moving love. And when I when I literally moved enough, I started to feel really good about myself. And so that's where my marriage began to change its direction.

unknown: 15:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 15:29

Because otherwise it was too destructive.

SPEAKER_01: 15:31

Yeah. And then like you said, just moving towards love created how you react how you would react and be with her, and I'm sure she reciprocated more.

SPEAKER_00: 15:56

Well, because she feels she feels what I feel, right? And she feels she she feels that feeling, and it feels safer, it feels lighter, it feels happier, it feels uh there's no no need to be guarded. And so when there were more moments like that, the relationship was better. So that's how a person starts to change. It takes one. Why does it take one? It takes one because one person becomes the changer of the environment, the environment of their mind. And that's really what I was doing in the story. I was changing the environment of my mind. And uh I wasn't I was doing that by by moving into these very positive energies so I could start to live in them and feel them. Uh and that's a really feeling is a really big part of the whole emotional makeup of people. Because when I talk to people in my course, that one of their biggest struggles is their biggest struggle says, stop being so negative. Why do you feel so negative? I feel so negative because I'm still dwelling in the in the in the world of fear.

unknown: 16:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 16:58

So I have a uh a story I tell, an analogy I tell. And the analogy is uh I call it the cruise ship. And the reason I call it the cruise ship is because in the analogy you become a cruise ship. And as a cruise ship, you find you don't know it, but you have a rat on your ship that you don't know is there. And then the person you marry is another ship, and they have a rat they don't know is there. Now these two ships have two rats, and the two rats have radios, and they're sending messages back and forth called against energy. The against energy is so strong it's separating the ships. And so when the ships are separating, they don't know why they're separating because they don't know the rats are doing the work. So your ship goes to a seminar, and you find out you might have a rat. So you go through trouble to find the rat and get it off the ship. Now we got two ships, but this time we've got only one rat. Though the rat that's on her ship is still pushing, but there's no rat on your ship to push back. And when there's no rat on your ship to push back, that means the separation slows down. And that's that's a really important idea when we start to think about uh what is the rat in the analogy. The rat is the pain of your childhood. And so uh I have the scale of 10 to 0, and 10 is the purpose, a place where you're raised in purpose. Zero is a place where you're raised in chaos. And so when you're you're you're abandoned, you're abused, you're neglected, the more of that you have, the lower you go. Right? So up at the top, it's great parents who are raising you and they're showing you how what love looks like. And so now you have all that in your subconscious mind. And life becomes pretty easy for you, right? Because you have good instructions, right? And so uh on that scale, it goes from purpose down to the middle, which is the I call the Twilight Zone 765. And that's where the parents don't raise you, you raise yourself because you don't know, you don't know anything because they're not teaching you anything. And so when you grow up there, you've got to figure everything out on your own, right? And then from five to zero, that becomes chaos where abandonment, you're abandoned, you're abused, you're neglected, and all of that makes for a really troubled subconscious mind. And that's what causes marriages to be so hard. I was just talking to uh uh an attorney who has a podcast, and the podcast is about marriage and and uh and the legal process. Like a, oh, heart and law. That's what she was doing, heart and law. And so I'm thinking, how do how do we get heart and law to come together? Because it doesn't even seem connected, right? Like, but that's what happens in marriage in marriage. In marriage, that the marriage goes into a divorce court and now it's in law. And it's it's like it becomes very like rigid because all this emotion from the chaos kid is in the courtroom and in the documents and all these terrible things that are happening in there. And so uh she was talking about the idea of reconciliation. Uh, because what is reconciliation like? How can anybody actually do that? How can they possibly reconcile when they've been living in fear year after year after year? They've not been in love, they've been in fear, and they don't even know what fear is, they actually don't recognize it as fear.

SPEAKER_01: 20:16

Yeah, they just think it's their normal.

SPEAKER_00: 20:19

Well, well, they actually have ways to bill it as something is re really uh that makes it makes them look attractive and smart and clever. Uh, but they're still living in fear. Um and so when you think about all the ideas of of meanness and uh and fear and uh uh unfair and upset and and angry and arrogant and and bad and critical and dangerous, all these ideas are energies that people live in. And when they live in them, they they seek somehow to be right. So here you are living in fear, but now you gotta be right. And now you gotta fight to be right. That makes you even less attractive, right? Because you're fighting to be right while you're living in fear.

SPEAKER_01: 21:02

Yeah. Even you talking like that and using those words is like kind of making me feel that bad energy. Exactly, right. I was I'm actually like thinking, okay, now what can we do about it and like how to how to go the other way? Like I know you work with people to help them see this and like fix their relationships. Is this a good time to talk about more of the like how to oh how to get out of that? I know you said learn about yourself and go into love, but what else do you teach or how do you teach it? I know you said you have a book as well.

SPEAKER_00: 21:33

So um, so the uh um in this in this book there's a uh a chapter uh that's uh dealing with the the signs, uh the 21 signs of uh of uh losing her heart. And the reason it's early in the book uh is if if you don't know you you've lost your heart, if you're not aware of it, you have to be told in a book what it is. And so the 21 signs you're losing your heart are signs that are like uh pretty graphic and pretty pretty unattractive. Because now this is you as a man losing your wife's heart, which you thought you had, and then you took for granted. And the reason he does that is because he literally becomes his father, he turns into his dad. So what happens with his dad? Well, his dad could have lost his wife's heart, and the son wouldn't know it. And so the son the son doesn't see it, and so now it becomes a a a uh well, Jesus all kinds of versions of relationships, but the but the marriage is a marriage where they endure each other, uh a marriage where they uh are angry at each other, where they yell, where they criticize, they blame, they pick, uh they have people have all kinds of relationships. And and remember, when they're getting older, it becomes even less attractive to to have those those things happen. But uh people are talking about their mother and father, the that the people that raise them, right? So what you want is a pretty positive person, a pretty positive father and a pretty positive mother that has a sense of beh a sense of humor, uh, and they have the ability to talk to each other. That's a really great relationship. Because if you grow up in that, you grow up in a flexible, more open, less critical environment. And that's really what everybody wants. They want to live uh in a place uh where I call this the kid standard. The kid standard is mom, I want you and dad to like each other, and then I want you and dad to make me feel important. That's the kid standard, right? Just like each other and treat me important or make me feel important. If you just do that, I'll turn out okay, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 23:54

Yeah. And what is the you mentioned the book, what is the name of it, sir? On the audio.

SPEAKER_00: 23:59

So this this is the book. The book is this is not the woman I married. Uh so this book is for men. This is not the woman I married. And and why? Because the men who call me, they say this line. Oh, this is not the woman I married. Why is it not the woman I married? Because the woman you married is a chaos kid. She she grew up in abandonment, abuse, neglect, some version of that. And she has that stored in her subconscious. And so when she gets to be uh 30, 40 years old, that's the time when it comes out. That's the midlife. That's the time when it arrives. And so that midlife crisis is a crisis because what was in there in the beginning from childhood is now coming out. And what does it do? What does it do? It affects the personality. It makes the personality into what you were born into. So whatever those values are down there, uh like lying, stealing, survival, justification, distortion, manipulation, right? All those things are in there. They're all waiting for the need to come out and and just be taken over. Right? So how does it happen? Well, it happens usually from big events like the death of a father or death of a mother. That's a big event that could trigger the the midlife crisis. Uh or the father or the mother gets sick, uh and it becomes like a a terminal situation that they can't can't handle. And then they uh a big move, that's a another thing, a big move that, you know, especially when a woman leaves the place she grew up and goes to some place that he wants to go, and now she knows nobody. She knows nobody, now she's like really unsettled and she's not feeling safe. So that's a place for a midlife crisis to happen. Uh another favorite place is called uh the home improvement. A home improvement is a place where a lot of stress takes place. Uh in fact, a lot of people who tell me that they were uh they're in these these midlife crisis situations, uh, there's always a home being renovated or a home being bought or a home being rebuilt. Something with a home, right? Why is that? Well, that's a huge thing on people's lives. Their home isn't it's part of their identity. And so when the home gets involved, uh and I've heard this so many times, the guys tell me, and we just finished our house, and it's a beautiful house, and it's a show place, and and now she does this, right? So he's he's all frustrated because the home is involved at this physical building. So a renovation could be a very stressful thing that could ignite the midlife crisis. Um, but while we're on this midlife crisis idea, I think it's really important to point out uh what is a bucker, a B-U-C-K-E-R, a bucker. A bucker like this comes from the bucking bronco idea. Uh the bucking bronco throws off the rider. And so, what is a bucker? A bucker is throwing off the parents' messages, trying to throw them off. And so they what happens is a bucker creates three steps. And the three steps they and by the way, they're doing this like four or five, six times a day. They're going through these three steps. Step number one is stop. I'm not doing that. Now, what happened there? Well, the subconscious came up with an idea. An idea that dad would come up with, or a damn mom would come up with, right? And that they said, stop, I'm not doing it. So that's the first resistance. The second one is I'm doing this instead. I'm gonna do this instead. So now they borrow a value from probably the person they married. A value they don't have. They're borrowing it, right? So they they borrow borrow uh a thing called consistency, or they borrow kindness, or they borrow listening, or they borrow some really good trait. And so they borrow it and they then they the third step is they act out the trait. So they didn't just borrow it, they borrow the idea. They act it out as if they had it. Okay, so now we're talking about who? We're talking about the people in the midlife crisis. Who are those people? They're they're lawyers, they're doctors, they're scientists, they're entertainers, they're they're athletes, they're they're all these people that have extremely successful lives. Uh what are they doing though? In their private life, they're living like buckers. And they're fighting this one, two, three, one, two, three over and over again. Well, you can see what they're doing. They're fighting their subconscious mind. Because the subconscious mind is coming up with the ideas and they say, Stop, I'm not doing that. Then they deny it and they say, I'm doing this instead, and then they act it out. Well, those three steps are exhausting. They're exhausting. It's very hard to be a bucker, it's very hard to be a person who's having to go through the three-step process. The other thing I want to point out is that every single person that I talk to, by the way, they're called stayers. The people I talk to are called stayers, and they talk about levers. That's the person they marry. They leave the marriage. So when they talk about the uh levers, they they they say, uh, he just snapped. He just snapped. He was so wonderful and he just snapped, and that's how it sounds. He was so wonderful. Why? Because he's borrowing values over and over again. Values he doesn't own. What what what's he doing? He's literally pacing the value on top of this subconscious mess of chaos. And so, what are the buckers? Their buckers are chaos kids who literally fight in their subconscious mind. It's a hard, hard life to live. And uh uh buckers uh as a as a group uh are are not able to keep up their lives because they're fighting that that mind. And because they're fighting that mind, they can't keep up the life, they can't stay married, they can't keep consistently following through because they're under that pressure, and then when the final final thing comes a bit death or a move or whatever the big trigger is, uh they're gonna snap. And when they snap a scary thing happens. Uh this person becomes uh and and I see this in in as I I teach about midlife crisis uh what the people who are staying tell me about these people who are leaving these buckers is that their eyes become I don't want to say black they don't become black they become darker their eyes become somehow to the person who knows them become not like their eyes like in and they can't even describe it they can't picture it they say like the eye becomes like a diamond. No the eyes it's not like that right it's just that the person who who loved them sees something that they never saw in their face before. But it's in the eyes. And what the eyes when the eyes go dark they can see that there's like some kind of creature that's taking them over. And they they talk about that. They talk about the monster that's taking them over. But that that's the life of buckers and chaos kids. But but all that is to say uh in the in the environment of a of a of a a person who's a bucker a chaos kid who collapses into a midlife crisis what does a stayer do? A stayer can decide I can change my mind. I can change what I believe I can change what I think I can change what I imagine. And what you believe what you think and what you imagine that's energy. And as you change energy everything starts to change. And so that's something that you can't actually tell people that because they you know they might hear something like this from me and think boy I would like to change that about what I think what I imagine or what I believe. But it is not easy. It's not easy because you have to have a foundation under you to really change what you think what you imagine what you believe and that becomes very very difficult if you don't have training. So that's what what I'm doing every day I'm I'm training people and how to change what they're what they're doing in their mind. Change their mind change the world.

SPEAKER_01: 32:27

Yeah and how can people reach you or what how can they find you to work with you or learn about you and what you're meant to do.

SPEAKER_00: 32:34

So so the the the program is our end you can save thismarriage dot com uh and then you could also go to larrybilana.com or there's a lot of videos there of ideas that I talk about uh and those are all uh things that uh you know you get you get enough of this uh idea you know could people hear from me they hear chaos kids uh and they never heard of a chaos kid before they don't know what it is and so if you want to get familiar with chaos kids you can go to Larryballada.com and start to watch videos and start learning about chaos kids and and marriage and and what happens with intimacy and how it disappears because the chaos comes for them and then it's kind of it's it's not it's not too late. And so we have pinballs and we have environment changers. And pinballs are people who react to everything and react emotionally all the time and in a bad way. Environment changers are busy changing the environment of their mind and because they change the environment of their mind they're not pinballs. And so they they have a chance to to literally change anything but pinballs can't change anything. Pinballs are fixed in the life of reaction. Environment changers can change the environment of their minds and that's going to change a lot of things for them.

SPEAKER_01: 33:52

Yeah and I know that they talk about the fixed and growth mindset it sounds like the pinballers are fixed mindset people.

SPEAKER_00: 34:02

Well well yeah because they they've live they're living in fear and in living in fear they think fear is giving them safety and because they think fear is giving them safety and they've never heard anything else like fear is making me feel safe yeah it does but it doesn't give you safety it literally gives you a s uh a a temporary feeling of safety which then comes to be a real punishing effect later on and it's so it's got like a a little reward and then a really big long side effect that that's the the whole problem of fear. Fear does that to people yeah and I was gonna say um how would you kind of summarize or wrap this up just uh our closing thoughts so I I I was having a an argument with my daughter because uh she she I I was saying childhood makes marriage I was saying childhood makes marriage and childhood makes marriage what she and she's saying why would you say that nobody understands that nobody understands and you've got to have a long explanation about why childhood makes marriage and so what I'm trying to say is that childhood once you marry you marry a family and when you marry that family you're marrying that childhood and you're marrying all the characters in the family and so if there's alcohol if there's drugs if there's immorality if there's all kinds of distortions of all kinds you're gonna get have that in your life and then when you have kids with your chaos kid you're gonna have that in your kids' life and so now you're gonna be if you if you've got a really good morality and you're the person you marry does not have a really good morality you're literally in two separate worlds and now you can't you have no way to to to meld them until you get to that love side leave fear and go to love. The reason I talk about fear and love so much is because that's the great dividing line which divides people from fear people and love people. And love people are you know there's not a lot of them it's really hard to find people who actually live uh on the on the energy of love they just they just like it's a thing they they just adopt it they adopt it they take it on and it feels very comfortable for them and they wouldn't consider anything else but when you're living in love you're not judging you're not criticizing you're not doing you're not you're not doing all the things that are fear requires and fear requires a lot yeah a lot of bad stuff. Yeah no I mean so childhood makes marriage is what what I'm trying to say.

SPEAKER_01: 36:30

Yeah and I like the idea um obviously you said it works going towards love I can just see where if you look at a list of both sides and you remind yourself of the love side when you're making decisions or things and when you you like you said when writing it down is the more important part. I can see having a list and whenever you're reacting look at the list and be like yes let me do the right thing or the positive thing or the love thing.

SPEAKER_00: 36:53

Because you're you're gonna end up doing eventually what you admire. And when you realize you admire love and you don't admire fear it's like makes everything clearer in life and so everything now becomes like uh where's the love in this where's the fear in this uh oh yeah there's the fear in this I don't want that I want love and so now that now I'm I'm literally using words to try to explain this uh but it's something that happens instantly when you start to train yourself to leave fear and move to love. Yeah and it becomes something that becomes easier to do. For sure. Because it's just a feeling you feel it. For sure.

SPEAKER_01: 37:32

Yeah I've I've definitely heard things like this and I but maybe like slightly different way so I I definitely like the way you put it and I'm going to leave it there unless you have one more thing to like like a closing comment kind of thing um the other thing is uh everybody's got a spirituality in their life uh you've got uh Jewish a Jewish Buddhist uh a Buddhist Christian Catholic uh like something you have something in your life some some foundation some set of ideas that you got in the beginning and that's your foundation and uh and I found that people who don't have a spiritual foundation don't have the ability to hold on to these ideas and apply them but the people who have a spiritual foundation somehow have they've got the ability to assemble everything into a system that they can start to live in.

SPEAKER_00: 38:33

But if you don't have that spiritual foundation it doesn't hold together. And that becomes very difficult when people have no spiritual foundation. So I've had faithful say to me um no I was raised uh with no really no religion at all and uh my mother and father they they just they just didn't believe in anything right so that's that's having a child with no spiritual foundation and so if you want to get a low a life of improvement you got to get really determined to get a life of improvement when you have that background. But then somebody who says I grew up in uh listening to uh sermons uh Christian sermons I grew up listening to Catholic sermons I grew up listening to right well that's the fountain spiritual foundation they have and it didn't matter that they don't remember one single thing that doesn't matter what matters is that everything they heard got in and it all somehow stayed and because that stayed that's your spiritual foundation and we've got it it's gonna help you a lot to learn these ideas about love.

SPEAKER_01: 39:41

Yeah I can definitely see that yeah all right well thank you very much for all of these concepts and ideas to save a loveless marriage and turn everything around and your own life you know being in love and having a spiritual foundation I can definitely see the benefits though thank you very much for being all right and if you love this episode be sure to tell your friends about it and rate it as well all right thanks everyone