The Path To Liberated Love with Mark Groves

[00:00:00] Mark Groves: What I have now since realized so much is that that shame that I would experience sometimes when I was out of integrity with my values which I maybe not would have been able to write down on a piece of paper because no one had asked me them or I hadn't constructively intentionally through my feelings and my body's response to things.

[00:00:20] Mark Groves: actually written down what they were and then if I was to then write them down then now I'm accountable to them and I got to clean up my whole life because to me that's healing. Oh totally. Like you wonder why you have anxiety or depression or you feel off or you feel overwhelmed, it's because you're overriding and probably violating one or multiple values that you have.

[00:00:47] Nikki La Croce: Hey, gang, I am so excited to share this week's episode with you. I had the incredibly good fortune to sit down with the one and only Mark Groves, founder of Create The Love, host of the Mark Groves podcast, and most recently, co author of the book Liberated Love, which he wrote with his wife, Kylie. During our conversation, we tackle a lot of topics relating to how we show up as people, personal accountability, relationships, boundaries, all that good stuff.

[00:01:14] Nikki La Croce: And I could sit here and tell you a lot more about it, but why waste any more time when we could just jump into the conversation? So let's do it. Hi, I'm Nikki La Croce and you're listening to Can I Just Say? And today I'm super excited for our guest Mark Groves to be here. A big part of why this is such an important moment for me and just a monumental moment for me.

[00:01:31] Nikki La Croce: Time is because Mark's episode, Crushing Codependency Myths with Terry Cole, was really the catalyst for helping me leave the codependent abusive relationship that I was in and ultimately launched me forward to where I am now and living a life that I do truly love and I'm grateful for. So with that, I will say I am indefinitely grateful to you and welcome to the show, Mark.

[00:01:53] Mark Groves: Oh my god, I'm so excited to be here and what a powerful transformation that is, right? I think that's why the power of podcasting or whatever our vehicle of expression is, you don't even realize what it can do. Right, right. Yeah. I think like a conversation I had with Terry Cole helped you find a way to transform your life and, and notice the things that were unhealthy, you know, in whatever way.

[00:02:21] Nikki La Croce: Yeah.

[00:02:22] Mark Groves: To move forward and look what you've created.

[00:02:25] Nikki La Croce: It's, it's incredible. And I feel like what was so, it's kind of funny. My therapist is the one who recommended the episode to me. I had been following your content and I was really trying to think about this earlier today. I was like, when did they start listening to your show?

[00:02:40] Nikki La Croce: Because I think it happened pretty organically. I must've been following Create The Love because for a long time you had a lot of quotes that were like very powerful. And, um, I then found you and your podcast and there are several vivid moments that I have listening to your show, even in moments where, uh, your relationship with your now wife, Kylie, was deconstructing at the time.

[00:03:04] Nikki La Croce: And I remember being, In my car, listening to this and, and thinking to myself, Oh, okay. I thought that that was, you know, his, his partner that had been established and this was going to be the relationship that you were in. I may have even thought you were married at the time. And so I feel like kind of being witness to your experience and your growth and your accountability to yourself opened my mind and heart to the idea that, okay, Even if it has these moments that feel right, are you feeling true to yourself?

[00:03:36] Nikki La Croce: And I really admire that that's what you bring to the table. You have a very beautiful way of expressing yourself with such integrity and You also share outwardly so much that people keep inside. So in terms of kind of kicking off the conversation, do you feel like you've always been that way? Has this always been a part of yourself that you have had access to or felt inclined to share with people that emotionality that quite honestly a lot of men, at least historically, have not been comfortable sharing?

[00:04:12] Mark Groves: Man, what a great point of inquiry. I, no, I haven't. And I think a lot of that was when I was younger, it became so important to me now because I didn't do it, like the cost of having these internal dialogues, these internal narratives, these internal thought processes that really I was stewing on, I was storing, I was hiding, you know, I even think of some of the Hardest relational moments, which, you know, I might have processed with good friends on the phone, you know, when you're a teenager Yeah, like you spend way too much time talking on the phone.

[00:04:46] Mark Groves: Maybe people don't know. I don't know. They just snap each other

[00:04:49] Nikki La Croce: Right

[00:04:50] Mark Groves: or FaceTime. They probably FaceTime which is more intimate, but I um, I didn't outwardly express all the things I was navigating. I kind of hid the things I was ashamed of or afraid of And when I started my journey of learning about relationships, it was because an engagement ended.

[00:05:09] Mark Groves: And it was through that, that I was just catalyzed, you know, to want to discover and learn so much about why. I wasn't good at them. Like, it was very self oriented. Yeah. Like, how did I get to a place where I forgot about myself, and I forgot about what mattered to me? How long had it been since I'd done that?

[00:05:30] Mark Groves: You know, I realized that if you don't pay attention to why you're choosing what you're choosing, or even what you're choosing, you can live a very long period, if not a whole life, unconsciously and in some way directionless. But really motivated by what other people see as a successful life or, uh, the right thing to do, quote unquote.

[00:05:50] Mark Groves: It was when I started to write about what I was learning about relationships and the things that I had done, quote unquote, wrong, that I started to see the value in In other people witnessing themselves through my vulnerability. And really my writing is, that's where it started. I wrote a blog. It was a way that I could excise my shame.

[00:06:11] Mark Groves: Like I could get it out of me. Like I, I didn't show up properly. I, I was shallow or I was this, but here's what I've learned. And so there was this, um, also an accountability.

[00:06:23] Nikki La Croce: I love that you started there because that was actually something that I wanted to lead with and I was like, do I jump right into this and go right at it?

[00:06:32] Nikki La Croce: Um, so with that segue, so accountability is, I feel it starts with self awareness. And then once you're aware you need to become accountable if you're going to make any sort of change. And so do you feel like there's something that you look back on and you say that was the hardest part of myself to face that I had to acknowledge, accept, and then actually decide I was going to transform?

[00:06:58] Nikki La Croce: Speaking about shame, I think that that's for a lot of us the, the underlying thing, but do you have any recognition of what maybe the core of that shame was?

[00:07:09] Mark Groves: Yeah, you know, I had a, I can remember the first time I really journaled was after I, so there was this woman I was dating and I wanted, I could tell I wanted to break up with her.

[00:07:21] Mark Groves: I needed to break up with her. And I was like, okay, I had made a rule at that point in my life that I had to have every conversation I didn't want to have. So I was like, okay, I gotta have this conversation. I don't want to have it, but I have to. But I was like, I'll just put it off. So I put it off for two weeks.

[00:07:40] Mark Groves: And then when I finally broke up with her, she said to me, you knew this two weeks ago, but you kept stringing me along and I ended up Investing more deeply and you, you didn't invest at all. You were just preparing for this conversation. And I remember that night when she left, there was just so much truth to what she was saying.

[00:08:01] Mark Groves: And I actually saw the impact of my delay in having a conversation. I saw this. Yeah. And so I adjusted my rule that I have to have every conversation I don't want to have. And I have to have it as soon as I know I need to have it.

[00:08:16] Nikki La Croce: I, I look forward to my wife hearing this conversation because she was much better at that, as she told me.

[00:08:24] Nikki La Croce: Prior to our meeting that she could establish that, you know, I'm not in this anymore I'm not going to pretend to be in this whereas I was the one who if I felt somebody Kind of pulling away I was probably similar to the person that you were dating at the time where I'm like What can I do to invest more that will maybe make you realize that you want to be in this You posted something the other day about don't be in a relationship Where somebody else doesn't wanna be in it with you.

[00:08:53] Nikki La Croce: And I felt that on such a visceral level because the type of codependent I was was the one who really leaned into, I can do more, I can be more, I can show up more for you. Mm. However, to do that, I'm going to abandon myself. And that piece of shame and that accountability, um, you know, they weren't at the surface for me yet.

[00:09:19] Nikki La Croce: It was like, there was a very deep seated shame that allowed me to live in that space to try to pretend that something was something that it wasn't. Um, to allow me to lie to myself for so long. And then also the lack of accountability because I didn't want to acknowledge that what I felt to be true was actually true.

[00:09:39] Nikki La Croce: And so I feel like having the ability to, as you're saying, identify that, not only be accountable to it, but also to say, I have to set this boundary for myself so that not only can I sort of release somebody from, you know, whatever I might be contributing to a relationship that's not healthy, but for myself to really be free and explore what's right for me.

[00:10:03] Nikki La Croce: Like you're, it's a service I think to everybody. Both people in a relationship if you have that recognition and you can say I care about you, but it's not a fit

[00:10:14] Mark Groves: Oh, I mean, that's love Right, like there's this idea especially for people who are martyrs or like people pleasers chasers It if if someone in the relationship is dysfunctional and the relationship doesn't change and stays intact That means both people in the relationship are dysfunctional.

[00:10:34] Mark Groves: Mm hmm. So if we are knowingly or unknowingly participating in dysfunction, there's, we are part of it. Yeah. And I think one of the aspects of relational teachings that really kind of emphasizes the continue to fight for things is this idea that people, let's say, who are anxiously attached or people pleaser or codependent, they all tend to overlap because they're a cluster of behaviors.

[00:10:57] Mark Groves: Yeah. Um, and we could choose whatever label, but it's really people who tend to self abandon and, and oscillate and prioritize other people's needs at the cost of themselves and of their own safety, of their own security. Right. And so the, the conversation that tends to happen is, well, There's something wrong with the person you're in relationship with, but actually it is the leaving of your own center, the leaving of yourself that is also, I don't want to say something wrong, but it, but it's dysfunctional.

[00:11:28] Mark Groves: It's not producing healthy relationships because if you need someone to finally see your worth, someone to have some sort of problem that you need to solve, then them getting healthy or them providing you with the thing that you seek from them. It doesn't create healthy relationship dynamics. Right.

[00:11:45] Mark Groves: They're conditional. It's like very conditional. It's so codependent. You know, I have a friend who said that in their healing of their codependency, that they could turn anyone codependent. They were so good. They could take like a fully functioning normal human and make them under function, which I was like, that's a pretty funny.

[00:12:03] Nikki La Croce: Yeah. It's a, what a skill. Um, yeah, that's a, that's a really interesting point. I, I mean, I think that. Growing up, I don't think I understood how prone I was to abandoning myself. And a lot of what happened when I would be in therapy, and I remember when I first started, I started because I felt passionless in my work.

[00:12:27] Nikki La Croce: And then it was like, here's all the other stuff you should really be focusing on. And when that happened, I started to look back at my life and really think, okay, well, When did this insecurity start? When did I start not feeling good enough? And I'm curious, something that I don't know that I've heard you talk about a lot in your show, and maybe you haven't, I just haven't caught these episodes, is when you were younger, have you looked at that part of your life and established if there was a time or a pattern, um, or things that were modeled to you that kind of cultivated that sense of shame or that?

[00:13:04] Nikki La Croce: essentially the effect that like developed your codependency?

[00:13:10] Mark Groves: Yeah, I mean, it's probably multi layered in how it expressed in that I'm the youngest of three. My mom was a stay at home mom and then went back to college while we were young. And my mom was overwhelmed. She was overwhelmed a lot. And And because she was overwhelmed, you know, there's this unconscious thing like, well, if my mom isn't okay, then I'm not okay.

[00:13:37] Nikki La Croce: Yeah.

[00:13:38] Mark Groves: Right? So I started to oscillate around my mom's feelings and I would say that I became like the good boy, not make any mistakes, keep it all together, because I didn't want her, I didn't want to contribute to more overwhelm. Mm hmm. And I You know, it's like our society is structured to have overwhelmed moms, to have overwhelmed people, so this is no shame or blame on her, it's actually the result of the fact that the way that we have structured, at least especially in the western world, that people are not aware There is, you know, it takes a village, it's a saying we just happen to not have such proximity, right?

[00:14:18] Mark Groves: Uh, which I think immigrant households do such a good job of like, maybe through necessity, but through tradition that they have multi generational homes, which is, that's how you alleviate some of the weight of carrying things. Now, granted, there's a line between collectivism and overt independence. Both have toxicity, which you can see express itself in many ways in families and culture.

[00:14:41] Mark Groves: But, and that really speaks, that's the meta version of can I be myself and be in a relationship? Right. Can I oscillate between like, I'm a me and you're a you, and there's an us. Most of us, Either abandon ourselves for relationship or abandon relationship for self.

[00:14:58] Nikki La Croce: So many people I think end up settling for something that isn't really an integrity with who they are because they have a belief about themselves or of what a relationship should be that they're sort of navigating towards instead of pausing and sort of like adjusting and asking themselves, well, does this feel right?

[00:15:22] Nikki La Croce: Does this feel true to who I am and what I want and how I want to be treated? How I want to feel I can treat the person that I'm with? And when you speak about sort of the way that relationships have been exposed to us and, and shown like, this is what you do, whether that's parent child relationships in the way that, you know, a lot of mothers sacrifice, um, for their children.

[00:15:44] Nikki La Croce: My mom was also a stay at home mom for a long time. And that was after she had this really big life where she did a lot for herself. And so, you know, you see that sacrifice. And I think some of that, um, you know, in my life, I'm sure weighed on me. And then at the same time, there's these, Moments that I think about where it's like just in the process of learning more about myself in the relationship where I wasn't happy and denying that, right.

[00:16:09] Nikki La Croce: And, and just like shoving aside that feeling of disconnect from self in the interest of trying to connect more deeply with somebody else. And it's like, oh, ew. Like, no, don't do that. You know? But it's kind of one of those, in hindsight, it's very easy to see, but in the thick of it, it's really challenging.

[00:16:27] Mark Groves: Yeah. Yeah, it's survival. It comes from such a beautiful place, unfortunately it ends up as an adult being really painful because it was painful for the kid. And you think about how many of us are taught to override our needs, our wants, our senses. So you know, if you're like in your childhood taking care of your siblings, taking care of your parent, have an alcoholic parent, a narcissistic parent, an overwhelmed parent, you have an addict, like you have all these.

[00:16:56] Mark Groves: Your life becomes around other, and then you forget about a self or never developed one fully just because there wasn't an adult there and there wasn't enough support. You know, like I think so many of us are born in to relationship or born into family raised by children, emotionally children. And that's like, That's not an insult.

[00:17:18] Mark Groves: It's just that developmentally, we are now being asked to move to another level. We're being asked to, to actually grow up emotionally. And that requires an immense amount of responsibility and accountability. And it doesn't begin without accountability. And, you know, there's no transformation. That begins without a come to Jesus moment of, like, getting with the truth.

[00:17:44] Mark Groves: And I think, you know, coming back to your question that you asked earlier, it was like, I had to be with the truth of who I was being. And like how I was showing up and that started with the recognition of like that, you know, that woman saying that to me that led me to start journaling like, Oh my God, I, I did do that.

[00:18:02] Mark Groves: I caused her harm because of my fear of a hard conversation. So me not showing up to something I know, and now it was just glaringly true that I knew that I needed to have those conversations quickly because I was hurting someone else through my own fear of being an adult. Yeah. That's interesting. What, what I have now since realized so much is that that shame that I would experience sometimes when I was out of integrity with my values, which I maybe not would have been able to write down on a piece of paper because no one had asked me them or I hadn't constructively intentionally, uh, through my feelings and my body's response to things actually written down what they were.

[00:18:44] Mark Groves: And then if I was to then write them down, then now I'm accountable to them and I got to clean up my whole life because to me, that's healing. Oh, totally. Like, you wonder why you have anxiety or depression or you feel off or you feel overwhelmed. It's because you're overriding and probably violating one or multiple values that you have.

[00:19:05] Mark Groves: Yeah. And what happens when we do that is we experience what I would call healthy shame. I was talking to a friend the other day and they're like, all shame is toxic. And I'm like, No. Shame that is about the violation of your own integrity and morality, which is different than the shame from projected morality from religion.

[00:19:25] Nikki La Croce: Yeah, yeah.

[00:19:26] Mark Groves: That shame that is our own value system that we're in violation of. If we do not listen, And change our behavior and get into alignment, then it becomes toxic. But that would be true of any unhealthy choice. Yeah. It doesn't have to be correlated to shame. Because any choice you make that you know is not good for you says that the information your body's giving you is not valuable and that you're not valuable.

[00:19:49] Mark Groves: And so that will all correlate to autoimmune, to all these different things. What is autoimmune? The body is at war with itself. It is fighting itself. Well, what are you doing when you don't listen to your values? When you don't make choices that are aligned? You're at war with yourself. So it's like what a physical manifestation of that and don't get me wrong a lot of autoimmune and those types of Presentations occur really young they they can occur through onsets of Trauma very early in our life before we're even consciously Right?

[00:20:25] Mark Groves: So it's like, we still have

[00:20:26] Nikki La Croce: generational trauma too, right? That you don't know what's affecting you.

[00:20:29] Mark Groves: Oh my gosh. You can look up your family tree and it will, it'll express differently. There's beautiful research on this, but it'll express differently. If your great grandfather or your great grandmother went through a famine, it'll express differently in the generations below based on if it's the maternal or paternal arm.

[00:20:46] Mark Groves: But you can see like, I mean, there's mice who to, uh, the smell of cherry blossoms and they're shocked. And then when they, Observe three generations later when mice are exposed to the smell of a cherry blossom, which we live in Vancouver. They're beautiful. These mice run from it because they've never been shocked with a cherry blossom association, but because generationally they were, they're still afraid of cherry blossoms, even though there's technically nothing to fear.

[00:21:17] Mark Groves: Well, think about how that shows up in all of us. If you're, Great grandmother expressed a boundary and was abused or hurt or hung or burned at the stake. It's a, you know, that epigenetically, you're not going to be speaking out about things. Right, right. So you wonder why it's so hard to put words to something.

[00:21:38] Mark Groves: You can just look up your family tree and be like, what happened the last time someone put words to a feeling? Oh, oh, so this is when I need to access my voice. Why is it so hard? Why does it feel like when you tell someone to work on a boundary and you're like, just say no to dinner on Friday. And they're like, Oh, and I'm saying to them, like, have compassion because your access to a no could have genetic imprinting that is saying you're going to die.

[00:22:07] Nikki La Croce: Right.

[00:22:07] Mark Groves: And even though it's just dinner, it's also disappointing people. So then you have to look, how did I relate to disappointing people in my childhood? What was I taught? What was my family system? Uh, what did it teach about it? So, you know, it's all multi layered. Being a human is complex, but it's, it is simple in one sense that it's like, what matters to you?

[00:22:26] Mark Groves: What do you value? If you don't know what that is, who do you look up to?

[00:22:29] Nikki La Croce: Mmm,

[00:22:30] Mark Groves: those are probably values you want to emulate. So you adopt their values,

[00:22:34] Nikki La Croce: right? And then

[00:22:35] Mark Groves: you just find better fits. You fine tune them.

[00:22:37] Nikki La Croce: Yeah, I like that idea. And I feel like it's really interesting that you brought up the values thing because that was actually something that when I exited the last relationship that I was in, I actually, it was like the week that my wife and I established that we had feelings for each other.

[00:22:53] Nikki La Croce: And I was in therapy and just sort of this recognition of, you know, okay. And feeling needed, I felt wanted. And so like I had to unpack that. And then I was like, okay, so all I ever wanted was, for somebody to love me the way that I loved them. That was my standard. And something that you mentioned in an episode that I was listening to was like, do you even have standards, right?

[00:23:14] Nikki La Croce: And the way I established for myself before getting into something else, and what I really needed to do and didn't realize until that moment was, what are my core values? Sort of theoretically, I knew what they were, right? Like they exist. Like I tried to embody things, but the actual, you know, look at it on paper and establish this for yourself.

[00:23:35] Nikki La Croce: This is how you feel about it. Actually led me to the opportunity to create a list of my wants, needs, and deal breakers. The list of deal breakers was mostly a list of things that were related to my ex.

[00:23:48] Mark Groves: Yeah. They become pretty obvious. I was like, none of these

[00:23:50] Nikki La Croce: things. Thank you.

[00:23:51] Mark Groves: Yeah.

[00:23:52] Nikki La Croce: Then I was like, but what do I really want?

[00:23:54] Nikki La Croce: you know, what are the things that I'd like to have? And okay, great. If I can have those, awesome. And then there are the needs. These are the things that I will not abandon,

[00:24:03] Mark Groves: right? These are

[00:24:03] Nikki La Croce: the things that I have to hold true to because most of my last relationship I was abandoning myself. And my therapist had said to me, the hardest thing that will happen when you're leaving a narcissistic relationship is reclaiming your sense of self.

[00:24:18] Nikki La Croce: And I was like, That is a factual statement

[00:24:21] Mark Groves: filled with so much grief.

[00:24:22] Nikki La Croce: Yeah, and it's um and to your point sort of shame the disappointment the frustration with myself For abandoning myself and going down that road of how did I let this happen? But what I really find so beautiful about it and and in relation to what you're saying is it prompted me to take a really hard look at myself and think, okay, this is who I perceive myself to be, but these are the actions that I'm taking and that doesn't align.

[00:24:48] Nikki La Croce: If these two things are not the same, or at least, you know, trending the same direction, how can I feel that I'm being true to myself? And if I'm not being true to myself, how can I show up in other relationships in my life, romantically or otherwise, that actually are going to make help me grow and flourish and also be the best I can be as a part of somebody else's support system.

[00:25:11] Nikki La Croce: So I feel like the idea of really thinking about and understanding and establishing your values in more than a theoretical sense, really putting it on paper and forcing yourself to look at it was just a pivotal moment to be able to say, okay, this is what a big part of who I am and what I care about.

[00:25:30] Nikki La Croce: And if I'm going to move forward in my life, then I need to do my best to live in integrity with these things. And one of those values being integrity, you know, and making sure that I'm showing up for myself first and foremost. And that's something that you and Kylie talk about a lot. And you in general, with your show is that coming back to self and really saying like, how does this fit?

[00:25:52] Nikki La Croce: into who I am in my life, but also that we need to be open and willing to adapt because we're learning and changing and figuring that out as we go. So it's not like the shame shouldn't be associated with the fact that you're shifting. In fact, I think A good way to release the shame is to recognize that those shifts are happening and then also give yourself space and compassion and grace for knowing more now than maybe you knew then.

[00:26:20] Mark Groves: Yeah, I think void of the application of the awareness is where the shame becomes toxic. So it's like, It's Maya Angelou who has that quote, like, When we know better, do better. Yes. Right? What a beautiful quote. What a shareable quote. Right. But a livable quote is very different. It's livable, but it requires what you're saying is like, Okay, I've written down who I am, who I think myself to be, who I want myself to be.

[00:26:45] Mark Groves: Right. Right? My idealized self. And then it's like, who am I being? Mm. Well that gap as you're talking about creates a dissonance if it's not aligned. I remember one of my favorite quotes, you probably heard me share it, is from Ramm Dass where he says, um, he quotes, I think it's Gandhi, who says, um, let my life be my message.

[00:27:06] Mark Groves: Mm-Hmm. and Ramm Dass says, I hope that I live with the integrity, that the truth that live within me are the same as the truths that live outside of me.

[00:27:16] Nikki La Croce: Oh,

[00:27:16] Mark Groves: and when those, when that isn't true, I'm sending a love, a message of both love and fear. I think a lot about that. When I heard that, I remember exactly where I was walking.

[00:27:25] Mark Groves: I was walking through Washington Square Park in New York. And I remember just being like, Oh, that's like the verbal expression of what I experienced when I'm not in alignment is like, I'm actually sending a message of fear and love. So I'm split. And you know, I, I think, like, to aspire to always be an integrity is a goal, not a possibility.

[00:27:51] Mark Groves: That's a really good point. Right? It's like, uh, in AA they have that famous line that, uh, It's about progress, not perfection. Because, uh, It's just more of punitive consciousness. If you're like, Oh, I made that mistake. I'm such a fuck up. I'm this, I'm that. And it's like, you can be with, I made a mistake and then change because when then you start to have gratitude for your awarenesses, for your pain, for your suffering, for the things you've been through in your life.

[00:28:19] Mark Groves: I think it's much, it's much easier to let something go no matter what the experience is. And that's not to minimize the experiences people have had. Yeah. But it's a lot easier to let go of the pain that lives there when you actually turn it into a transformation. And that can be really hard because, you know, that conversation brings up things like abuse, things like violence, domestic violence.

[00:28:44] Mark Groves: Those are all such incredibly important, sensitive subjects to acknowledge, right? And the hard part is, is that you can't, nor can I, go back in our past and change any of that. Okay. Well, that's true. So we could just be with that truth. Right. . Okay, well if I have to adopt this line that I hear personal growth people talk about where they say it happened for you, not to you.

[00:29:08] Mark Groves: And then of course, what I see in response to that is, oh yeah, the abuser happened for me. Great. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Like what an awful perspective to have someone have to hold in that sort of bypassing thinking. Yeah. But on some level there is truth to the saying, it's just that it needs to have a lot of small print that says you can be the victim of something.

[00:29:31] Nikki La Croce: Yeah,

[00:29:31] Mark Groves: and you are the victim of things and you're the victim of other people's behavior sometimes. Okay. Uh, like hold the compassion for that. Cause that's a big, that's a big one. And there is so much learning to cultivate from it. Because if you look at the experience and what a sensitive topic. So I acknowledge this, but it's like, if you look at the experience of a child who experiences abuse, They couldn't have access to it now.

[00:30:01] Mark Groves: Right. Okay, well if we're gonna just touch that tender space and be like, How's my relationship to no today? Maybe up our lineage that no was never there and that's why you see cycles of abuse move through families and all that kind of stuff. But it's like, man, to hold the complexity of that requires us to recognize the complexity of our experience.

[00:30:25] Mark Groves: To say, okay, I can't change it. If I was to just touch the idea, just to try it on, that there is an, there's an experience of growth and expansion that can be invited from it, not, not thanks universe for delivering me this, Oh God, you're so great for giving me suffering, but it's like, what could I get from it?

[00:30:46] Mark Groves: What could I extract from that? That would change me forever. Cause it has.

[00:30:51] Nikki La Croce: Wow. Yeah.

[00:30:52] Mark Groves: Right. Like I could either let the story change me forever. That. I'll never move through it and I'll never let it go. But this idea of forgiveness or moving on is somehow giving approval to something is not true. It's like to forgive something is to decide for yourself that you don't want to hold on to the pain of it anymore.

[00:31:12] Mark Groves: And the way to do that is to forgive. to at least give a purpose in whatever way we can, you know, if, if, because think of like the greatest transformations really occur when someone goes to the place of never again.

[00:31:21] Nikki La Croce: Well, that's a beautiful way of putting it. I love that. I, everything you just said, I think is spot on and in just reflecting on my own experience and knowing the never again was a massive factor in that, but also to really, as you said, sit with it.

[00:31:37] Nikki La Croce: I say frequently that I would never, if I could have achieved the growth that I've achieved and the transformation to your point, without having gone through the things that I went through, a hundred percent, I would be like, didn't need that to happen. Great. Happy to be here. I'll

[00:31:51] Mark Groves: take the easier path on life.

[00:31:52] Mark Groves: Number two. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Totally.

[00:31:55] Nikki La Croce: And, um, we'll just expedite it and

[00:31:57] Mark Groves: take the life with a yacht and a healthy family system.

[00:32:00] Nikki La Croce: Yes. And a

[00:32:01] Mark Groves: helicopter. And a Lamborghini.

[00:32:04] Nikki La Croce: Yes. Well, you know what? I could even do without the Lambo. Um, I'm just good with lay flat, um, flying. Just like, make sure I can rest. Ah, I mean, once you

[00:32:11] Mark Groves: taste a sleep in the air, it's hard to go back.

[00:32:14] Nikki La Croce: It is. I, I, I feel like my life's never changed. My

[00:32:17] Mark Groves: first job would, yeah, I remember my job as a rep when I was in pharma, uh, they had to fly you first class if you went intercontinental for meetings and stuff. And I remember getting on the plane and they're like, Oh, your seat's right here. And I was

[00:32:30] Nikki La Croce: I had a similar moment.

[00:32:31] Nikki La Croce: I was like, and this will be my life.

[00:32:32] Mark Groves: Right, right. I

[00:32:34] Nikki La Croce: mean, while I'm like, economy's fine. Yeah, exactly.

[00:32:37] Mark Groves: I was thinking of a Seinfeld episode where, uh, the flight attendant standing, closing the curtain. Oh, yeah. Hey, do you know this one? And he says, uh, or she, I can't remember, says, uh, if only you worked a little harder.

[00:32:48] Mark Groves: And closes, and closes the curtain.

[00:32:51] Nikki La Croce: Yes.

[00:32:52] Mark Groves: Yeah, it's true. Once you try laying down in there, it's, It's life changing. It's hard to go back to the vertical, uh, your feet getting swollen. They're, they're like,

[00:33:00] Nikki La Croce: would you like four extra inches? That will be a hundred dollars. And you're like, I don't think I do.

[00:33:05] Mark Groves: Or how about freshly baked cookies and a good sleep?

[00:33:07] Nikki La Croce: Yes, exactly. But yeah, I think that looking at that part of my life and, and, you know, as I mentioned, just some of your content. hit home so deeply at a time when I needed it in those moments, because it was like hearing somebody else reflect these moments, these profound realizations of what it means to sit with yourself and to really establish that awareness and that knowing because your body is telling you, as you mentioned earlier.

[00:33:38] Nikki La Croce: And, um, When you can feel it, but you're not doing something about it. I feel like that's the, the state of sort of perpetual victimhood that a lot of people find themselves in. It's the acknowledgement that it happened to you and the either unwillingness and or inability to extract yourself from that state of victimhood.

[00:33:59] Nikki La Croce: And I really appreciate appreciate what you said about, you know, those things happen and they're valid. I mean, I literally was in an abusive relationship. I was very unaware because I wasn't familiar with the ins and outs of covert narcissistic abuse. And so one of the hardest things for me. That's why it's covert.

[00:34:17] Nikki La Croce: Right. It's aptly named. Um, one of the biggest things even recently, like, I mean, present time right now that I've been having to access and really acknowledge is, I've been able to speak about it really objectively. I've been able to say, this is what happened. I've been able to tell people the story. The thing that I'm still like, how do you feel about it?

[00:34:40] Nikki La Croce: And not in the way where I was at first really resentful and angry and disgusted with my ex and my own shame that was encompassing me. But it's like, That really happened. Sit with it. Give yourself space to acknowledge what that really means. And part of why I feel like I was so motivated to transform with a forward trajectory was because I witnessed my ex living in a state of victimhood constantly.

[00:35:09] Nikki La Croce: You know, the targets on my back, I, you know, nothing ever goes right, et cetera. And. having this just really heightened awareness of, I will not be somebody that lets these things define me. I will be somebody that allows these moments to propel me forward and help me grow. And because I lost my mom, like literally at the same time that that exiting of that relationship was happening.

[00:35:33] Mark Groves: It's a lot of loss. Yeah,

[00:35:35] Nikki La Croce: it was intense. And I did a couple of solo episodes where I spoke about the, the, How it was two really different types of grief happening at the same time. And it was, how

[00:35:45] Mark Groves: would you differentiate them?

[00:35:46] Nikki La Croce: Uh, that's a great question. Thank you. Uh, so I would say one was a loss that I was grateful for because it gave me the freedom that I needed.

[00:36:00] Nikki La Croce: And it also, I think showed me my own capacity and strength in being able to remove myself from, um, the situation that was not suited for me and was quite, um, you know, traumatic for me. And the other was the loss that I had feared my entire life and knew that that would impact me for the rest of my life in a way that I don't know that you ever fully recover from the loss of a parent.

[00:36:32] Nikki La Croce: The other was like, I can't wait to recover from this.

[00:36:34] Mark Groves: Yeah. It was

[00:36:35] Nikki La Croce: like, I want to move through this grief so I can be done with it. Losing my mom was like, I'm going to continuously access this grief in various ways. Like even today is a great example. This is a very big moment for me and I'm so excited to have you here.

[00:36:48] Nikki La Croce: And yesterday it was really hard for me thinking. my mom would have like called to give me a pep talk. She would have put it in the calendar or said something, you know? And so I think just the recognition that one of those grief, um, one of those moments of grief was welcome and needed and the other was tragic and just the most undesirable kind of grief I could have imagined.

[00:37:09] Mark Groves: Isn't that interesting that like grief can hold that level of paradox? Yes. Like one is like, I'm excitedly sad.

[00:37:17] Nikki La Croce: Yeah,

[00:37:18] Mark Groves: you know at the you know, I think when we have grief that's associated with Like the ending of a circumstance that reminds us of what we've tolerated of You know what we've let ourselves be or what we've the standard we've created or accepted right that that through that we are grieving that we let ourselves down, that we didn't have access to our voice, you know, whatever it is, but you grieve what's po what was possible in the time we spent learning the thing.

[00:37:48] Nikki La Croce: Yeah.

[00:37:49] Mark Groves: And that's like a, There's a beautiful grief to that because you have to have compassion for the younger parts of us that didn't know till we know and the way to honor the younger part is to change. And I remember, uh, having a lot of judgment for like, uh, men with frosted tips, puka shell necklaces, you know, when they weren't in integrity in terms of their relationship to women.

[00:38:13] Mark Groves: Well, I had frosted tips, I had a bookshelf necklace, and I wasn't an integrity in my relationship to women. So I was still not, I still hadn't cultivated and excavated the totality that was available to me in that behavior, because I was judging it still in other people.

[00:38:28] Nikki La Croce: That's an interesting point to make too.

[00:38:30] Nikki La Croce: There is definitely that, um, heightened awareness of the projection that we manifest sometimes when you're coming out of it. And you're sort of looking back on yourself going, That was me, you know, and it's, it's an acceptance of the version of myself that I was. And it sounds like similarly for you, you sort of, it's almost an out of body experience, but looking at your past self and saying that's not who I am now.

[00:38:58] Mark Groves: Yeah. And. And being grateful, even though it's hard to do, to be grateful for who I was, because that's the only reason I know what I know today.

[00:39:06] Nikki La Croce: Yeah, that's a really good point.

[00:39:07] Mark Groves: I remember being in this, uh, psychotherapy training, and one of the, it was a group training, and one of the parts of the training is I had to face, All the women in the group, and apologize for how I had behaved when I was younger, and, and just like, my lack of integrity, and

[00:39:23] Nikki La Croce: Now these aren't women that you actually had No, this was an exercise?

[00:39:26] Nikki La Croce: Yeah. Okay. And

[00:39:27] Mark Groves: you know what was so profound about it? I mean, it was profound on many levels. I was in tears because I was really connecting with the shame I had. And we're talking like infidelity, um, just womanizing, but like operating in language. Like I don't want anything. I'm not interested. I I'm not looking for a relationship, but I unconsciously, this was not conscious.

[00:39:52] Mark Groves: I could sense that some of them wanted a relationship. So I could feel I was taking advantage of that. In hindsight, I could see these things and that my own fear of intimacy was causing me to control intimacy, to control the depth of connection. Right. So I was, Although, uh, easily I would have been able to justify it through like, I was always honest.

[00:40:14] Mark Groves: I was about my intentions and what I desired, but I was really dancing in the gray of language. I was a master of dancing in the gray of language. And I think probably now on social media, I'd be, I would have been called a narcissist. Um, but I still had empathy. So there was still that.

[00:40:29] Nikki La Croce: To be fair though, if we look at the true definition of a narcissist, I think that I, We're talking

[00:40:34] Mark Groves: the pop psychology Instagram version.

[00:40:38] Mark Groves: You know, whenever we call any avoidant behavior narcissism, which I had avoidant behavior. I had a disorganized detachment style. As soon as someone wanted me, I ran. As soon as they didn't want me, I ran towards, you know, so was interesting though, is as I can face these women and apologize to the feminine for my behavior.

[00:40:58] Mark Groves: They were all in tears. Because they had all experienced some level and craved in some way an apology from someone.

[00:41:06] Nikki La Croce: Yeah,

[00:41:07] Mark Groves: and so it was this profound moment for me where I've we shared a lot of communication after and a lot of gratitude I was so grateful they held that space for me, but that day I went back to my room and I was meditating and I felt the younger version of me re enter my body.

[00:41:25] Mark Groves: Like I swear to God, I was like eyes closed and I felt like 21 year old me just like come and sit down inside me because he was welcome again. And it was, it made me realize that I spent so much of my time rejecting younger versions of myself, because I was ashamed of them, not realizing that the only reason I could even develop the shame of the behavior and the awareness that better behavior was available was because of what they'd been through.

[00:41:56] Nikki La Croce: Wow.

[00:41:57] Mark Groves: Yeah, it was like a completely profound change for me.

[00:42:00] Nikki La Croce: I'm going to walk away from this conversation with that sort of in my head as one of the pivotal moments that's going to spark more change and growth in my life. So thank you for this. I think a lot about how when I was younger I Was I say to my wife constantly?

[00:42:15] Nikki La Croce: I'm like I was so desperate. I was so desperate and looking back on that version of myself I'm sad for

[00:42:22] Mark Groves: her.

[00:42:22] Nikki La Croce: Yeah, like it's sad that you felt so out of line out of alignment with who You are that you don't want to accept that that's who you were, you know, like it was not I mean I I came out when I was like 18, 19, but it was sort of a slow drip and kind of gradually letting people know.

[00:42:43] Nikki La Croce: And it was very weird and uncomfortable. And it was, I mean, almost 20 years ago now. So I feel like part of that is, you know, the discussions have changed. People are feeling more open with it, but there's this part of me that as an adult, I've really needed to be able to go back and say like, okay, Why, what did I learn from that and how has that shaped me to who I am now and being able to really look at that and do it as you said with compassion, giving yourself grace and also just being willing to inquire about that.

[00:43:16] Nikki La Croce: You know, I think a lot of people I'm the friend that is like, you should be in therapy. Are you in therapy? Everybody should be in therapy. And I feel like so many people either know that they should and, and won't, or don't understand the value of it. And I feel like. What it is at its core when somebody doesn't want to talk about it, whether it's in therapy or with somebody else or doing whatever sort of self work that you do, is like, you don't want to sit with the reality of what you already know.

[00:43:45] Mark Groves: Right, right. You don't want to confront it.

[00:43:47] Nikki La Croce: Yeah. And so when you do actually confront it, That's when the real growth starts to happen. But it's that, you know, that pivotal moment of discomfort. Like, are you getting yourself through it so you can get to the other side of it? Or are you kind of remaining complacent with the life that you have and establishing that who you are right now is just who you're going to be in maybe slightly varying forms over the years.

[00:44:10] Nikki La Croce: And to actually have true, real, meaningful transformation, as you're describing, requires you to go back to those places and look back at those versions of yourself and really ask, who am I? What is it that I want to hold on to and what is it that I can release?

[00:44:26] Mark Groves: Yeah, you have to have that humility, you know, the like accurate audit of your behavior, what you want to keep, what you don't.

[00:44:33] Mark Groves: And you know, it all takes eating a shit sandwich. Really, you know, the first piece of humble pie you got to eat is the worst one. Yeah, yeah, totally. But you, you go from running from who you are to creating who you are, you know, like instead of running from the things you're ashamed of, now you're actually listening to them and now you can change.

[00:44:53] Mark Groves: So there's, there's a liberation that comes through it. It's just that. The doorway to liberation doesn't feel so good. But that's also because we, we're not shown that the feeling that you have when you learn that a better behavior is available, it should be modeled by adults. You know, and it should be modeled by our parent.

[00:45:12] Mark Groves: When a parent makes a mistake, that they apologize. My parents have done that when I was young. Um, But you know, like when a lot of us don't even witness our parents, we witness them fight, but we don't witness them repair. That usually happens behind closed doors. So, you know, you look at, you look at agencies in the government.

[00:45:34] Mark Groves: The government doesn't apologize and repair. It's like, are you kidding me? Like all these things that we consider to be the models of adult or responsibility or authority, etc. are not modeling the actual behavior that we need. If you think about it, a lot of government, and that's probably a whole other podcast, actually infantilize us.

[00:45:54] Nikki La Croce: Oh yeah. We don't

[00:45:54] Mark Groves: trust that you can handle this information. We don't trust that we need to take care of you, create dependency. And we don't see that that very dynamic actually, like us not growing our own food, us not being in our own spaces, us not being in village. This is all ways that we become dependent on something and we lose our sovereignty.

[00:46:15] Mark Groves: The same is true in relationship with like, if you believe that a conversation you're going to have could break up your relationship and your relationship is actually how you define. Financial safety, which we could look back at history and that was true for almost all women.

[00:46:30] Nikki La Croce: Yep.

[00:46:31] Mark Groves: And it's still true for a lot of women today and true for a lot of men today.

[00:46:34] Mark Groves: And, and then we can see that that relationship and that conversation is likely not going to happen. Right. That's why, you know, when we even have that conversation. Conversation we were having earlier about things that can happen in our lives like abuse We still have to be well resourced to leave something very true, right?

[00:46:53] Mark Groves: And so it's like someone recognizing that they're You know, in circumstances that are unhealthy, that's why we have support groups. That's why we need to lean on people. Because in order to change, you have to be both internally and externally resourced. Externally being like community, being in nature, right?

[00:47:14] Mark Groves: Like going to, like, where were we ever taught, unless we were part of indigenous communities, where are you ever taught to go sit in a forest and allow the forest to hold you? Are you kidding me? If someone said that to me when I was 19, I'd have been like, I'll let a woman hold me, but I'm letting a forest hold me, you know, but that shows you that I was sourcing what I actually needed in different ways.

[00:47:37] Mark Groves: And internally resourced means starting to discover what true agency means. True choice. You know, there's this saying that the opposite of trauma is choice. Because usually when we go through trauma, it's usually, unexpected,

[00:47:52] Nikki La Croce: right?

[00:47:52] Mark Groves: Or something we couldn't control. Yeah. Or

[00:47:54] Nikki La Croce: unwitting. I think, um, when I consider just the, uh, nature of what I was describing with like covert narcissistic abuse is like, it was unwitting for so long, but it had, I paid attention to the things that I truly felt, I would have recognized it sooner.

[00:48:09] Mark Groves: Yeah. My wife talks about in our, our book, she talks about how her body was the somatic carrot canary in the coal mine.

[00:48:16] Nikki La Croce: Yes. I heard her say that when you guys were chatting and I was like, this is great. So beautiful.

[00:48:21] Mark Groves: Because you think about it, the body is the way, man, and it knows, and look what happens when we don't listen to it.

[00:48:28] Mark Groves: Inflammation, dis ease, mental health issues. You know, these, to me, like the Myth of Normal, the book by Gabor Maté, speaks so much to, like, all of the, issues we're having, they're completely normal response to a totally dysfunctional world. And I'm like, man, we got to return to nature. That's really the answer.

[00:48:50] Mark Groves: And, you know, we're kind of at the precipice. And I would argue we're probably already there of what, you know, they would call the singularity, which is where man and machine or human and machine merges. I mean, we've already kind of merged. You think about it, like we probably think about be having a Chip implanted in us is when that happens, which I think actually just happened with Elon Musk company.

[00:49:13] Mark Groves: Oh God, did it? But is it that or is it when you're psychosomatic like when your energy and your psychic energy is Actually being co opted and used and expressed like the internet is Spoken about being sort of like human consciousness in this digital format. And if you look at the network of the internet, it's very much like the network of the brain and human systems.

[00:49:36] Mark Groves: So this isn't to say that the internet's bad because you know, we met through the internet. It's great. Here for it. Yeah, we get to live out our passions. It's offered more opportunity to more people than ever. But like any tool we have to be really mindful because there will always be people Who Will Actually Take The Psychopathic Route.

[00:49:55] Mark Groves: And we believe that everyone is good and every, that's a beautiful belief, but you have to be discerning. And that's the problem is we believe in everyone's potential and everyone, and that's great to hold. I can hold someone's potential and be like, you're going to be amazing one day. Yeah. If you choose to step towards it.

[00:50:13] Mark Groves: Well, that's such a, But I enjoy it. Piece of it. Right? Right. Like, how do you get, how does someone get sober? They don't get sober because their family's like. Here's more money, and here's more of our resources, and here's more of our pain. Mm hmm. Um, we're just gonna keep supporting you till you finally figure it out.

[00:50:30] Mark Groves: No, it Fierce Love says, I see your potential, and I'm holding you to it. Like it says, like, you, you can do this, but you have to do it. Exactly. It's allowing the other person to become an adult. And it's actually like, if you think about what feeds addiction, which I love Gabor Maté's question is right.

[00:50:48] Nikki La Croce: Fantastic. I listen all day

[00:50:50] Mark Groves: when he says like the wrong question is why the addiction, the right question is why the pain. So you look at if someone doesn't believe that they can make choices, they believe they're broken, then an addiction is a perfect. Possibility. Social media addiction is perfect.

[00:51:05] Mark Groves: Shopping's perfect. Amazon's perfect. Netflix is perfect. All these fit perfectly in for people who do not want to be addicted. Want is the wrong term. We do not believe that they can step into their fullest potential, but it's only because the world has taught us in many ways, because it's monetizable, that we're broken.

[00:51:22] Nikki La Croce: Well, and also that it, those things will shut you down, right? The whole concept around addiction is we're numbing something. And so to that point that you made about Gabor Maté, I feel like, When I was at the worst moments, I was definitely ordering more from Amazon on a regular basis, numbing myself with things that like, weren't even good to put into my brain in terms of what I was consuming on Netflix, and just really hiding from the parts of myself that were Um, seeking light and keeping them dark, like really holding.

[00:51:54] Nikki La Croce: Feeding the darkness. Yes, feeding the darkness. That's a great way of putting it. So when you think about your own life and how you've moved through some of the challenging points that you've experienced, what is the. What is it that you've recognized within yourself that sort of signals to you that you're out of integrity?

[00:52:12] Nikki La Croce: I mean, like obviously we're talking about sort of the somatic piece of it But also just overall like how you've cultivated, you know, the sense of self that you have now How does that impact like the decisions that you're making?

[00:52:23] Mark Groves: Well, I'd say a sense of distress is usually a pretty good sign. Mental anguish like my body feeling off, feeling anxious That for me is a big one, um, where I continue to see possibility, you know, and I think this is an important distinction that it's, you know, it usually wakes us up is some really bad experience, a rock bottom of sorts.

[00:52:50] Mark Groves: And that can be anything, loss of job, food, illness, you know, it can be all these different body, right? It could be all these different ways, um, breakups, abuse, things like this, drugs, whatever. And so they wake us up. To the fact that we haven't been paying attention and there's stuff that is unresolved.

[00:53:09] Nikki La Croce: Yeah.

[00:53:09] Mark Groves: And you were talking about, uh, therapy. I think it's James Hillman who says that we don't go to therapy to have what what's broken fixed. We go to have what's broken blessed. I love that because what usually starts our journey of transformation is there's something wrong with me and I need to fix it.

[00:53:28] Mark Groves: There could be actually so many beautiful things created from that doorway, from that entry point. However, at some point we have to make the transition that actually it's, I'm not broken and I need to be fixed. I have, Challenges that are actually showing me my possibility and my potential. So it shifts from a perspective of I'm already whole.

[00:53:52] Mark Groves: I'm just expanding instead of I'm broken and I have to put these patches, you know, on this and I'm flawed and there's, oh, there's another course and another book and another thing. And it's like, really at the end of the day, it's always about change, you know. Remember asking, um, Sherry Salata, who worked with Oprah for years.

[00:54:12] Mark Groves: She was the president of O Network. She was the producer of Oprah. And I said to her, man, you've like met everybody. Like, you know, you got Deepak on Speed Dial. You got Eckhart on, on Speed Dial, on your favorites list. I said like, what is one truth that you know to hold true about all like their messages?

[00:54:31] Mark Groves: And she said that you don't need them. And then she was like, actually. Let me, let me change that. It's that you need them to remind you that you don't. And I think about that, that recognition that the best teachers remind you that you're powerful. They don't need you to need them because that's just more codependency.

[00:54:57] Mark Groves: Right. So it's like our, our path in relationship and in our own work, in my opinion, is to liberate ourselves and through our own liberation, liberate others. Relationships are the greatest vehicle for that friction. So when I look at my own change, I see that my work continues to be, which is so layered because it's really interesting.

[00:55:21] Mark Groves: It's like, we have a son now. And so we went from being two people in a relationship to being three.

[00:55:30] Mark Groves: That means that there's three people who have needs in our family system. Three people to consider. Right. And one of them doesn't know how to advocate for himself yet. Right. Right? Uh, Jasper, he's only 11 months. He's getting good, but it doesn't make sense what he's saying. He just screeches and you kind of guess, Oh, do you want that?

[00:55:48] Mark Groves: Do you want that? Are you upset? Are you hungry? Did you poop? Right? There's all these It's a very big guessing game for a while. Yeah, exactly. That's where I'm like, I pooped. I got to go. Yeah. But the, It, it, what it's magnified for me is that I need to be a fierce advocate for my own needs in relationship.

[00:56:06] Mark Groves: And the beautiful thing is when I bring this awareness, there's a bit of grief because I'm recognizing, shit, I haven't advocated for my, my needs as much as I really should have up until this point. And my partner can hear that. She's like, Hey, like I get it. And if I have oriented around her needs. Which is a natural predisposition for me, just look at my family system pattern that I was telling you about, then that means the person who normally is used to being centered in the relationship, not perhaps by their own making, but because of the other person.

[00:56:42] Mark Groves: We allow it, we develop that. That they actually have to de center themselves a little bit. So it's not just me who has to advocate. There has to be actually through the other person and advocation for my advocation.

[00:56:54] Nikki La Croce: Yeah. Right?

[00:56:55] Mark Groves: That there's like support in me expanding and taking up more space, which my wife loves.

[00:56:59] Mark Groves: is tremendous at. And, and so we've cultivated that relational culture that's like, Hey, if, if something's coming up for me, it's coming up for you. And if it's coming up for you, it's coming up for me. I just might not see it yet.

[00:57:12] Nikki La Croce: Yeah.

[00:57:13] Mark Groves: So anytime I'm advocating for myself more, that means I'm advocating for the relationship more.

[00:57:18] Mark Groves: I believe in the relationship. I love that. And I'm also modeling it for my son.

[00:57:22] Nikki La Croce: Well, I love that you said that too, Mark, because I was curious because of everything that you do and the conversations that you're having around our dynamics with other people and also the inner child work and things that you and your wife have discussed was what is it like for you now as a new parent to see these opportunities with your son through the lens of the work that you've done?

[00:57:47] Nikki La Croce: Like, how do you see What you've created and established for yourself and with your wife and in your relationship as the most important things For you to model to your son.

[00:57:59] Mark Groves: Well, it creates a whole new level of accountability

[00:58:02] Nikki La Croce: That is factual Avenue

[00:58:04] Mark Groves: to fuel my transformation. Mm hmm, you know like immediately when he was born, I was like, okay I got to get in the fittest shape of my life Because, like, I need to be here.

[00:58:16] Nikki La Croce: That's an interesting point, too, that that was kind of the first, one of the first places that you went. Is that, like, physical health, like, make sure that I have longevity.

[00:58:24] Mark Groves: Yeah, I'm 45. I'm, uh, that movie Old Dad's on Netflix? I'm like, that's gonna be me and Bill Burr. You know? Um, So there's that part was just this recognition like very seldom in your life.

[00:58:37] Mark Groves: Can you tap into that level of motivation? So, you know where there's a joke culturally that dads get dad bod. Yeah I was like what happens if I actually completely changed the narrative about this and I use this moment as an opportunity to change myself and and claim something That has always been something I've been involved in, but not fully stepped into, you know, and that it's not punitive.

[00:59:00] Mark Groves: It's not like, I hate my body. I hate my choice. It's like, Whoa, I feel so good. And I, because I feel good, I can be more present to my son. Um, so there was that aspect. I'd say the other side is that it made me dive much deeper into the neurodevelopment of children and babies, especially, which my wife is definitely spearheaded.

[00:59:21] Mark Groves: But the other cool thing about it has been. Well, one, we bond on it. My wife and I talk a lot about it, but this morning he was, he's learning to walk right now. And so, he'll often like take one of your hands, or both, or he just like Hail Mary's and throws both your hands. So I kind of hover around him just to protect him from falling.

[00:59:42] Mark Groves: This morning I tried a new technique where my hand was in the front and one behind, and when he fell, I went to catch him and I caught the side of his head. And he fell down and I had like, my fingers had just kind of run along his cheek. And he kind of looked at me like, whoa, like I'm not. He has yet to really fall on his face, which we know is going to happen.

[01:00:02] Mark Groves: I can't protect him from the realities of the world.

[01:00:04] Nikki La Croce: Well, and you set us a metaphor for the rest of his life as well.

[01:00:07] Mark Groves: Right, right. Exactly. And immediately I picked him up and I was like, I'm so sorry. Like, that's dad. I should have had you and I'm sorry. And I got you and I might not always be able to catch you, but I'm really sorry.

[01:00:23] Mark Groves: And that alone was just this opportunity for me to be with him and to recognize he's Probably a little disappointed because even though he can't make sense of it my hands the thing that caught him Yeah on the way down and and it was just such a beautiful moment You know and and just get to feel to be with him and his feelings and then he wanted mom which I also had to Be with that like, okay, we repaired.

[01:00:47] Mark Groves: Yeah. Yeah, and now he really just needs to be soothed by mom, which makes sense So then I have to be with that part that I'm like, why? Why am I not enough to soothe you? Yeah. Yeah. . Then I recognize there's so many more things going on. Uh, just like neurobiologically with his mom.

[01:01:01] Nikki La Croce: Yeah.

[01:01:01] Mark Groves: So there's that, and I, you know, I've really been recognizing how much advocacy, self-advocacy taking up space is also in some ways oppositional to cultural momentum right now.

[01:01:16] Mark Groves: Mm. And so I really notice. That the micro, the codependent patterns within interpersonal relationships, is really magnified by social media. Yeah. And so, I've been really in this dance of this for probably, like, deep in it for three years. I feel like I'm coming out of it a bit now, where what I've been able to access is is like, what is true integrity?

[01:01:42] Mark Groves: What is like self trust? What is discernment? What is curiosity? What is openness? Because I think more than now, more now than ever, um, we need people who are capable of building bridges between ideologies. Yeah. Because

[01:02:00] Nikki La Croce: they

[01:02:00] Mark Groves: become a trap, but they also become safe. They're presumably safe, but they're not actually safe.

[01:02:06] Nikki La Croce: Something that I feel is. really important and I want to be able to message more clearly and just embrace more on my own accord is being more of that bridge myself, like as an elder millennial, being somebody who, you know, Elder millennial. I like that term. Um, I, it's not

[01:02:24] Mark Groves: senior citizen, but it's like an older young person.

[01:02:27] Nikki La Croce: Right, exactly. Um, I, I will have to give credit to Eliza Schlesinger because that was one of her standup specials. And I was like, this resonates with me. Um, and I feel like for me, This recognition that, okay, there are people who are in Gen X who are like sort of leading the cycle breaking, but the elder millennial, um, younger Gen X group, I feel is sort of, we're the people who are saying, okay, Enough is enough.

[01:02:56] Nikki La Croce: We recognize the problems. We see the patterns. We want to start to resolve those things. And in doing this, I can speak upwards to my father who's 66 and say, Hey, have you thought about these things? Or you're not great at boundary setting. These are things that you should consider. And then on the flip side of that, looking at Gen Z, or even my sister's kids, who are just recently four and six, and seeing like, how can I show up for them?

[01:03:23] Nikki La Croce: What can I give them that, you know, I didn't have that I needed? And it's really profound to have these moments of understanding. Standing that you can give to other people the things that you didn't necessarily have but needed. And I think, you know, in regard to what you were saying about your son, Jasper, it made me consider this moment that I had with my nephew when I was there over the holidays.

[01:03:45] Nikki La Croce: And he has really big emotions and I was. I, I mean, I still do, but when I was a kid, I had less, um, fewer skills to navigate those emotions and I feel like, you know, I would get grounded and I would be sent to my room and it was like, you've had this big emotion, go sit with it, go deal with it. What I would do is probably scream, cry, or sleep, um, to just regulate myself.

[01:04:06] Nikki La Croce: And I, When he was having these emotions, like he just goes away and my sister and brother in law are great, like I really admire the way that they're parenting and to your point about apologizing, like, wow, what a concept, um, you know, and it's beautiful to see, but I was happy to take those moments as the aunt and come in and be like, okay, like I'm going to sit with you.

[01:04:26] Nikki La Croce: What is it that you're feeling? You know, why is it that you want to run and hide? Like nobody thinks that you did anything wrong and trying to, you know, rationalize with a three, four year old is a task in and of itself. But I feel like there was just really something powerful in that moment to be able to see the potential in what we're learning and how not only we're applying that to our own lives, but how that can transcend and create as you referred to it, the liberation for other people as well.

[01:04:52] Nikki La Croce: So like I really, this is not really a question, but more of a statement of agreement and also just recognition and gratitude for the fact that you are doing the work that you're doing, because there's inviting people into these conversations and sharing that knowledge is the jumping off point for a lot of people.

[01:05:10] Nikki La Croce: I mean, it could be somebody listening to an episode of your show or this episode or something else. And just, you know, when that moment clicks and it's just this beautiful manifestation of, All of the work that we've done and all of the work that is yet to be done.

[01:05:23] Mark Groves: Oh man, and it's endless, you know, and that's again, not a sign of our inadequacy, but a sign of unlimited potential.

[01:05:30] Nikki La Croce: Yeah.

[01:05:30] Mark Groves: Like what a different way to see it. Like, Oh, I just learned a thing. Here I am. Like, I guess I have more to learn. Yeah. No shit. Like as soon as you say you don't have more to learn, the universe is going to slap you with a real big lesson that you always have more to learn. I mean, I remember thinking that once and then, Oh wow.

[01:05:47] Mark Groves: Yeah. You know, the tsunami. Yeah, you know, if there's One thing people can always know is that it's never too late to change. You know, I met this one woman at a conference I was speaking at, and she was in her, uh, 60s. And she had said, like, what's the point? It's too late for me. I was like, shit, you're a woman who's healthy.

[01:06:10] Mark Groves: You could be living to your 90 something.

[01:06:12] Nikki La Croce: Yeah.

[01:06:12] Mark Groves: So you got, you're 60, I think she was 66. So let's say you live till 96, 86. You have 20 more years of apathy. 20 years you want your like, most potentially like, ideally if we all get to retire, which that's probably a pipe dream these days, thanks inflation.

[01:06:32] Mark Groves: But it's like, Those are supposed to be your golden years, and you're gonna spend them not golden? Like, it's never too late to change. It's never too late to heal. It's never too late to take the bags back that you hand down the chain. And it's never too late to pass the bags up.

[01:06:51] Nikki La Croce: Yeah.

[01:06:51] Mark Groves: You know, and even if your parents aren't alive, we can all still, you know, burn the bags that they gave us, you know, because there's, this is the point of life is to liberate ourselves from these patterns so that we can exhale.

[01:07:04] Mark Groves: So we can be well resourced.

[01:07:05] Nikki La Croce: And enjoy it. Right. It's like so much of what we've done and I, you speaking about social media is such a great example. Like we have just, you know, Put our focus on things that are not really creating, um, the fulfillment or the joy. It's like there's this sense of obligation and this sense of responsibility to maybe even like you have a large following, right?

[01:07:29] Nikki La Croce: If we become too entrenched in what we're doing for everybody else, then we, It can easily get sucked back into that pattern of self abandonment. And I'm, I'm curious with the work that you've done. You've done a great job building community. I really admire it. We joined one of your masterclasses, like I think maybe early in the year or before the end of the year.

[01:07:48] Nikki La Croce: And I was so happy to have done it because it was right before I think we were introduced and have this moment of just, okay, I feel like this is what I hope to be able to bring to the table for people. You're so genuine and organic and authentic in the way that you show up exactly who you are when you are on your podcast or in a masterclass is who I'm witness to today.

[01:08:10] Nikki La Croce: And so I really admire that. And I think it's a really great example of being conscious of the impact that we can have and knowing that there is the but you can still remain accessible to people and still bring, you know, that knowledge in a way that doesn't feel like it's preaching. It's just, You know, it's sort of the gift that you get to give somebody through your own experiences.

[01:08:35] Nikki La Croce: And I feel like this is an opportunity for a lot of people because one of the benefits of the internet is we have the visibility. Anybody at any given time can be the person that you're looking to. No excuse

[01:08:46] Mark Groves: anymore.

[01:08:46] Nikki La Croce: Yeah.

[01:08:47] Mark Groves: Like you can learn how to rebuild a car. You can learn how to build a rocket on YouTube.

[01:08:53] Mark Groves: You can learn all of it. Like the other day I had to fix something on my car, which I have an old car, which means you're always fixing something. And I just started Googling it, found someone who had done the exact same thing I needed, it was with a radiator, and I was doing it. And I had to take a couple trips to the car store, which everyone knows is also part of it.

[01:09:12] Mark Groves: I mean, you have more

[01:09:12] Nikki La Croce: confidence than I do, because I would be like, I am not sure that this will go the way that it's supposed to.

[01:09:17] Mark Groves: Well, to be fair, like, I love it. So it's different, right? For other people, that's like, I'd rather just pay somebody and I get that. That's a lot of other things. I'm

[01:09:25] Nikki La Croce: like, I don't want to die because I fixed my own car.

[01:09:28] Nikki La Croce: Yeah,

[01:09:29] Mark Groves: listen, I'm not doing a brake job. That's for sure. Fair. That's for sure. But yeah, there's. There's so much you can learn. To me, there is no excuse to not become everything, you know, now, like now. And granted, there are life circumstances that I am not minimizing. Right. But man, I think as much as we like hate on Gary Vaynerchuk or David Goggins.

[01:09:51] Mark Groves: Yeah, yeah. Part of their motivations is like, you don't even know what you're capable of. Like you haven't even touched a thread of what's possible for you. And it is when people wake up to their choices that they can choose. They have been choosing, even if they don't like their choices. Let that cook you.

[01:10:11] Mark Groves: Right? And it's like, that's when they're free because all of a sudden now they wake up to, well, if I've been choosing all that shit, that means I could choose other shit. Yeah. And then now it's possible. Oh wait, I don't have to listen to all the bullshit limiting beliefs. Everyone like, when I was in college, people were like, you have to do marketing or you have to do finance.

[01:10:29] Mark Groves: If you want to make money and be a good provider, blah, blah. It's like, now I'm in Vancouver and I'm like, the average house is fricking, I don't even know, 3 million or something like that. When I was a kid, I You always, I'm not sure if this was true for you, but you always thought that the wealthy people were people who were like doctors or lawyers, right?

[01:10:47] Mark Groves: That was, or accountants.

[01:10:48] Nikki La Croce: Yeah. We're insurance people.

[01:10:50] Mark Groves: Right. Now I'm like, well, how the hell are they buying a house in Vancouver? Oh yeah,

[01:10:54] Nikki La Croce: no, they're not.

[01:10:54] Mark Groves: You know, it's, I mean, Canada's housing problem is a fucking whole other problem. They're

[01:10:58] Nikki La Croce: probably the, um, they're probably the people who are in those positions that also have a social media following.

[01:11:04] Mark Groves: Right, right. Right, exactly. They're doctor influencers. Yes. Carnivore MD, he has a house here. But yeah, like, I think about it now, I'm like, When you have a job for a company, which is not, I had a job with a company for 14 years. It's like, you're always limited by the market cap of that job. I feel that. You can never make more than that.

[01:11:25] Mark Groves: And look, man, this is not projecting what I desire for my life on anyone. For some people, they want to be innovators and creators in someone else's business. But like the abundance capacity of someone who is in their gifts, what I do If someone from branding was giving me advice, they would never say, be you all everywhere, right?

[01:11:46] Mark Groves: Like that's not But that's what works. Well, because now people crave authenticity. And the good thing is, I don't have to remember anything I've said that's not me.

[01:11:56] Nikki La Croce: I feel right. Well, cause you were in sales, right? Yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So I was in tech for 15 years. I left this summer. Congratulations. Thank you.

[01:12:06] Nikki La Croce: That's big. Talk about liberation. And thanks to my wife for supporting me in that. Way to go

[01:12:11] Mark Groves: wife. Shout

[01:12:11] Nikki La Croce: out. And I think that the thing that I always hated and I'll say to her all the time is I hate networking at like conferences because I feel like I'm, I have to sell somebody something. They don't need or that I don't want, right?

[01:12:26] Nikki La Croce: Yeah. And I was, and I, so I wasn't even in sales, but it's like having to put on that sales hat was so out of integrity with me and the way that I choose to network now. And she's like, you're great at it because you're not trying to because you had all that training. Yes, exactly. You're good

[01:12:44] Mark Groves: at selling something you didn't want.

[01:12:45] Nikki La Croce: Right. Exactly. Imagine how good you can be if you do. And I, and it's like, just because I care about developing the relationships, then I can focus on, you know, is there something that can be mutually beneficial for people? But when you're in a position where As you said, some people are comfortable being able to deliver the value for somebody else, but the thing that I always felt that was off for me and it was my entire career was, I feel like I should be working for myself.

[01:13:08] Nikki La Croce: I feel like there should be something that like I'm doing that is not whatever it is that I'm in the midst of. And I had forgotten that you were in pharma sales. until I had re listened to something recently and I was like, Oh gosh, yeah. It's like, I can only imagine how stifling that must have felt because of being witness to everything I've been witness to in what you've created.

[01:13:29] Nikki La Croce: And it's like, that is so inspiring to know that you, as you know, kind of were rounding out the conversation. It's like your accountability, the choices that you're making, Those are going to be the things that define your path and they're going to be the things that liberate you and allow you to invite other people to liberate themselves, which is, I think, something you or Kylie said in the conversation that I mentioned earlier.

[01:13:55] Nikki La Croce: And I found that just to be so comforting and also really powerful.

[01:14:01] Mark Groves: Yeah, there's, I think it's Elizabeth Gilbert. I shared that quote that she wrote to Glennon Doyle. It's in her book. Oh, I forget Glennon Doyle's recent book. Oh, Untamed. Untamed. Where she says there's no such thing as one way liberation.

[01:14:17] Mark Groves: Like if you're free, the other person is, they just don't know it yet, you know, and that's part of the principles of, of liberated love that we talk about is honoring another path as their own, like trusting, you know, I was once, um, talking to a friend of mine who's a mindset coach and I said to him, Peter Crone, and I was saying to him, look, I'm, I'm struggling.

[01:14:40] Mark Groves: I wanted to let go of this employee that I had years ago, um, who is an incredible human. Loved. And I was saying to him, like, I'm just worried, like she won't be okay. And all that kind of stuff. And talk about codependency again, which not to negate the care for people, but the fact that I'm willing now to like put my business at risk or whatever.

[01:15:00] Mark Groves: Right.

[01:15:00] Nikki La Croce: Yeah.

[01:15:00] Mark Groves: And he says to me, uh, how arrogant of you to believe that, you know, what's better for her than what is trying to actually move through her.

[01:15:09] Nikki La Croce: Wow.

[01:15:10] Mark Groves: Like, you don't know that that's not the best thing that'll ever happen to her.

[01:15:13] Nikki La Croce: I mean, I got laid off and it was the best thing that happened to me.

[01:15:15] Mark Groves: Right. And now she has the job of her dreams. This is years later. She loves it. She's happy. We're still friends, you know? And I'm like, wow, it's so when you can let go of people with that level of reverence for their ability as an adult to make their way through the world, you're actually saying, I trust you, which is again, not to minimize the pain of losses or how hard it is to let someone go and work, but that if you're feeling called to it, At least you're being called to bring a conversation forward.

[01:15:46] Mark Groves: And I think that's true of relationship. It's like when you're feeling called to leave one, you have to bring that truth to the relationship. Right. Because it exists anyways. Now what you might do with that truth, why do you want to leave? Have you always want to leave? You know, how did it start? You know, would you ever want it to work out?

[01:16:05] Mark Groves: There's a lot of points of inquiry. But you have to actually start with that truth, and if you bring that truth forward, at least to yourself first, you can navigate it, decide if you need to bring it forward, or end the relationship. But where relationships either end, or dive much deeper, is when a partner is willing to say, I will no longer dance around the elephant in the room, or I will no longer hold back.

[01:16:27] Mark Groves: Because if you hold back truth from your partner, it means you don't trust them to hold it. Which means they never develop the capacity to hold it. Which means they never develop the skill set that you don't think they have.

[01:16:38] Nikki La Croce: Yeah, yeah. Well, you touched on something that I feel very strongly, which is that I don't like when people say to me, I didn't want to tell you because I didn't know how you'd react.

[01:16:49] Nikki La Croce: And it's like, you're not even giving me a chance to have a response. Right, you're

[01:16:52] Mark Groves: choosing for me.

[01:16:53] Nikki La Croce: Yep.

[01:16:53] Mark Groves: Yeah, which if we had other people choose for us, especially when we're young, or take away our choice, that'll be a trigger for sure.

[01:16:59] Nikki La Croce: Yeah, and I find it really fascinating too, just how much we can learn from observing those moments too, because that's not something that I even understood.

[01:17:09] Nikki La Croce: until I was out of these varieties of situations and looking back on it. And it all comes back to, you know, who am I? How do I want to show up in the world? What do I care about? And you know, what am I bringing forward? And what am I leaving behind? This has been such an amazing conversation, Mark, I appreciate you.

[01:17:27] Nikki La Croce: I appreciate just everything that we've gone through and over. And I hope that this is just one of many conversations because it's just been such a blast to hear your perspective and to be invited into your world and to learn more about you and this has just been just an absolute delight and I feel very honored that you took the time to meet with me in person.

[01:17:49] Mark Groves: Oh, I'm so grateful that you had me on. Uh, so grateful that you trust me with your audience who I know you've spent a lot of time cultivating.

[01:17:57] Nikki La Croce: Thank you. Is there anywhere else that you want people to follow you or anything else that you want to share with listeners before we hop off here?

[01:18:04] Mark Groves: Well, yeah, you can go if you love the ideas that we discussed.

[01:18:08] Mark Groves: Kylie, my wife, and I have a new book coming out April 16th, which is called Liberated Love and it's available for pre order. Perfect. And we have, if you buy it, you can go to createthelove. com slash liberated love and there's a free meditation and a workbook that goes along. You just enter your order number.

[01:18:25] Mark Groves: Amazing. Yeah, and and so they'll get access to that and that meditation is really about identifying a lot of the problems things we talked about today. You know, let's be honest, it all shows up romantically before it really shows up anywhere.

[01:18:38] Nikki La Croce: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I, I think it's really great to, to just be witness to the, what you refer to as the rupture in your relationship and the repair.

[01:18:49] Nikki La Croce: And then to see this, um, I think you both referred to it as sort of your book baby, you know, and to be able to see how. Two people can grow apart from one another and then reconvene and develop something that's so strong. I can't wait to dive into the book and to just see more of the content that you're creating and the love that you're putting out into the world and helping other people create.

[01:19:15] Mark Groves: Thank you so much.

[01:19:16] Nikki La Croce: Thank you, Mark. Gang, thanks so much for joining me for this week's episode. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I loved having it. It was such an incredible opportunity to sit down with Mark, and I'm so grateful that we had the chance to do it in person. I know that this Episode and our conversation will resonate with so many people.

[01:19:33] Nikki La Croce: So if you can please share this episode with at least one person that, you know, we'll get something from it, it would mean the world to me. I know that it can be challenging for us to navigate relationships. And I've done the toxic thing more times than I can count. So being able to tune into ourselves and really understand more about who we are and how we show up is just.

[01:19:55] Nikki La Croce: Absolutely instrumental in growing into our full potential. So go ahead and hit that share button here on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts and send this to somebody that will benefit from hearing it. In the meantime, you can also subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts as well and visit, can I just say podcast.

[01:20:13] Nikki La Croce: com for more. We'll catch you on the flip side.