Hi, thank you for joining today’s podcast episode. Today’s episode is 191, “How to drastically change your experience in relationship”, an interview with Larry Bilotta.
Before we get started, I wanna just pause and recognize your listenership. I realize how busy and occupied we are, and just to take time and share with me in learning about relationship principles, tools and practices for you to grow your partnership, your connection and your authenticity and love.
I appreciate and acknowledge your quest on this journey, and I with you am on this journey and deeply committed to the path as well. Everything I talk about, I do my very, very best to practice… And you’ve been a long-time listener, you’ve heard me give my own examples of my own challenges and my own practices, and what it looks like on me. And as we welcome guests as they’re sharing their insight and their expertise and their knowledge, again, it might look different than it would look on you, so I wanna encourage you to just take what fits and resonates, and leave the rest. And again, thank you for your listenership.
If you would like access to today’s show notes, you can find them on my website, which is DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast and you can find all the episodes there. Again, today’s episode is 191, “How to drastically change your experience in relationship”, an interview with Larry Bilotta. Let’s get started.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Married over 45 years in an age of divorce, Larry Bilotta is an authority on understanding people, marriage and relationships. Larry lived 27 years in a marriage made in Hell, but in the 28th year, fell in love…with his wife! As one of the few marriage experts who actually transformed his OWN marriage, today, Larry holds the key to bringing a marriage back from the brink of divorce, even after the papers have been filed.
Larry, welcome to the show. It’s a pleasure to have you today.
Larry Bilotta: Thank you for having me, Jessica. This is a great opportunity. Empowering relationships – what a positive subject that is!
Dr. Jessica Higgins: It is, and you have a personal journey with this. As I’ve said in the bio, just having transformed your own marriage, and after 28 years there was a big change for you… And I guess I’m curious, was there anything that ignited that change?
Larry Bilotta: Well, the Larry and Marsha story was the classic story of two people who have nothing in common; they have no shared value system from their families, and have every reason to split apart. The only thing that held us together was that we were both programmed to be married and miserable, which we did. So we stayed in it, and fought tooth and nail, year after year. So it was a very, very hard life. 27 years of hell, I call it. The 27 years of hell was really necessary for me to learn what I had to learn… Because if I hadn’t learned from Marsha all of these lessons, I wouldn’t be of much value to people today.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wow…
Larry Bilotta: So that had to happen. One of my foundation teaching principles is we only learn from pain, and when you have pain, if you stay in it and you stay with it, you’re going to learn, and you’re gonna discover and you’re gonna realize things that you can’t learn just with no pain. So when you have pain provided by a difficult relationship, you have motivation to learn, if you don’t run away. Unfortunately, most people are running away. They’re running away from the pain of the relationship, so they’re going on to second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth relationships, and the only reason they believe that is because they believe that they’re not carrying the problem. They believe that the problem is in the other person, and they need to get rid of that person, because that person is the problem; they’re not the problem. So that would explain why people are running away from relationships that are troubling, and are hard and difficult.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right. And I wonder if you would even add that people perhaps even blame the fit. “This isn’t a good fit”, and the relationship. But it’s still a mechanism for the same thing, it sounds like.
Larry Bilotta: Yeah, because does it really matter what story you tell about your problem relationship? It doesn’t matter what story you tell. “We fell out of love”, that’s a story. “It’s not a good fit”, that’s another story. “We grew apart”, that’s another story. It doesn’t matter what story you tell. “She got a red lawn mower, I’ve got a blue lawn mower.” Who cares what the story is why we split up? It doesn’t matter what the story is. The important thing is if you’re not in pain, you’re not learning anything. If you’re running away, always seeking pleasure, you’re not learning anything.
So that’s really what this Marsha relationship, the 27 years of hell – it taught me everything. Unfortunately I had a program from my childhood that says “You stay married and you stay miserable.” And that is a message that’s in my mind. She had the same message in her mind. So we couldn’t leave each other, because the message is powerful. Stay married, stay miserable. That just was the thing that held us in place.
I’m sure if we didn’t have that programming from our childhood, I don’t think we would have been able to stay and learn. We wouldn’t have been able to do it; it was too painful.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: My initial question is about to lead into my question here, which is “How did you turn being miserable into learning?”
Larry Bilotta: It started in 1977, when they impeached Richard Nixon… And I stayed in that hell until they elected the second Bush. That’s how long it was, in terms of history. And the need to learn this became — when I married Marsha in 1974, the pain began right away… What was the pain? The pain was “My value system is not your value system.” Let’s take a look at the value systems.
Marsha’s value system was her parents were homeowners, and they improved everything, they fixed everything, they repaired everything. They kept a home. My parents were apartment dwellers. They didn’t own anything, they had no savings. My father gambled at the race track, my mother drank on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday… And so they had a gambling and a drinking problem. That’s why they had no money. So that’s what I grew up in.
The name wasn’t called out at the time, back in the ’50s, but my parents were narcissists. Now there’s 120 books on narcissism, today, but my parents were narcissists… So what was I? I was a narcissist. I was obsessed with myself. So what Marsha was determined to do was rip my programming out of me, because she saw it was wrong, and needed to be gotten rid of. So I had these values put into me, and I would fight to protect those values. So she was out to rip those values out of me and replace them with her values system, from her parents. That’s really what made it hell. It was hell.
So it was a huge battle, as she kept on trying to teach me, for instance, that my father was a gambler and that my mother was an alcoholic. I did not want to think that. I did not want to say that, I did not want to admit that. So she was working on me for years, to force me to face that and see that, that that’s what my parents were doing… And my parents distorted things, because they were really self-centered people, and I just became that. I just became what they made me.
When you’re living in an intimate relationship, whether it’s a marriage, or an intimate relationship without marriage, it doesn’t matter; you’re gonna learn something, because you have opposite value systems. And some people have extremely opposite value systems. My values system – for instance, my parents were apartment dwellers, and their habits were gambling and drinking, and her parents were homeowners, and they were very stable people. The only problem was they had really nasty tempers. So Marsha had anger; she had a lot of anger.
I didn’t have parents with a temper, so I had no anger… So what I did is I did the passive-aggressive things that passive-aggressive people do, and she was in open confrontation. That’s what she did. So you see, just with picking a few values, you can already see that we have everything necessary for destruction of the relationship.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And great clashing.
Larry Bilotta: Yeah. We were held in place though by that master program, Married and Miserable. So we couldn’t get out of that… We were literally two people in a slug fest, in a ring, that couldn’t escape the ring. We couldn’t escape the ring.
So year after year, it was painful… Because what I was doing as the non-conflict person – I was looking for a way to hide and to lie. So I would lie all the time, because I never wanted her wrath released on me. So I would lie to temporarily put off her anger.
She always was attacking me for being a liar, and I was always attacking her for being angry. I couldn’t take her anger, she couldn’t take my lying… And I’m soft-natured, she’s hard-natured. So more opposite values. Soft-natured people lie a lot, and they do because they hate conflict. And soft-natured people are people who are relationship-oriented, not results-oriented. Hard-natured people want results; they want good and bad, right and wrong. And soft-natured people are like “Who likes me? Who thinks highly of me? Who’s my enemy? Who’s my friend?” That’s how soft-natured people process life.
I’m a soft-natured person, she’s a hard-natured person… We had horrendous differences of clashing values, all the time. From the smallest subjects to the largest subjects. And that creates lots of pain. When you want lots of pain, you’re going to want to learn things; you’re gonna want to discover things, you’re gonna be like “Why is this? Why is this happening? Why am I suffering?”
So one of the things I learned in this terrible ring I couldn’t get out of is I learned that the pain is not coming from the person out there, it’s coming from inside me. And that was a huge discovery, because I thought Marsha was my problem. She was the person who was doing all this, and she made the pain in me. But it turns out this thing called the little voice inside your head – we all know about that – is actually what causes the pain. Because the little voice inside your head is constantly telling you the meaning of events. “This is what that means. This means that. This means that.” And the things that the voice tells you are always terrible; they’re always painful, they’re always rejecting…
So what I discovered in the late ’70s is this voice actually was exploding within me, while Marsha was exploding outside, and I was caught in the middle. That’s like a vice; it’s got two sides, and they’re crushing you… So what creates the pain? The two sides are crushing you. But if one side of the vice is removed, what happens to the pain? The pain disappears. You need both sides of the vice to create pain. Together they need to crush you, and if they’re both there, you’re gonna be in pain. But if one side is removed, that pain disappears.
So that’s what I discovered in the late ’70s – if I could take this inner pressure and I could get rid of it, then my pain went away. And that was the beginning of the discovery of how to end my pain. That Marsha wasn’t actually the creator of my pain; this left side of the vice was… Because it crushed me. And you know that feeling, when you’re being crushed. It’s a really terrible feeling… And you really can feel that in really difficult relationships.
So what happens is we don’t know what we’re getting into when we fall in love. We don’t know. But this is happening over and over again, millions and millions of times. And nobody’s waking up to it. So what happens is we fall in love by falling in love with 2, 3, 4 things. We love three things or four things about this person. But then there’s 8, 10, 12 things that we would hate about this person, and our family and friends could often see it, but we cannot. So what we do is we fall in love with 3-4 things, and we can’t see and won’t see and refuse to see the 12 things that are gonna really create a lot of pain… So what we do is we fall in love, we see the 3-4 things that we love, and we think that’s gonna be all that we’re gonna have, and we believe it.
So what happens is once we fall in love, and then we do something like get married, we get deeper and deeper into this relationship and then the 3-4 things we love disappear. And the 8, 9, 10, 12 things we couldn’t stand start appearing. And that’s what the makings of destroying the relationship is. The things we couldn’t see now appear; the things we loved disappear… Which explains why people say they grow apart, and “We’re not a fit”, and all that kind of thing. But you know, all this is predictable, because it’s all in the childhood. All the pain in the childhood. The more abandonment, the more abuse and the more neglect a person has in their childhood in the first ten years, the more that abandonment, abuse and neglect is gonna show up in the marriage, in the relationship, and it’s gonna be there, for sure. Absolutely for sure. And when that’s there, you’re gonna pay a price.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Larry, let’s pause really quick, because you’re saying some really wonderful things and I just wanna kind of clarify with you. So when you’re talking about the vice of perhaps what your wife is presenting to you that feels painful, or maybe her delivery and how you’re experiencing that, and then your inner narrative or story about it, and the tension between those, or the pressure between those… And when you’re talking about revisiting your narrative or questioning that story and letting go of that story, I also can imagine listeners are saying “Well, what if my partner is telling me I’m a jerk, and I’m this, and I’m that, and I just agree with them?” If they’re saying harmful or hurtful things and then I just let go of that pressure, then I become a doormat, right? There’s a difference between that and what you’re saying. Can you help with that?
Larry Bilotta: Yes, let’s talk about the doormat. What actually is a doormat? A doormat is a person who gives up and becomes a victim of what is in their world. So if a relationship — the classic one is an abused woman, who seeks shelter; the abused wife shelter. She’s married to an abuser. And when you go into her childhood, you see that the messages from mom and dad were to make her an abused person. So she literally gets messages from the childhood, that get put in her mind, and the message is “You have to be abused.” And so now she has to obey the messages that are in her mind, and that draws her like a magnet to a man who is literally programmed to be an abuser. So there’s the classic example of how we’re drawn together by childhood messages.
Here’s one I see over and over again. A person grows up in a really good home; very positive parents, very loving parents, very caring parents. The parents give the message through their behavior, through their actions, through their words, that we need to take care of the less fortunate. So here’s a girl who’s growing up in a good home, for example, and the message she gets is “We need to take care of the less fortunate.” What that turns into in her mind is “If I need to take care of the less fortunate, I should marry the less fortunate.”
So what she does is she’s attracted to a very troubled guy, from a very troubled home. And he has abandonment, abuse and neglect, and she marries him. And she’s surprised to find out in seven years, in twelve years, in fifteen years, that he collapses into a completely different personality. And what is that personality? It’s literally the personality of that childhood home of his. And she is shocked and surprised. That’s called the mid-life crisis. The mid-life crisis transforms that person into the pain of their childhood home messages… Because that’s what happens – we have 53,000 hours of waking time in our childhood; 53,000 hours – that’s a lot of time to get messages.
So if you have a lot of abuse messages, abandonment, neglect messages – if those messages are in there, when you get into your thirties and forties, those messages are gonna become very strong, and they’re gonna take over your personality and put you in a mid-life crisis, and you’re not gonna be yourself. So the person you’re married to is gonna suffer for that.
Once again, I could warn people about this, but when they’re falling in love, they’re not gonna listen to me. So they don’t take the warning, and they marry these troubled people. It’s a really amazing phenomenon.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right, yes. The honeymoon and the very fantasy that we’re in – we all do – and the neurochemicals that support that…
Larry Bilotta: Yes. The oxytocin, the dopamine, the endorphins – yes, they come and take us over and they blind us.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And projection… We fill in the blank and we imagine who they are, and have it all figured out…
Larry Bilotta: Yes, yes.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Okay, so help me if you can… So you’re saying a lot of this early imprint in our childhood experience, and perhaps it’s even below the field of our awareness. It might even be unconscious, subconscious, or even the stories that we tell ourselves, that we operate within… And when we’re in these painful dynamics, when I was asking earlier “How do you shift into a healthy place?”, I guess I feel that there’s a transformational process, whether or not it’s evaluating and contemplating your story, maybe that’s from childhood that you’re saying, that inner voice that you had, that helped you let go of that, and maybe — I don’t know how you did that; I’m really curious how you did that. So can you speak to that? Let’s start there.
Larry Bilotta: Okay, so you’re asking about that little voice inside your head. The little voice inside your head is very destructive. Psychology calls that the ego, and that voice is going to be destructive all the time. It’s just a matter about what content that voice has to use on you. If you have abandonment, abuse and neglect, physical or emotional, from the first ten years, that’s what the voice has.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So how did you recognize and have the perspective to see that was ego, and perhaps the painful narrative and imprint from childhood, and then what did you replace it with?
Larry Bilotta: I discovered it was a voice in the ’70s. It was the voice, and it was talking to me. That just really blew my mind. I thought I was the only thinker in my head, that’s what I thought. And in the ’70s I discovered that there’s a second thinker. Like “What is this second thinker? It talks to me. It knows me. It knows the situation, and it’s telling me terrible things.”
So what I learned about this voice is that it is all about a thing called “against energy.” It’s all about against energy. And so I came up with an analogy. The analogy is called the ocean and the beach. The ocean and the beach analogy goes like this. We’re born into an ocean of against energy. An ocean. And so it doesn’t matter which ocean – Atlantic, Pacific, Mediterranean Sea, it doesn’t matter what ocean you’re in, there are sharks. There are sharks in every ocean, so no matter where you try to escape, no matter which ocean you go to, the ocean of against energy is always around you, because there’s always sharks. So sharks create pain, and so we don’t know what to do, so we think we’re gonna outrun the sharks, but we can’t outrun the sharks, because they’re everywhere. So what we have to find is a way to get on the beach… Because if we can get on the beach, sharks can’t follow us to the beach, because they can’t survive on the beach. We need to get on the beach.
So now the question becomes, alright, I need to get out of the ocean of against energy, where there’s a law of the ocean that says “Every problem will be replaced by another problem.” So that’s the law of the ocean of against energy. So if you’re in the ocean of against energy, every problem is gonna be replaced by another problem, and there’s no escaping that, until you get on the beach. Because when you’re on the beach, the laws of the ocean don’t apply to you.
So we’ve gotta get on the beach. How do we do that? I devised four steps to — this is the story I’m telling myself. The first step of getting out of the ocean is to accept that I’m in the ocean. Acceptance is the first start of separating yourself from the ocean of against energy. The first thing is I accept I’m in the ocean of against energy, and so I’ve made my first separation. My first little separation is acceptance. Because the ocean doesn’t want you to accept anything, ever… So acceptance is not allowed in the ocean. But when you accept that you’re in the ocean, you’ve made the first separation from the ocean.
The second separation from the ocean is called gratitude. And now that you’ve accepted you’re in the ocean, you have gratitude that you’re in the ocean. Why? Because this is good, because I’m learning from pain. The pain has given me the motivation to learn, and the ocean is making that possible. So I have gratitude for being in the ocean. That’s my second separation from the ocean.
My third separation from the ocean is called appreciation. That brings us to the appreciation question. The appreciation question is “What do I love about you?” When you appreciate something, you enlarge it, and when you ask the question “What do I love about you?”, you are enlarging the goodness of what that person is. So you ask the question “What do I love about you, Sheila?” and “What do I love about you, Mark?”, “What do I love about you, John?” You’re asking the question “What do I love about you?” and then you name the top three things you love about that person. Well, that’s something the ocean of against energy never wants you to do, ever. Never wants you to look at what’s good about somebody. But here you are, you’re separating yourself with appreciation by asking the appreciation question, “What do I love about you?” Now, this is the third separation out of the ocean, because you’re focusing on something the ocean doesn’t want you to do.
The fourth separation that gets you actually onto the beach is called quantum forgiveness. Now, quantum forgiveness is separated from religious forgiveness, because religious forgiveness says “You’re separate from me, I’m separate from you. You did something bad to me, but I’m gonna forgive you because I’m the better person. And we know I’m the better person, because I’m better than you, and I’m gonna forgive you because that’s the thing that a really good person like me does.” That’s religious forgiveness. There’s a lot of problems with religious forgiveness.
Quantum forgiveness is very different, because quantum forgiveness, coming from what we’re learning from quantum physics, is that at the subatomic level, electrons, protons, neutrons, photons, we are all connected. We are all one at the subatomic level. And when we do quantum forgiveness, and these are the words of quantum forgiveness – the words are “You are good, pure and innocent. All is forgiven and released.” You’re actually forgiving yourself, while you forgive that person at the same time. Why? Because we’re all connected.
So this is really what pulls you out of the ocean, that fourth step. The fourth step says “You and I are one. We’re not separate, we’re not divided. We’re one. You’re pure and innocent, and all is forgiven and released.” So that’s the fourth step. Now, those four steps gets you onto the beach. And when you’re on the beach, you’re now in your right mind. You’re not being beaten up by the against energy ocean of the little voice inside your head. You don’t have all the against energy;Â you’re not against anything. You’re free on the beach.
So that’s what the ability to get free of the ocean is – it gives you freedom to not be what I call a pinball. A pinball is a person who’s bouncing off everything in the world of what’s going on. When you’re a pinball, you’re very interested in what’s going on. You’re always thinking about what’s going on, you’re asking people about what’s going on. You wanna know, because you want to be stimulated by what’s going on, especially troubling things that are going on. So you’re reacting constantly, and it becomes a whole way of life, constantly reacting to what’s going on, what’s going on, what’s going on… And now you’re obsessed with what’s going on. And now all you’re doing is bouncing.
The opposite of this is called the environment changer. Now, the environment changer is a person who changes the environment in their mind. That’s what their environment is, it’s the environment of their mind. And when you’re changing the environment of your mind, you’re really changing everything – that’s the most important thing – and no longer be a pinball bouncing off these external stimuli.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: One of the ways I’m hearing this is — other terminology might be power struggle, or that hyper-vigilant fight, flight or freeze response when you’re in this conflict, and that if we can utilize some of these steps you’re recommending around acceptance, gratitude, appreciation and quantum forgiveness, that it shifts our perspective. And I’m almost thinking — I don’t know if you’re familiar with aikido… But it’s a martial art around relationship. I’m almost getting that there’s an exercise in aikido of when we’re in that opposition of the attacker and the person being attacked, that there’s this oppositional force… And that if we can step off that line, but maybe even stay in connection and be able to see, but we’re much more healthy, empowered, and we have a sense of perspective. Are those fair things that I’m reflecting to you?
Larry Bilotta: Yes, you’re mentioning aikido… There’s all kinds of ideas in the world, which is intended to be an antidote for the little voice inside your head. Because the little voice inside your head puts you in against energy. And when you’re against anything, you’re gonna pay a price for that. So getting out of that against ocean is the most important thing, and we all are looking for ways – like mindfulness, for example – to get out of that against ocean.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And Larry, I had Byron Katie on the show, and what you’re describing is reminding me of her description of the work.
Larry Bilotta: Yes, the work. Absolutely.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Okay, so I really wanna ask you, personally, utilizing these four steps – was that enough to shift and transform your marriage?
Larry Bilotta: The four steps are a shorthand of a story I’m telling myself. Because it turns out that your life is governed by the story you tell. So all of this is in the mind, all of it. None of it is in the body. It’s all in the mind. So in the mind is where our work is. Our is not to do what we say and what we behave; that’s not what we’re gonna accomplish. Byron Katie – all of her messages are about the mind. What you do in the mind is what you’re really doing. So the question becomes “Well, what is in my mind?” The story is in my mind.
When the little voice inside your head is really working on you and managing you, it’s doing it with a tiny story. And the tiny story – examples of the tiny stories from the little voice inside your head are “Oh, this sucks! Oh, crap! Now what?!” Those are tiny stories. “I hate when she does that!” Those are tiny stories. And these tiny stories is what you’re owned by, when the little voice inside your head controls your life. So when you get free of the little voice inside your head, you realize “Hey, I can tell the tiny stories. And I am going to be the leader of minds.” So what are the minds? Well, there’s the mind of the little voice inside your head, there’s the mind of your parents, there’s the mind of your friends and relatives, there’s the mind of society… All these minds are in your mind, looking to control what you’re doing, and they’re all gonna take over and tell you what to do. And when you just listen to these minds, you’re really not the leader of minds.
So what I teach my students is you wanna say this phrase, “I am the leader of minds. This is what we’re doing.” What you’re doing is you’re telling the mind of the little voice inside your head, your parents, your friends, your relatives and society, “This is what we’re doing. I said this is what we’re doing.” When you decisively do that, you are now the leader of minds, which is giving you freedom to not be controlled by the ocean of against energy.
What drives people to depression is the thoughts of the little voice inside your head, of the other minds. That’s what actually depresses people. And they’re not the leader of minds; they don’t even know what a mind is. I’ve talked to the depressed people; they don’t know what a mind is. They don’t even know the mind can be led. They don’t know. They’ve never heard that idea before. But that’s what creates depression.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. Larry, I’m really curious if you’d be willing to share one of your main pain points, or some of the pain you’re experiencing in the earlier stages of your relationship marriage, that then became a teacher once you utilized these steps.
Larry Bilotta: The values system war that Marsha and I had — let’s look at the values system of my father, for instance. “I wanna do what I want, when I want.” That’s a value right there, and that’s a message that’s installed in my mind. And now that’s a message of my parents, isn’t it? “I wanna do what I want, when I want.” My mother’s message, “I wanna do what I want, when I want.” She wanted to go out to bars and drink. My father wanted to go to the race track whenever he wanted to go. “I wanna do what I want, when I want.” So that was a deeply-held value of mine.
And what was Marsha’s requirement? “You have to get rid of ‘I wanna do what I want, when I want’. You need to serve me. You need to make me your priority. And when we have kids, you need to make these kids a priority. You are not the priority. You are the last priority.” Now, let’s take a look at the contrast of these two value systems. “I wanna do what I want, when I want”, or “You need to serve me and the children.” Now, what’s it gonna be? You feel the tension there, right?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Mm-hm.
Larry Bilotta: So I’m in pain, aren’t I? Now, why am I in pain? Because the little voice inside my head is owning and controlling and running the message of my parents. “I do what I want, when I want.” The little voice inside your head is ready to do, is ready to fight, sometimes physically, to keep the value you own, to keep the value of your parents. It doesn’t matter if it’s destructive, or immoral, or anything. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is the little voice inside your head is the police force, ready to protect the values system you were given. And when you have these clashing values – wow.
But that’s why there’s divorce. That’s why there’s no-fault divorce. Because the court systems of the state, for example, or the countries – they don’t wanna get in people’s emotional turmoil. What they wanna do is they wanna end it and get back to an orderly society. So what they want is get rid of your marriage, because we don’t want you fighting in our buildings, apartments and houses, and causing turmoil in our neighborhoods. We don’t want you fighting. We wanna end your fighting. And what we wanna do is sell you on personal happiness.” And that’s what the whole world is now made of in the Western world – it’s all about personal happiness. Not about learning through pain, it’s about personal happiness. And the message is “You need to find your own happiness.
If your husband is making your life hard, get rid of him. Your family, your friends, your co-workers – they’re all singing out of the same hymnbook: “Get rid of him, get rid of him!” That’s what they’re all convinced about. It doesn’t matter what religion you are, it doesn’t matter where you come from, everybody is selling personal happiness as the answer to everything. And there’s no learning in personal happiness. When you pursue personal happiness–
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, I was just gonna say that – the definition of happiness in the way that you’re using it is a shallow version, like you were just saying.
Larry Bilotta: Yes, that’s right. So what your friends and family want to do is they don’t want you to suffer. They don’t want you to learn. They don’t want you to learn through pain. Because they’re not learning through pain, they don’t want you to learn from pain, so their advice is “Get rid of him! Get rid of her!” So that’s why we have the very high divorce rates, and nobody really cares. And certainly nobody cares for the children, because children care about mom and dad staying together. The children care about mom and dad being stable together, because their parents’ stability is their level of emotional pain, or low level of emotional pain. So they care about it.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes.
Larry Bilotta: But the world doesn’t care.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right, right. So I just don’t wanna lose the thread… If you’re open to sharing what did that value system look like with “I wanna do whatever I want, whenever I want” versus “You need to be here for me, and you need to be here for the children” – what did that look like once you utilized the process you’re describing?
Larry Bilotta: I gave you that portrait of those two opposite values. I’m not making any judgments about good or bad, or right or wrong, but these are two opposite value systems. And what we have inside me is the little voice inside my head demanding that I fight for and protect the values system that I wanna do what I want, when I want. This little voice inside your head is the only problem of the human race. It’s the only problem. Because if you didn’t have this little voice inside your head giving you all of this against energy, fighting for this and fighting for that, protecting this and stopping that, against this and against that – if you didn’t have the little voice inside your head, you wouldn’t suffer.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And can you share with us, if you’re open, what it looks like now around that previous tension point, now that you’ve really worked a lot of this?
Larry Bilotta: So what happens is when the little voice inside your head starts to fight for the values system that you have, that you’ve been given in childhood, it’s against your mate, your spouse. It’s against your mate and your spouse, and wants to make him/her pay for this threat of this opposite value system. “You want me to take care of you and the children and give up my own selfishness? Are you nuts? Are you crazy? I hate you for even suggesting that.” Right? Do you feel all that against energy there?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Mm-hm.
Larry Bilotta: What is that? That’s the little voice inside your head telling a story, the story of against energy. So when I realized the story of against energy is being told to me, from within me, and I realized the source is the little voice inside my head, I now realize that I really need to lead the minds. I can’t be pushed around by my parents mind, and by my little voice inside my head’s mind, and by society’s mind, and my friends’ minds. I have to stop being pushed around. I’ve gotta take a stand. Not against my wife, who’s trying to change my values, but I’ve gotta take a stand in my mind, to be the leader of minds. That means I’ve gotta stand for something, I’ve gotta believe in something, and the something I’m gonna believe in is I am the leader of minds. This is what we’re doing.
So I started to do that more often, and now it wasn’t a matter of letting the little voice inside my head push me around with my parents’ values system, because I’m saying “I’m the leader of minds. This is what we’re doing.” What are we doing? “This is what we’re doing. What we’re doing is we’re gonna take the kids to the playground. This is what we’re doing, I’m the leader of minds. This is what we’re doing, we’re planning a birthday party, and my job is to get the decorations. This is what we’re doing. I’m the leader of minds, this is what we’re doing.” It’s time to rake the leaves. “Hey, I’m the leader of minds. This is what we’re doing – we’re raking leaves now.”
What did I do in the old days? “I hate the birthday party! I hate planning the picnic. I hate that you’re making me rake leaves. I hate, I hate!” Against, against, against. That’s the way it was. That’s the way I lived. So when I became the leader of minds – and that took years, by the way, for me to learn this and discover this and to teach myself this… It took years for me to become the leader of minds and say “I’m the leader of minds, this is what we’re doing.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Do you feel like once you’re on the beach, the metaphorical beach, the proverbial beach, and working these principles, being the leader of minds, do you feel like this is where win/wins can also be generated?
Larry Bilotta: Well, what happens is that I dispel against energy. First from my mind, because I’m changing the environment of my mind… And then what happens when my mind doesn’t have against energy? It now vibrates differently. It vibrates at a higher level. Now, even pinballs know about vibration. They call it vibes. The Beach Boys sing “I’m pickin’ up good vibrations”, right?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: [laughs] Right.
Larry Bilotta: They know about vibes. So when you think, you literally create the vibration. And when the little voice inside your head is thinking, the vibrations are very low, and very slow, and very pushy. But when you change the vibration of your mind by thinking these thoughts of “I’m the leader of minds, and this is what we’re doing”, the vibration is now very high, and you’re actually broadcasting a vibration at a very different frequency. And everybody feels it. Nobody can deny it. They know you’ve changed. You don’t have to have a talk, you don’t have to explain anything, they know you’ve changed. And they like the change. Why? Because they don’t have to do anything about it. They don’t have to fight, or resist, or explain, or talk, or anything. The vibration in your mind has changed, they feel it immediately. And what happens – because they’re reactors, they’re reacting. To what? The change of your vibration. You have changed the environment in your mind, and now you’re changing the environment of the people in your world.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And have you found that you’ve seen new possibilities from that place?
Larry Bilotta: Well, when we talk about creativity, what happens when you’re free of the little voice inside your head? You can create. And how do you create? You create with your mind. You tell what I call tiny stories. And you could tell tiny stories like — for instance, here’s a tiny story… I like to give people the seven-day test. Testing out tiny stories to see what they can do.
Here’s a tiny story. I give this specific tiny story: “Everybody loves me and goes out of their way to help me.” Now, if you told that story hour after hour, day after day, for seven days in a row, what would happen? “Everybody loves me and goes out of their way to help me.” Simple tiny story. And you just kept telling it, and telling it, and telling it. What would happen? Well, you can sense what would happen, and people who do this experiment come back and always tell me “Amazing things, amazing things! It’s like people are noticing and they wanna do things for me.” That’s the power of the tiny story. Why? Because the tiny story tells your mind that you’re the leader of minds, and you now change the vibration that’s being felt in the world.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Well, this is so powerful. We didn’t even really go into the mid-life crisis, and we don’t have time today, but I know you have opportunities for people to engage with that material… So how can people get in touch with some of your other teachings?
Larry Bilotta: They can just enter Larry Bilotta in YouTube, for instance. They can enter “Larry Bilotta mid-life crisis” and they’ll find a lot of videos and articles and all kinds of things. The other thing they could do is they can go to ItOnlyTakesOneMan.com for men, and they can go to ItOnlyTakesOneWoman.com for women. The reason that site is named that way is because it takes one person to change a relationship. It does not take two. It takes one, for these very same reasons.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wonderful. I’ll make sure to have those links on today’s show notes. And in closing, is there anything else you want to end with, or underscore?
Larry Bilotta: I like to say “Be like the Universe. The Universe is lighter, easier and funnier, because the Universe is secure, and not threatened.” When you’re in line with the Universe – be lighter, easier and funnier – and you use those three words to teach yourself what the universe is like. The Universe is lighter, easier and funnier. The Universe has a sense of humor, the Universe isn’t loaded down with all kinds of heaviness. The Universe is lighter, easier and funnier, and so I wanna be in line with the Universe. I need to be lighter, easier and funnier. That’s a good way to think of taking more ease of yourself, and getting away from the little voice inside your head, which is not lighter, it’s not easier, and it’s not funnier. It’s harder, it’s more forceful, it’s more pushy and more demanding. We don’t want the little voice inside your head in our lives. We don’t want the little voice inside our head in our minds.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So, so great…
Larry Bilotta: We wanna find ways… And that’s what this course I teach, called The Environment Changer – that’s what the Environment Changer course is all about. Becoming the leader of minds, so you don’t have the little voice inside your head pushing you back into the ocean of against energy.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. There’s such a wealth of knowledge that you’re describing, and I like how coherent you are in really rounding out some of the teaching that you’re describing. Thank you for joining us today.
Larry Bilotta: Well, Jessica, I owe it all to Marsha. If it wasn’t for Marsha, I wouldn’t know any of it… I wouldn’t know any of it. I would be concerned about “How come the Coke machine is busted?!” [laughter] I would be really not much use to anybody.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. I’m a firm believer — that’s one of the things that came out of my dissertation, or looking at conscious, intimate relationship, was how relationship can be our teacher, and our partner can really hold the mirror, and if we’re willing to lean in, like you’re saying, and use pain as a teacher, a profound transformation can occur.
Larry Bilotta: Yes. In the beginning of that process it’s extremely messy, extremely painful, and very sloppy. There’s nothing cool and neat about it.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right.
Larry Bilotta: But the sloppy startup period is not long, if you’re clear on your mission.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. Wonderful. I hope people get in touch with you, and become leaders of their minds.
Larry Bilotta: Yes, be the leaders of minds. That’s where the success is.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wonderful. Alright, well thank you so much, Larry.
Larry Bilotta: Thanks for having me, Jessica. This was great, thanks for the opportunity.
I hope you have enjoyed today’s episode. Again, this is episode 191, “How to drastically change your experience in relationship”, an interview with Larry Bilotta. I really appreciate his fierce commitment to this practice and what it’s actually cultivated for him. And as I mentioned in the interview, it does feel very similar to Byron Katie’s perspective, and really shifting the way we are making assumptions, our expectations, our projections, our narrative, and our beliefs – all of it has such a profound impact on our experience and how we relate to our significant other.
If you would like access to today’s show notes, again, you can find them on my website, which is DrJessicaHiggins.com. Click on Podcast, and you can find all the episodes there. Again, today’s episode is 191, “How to drastically change your experience in relationship”, an interview with Larry Bilotta.
Until next time, I hope you take great care.
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