Dr. Mark Hicks on Learning Love and Rebuilding Relationships

Wendy & Rich 0:00
Hey everyone it's Rich Bennett. Can you believe it? The show is turning 10 this year. I am so grateful for each and every one of you who've tuned in, shared an episode, or even joined the conversation over the years. You're the reason that this podcast has grown into what it is today. Together we've shared laughs, tears, tears, and moments that truly matter. So I want to thank you for being part of this journey. Let's make the next 10 years even better. Coming to you from the Freedom Federal Credit Union Studios Hartford County living presents Conversations with Rich Bennett. 

No, no, no, no, no, no. 

Rich Bennett 1:00
Today on Conversations with Rich Bennett we're talking with Dr. Mark Hicks, a counselor, minister, and author of the transformative new book Learning Love. Building a life that matters and healthy relationships that last. Dr. Hicks will break down how love is more than butterflies or chemistry. It's a skill that can be taught, practiced, and lived. He'll share five components that make up lasting, healthy love. Starting with one, you might not expect. If you've ever struggled to rebuild after heartbreak, long for deeper connection, or simply wouldn't your life and relationships to mean more, then this episode's for you. So grab your drink, whether it be coffee, water, tea, whatever. And sit back and listen, because you're going to learn a lot of how you doing, Dr. Hicks. You like Dr.Hicks , Dr. Mark? 

Mark Hicks 1:55
Mark what? Just Mark's fine with me. 

Rich Bennett 1:57
Okay. All right. I knew that. I just wanted to test you. I want to give right into a couple things. You've had quite the diverse background from minister to missionary to counselor. What actually inspired you to write learning love now? 

Mark Hicks 2:14
Well, there's really three paths that brought me to this place. One is that I am a counselor. As you said, I've been a professional therapist and in counseling, almost everything we talk about and deal with has to do with relationships, whether it's a relationship to ourselves. That's an important one, or how we deal with family dynamics, how we deal with work dynamics. It's all about relationships in our life. When we talk about ministry, theology, spirituality, we're talking about relationships. 

Rich Bennett 2:43
try to say 

Mark Hicks 2:44
Relationships 

Rich Bennett 2:44
right. 

Mark Hicks 2:44
It ships the community, relationships with each other, relationships with God. Then there's a third track and that's my personal experience. I was actually raised in a healthy, happy family. I'm one of the few actually. I think that's a very rare thing and I'm grateful for it. That doesn't happen all the time, but I 

Rich Bennett 3:01
said, 

Mark Hicks 3:01
was going to be 

Rich Bennett 3:01
Right. 

Mark Hicks 3:02
but even when you're raised in a healthy family, you don't always know what it takes to build healthy relationships. Early in my life, I ended up in a toxic first marriage. It was an absolute disaster. I still have the emotional scars for that one and ended the divorce. At that point in my life, I was really questioning, is love even real? Or 

Rich Bennett 3:25
Family, 

Mark Hicks 3:25
is it just some fantasy that we stumble into sometimes and some people get lucky and it works, but for a lot of people it just doesn't because there's a lot of people out there 

Rich Bennett 3:34
with 

Mark Hicks 3:35
relationships. I really wrestled with those questions. I didn't even fully realize it at the time, but looking back, I could see the kind of the questions I was wrestling with at the time it just felt like frustration, frustration and life 

Rich Bennett 3:47
and 

Mark Hicks 3:48
relationships. But over time, from my counseling background, from my theological background and from that personal experience, I did come to the conclusion of the understanding that love really does exist. But the problem we have with it is we think it just happens. We think it's just going to come naturally. We get this from the rom-com movies and all that. I'm not a critic of those. I think they're fun, but it doesn't necessarily display real life. And we come from our family background, which in some cases like me, it was healthy enough, but you don't really understand everything you need to know about the world because it works, what works for you and your family work in your family. That's it. It doesn't work everywhere else. And as I said, I'm one of the lucky ones. A lot of people come from dysfunctional background, abusive backgrounds, toxic relationships as children. And you really don't know what a healthy relationship looks like. And then we go down to the world and just expect people to find that special someone and get married or go into an office and work with people seamlessly and go through life with friendships. And then we wonder why doesn't that work? The reality is love needs to be learned. It is a learned skill set. And we need to understand what love is and how to live it out. Like we do other things in life. If we learn, if we want to learn any other skill. 

We need to learn things that we do to prepare for the things of life, but then when it comes to love and marriage and relationships and friendships, we just wing it. And that's where we fall down. We've got to get to the place where we understand love is a learned skill set. 

Rich Bennett 5:39
Why do you think people resist the idea that love is a skill that we can learn? 

Mark Hicks 5:43
I think it is that romanticized idea that it should just happen. 

Rich Bennett 5:47
Yeah. 

Mark Hicks 5:48
I think perhaps if you do come from a dysfunctional background, it may seem exhausting to think I've got to start from scratch and learn this. It's really not, but it's not as bad as it sounds, but it can feel like it's just exhausting to try to learn all what things you need to learn about love. It feels like there's a million moving parts and a lot of different things that are involved. And that's why I break everything down to the five components. Five components of love. I want to make this easy to understand conceptualize and live out. 

Rich Bennett 6:19
And speaking of the five components of love, you actually open the book by saying that grief. It's actually the first component of love, 

Mark Hicks 6:27
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 6:28
which is unexpected. So why started there? 

Mark Hicks 6:31
It is a surprise to a lot of people, but that is a foundational element because you're not going to get through life without scars. 

Rich Bennett 6:39
I mean, 

Mark Hicks 6:40
you're going to get hurt. It's just a fact of life. Now, that doesn't make it. That doesn't mean to be pessimistic. There's great things in life as well, but life is going to be hard sometimes and people are going to hurt you and you probably learn that as a child coming from some families that life is just difficult and relationships are difficult. Now if we're not careful, what's going to happen is we're going to put up emotional barriers because we want to protect ourselves. We want to keep people and arms linked, take our time, push people out, keep people away and put up those emotional walls in the idea of protecting ourselves. What we're actually doing is building our own emotional prison. We are keeping ourselves from connecting with other people. We have to have a comeback story. If we are going to be hurt, we have to have a way back to stay connected, to be open to relationships and to have healthy ones. We have to have that comeback story. We have to have a way of living with the scars of life, overcoming the difficulties of life, and that process is grief. When we know how to grieve, when we know how to process the emotions of grief, that is our comeback story. That's the way back from the hard times to a place where we don't erase the things that happen. We can't undo the past, but we can go on to a good life. One of the things I often say is that some things in life are so painful, it's like it leaves a hole in our heart. 

Rich Bennett 8:02
But 

Mark Hicks 8:03
you can live a really good life with a hole in your heart, and that's what we have to understand. It's kind of like if we lost an arm in an industrial accident, 

Rich Bennett 8:12
you're 

Mark Hicks 8:12
never going to be the same. It's always It's going to be different. Life is never going to be the same. We can't grow that arm back. But with new skills, with help, you can have a comeback story, and you can live a really good life without that arm. The same is true with emotional pain. 

Rich Bennett 8:28
true. 

Mark Hicks 8:28
We have that hole in our heart. We have that heart break. We have that breakup. We have that divorce. We have that dysfunctional family. Whatever it might be. We're going to have that hole in our heart. But what we do 

Rich Bennett 8:40
Right. 

Mark Hicks 8:40
through grief is learn to live a really good life with a hole in our heart, and that keeps us open to the idea of relationships. Grief is vital so that we don't close ourselves off before we even start. 

Rich Bennett 8:53
Alright, so what does healthy grief look like in real life? 

Mark Hicks 8:57
a process of grief. We sometimes call it the stages of grief, which is a really bad 

Rich Bennett 9:01
There's 

Mark Hicks 9:01
name for it because it's not like stair steps that we go through. 

Rich Bennett 9:04
Right, 

Mark Hicks 9:05
the process of emotion, and a lot of people know the stages of grief of denial and anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. But what I always say is that grief is really an individual process. Everyone goes through it. While there are things that we can understand psychologically about the emotions and the process of grief, it is a process. Everyone goes through it differently. And what I say is make sure you get help. Get help you need because if you were going to a physical ailment, you would go to a doctor. If you had a toothache, you'd go to a dentist. If your car wasn't running right, you would go to a mechanic. You would call a plumber. You'd call a 

Rich Bennett 9:44
Right, 

Mark Hicks 9:44
lawyer. You'd call whoever you need to help you. Why would we do anything different when you have a broken heart? When you have emotional and 

Rich Bennett 9:51
true. 

Mark Hicks 9:51
mental distress that is dead, it's going to disrupt and maybe destroy your life. your life if you aren't able to deal with that. to overcome that dysfunctional family, to come back from a heartbreak, come back from the divorce, come back from the death of a loved one, something that is scarring our life, our emotional life, yet help for that. Find a counselor, find a therapist, find a coach, find someone who can help you through that individual process. There's lots of information out there about the stages of grief, which I prefer to call a process of grief because, as I said, it doesn't go stair step, it more of back and forth through these areas, but it leads you to that place where life can be good again. Not the same, but life can be good. We need help to do that just like we would need help to heal physically from a major injury. Get to help you need. 

Rich Bennett 10:43
Actually, let's talk emotion. 

Mark Hicks 10:45
You 

Rich Bennett 10:45
describe love as a required emotional skill. Not just expression. How could someone who's more emotionally closed off grow in this area. 

Mark Hicks 10:56
Yeah. Emotion is the second component of love and that one does not surprise people. We understand that one. And yeah, for some people, it's really easy. They have no problem expressing and understanding emotions, feeling comfortable with them. For other people, they are more closed off, more cerebral. It's more difficult, more introverted, and all that's fine. I don't want to criticize anybody's personality. You are who you are, and that's a good thing. But it is a skill to express that emotion and so start small. 

Rich Bennett 11:24
Yeah. 

Mark Hicks 11:25
Start small. And the key is the people that you care about need to know you care about them. So tell them. And if that feels awkward, you don't even have to say I love you. If there are some people that come from an abusive background where love was a loaded word, where it was used against you, and things like that. If you just can't do that, okay. Say, I appreciate you. Or just say. 

Rich Bennett 11:51
Right. 

Mark Hicks 11:52
A sincere thank you when somebody does something nice. Start small. But make sure you're doing something to 

Make sure the people in your life know you care about them. Find ways of saying that and showing that it's absolutely vital for relationships to have some kind of connection of emotion. Otherwise, it becomes a contract. It 

Rich Bennett 12:15
yeah. 

Mark Hicks 12:16
just becomes a commitment. And there's nothing wrong with commitment. I know that's important too. And we'll get to that. But those that say, well, it's not about emotion. It's about commitment. Well, you're missing a really important opponent of what relationships really are. Is that deep emotional bond that we have with people. And if that's difficult for you, start small. It's a learned skill set. You'll get more country as you go. It has to do with your brain, because if you have trouble with that, it's because sometimes the brain is always not sometimes the brain is always on the lookout for things that can hurt us. It's 

Rich Bennett 12:53
Right. 

Mark Hicks 12:53
not on the long lookout for things that are good. And so we don't always have a natural way of expressing good things to people. We have a way of defending ourselves. Our brain instinctively knows how to defend itself. We don't always have an instinct about how to say things of appreciation. That's not an instinct, because we have to defend ourselves in order to survive. Our brain knows how to do that. We don't have to appreciate each other to survive. And so it's a learned skill. Practice it. And again, if it's really a big problem in your life, get help for it. There are ways to work your way through this, whatever is blocking that. Get help for it. And you can get to a place, you don't have to be overly emotional. You don't have to transform who you are. But just get to the place you can express emotion. 

Rich Bennett 13:43
With that, with the practicing on expressing it, because you're right. There are a lot of people. And to this day, I've met a lot of them that just for some reason they can't say I love you. But do you think that just looking in the mirror at yourself and saying that would help as well? 

Mark Hicks 14:05
Oh, absolutely. Absolu. In fact, the fourth component of love is loving ourselves. It is accepting 

Rich Bennett 14:11
Okay. 

Mark Hicks 14:11
of ourselves. And that is absolutely vital that if we don't love ourselves, we are not going to be able to love other people. Brene Brown has written a lot about this and a lot of research. Other people have as well. You can only love other people as much as you love yourself. That's the limit. And so, yes, you're absolutely right. If you're struggling to love other people, expressing emotion to other people, it very well may be because you have these internal things, this loathing of yourself. And when you do that, it's going to come across towards others. You're going to have a really tough time connecting. Learning to love yourself is vital because love is not a commodity like money. If you need money, you can go get a second job. You might be able to borrow from a free hand. Take out a loan. There's a lot of different ways you can get money. You can 

Rich Bennett 14:58
Yeah. 

Mark Hicks 14:58
even steal money. But I don't recommend that one. 

Rich Bennett 15:00
They don't do 

Mark Hicks 15:02
But 

Rich Bennett 15:02
that. 

Mark Hicks 15:02
there's ways to get money. But 

Rich Bennett 15:05
yeah, 

Mark Hicks 15:05
love is organic. It grows within us. And so learning to love yourself first is absolutely vital. It's a, as I say, it's listed as the fourth component of my book of learning to love yourself so that you can love others. If you, if you're feeling hindered in your connection to others, it could be a lot of things. It could be about emotion and worried about how that's going to come across. But a lot of times it is that we just don't love ourselves. So we're struggling to love other people. The limit for your love for others is going to be how much you love yourself. 

Rich Bennett 15:39
And while we're on acceptance and then I want to go, I want to go back because we missed the 

Mark Hicks 15:44
component. 

Rich Bennett 15:44
third 

Mark Hicks 15:44
Which 

Rich Bennett 15:45
is what? Practicality. 

Mark Hicks 15:45
Practicality, yep. 

Rich Bennett 15:47
So for the acceptance component, how do we love people as they are without enabling harmful behavior? 

Mark Hicks 15:56
That's a really good question. That actually does take us back to the practicality side because love, love does have a practical component. The third component is practicality. And within the discussion of practicality is boundaries. Boundaries are an important aspect. And 

Rich Bennett 16:13
Yeah. 

Mark Hicks 16:13
that is a practical aspect. That is just how we live together well. Practicality is about living together well and it can evolve in a lot of things. It could be how do we deal with money as a married couple? How do we make parenting decisions and household chore decisions? That's just how we live together well. It could be things like mental and emotional health because things like depression and anxiety, they take a toll on us. They also take a toll on our relationships and those are treatable conditions. 

Rich Bennett 16:40
And also take a toll on the people around you. 

Mark Hicks 16:42
They do, they take a lot of toll on 

Rich Bennett 16:43
And 

Mark Hicks 16:43
our- 

Rich Bennett 16:43
not just your significant other, 

Mark Hicks 16:45
Right, take on the job in the community, at your church, at your club, whatever it might be. 

Rich Bennett 16:51
yeah. 

Mark Hicks 16:51
Thanks a toll on the people around you as well as yourself and those are treatable conditions. So it becomes a practical matter of relationships to treat that. It also deals with boundaries because one of the things you have to have, in order to have healthy relationships, is you have to have room for them. And if your life is consumed with a dysfunctional toxic abusive relationship, you will have no room for a healthy one. And so one of the things I say clearly in the book, and it surprises some people, but some relationships have to end. And as a relationship coach, as a therapist, as a minister, people assume that I might say, oh, every relationship can be saved theoretically. If everyone practices these five components of love, if everybody studies what love is and how to practice it, and wants to save a relationship, the yes, it's not reality. In the reality, there are abusive people out there. And 

Rich Bennett 17:44
Yeah. 

Mark Hicks 17:44
the best thing, the best thing that can happen to an abuser is to run out of people to abuse. And so it is not an act of vengeance. It is an act of love to set a boundary and say, you know, I'm going to live in this healthy space. This is where I'm going to live my life in this area of health and happiness and driving. And if you want to live here with me, you're welcome, and we can be in a relationship. But if you want to be toxic and abusive, you are choosing to live outside that boundary. We're no longer in a relationship. Not because I keep you out. 

Rich Bennett 18:17
Right. 

Mark Hicks 18:17
Because you choose to live outside the boundary I'm setting. And we, everybody has a right to do that. And it's a vital component of that practical aspect of how do we keep healthy relationships by keeping the unhealthy ones out? 

Rich Bennett 18:32
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the part about some time, you know, some relationships just have to end. And I do agree that because there are sometimes not necessarily because of the other one being a narcissist or whatever, it's just some things happen. But sometimes when you end those relationships, you end up getting along better with the other one than when you were together. 

Mark Hicks 18:59
It can't happen. Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 19:01
Yeah,

Mark Hicks 19:01
I've seen people do that and sometimes, you know, relationships sometimes have to fit into a certain place in our life. And if we have gotten that out of whack, it doesn't mean that it's all or nothing that we're going to be best friends or we're never going to see each other again. You know, sometimes you can have friends that are more distant and they are good friends and you value them and you love them, but they're not your best friend. You don't tell them everything because you know that there's some issues there that you just can't tell them everything. But that doesn't mean you can't come out of your life and you never see them again. You know, som 

Rich Bennett 19:36
right . 

Mark Hicks 19:36
people they may have rushed into a marriage that they never should have been in it to start with. And it was a terrible idea and they're both good people and they really do have a love for each other, but they really would have been better as friends, as colleagues, 

Rich Bennett 19:50
Right. 

Mark Hicks 19:50
as neighbors. They never should have gotten married to begin with, but for whatever, you know, emotional reason at the time they did people make mistakes. And yeah, the scenario where you're talking about that maybe there are some people that can have a more distant relationship, but can't have one that is too close. It's not an all or nothing thing. It's not it's not your my best friend or your my spouse or your nothing. There are degrees of relationship, and that's fine. 

Rich Bennett 20:19
it. Yup. Oh, yeah. 

Mark Hicks 20:21
That's 

Rich Bennett 20:22
Now the, the, the fifth component, which I'm sure a lot of people get confused about. You close with passion. 

Mark Hicks 20:29
Yes, 

Rich Bennett 20:29
But you say it's more than just romance. 

Mark Hicks 20:32
it is. 

Rich Bennett 20:33
What do you mean by that? 

Mark Hicks 20:33
It's a passion for life. It can certainly involve romance. If you're talking about marriage, then absolutely passion is part of it. Yeah, it's more than that. It's a passion for lots. 

Rich Bennett 20:42
Yeah. 

Mark Hicks 20:42
It's a passion is that is that drive to just enjoy life and find what is good about it. Now we know life is serious, and that's why practicality is the third component. And we know life is tragic at times. That's why grief is the first component of love. We don't forget those things, but let's also not forget about passion, about enjoyment, going to work every day because you love what you do. And you enjoy your coworkers coming home every night and enjoying your family, not just clicking off a list of chores and doing homework and fixing dinner and mowing the art or whatever we do, but actually enjoying your family. We find in ways that we really bring that passion so that is the wind in our sales, the fuel in our engine to live out those relationships in a happy way, not just doing all the healthy stuff, but be actually happy. We are meant to be happy in our relationships, and there's a key to it. There's a little trick here. It's learned to have fun. 

Rich Bennett 21:41
Oh, thank you. 

Mark Hicks 21:43
Learn to have fun. And that is also a learned skill set, because going back to my previous point, our brains will constantly look for the damage. They'll look for things that are going to hurt us, offend us. 

Rich Bennett 21:54
We 

Mark Hicks 21:54
have to defend ourselves. That's what our brain is wired to do. Keep us alive to keep us from being hurt, both physically and emotionally. Yeah. We have to learn the other stuff. And so learn to look for the fun. Too many people have opportunities to do something fun and and brush it aside, because they've gotten too serious or they have opportunities to really enjoy something, but they won't let themselves learn 

Rich Bennett 22:17
Yeah. 

Mark Hicks 22:18
to have fun. Every day is not going to be fun. Every moment is not going to be fun. Every person in your life is not going to be fun. Some of them are. Some days are just going to be fun. Enjoy it. So that you have that wind in your sales, that breeze that comes through and pushes you along in life. And there's so many people that get the first four basically right. They've been through tough times and they've grief through it, maybe even gotten counseling to get through that. They've made strong emotional connections. They've lived life in a practical way. They've made good decisions in their life and lived together well. And they've even learned to love themselves and appreciate who they are and are loving other people. And then they look around and think, what's wrong? And what's very often wrong is they've balled into the society checklist of being told since you were very young, the way to live life is you got to get your education, get your job, find that special someone, you know, get promoted, have kids by the house, you know, all the stuff, nothing wrong with any of that. But then we get to be 35, 40 or so. We've done all of that and we think. "Is this it?" Well, yeah, it is. It can be. It doesn't have to be. It could be another a number of other scenarios. But it can be that. But what we forgot to do was enjoy it. We forgot to have fun doing it. We thought that if we just checked everything off the list and did all this stuff, that somehow we were magically going to be happy. No, we have to learn to be happy doing that stuff. And the trick is to learn to have fun. It is a learn skill set to learn to laugh. Some people have forgotten that one. We just don't, we don't do it anymore. Learn to laugh, laugh on purpose, have fun on purpose, make it a priority in our life just like you would make your finances a priority, just like you need to make grief a priority, just like you need to make emotional bonds a priority, make fun a priority. So, if you're able to grieve the tough times of life, so you don't barricade yourself into behind emotional walls, but you can connect. And you do have those emotional connections. You allow yourself to have emotional expression and connection. You live life in a practical way, making good decisions in your relationships. So you live together well. You love yourself first so that you can love others and you have that organic love pouring out of you towards other people. And you remember to have fun and have a passion for life. You can build relationships in every area of your life from work to the community, to your home life, to your marriage in every area. You use these five core components, you can build life of 

Rich Bennett 24:49
love. I love the last one because, I mean, you're right. I do think a lot of people forget to have or forget to learn how to have fun. And the whole time, I just think back to when the kids were little. And as parents, you would sit there and play games with them and everything, and you would have a blast, you would have 

Mark Hicks 25:08
it. 

Rich Bennett 25:08
fun doing 

Mark Hicks 25:09
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 25:10
And then as the got older, it's like the games went away. 

Mark Hicks 25:14
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 25:15
And I think in my name, I was sticking to my neighbors, because I mean, both their kids have moved out. But a lot of times, don't just sit down and play cards with each other. 

Mark Hicks 25:24
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 25:25
And have fun doing it. You know, or sit down their camper and just have a blast. They just love being around each other and having fun. Yeah. And I think of all the different things I love to do with my wife. I put like a, I want to say almost like a bird sanctuary, 

Mark Hicks 25:45
yeah, 

Rich Bennett 25:45
right? And she's taught me so much about birds and just watching them. My next step, I'm waiting for them to come in. I want to put a pollen in, garden in the 

Mark Hicks 25:54
backyard. 

Rich Bennett 25:54
back, in the So, yeah, you know, because she, I have to think her because I'll, before I didn't really care about nature, I mean, I was, as a marine, I was always out in it, getting rid of it and all, 

Mark Hicks 26:10
yeah. 

Rich Bennett 26:11
You know, but to see these, the plants and 

all the different birds, the butterflies and everything, it, they realize it's God's creation and how powerful it is. 

Mark Hicks 26:23
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 26:24
How it helps you emotionally. 

Mark Hicks 26:27
Exactly. 

Rich Bennett 26:27
It's fun. 

Mark Hicks 26:27
It's fun. 

Rich Bennett 26:28
It's fun. 

Mark Hicks 26:29
It's freeing. It's fun. It's liberating. And so many people 

Rich Bennett 26:32
Yeah. 

Mark Hicks 26:33
just need to take a breath and relax and laugh together. And that, 

Rich Bennett 26:38
Yes. 

Mark Hicks 26:38
that's that alone. I think that is one of the most overlooked components of love. All of them are struggling in some ways or not. They're all them need work sometimes. And that's fine. 

Rich Bennett 26:48
Mm-hmm. 

Mark Hicks 26:48
But I think one of the things that we really have forgotten is how to have fun together, how to laugh together. And you just think when you, you know, think about times that you have done that where you really just had a great time laughing with someone, you felt connected to them. 

Rich Bennett 27:02
Yeah. 

Mark Hicks 27:02
These are all interconnected. They're not separate because if you laugh with somebody, you, you, you really have that fun time with them. You have an emotional connection. You have that, that builds it. It's not the only thing, but it's one of the things that builds that emotional connection, that second component of love. And so they're all kind of interconnected that one helps the other. 

Rich Bennett 27:23
You're listening to the conversations with Rich Bennett. We'll be right back. 

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Mark Hicks 28:44
Absolutely. 

Rich Bennett 28:44
We start unlearning 

Mark Hicks 28:45
that. That's a tough one, yeah, because when we're children, we just accept whatever our family does as normal. And one of the things that we have done in our society that I greatly object to is that we have made the phrase, that's just the way I was raised, somehow the closing of an argument. that's not a reason. 

Rich Bennett 29:09
No, 

Mark Hicks 29:09
And when we, and somebody says, why are you doing that? Well, that's just the way I was raised. Why do you believe that? Well, that's just the way I was raised. And we just accept that in our societies. Oh, well, okay, well, that's the end of the discussion. That is, there is no, that is not a reason. If you ever use that phrase, catch yourself because 

Rich Bennett 29:29
yes, 

Mark Hicks 29:29
we have, we have grown up thinking something is normal. And then if that's just the way we were raised, we think it's okay just to keep doing that. Always ask the question, were they right? Okay, that's the way I was raised. That's fine, but were they right? And it doesn't mean that we have to trash our family. It just means that no family is perfect. There should be some area you can look to in your family. If you're, if you're reflecting on it and say, you know what, I love these folks, but on this one, they get it wrong. That's not a bad thing. That's not 

Rich Bennett 29:59
yeah, 

Mark Hicks 29:59
praising them. That's not hating them. That's not putting them down. It's just that we all make mistakes. And it I can now do a different. I can make a different decision. I can, I can do things differently and better and that doesn't, that doesn't erase my heritage. It just means I'm building on it. I think it's so important that we get this concept across because so many people are just repeating what they've always done 

Rich Bennett 30:23
Yeah, 

Mark Hicks 30:24
in their families because it just feels natural. Again, I'll go back to the point I've made a couple of times now. Our brains work a certain way and when we do something over and over. It builds neuro pathways that feel normal, that doesn't mean it's right. It just feels normal to our brains because it's what we've done so many times. When we do something different, it feels very awkward. It's not because it's wrong. It's because our brains don't know how. Think about the first time you picked up a basketball or the first time you tried to cook something in a kitchen or any new skill you tried to learn it, it's always awkward the first time. And so 

Rich Bennett 30:59
with 

Mark Hicks 31:00
everything and it's true of of this as well, when you try to do things different from your family in a different way, it's going to feel awkward. That doesn't make it wrong. It just means your brain is having to learn to build new neuro pathways to do things differently. So if the if you come up from a family that the instinct and the go to in every stressful situation was to yell and scream and throw things, that's going to feel normal. And you're going to feel normal when you do that, but when you understand, you know, that's not really beneficial to my relationship. That's not helping my marriage to yell and scream at my spouse and throw things at them. That this is really doing damage. That and you start doing things like, all right, let's sit down and talk about this. That's going to feel really awkward. It's going to feel hard and it's not because it's wrong. It's because your brain has to form new neural pathways to learn how to have conversations while you're stressed. You've never had stressed conversations for you've had throwing things during stress before. And so building those new neural pathways will take time. It takes practice. Again, if that's a struggle, get help. There's ways to do this. And when we build those new neural pathways, then we're learning new skills that we can build on what our family taught us. We can go as far as they can go as far as they taught us and then go better and 

Rich Bennett 32:21
prove it. 

Mark Hicks 32:22
we go, we go better than our family. And if everyone just took a couple of extra steps. And I know for fact this can happen because one of the reasons I've had a great family life growing up, my dad had some struggles growing up. His dad was a really 

Rich Bennett 32:36
Yeah, 

Mark Hicks 32:36
heavy drinker. He was a good guy when I was a kid. My grandpa quit drinking at some point in his life. And he was really good man when I was alive. But during my dad's growing up years, he was a heavy drinker. And he was kind of violent and not a good man. And my dad made a conscious decision as a young man as a teenager. If I have kids, I'm going to raise them different than I was raised. And he did. He did. And and it was a dramatic difference. He consciously worked at it. And I would say that can't be that couldn't have been easy, but he understood I don't want to treat my kids the way I was treated. And as I said, my grandfather, I don't want to put him down because he's great to me and he quit drinking and I'm 

Rich Bennett 33:16
Right! 

Mark Hicks 33:16
god bless him. But he, he had some struggles early in his life. My dad was the victim of that. And he made the conscious decision to change that it can happen. But again, get help for that. You don't have to do that alone. You don't pick up your bootstraps. Get And make the decisions to overcome that family dysfunction. It can be done. Lots of people have done it. It's just not easy, but it 

Rich Bennett 33:39
Yeah. 

Mark Hicks 33:39
can be done because your brain has the capacity to build those new neuropath ways and learn new skills. 

Rich Bennett 33:46
Why do you think some people actually are afraid of seeking help? 

Mark Hicks 33:52
You know, I struggled with that question. There's a stigma with just ludicrous. 

Rich Bennett 33:57
Yeah. 

Mark Hicks 33:58
It's just absurd. In my mind, there will be a stigma. I mean, that's not having a stigma going to the dentist. Why would there be a stigma of getting help or something that's hurting you? It's absurd. So we got to we got to just stop that. And 

Rich Bennett 34:11
Yes. 

Mark Hicks 34:11
I think there is a In some capacity going back to our families, people say things like, well, my grandpa never went to a counselor and he was just fine. I have two responses to that. First, was he? I'm not 

Rich Bennett 34:24
right. 

Mark Hicks 34:25
so sure your grandpa was always fine. He probably had some issues, doing that whole pick your self up by your bootstrap thing that people did in the olden days. And the second thing is, counseling didn't exist back then. He didn't 

Rich Bennett 34:38
Thank you. 

Mark Hicks 34:38
have. He didn't have that option. And so let's not glorify somebody who didn't get counseling because it was not available to him. You know, if it had been available, you'd have been a good. It'd been a good idea for him to go to everybody should be in counseling in my view because life is just hard. Not because not because everybody's crazy or any silly thing like that, but because life is hard. We're all going to struggle with things where I'll have new things to learn. And if we're going to build healthy marriages, healthy families love what we do for a living, build healthy communities in a better society. We need to be healthy, happy people. And that's going to take some doing. 

Rich Bennett 35:14
Yeah. 

Mark Hicks 35:14
And so get help for that. Everyone needs to be in counseling. I know not everyone can afford it. But not everybody can afford a dentist either. And that doesn't 

Rich Bennett 35:22
it 

Mark Hicks 35:23
make 

Rich Bennett 35:23
true. 

Mark Hicks 35:23
And that doesn't negate the need for a dentist it just 

Rich Bennett 35:26
see it just there. 

Mark Hicks 35:27
it means that that's a different problem. But yeah, there are problems. There's hindrances for some people. And that needs to be addressed. But if you can at all find a way to get counseling in your life because get a coach, get a 

Rich Bennett 35:41
Yes, 

Mark Hicks 35:41
therapist because life is just hard. And we all have things to learn. You know, I've had a bad marriage. I'm now remarried. I'm very happy. I'm very lucky. And again, it's not perfect. I'm not going to claim perfection. We're all learning these five. components. I can teach them. I'm also still learning them. I'm still practicing them. It's always a practice. But the thing I've learned is I've had a bad marriage. I've had a good marriage and good is better. We need to get good relationships in our lives. 

Rich Bennett 36:10
Yes, 

Mark Hicks 36:11
And if you and if you are allowing yourself to be in bad relationships because you have some sort of stigma about counseling or some sort of ego thing where you don't want to ask for help. You are just condemning yourself to be in these unhealthy relationships and good relationships are better. You're going to be healthier, happier, more thriving in every area. If you build healthy relationships. And we're going to and if enough people do this. We're going to be a better society. People say, what do we do, what do we do about the world, what do we do about the nation, what do we do about the state of humanity. If we learn how to love each other in relationships all the way down to our homes, our families, how we treat each other at work, how we treat each other at church, how we treat each other in the community, how we treat each other when we see people at the store, how we treat the stranger that we just. there at the market, if we learn how to treat each other through these principles through these components of love, we understand how to build relationships. Then we change society. If you want you want to fix the world, it's about love and it's a learn 

Rich Bennett 37:16
Yes, 

Mark Hicks 37:16
skill set. It's not some a theory. Yeah, if we all just have have an emotional trip or something. It is a learn skill set. And if enough people learn it, we change the world. 

Rich Bennett 37:28
All right. Now I want to go a little deep here. 

Mark Hicks 37:30
Okay. 

Rich Bennett 37:31
Because this this has been two, two questions. But I'll always the first one. And this has been a pitpeave of mine. Why do you feel that some people have a hard problem loving themselves? 

Mark Hicks 37:47
A lot of that does go back to family because a lot of people were raised in toxic relationships, abusive relationships, a lot of families struggle with this and very few people were raised in really truly healthy families. You may have been raised in a family that worked for you as I was, but there are a lot of unhealthy things learned in childhood. We felt constantly fearful of punishment or making mistakes. I think society has been very hard on us especially when we're young for making mistakes and you see almost a rebellion against that. They try to make mistakes when they're teenagers because it's like 

Rich Bennett 38:29
Yeah. 

Mark Hicks 38:29
I know I'm going to make them big. A lot of that is because there is not this learning process. It is like just get it right. There is a lack of love in the world, a lack of support 

Rich Bennett 38:43
in 

Mark Hicks 38:43
the workplace and So many people grow up with this idea that the way I'm going to have love is I'm going to act a certain way, be a certain way, look a certain way and then people are going to love me and that's going to validate me and then I'm going to love myself. That sounds logical, but it doesn't work. And so many people have balled in to that so called logic that they just keep trying that over and over if I can just act differently this time, if I can just be this other way, African, just get it right this time. People will love me and that will validate me. It will never validate you. It is all about learning to love ourselves internally. And that comes from understanding that we have inherent value just as a human being. that we have inherent value that yes, we have flaws, but those flaws are things we do. It's not who we are. And we can change what we do. We 

Rich Bennett 39:40
Oh yeah, 

Mark Hicks 39:41
can change what we do. It's not easy sometimes it takes some work, but we can change what we do. So we don't have to worry about the flaws because once we realize we have a flaw, we can change it. It's not easy. It's easier said than done, but we can still do it. That doesn't affect who we are and we have equated so much about who we are to what we do if we make a mistake and we're a bad person. No, it means you're a good person. You made a mistake and that if we 

Rich Bennett 40:04
learn from that mistake 

Mark Hicks 40:05
and we learn from that mistake in order to be a better person that that if 

Rich Bennett 40:08
right 

Mark Hicks 40:08
we understand the inherent value of being human, the inherent value of the soul of who we are as a person the creation that we are that if we understand that then we can understand that the things we do or things we can change. When people criticize us, we take it so seriously, but we don't have to. If we understand that their criticizing something we did, we can evaluate that, are they right or wrong? If they're right, okay, I can change that because I realize now they're right. I'll change what I did. That is a whole different attitude than feeling like they're attacking me personally. We think people struggle to love themselves because we just don't know the inherent value of who we are of the value of just being human of our human soul. And because of that, we are always struggling to get to a place we could love ourselves to do enough, be enough, do something to please enough people to have enough evidence that we can love ourselves and that never works. 

Rich Bennett 41:12
You're ready for this deep one. 

Mark Hicks 41:14
I am. 

Rich Bennett 41:16
I do believe this is a problem. It might be, it might be your next book. You never know. 

Mark Hicks 41:25
I'm always open for that. 

Rich Bennett 41:27
You always hear of people, not one night everybody. I think too many people got away from doing it, but people pray to God. They get mad at God. They thank God. Do you feel like, especially today, not enough people love God? And how can they learn to love God? 

Mark Hicks 41:51
I love that question. Yeah. I think it's a big problem. I think very often our spiritual life, our religious life, whatever you want to call it, our relationship with God has become transactional. That if I do the right things, God will love me. Well, that's the same thing I just talked about. If I can get enough people to love me, get enough people to appreciate me if I can do all the stuff, get all the checklist. Very often, religion loses sight of love and becomes more about a checklist of behaviors to make sure we do certain things act a certain way and you know, acting a certain way and doing certain things isn't necessarily bad, but it's not the point that if 

Rich Bennett 42:28
Right. 

Mark Hicks 42:29
we have the right spirituality, we're going to do the right thing. If we are the right person, we will do the right thing and doing the right thing doesn't make you the right person. And so this does get it. You are right. It's a very deep question. We could go on for a long time, and I probably do need to write a book about this, but it's but we need to avoid this transactional relationship with God, that God will love me if I do this. This is if we get past that and we understand that we are a creation of God and the Bible tells us that God is love, not just loving, not a characteristic God is love. And then in Genesis, we're told we were created in the image of God, which means we are created in the image of love itself. If we begin to understand that, then we understand that we are the actual image of love itself. And that is valuable, that we are not created as as something that needs fixing, our human life needs to be addressed in some ways because the mistakes we make in our own ignorance and all of that, we know that. But who we are inherently as a creation of God is valuable in itself. We are an inherent creation of love itself. And when we start to understand that, it changes everything. But unfortunately, because of the evil in the world, because there is such bad things, there is an instinctive idea on leadership, whether it be church leadership, government, or anything else, how do we control, how do we control the behaviors of the people? How do we get to people the act of way we want them to? And that can be everything from let's not do stuff like murder, which is a good idea, 

Rich Bennett 44:07
to write, 

Mark Hicks 44:08
to send, you have to you have political leanings that we need you to follow or philosophies we need you to follow and leadership will push that. And I'll say it runs in government, it runs in families, it runs in 

Rich Bennett 44:21
runs 

Mark Hicks 44:22
everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, there's a leader, there is a tendency, there is a temptation to try to impose your will upon other people happens everywhere, including the church. And so when we get into that, it all becomes transactional. If we understand we are an inherent creation of love itself and we learn who we are, what we do is going to take care of itself. You're going to be a good person when you understand the inherent love that you actually are. One of the examples I give for this is, you know, we put up speed limit signs because we want people to go a certain speed limit, particularly in a 

Rich Bennett 45:00
residential 

Mark Hicks 45:01
yeah, 

Rich Bennett 45:01
place, 

Mark Hicks 45:01
residential 

Rich Bennett 45:02
especially, 

Mark Hicks 45:02
area, exactly, because you can have a child run out in front of you, a dog ran out in front of you, things could happen. So we make people go 25 or 35 in these residential areas to make sure it's safe. Now that's the reason we do that is because even good people sometimes they're going to get in a hurry, they're not going to be conscientious, we're going to have just a brain lapse and not be thinking and we're going to go too fast. So we have to put that law out there with consequences. However, if we are all conscientious people all the time, we are all caring and compassionate all the time. We get to a place where we understand the good of others and we want that. We want to be conscientious every second because we never want to risk hurting a child. We just don't live with that kind of conscientiousness because we're, we, our brains just go to other places sometimes. And that's why we 

Rich Bennett 45:53
right, 

Mark Hicks 45:53
have to have laws. But if we are conscientious all the time, we wouldn't need that speed limit sign. And that's the point of spirituality is to get past the point of law and transaction and get to a place that we are such good people, we don't need to laws. 

Rich Bennett 46:08
I wish people would learn, I mean, I do believe that if you learn how to love God, you're going to learn how to love yourself even more. Then you're going to learn how to love other people. Everybody around you. And I do think it is something that's missing. And I'll never forget this. I was on somebody's podcast and one of the things I asked, because they asked me, "What do you want to learn?" I said, "I want to learn how do you talk to God and how do you God?" Because I do believe that a lot of people don't know how. they pray, what are they doing? They're always asking for something. 

Mark Hicks 46:47
When 

Rich Bennett 46:47
How many times do they thank him? Mark, and I'm not lying about this. It was shortly after that recording. And I always say a prayer when I wake up. I always say a prayer when I go to bed. That night when I went to bed, all I did was a simple prayer. All I did was tell God how I love 

Mark Hicks 47:07
Him. 

Rich Bennett 47:08
And I started tearing up. It's all most as if I heard Him say, "I love you too." It's just… 

Mark Hicks 47:18
Yeah. 

Rich Bennett 47:19
It's not weird. I want to say it's powerful, 

Mark Hicks 47:21
It is powerful. And what 

Rich Bennett 47:23
you know? 

Mark Hicks 47:23
you're describing there is really the teaching of Jesus. He was asked, "What's the greatest commandment?" And he said, "The greatest commandment is to love God with all that you are, with everything." Because when we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, that Jesus said, "We're going to hear that back. We are going to hear that I love you back. We're going to hear that inherent unconditional love, not based on what we do, but based on who we are as God's creation. And then he said, "The second one is to love your neighbor as yourself." That's the interesting part to me because now with Brnaviar's research and others, we are learning that is the limit. Jesus, 2000 years before the psychological research came out, said that the most you can love your neighbor is as you love yourself. That's the limit. Jesus already knew the psychological limit. And so he said, "Love your neighbor as yourself." And as we love God first, we learn to love ourselves as God's creation. And then as we love ourselves, we can love our neighbor. 

Rich Bennett 48:21
Something very important. Tell everybody where they can get the book. But also where they can get in touch with you because you do speak in and coaching as well. 

Mark Hicks 48:32
I do. 

Rich Bennett 48:33
So there's a couple parts of this first of all. And about purchasing the book, who does it help when they purchase 

Mark Hicks 48:43
Yeah, but I'm glad you asked me that. I have a partnership with an organization called the World's Greatest Experiment. Now my book, as you've heard, is very practical. It is the five components of love that we live out as a learned skill set. But also know there's a spiritual side of love. And the World's Greatest Experiment does an amazing thing. They go into third world countries, very poverty-strickened areas, where children are out on the streets begging for money. And they take them in and they teach them that they are of value just because they are human and just because they have the capacity to love. It's not based on their begging. It's not based on their work. It's based on who they are as a person of love. And so they teach them meditation, meditation of love. And they get corporate sponsors to pay these children as they learn meditation. They meditate on love. They meditate on love to the world. They are paid for this to lift their families out of poverty. And so 

Rich Bennett 49:40
the book? 

Mark Hicks 49:40
they are 

Rich Bennett 49:40
Wow. 

Mark Hicks 49:40
being taught that your inherent love is worth something. It's not just your backbreaking work, this is worth something. It's your capacity to love that is worth something. And so they pay these children lifting their families out of poverty and teaching them meditation and love. They'll use the word prayer in some cultures. They'll use the word meditation or their cultures. They try to be culture sensitive about that. 15% of my proceeds of the book go to this organization. So when you are reading this book, there are going to be children around the world that are meditating love toward you. The the the leader of this of this organization told me said, we want to make your book the first book to live stream love as the reader reads it. And so you're going to be receiving meditations of love from children around the world as you read this very practical book on building love. And because these part of the proceeds is going to this organization to lift these children out of poverty, you're also participating in the charitable aspects of love. So everything about this book is about every aspect of love. And you can get the book wherever books are sold, go to your favorite bookstore. If they don't have it in stock, ask them for it. It's from Morgan James Publishing. Or go to my website, markahix.com. I have easy links to purchase the book at markahix.com. Make sure you get my middle initial in there. Hix is HICKS. And so markahix.com. And I do have a contact form there that people can reach me. I'm available for workshops, for speaking engagements, for coaching or I'd just love to hear from your audience. And let me know you heard me on the show. I'd love to hear from 

Rich Bennett 51:20
you and sign up for his newsletter as well. 

Mark Hicks 51:22
Yes, I have a newsletter. 

Rich Bennett 51:24
There's 

Mark Hicks 51:24
There are lots of stuff on the website. I also have a monologue podcast. I don't have guests on my podcast. I do about 15, 20 minutes of just teaching love. It's called the Learning Love. Yeah, it's a learning love podcast. It's only about two, three months old now. I just started that. But I teach things about the book about love and relationships in a monologue format. I can say, it's 10, 15, 20 minutes, most. 

Rich Bennett 51:48
a really great. 

Mark Hicks 51:49
And it's the Learning Love podcast with Dr. Markahix. You can find it on any podcast platform or YouTube. You do have to put with Dr. Markahix on it because there's so many names on 

Rich Bennett 52:00
right 

Mark Hicks 52:00
of love and learning and all of this. And since mine's new, it's harder to find if you just put Learning Love. But the Learning Love podcast with Dr. Markahix, if you can top in all of that, you'll find it in any podcast Spotify. There's YouTube channel Apple Podcast wherever you wherever you like. So you can find more of this kind of insight on love on my podcast. 

Rich Bennett 52:23
And there how long the episodes? 

Mark Hicks 52:25
Oh, just about 15 minutes or so. Give or take. 

Rich Bennett 52:27
Really? 

Mark Hicks 52:28
that 15, 20 minutes because I don't do interviews. 

Rich Bennett 52:30
I knew 

Mark Hicks 52:31
Yes, I don't do 

Rich Bennett 52:31
anything. 

Mark Hicks 52:32
I'm just talking about my insights that I teach in the book, kind of extrapolating from those and new things that I'm thinking about for my next book. And I share those on my podcast. 

Rich Bennett 52:45
Uw, I'll definitely put the links, all the links you mention in the show notes, um, but if you don't mind, I'd also like to add your podcast to my podcast network. 

Mark Hicks 52:57
I'd love that. 

Rich Bennett 52:58
And I'll email you all that stuff because I think I think that's it. 

Mark Hicks 53:12
I'll be right back. You can find some older posts that I did just as an amateur, trying to put stuff up there, but about three months ago, I got really serious about it. I hired a producer. She's awesome, Abby Grayves of Abby Gray's production. That was a great job for me and she has made it into a professional broadcast, and I'm really happy with it and I, it gives me a chance to share these kinds of insights on a regular, 

Rich Bennett 53:33
yeah. All right, so those of you listening, make sure you go to the website to purchase the book mark a Hicks.com, after you read it, me before review, and then purchase more copies from the website for more people because and pass them on because everybody can learn how to love plain and simple. So Mark, is there anything you would like to add before I get to my last question? 

Mark Hicks 53:59
I always want to emphasize that if this seems overwhelming because you came from a dysfunctional background or you've been through a divorce or you're just at a bad spot, it is possible. It's possible for everybody. You can break this down into these five components and practice them. It's a lifelong practice. It's not about being perfect. It's about practicing. And so you can build those healthy relationships you want. 

Rich Bennett 54:26
God, usually I could just end on that, but I already sounds good to ask 

Mark Hicks 54:30
you another question. Oh, yes, do 

Rich Bennett 54:31
another. All right. What is the next big thing for more kicks? 

Mark Hicks 54:37
Well, I'm currently working on my second book and so I hope to have that to present that to Morgan James sometime this summer. That's an ambitious goal because I'm doing a lot of things now. So it's hard to find the time as much time as I would like to write. But I hope to have that out sometime next year. So about the time because my book, learning love just came out in June. It's coming out in June. So hopefully about a year later, the second book will come out. And I am just in the earliest days of launching a new nonprofit organization that I'm calling the Learning Love Foundation. And 

Rich Bennett 55:15
oh, 

Mark Hicks 55:15
what I hope to do from that is receive grant money and partnerships. Whether it be nonprofit or corporate partners where we can build workshops and seminars and bring in speakers. I'd love to be one of those speakers too, but bring in other speakers because a lot of good people out there talking about. 

Rich Bennett 55:31
Yeah. 

Mark Hicks 55:31
to build as many platforms as possible build workshops online events online education and I also have an idea for documentary, but that's going to take a lot of money. So hopefully I can get a grant at some point to build a documentary about how to build healthy relationships. But that's in the earliest stages. It's not up and running yet. And I have filed the papers with the state of Tennessee 

Rich Bennett 55:53
Good. 

Mark Hicks 55:53
where I live. And so it's it's just in the earliest days, but in the next few months, the Learning Love Foundation will be off the ground. A new nonprofit to spread this message of learning love. 

Rich Bennett 56:07
So what I'm also hearing is you're going to be on a few more times again in the future. 

Mark Hicks 56:12
I would love to be on your show anytime. Absolutely. 

Rich Bennett 56:15
I love talking to people that have nonprofits and authors I always invite back on when you have another book coming out, but yeah, I love this with the foundation that you're talking about starting. I think that's something that is definitely needed. 

Mark Hicks 56:31
and this is the very first time I have announced that publicly 

Rich Bennett 56:36
Well, 

Mark Hicks 56:36
only my only I have close friends that don't even know about this yet because I it's I literally just filed the papers with the state of Tennessee couple of weeks ago, I still have some IRS papers, I still have to four to 

Rich Bennett 56:48
write 

Mark Hicks 56:49
submit it's about a month or two away from being officially launched with all the government paperwork, but I have my board in place, but this is literally. Literally the first public announcement of the Learning Love Foundation. 

Rich Bennett 57:03
Once you get everything set up and the website sent me the link. Well, you know what we'll stay in 

Mark Hicks 57:09
Absolutely 

Rich Bennett 57:09
touch. because I want to help push it on my other website as 

Mark Hicks 57:14
Awesome. 

Rich Bennett 57:14
well. I just think that's great. Mark, I want to thank you so much. It's been a pleasure, those of you again listening, make sure you get the book, purchase more copies for other people, leave reviews, listen to his podcast and you'll be able to find everything into show. It's all the links and everything. Thanks a lot, Mark. 

Mark Hicks 57:34
My pleasure. Thank you. 

Rich Bennett 57:36
Thank you for listening to the conversations with Rich Bennett. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and learned something from it as I did. i'e an answer when you get a chance. If you'd like to hear more conversations like this, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and if you have a moment, I'd love it if you could leave a review. It helps us reach more listeners and share more incredible stories. Don't forget to connect with us on social media or visit our website at conversations with richbendit.com for updates, giveaways and more. 

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