Nice Guy Lies, Ego Traps & The Beliefs Holding Your Marriage Back l EP. 79 l

“We question every belief… except the ones we truly believe.”

In this episode of the Be Better Podcast, I break down the hidden beliefs that keep high-performing men stuck — in their marriage, in their identity, and in their emotional growth.

Right now, a lot of people are questioning authority. Governments. Media. Institutions. Narratives.

But very few men question the beliefs running their own life.

The belief that:

• “I’m a good guy — that should be enough.”
• “If I’m nice and agreeable, I’ll be loved.”
• “I’ll just figure it out myself.”
• “Money won’t make me happy.”
• “Confidence is arrogance.”
• “Masculinity is toxic.”

These beliefs feel virtuous.
 But they quietly cap your growth.

I share my own journey out of reactive nice guy patterns — how I realised confidence wasn’t arrogance, masculinity wasn’t domination, and aggression wasn’t evil… it was contextual.

A grounded man isn’t weak.
 He has range.
 He can be calm, decisive, aggressive, compassionate — and knows when to use each.

I also unpack why trying to “do it alone” keeps smart men stuck, and how ego disguises itself as independence. Every athlete, CEO, and high performer has mentorship and accountability — but when it comes to marriage and emotional leadership, men suddenly think they should just figure it out.

And finally, I challenge the belief around money.

Money doesn’t make you happy — unless you use it to remove the internal blocks that are keeping you disconnected, reactive, and emotionally unavailable.

If you’ve covered phase one (business, income, material success) but still feel like something’s missing… this episode is phase two work.

Challenge the beliefs.
 Then take action.

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If you’re a business owner or high-performing man whose life is stable on paper — but your marriage feels flat, your presence at home feels off, or you’re tired of trying harder without real depth or connection click below to apply for coaching.

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Transcript

Harrison Orr (00:38.488)
Beautiful.

So we question the beliefs, we question all our beliefs except the ones we truly believe and those we never think to question.

Harrison Orr (00:54.082)
You're listening to the Be Better podcast. I'm Harrison Ohr. And after evolving out of a reactive, people pleasing nice guy that almost destroyed my marriage, I have now come full circle into coaching 500 other men into becoming more calm, more grounded.

You're listening to the Be Better podcast. I'm Harrison Law. And after being a reactive nice guy that almost destroyed my marriage, I've now coached almost 500 men to be more calm, present and grounded in themselves so that they can lead themselves in their marriage to greater heights.

In this episode, I'm gonna talk about the beliefs that hold us back. Some of the biggest beliefs that I've had to identify and change in my journey to getting here, especially after what's going on in the world right now. And it's pretty fucked up.

if this is, I'm assuming this is all over everybody's social media, everything about the Epstein files and all the junk and the people in that and the corruption of the leaders of like massive businesses and companies and like basically the entire world. And that's pretty scary.

Even depending on how deep you go down that rabbit hole, the questioning of, well, was Hitler actually that bad? Right? That's where a lot of this ends up if you followed this, you know, what these people believe, where they come from, their belief system and everything, where you kind of not end up, but a scene that you move through as part of this journey. And if you're starting to then question

Harrison Orr (02:43.692)
the authority of the government, the intentions of the people that supposedly run the world. You're questioning all these things that we were fed as supposed facts, as like things that we just took as how it is. And we just believed it without any questioning or any personal analytical thinking. Then it's time to question some of the stuff that we can actually control.

It's time to question some of the beliefs that we hold about ourself, about our marriage, about our life that have gone unquestioned.

Maybe they're patterns that you run through your life because that's part of your identity. Maybe it's a system or a phrase or belief that you believe because it was passed on to you by mom and dad. You've heard enough people say it throughout society that you just align with that and think like, yeah, that makes sense. I'll just adopt that as my own. Without any critical analysis.

or decision making on your own part. And that's what I wanna work through today. Some of the ones that I've personally walked through and changed my thinking on and maybe all along with these two. So the first one was that I'm a good guy.

This will obviously relate to everyone here that I'm a good guy, I'm a nice guy, that if I am good to other people and by good it means I'm not a problem, I say yes to everything, I put everybody else's needs ahead of my own, I don't speak up, I don't have an issue with anything that anybody else wants to do or wants me to do, then that makes me easy going. That makes me a good guy, that makes me a likeable guy, a lovable guy, an attractive guy.

Harrison Orr (04:40.526)
your adjectives for what hit home for you. And that works to a certain degree, right? It gets you friends, it gets people that will acquaint with you, people that will ultimately end up using you because you have a purpose in their life.

Like that philosophy is great if you're an employee. If you're a boss and you've got a nice guy that will do anything, you just have to ask, fantastic. If you're a manipulator or a narcissist and you have someone like that in your life, it's fantastic because they will just do whatever you ask with no pushback, no anything else and life is good.

So the problem then is when you start to take responsibility for your own life, when you run a business, when that nice guy act actually starts to erode your marriage, actually starts to create a distance and arguments and tension and a roommate like scenario because

you don't communicate what you really want or what you really think. You just say yes to everything in hopes to keep the peace and you end up in this shallow existence afraid to feel certain emotions like anger or desire or other things because you've been shamed into, well that's not what a good man does. So you repress those.

and then your wife who wants nothing more than just to feel you for who you are with a man with a fucking spine in a direction, but he's nowhere to be found. And so some women will just give up on that. Some will push back and try to challenge, try to pull you up to the potential that she can see in you. And then that will create tension.

Harrison Orr (06:46.102)
we can use that tension to grow and to change or push back and say, well, nothing I do is ever good enough and she's the narcissist and she's this and she's that, get a divorce and never look in the mirror. Luckily for me, my wife was the second type, the first type, right? She could see the man that I could be and

I was... I don't even know who to give credit for this for because I can't really take credit for it on my own but I somehow I woke up to the nice guy traits and how they were playing out in my life and in my marriage and I was able to do something about it.

I was able to look in the mirror and see that all these were just patterns and systems that parts of me were running to try and protect me from reject, from rejection, from abandonment, from not being loved from everything that I, that I wanted. And they did a fantastic job of that, but now daddy's home and he can lead. And literally since being able to do this, my marriage has been so much stronger.

so much more natural. I have felt so much more confident in myself and everything that I'm doing in life. The insecurities, the anxiety, the things that I used to have, the doubts even, are just not there anymore. The confidence now comes from my ability to just send it and figure it out as we go, rather than needing approval from other people, needing certainty from external sources, which is never gonna come.

and I feel so much freer because of it. And don't get me wrong, this does not make me stress free. This does not mean that I'm just living in this blissful land of peace. Life definitely still has its stressful moments. There's still a lot of stuff that I'm navigating because I'm a human being, but the patterns and the stresses that I had then seem so trivial now because of this growth.

Harrison Orr (09:02.638)
And when I was looking at the beliefs, the belief system that I had that it was good to be a nice guy, it was good to be a good guy and all these things, what...

was also there, which made it so hard to change. Cause if you're like me, you've, you've tried looking up, you know, how to be less anxious, how to be more confident, how to be, you know, how to lead in your marriage, how to do all these things. And that you, maybe you look up affirmations or things to do with your posture or things to say like little scripts on questions to ask or how to lead the conversation or date night ideas or these other superficial

tactics But they never really land because inside you're still insecure. You're still wanting the approval You're still coming from the nice guy energy and so nothing really changes because In using those tactics the root cause is Never actually addressed the root cause is never actually spoken into or worked on Because for me

Not only did I have these protective parts, these parts, because of certain events in my childhood and earlier years, I formed these beliefs that it was bad to be arrogant.

and I couldn't tell the difference between confidence was too close to arrogance. So I don't even want to be close to that end of the spectrum. So I'm going to go so far the other way and be shy, introverted, anxious so that I can never be seen as confident or arrogant because that was bad in my eyes because...

Harrison Orr (10:40.65)
someone that I deemed with those traits was a bully, was an asshole, was not very nice in childhood. And I never wanted to be like him. I never wanted to make anyone feel the way that he made me feel. And so that was the story that this part kept telling me over these years. And it's the same with a lot of these other traits. You don't want to be, if you're masculine,

then that means you're alpha, which means you're controlling, which means you're domineering, which means you're a douchebag and you're all these negative things. And so the thought of being masculine, the thought of, know, picking, being decisive and picking a direction seems so counterintuitive. And also because of all the scripting that, you know, we got fed through social media and society and everything of, well, it's bad to be a strong willed man. You're a threat if you're

aggressive or if you have anger or if you don't say yes to a woman, to everything that she wants and like you don't do all these things which ultimately create people-bleezers and a generation, a society of nice guys which is by far and large what we essentially have right now.

Like we would not have this dilemma with the Epstein's and like the Diddy's and all these things if there weren't so many nice guys. Cause if you have a man truly in his masculine essence that sees that shit, he's like, no, I'm fucking not having that. I'm not allowing that. I know my morals. I know the morals of the world. And like, I am not allowing that to happen. It's not gonna happen. But people turn a blind eye.

People take the paycheck to shut the fuck up. People do all these things and this is where we are. So part of this mission as well is not just personal, not just the clients that I work with, but to create a worldwide generational change of nice guys into grounded masculine men that can then raise boys initiating them into masculine, healthy men. And that's.

Harrison Orr (12:53.708)
my view of how we get out of this mess individually and societally. And so you might recognize yourself in some of those traits. Think of the traits that you say that you want to have. Confidence, decisiveness, maybe you even have a resistance to having any level of authority because, that seems dictatorship or tyrannical.

because maybe there's someone in your life that you've had a personal encounter with or that you just see online. Great example of this is Andrew Tate. So many people see him and see all the traits that he is and all the negative labels that get thrown at him. Well, he's a feminist, he's a misogynist, he's racist, he's arrogant, he's all these things. And then so any trait of his that even though...

we might do, we might benefit from having even just a slimmer of, then we withdraw. Cause I don't want to be associated, I don't want to be put in the same basket as him.

So a big shift in my belief around this was no traits are bad.

It's contextual.

Harrison Orr (14:12.96)
Is being aggressive bad? Well, if it's towards your wife or your children, most likely, yes, most definitely. Is being aggressive towards someone who is physically threatening you or your family bad? Contextually, I would say no. But having the ability to be aggressive or not and knowing how to control it is the discipline, is the power.

Like not having it at all, not being able to be aggressive, not being able to fight, not being able to wield a certain trait if you need to, if it's called for in the moment, is not virtuous, is not something worth striving for. It's weakness.

Like if that would be the best use of that in that moment to be aggressive, to be forceful, be decisive, to like hold your fucking ground and not back down. And you don't have capacity for that. Well, that's not a good man. That's a weak man. A good man is someone who has all these traits at his disposal and knows when and how to use each one.

So that's what's flipped my belief on being that good or that nice guy. The next one, which I know a lot of men still have is the, I'll do it myself belief. I'll just figure it out, especially with chat GBT and AI. There's so many resources out there now for men to just figure it out on their own.

And I don't know about you, but the amount of plans and blueprints and strategies and things that even I've created in chat GBT and then actioned by almost like none of them, like the ones that I've actually created is crazy. Because the missing piece is not information. Information helps to a certain extent.

Harrison Orr (16:18.242)
but it won't change your actual life. It won't be the difference between being reactive and being calm when your wife gets emotional.

It won't be the difference between defending yourself and creating a fight when she calls you out on something versus taking ownership and leading the conversation back into connection. It won't make the difference in these moments where it actually counts. If anything, it actually makes it more tormenting because you can see what you should, you know what you should do. You can see the blueprint. It's it's right there, what you have to do, but you never do it.

having to do this all on our own, like even if you action the plans, even if you stick to this and you do it, we're still only limited by our own way of thinking. And our way of thinking got us into the situation that we're in. And so it takes a very different, depending on how much you want to change, level of thinking to grow and to change. And so given enough time, provided you're a relatively capable man, yes, you could most definitely figure it out.

What does it cost you along the way? In time, in energy, in money, in relationship connection? Like if you wanna be a more calm, present, grounded, and better role model for your kids, do you have nine years to fucking figure that out? I dare say most people won't.

Even if your kids aren't born till next year, so you've got eight years, by the time they are eight, they have a pretty strong perception of who you are. You have well and truly ingrained their emotional regulation, their feelings and thoughts towards you, like how they show up, like they have mirrored the hell out of you for those last eight years.

Harrison Orr (18:13.484)
why not find someone, something, a way to shortcut that and do it in one year and then you get to spend the next seven years modeling that new behavior for your kids, living in that level of relationship with your wife because you've now addressed it. You're not hoping it doesn't end in divorce or an affair while you fuck around and find out. And...

Even kids fundamentally believe that time is the most valuable resource. Like what's one of the first levels of punishment that you have for a kid? It's time out. If they are naughty, stop what you're doing, go and sit by yourself and face the wall. Five, 10 minutes, whatever it is of no free time. You take that away.

And then people kind of go through, you get told that, okay, well, you need to do this, this, this, this, this. And then eventually we get to a point where, time is the most valuable resource again. And then people start to, cool, how do I buy back time? How do I have more time? If we're being real, most people don't need more time. They need to be more efficient with their time. But if you're looking at getting back your time,

That's where most people are cool. How do I hire someone to do all these things? How do I fast track these things so that I can do more of it with what I want? And if you can find a strategy, a plan, a coach, a mentor, a system somewhere to get you to who you want to be and what you want faster, then you'd be able to figure it out on yourself, on your own. Then you've just...

bought all the years it took for that person to figure out that system and that lesson and just implemented it for yourself. You still get the lesson because you still have to actively do it, especially if it's personal work, right? You can't just click your fingers, like swipe your credit card and like, cool, I now have no limiting parts that hold me back anymore. I'm no longer a nice guy. I'm now this strong, divine, masculine creature just cause I swiped my card for however much.

Harrison Orr (20:20.578)
Maybe we'll get to that point one day, especially if Neuralink, I think it is, has all the little chips that you can just put into your brain, like just download how to be a doctor and everything. Maybe that'll happen, but we're not there yet. So shifting that belief of I can do it on myself to I need to do it on myself, which is often associated to ego, to like, you know, maybe it's for some reason it's worth more if I figure it out on my own. don't need help like this macho man type attitude.

which never works. Like every single person that you respect, every team, sporting team, every athlete, every person in business, every person that has anything meaningful in life, I promise you, they didn't do it on their own. They had a team, they had a mentor, they had a support crew, they had someone, some people that helped them to get there. And so now, my biggest focus in life is

pooling all my resources, my money and everything that I can into buying the lessons and the skills that I need to get to who I want to be, the business that I size that I want to have, the level of impact that I want to have and everything that I need along that journey as fast as possible, as fast as humanly possible. So I can like, the visual I have is on the other side of this tug of war rope is

that version of me, that level of global impact, that business, that life, the everything that I can do for my son and my future kids and my wife. And by not doing it on my own, I'm trading the time, I'm trading the money, I'm trading the resources. And as I pull...

I'm putting the other people on the end of the stroke with me, right? You consume enough content of Alex or Mozi, it's like, beautiful. He's on this side with me, helping me just bring it that little bit closer. Okay, I've got another mentor from something else that was holding me back. Cool, he's on this end of the rope with me as well. And tug by tug, we're just pulling it closer and closer and closer as opposed to just hoping we get there one day, if at all.

Harrison Orr (22:27.202)
So that's the, need to do it myself, belief shattered. And the last one, I've only got five more minutes, because I have to jump on a call, so I'm make this quick, but that money will make you happy. Money won't make you happy, I should say. That belief that we all get sold is like, know, money won't make you happy, but so many of us still try to figure that out for ourselves. And I used to believe that wholeheartedly, that money wouldn't make you happy. And even,

When I first left school, I became a I did my apprenticeship as a chef for like seven years. And I believe that if I loved what I did, and I liked cooking, I liked the kitchen environment and everything, you you just hang out with the cool guys, talk shit all day, it's great fun. And I...

got to, if, as long as I loved what I did, then I could hack the hours and I could accept the shitty pay, right? I got to use it to travel. I went and lived in London for a few months. I lived in Canada for a year and a half, whatever it was. And like, that was my goal at the time, but I had no value for money. I didn't realize, well, yeah, to live in this world, you need a level of money.

to be able to have a lifestyle, to travel, to provide for a family, to do all this stuff. I had no value to it. I had no perspective of it because I was sold into money won't make you happy. especially looking back.

That's why I think people with a poor mindset buy into that because it removes the hard work and the desire because it feels almost like you've elevated. Like, I'm not in a scarce mindset anymore because money doesn't make me happy and I'm somehow better than the people that think that are based on material worth. But my viewpoint now is if money doesn't make you happy,

Harrison Orr (24:24.268)
you're buying the wrong things. Like truly, if you are a millionaire, a billionaire, if you've even got like, know, making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year and you are not significantly happier than when you were making $50,000 a year, I wholeheartedly believe you're buying the wrong shit.

You're buying things that will not make you happy and case in point, maybe you're buying the cars or the holidays or the, know, the boats and the toys and the house and all those things. But if you're not happy, there's a reason for it. If you've got that level of money and that level of resources, then dude, go pay for a coach, go pay for a mentor, go do some personal work. Like you've got the resources, go and figure out why you keep trying to fill this hole with material possessions.

And so if you aren't happy, if you have a lack and you have those resources, you're not spending them in the right way. If you've got the resources, you can be more generous. You can work on your shit. You can find better mentors, better resources, like better access to rooms, to like things that would help you address those issues and remove those problems. And then you can just be of better service to everyone around you.

Like when you've got that, okay, cool. Sister, mom and dad, someone is sick. You know what, no worries, I got it. Here, let me cover that. I don't care, I just wanna see you happy and healthy. money, just like a woman, is an amplifier. They will amplify what you already are. If you're greedy and shitty and not a nice person, they will just amplify that.

If you're generous, if you're giving, if you are well-intended, it will just amplify that. You can give to more people, you can help more people with whatever that looks like based on your values and your desire to contribute once you've got your base needs met. And then you provide that role model for your kids. So if you're in that space,

Harrison Orr (26:38.584)
You've got enough resources and you're not happy in yourself, in your marriage, in some area of your life. I highly recommend checking your belief on doing it yourself. Challenge that belief, why that's still there, why you haven't counsel or support or challenge or accountability, whatever it is you need in that space to address it. And if you've got the money, what good is it anyway?

if you're not gonna use it to significantly improve your life in those meaningful ways. Like most men that I talk to, they've covered phase one, they've covered the stable income, they've covered the business success, they've got all the material wealth and everything and then still feeling like that lack because phase two is about emotional regulation.

connection and understanding of oneself and therefore, you the people that they interact with which builds the connections, the love, the understanding, the full experience of connecting to another human being, of being social creatures and having those relationships, but also the understanding of yourself and the ability to experience all the emotions in their fullness without.

turning to addictions without being self soothing and self deprecating without any of the negative byproducts of someone that doesn't have the ability to regulate and stay in that grounded adult self. So I could go on for this for a hell of a lot longer with these beliefs because we all have beliefs that have served us to a certain point but also hold us back in this growth that we're now looking for in progressing further in life. But I'm going to wrap it up there.

So challenge the beliefs, the beliefs that are in your mind and in your life right now. Challenge them and then take action on them. Don't just sit there and question them. Actually cool, what would it look like if I didn't have this belief? What actions would I take right now? And go and take one. So with that, don't be sorry, be better.

Harrison Orr (28:52.143)
you