One Word That Eliminates Stress

Building a business is a lot of work and more often than not, it involves working 60 to 80 hours a week during the first few years of starting the journey.  What is often not talked about is the stress it causes and how that effects all of the relationships with your family members - often with some very negative results.

Our guest today, Galen Wilson, is a story teller, but one that has used his journey in life to develop a way to help people deal with that stress and create an even closer relationship with their spouses and peace in their home.  I think you will find it very interesting.

To learn more about Galen's work, you can find links to all he has to offer at https://www.monumentmethodinstitute.com/

Transcript

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Roger: Today I'd like to welcome a special guest. His name is Galen Wilson, and he's a relationship coach and an author of some 34 books. I can't imagine. It was hard enough for me to write one so far, so I can't even imagine 34, but I'm sure he's got a lot of wisdom to share. And today we're gonna talk about some things, including, how running a small business, especially in the startup phase, can really mess up your relationships. 

But first, Galen, I'd like to give you the opportunity to explain your background and where you got to this point from. 

Gaylen Wilson: Okay. Well, it's, I turn 70 next month, so, yeah, it's still July is'nt it? Yeah. so  I got married at 20, had four kids by the time I was 26. 

Roger: Wow 

Gaylen Wilson: so yeah, we were, we were my father-in-law threatened to buy a book that told us how that happened. And so I started farming, in Southeast Colorado, on the desert plains of Southeast Colorado at, at 23 years old. And so I did that most of my 20s and into my early 30s. And, I made better money than the average 20-something-year-old in rural Colorado doing that. But then the last two of my three... Two of my last three years were crop failures due to drought. And, so that was the kind of the end of the farming.  

Roger: Farming's a tough business. 

Gaylen Wilson: It, yeah, well, especially this, this land in southeast Colorado, it's, it's the area where the, was the very north end of the Dust Bowl 

Roger: Oh. 

Gaylen Wilson: where all the dust blew from here into Chicago. 

Roger: Right 

Gaylen Wilson: And so, it, it really should have never been broken out of the buffalo grass. 

And, but anyway, so I ended up filing farm bankruptcy. Of course, I was a very driven... At one point, around 27 or 28,  

I was, I had four kids, was farming a dry land farm and an irrigated farm, had a sharpening implements for farmers and, a roofing business, and taking 17 credit hours at the college, at the community 

Roger: Wow 

Gaylen Wilson: So I was, I was a little wacko insane driven at that point. And so when the, when the farm bankruptcy happened, even though it was out of my control, I kind of internalized it as my fault. And I did have, I had zero tools to deal, deal with that, emotional tools in my toolbox to deal with that. And so I just did what the good old Colorado rancher farmer did and shoved it. Just bury it inside. And so I did some minimum wage jobs, but, my both, my wife and I both got minimum wage jobs, but that's really hard to support four kids working minimum wage jobs. So I decided to go to the, go to the city to make my fortune and went to Denver, in the late '80s. And, and believe it or not, I got a job as a stockbroker. 

Roger: That's a switch 

Gaylen Wilson: Yeah, it, it quite drastic switch. But, you know, that was, uh, a lot due to the fact that they don't give farmers enough credit for having to be businessmen. And then I'd also taken some business courses at the community college, so I, I scored like a 92 on the Series 7 on the first time through. 

So I, I, I was a duck to water to that. And the, the new Yorkers really loved my laid back Southeast Colorado accent and, and attitude and so I was doing quite well at it. I walk into, into work one Monday morning in, in January, mid-January of 1990, and I'd been selling this little dental HMO to all of my clients, and I had $3,000 of my mother's money in it. And I walk into work and they said, "Oh, by the way, DHA just filed Chapter 7." They're gone. All my clients' money is gone. none of them wanted to talk to me anymore. 

And so here we had two disasters within about three years, that second disaster, I decided it was time to crawl inside a vodka bottle for ten years. 

Yeah, I  chose, again, no tools, emotional tools to deal with it, so I, picked a really bad one. And but I was very high functioning alcoholic, so I was able to still support my family and still keep jobs until later on where I got to the point where I couldn't keep jobs again, uh, anymore, 'cause I just got worse and worse. So about 10 years out, I finally got into a situation where I got some rehab and got some tools in my toolbox and, and got... I was to the point where I was getting sober for six months and then having a weekend binge here and there. And I then got, in January of 2001, I got a job as a traveling computer consultant for a, a company called PeopleSoft. And, and, I had... The way I got to that was I had gotten a job with a, a cellphone company that used PeopleSoft, and had worked my way up to being the administrator for that software, so that I learned the software inside and out, that's how I managed to move into the consulting end. And so January of 2001, I was flying high, making more money than I'd ever made in my life. Well, we all remember what happened in September of 2001. Those planes fly into the building. That whole consulting industry just goes down in ashes with the, with the with those buildings. And so here I am again. I, I stayed on unemployment for, like, nine months, sending resumes out. This is when you sent resumes with snail mail. 

And I got flown out to Chicago for one interview. They loved me, but then a week later they said, "Well, the economy isn't where we want it yet, so we're not gonna fill that position." And, so I ended up having to go to work for Walmart as a cashier. And it was also about that time that between the repeated disasters and my alcoholism that my wife and I finally split. Our kids were all grown, and, you know the old adage, if, when you have that many kids and you're managing kids, you tend to drift apart. And so my first wife was amazing. I have nothing bad to say about that woman. But, But, it just, it was too much for her. And so, so in the fall of, 2002 is when I met Heather. We'll be, we'll be together 24 years here in September. And, I hit the lottery with her. and so it, all came together that I still owned a house in our little town in southeast Colorado that we hadn't been able to sell, and we'd just been renting it out. Well, it came open about the time Heather and I decided it was time to move in together and, so I, I was able to transfer from Walmart. I had gotten a job as a cashier at Walmart, so I was able to transfer to the Walmart in our little town and the ground with a job. And so I put a little ad in the paper for computer repair. And, within nine months... I had never done it professionally, but I'd been a hobbyist. I bought my first computer for Christmas in '82, and, and I'd built my own computers and so I, I can do this. And so within nine, six to nine months, it was making more than the Walmart job was, so I was able to quit that. and we were doing it out of our house. So from about June of 2004 to present, Heather and I have been together 24/7, 365. I can count on one hand the days we've been apart in 24 years. you gotta really like your wife, not just love her, to be around her. 

Roger: It's absolutely true 

Gaylen Wilson: You've gotta... Yeah, you've gotta be friends. Well, one of the first things, in between my marriages, I had been studying some tantric sex, and one of the tenets of it is eye gazing. And because eye gazing during lovemaking creates an incredible bond between lovers. And so we started off our relationship with a lot of eye gazing, a lot of incredible bond, and that carried us through. 

I mean, we... A normal relationship, romance phase in a relationship is six months to two years, is what the experts say. We had 12 years of romance phase before any, if, anything happened. And it, it was at that 12-year mark that, Oh, I gotta stop, step back and tell you my other disasters. 

yeah. because the computer business was doing really well. Viruses were my bread and butter. But then Microsoft decided to come out with Windows 7, which they said didn't get infected. It said it was five times less likely to get infected than Windows XP was. Well, from my experience, it was closer to 10, 'cause we went to working on  from working on 10 to 15 computers a week to one or two computers a week And, and so here we were, another crash. fortunately, I landed on my feet again. I found there was a couple, websites that were like dating sites for computer techs and companies that needed work orders done. and so I did started doing freelance computer field service, and originally just traveling around southeast Colorado, southwest Kansas, and Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles. You know, if a McDonald's needed a cash register swish- cash register switched out, I'd go do it. If they somebody needed a network switch put in, that was the kind of work, and running network cables, and just about anything and everything. And, so by, by 2014, we had hooked up with an outfit out of West Virginia that had the, uh, contract with AT&T, and AT&T had the contract with the Farm Service Agency to provide all of its computer equipment. So they were sending us all over the United States doing, field service work in, in the county seats, in the FSA offices around the country. And our big trip was we left July 6th of 2014 in a brand-new little Toyota Prius C that I'd bought because it got-- it was supposed to get forty-eight miles to the gallon. And I had built a four-by-four Harbor Freight Tools trailer kit and put a Sears  car top carrier on it. Needless to say, we had pe- people stopping and taking pictures of us. Not something you see very often. So, so I took Heather and her fourteen and sixteen-year-old daughters. She-- oh, by the way, she had three kids when I met her, a two, four, and eight-year-old, so I, I had gone completely insane at that point. And so I, by, by 2014, they were-- the, the girls were, fourteen and sixteen. And so we drove through thirty-five states and did two hundred and fifty offices in thirty-one states. seventeen weeks and, and twenty-five thousand miles on the road. And, when we got home, the girls were done with the road. They stayed home with their eighteen-year-old brother. We went back out for another two or three weeks. then around Christmas time, all the FSA  offices don't do much, and so, we had a couple weeks off, and I got really sick. And so I went into the-- our local clinic, and I, I told him, "I think I've got pneumonia." 

And he says, "Yeah, you do. Here's some antibiotics." Well, he was supposed to have done a chest X-ray to confirm that, the physicians is-- we, we have a hard time getting good healthcare professionals in our little town because it's so far away from the cities. And, and so so I bought an oxygen generator, and we had bought a, motor home for this next... 

We had another three-and-a-half month trip planned in January. And so we bought the motor home, or we had the motor home, had the oxygen generator. By the time it was time to, to leave, the stuff coming out of my lungs was clear, so I thought, "Hey, we're good to go." I threw the oxygen generator in, 'cause I was still using it a little bit at night. And, and so as we started on that trip, it was down through Oklahoma and Texas, and then we were gonna go out through Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Utah, and back home. we, we got, as we got, went on that trip, I just kept getting weaker and weaker, till we were down in Corpus Christi, Texas, on, on President's Day, and, you know, the FSA offices were closed. 

And I said, "Let's find a walk-in clinic. Let's see if I, see if this pneumonia is coming back." And so we went in there, and I could barely carry my little 10-pound bag of tools into these offices without having to set it down and, and suck air for two minutes to tell them why I was there. I had gotten that bad. And so they sent me for the chest X-ray, and they called me back that afternoon and said, "Mr. Wilson, you don't have pneumonia. You've got congestive heart failure. You need to get home to Colorado today." Well, my type A personality said, that afternoon I said, "Okay, we'll finish this six weeks, and then we'll get it taken care of." 'Cause we, we were making $300 a, a job and getting three to four jobs in a day. So crazy money. And, But I got two jobs in the next day and it sunk in that I had severe heart issue. And so poor Heather, she's from a little town of 300. She doesn't do city traffic. She had to drive that motorhome all the way from Corpus Christi, Texas back to southeast Colorado because I was just too far. 

All I could do is lay back in the bed with the oxygen on and feel sorry for myself. And did make me drag the hose up as she went through San Antonio. We had a big long hose on it that I could reach front seat. I had to sit her when we went through San Antonio. And so she gets me home to southeast Colorado and we go into the little hospital here and it's pretty much a triage hospital. So they say, "Okay, Mr Wilson, the ambulance will be here to take you to Colorado Springs. And so we get to the springs and they into the ER up there and they do some tests. And a normal healthy human heart puts out 50 to 60% out of the left chamber every time it beats.  

Mine was putting out five. I was knocking on death's door really hard at that point. And so they actually gave me Lasik, which is a diuretic. They took off 22 pounds in two days. And that was all water that would have been around my heart and lungs. 

And the doctor was explaining it all to me and I said, so in other words, my heart and lungs got in a ballroom brawl with each other in the middle of a pool. He says, yeah, pretty much. And so, they put a defibrillator pacemaker in me and, and sent me home. And by that summer I was back up to like 30% ejection fraction. I wasn't doing too bad. I mean, you're not running any foot races, but you can live a fairly decent life at 30%. 

But then the next year, my heart started going into AFib, and that's where the part, top part doesn't beat in synchrony with the bottom part. when your heart's weak already and then it doesn't beat right, you're a sick man pretty quick. And so poor Heather had to watch me dying in front of her eyes for three and a half years. And, you know, that's when a lot of couples will... a lot of relationships will just disintegrate. either the, the sick person pushes the caregiver away, or the caregiver just gets so exhausted they say, "I can't do this anymore, and I'm out." But, but the bond that we had created during that first 12 years of our marriage was  bringing us through this rough time because we didn't, we didn't get angry at each other. We didn't push each other away. you know, of course it was rough on us, but we tended to, to cling together more. The worse I got, the more closer we got. And so Heather never hinted that she wanted out. She was my angel, my rock during the whole thing. She just stuck by me and nursed me and, and took care of me right to the very end. And, and I thought the end was coming. And, on June 19th of 2018, I sat her down at nine o'clock at night and told her, "Honey, I'm not gonna be here in two to three months. We need to finish getting ready." we'd been to the mortuary once and had some final decisions to make. And of course, she's crying her eyes out now because her soulmate just told her he was dying in a couple of months. A half an hour after I told her that, the call there was a heart available 

And so we, we grabbed our little to-go bag like a pregnant couple keeps, and off to Denver we ran. And it was an eastern Colorado hailstorm that night. And, so the the waterworks were going outside the car, and the waterworks were still going inside the car because she had switched from crying 'cause she was sad to crying 'cause she was excited and, and scared because there was a 5% chance I'd die on that table. And so they had given us till 1:30 in the morning to get there, and we slid into that dry, that parking lot at 1:15. So I don't know how fast she went, and I just didn't try to slow her down. So anyway, they rolled me into the OR at about 4 o'clock in the morning, and by 9 o'clock I, I had a 38-year-old heart in my 61-year-old body And so, so it, it, it just, it has made me feel so blessed, to not only... 

First, first of all,  they've given me another 20 plus years with my soulmate. told me at my eighth annual checkup this year, they basically told me, "That heart's yours. it's perfect shape." my donor was a 38-year-old that was into snowboarding and inline skating and extreme sports, and his ejection fraction is 67, it's way above average strength heart. And so they, they basically told me, "You're gonna die from something other than a heart problem." So, and then, so one of the ways that I decided to pay, you know, I got this, Type A personality again kicks in, so I get this driving need to pay those blessings forward and help other people find the joy that I have. And, and so one of the ways I did that was about three years after the transplant, my erectile dysfunction was getting worse. I was getting on towards 65. I had actually developed ED back at, at 44 years old, caught a 17 year younger wife two years later, thank God Viagra worked. You know, the first erection I lost, I was to that doctor the next week saying, "I want that new little blue pill they're advertising." And so, but at 65, you know, the Viagra wasn't working as reliably as what it used to. And, and so I joined a couple of groups for erectile dysfunction discussion on Facebook. And I got so active in them, helping other guys figure theirs out and that within three months they made me administrator of the, the larger group. And then three months later, I got administrator of the smaller group. So I've administrated those two groups for over five years now. And, and so I got a... Basically, I got a college education in how to, diagnose and treat, and treat ED. And one of my biggest frustrations was is during this time, and you're kind of seeing right now that I didn't sit down to write 34 books. I've just, just been putting one foot in front of the next one, one. And so one of my frustrations was in, in helping people in this group is when women would come to the group and looking for help. And it was the same story. Hundreds of women over the five years came and told almost exactly the same story. Their man had developed erectile dysfunction, and his way of dealing with it was to refuse to go to the doctor and just withdrawing to himself, cut her completely off from any physical contact, any emotional contact, basically abandoned her in the marriage. And these women all said this, the same thing, "I love him. That's why I won't leave him. I love him, but I would need him to come back to me." 

And it frustrated me because I, I... all I could do is empathize with them that, "Yeah, I understand how you're feeling," I couldn't-- I didn't understand why he was doing what he was doing. Like I said, the first erection I lost, I was at the doctor. And so I actually got Heather and I into a course to become certified thriving relationship coaches, just to try to figure out that problem, why these men were, were withdrawing like they were. And I've actually figured out, so make sure I loop back around to this. so one of the first books we read was Hold Me Tight by Dr. Sue Johnson, and in it she talks about attachment theory. her attachment theory is, is that we were bred through thousands of years of prehistoric evolution to have an instinct for a strong attachment to our mates And that those that didn't have that instinct back in the day didn't survive and their offspring didn't survive. So it got brought into the modern man as an instinct that's just as strong as our need for food or need for water. So she went on to say that most of the fights we get into are not about what we're fighting about. It's about the fact that that attachment instinct has detected a threat to the attachment and has thrown the body into fight or flight mode. So you end up with both parties in a, in a relationship in fight or flight mode. The logical brain takes a hike and leaves the building and leaves what I call the lizard brains in control. the primal brains. they say things that aren't meant and things that aren't true and things that are really hard to take back later. And, and, and so it does emotional system damage to the partners. I've always said that there's no sexual desire without emotional system safety. And so as the, the couple stays in this fight or flight for weeks or months or years, it does damage to their emotional systems. And so they can end up or five years down the road saying they still love each other, but they've done so much damage to their emotional system safety that they no longer desire each other. so there's just no love making happening. a dead bedroom. Dead, dead... That's the worst case scenario is a dead bedroom. But, there's a lot of things in between with a lot of couples. And so, Heather and I never had that really, that problem, very much 'cause we always kinda used sex as a repair tool and then after the transplant, we were able to go back to making love two or three times a week but I'm always the type that's want to tinker with things. And so I, I said, "Let's, let's see what, what this attachment, how we can use this attachment instinct knowledge." So I said, "How do we stop triggering each other's attachment instinct?" 

Because as good as our relationship is, we still fight or still did fight, especially with the generation, you know, 17 years between us. and so, I, the first thing I thought about was, well, we need to watch what tone we talk to each other in, because you can talk to each other in a tone that you get away with it because they love you, but you're not really getting away with it because you are triggering that attachment instinct and throwing them into fight or flight mode And so that's the first thing we did, is we gave each other permission. And, and permission is so important the, in the Monument Method. Heather and I believe we're building this big, beautiful marble monument to our relationship. And each kind word or loving gesture, or especially when you make love with presence, you're building onto your monument. But each cruel word or cold shoulder or fight you get into is like taking a hammer and chisel to your monument. And so we decided we wanted to fiercely protect our monument. That's the Monument Method Institute motto, is fiercely protect the monument. You need to make the monument more important than your, than your ego and more important than being right in a fight, nobody wins those fights anyway. You might win the argument, but you lose the fight. And so, we decided we wanted to fiercely protect our monument, and so we gave each other permission to start calling each other out when we, were using tone that wasn't necessary. You know, "Honey, did you need to really say that that way?" And so that helped some, but we were still getting into the fights and still getting in fight or flight mode. so I'm, I start "How do we prevent it altogether? How do we keep out of that fight or flight mode?" And so I came up with the idea we gave each other a sacred word, and ours is monument. And so any time one of us sees the other one heading towards our monument with a hammer and chisel, in other words, we've said something that's gonna start a fight, the other one can call monument. And that does a couple of things. First of all, it reminds us that our monument is more important than that fight we're getting ready to get into. And secondly, I, I called it second, a sacred word because we've made a sacred vow that when either of us calls monument, the fight stops right there. No matter how mad we are, it stops. But once you stop the fight, you can't separate, go calm down, and then come back together because you'll be just right back where you were again. still haven't gotten yourself out of that fight or flight or prevented the fight or flight from happening. So what we discovered to prevented it from happening altogether is one of us calls monument, we turn towards each other together and embrace each other's arms and gaze lovingly into each other's eyes and patch that little spot on the monument that we just chipped at. 

And the science behind that is, is that when you gaze into your lover's eyes, goes into that primal brain and tells the primal brain, "Hey, your attachment's safe. You can stand down. You can let the body out of fight or flight now." And so that's what happens. You calm right down, especially as you practice it, and it does take practice because we seem to be wired to fight as humans. So it does take practice, but once you practice it, your body learns that eye gazing means time to stand down. And so the logical brain can return to the building at that point, and you can logically discuss what you're getting ready to have a big fight about. So you don't... it's not, it's not circumventing the problem that started the fight to start with. It's giving you a logical brain that you can communicate. Because that's what the, the, the traditional, marriage therapy people say, "You need to learn how to communicate better. Communicate better." Well, you don't communicate when you're in fight or flight mode. Your lizard brains are communicating. 

And so you gotta keep yourself out of fight or flight mode to where your logical brain comes back and, and does the discussion. And so, So we, we started doing that, and then I had written The Monument Method book last fall, I was, I was out working on our, Infiniti JX35 SUV. these... I'm a decent mechanic. All my farming years, I, I overhauled tractor engines and, so I was a pretty good mechanic, but these new cars with their computers are just a pain. 

Roger: They're absolute pain. They really are 

Gaylen Wilson: They are. and I had worked two months, to get this thing running, and I finally got it running. And so I was a little excited. I drive it around the block. It's running really good. I pull it into the driveway, shut it off. Heather wants to go visit friends. we've made really good friends with the guy who got his heart 17 days after I got mine And Heather and Chris have trauma bonded over their heart transplant husbands, so they are closer than sisters. so they lived a couple hundred miles away, so we got in, loaded the car up, pushed the button to start it. Nothing. Not even a click. And you can imagine now, smoke is starting to come out my ears I'm so upset. So I, I popped the hood, and I get my multimeter, and I check the battery, and it's at eight volts. And, you know, it's supposed to be, like, 12 and a half. And so I'm so far gone, I don't stop to think, hey, Galen, that's got to be an alternator problem. You had it on the charger all night long. I went to go get the Hyundai to pull it over to jumpstart the Infiniti. I popped the trunk on the Hyundai 'cause to get the jumper cables that I know are there. I go around there. They're not nowhere to be found. Well, that's because I was too dysregulated by that point to move the blanket that they were under. But, And so we've all been there, right? So, so now I, I remember an old set that I've got hanging in the garage, and they're, they're, like, 40 years old. And that's how you can tell you're getting old, is when you can talk about something you bought 40 years ago. So I, I go get them, and I carried them out, and I've gone, oh no, I've left these out in the rain once too many times. They're all rusty and nasty. And I'm going, these aren't gonna conduct any electricity, and I clip them on, and I kick the other end together to see if there's a spark, and there's just nothing. so at this point, there's smoke coming out my nose and my ears. I grab them off the car, hold them over my head, and throw them on the concrete and scream. Well, Heather's sitting in the car with the hood up, so she doesn't see this, and the windows are up, so she doesn't hear anything. So she has no clue that her husband's out right in front of her, spiraling out of control. And I'm not normally an angry man, but this was, this had me going. And so I go into the garage and, and, find another set of jumper cables, come out, get them hooked up, get it charging. I walk around to the driver's side of the car, and I'm nearly a puddle in the concrete by now, I'm so upset. okay, I open the car door, and picture this, a 69-year-old man crawling in on his hands and knees on the driver's seat of that Infiniti, and I get, like, eight inches from Heather's face, and I said, "I need a monument." And the second she gazed into my eyes, that anger just went gone. I mean, I expected it to lower some, but it was just gone. it, it shocked me. And so I first of all, I said, "You have my permission, any time you see me upset or spiraling at all, you're allowed to come and monument me and get me regulated back." And so of course, now I, I, there was another book in that called The Monument Method Two: The Sanctuary Bond, 'cause that's what we're calling it, is the sanctuary bond. And, what, what I figured out as I was writing that second book is what had happened was, is because Heather and I had been practicing The Monument Method for a couple of years, I mean, even before we had the words for it, the, the, the name for it didn't come about until I started writing the book last November. And, But we'd been practicing it in our marriage, and what we had done was trained our nervous system to realize that when eye gazing happened, it was time to stand down. 

And so that's what had happened in that car, in that car that day. so as I got to writing the book, I realized how powerful this is. and this is, especially for you guys, you small business guys that are, that are, don't have a lot of time with their women, this is something that, that can be so powerful because the number one things a woman needs to be happy in a relationship is to feel cherished. And generally, if he's spending 14 hours a day at work, she's not feeling cherished. So he needs to maximize that time when he gets home. so, well picture this. She's, she's at home. She's been cooking supper for the family, and he's been out in the world building his business, and the world has just been really mean to him that day. And he comes walking in the front door, already in fight or flight mode when he walks in the door that, the day he's had. so traditionally, she would just kind of maybe stay in the kitchen and hide and not want anything to do with him while he's that, that way, and hopefully, hoping he's calming, gonna calm down sometime. Or she would come and, and engage with him, and then all of a sudden she's in fight or flight mode too, and the outside world has brought its chat, hammer, and chisel into the relationship and is hammering away at their monument. 

And, and so, you know, then they have a horrible evening together because they're both mad at each other all evening long. So now with the monument method, the sanctuary bond, he comes in the door all out of sorts. She realizes that. She comes to him with his permission, because to monument somebody without their permission is just creepy. So with his permission, she, she comes to him, gives him that monument. It settles, it, it kicks him out of fight or flight mode. And that's gonna do two things. First of all, it makes that, that bond even stronger. And as the bond gets stronger, emotional system safety grows. And I think I said earlier that, there's no sexual desire without emotional system safety. so now they're building an incredible emotional system safety. And so that desire returns into their marriage. The, that romance phase can return after decades of marriage, and it can stay for decades because they're actively working on, on deliberately creating that bond. then the second thing it's gonna do is it's gonna make him live longer because When he comes into the househttps://masteringbusinessbasics.buzzsprout.com/ in fight or flight mode, his body's producing all kinds of stress hormones and, and, You know, the cortisol and the adrenaline and everything else that ends up making us diary. And so, and then third thing it's gonna do is it's gonna let his logical brain return to his body. And so all of a sudden he can make better business decisions the next day because he didn't spend all evening in fight or flight mode. And I've actually even taken this... it, it doesn't work so much for Heather as it does for me, but there's been times when, she, she hasn't been around and I've... You know, working on, on these books and stuff, I sometimes get myself pretty wound up and get, get stressed out. And if she's not around, she's... We've got grandkids that she goes and takes care of, so I'm not there to get my monument. So one day I just tried it. I said, "Let me just imagine myself into her eyes and, and receiving that monument." And it worked. I mean, phew. My nervous  system knew what to do just from, remembering how wonderful it was gazing into her eyes. 

Roger: Yeah, it's, it basically just changes your state of mind 

Gaylen Wilson: Right. You're, you're deregulating yourself out of that fight or flight mode. So that's a tool you can then use once you've developed it with your woman at home. It's a tool you can use in your everyday life, in the business life. If things get too crazy, you shut the door and just go imagine yourself gazing into her eyes. I, I think you could even take it to giving her a phone call and just hearing her voice. And, I, I keep saying that the best return on investment a small businessman can have a great relationship with the woman at home that becomes a refuge rather than another, another battlefield to manage. 

Roger: I think that's absolutely necessary. I mean, I've seen businesses break up people because of the stress, and it's stressful running a small business 

Gaylen Wilson: Oh yeah. Yeah, I, I have basically switched from being a computer field service guy to a, a publishing magnate now. And so I, yeah, I'm at 69, I've been working 14, 12 to 14 hour days, six to seven days a week for the last nine months building this whole empire. And I've never been so energized, that's the word. but I, I too am having the issue with Heather that she's going, "Okay, when are you gonna spend some time with me?" And so, so that's where I've got to, to optimize the time I do have with her and put the damn phone down when I don't need to be on it. 

Roger: Exactly. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. I, I think that people will get a lot out of this conversation if they listen to it. I really do 

Gaylen Wilson: Well, I, I hope so. that, that I feel that's my legacy from all the, the crazy shit that's happened to me in my life is Well, you know, you, first of all, you, you look at my life on paper, and you might have expected to meet a bitter old man in this, in this interview. And, but I've always Somehow I've always found the ability to be grateful for, for what I had left instead of bitter about what I 

Roger: I call that the, half glass full instead of half glass empty. You know? You gotta let your, your glass is always half full if you look at it that way, so you're always on the positive side. So I really thank you for coming on the podcast today. 

Gaylen Wilson: Oh, it's been my honor. 

Roger: I think our, our listeners will get a lot out of this conversation. And, if people wanna find out where your books are at and everything, where would they go? 

Gaylen Wilson: Okay. Monumentmethodinstitute.com is my, my website and, there's links to my Amazon books. I've got, I've got the, the core relationship books. got a four-book dating series for, two for the older couple that are getting, that have been in a failed marriage and are getting back into this insane dating market we've got. And then two for the, man before... That, that's Monument Man and Monument Woman. And then Man Before the Monument and Woman Before the Monument are the, for the 16 to 25-year-old crowd that is wanting to learn how to build a relationship on structure rather than chemistry. know, 'cause our society is telling us that kids, that chemistry is everything. And that's why you see these relationships ending in six months to two years, is 'cause that's the end of the normal romance phase in most new relationships. And so my books tell you how to build the structure to be able to keep that end of that romance phase for decades. And so I wrote the books in such a way that by the time the reader finishes them, they go, oK, this is great." They've seen what you've seen today, only in detail, how to implement it. So I... They gotta go, "Well, okay, where do I find somebody to build a monument with?" And so I've solved that issue. I've built the Monument Validated Person, 

mVP, dating site, that you've have to have read one of the books and pass a quiz before you can ever even get in the site. And then you've got to agree that you're there to find somebody to build a monument with, not for casual dating. 

So it's my anti-hookup dating site. And it's a ghost town right now. We need, we need members. And it, and actually, as part of my pay it forward from my heart transplant, I'm making that free forever. I'm never gonna charge for MVP. And, in fact, right now, if you go there and scroll to the bottom, there's a link that you can download any of those four books for free. along with the first book in our... We've got an 18-book romance series that Heather has mainly been writing. And, and so you can download the first book of that romance series, 

Roger: Right. I'm gonna put all that information in the show notes for you so people can go check it out. So, well, thank, again, thank you very much, for being on the podcast today, and good luck to all your endeavors 

Gaylen Wilson: yeah. Thank you so much for having me.