Show Notes

• Background with Beachbody
• The mindset of fitness
• Obstacles that get in the way of exercise
• The state of health and fitness in our society… and what to do about it
• Choosing excellence
• The importance of relationships
• Real-Life Marriage
• Modeling success – in relationships, and in life
• The most important lessons about marriage
• The oak tree – a great analogy for marriage
• How to do it all, and still make time for what’s important

Connect With Traci Morrow

Website: http://www.TraciMorrow.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracimorrow/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TRACIMORROWFITNESS/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/traci.morrow1
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/officialtracimorrow/

Additional Resources

Book: Real-Life Marriage: Navigating Your Beautiful, Messy, One-Of-A-Kind Love Story

Summary

Traci Morrow built a multi-million-dollar, international business in the health and wellness industry. In addition to her business success, Traci recently published her first book, “Real-Life Marriage: Navigating Your Beautiful, Messy, One-Of-A-Kind Love Story.” She shares how fitness enhances every other aspect of life, as well as the most important lessons for a successful marriage.

Full Transcript

Brian  

Welcome to another episode of Life Excellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success. For nearly two decades, Traci Morrow has built a multimillion dollar international business in the health and wellness industry, inspiring and leading her team to improve their health and grow their wealth. In addition to her business success, Traci has been married for more than 31 years, is the mom of six amazing kids, and is also a grandmother. Traci is a speaker, trainer and professional coach. She recently published her first book, Real Life Marriage:  Navigating Your Beautiful, Messy, One of a Kind Love Story. She is an amazing woman who epitomizes my own philosophy of Life Excellence. One of the things that I really admire about Traci is her strong desire to not only create success in every area of her own life, but to also help others do the same. Traci is joining us today from the beautiful island of Kauai in Hawaii. I’m thrilled to have her on the show. Welcome, Traci and thanks for joining us on Life Excellence.

Traci  

Thank you so much for having me, Brian.

Brian  

It’s wonderful to see you as always. Traci, let’s jump right in and start out talking about health and fitness in your career over the last 20 years. Like many of us have done, you were watching a fitness infomercial on television years ago. And you bought this product which was produced by a company called Beachbody and that purchase would take you on a life changing journey. Tell us about that time in your life; where you were and what caused you to dial that 800 number and begin what would become, not only an amazing fitness transformation, but an incredible life transformation as well.

Traci  

Wow, that is just it in a nutshell, how sometimes we can make one decision that seemingly takes your life on a completely different path that you didn’t even see coming and that’s just how it happened for us. We had at the time – my husband Casey and I – had four kids, we had four children in five years. So life was busy and full. With my fourth pregnancy, I had gestational diabetes and the doctor said to me, you need to lose your pregnancy weight but then if you – even on your small frame, I’m 5′ – 3″, he said on your small frame – if you even go 15 pounds overweight, then that will send you into type two diabetes because you’ve had gestational diabetes. Back then life was crazy busy with all those kids. Losing that weight, I was intentional to do that, and I was a runner, I played in a couple different adult soccer leagues; I wasn’t any good, I jokingly say. I just loved it because it was fun and being a part of a team. My husband and I played on a co-ed league. When baby number four – my daughter – got to be about four, my metabolism just stopped working the way it had always worked. I put on about 15 pounds really quickly without changing any of my habits; everything was the same but my body wasn’t working the same. I was really struggling because I had never had a weight issue before. It’s not that I hadn’t gained weight before, I just knew how to manage it. Nothing was working. I can just remember praying like, oh, God either give me a solution or help me to feel comfortable in this new version of myself. It was just a couple days later that I had the clicker in my hand on a Sunday afternoon – I can still remember it was a Sunday afternoon I was clicking through – and stopped on a commercial with Tony Horton’s face, the creator of Power 90, at the time, it was before P90X was created. He said, God did not create you to have a big butt or thick thighs or a big a full neck. And it was like…I just like paused at the TV, because how ironic that I was just landing on those very words. I was drawn in by the before and after pictures and later learned that Beachbody, the company, had a policy that you could not retouch the before and after pictures and it was written all over the screen – unretouched pictures. But these were women and men…I love the fact that you could still see stretch marks on the moms, like they were real pictures, real human beings, but their lives and bodies were changed by just working out in their home, which I love that idea. I tried working out in the gym, I taught classes in a gym before I had kids and it just wasn’t realistic for that season of my life. So I liked the idea of working out at home, where I could fit it into my mom schedule without leaving home. But at the time, it was $70 and we were a one income family at that time. I can remember saying to Casey, okay, this is $70 out of our budget, let’s just do it to the letter; this company has a money back policy. So we did it to the letter and it changed our bodies in a way that I thought was only like a genetic thing. Little did I know – it’s funny because I even taught in a gym – but I didn’t know you could change your body composition, in the way that you could, just in your house with little hand weights. So it lit a fire in me, because I wanted to help other people find what I’d found; that it was really as simple as just 40 minutes a day in your house. So I went online, it was very new, because I bought it off the television but on the back – I was looking in Target, I was looking in Costco, I couldn’t find something else from this guy, this Tony guy – and so I went on the back of the VHS tape – no DVDs yet – and it said beachbody.com. It was an online – a “.com” – company, and that was still really new. So I went on their website and it said, submit your before and after and you can win our contest and come and film our next commercial. And so we thought what the heck. We submitted, we won; hadn’t won anything like that before. So they flew us out to Kauai and filmed the commercial. That’s where I met our CEO Carl Daikeler and Tony Horton, and we figured out that we lived about 35 miles from each other in LA. That’s about a two hour drive in LA traffic. We just started working together, we hit it off, and it started this whole snowball effect, that when they needed a fitness model, they would start to use me because I lived close. Tony and I started hosting fitness camps around the world, around the country. And then our CEO was going to start a network marketing branch of the company. They asked me to be a founder, and it just kept snowballing in the right direction.

Brian  

That’s amazing, what a great story. I’m actually a huge fan of Beachbody. You probably don’t know that about me. But it’s been a while since I’ve done any of the programs. I’ve done P90X more than once and also Insanity, which by the way, is the perfect name for that program. (Traci:  Yes, yes it is.) For me, those products, like for you, had a huge impact on my fitness level. I would do the same thing; I’d move furniture around in a particular room to be able to do it because there’s just one room in the house where we had a DVD player, which is when I plugged into it. It’s just amazing the transformation that can occur, like you said, just in a small space within your house. Obviously they’ve figured out the science and the physiology and the fitness part of it. If people work it, it really has a huge positive effect on their fitness.

Traci  

Absolutely, absolutely. And not just your fitness, but it’s your mindset about fitness. It’s your mindset about food. Because once you start to feel your body change, you have more energy. First, you’re tired, because you’re making your body do something consistently, that wears you down a little bit. But I always say it takes energy to make energy. And so you start…they say it takes money to make money, it takes energy to create energy. When you stay with it, as all things, consistency is queen or king. It starts to generate this energy inside, and then you want to keep feeling better. It started out for me [that] it was an aesthetic thing, like I don’t want to have this extra weight on me; it turned into this, I feel so good. It changed from how I look, to how I feel. Then wanting other people to have that feeling too. Then it turned into what am I eating? What do I need to supplement because my food doesn’t have necessarily all the things that my body is craving now, [what] I’m needing because I’m acting like an athlete. It just kept spurring on the next level of interest for me. Once you find something that is, like you said, something anybody can do; it’s all these years later – it’s 19 years later, that was 19 years ago that I was clicking through those channels and all these years later – I still will. We went from VHS tapes to DVD players to now we’re an online company where you can just stream it wherever you are. I still am doing those workouts here in this space. I call it up on my phone or my laptop and I’m doing it. I still clear away the furniture and I’m doing it here, or just bring my phone up to the hotel gym and I do it in the gym. So no matter where I go, I have no excuses to not have that feeling of how it feels good to take care of your body wherever I am and no excuses. It’s wonderful to be able to give that gift, or at least offer that gift, to someone, if they are interested in having that too; I’m very passionate about that. I don’t think necessarily that fitness is…like Tony Horton and I – he’s a very dear friend now, we’ve worked together for many years, the creator of P90X, and so many other programs – but I don’t have the same passion for fitness that Tony does that I want to be a trainer. I’ve been a trainer before, but I don’t want to that to be me. What I find is that being healthy and fit enhances every other relationship and aspect of my life. No matter what you love to do, doing it in a healthy body just makes it all the better. The experience, every aspect of the experience, is better, every relationship is better, whether that’s me as a wife, as a daughter, as a mom and now as a grandma. I have more energy and enthusiasm and excitement and I bring more of my best self to those relationships because I’m in a healthy body. What better gift can you offer to someone? That’s my passion.

Brian  

Absolutely, and that shines through. I think anybody who’s watched the first couple minutes of this podcast or is watching the show on YouTube can see that passion come through. That’s one of the things that I love about you, Traci. Traci, fitness products aren’t new and you’ve been in the industry for 20 years, and 20 years ago they weren’t new either. But it does seem like the industry goes through seasons of change and I know new equipment and new programs come and go over time. What has remained constant for you in the area of fitness during your career with Beachbody? And how has the fitness industry evolved over the last couple of decades?

Traci  

Well, I would say the thing that has remained consistent really doesn’t have to do with the fitness part at all, because this is what I say; I love Beachbody programs and products, I love this company, I love the heart of our CEO Carl Daikeler, but the reality is if you’re going to do something – as long as it’s, as you said, scientifically that you are safe, and you’re doing things that aren’t going to injure you because you aren’t doing them improperly or unsafely – if you do anything for a long period of time consistently, you’re going to have results, whether it’s Beachbody or anything. What I love about Beachbody, or what I’m finding about the health industry, is you always do better if you have a buddy. You always do better if you have an accountability. People who go it alone…now, I could go it alone, because I’m just that kind of person where by now I have it hardwired in my head that, like, you just do it because it’s just a part of who I am. But it took me a while to get to that point where it was just, I just do it. So how did I get there is the extra accountability of telling somebody else, hey, I’m doing this do you want to do this with me? And then having someone encourage you, that, really to me, what I find is people succeed better when they’re doing something hard with someone that they care about. I think that’s why running groups do so well. Or anytime where you’re doing something where you’re training with a group, with your friend, and you try and make something that maybe you don’t care about as much or have as much fun doing, for me it’s more fun because I’m with somebody. So helping people to find a group of people to do that hard thing with, I think people are realizing that people are more apt to stay with it when they are doing it with others. What was your other question? I’m trying to remember.

Brian  

How things have changed and how they’ve stayed the same.

Traci  

Well, I think the other thing is, I think we always keep coming up with new gizmos and gadgets, but the reality is I just keep coming back to that original program that Tony did, Power 90. You can have all sorts of new things that you are holding, or working your muscles in a different way, but the reality is good old fashioned push-ups and sit-ups and squats and lifting some weights and having dumbbells and having circuit training; no matter how creative people get there are just some basic things that when you are working your muscle groups you don’t really need all those gadgets, that’s, I guess, what I’m saying. I think there are a lot of people who feel like it has to have a gadget or something expensive to work and that’s the beauty that I feel like more and more people are coming back to. You get this elaborate thing with all these gizmos, and then you come back to oh, if I can do push-ups and crunches and squats and using my body weight, I can get super fit and toned. And then it really does have to do with what you’re putting into your body because you can’t outwork a bad diet.

Brian  

Well, the gizmos and gadgets become an excuse too, don’t they, so we can say well, I can’t afford a gym membership, or I can’t afford a set of weights or I can’t afford the abdominizer or whatever the latest gizmo or gadget is and the reality is there’s so much that can be done with just body weight. One of my favorite exercises is to put on my running shoes and walk out the door and start running and that doesn’t cost anything. I mean, I’ve invested in running shoes, obviously, and clothes, but we can wear anything. And you’ve seen people wearing all kinds of things that don’t really look like running attire and probably don’t have Saucony shoes, or whatever the the expensive shoes are, but they’re out there exercising. So like you said, just a push-up, or a body weight squat or having a chair – like the things that you can do with a chair (Traci: Yes.) are amazing. Sometimes we let that get in the way and it becomes a convenient excuse, I think.

Traci  

Yeah, or time. It doesn’t need to be a whole hour, it doesn’t need to be, like you said with the weights, you can fill up water bottles. One of the things that I did is I picked up my grandson, who was I don’t know, six or eight months and he’s just a huge tank of a kid; he was my weight. I made a whole workout holding my grandson. What are the things that I can do where I am accessing – making sure that I’m safe – but doing squats and lunges and he thought it was fun. He was giggling and he was loving the closeness of me holding him. But also, I mean, I was so sore and beat by the end of that workout. But you can do things with your kids with the things that you have and take care of your body and make it as fun and creative as you want it to be. In the end, I just keep coming back to, it’s how it makes you feel. It’s [that] our bodies are designed so incredibly and they’re made to move. They’re made to have this movement. We’ve gotten so many modern conveniences that I think sometimes that it creates a laziness; devices and things that can create laziness. What I love about our programs – that they are on devices – is that it also creates this ability to be healthy and fit no matter where you are. Because you’re bringing your gym with you wherever you go. And oh man, it’s exciting.

Brian  

Yes, it is. Traci, we’ve known each other for about five years, I think. I know you’re incredibly passionate about, not only wanting to lead a healthy, fulfilling life yourself, but also to teach others to do the same. One of my great frustrations is that living in a time and place that we do, we know more than ever about the importance of health and fitness and we’ve talked about that already and yet childhood and adolescent obesity have reached epidemic levels in the US. Adults really aren’t doing that much better. Share your thoughts around that. What should we be doing as a society to create a world that’s healthy and fit rather than one where half of premature deaths are really preventable through healthy lifestyle choices. I know that it’s not all about fitness, it’s about health, too. So maybe talk about both of those. 

Traci  

Gosh, it’s a big issue. But there are some immediate things that people listening or watching can immediately start to think about implementing into their home. I like to say that health begins in the home. It’s very easy to look outside and say, gosh, we’ve got this huge problem, but what can I be a part of doing today in my home, in my family? Because how we change the world; as we know because we both love John Maxwell, what does John talk about? It’s very easy to get overwhelmed and say how do we change THE world, but how do I change MY world? How I can change my world is how do I take care of myself and how do I take care of my family? I think that is very…as a mom of six I understand the craziness and busy-ness of working parents and parents who are running in a bunch of different directions, both with work, their kids activities, sports, homework, so many things. So really paring down and really looking at the priorities that we have in our life, in our family, and maybe eliminating some things, some time wasters, maybe some scrolling and time spent on devices, both parents and kids. It has to start with us, so we as parents have to lead by example. I think a lot of times parents have a hard time asking their kids not to do something because they know, well, I do it too, or my spouse does it too, so how can we ask the kids not to do it? It perpetuates a behavior or a pattern of behavior, because we know it’s not right but it’s hard for us to ask the kids because we haven’t taken back the reins ourselves. So looking at what are some time wasters that I do that maybe is being a bad example to my kids, that I know I need to stop but day after day after day, I just keep letting the day roll into the next day, and I’m not stopping it. What are some things that I know that I can stop? Those would be time wasters; maybe scrolling on the TV, leaving the TV on when it doesn’t need to be on, picking up your phone mindlessly when you’re in the car, when you are waiting for something, when you are in the house and nothing’s really going on and just mindlessly scrolling; determining that you’re going to stop those behaviors. When you do that, let me just tell you, I did a fast from devices one week and it was this huge lesson to me of how many times I automatically just go for it – grab my phone – I have fallen into the trap myself. I’m not saying this from a place of like, you shouldn’t do this. I’m saying, I get it, I’ve done it, I do it too. I have to continually redirect my brain, it’s a part of our culture and part of what we do; we just open up our laptop, we sit on the couch, we open up our laptop, or we have our phone in our hand at all times. So learning to have a dock; we’ve opened up a dock – phone dock – in our house, where they come in, they plug in their phones, and they leave them there past ten o’clock. That’s one thing. Phones don’t go in the bathrooms, phones don’t go into their bedrooms for our teenagers. At night time, they dock their phones in our bedroom. That helps them with their sleep patterns because very easily they can kill six hours into the night and parents don’t even know it, that they’re killing time on their phones and what kind of trouble are kids getting into at night. That’s a whole nother topic. But teaching phone habits that are healthy, because they’re going to take that into their adulthood and we can teach them young. Once you decide that, then you can start looking at what are some things that we can do as a family that are healthy things that will lead them into their next part of their life as they step into adulthood? Well, learning how to…maybe looking up some healthy recipes where you can start to prepare, have meals together. Maybe you can start with one meal a week, and maybe build up to as many as you can. I realize that’s hard with sports seasons, but starting to prepare foods so they’re learning how to prepare foods. Maybe you don’t know how to prepare food, I get that too. Maybe your mom or dad, they were both out of the home or you had one parent only and there was a lot of fast food or takeout food because of necessity. Maybe we can break that cycle in our home and bring back a family dinner time starting with one night a week or a few, where you start to learn recipes so you can pass that on to the next generation. Where they learn what a healthy plate looks like with a big green leafy salad and another vegetable and a whole grain and a protein source on their plate. Then you sit down and have dinner conversation where there’s not a device at the table, a phone at the table. Just that alone is something and then maybe having an after dinner family walk, or you do things that you start bringing activity into the home. I like to say I wanted my kids to catch me reading and catch me doing the things I wanted them to do. Because people learn far more from what they see us do than what they hear us saying to do. Then if the two are in alignment is the all the more of a powerful lesson. So I wanted my kids to find me up early in the morning, out working, out in living room or in the garage. We transformed our garage, eventually, into a gym. I wanted them to find me in the early morning – when they woke up in the morning – to find me at the kitchen table reading and underlining so that they understood, when I’m an adult, I will exercise, when I’m an adult, I will get up and I will read to continue my growth. I didn’t have to say a word. But they saw me and when they got up it wasn’t like, Mom, can I this…they knew to come and they could quietly get a book of their own and sit next to me that it was mom’s quiet time and they could enter into quiet time too and color with me or read or look at a book themselves. Then they start the habit with them. So little things that you can do to model it for your kids. Start it with yourself and put it into the family culture of what you’re doing. It’s incredible to me how you start to see your kids start to emulate what you do when they catch you doing it. 

Brian  

Yeah, they definitely model our behavior, don’t they, rather than the things we tell them to do.

Traci  

Yes, they do, for better and for worse, I’m sorry to say. And I’ve shown both, trust me.

Brian  

We all have. I mentioned in your introduction that you epitomize Life Excellence and I really believe that. You’ve clearly decided to live in relentless pursuit of excellence in every area of life. Traci, where did that desire come from and tell us how that plays out in your life? You’ve actually spoken to that a little bit.

Traci  

I believe agreements we make with ourselves, both positive and negatively, are really powerful. When I was 22 – I was raised in a home where I was taken to church, but I became a person of faith when I was 17 – when I was 22, I made an agreement with myself that I think has served me well. And that was, I made the agreement that no matter how hard it was for me, as best I could, if I was faced with a choice, I would try to make the choice that I wouldn’t regret. I was going to try to live with as few to no regrets as possible, as much as I could, as far as direct choices. I have regrets, trust me, there are things that I have apologized to my adult kids for – I just didn’t know – did the best I could with what I had and it wasn’t great. We talk it through now as adults. There are many times where I was tired but I know I needed to follow through on disciplining a child, when it would have been easier to just let them mouth off and walk down the hall rather than go and have the hard conversation with them and continually follow through. Or when I was tired…it mostly was all about being tired as a mom of six. But many times when I was tired, where they would want to have this heart to heart conversation, and I’m just so tired, all I was planning was to go take off my makeup and crawl in my bed, but stopping to have that conversation with them so that I wouldn’t regret not having that conversation with them. That, to me, that relentless pursuit of excellence…I saw that saying somewhere; somebody was in relentless pursuit of something. Somewhere in my 20s I thought somebody was in relentless pursuit of something, and I thought, I want to live in relentless…what do I want to live in relentless pursuit of? So I determined I want to live in relentless pursuit of excellence. What is excellence to me? Excellence to me – by my own definition, and how I determined to live – was to show up for people that I cared for – still have boundaries for myself, I absolutely – part of showing up for people I cared about was showing up for myself. Because I needed to take care of me; I can’t serve from an empty tank and I knew that intuitively and from reading John Maxwell’s books. But I wanted to show up for people and create experiences in moments with people so that when they left, I wanted them to feel better. I wanted them to leave feeling valued, I wanted them to feel like that was an experience that made them feel important. Not that they thought I was important; I wanted them to leave the experience where they felt important. I just determined I wanted to live in relentless pursuit of excellence, even if it was inconvenient to me. Truthfully, Brian – you know this too, because I know you live in relentless pursuit of excellence – usually, if you’re going to live in relentless pursuit of excellence, it’s when it’s inconvenient. Those defining moments are when it’s most inconvenient, when you have to choose publicly, but mostly privately; am I going to do what I know I really ultimately deep down want to do, or am I going to do what serves me in my most lazy moment, or my most easy moment. Am I going to choose the easy or am I going to choose what I feel I really am deeply called to do in this moment. And that’s a hard thing to live by, because it means denial of what you really kind of would like to just do in the moment. Ultimately, I can say now at 52 – and my kids are grown – while I have asked them for forgiveness for many things that I didn’t do well, I can honestly look back and say, oh, I regret…I know I should have done that for her or for him. Sometimes it was like they were in college and they were in crisis and I had to be somewhere and I canceled meetings and I cancelled things and drove three hours to go see them in college because they were in a crisis. I have no regrets about that because I know that they’ll always know, when I said, if you need me, I will be there for you. My job, you know I love what I do, I’m passionate about the people I do things for and with, but if you need me, it all gets laid down for you. They didn’t play that card very often but they knew that when they were in crisis, they could say, mom, I really need you and I would go and I would be there. That’s something I don’t want to say, I’m proud of, but that’s something I can sign my name to.

Brian  

Absolutely. I think that is something to be…if not, I mean, if you don’t want to attach the label “proud” to it, at least acknowledge it, and know that that’s part of who you are, and part of what you stand for. You’re right, that is part of the relentless pursuit of excellence, is being there in those moments, in those crisis situations that you talked about, and knowing that you’re right where you need to be during those times. Sometimes – we have four kids so I understand what it’s like to be running in four different directions or being pulled in a couple different directions – it doesn’t always work out perfectly and you’ve alluded to that. I think it’s important to give yourself some grace on that too. I know that you’re well equipped to do that. You mentioned being for people and having that be part of excellence for you. Traci, I know that people matter to you and I saw that you even have described yourself as a relationship developer, which I thought was an interesting term. I know that you’ve benefited, like I’ve benefited, from having some pretty amazing people pour into you both informally and in formal mentoring relationships. How did those relationships evolve and what impact have those had on your life?

Traci  

I’m going to first start and say nobody can choose their family, but I was blessed with a good family, not a perfect family. In fact, there’s a lot of mess in my family – my grandparents and my aunts and uncles; I’m from a humongous family. From my mom’s two parents they had nine children; from those two little grandparents and those nine children. I think there’s like – between all of my cousins and my aunts and uncles and all that – I think there are like 170 of us and growing. There are so many. So the first thing I want to say of why relationships are important for me is, my grandmother, her mom passed away when she was three and she was an only child. So she was raised by her dad and her dad passed away when she was like 16 or 17. And before he passed away, she was dating my grandfather, and he allowed him to marry her. They married when she was 16. They were married for just shy of 72 or 73…I always forget the [number of] year[s]. But I wrote about it in my book, which we can talk about maybe in a little bit. But they, to me…family was very important to her because she craved family because she lost her family so young. She always wanted brothers and sisters, so she had so many kids. We all gathered at least once a year growing up because family was important to her. She wanted all of her kids together and all of her grandkids together and they all honored her by doing that. So first and foremost, my mentor was my family in that I saw that you honor your family, you honor your mom, you honor the relationships in your family. Now let me say, when we would gather there was always…with those people…they are very strong personalities. There was always at least one humongous, big family blowout between one of my mom’s siblings. The cousins would all gather to watch how it played out and it was messy and all that good stuff. But it was who we were, my parents were Slovenian and so it was this big kind of fiery ball of love and messiness and honesty and just honoring each other even as they fought with each other. To me, that was the first level of that is what people are supposed to be; show up for each other even when you can’t get along. You still keep showing up for one another. I can remember looking back, I have a very clear picture of my grandmother’s face, how I loved her. She would just kind of sit back and just take it all in and you could just see her cup and her heart so full. I just can remember, even as a little girl, seeing her see it all. And I just thought that is what I want. That’s how I want to feel about people. That’s how I want to look at people. Then grow growing up I learned about John Maxwell when I was 21. My parents were wonderful too, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to skip a generation, they were wonderful, I have four brothers and sisters, there’s five of us. We’re all really close and we gather together and we’ve continued that tradition. That’s why I wanted a big family. When I found John [Maxwell], it was because I didn’t finish college, I had just a semester of college, and I practically flunked that out. I knew that I wanted to pick my own mentor. So when I started learning from John, I thought I was going to learn about business things, whatever that meant. Instead, what I learned was John was like a relationship genius. He was all about teaching you how to…next level, like what I saw in my grandmother’s face, John lived out to the nth degree. I thought, that called out something deep within me and that has been really what I’ve worked toward. I attribute a lot – if not all – of my success in business to just learning to really connect with, love, serve, care about, and develop people, and help them develop their relationships, because the better they develop their relationships, the better they do in their marriages and their families and in their businesses. So I thought, helping people develop their relationships, that’s what John did for me and I want to do that for other people.

Brian  

Well, if we do that, effectively, the rest takes care of itself.

Traci  

That’s right. Yeah, exactly.

Brian  

You mentioned your book and sort of casually said, maybe we’ll talk about it; of course, we’re going to talk about your book and I want to jump into that right now. You wrote that early in your marriage…and you have so much wonderful context in your family. Obviously, because you’re a people person, you’ve been around lots and lots of other people outside your family, too so you certainly have knowledge and expertise to be able to write the book that you wrote, but you wrote that early in your marriage, you never imagined yourself someday writing a book about marriage. And yet, as with other areas of your life, you’ve been deeply committed to not only surviving that messy, complicated relationship, as you put it, with your husband, Casey, but to creating a thriving, loving marriage that will last a lifetime. What caused you to want to share what’s worked for you, and the experiences that you’ve witnessed in other people and seen within your family and others around you in a book about marriage?

Traci  

Well, I’ve kind of almost shown the pattern of how my brain works in just a little time we’ve talked. I wanted to get healthy because I needed to lose weight and I found something. I found out the process, that it was like, oh, there’s a path forward. So what did I want to immediately do? Show someone else how to do it. Then when I found, from John, how to next level relationships, and how that affects every aspect of your life, the next thing I wanted to do was help other people find out how to do that. As Casey and I figured out and found our way, I think the next thought was like, this should not be kept to us, this should be shared with people because we were two people who came from two very different backgrounds. I talk it about in the book. What’s funny is my husband, we were on vacation and he just had a call with his friend who is also his boss and he said, tell Traci, I’m reading the book. And he said, oh, is that right? And he said, boy, you guys are really putting it all out there aren’t you. [Laughter.] (Brian:  That’s true.) [I said] oh my gosh, did you feel so uncomfortable? And he said, no, because we are putting it all out there. The reality is I tell a bunch about our immature moments, our growth moments, our arguments and how it went because we were so different. We came from such different backgrounds, but we loved each other. I think there were definitely times where we could have given up because it was just hard. We were kind of like this…I never thought…I don’t think I ever really thought like, I’m out of here. I don’t think I ever thought that. I just knew there has to be a way, there has to be, we’re not figuring something out. There’s got to be a tool. There’s got to be something. When I found books, I did find tools, like a little something in this book and a little something here. I never picked up a book that went like, this book gets me, necessarily. It was just a bunch of little pieces along the way. Most of the books that I read, particularly faith-based books that I was reading, sounded so perfect, like the people in it weren’t messy and we were messy. I would have loved to have picked up a book where someone talked about how they were like really immature in it and it worked out clunky, but it still worked out. So that’s what I determined, like, I’m going to tell how it works out clunky and you move forward a little bit, and you just keep taking steps forward, and it gets less and less clunky. Then it’s smooth because that’s real, that’s how it was real for us. Maybe some people will read our book and say, man, we get along, it’s way easier for us than it was for Casey and Traci. And for that, I say, that’s amazing. But for me, I just want people to find that there is a path forward. When you say I do…there’s a lot of divorce in this country but there’s also I think it’s like 1.2 [million] marriages in the US in 2021 and like 650,000 divorces; so not quite half as many divorces as there are weddings.You even see celebrities and all these celebrity ballplayers and all that stuff, they keep getting married again and again. Look at Elizabeth Taylor, for anybody who’s old enough to remember her, she was an actress who married eight times. One guy, I think she married two times or maybe three. But it’s like, they keep getting married because there’s some things people are craving in a lifelong marriage, in a lifelong relationship. They keep getting to the end and it’s like, okay, this is hard, I’ll start over again. But a lot of times, the problem that you’re bringing into the next relationship is yourself, you’re the one, you aren’t getting past yourself within that one relationship, and you keep hoping someone else is going to fix it, but it’s you. And so these tools are really like self-reflective. They are practicing with the same person over and over again, the person you chose, and it’s moving forwards little steps at a time and and really creating the marriage that you desire. Casey and I have said so many times, gosh, if we had ever given up, we would be missing out on this. Let’s just suppose even if we divorced and married somebody else, we wouldn’t have this long, rich history of trying, and figuring it out, and forgiving each other, and figuring out it again, and growing up within the marriage. That’s something worth sharing. Because if somebody does have a desire in their heart – if you want to get a divorce, and you want to try again, that is the individual’s decision – but if you desire to have a marriage for life, shouldn’t somebody who’s figured it out through the mess show you how to navigate that rough terrain? That’s my heart for that. So I’ll say first, I think there are three audiences for this book. This book is for people who are married already; you could be married 20 years and stuck and are we going to keep going with this because it’s not working. Or you could be married five years or two years, any amount of years or months or days, and be like okay, we want tools, we need some tools. This book is for you because those tools are in there, [it] will help any married couple who wants to work on it. This is [also] for somebody who is not engaged or married, this is for somebody who is seriously dating and is trying to decide, is this the person I want to marry? Because there are action steps at the end of every chapter that you are to do with your person, and it gets conversation going and talking. In those conversations…Casey and I have done marriage prep classes at our church and we’ve also done marriage mentoring for people who are married and they just wanted some mentoring, they’re stuck on something. So we’ve met with couples who have asked us to mentor them. What we found is…we’ve mentored couples before they were even engaged or when they were engaged. So before you’re engaged, you’re deciding if you’re going to get engaged, is this the person, I’m not sure. I believe this language will help you discover do we want to take this next step. Are we on the same path? Do we want the same things? Do we have the same vision for marriage that we want to take that next step. Then [finally] this book is for people who are engaged, who want to start out on the right step and talk about all the things before you get married; setting expectations at the beginning is one of the best things you can do for your marriage, to talk about all the things. A lot of times – this is a John Maxwell thing, but he’ll say disappointment is that gap between where expectations don’t meet reality and disappointment lives in there. So let’s talk about expectations – a lot of times, many times, we have an expectation about lots of things – but marriage in particular on this topic – that what we think marriage should be, what it’s going to be like, what we want out of marriage, whether that means I hope we move every few years and try different places versus I want to live in the house my parents passed down to us and I hope we live there and pass it down to our children. Those are two very…they don’t seem like it’s a big deal but that’s kind of a big thing to talk about because if you’re somebody who wants to live in many different states, or even different countries, that’s something to talk about before marriage. So getting those conversations going – in these activities in the book, at the end of each chapter – is a good thing for engaged couples to be talking about so you can make some decisions in advance of your marriage. Getting back to the question that you talked about – we did see that in our our marriage prep classes – what about people who are putting it off and putting it off, because they’ve not seen marriage done well, so they’re afraid to pull the trigger and get married because they don’t want a divorce, they want to do something different than what their parents did. Or they don’t want to have to go through the pain or put that pain that they experienced as kids of divorce on their own kids. We’ve heard that loud and clear from kids – not kids, people who are in their 20s creeping up on their 30s, in their low 30s getting to their mid 30s – not getting married because they are afraid of that. They do all the things but get married. Then a lot of times those couples break up, to be totally honest. Because without the commitment…a lot of times if Casey and I were in a lot of those situations but we weren’t married, it would have been different, we might not have had the same thing that we were working together to create a marriage and a family as a married couple moving forward. That commitment was important to both of us, that commitment said I’m all in and I’m continuing to make the same promise that I made on day one standing at the altar, in the dress or before the judge, whatever it was where you made your promise. We want to continue to make that promise every day moving forward. That promise is just saying I’m committing to you. I’m in. I’m committing to you the good, the bad, the ugly, and it’s going to be all and I know that and I’m in. Now what they’re saying is they don’t have…I think the root of what we’ve heard is they just don’t know how to make it work. That’s what this book is. This can help you. It isn’t that I’m the greatest author in the world, I’m just saying I found tools that can help people who have a hard time, or who have a not so hard time, navigate uncharted territory, that uncharted territory of marriage, of creating a unique marriage, your own marriage, because every single marriage is different. So if you haven’t seen a marriage last, this book can help you. This is me as your older sister, your aunt, a mother figure, saying hey, this is how we worked out, this is how you can work it out. I think sometimes those people put it off and put it off, because they want to make it work but they they just don’t know how. So these tools, you can feel safe stepping forward knowing hey, we now have the tools; and it’s not like you’re going to need advanced tools, like Real Life Marriage 2.0 isn’t going to come out because you’re going to need your next set of tools. These are the same tools at 30, almost 32, years of marriage we are still using today because they last for a lifetime. 

Brian  

Well, you’ve hit on one of the challenges that we’re facing in society today is that we seem to be exposed to more dysfunction in marriage rather than models of loving, successful marriages. The other thing that I’ve noticed happening with young people – and you have teenagers, but you also have kids in your 20s and at least a couple who are married, I think – but one of the things I’ve noticed with young people is because of that trend – the dysfunction in marriage, the obvious rate of divorce and kids growing up in single parent households and that sort of thing – that young people today are often hesitant to commit to marriage. How do you see that playing out long term if the trend continues? What can we do to turn that tide in the other direction? I know your book is in…again, like if we could just get your book into the hands of all teenagers or before you date you have to read Real Life Marriage, that would be very helpful. But seriously, it’s a huge problem and it’s one that is very concerning for me. I’ve always thought it is interesting…so I love people and I love to observe and study people, and I’m a learner, and constantly learning and growing in every area of life. I’ve always found it interesting that we read and attend seminars and get coaches and mentors in so many areas. Like we can read a book on how to fix a car, or we can read a book about how to grow a business or how to start a business. And we can read books about fitness, and we can read books about super foods, or how to be healthier. And yet, not many people are reading books about marriage so it’s no wonder the challenges that we have as a society with marriage, the dysfunction that we have around marriage. The good news is that there are tools out there, tools like your book, there are many other books. I’ve had the same experience that there haven’t been books…there isn’t a marriage manual, just like there isn’t a life manual. I wish there was. There isn’t a parenting manual and it seems to me that maybe that’s your next book, because (Traci: Oh yeah, in the works.) [inaudible] amount of experience as a parent, and I know you would have wonderful wisdom and insight to share with parents of all ages and so that’s another another opportunity. But there are tools out there that people can avail themselves of that will help them in their marriage and help them in their relationships. I just wish more…I hope people listening to this podcast and watching the show on YouTube, will go out and get your book and get other books as well. Because for me, one of the reasons that our marriage has been successful – and we’re going on 33 years – so we’re right around the (Traci:  Congratulations!) Thank you. To the extent that I’ve been able to contribute to that, it’s really just like I do in every other area of life, finding people who are successful, and find out what they’re doing that makes them successful. So whether, again, it’s fitness or health or business or spiritual growth, or whatever area of life, relationships, and certainly marriage, it’s helpful to know what works for people. By the way, it’s also important to see dysfunction and see things not working and see tension because we can learn and grow from that too. If we see somebody who’s unhealthy, we can observe their behavior and like just do the complete opposite. I tell our kids that if you don’t know how to do something, just do the opposite of what everybody else is doing and that’s probably a pretty good place to start, then you can go from there. Isn’t that true, though? (Traci:  It’s true.) So we can learn from both, but it’s a little baffling to me; I am curious about why people are so eager and so apt to learn about things in every other area other than relationships. Relationships are difficult. Marriage is difficult, it’s ups and downs. It’s messy. It’s real life. I’m looking at the cover of your book right now, which is the bottom rack of a dishwasher and the dishes are messy. There’s ketchup all over one and there’s mustard all over another plate. It’s not the fine china set up with the beautiful crystal. It’s the messiness that you have on your cover. But the good news is that there are tools available to help us navigate through that. There are people who can help us navigate through that, whether it’s just…my wife and I used to used to double date with a couple, and they were in their mid 80s when we started going out with them, and they were in their early 90s when – they’re both deceased now – but it was just some of the most wonderful, rich time and conversation that we could have invested. I miss them dearly. Leo and Fran were their names, this tiny little Jewish couple, and they had been married for over 60 years and they would lament about challenges going on with their kids. We had a couple of those conversations and then I thought, wait a minute, their kids are in their 60s and 70s and they’re still talking about parenting challenges. [Laughter.] They just poured wisdom and insight into us. So there are people all around us who are wonderful models of successful marriage. Books do that, books in any area give us the opportunity to read wisdom and gain tools and knowledge and strategies for improving. Marriage, as you know, is just one of the absolute most important relationships in life.

Traci  

I want to say too, if you go to my website, TracyMorrow.com, on that, on one of the drop down menus, I list books that were impactful for us that we recommend to other couples. So they’re in the area of money management and finding out your money personalities. Eventually, I’m going to – hopefully, by the end of 2022, so depending on when you see this, if you go there, it might be there, or it might not yet – have an online course that we’ve done live with couples in groups, but those books are a part of it. So it’s like your money personality, your personality and how you view things, your love languages, how you receive love how you show love back and forth with one another. There’s a Dave Ramsey book, there’s a book on sex, which I feel like is a big topic, especially in the church, where I feel like we had a marriage prep class, where …I don’t know how many people really get great mentoring about sexual intimacy. I’m not talking about the act of sex, I’m talking about sexual intimacy. Andy Stanley has a book called Love, Sex and Dating, which I’ve given to all of my kids, whether they’re teenagers or 20 somethings. And the idea behind it…if you’ve got a kid who is not married, that is an incredible book to give to them. I think it’s even for somebody probably maybe as young as 15, maybe 14 – read it first to determine if you think it’s ready for your kid yet – but that’s a great book, because he talks about like, you are sexually compatible with pretty much everybody but sexual intimacy is the same thing as relationship. It’s being intimate with someone, it’s about a connection, not just an act. I feel like that is a piece that is also…how many kids and young people are trained about that area of their relationship by movies or TV, which is just so bogus. There’s a lot of misconceptions around that; it’s just not talked about in the church, you’re told what not to do. Then once you’re married, it’s not really talked about at all, other than don’t have an affair. So talking about that, there are great authors Cliff and Joyce Penner are…if you’re a church going person, that book, to me, they have many, many books – they were the actual mentors, they were the ones who came in and taught the classes for Casey and I – but they have so many books…that’s the value of being in LA, because so many of those authors and people…but there’s so many topics that are so rich, and I put some of those books up for you on my website. So if you would like to look at some of those books, go ahead and look and I think there’s even links directly to them on Amazon. So if you’re…like Brian said, there are a lot of different books. Those are the ones that I would recommend to start with, in addition to my book, but those are ones like that you can cherry pick topics. If you feel like…as you’re reading through my book, you can go…that would be a good one to kind of dive deep into on the different topics.

Brian  

That’s great. Thanks for sharing that. Traci, you and Casey have six children and now a grandson too, what are the most important lessons about marriage you want each of your children and eventually your grandchildren to know?

Traci  

Oh, just I think open communication is a big one and being a part of having mentors. Open communication with one another, where I want them to talk about what they saw in their parents marriage growing up, each of their parents marriages growing up, and then talk about what they want to bring into their own marriage moving forward for their own legacy. then keeping the sanctity in the privacy of their marriage; putting a boundary up around themselves. That’s one of the…a dear friend of mine married our oldest daughter – she’s our second born, but our oldest daughter was our first to get married – and he had a each of the parents read a blessing out loud as part of the marriage ceremony, which was in effect us cutting the strings, like basically releasing and stepping back from the new couple. One of the things that I said was like, don’t let anyone inside that inner most private conversation. Don’t complain about one another to other people. Don’t let the mothers or the fathers of either side in too tight. You’re creating something that’s very special and unique to keep between the two of you. I’m not saying you can’t have mentorship; they have asked us many things and allowed us to come in. But keeping a healthy boundary around the couple is so important and you don’t even let your children in. The healthiest families are when the husband and the wife have a really healthy boundary around the mom and the dad, then the kids operate so much more healthy. This is broken down when the parents are broken down and the mom is more connected to the children and the dads feeling left out – he’s more at work or he’s more doing stuff with his buddies – then there starts to be a breakdown. My biggest advice that I’ve given to my kids is like really put a healthy boundary around the two of you [one] that Dad and I don’t go into, the other person’s parents don’t go into, that not even your kids go into. That’s you guys and your faith. Absolutely get counseling or input, but you have one another’s back. That’s how you become each other’s person is by everyday choosing to have one another’s back and keeping that privacy and that intimacy between the two of you. That alone changes the whole health of the family. The temptation of the mom is [it’s] very easy to get all the things you need from this precious little baby, as you bring a baby into the family. It’s very easy…this guy, the dad, suddenly is not as cute and cuddly as that baby. You’re getting all your physical touch and your kisses and your loves and words of affirmation and all the love languages and ways you receive love from this precious little baby and you suddenly aren’t as needy to your spouse. So when you keep the boundary – of course you love your child – but when you make sure that you are making time to date your spouse and spend time with your spouse and cultivating that relationship of above all, that is where you keep growing together. Yes, you are going to expect to grow apart and in different directions, at different paces, in different interests; that is two different people growing. But making intentional choices to continue to grow back toward one another, even as you are growing in all those different spaces so that as you grow to the next best version of yourselves you’re continuing to stay connected. As you do that your marriage is so much richer and has a depth of growing together. I also say every argument that you have that you settle it’s like an oak tree and I use the illustration in the book. An oak tree has a vast root system that goes far and wide and fairly shallow, there are a few really deep – a couple to three – really deep roots. But the main root system of an oak tree is pretty shallow and far and wide; about the width or even farther than the branches and they reach out pretty wide of an oak tree. I always think every argument that you have…a little oak tree is tiny, small and the spindly little root system goes down. But very quickly, it starts multiplying and knotting and twisting around each other underneath to prepare to support the branches as it gets bigger when a storm comes. I think that is such a great analogy of marriage. Because with every argument, with everything you overcome, every hardship that you go through together, every time you grow apart and stitch back together and grow to the next stage in your marriage, you are interlocking and intertwining your lives together and building a pretty radical root system that is going to support you when hardship comes. I like to say, remember, you’re building a mighty oak with every argument and every hardship that you overcome. That’s your root system that’s going to support you when hard times come and try to knock you down.

Brian  

I love that Traci, the oak tree is just such a wonderful visual for marriage. These last few minutes, I want to go back and listen to that almost immediately. If you’re listening to the podcast, or again, watching this show on YouTube, just rewind and listen to that last five minutes because that’s really rich. I appreciate you sharing that. Traci, you’re an entrepreneur, author, podcaster, speaker, coach, wife, mom of six kids and a grandma. How do you do all that you do and still make time for everyone and everything that’s important to you?

Traci  

Prioritize. I prioritize. I know what’s important to me and I’ve learned to say no. When I was about 35, I was getting pretty rundown because I wanted to do all things and be a part of all things. If you were to picture my life as a piece of paper, my margin was minuscule. I can just remember at one point, Casey saying to me, I think we need more margin, you’re going to run yourself into the ground. So I started intentionally saying no. I had two or three people who, I gave them permission, to ask me how often I was saying no. So I determined what were my priorities. Then from those priorities…I remember John Maxwell, he’d say I do three things really well, the rest I get someone else to do. That really said to me, okay, as a mom, I have to do more than three things. But what are the things that I absolutely need to prioritize that are my heart and soul, my passion, my purpose? And what do I not need to give my time and energy to? I am a pretty high energy person and I do like to do a lot of things but learning to say no, was very important. Having people ask me, am I saying no, giving Casey the permission to say to me, hey, I think your margins are getting a little small again, that’s the trigger to me to go, oh. I just naturally want to just keep trying it all, so I pare it back and go back to my priorities and really live within those priorities on my calendar. The rest, I just have to say no to; I actually do schedule in rest. It sounds so crazy when you say all those things that I do, but they aren’t all at once. They aren’t all at the same time. Also my kids all have…four of my kids are adults and outside of the home and they all have their lives now. We do make time for one another but it’s also – they understand and I understand – that they have their life and I have things that I’m doing too. That, hey, when can we FaceTime? When can we talk? We schedule time for one another but definitely we get it on the calendar and then we schedule in space and then to the rest we say no.

Brian  

Traci, thank you so much for being on the show today. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. I feel like we could talk for another two, three, five hours; days, probably, but I’m still grateful for your friendship. I really appreciate the wisdom that you’ve imparted today, so thanks for being here.

Traci  

Thank you so much for having me. I feel the same. I feel like we could talk for hours, but I do, I value your friendship. I appreciate you having me on. I’m so grateful for every person who’s listening. I just pray that this was a blessing for you and that somewhere in here there’s some some nugget that you needed to hear today that you get to take home; feel the freedom either to take care of your body, or reclaim some relationships or priorities, and that you walk away invigorated and excited to take back the reins.

Brian  

Thanks again, Traci, and hopefully we’ll see each other soon. (Traci:  Thanks, Brian.) And for our listeners and viewers, thanks for tuning into Life Excellence. Go online today, and I’m just going to say pick up two copies of Traci’s book Real Life Marriage – one for you and your spouse or significant other or somebody you’d like to be your significant other, and one to help someone else improve their marriage. Please also be sure to support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with Traci Morrow on social media and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.