Why Your Therapist Should be Checking out GaryVee

For the uninitiated, GaryVee is Gary Vaynerchuk and while many may site all of his great intuition in investments, social media, communications, or the world of wine businesses, he is far more than that.  Gary is someone who knows who they are, and someone who is truly his authentic self and I suspect, not knowing him on a personal level, that he is largely the same guy whether you are hitting yard sales with him on a weekend, hanging with him at a backyard barbecue, or sitting across from in a boardroom setting.  I heap praise on him because he has a better grasp on emotional maturity than many therapists I have met.  I have recommended him to countless clients of mine, from other therapists, entrepreneurs, and even just those who are working to grow and heal from emotional trauma they experienced that has caused them to live a fairly limited version of their lives.  In a 30-minute podcast you are likely to find advice ranging from being authentic to investments or how to grow your business utilizing the tools that are being underutilized by many people in the same space.  While I love all of the content, my focus is almost always on the little tidbits of emotional wisdom hidden in what I suspect many people are consuming his content seeking.  Many of the people I have worked with who know GaryVee, know him because they are interested in the idea, or are, entrepreneurs.  Like I said though, he has some emotional tidbits that are hidden, and I am going to call them truffles of wisdom here, because honestly, those pieces on their own are sufficient to create an entire content channel off of, and yet they are just ideas he tosses out amidst the rest of the information he generates, and the dude is a content generating machine.

The first piece of wisdom that I grabbed from Gary is one that seems so simple, yet for so many of my clients and even myself, it goes against our nature, and that is to do what is right for US.  Not our parents, not our grandparents, not our friends or the people we went to high school with.  Do what is right for us, on and individual basis.  That isn’t to say be self-absorbed or selfish, but rather worry about meeting our emotional needs and building and following our own paths.  For some of you, I imagine that seems like something you already know and do, but for a huge segment of the population and an overwhelming majority of those I have worked with, this is a foreign concept.  We believe our sole purpose on this planet is to live up and exceed the expectations our parents have for us.  We end up chasing the dream they laid out for us and working to beat their goals.  Inevitably, one day we are standing at a place we thought would feel a lot like success and instead we feel disillusioned and far more than simply disappointed, but damn near crushed instead.  We worked our asses off to get to a place, only to find out that it didn’t bring any sense of fulfillment nor satisfaction.  The paycheck looks good, the stuff we have looks good, but one of it is really success, because we are miserable.  The fact that a guy who talks about business with such passion picks up on this, really set Gary apart for me immediately.  While I bought in then, I didn’t convert immediately, because I kept believing that a job that had lower demands on me, but provided higher pay was ideal, even though now in hindsight I look at that moment and am astonished to see how miserable and unfulfilled I was.

Authenticity is a big piece in the work I do with my clients and something that none of them typically know how to exhibit.  Gary, as I mentioned before seems like he is the same guy no matter where you catch him and no matter how you know him.  He is successful and loves “the hustle” which has helped him become this person who occupies a big space in the world.  However, he doesn’t sell people on bullshit and he isn’t trying to get them to buy his program or pay a load of money to be in his orbit.  Beyond that, he isn’t telling people that the hustle is the only way.  In fact, moreover what he is putting people on is pursuing the things that genuinely spark your soul and finding the things you are passionate about.  I referenced the idea of catching him at a yard sale, and the reason I mention that is watching him share content from when he goes to yard sales, and flips items, and seeing a sense of pride and accomplishment as he makes a great profit margin on something he bought for a few bucks shows that this is just who he is, he loves the idea of taking something and finding a way to flip it in order to be successful.  Greater than that though is him calling out people for pursuing an image that isn’t theirs, he talks about people taking trips they can’t afford to get a picture for social media or using fake watches or suits to try and appear more successful, and he says all of this while wearing clothes he is comfortable in, not fancy suits and accessories.  In a podcast he participated in, he said something that so many people miss out on, so I am going to quote him here. 

“I’m desperately sad that people buy things to close emotional gaps”. 

So many people I work with have struggled with this and they have houses filled with stuff and have debt problems because they sought that dopamine fix from buying something.  That didn’t fill their souls, that didn’t give them the love they missed out on as a child.  All it did was occupy space in their homes and decrease their net worth.  He takes that point a step further and points out that often we don’t believe in ourselves because of messaging we got from our parents.  The number of people I have worked with who have struggled to find firm footing in their adult lives because of issues stemming from childhood is innumerable.  These are not kids who were beaten or outright abused, and as adults they have families and careers, but they struggle with feeling okay in their own skin, being accepted and simply being “enough”.  Our parents may convince us that we aren’t good enough, or that if we stray from the path they expect that we are failures.  Our childhoods shape how we interface with the world for the rest of our lives and it isn’t often something that we begin to truly figure out until therapy.  My role is to help people heal from those wounds, to allow them the ability to reparent themselves in some situations and see their tremendous value they have just in being themselves.  For so many, that seems like an impossible struggle and this leads to tears, breakdowns, self-doubt and a whole lot of work in our sessions.  Yet there, on whatever social media platform you happen to pull up, GaryVee, a guy who isn’t a licensed therapist is offering advice that your therapist should know about.  So, if your therapist doesn’t know Gary, I suggest you put them onto him in your next session.