Deciding Enough Is Enough — Drained to Unstoppable

00:00 Welcome back to the Johnny Jensen show. It is great to have you here, whether you are listening for the first time or a peak visitor, listener. Great to have you here. I am driving along today, driving. I did a walk and talk the other week now to drive along. When I started doing the podcast, we had all sorts of different formats and I guess it was a little bit more casual. As results, as listeners have grown, I think I've become a little bit preoccupied with making sure that it was all perfect or as good as it could be, even down to planning the content and coming up with the perfect topic.

00:40 And whilst all that is good and has definitely supported the number of listens, I think there's an aspect of it where if I haven't got it set up, ready to go, then it makes it harder to actually record, like to just turn it on and go. So here we are with a nod to that, this drained to unstoppable series. We've got lots happening inside the High Value Man Project. If you don't know anything about what we do, we support midlife dads to create the life they desire instead of one they feel stuck in. Really giving men the freedom, power to be the man and dad they want to be.

01:19 First and foremost, to win at home. And that's not that being successful at work or in your business isn't important, but there are plenty of business programs around. I did it myself right in the midst of our relationship being a real struggle. And not just because we ultimately weren't compatible, but we had financial challenges, both got made redundant after our wedding. We had three miscarriages. We had ultimately two babies. I had a stepson who was, you know, tweenies, you know, 9, 10, 11, 12, that sort of age age bracket.

02:00 And so there really was a lot going on that I think ultimately we weren't back compatible. But the point B is that I did a business course right in the middle of all our challenges. I did a business course with the idea being that if I could just get the business to be more successful, everything at home would naturally work out. Well, the truth of the matter was, I was absolutely fried from what was happening at home. And the business was actually doing all right. I didn't really need another load of

02:38 knowledge and I don't want to call it homework, but you know, there was stuff to do in order to keep up and follow along with the program. It was Daniel Priestley's key person of influence. I did number 10. And in reality, I didn't give the program its full attention because I had so much going on at home, so much stress and struggle going on at home. I remember one session in particular with Daniel and it was like three or four people. So it was almost a one-on-one session. And I virtually broke down in the meeting. Like, you know, it wasn't for me kind of thing. It was just how can I juggle all this?

03:19 How can I manage? And there I was in what was a business mentoring session talking about how on earth am I going to fix this thing at home. I was terrified of losing it all. Losing it all being everything I'd built myself up to be as a measure of success, family, the home, children, being a dad, being a husband, and fearing the expression I often use is that I felt like it was running through my fingers like sand in an hourglass. So there are business programs around and that's why we don't need another one.

03:56 That's why we need the high value man system for living so that men can thrive in themselves and create the relationship, the riches, the results they desire at home. Because anyone that's been in a challenging home situation will know what kind of pressure that puts on your work. I mean, it's naturally true that if you're working too hard and your focus is on that and you're not getting hope to help out with the kids and you're not putting your way, like everything's like, you don't understand, I'm going to grow this business and we're going to live happily ever after. That will put pressure on the relationship, of course. And then if the relationship's struggling, you're probably not going to be as focused and productive at work.

04:40 But equally common, and, you know, given that there are more people who are employed and work for themselves, I dare say it's even more a problem, is people whose relationships are struggling and they take that into worth. And if you love your wife, if you love your family, the thought of having another art, the thought of. of going through baby visual, the thought of waking up anxious for what that day is going to hold, let alone running around trying to hold it all together and be the dad you want to be, it naturally impacts your work. There's this drained experience. So that's what we're doing.

05:18 And in rebuilding after my marriage breakup, my breakdown, and putting myself back together, we unlocked what is now the high value mad system for living. It's the application of 25, nearly 30 years now of personal development, interest, leadership, and self-growth. What I've read about courses, stuff that I've done, and it just all came together, not because I didn't know it, but because I had truly applied it to myself. And when I did, that's what we've got here. That's what was available for you all. Now, Elite 101 is what I've been doing ever since we launched.

06:01 Always been a desire and a commitment to do more events, to have the group cohorts running. And without doubt, COVID and everything didn't help that. It came right at a time where things were booming in the right direction. And then, you know, we all know what happened there. But April the 28th, it's Tuesday, April the 28th, is drained to unstoppable. It's a 90-minute live interactive event with a full QA and participant workshop, both during and after. So it will actually run on longer than 90 minutes for those that want to stay do get more out of it. But what is the experience for you? What level of

06:46 masculine energy and focus and drive would you score yourself out of 10? Is it, you know, you aren't, do you feel like you're winning? Do you feel like you have a voice in your relationship? Do you feel like the time you spend with your kids is chilled, it's fun, it's full of love? Do you feel like you see your mates? Do you feel like you recognize the man in the mirror? Because if you don't, that is the low value life. That is the drained experience. I asked a guy the other day I was talking with, he came through. He'd got his high value mad score, which is an epic way for you to start your interest and discovery in everything we do.

07:29 If you go to highvalue madproject.com forward slash score, you can answer, let's not mess about 10 questions. Within a couple of minutes, you'll get back a truly personalized response to your answer. She'll know what your high-value mad score is. You could share that in our free community and find out where other men are at. The reality is that too many men are living a substandard experience. And what I'm getting at is that that was my journey. That was where I was at, wondering when's this going to get better?

08:05 How come if I'm doing all this stuff for her and the kids, if I'm working my ass off, if I know I'm a fun bloke, I've got loads of mates, I'm like, the rest of my life has been a ride, a buzz. Like, how come my marriage is so shielded? How come I feel, how come I feel so crap? And the three points at which guys start working with me are generally: one, they're burnt out and exhausted. Like everything's pretty good. They can't work out why they feel so crap about themselves. Two, their marriage, their significant relationship is struggling.

08:45 And when that's struggling, the rest of their lifestyle will normally be off. You know, the classic one is guy's relationship is struggling. And then when we get down into the conversations about what he gets up to, when it's probably unfit, it's probably drinking too much. He's probably having a cheeky line. He might be having a bit other side. It's not a healthy set of, you know, attachments. If it was a Batman utility belt, that list of things I just went through would not be helping you be a superhero. But we don't realize this. We don't recognize the situations we've got ourselves into. We're just trying to survive, just trying to get through it. If I can just get us through this period, everything will be okay.

09:30 The number of guys that tell themselves that, the amount of time I told myself that from the first miscarriage through to our breakup was 2011 and the breakup was in 2015. So you're talking about four years of struggle. That's not all about her. I'm just saying, we have. had four years of struggle. By the time I ended up in the doctors talking about what was wrong and antidepressants, by the way, I was adamant there was nothing wrong with me. Shouting in the face of a little counselor woman, there's nothing wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with me.

10:12 Johnny, if you don't go and see the doctor, I'm not going to work with you anymore. And I was livid, livid. How dare she suggest there was something wrong with me? And to be fair, she didn't actually suggest there was something wrong with me. She said, you're not well. But I took it that that was like fault. I was at fault. The problem was mine. And accepting that the path back might take a degree of responsibility was the beginning. Now, that is a foundational aspect of the high-value man system for living. It's recognizing how you got into this situation, what choices were made along the way.

10:52 How are you actually showing up? What is the underlying energy that the underlying snide feeling, comment, blame, frustration, resentment? Because it's always there. When you're a guy who's feeling completely drained, who's in regular arguments with people, who's got stress at home and stress at work, who doesn't wake up excited, then there has to be a level of responsibility there. Even at a level, even at the basic level of this doesn't work for me, I'm going to do what it takes to get myself out of it.

11:30 Because most men can't accept some of the tough decisions that come with that. The tough decision I couldn't accept was I could have and perhaps should have left super. But I couldn't see that being a good man, a good husband, a good dad, I couldn't see that that added up alongside. Go and get yourself fully focused on work, put yourself in an environment where you could be happy each day, put yourself in a situation where you and the kids can have a great time, could be happy. And so I didn't take some of the tough decisions that need to be taken. I don't know what her response would have been to that.

12:11 It might have been, screw you. What would other people have said? How dare you? She's not very well. How dare you leave her like that? But the inner dialogue, the repeat, looping trauma, that is what will take you down. If you stay stuck in a situation that's fundamentally hurting you, don't expect it to suddenly start feeling better. You know, what's the Einstein said, definition of madness, it's doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result. I mean, that quote is used so often, and it's so bloody obvious. I mean, you don't have to be Einstein to come up with that, right? I wonder if he did say there's a famous Winston Churchill quote, which apparently he never said.

12:55 The one about if you're going through hell, keep going. If you're going through a tough time, don't start. Apparently, he never said that. But yeah, there are some brilliant Winston Churchill quotes. So if you have a look at them, not very 2026, but some great quotes from him nonetheless. Staying in a stuck situation, staying in a situation that's fundamentally harming you, that is inconsistent with the vision you've got for yourself and your life will take you down. You know, that's friction. You know, one of the things in engineering, by the way, I am not an engineer, but one of the things I know, there's that repetitive strain.

13:42 If it's a piece of mechanical movement side of an energy or surgical equipment, like it has to be, it has to repeat that action with sort of precision and efficiency thousands of thousands of times. And if it doesn't, if there's the remote millimeter, micro millimeter off, then the friction will cause that machine to break in ways that it was not expected, in ways that, you know, shorter life cycle in dramatic effects. You know, a Formula One car racing towards a hairpin corner at 120 mile an hour.

14:24 It needs every single piece of the machinery to react as expected in order to get the result that it wants. And yet here we are as these incredible machines, as these men, and we live in a situation that is completely inconsistent with the direction we want to be headed in, man we know ourselves to be, the man we're setting out to become, the life that we planned and envisioned for ourselves, and yet we. we wake up day in, day out, feeling like crap, feeling that it's not going to work out, and then putting up with the day and then going to bed miserable, expecting not to wake up and enjoy another opportunity to live an incredible day on this planet, but expecting shit.

15:08 Like the likelihood is I'm going to wake up and get another day just like today. And if you're wondering how come the male suicide rate is so high, I believe it's somewhere inside of that basic reality, that basic statement of fact. Too many men are living a drained four, five out of ten experience, putting up with rather than thriving, rather than being unstoppable. And whether it's in a relationship that's worth saving or whether it's rebuilding after a divorce, the amount of effort required to get yourself back on track is the same.

15:47 If you put the amount of effort required to rebuild after a breakup into a marriage, the marriage would probably succeed. Or at the very least, if you were putting in that amount of effort, if you were taking 100% responsibility, if you were marking down boundaries, if you were leading by example, if you were being the difference that you wanted to see yourself, then you would feel so confident about what you're up to, you would happily break up with her. Or she would be so inspired by what you're up to, she would stop shit testing you and turn around and be like, Yes, that's the man I married.

16:26 That's the man I fell in love with. That's the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. Because part of what goes on for a lot of women is disappointment, is a sense of not being loved or appreciated, not feeling safe and secure. A lot of good men, a lot of people suffering nice guy syndrome, will say the same thing. We're not women and they're not men. And that's not about, well, magic or alpha masculine. It's about recognizing that we are fundamentally different creatures. Men thrive from the basis of a strong identity. Now, that doesn't mean you have to be a superhero. It doesn't mean you have to be like super strong and the most confident man in the room.

17:09 But you do have to be really, really happy in your own skin, really proud of what you are. Because when we're not, that beats a guy up. When we're not, that is deeply unattractive both to ourselves and to those around us. The kind of magnetism that a confident, brown, charismatic man will give off naturally creates results. So that's what the high-value man system for living is about. It's about you being that guy. And I've steered away from saying be the best version of yourself, although fundamentally it's there, right? It has to be there because it's the truth, but we're editable. But I've stopped saying it because it's so easily thrown around.

17:47 Be the best version of yourself. Yeah, that sounds nice. It's not about sounding nice. It's like religious people praying and just expecting things to work out. No, God, whoever your God is, gave us these bodies. And it is a miracle, by the way, that we are this incredible machine living on a planet that's just a speck of sand in an otherwise gigantic universe at the size and scale your brain, my brain, can't even comprehend. That's a miracle. That's it. We were given these bodies. It evolved. It was a miracle so that we could do wondrous things with them. We live on a planet that is fundamentally geared for success. Birds trapped seeds that they've eaten. They fall to the ground.

18:32 And by a series of luck, good fortune, water, sun, wind, other nutrients that are provided, that bird crap turns into another plant. It's like, so who are we to presume that we exist on a planet like that, that we've got everything we need to survive and thrive, and yet we're going to squander it. And yet we're going to live this 70 or 80 years in some kind of four out of 10, some kind of putting up with struggling, suffering experience. It's not what was intended. Weeds flourish. I mean, get your head around that.

19:07 Weeds, things that are basically shit, flourish. So when you decide that enough is enough, that's when things transform. When you decide I'm no longer willing to be this drained version of me, I'm making a declaration. I'm going to become unstoppable. I'm going to create a high-value man life where the people around me are completely inspired. I want to be on board, want to be part of my mission. Where I'm thriving, where in the halo of me thriving, they're thriving. Children whose dads are thriving and are loved and supported by them thrive.

19:51 Women in secure, safe, happy, loving relationships with a guy who shares the load, who's proud of himself, who works and plays in equal measure. She is going to thrive. She's never going to want to let you go. She's going to want to hear what you have to say. And if you don't believe me, have a look at what you've let go. Have a look at how many times you pop advice. Have a look at where you haven't shown up. And then ask yourself, is there any reason why she's not being more like I thought she would be?

20:26 That she's not wanting to jump my bones on a regular basis. And there's a lot of caveats, layers to a lot of these subjects, you know, people's health, circumstances, different seasons. That just means winter summer spree. I mean, different seasons in our life. There are challenges. It's a very different having a toddler to a teenager. That goes without saying. But who you choose to show up as doesn't change. How you choose to better and move yourself forward. It's up to you. What put you this far won't get you to the next level. It's ridiculous to presume it will. You need new knowledge, new equipment, new people,

21:06 new passion, new energy. That's how you keep moving forward. And going back to the top of today's podcast, like, how do I keep moving forward? What sort of adjustments do I need to have a look at? Where's the gap? The gap is in trying to be perfect. The gap is in wanting to be like, I guess maybe I've not been real enough and recognizing that, like getting this podcast out every week. Last year, I only missed about three weeks. This year, I've just missed the last three weeks. And there's stuff been going on, stuff that perhaps I've not really shared. I've had an extra job,

21:49 two days a week for the last few years. I've been spent helping out a very dear old friend, like putting my marketed knowledge and skills and internal calms and leadership to use for him. But I haven't really spoken about it because I was like, oh, well, that's that's not like I can't admit that. It's weird. I had it all flicked up. So I'm not going to go into this in more detail because I'll save it for another episode. But point being is rather than it be something that made sense because it did make sense, it's something that I've been trying to juggle. And so you evolve, things change, you move forward, you adjust what you do.

22:31 You do a start to play around with different formats for the podcast. You buy a microphone that's high quality and you can walk and drive with. You make it happen. I used to say to my kids all the time, don't moan, make it happen. Such an important expression. Make it happen. Like, what's it going to take? So I'm going to tell you that what's it going to take right now for you is, yeah, you could book a power call, highvalue manproject.com forward slash power call. You could talk to me about the current goals, challenges that you've got on and why you're only whatever your high value man score is right now.

23:11 And we could work through the high value man system for living in an elite one-on-one situation. Or you can come and get involved at the other end of the spectrum on the 28th of April in the next train to unstoppable session. 90 minutes, £35, $40 on the early bird. And start your journey. Now, we've got you covered at all levels. Let's land in this summer. Happier, stronger, faster, funnier. All the errors, the positive errors lined up for you. Drain to unstoppable.

23:50 You can get yourself registered at highvaluemanproject.com forward slash unstoppable. Highvaluemanproject.com/score unstoppable. And I would love to see you there or share this with a share this episode and that event with other men in your life. Men you want to go on this journey with men you know who need to accept. Yes, there's a change there that I want to make. There's a gap there that I want to bridge. Because that's what it's all about. I want to see men thrive. I want to slash the male suicide rate globally.

24:27 I want to transform the experience of men going through divorce or thriving in their marriage because that's what the world needs. That's what our kids need is for men to thrive. Thanks for listening. Please subscribe, like, share, do all the business to make this podcast the success it deserves to be. And I'll see you on the next episode. Let's go.