Yesterday I was filming a video specifically for one of the new products that I’m created called The Ex Recovery Program. Now, I’m not sitting here to sell you anything, but I was filming this particular program, this particular section in this program and I got inspired.

I got so inspired about what I was talking about.

I said, “Rules, I’m not going to listen to them.” I think everyone who’s trying to get an ex back or who’s trying to get over an ex needs to hear what I’m about to say.

What’s interesting is I’ve been doing this for over a decade.

That means I have had a lot of people come through the program. I’ve had a lot of people succeed. I’ve had a lot of people fail. And I’ve been able to notice and pick out certain types of behaviors between people who succeed and people who fail.

Most of the time I’m talking about people who succeed, people who go through the program and either get their exes back or have a complete revitalization around their life. They look at life in a new and different way.

But that’s not what I’m going to do today. Instead, I’d actually like to turn the camera to the other side, to people who fail and look at those patterns. Look at what those people are doing that isn’t working.

And what I’m hoping is anyone who’s watching this who doesn’t have enough money to buy a program or do certain things can watch this. And if they see that they’re implementing these behaviors, they can know they need to change something.

They don’t necessarily need to buy something, but they need to change their fundamental approach into how they’re either getting their ex back or moving on from their ex. And the first thing I really want to talk about is this idea of understanding a concept versus implementing a concept.

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Reason #1: Understanding Vs. Implementing

You see, it’s not enough to simply understand something. The one thing that separates the losers from the winners when it comes to this get your ex back game or get over your ex is people… understanding a concept is easy.

It really is.

You sit there and listen. I tell you what to do. Someone else tells you what to do and you understand the fundamental reasons for why we’re telling you to do what you’re supposed to do. But that’s not the same thing as you actually going out and implementing that. You see, it’s kind of like a puzzle.

Understanding a concept gives you half of the puzzle. Implementing the concept gives you another half.

So what I want you to understand is that trying to gain knowledge is only half this battle.

It’s up to you to take that knowledge and put it into action.

That’s a common theme you’re going to see when I give you these types of behaviors from people who fail.

Speaking of which, let’s start talking about that.

Reason #2: People Aren’t Willing To Own Their Actions

A common behavior that we see from someone who fails is they aren’t willing to own their actions. I talk often about how when exes go through a breakup, they often like to paint themselves as the victims. They like to make it all about them even if they were the ones to break up with you.

But I’ve also noticed a pretty jarring pattern emerging between people that I work with who aren’t willing to own their actions, whether that be in the relationship with their ex or whether that be what they’re doing.

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They’re so easy to blame someone else for their lack of success that they have no peace of mind or function of looking at themselves.

In the end, I can lead you to the water, but I can’t make you drink it. I can give you the best pieces of advice, but if you don’t implement that advice the way it’s meant to be implemented, it’s not my fault. It’s really yours.

The people who succeed own their actions. When they make a mistake, they are able to take a step back and say, “You know what, that’s on me.”

They don’t paint themselves as the victims. Painting yourself as a victim always means you’re blaming someone else. And if you’re blaming someone else, that doesn’t really translate really well into relationships when it’s all about working together for the common good.

And in this case, hopefully the common good is that you’re winning your ex back.

Or in this case, maybe it’s coming to a realization that you no longer want your ex back. And if you’re not willing to own your actions, if you’re not willing to take responsibility, nothing can really help you. So that’s one of the most common behaviors I’ve noticed.

Reason #3: Not Relying On The Right Types Of People

Another common behavior is people aren’t willing to rely on the right types of people. Now, what do we mean by that?

Well, as I’m sure you’re aware, if you’re going through a breakup and you’re talking to a friend or family member, they aren’t necessarily the most supportive, especially if you tell them you’re thinking of getting your ex back.

What’s interesting is because you have such trust in your friends, you have such trust in your family, you know them better than you’ll ever know me, you’re much more willing to take what they say to heart as opposed to what I say. Which is interesting because I’ve been doing this for a decade.

I’ve been doing this for every day of my life for over 10 years. Your friends and family have not, they haven’t seen what’s working. They haven’t seen what’s working. Everything that I ever recommend to you is not something I just made up out of thin air.

At one point maybe that’s true, but I always went out and tested it.

I always said, “Hey, try this out and report back to me and see what the results are.”

And if those results are positive, I tested out even more. And if I keep getting those positive results, next thing I know, I think, you know what? This might actually work. I try to view getting an ex back or even moving on from an ex as a science.

I put it through the Socratic method or the scientific method. I constantly create a hypothesis and test the hypothesis. Your friends and family aren’t necessarily doing that. They’re giving you age old advice that sounds like it’s right.

And sometimes they’re not even supportive at all where they’ll just simply say, “Hey, there’s other fish in the sea. Move on.” Which is not what you want to hear.

It’s important that you listen to the right people and the right people are always those who have experience, who have done it before. That’s also why I keep pushing people to get into our private Facebook group. Why? Well, it’s not because I think it’s not going to help them. It’s because it’s going to put them in an environment where everyone is on the same level, where everyone is experiencing much of the same types of emotions.

Listen to someone who’s actually gotten their ex back, not someone who hasn’t.

Reason #4: Not Willing To Look At The Big Picture

Another huge reason that people fail in ex recovery is they aren’t willing to look at the big picture.

Now, this one’s really self-explanatory, but I think maybe it’s important for me to explain it to you because this is something we go through life sometimes with blinders on and fail to look at big pictures. When I’m talking about looking at big pictures, I’m not talking about creating a game plan.

I’m talking about understanding the game plan as a whole. Understanding why you’re doing the things you’re doing right now. Most people only have a tendency to look at the next step and they often judge success based on that next step. But again, it’s kind of like a puzzle.

You’re judging the whole picture of a puzzle based on one singular puzzle piece. That’s not a smart thing to do and sometimes, no, not sometimes. Almost all the time, everyone who has gone through this process, who has been in your shoes is going to fail.

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They will. Things will not go their way. Maybe they think I’ve got the perfect text message.

They send it out to their ex and it doesn’t work. No response. Now, people who look at the big picture understand, okay, well, if that happens, here’s what I need to do. But people who often aren’t looking at the big picture take that as the end of the world. “Oh, my chances are completely over.

Oh, I’m waiting too long.” It doesn’t work that way. Take a bigger, broader view.

Run a marathon, not a sprint.

Reason #5: Work The Program

Another huge reason people fail is they aren’t willing to work the program. Again, earlier I talked about this idea of, look, I’m trying to view ex recovery as a science. It’s an imperfect science, sure, but there’s a reason why we’ve gotten so many successes. Why people are willing to come on and do one-on-one interviews with us.

Why people are willing to buy our products continually. And it’s not because we just made everything up out of thin air. It’s because we tested everything that we’re recommending for people to do. Now, some people come in with what we call a fixed mindset.

They come in believing that they won’t be able to get their ex back, believing that they won’t be able to live without their ex. And no matter what you do, you cannot do anything to change that mindset.

No matter how many success stories you show people like that, they’ll still have that innate belief that they won’t be able to win their ex back.

They still have that innate belief that if they don’t get their ex back, it’s the end of the world. They won’t be able to survive. People with fixed mindsets will fail more often than not. What we try to encourage and develop our clients into being is having a growth mindset, willing to be open to possibilities, willing to be open to change, which I’m going to talk about in a minute.

In order to do that, you have to work and trust in the program that we’ve created and the advice that me, any of the coaches, any of the moderators in the Facebook group are recommending to you.

It’s not because we don’t think you are capable of doing it, it’s because sometimes you don’t know the way and we do.

Reason #6: Not Setting Clear Goals

Another really, really big reason people fail is they don’t recognize the importance of being able to set clear goals. I talked a bit in the big picture section about this idea of looking at the puzzle as a whole, not judging success based on one small failure.

But often you also have to work in tandem or in parallel with this idea of being able to set a clear goal. When I come up to people and I say, “Okay, what is your goal?” They’ll say, “I want my ex back.”

But clear, that’s not clear.

Clear, when we’re talking about clear goals, we’re talking about specific. Your overall goal is probably always going to be, “Hey, I want to move on from this,” or, “Hey, I want my ex back.”

But that’s not a clear goal. That’s your overall goal. A clear goal is, “You know what? By next week I am going to get a positive response from my ex.” But here’s the other thing. People who set clear specific goals often have a tendency to freak out when they don’t hit those goals. Why? Well, it’s this relationship we have with failure.

A lot of people believe that we’re born in a society that only rewards success it feels like. No. Some people can debate on that, and I could even debate on that a little bit because sometimes even early ages were given, “Hey, here’s a participation trophy.” Which I think is a horrible thing to do because it devalues the actual people who won. But that’s another rant for later.

Here’s the thing. People who are afraid of failure will never grow because you learn more from your failures than you do from your successes. Anyone who succeed at anything in life will not have an epiphany, will not have a grow moment.

They’ll have a fixed moment. They’ll say, “Ooh, I like this success. I’m not going to continue to evolve. I’m just going to try to keep doing what I’m doing.” And so they continue to do what they do and maybe they have more success, which in turn creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, but eventually the success will stop.

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And when they face failure for the first time in their lives, they freak out and they don’t know how to deal with it.

People who are successful at this process are those who embrace failure, who take the failure as a learning experience. I’ve even gotten to the point where when I fail at something in life, I’m no longer that upset.

Sure I can get upset just like anyone else, but I look at it as a growing moment. This is a moment where I can learn something.

What did I learn from this failure? Hmm. Okay. Well, I did this thing and it didn’t work. Or I tried this little business strategy, hmm, it fell flat on its face. Before I would just get so upset about failing a business or something like that. I would go and play video games for a week, but now I look at it like, “Oh, okay, what can this failure teach me?”

And sometimes that’s why we need to set clear goals. We’re all little scientists throughout this process. We go through it. We’re trying different things out and when we fail, rather than getting upset, the smarter thing to do is to take that failure and say, “What did this teach me?”

Reason #7: Not Being Able To Track Their Progress

Another really, really big reason people fail at this program is they’re not willing to track their progress. Before I was talking about this idea of embracing failure, but oftentimes one of the best way, if you’re going to take a scientific approach to embracing failure, you’re going to learn from it, is you need to be willing to track your progress.

Human memory is not as perfect as you think. And what’s interesting is people who track their progress are able to see why things failed as opposed to why things didn’t fail. They’re able to see what’s working and what’s not working. This is a great exercise you can practice when you’re texting.

Take something as basic as counting the amount of times that your ex reaches out to you first versus the amount of times that you reach out to him first. Now, if you notice that there’s like a 2:1 ratio where you’re reaching out two times to his reaching out one time, you know, okay, this is what I need to be working on.

I need to be working about evening that ratio up so he’s reaching out to me first as many times as I’m reaching out to him first. You can even do this with who ends the conversation first. I’ve often said, well, don’t focus so much on who starts a conversation but focus more on who ends a conversation.

If you’re the one ending the conversation all the time, this is a really great thing because you are forcing him to want more. You’re forcing and putting him in a position where, okay, you know what? I wanted that conversation to go longer and it got cut of. And then maybe he starts reaching out to you more.

But you’ll never know that if you’re not tracking your progress

Reason #8: Not Holding Themselves Accountable

Another huge reason people fail is they aren’t willing to hold themselves accountable. Now, this is a little bit different from being willing to work the program. People who aren’t willing to hold themselves accountable are people who often have really poor discipline.

What do I mean by that? Well, the no contact rule is something that we talk a lot about because it’s one of the most effective strategies that you can employ when it comes to winning an ex back. But our estimations are that 80% of people who will attempt the no contact rule will fail it. Meaning they’ll break it.

They’ll reach out to their ex first or they’ll cave when he reaches out first or she reaches out first, whatever your situation may be.

The people who don’t fail in the no contact rule are the people who find ways to hold themselves accountable. They either block their ex’s number or they erase their ex’s number and give it to a trusted friend and tell that friend, “Hey, no matter how much I beg, plead, whatever, if I ask for that number, you do not give it back.” And then they erase the number from the phone and they don’t know his number. So next thing they know, they have no temptation to reach out because they can’t.

Holding yourself accountable is finding almost a way to punish yourself in a way that makes you afraid to break a rule.

I’ll never forget, I watched this really, really interesting episode of the show, Nathan for You. Now, Nathan for You is like a comedy spoof.

It’s on Comedy Central where this fake businessman will go into businesses and purposely give them horrible advice. It’s an interesting look at human nature and how willing we are to listen to poor advice. And sometimes the advice he gives people is just absolutely hilarious.

But he did this one skit this one time where essentially he took four or five people and he made them write an embarrassing letter about themselves, about something they thought about a coworker or take an embarrassing picture or pretend that they had an affair when they really didn’t.

And he used this as a way to holding these people accountable so that they reach their goals. So here’s how it works. I think it was for weight loss, something really simple. So essentially it was like, “Okay, you need to lose five pounds this week.

And if you don’t lose this five pounds, we’re going to send this embarrassing footage or this embarrassing picture or this embarrassing letter to your boss, wife, whatever.” And almost every single per person lost the weight.

One person didn’t and she lost her job as a result. Now maybe that sounds so funny, but the idea was all about holding yourself accountable.

Now I’m not saying you need to do something embarrassing and send a picture out or an embarrassing picture out to your friend or something, but find some way to hold yourself accountable. And sometimes that’s even relying on other people. People you trust to say, “You know what, if I don’t do this, take my phone away. I love my phone, take it away. I’m not allowed to have it.” People who are successful find these subtle ways to hold themselves accountable so that they’ll follow through.

Reason #9: Failing To See Your Power

Another huge reason people fail is they aren’t willing to see their power. I see this a lot with women, but even sometimes men, mostly women though. Women have this tendency to put men on pedestals, especially if they want to get them back.

They look at their ex as some sort of, if I don’t get him back, it’s the end of the world. They put them on a pedestal, they let them get away with murder essentially and it results in a devaluation of themselves.

They maybe don’t have a stronger self-esteem because their whole identity is wrapped up in this guy. People who are successful with this program almost find ways to knock the pedestal down, to put him on equal footing.

And sometimes men don’t like this because they like being held as some sort of God. But it’s important for you to see that you have a lot more power than you realize and a lot of what we’re trying to do is to get you to open up and see that. Usually I tell this to women all the time. The woman who’s willing to lose the guy will more than often get the guy.

Reason #10: Believing That Purchasing A Program Is All It Should Take

Another huge reason people fail is they feel as if purchasing a program, any program, not just mine, is all it should take to get their exes back. Think about that for a minute. We live in a society where we expect instant gratification.

Now, it used to be, think about this for a moment, before the invention of GPS in the cell phone, people would actually have maps in their car and they would have to learn the roads from a piece of paper map. But now all you have to do is, you get your car, you plan the coordinates, the phone does it all for you. Instant gratification.

Google has even gotten a lot more specific about this.

You may have noticed that often when you go to Google now, you type in, “Hey, what’s the weather like?” Immediately, without even having to click on any kind of result, the answer is given to you.

Google has surfaced the web, found the correct answer, and given it to you. But getting an ex back, moving on from an ex, these are things that will not happen instantly. These are things that must happen over time. The average length it will take to get an ex back, we have found is three months. That’s the average.

Sometimes it can happen sooner, but most of the time it happens longer than that. A lot of people don’t have the patience to wait that out, to see that through. And they expect that when they buy something, they should get that result when ultimately we can show them how to get that result, but it’s up to them to implement the result. And even then, it’s not a guarantee. That’s what’s so hard about this.

Reason #11: Not Prepared To Change

Another huge reason people fail is they aren’t prepared to change. Albert Einstein once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting a different result.”

It’s insane to expect that the way you’re doing things, if it’s unsuccessful, is going to give you success. You have to be willing to change something, to change some variable. Now, I’m not saying you need to change your personality.

You should never change your personality. But you have to be willing to change your approach. Your approach is important because a lot of people have the wrong approach. And if they just make a few subtle tweaks here and there, they can have great success.

Now, I hate to do this comparison, but it’s probably the best one I can think of. My wife and I sometimes watch that… now that I think about it, it’s a poorly edited show, but my gosh, sometimes it’s just fun to watch. It’s called the Dog Whisperer.

It’s basically that guy, he goes and rehabilitates really, really bad dogs. A lot of times the dogs’ owners are doing the right things, but they just need to tweak something here or something here and they get the results they want. But sometimes you’ll find he’ll tell these people, “These are the changes you need to make. Make sure you don’t feed the dog like a dog. Make sure he knows that it’s you feeding him. You hold the bowl as he eats. You hold the bowl as she eats.

Don’t just put the food down, walk away and expect the dog to give you respect. You’re treating it like a dog. You need to be the alpha of the pack. It needs to know that it can rely and trust on you.” What’s interesting is he’ll give these people homework and some people are incredible at implementing while others are not. They’ll often come back a few months later after the show is over to catch up and see, did it work? And you can always see the people who didn’t stick with it and it never works. And the people who did stick with it, and more often than not, it works.