Tim Bosland – Breaking the Silence for Men

Hi and welcome to the the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we are talking with Tim Bosland. Tim is the founder of.

Peace Life Coaching dot com he helps people breakthrough obstacles holding them back and walk into the joy and peace in God. This is just one of the things that he does with his clients. Welcome to the show, Tim. I'm really excited to learn all about what you're doing. So tell us your story. How did you get started?

Yeah. No, it's it all starts with often tragedy is the thing that brings us into what we call our purpose in life.

And that sort of thing. So I was in a 16 year marriage myself and it was there was psychological and emotional abuse. And at the end of the marriage, there was a time when I thought my only options really divorce or suicide. And it was a terrible, terrible place.

To be.

Felt like a beaten dog. I felt like I didn't have a soul. It was. It was obviously a traumatic experience being in the marriage and as actually I'm talking to you. So obviously I didn't pick. This was, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And part of it was finding my passion.

The other side.

So what are my passions? I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what I should be doing. I didn't know any of that. As a result, I'm like, who am I? I had no idea who I was. Absolutely no idea who I was because I had given myself up to this idea of peace in the marriage means making peace in all things.

And completely lost myself as a result. So the first thing I did is what do I like to do so I like. I like to dance, so I ended up going and taking Latin dance lessons and which was very outside of anything I've ever done before, I think.

I took, you know, ballroom dancing in college and took it a couple extra times.

Just to you know, because I enjoyed it and as part of that I found a passion. So I ended up doing Latin dancing competitively. I did. I had an amazing coach.

We placed first in men's leading a couple times. I ended up focusing on salsa and salsa. I became. I ended up coming in first for like intermediate expert. So did really, really well just really, really love it and found my passion kind of grew into who I was.

So how does that relate to, you know, piece life coach?

Well, here's The thing is that I realized that God's way of relationships, God's way of marriage, and just how God puts together in the Bible how we're supposed to relate to one another was extremely powerful. And then we're supposed to bring our whole selves to God. We're supposed to bring our whole selves to.

Other people as well. So what I realized is that there's a whole bunch of truth in the Bible that enables us to do relationships well.

And part of what happened was, is between the when I started right, when I got out of the marriage to even up until today, I've been voraciously consuming a whole bunch of material on any kind of therapy that I can learn about from cognitive behavioral therapy to what is anxious attachment.

To secure attachment to avoid an attachment, how do all those things come into play and as a result I have, I feel like a calling or a. It's almost my purpose in life to be able.

To help other people through some of the stuff that I went through that was extremely difficult. You know, if I think about how, especially men in a difficult marriage, I know women go through difficult marriages too, but my experience is, you know, as a male and there is little to no support.

And men are going through that, you know, when.

So for instance, I've talked to men since I've gotten into a healthier place, and like nobody ever believed me that anything was going on. You know, I felt like less of a man for even admitting that something was wrong. But I knew something was wrong.

In really creating that space for men to walk into, what was I dealing with emotionally, psychologically, when that was happening and it's amazing the response I've gotten from other men who have gone through something similar.

So that was kind of the genesis of walking into what I believe God's purposes for me as and then what happened was is one of my friends actually encouraged me to become a life coach. I'm like a life coach and I didn't believe her at first. But what happens is, is that I go to a restaurant and.

People start sharing their addictions like, hey, I'm addicted to cocaine. I'm like, I'm just here for, you know, a nice meal. I don't necessarily want to talk about your cocaine addiction. You know, that sort of thing. But people tend to open up to me which.

It's been a gift and a curse all at the same time, so part of what I've done is try to learn the best I can on how to actually help people in those situations. And part of it is as one of my mentors said, is being able to help and heal yourself is the best form of, you know, education that you can get.

In order to help others. So that's really the genesis of.

And as I'm just talking through that, I can remember a really cool story about I had a couple in front of me and they were.

You know, I think I think they're on the verge of divorce. They were just going at each other. They were. I let people argue to kind of figure out how they argue in the session. And I took control of the situation and said, hey, listen, we're going.

To actually do an exercise so one of my other mentors calls it the sweaty palm exercise where I make the couple face each other. I have them hold hands and they actually have to listen to one another sometimes for the first time.

What was really interesting is I had a doctor and she was a aspiring nurse or something.

That, and he had her express how she was feeling in order for him to be able to. I called it repeat back. The issue was is that three, I think was probably a 5 minute like she was sharing for 5 minutes. The dude was so smart he repeated nearly word for word.

What she was saying, and it was like, that's not what I meant. So I had to change the words from repeat to.

Reflect. So we have to reflect back and he just couldn't get in an emotional space where he could actually reflect back in a positive way. So I switched the, I switched it on them and I had him share something about what she was doing that was super emotional for him. And I've studied a whole bunch of body language.

I can tell when somebody's not listening correctly and listening correctly is basically either listening to protect yourself or listening to learn. There's only two ways we learn or we listen. It's either listen to protect, or listen to learn, and it's from a book. Do I have to give up myself in order to be loved by you? I forget the name of the author.

And the idea is that we can either you know, 15 to 30 seconds after somebody starts talking. We usually start thinking about how are they wrong? How can I protect myself? How can I defend myself and whatnot? And the certain body language signals that happened and what happened was, is she stopped listening about.

15 to 30 seconds into what he was saying, and like, all right, listen, you're not listening with the right ears. Why don't we start over? She got super frustrated. She's like, how do you know that? I'm like, well, your eye movement your way, your body is all that kind of stuff.

And then what? It took it takes couples, usually about four tries because it's so not ingrained into most relationships to be able to hear with the right ears in order to try to understand.

And it was actually, it was one of the most beautiful moments I've ever experienced as a coach, because she ended up.

Reflecting back to him.

In a way that was slow methodical using her own words and actually empathizing as opposed to protecting herself.

And as a result, this guy he ended up literally breaking down and crying because I think it's the first time he's ever been heard.

And mainly because it was, it was an Indian couple. So you have to think of the culture and.

Subcultural impacts of listening and male female relation and in especially in the.

Indian culture it's very.

Different and when you think about how he was never necessarily listened to by his parents or anything like that, being the first time he's probably he was in his early 30s. The first time he actually felt heard as a human being when he actually thought and felt it was. It's one of the things that.

They get paid well, but it is more valuable than money to see those kinds of really sole connections get established as part of what I do, it's.

Just been a amazing, amazing journey.

Really incredible that you're working with men, men and women, but men in particular. There are a lot of women.

Here, doing coaching and women have, you know, they they've suffered a lot over the years. But there are men who really need help being hurt. And I think most of what coaching is, when you boil it all down, it's hearing people hearing what they're saying.

On the inside, and they may verbalize it, but men especially have been raised to kind of choke their emotions. You're supposed to live in your head, not in your heart. And if you start living connected.

Your head and your heart and the rest of your body, there's.

Obviously you're a little weird.

It's just like that's how people think.

True. Yeah, yeah.

When in reality, you're just another human being who has a soul and who.

Has a mind and a body that really we were designed to be connected altogether. You know your body speaks to you. We have intuition.

I mean, you may call it the Holy Spirit or whatever you want to call it, but it's there is something there that tells you when things are right, when they're not right, when they feel good, they help you feel emotions. And but if you're just like choking those emotions.

Down emotions do drive chemical reactions in your body that cause you to feel and to become ill in a lot of cases, and I think maybe that's partly why men have heart attacks so frequently is because they just haven't.

Been able to have the opportunity to communicate with somebody.

And be heard.

Yeah, it's especially. It's especially interesting because I don't I believe that a lot of men are not connected to their bodies necessarily. So as you become more my, my one of my Favorite coaches that I had, Jack Stanley, he talks about. I didn't realize it. I'm a I call myself a recovering engineer.

So just for that.

Just because as a recovering engineer, I was thought it's either one or zero. There's no other.

OK.

Option. So as far as lack of feeling I was completely there.

And I remember at the beginning of him working with him, it was. He's like emotion actually colors the world. And I'm like, what that makes no sense whatsoever.

And now I share that with others because being able to see almost the sub conversation under most conversations which is feeling and the unconscious mind completely opens up a world.

Is almost. It's completely foreign to a lot of men for sure. It was interesting how you talked about actually being heard. There's often I'm an NLP practitioner, also a hypnosis practitioner, a couple of other things. But one of the things I've learned is that the unconscious mind usually reveals what it's actually.

Wanting to talk about as opposed to what the words that are coming out of somebody's mouth are so as a coach being able to listen to the subtext of what somebody is.

Thing can help them actually hear themselves right. So one of the areas I'm a masculine communication coach for Nice Guy Reform school and one of the things that really makes a lot of the guys mad is I ask them questions to reveal what their unconscious mind is, thinking that their conscious mind.

He isn't actually aware.

Of and like I hate you. I'm like, alright, I got it perfect. You know, when they start to be able to connect those things, it's amazing.

One of the exercises that I give to most men, especially that are trying to, for instance anger, anger is 1.

That is usually it's a result. It's not. It's a symptom. It's not necessarily the actual what's going on at the same time, most men are very aware when they become angry.

So I often give men an exercise of all right there is. Whenever you get angry in a conversation, I want you to do one thing. I only want you to notice it, and we'll have a goal later. But from the time that you actually get angry till you realize you're angry, I just want you to make note of what that time is. So if it's 5 minutes, it's 5 minutes.

And our goal is just to.

Ask yourself, what did I like from a somatic perspective? What did I feel in?

My body that made me realize that it was anger.

And the goal of the exercise is to be able to take that 5 minutes and notice it within 3 minutes and then two minutes and one minute to the point where somatically you can actually feel it as it's happening.

Notice it and then course correct immediately. So from 5 minutes to 0 minutes and sometimes you can go to negative only if you're you know that there's a certain situation that is going to put you in a certain mood and puts you in a certain feeling. In order to do it. So it can be a super powerful exercise for sure.

Sounds like it NLP and hypnosis and hypnotherapy and all of these modalities that are really coming up to the forefront right now are so amazing and so powerful to transform lives where.

Right.

I will say many decades, it's probably longer than that, but I can only speak to the decades that I'm aware of. People just have been trained to live a certain way, choke down your emotions. Children are seen, not heard. We don't care what you think. Stop daydreaming. Pay attention.

It's one or zero. There's no room for creativity, and it seems to me as though in the last couple of years, that's all changing. People are realizing that, hey, I'm here for this experience.

I want it.

And I don't care if it's not the way it's supposed to be. I'm going to enjoy my life. I'm entitled to enjoy my life. I'm entitled to be around people that care about me, not just say they care about me because they're my family and they have to. They genuinely care about me.

We were talking before we started recording about spending time with your kids and being present.

That is such a.

Powerful gift to give children.

It is, it is, and I think especially.

From a male perspective, there's the one of the one of the things that my kids have really helped me is.

Learn how to be silly. You know, as a, you know, 47 year old man, the idea of being silly sounds really foreign, right? But there's such joy in being silly and just it makes you so present with your kids.

And part of what I did was, and I've had a I've had some abuse in my past, so and it was probably around the age of 5.

Or six. So one of the things I did was I purposely went and taught Sunday school at a young age, a young age Sunday school. So second grade, first grade, that sort of thing.

One of the most beautiful things they taught me is just how to have fun. Be silly, you know? Be straight, be honest and just enjoy playing. And I think as adults and even as we were growing up, the idea of you need to, you need to grow up well. You know what? Sometimes we need to act younger.

Sometimes we just need to enjoy the present.

Play with our kids. Be super silly. You know, I was. It was about a month ago and I have no idea why. I just wanted to listen to Christmas music, so we rolled the windows down and it was. What is that? August rolled the windows down and we were all singing at the top of our lungs. Christmas songs like the 12 days of Christmas.

And stuff like that. Super silly, super stupid. And it's one of those memories that will stick in your mind for a long, long time. So just the idea of being.

Putting aside everything that's going on, we all have things we're struggling with. We all have goals we all have and being present with our kids. You're right. It's such a gift to our kids, so I'm hoping that they'll remember Christmas. You know, Christmas in August. I'm hoping that they'll love when.

Maybe a trans tradition when they have.

There we go. There we go. There we go. And just being just playing and being silly with them is super.

For sure, yeah.

And part of that too is the from a children's perspective, I'm part of the relationship school. Jason Gattis, the relationship school, be graduating soon. And one of the things he talks about is how when we were growing up, we were, we have our true selves and our strategic selves and our strategic self has been shaped and.

Formed by how we got love and affection when we were kids especially.

So the idea of performance based love and affection and acceptance, and when we got good grades, we felt that love and affection, if we didn't do what we're told, we didn't actually feel that connectedness and love and affection as a.

Result and part of as we grow up and try to.

Love out of our true selves is being able to express who we actually are and being fully loved and accepted. Because here's the difficult part, our true selves and our strategic selves. So.

If and I realized this a while ago because I was struggling with it that.

If I am just presenting my strategic self, then even if somebody likes me, it's not me, so I can't really feel like it's connected.

If they don't like me, then that's fine. I really. It's a safe, safe place to be.

So the idea of creating this additional persona that you're presenting to the world in general creates A falsehood of connection at times instead of just being your true self.

And that's one of the things I enjoy helping people do as well is.

All right, you have this person that you perform as, and then there's this person who you truly are. Let's figure out how to actually get as close to your true self. Now, when we're in certain circles, we're not going to just vomit our true selves all over everybody. Right. We're going to be protective of that. And as far as the intimacy circle, to be able to.

Connect in a way that is true and genuine, as opposed to kind of fake and protected. So that's been one of the other things that's really neat to see as I work with some of the folks as well.

I was talking with another gal a while ago and she's talking about the difference in the way she approached.

Meeting new people and you kind of reminded me of this conversation with the your last comment. She used to go into a group and wonder who would like her?

And now.

She goes into a group and she wonders.

I wonder who I.

Will like.

Yeah. The difference of perspective, when you're meeting new people and it really it calls up the idea that you are enough.

And you're entitled to be curious about the people you don't have to go and try to make them like you and try to say whatever you need to say in order to get them to like you. You can just be you.

You and be curious to see.

Who am I going to connect with?

Yeah. Yeah, that's powerful. I think one of the things I try to teach guys as well is that there's such a with all the different like me too, movements and just this wanting to be accepted, flipping the script and realizing that you are enough. And when you present your true selves, some people aren't going to like you.

Like, not everybody has to like.

Thank you.

And that's an important thing to think of. The other part too that I try to help guys come to the conclusion of is that.

Outcome like release the outcome, you go into a situation like you're saying just be curious and especially in the dating world or even when you are with your wife or anything like that, be who you are, release the outcome. It may be a difficult path to get to the point where you're through the situation.

But if you present what you're actually truly feeling and believing.

The person will be accepting the true you as opposed to the strategic you and on the other side a conflict is such a connection if it's done right. If you're just yelling at each other and like we talked about before or if you're not listening to learn, you're listening to protect, then conflict drives a wedge the way that I describe it to my.

My clients is that every little resentment you have is a brick between you and your spouse and by the.

Time you've probably gotten to me. You can't actually see over the brick wall that's called the resentment wall. And by taking down those bricks one at a time, and sometimes you can take out a whole level of bricks, you can create this connection. That is not something that you've ever experienced. And I think a lot of relationships are really operational.

Have before we started and it's really just this operational agreement that I'll see on the other side of when the kids are 18, right. And there can be a much better soul connection if there's intentionally talking about the resentments in a way that's helpful in part of what I help people do is.

There's a it's kind of a formulaic like, hey, I see you're having a really rough day, so kind of an acknowledgement from an empathy perspective and then you say this is what I'm feeling.

This is what happened. This is what I'm feeling. What I would prefer. So it's kind of a four step process and we're able to do that in.

Number one release in the outcome #2, you're not attacking and you're just saying, hey, this is where I'm.

Coming from I've seen like that one.

Couple I've talked about, there's a couple of other.

Couples where they go from at each other's throats to actually understanding each other, and it becomes such a.

The energy just completely changes between the people, right? So they're not seeing each other or they're faced away from each other, and then they ended up facing each other emotionally as opposed to physically. That makes sense.

It does make sense, makes total sense, and it it's really it's a powerful tool to be able to help people come together and not end up divorced and all the times I think divorce just is because the tools weren't there. They really.

Did intend to stay together forever, but the tools weren't there in order for them to be able to communicate with each other in a way the.

You could get over all of these hurdles and then you've got, you know, everybody experienced trauma at some point in their life or another.

And not knowing how to deal with trauma and working through that process. And if you have two damaged individuals that are together and neither one of them has the tools to.

Figure that out, then. Sorry, but the relationship is pretty doomed unless somebody gets on the pole and realizes that we had to.

Deal with the trauma first.

And then we then we need to deal with our relationship with each other and our relationship with the kids. Kids will grow up and move away.

And they're not a lifelong commitment, no matter.

How much you love them?

I mean, I'm still my mom and dad's son, so you know that's never going away. But that's an interesting statement that, you know, I think it's not just the tools, but it's the desire to be humble enough to commit to the relationship.

Work with each other. Because here's The thing is that I talked to, I talked to a friend.

A long, long time ago. And he's like, I want to be completely healed by the time I get into a relationship and like, that's not possible, because when you're before you in a relationship, there's a certain kind of.

Work you can do.

Once you get into a relationship, there's a lot of stuff that's been programmed or that you've reacted to before, that you're not going to have to deal with as a single person. There's a book by Oprah and Doctor Perry. Doctor Perry is a great OT guy. It's.

What happened to you? So the primary question is not what's wrong with you. It's what happened to you. There's a story in the book where.

There is a veteran that's walking along with his girlfriend and all of a sudden there's a backfire from a car. You know, all of us. He's hears this loud bang. Well, when he was in the military on the front lines, that meant dropped to the floor. Or you're dead, like it was an automatically programmed thing. So it was his brain stem. Basically said we need to.

Drop to the floor.

What happened was, and the story in the book, he actually, you know, threw his girlfriend to the ground as well and ended up.

Hurting her. And it wasn't a it was a automatic response. It wasn't a thought provoked response. So the idea of there's trauma in our past that sometimes doesn't come up, actually until we're in a relationship.

Now granted, we need to try to heal as much as we can beforehand, but there are certain things that.

Only a committed relationship can help you heal, so that's that was an interesting juxtaposition. Like you have to heal as much as you can, but then you're not going to heal fully until you get in a relationship where there's difficulty. I mean, it just happens, right. So being able to heal through our relationship.

And also be helpful as well.

I think it was Eckhart Tolle who said you'll never. You'll never know how much work you've done or how much you've progressed until you get into a family relationship or go have dinner with your family or something along those lines. I mean, we go along and we think we're doing all this work and we're really, you know.

On our game and we go to the family reunion.

And it just like.

Oh, my God, you're driving me crazy.

Yeah. Yeah, especially with family. It brings up all the child.

Good things that we have suppressed unconsciously because sometimes our brain couldn't handle it. One more comment on the relationship part. It's not only the tools and the desire, but having been in a relationship where there was abuse, there's two things. Number one, I own.

Staying in it, I didn't stick up for myself. I didn't know how. I didn't have the tools I wanted to try to keep the peace, but the number #2.

Is sometimes there's there is unhealed trauma that somebody doesn't want to heal from, and a lot of people call it narcissism or BPD or anything like that.

And sometimes it's just not salvageable because there is this abuse. So even if people have tools and the desire.

If they're not in a psychological state to actually be able to move forward, it's oftentimes the best option you know, especially like in my situation, it was either divorce or suicide. Well, suicide is not.

I was in the.

Same boat at one point in my life, you're not like.

Freaking me out at all. Totally get what you're saying.

That's there.

There. And isn't it interesting how I call it the circle of care where there's a lot of people that have gone through difficult experiences, we end up helping people that had difficult experiences and then they help people who have difficult experiences. And it's.

This this constant, beautiful circle of care that enables future generations to benefit from the trauma that has happened in people before them, for sure.

I have long been a proponent of if you're in a dysfunctional relationship, I don't care if you have kids or not. Get out of that dysfunctional relationship. You are not helping anybody, especially not the kids, because you're showing them that you.

It's OK to be in a dysfunctional relationship. They grow up not knowing how to have a proper relationship.

Yeah, for sure.

It's modeling for them.

What you find acceptable? So for instance, my parents live about 8 minutes down the road. I'm intentionally teaching my kids how to treat their parents by going and trying to teach, you know, treat my parents as well as I can. So you got to visit every Sunday. We're visiting that sort of thing to create this rhythm of life.

Of intentionally teaching our kids what we feel is the best way to live life in general.

My father in.

Law lived with us for 18 years.

And we eventually moved and.

He has his.

Own place. Now he's doing fine but.

He was.

We tease our kids that yeah, we did that.

So when we get older, we're going.

To rent a.

Room in your house? No, not that.

For sure.

It helps with the family dynamic too. It's just it's nice to.

Enable my kids to be able to have grandparents to grow up around and you know there's family stuff can be tough at times, but at the same time there's this bond that especially while my parents are still living, they're in their 70s, we can experience a type of life that creates that connection and.

And that sort of thing. So it's just, it's fantastic to be able to help my kids with that too.

Yeah, I love that so.

How do you work with people?

Should ask do this earlier on but.

So there's a couple ways. Number one, I'm focusing on helping especially high performing individuals like executives, that sort of thing be able to step into a power that they didn't know that they had. And I think that in order to do that, first we establish know yourself.

So people really have to know themselves. We talked about strategic self and true self. So there's certain things that certain NLP things that I do to help them actually know themselves.

Well, the second part is mastering yourself. So for instance, I had a I worked with a guy this past week where out of integrity basically told the different story to everybody lies to a lot of people, that sort of thing. So using some NLP techniques of, you know, breaking state and a couple of other things, how do I reprogram as unconscious to?

Be able to say this is how I'm going to act versus how I'm currently acting, so I help some of the high performing individuals to step into who they are as opposed to just performing as.

Or the 2nd is helping guys step into their masculinity. As we talked before, being able to not only step into a place where they are providing, you know if a guy provides for his family, they think that that's near a complete statement and they're done. The ability to provide.

Emotional support for their partner in listen.

In a way, that's.

Helpful. So retransformed their minds on how to show up as themselves. I think I believe the name of the book is courage to be disliked.

Could be a little bit wrong in that.

The idea of actually standing in who you are and just being able to live who you are as a result, part of what I do in the nice guy reform school as well is just be able to communicate in a powerful protecting way. That's understanding, you know, do you actually want me to give you advice or help you with this or would you like me to just listen, you know, those two options.

Powerful, powerful options.

90% of the time, a lot of things are solved just by listening with a learning ear for sure. So that's number two helping guys step into that the 3rd way that I help people is really helping you know, 95. And that's probably understated, but 95% of couples often say that their problem is communication.

So being able to be just a moderator in a real conversation and teaching them how to communicate is the other part that I help with. And when working with the men as men can actually lead in this type of way.

Where they say hey.

Why don't we sit down? You know, I understand that. You know, the kids are all over the place. But when this happened, this is how it made me feel. And this is what I would like in the future.

Men being able to lead in that way is such a.

A vote of protection and being able to provide in a way that isn't just financial. So when guys step into that, it's extremely powerful. The their woman can kind of rest and more of who they are and just relax as opposed to stepping into more of that masculine role. So those are the three ways that.

I help people.

Very cool. And they can.

Reach you through your website.

They can. It's PeaceLifeCoaching dot com. That is the primary way to find out more about me. I would say that following me on Facebook. My name is Tim Bosland. I post probably 5 to 6, sometimes 12 times a day has everything to do with relationships, masculinity. Some advice for women as well.

But focusing mainly on men, some super silly stuff like fun dog video, that is a smile.

You know, a smile, alert type thing. So just try to keep it light. You get to know me in a much deeper way. Everything from Bible verses to all that kind of stuff. So that's the probably the best way to get to know me. The best way to reach out to me is Tim at PeaceLifeCoaching dot com and I'd be happy to set something up and.

You know, figure out how I can best support some of your.

Listeners for sure.

That's awesome. So what's the one thing you want to leave the audience with today?

There's always hope.

There's always hope for change. I think when we get to a point where the pain of change becomes less than the pain of staying the same. So, for instance, you and I were both in really difficult, you know, relationships and that pain is super intense, amazingly awful. But there's still hope.

And there's hope, because there's people that have gone before you that can help you go from where you are to the life that you've imagined, but have no idea how to get there.

In that whole circle of care has been designed so that people like me, people like you, can actually help people figure out the path. So it took me 4 to five years to understand how a lot of this works.

By giving the Cliff notes of how we got there, it can take as little as you know, four months at time. So that would be my main message for sure.

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me today. This has been awesome.

Thank you very much. Very nice.