Have You Thought About Renewing Your Wedding Vows?

Welcome to the Missing Secret Podcast. I'm Kelly Hatfield.

Hey, and I'm John Mitchell. So, here's our topic today, the idea of renewing your wedding vows. Think about that, just the idea of renewing your wedding vows, and Kelly, how this came up is, I guess I don't know, maybe, maybe it was a month ago, Ginge and I went to a wedding in Cabo, and the person getting married was was the son of our next door neighbor who lived on the lake with us two houses down, so we watched him grow up, and now he's like 32 or 33 so he's getting married, and so we go to Cabo and and it was pretty cool and so we listened to the vows and as I'm sitting there listening to the vowels I'm like wow you know we ought to Ginger and I should renew our vows we're we're going to Wimbledon in in London in July, the athletic director here at the University of Texas is, is giving me the tickets, and, and I know the tennis coaches, men's and women's, really well, and so they're going to be there, so it's going to be a party, and, and the course of tickets are super hard to get for Wimbledon, so I'm very appreciative of that, and but it occurred to me as I'm thinking, well, we're going to to Europe, why not just pop over to Paris and go to the Eiffel Tower and renew our vows, and so that was the idea inspired by the vows of our neighbor, and so that launched me into really thinking about this, and, and you know, it's so different, like, How long have you been married?

It'll be 31 years in August,

Right? Think about how different your life is today than when you first got married. I mean, radically different. You're a different person. Jared's a different person, you know. And that's what struck me when, when we got married, and of course when Ginger and I got married, I was in my, my 50s, my late 50s, and I'd never been married, so I was clueless about marriage, and Ginger had been married like 22 years, I think, to her first husband, and so she knew the drill, but you know, I was clueless, and so now I see that that renewing our vows and updating our marriage, really, and living with intention and clarity is, is so powerful. What do you think about this, this whole idea?

Well, no, I love it. I, you know, you mentioned it briefly that this was going to be our topic, and immediately got me to thinking when you just said we're, you're so different, like at different stages, you know, of your life. Well, I got, I was 22 years old when I got married, right? So, the, you know, who I was then, you know, and who I am now, you know, 31 years later, you know, are two, you know, very different, you know, people, and we've never renewed our vows before, but that's interesting. I hadn't even thought about, like, you know, and same thing with Jared, obviously, he's a few years older than me, but we were young, we were in our 20s when we were,

Right

You know, and so in life, and all of the things we've gone through together, and you know, all of those things have, you know, unfolded, and it never even really occurred to me, you know, to, you know, because for me it was, you know, and I know it is for you too, but I'm just like, yeah, well, this is what you were married, we're going to be together forever, right? You know what I mean, till death do us part, kind of thing, right? And so it never even occurred to me to renew vows. I, you know, what oftentimes, too, I would think. I think my perception, maybe until you just brought this up, of going into this was, I some of the people that I've known renew their wedding vows when they've gone through a rough patch, when there's some kind of, you know, not just, you know, for the sake of, hey, we're in a different place in life, right? Let's, you know, reaffirm those vows that we made to each other, and, you know, so I hadn't even really, it never even crossed my mind, but I absolutely love it. It, it's such, yeah, yeah,

It's really, it's really cool, and you know, I think to some degree, what's what's pushed this forward a little is like Ginger has had to take care of her parents over the last 10 years, and and her mom died last year, or her dad had died, you know, probably seven or eight years previous, and so all that got lifted off off her, which is great, and now we have three grandkids, and she wants to, you know, focus on the grandkids, and, and you know, on on my end, you know, it's, it's funny, I really feel like I'm at the pinnacle of my career, I mean, I'm more excited about what I'm doing than I've ever been, and, but, but the other side of the coin is I don't feel like I'm chasing anything, you know. How, how it is where you're chasing this? I want to be this, I want to be that. I'm like, you know, I'm just self-actualizing. I got something that's life, life altering. I'm honored that the University of Texas gives me the platform to teach it, and really to develop this new discipline of advanced leadership of self, literally, and make University of Texas the preeminent authority in that field. I mean, it's totally fun, and so, but, but I also see that, that I just want to focus a little more on Ging, and, and sort of the togetherness, and not, not, you know, to some degree, because she's been so busy with her, her parents, and all the myriad of things that go on, it's just a new opportunity for us to to reaffirm our commitment to each other and and and you know she's she's such a wonderful spouse that it's just fun to to you know just just to renew this this amazing relationship we have and so, but I think here's something that I think you'll find interesting, and maybe the audience will too. So, I get this idea, and as you know, I'm really hot lately on on up in my game with AI, so I go into Claude, and I tell Claude what that we're going to renew our vows, and and I start describing to Claude, you know, the relationship that that we want

in the future, and and I create a Word document, basically, and and put it in very simple terms, and and then Claude starts asking me questions, and so what comes out of it is Claude creates like a four page document of this life that we want, and that's that's sort of step one, and step two is it? Then creates 10 vows that affirm that life, and of course I was blown away by by how eloquent Claude was, and how it fleshed out, you know, what Ginger and I both wanted, and so it's amazing how you can use AI to, to really impact your marriage.

Yeah. No, I love that. And I love, you know, when we tie this to the, you know, the life GPS, you know, again getting that clarity, you know, that immense clarity about what you want your marriage to look like you know again those vows and that life GPS just helping you live into the best version of yourself, so that you know you're living into those vows into clarity around what that vision is, and so I love that it's such a great tool for helping people get that level of clarity, because you know we've talked about this a million times. Let's be honest, you know, like the level at which people think, you know, isn't super deep. You know, we've been trained to not think deeply, and I think that's one of the wonderful things about, you know, using AI too, is that it helps give some, you know, some deeper insight, you know, you can utilize it for exactly what you just shared, you know, with how you utilized it, and that doesn't, you know, for people who are listening to, you know, you could argue that it's doing some of that thinking, you know, for you, that it's still like you're but. I don't look at it that way. I think that it sparks my,

Yeah

You know what I mean, like my, my ability to brainstorm, my ability to, you know, for it to say something, and then I'm thinking a little bit more deeply about it, and going, huh, you know, I hadn't looked at it that way before. I find that it really is like opens, you know, things up, and it opens up the depth of my thinking, and it just kind of gets the wheels in motion when you sometimes are feeling like, well, how do I, how do I articulate this? I'm not quite sure how to articulate this, or I'm not quite sure, so that's what I find fascinating about it, and being able to utilize it to get that clarity too, for your life GPS. When it comes to your, your relationships, it can be used for everything: your health, your relationship with your significant other, your children, your every relationship in your life. I mean, it's just such a wonderful tool. I'm glad that you shared how you utilize that, because I think that's one of the ways that we often think about it, in terms of, or I do, anyway, in terms of business. How can I leverage it in my business, right? Not how do I, how do I leverage this to enhance and optimize my personal life, too?

Right? Right. Well, you know, so in, in my new book, I created a chapter, basically, that says that the gap between the 2% the 98% is widening, and it's widening because of of the combination of AI and the propensity of the 2% to actually lead themselves as opposed to just winging life, and and I do see that is as true, because I mean I just look at myself a year ago I wasn't nearly as proficient with AI, and candidly, I see what a big jump AI has made in the last year. Have you, have you noticed that?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are things I just didn't even realize that it knew how to do, or that it would be able to know how to do a year ago. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah,

Well, and you know, as it relates to the advanced leadership of self methodology, I see it's, it's, it's all about clarity. In fact, the book "Think and Grow Rich" the top book "The World on Success" at the end of the day comes down to clarity, and when you use AI to create clarity and see things that you can't see, like if you're doing a thinking session, a deep thinking session, and you ask it to help you see what you can't see. Suddenly, it's taken the methodology to a whole nother level. I've seen this happen repeatedly, and, and I see that so much of it too is becoming really good at at at prompting. I've got a guy that I've just hired to be my AI coach, and he showed me so many things just in the couple of sessions we've already had, where how you prompt it is is going to dictate what you get out of it, and and even asking AI to ask you questions, or even the coolest one just recently is is saying to AI, here's what I want you to do. Would you write the prompt so it's more effective? It's amazing what happens then, because then it'll write, it'll rewrite your prompt, and it'll be 12 times better, and and it's just pretty amazing, but I was going to mention one other thing. Oh, I know what I was going to say. So this gap between the 2% and 98% is expanding because of people's propensity or not propensity to using AI, you know, and as, as Darren Hardy told us many years ago, most people won't do anything to have their success. Now, they'll talk about it, they'll, they'll, you know, they'd like to be more successful, but, but it's just not a priority, and so they won't do anything, and, and therefore they won't lead themselves. If you're asking them to take 12 minutes a day to lead themselves, they're not going to do it. The 98% are not, and they're not going to embrace a. I, they're going to dabble with it, but they're not going to really use it, and that's why that gap is expanding. Do you think that's true?

100% I think that's true. Yeah, absolutely. I think that is a key differentiator, and then the thing you mentioned earlier, too, which is just that, taking taking action, like doing the thing that needs to be done to move the, you know, the ball forward, whatever that is, you know, taking those actions, you know, and then also, which again would lead to, you know, utilizing AI as one of the tools in your tool belt, but yeah, no, I 100% agree with you that it's widening, and it's only going to get wider as you know AI becomes more and more prevalent, isn't the word, because it's here, but yeah, the people who are using it and understand how to leverage it are the ones that are going to rise to the top, for sure.

Well, and you know, one of the things I sort of struggle with a bit is, and again, keep in mind my head is in that place of after writing this book, Advanced Leadership of Self, and doing it with AI, I am super into this, and I'm looking at the world very much from the lens of leading yourself, and I see that that this methodology is is not for everybody. I mean, it's pretty simple, you're taking, you're creating commence clarity in your life, and you're feeding the succinct articulation of your desired life to yourself each day, and the effect of that is in it makes the right actions happen automatically, and you have this powerful force pulling you forward to your desired life, all very simple, but you know as well as I do that there's a lot of people, probably the majority of people, that will go. I'm just not going to do that. I'm just.. it's, you know, I'm not wired that way. I know a ton of people that are that way, but then the other side of the coin is, I'm like, well, wait a minute. Everybody's life is precious. Are you, are you going to tell me that, that you're going to consciously choose not to proactively lead yourself, that you're just going to wing it and hope for the best? You know, I find that hard to, hard to justify with with people, but I also see they're not going to, they're not going to go to the effort that that our methodology takes, although it doesn't seem that hard to me. Any, any thoughts on that dichotomy?

No, I mean, I, the only thing I would add, you know, related to the AI piece, is that people will be reluctant because it's technology, and it's like, oh, this is scary, and you know, they're moving, you know, to see movies, that kind of thing. So, I think that's one part of it. I think the other part of it, too, and this is something that you know, hey, it's fair, you know, because it's, it's, it's a reality, you know, are there are those people who will be resistant to it because of its effects on, you know, the environment, on the jobs, you know, like data that are causing issues, and some of these, like, there absolutely are going to be folks that are resistant to it because they don't want to contribute to that, and you know, hey, I get that, and in the same breath, I'm like, it's here, though, like you can either, you know, be left behind, you know, because it's not going anywhere, it's, it's going to continue to, like, this ship has sailed, it's like any other kind of revolution, you know that we've gone through or evolution or like the industrial revolution or the like this is the internet that like it is here you know so then it's just a matter of you know how do you then you know kind of what's the word you know balance those two you know,

Right

Ideologies, you know, they want the need, the need to get on board with it, with the maybe, you know, what you, the feelings that you have around it, from a, you know, the environmental side, or the people who are running the AI, you know, and your feelings about them, there is definitely that side, and I think you know that I think is going to be a challenge for some people too, on whether they get on board with this or not,

Right? Right. Well, and I get it, you know, to some degree AI is this mysterious black hole, and that people have some. Level of fear about it, but I see that that it's, it's wherever you're, you are in life, and whatever you're doing in life, you can use it to the level that that helps you. You don't have to have 30 different AI agents doing 20 different things for you now? Great, if you're a CEO of a company, and that's that's maybe great for you, but maybe you know you're just, I don't know, you're a mom raising kids. Well, that's another thing, and and there's different levels, but I think that that people need to embrace it, and, and, and again, back to the idea of leading yourself. Leading yourself always comes down to your morning routine, and, and if you're not doing anything to impact your mindset, then you're, you're not leading yourself, and, and so my attitude is, is you don't have to do our 12 minute a day technique, but my goodness, do something with your morning routine that impacts your, your mindset, whether it's meditation or it's affirmations or it's reading scripture, or whatever you know works for you, but, but you can't just go well now. I'm just keep on winging life, that that will not play out very well, I don't think.

No, no.

Okay. Well, until next time, we will see you.