When life completely unravels, finding a path forward requires changing how we process adversity and trauma. In this insightful conversation, Daniel Weinberg speaks with advanced life coach and hypnotherapist Garth Delikan about using Neuro-Linguistic Programming to rewire the mind and recover from profound personal loss. After losing his 25-year business and navigating a sudden divorce, Garth spiraled into depression before rebuilding his life step-by-step through discipline and mental reframing. He shares how shifting internal dialogue, addressing past emotional wounds, and releasing negative patterns can empower anyone to reclaim control of their future. Discover actionable strategies for emotional healing, self-leadership, and lasting personal transformation.
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Who Am I When It All Falls Apart?
Redefining Success And Early Ambition
On this show, we have Garth Delikan, where we talk to him about Who Am I When It All Falls Apart? Men’s Anonymous.
Garth, so good to have you on the show.
Thank you.
We are going to have a very interesting discussion on the journey of when things fall apart. Who are you when the business is gone? The marriage is over, and the life you thought you were building suddenly looks like nothing you expected.
I am having a PTSD attack now.
Let us start with this. Before everything fell apart, what did you believe made a successful man?
For me, as a young man, I think I mentioned to you in a previous call briefly that I was very goal-oriented from the age of seventeen because somebody gifted me Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book, The Education of a Bodybuilder. I have always been into training. I just remember Arnold saying the first time he touched the barbell, “I knew this was my destiny.” He said, “I would use bodybuilding to get to America. Once I got to America, I would beat the Americans. I would become a millionaire with them getting into property.
I would then become the biggest action star in Hollywood. We will get into politics.” I thought, “My goodness, this goal setting is awesome.” I still have it somewhere down here. At 21, I wanted to be self-employed. I wanted my own business. At 25, I wanted to be married, and at 30, I wanted to have a Ferrari. I got married at 21. I bought my first Ferrari at 23. I was running my own businesses from 21. What I never factored into this goal-setting was company liquidation and divorce.
Fair enough.
It was all success. “Let us go for this. That sounds good. Let us go for this.” All of a sudden, bang, brick wall. He is like one of those cartoons, where the character goes, then just slides down the wall.
How much of your identity lived in your business, what you described about your marriage, and how other people saw you?
A hundred million percent. I loved to be married so much. I met my ex-wife when I was 20, and she was only 16. We got engaged when she was 17, married when she was 18, and I was 21. She was to me my life partner, the love of my life. I just absolutely adored her. I never thought we would ever split up. She never gave me a clue right up to the second that she said she did not want to be with me, that she was unhappy in any way, shape, or form.
My entire identity was me and Tracy. Me and Tracy in our house in Twickenham, me and Tracy and Josh and Amy. That was it. My life was my family. Everything I did in business at that time was for the security of my family. Initially it was not, obviously. I wanted those material things, because, like all young men, not even men, all young people, you think wealth, success, security is grounded in material things, and it is not.
You think wealth, success, and security are grounded in material things, and they're not. Share on XYou said something there. You said that you had no indication that there was anything. Let us say that there was a failing in the relationship. If you look back now, the man you are today, is there anything you already knew was wrong, but did not want to face?
No, not honestly. I could say, hand on heart, I had not a scooby-doo, not a clue, because they all said they had a relationship going. The sex, you are not seeing sex life. Sex life was astounding. Literally two weeks before all this happened, I took her down to Dorset in England on the Jurassic Coast. In those days, what you could do was have a little hammer and a chisel. You could go on to the beach, and you could break up a rock to find dinosaur bones. It was one of the things to do. I remember walking up this hill with the sunset, and she turned around and pushed herself into me and said, “I love you so much, and we are going to be together forever.” Two weeks later, she hated the very ground I walked on.
Can you take me to a moment when the reality of what you lost really hit you? You took me through what went on because you had a few things go wrong all at the same time.
I did. Initially, I was in the world of advertising then as well. I started to work as a freelance graphic designer for a small agency in ‘82 that very quickly became one of the most prestigious agencies in the world. Because of that, they grew exponentially. As their agency grew, the graphic design side of it grew. They said, “We need somebody. Even though I had a partner, we need somebody to run the studio for us. We need somebody to run the business.” Sid did not want to do it. He just did not want to be involved whatsoever. I will do that, because I love being with people.
I love being around people. I ran that business successfully for 25 years. Kevin won one Monday morning, and they said to me, even though we did a profit share with them, “We want the biggest share of the profits.” I thought, “That is fine.” I do not mind because my little group of companies was turning over 7.1 million within the agency group. There is plenty to go around for everybody. I thought, because we are freelance, they have given us this opportunity to rent. That is fine. They did not want to negotiate.
They said, “What we are going to do, we are going to put one of our directors in charge from today, Garth, and you are going to be working with it.” They moved me sideways. They said, “Do not look at it as a demotion. It was. I just believed their lies for a year. I knew, loved, and trusted them. I had been there for 25 years. They just downgraded my job, downgraded. Finally, they almost made me an employee in my own business. I went in on a Friday and they said to me, “We are going to do a yearly review on a set of your performance.”
I said, “No, you are not.” I said, “What is going to happen is you basically constructively dismissed me this last year. I will put up with your nonsense. I want a payment, and I am going to leave today. If you do not pay me, I am going to take you to court.” “You cannot take us to court. That is why you watch me.” I left on Friday. I got a call about 6:00 that night saying, “We will give you a payoff. We are not going to give you as much as you want, but just leave.” I left. This is when you would have thought that alarm bells would have been ringing with the wife and everything.
She was so supportive. I cannot even tell you that. It was just mad. She said, “Do not worry, darling, we will get through this together.” I took about six months of garden leave. There is a part of me that said to me, do not go back into advertising. Set up a gym in London, be a PT, be a coach. It was the fear of doing that, of jumping into this fire that I knew so well, advertising, graphic design, running businesses. I thought, “That is scary. My kids are only six and five. I still have a big mortgage. I am married. No, let us not do that.”
The Sudden Collapse: Losing Business, Wealth, And Marriage
I set up a multimedia agency in Carnaby Street, and went back to the devil I knew. I went into business with a financial partner who literally turned out to be a crook. Two years into the business, he went away on a six-week honeymoon. I then kept getting all these phone calls saying, “What are you paying this invoice? When is this bill going to be settled?” I said, “That is really strange because I signed that invoice off two weeks ago. I signed the check for that a week ago.” Alarm bells started going. I got a friend of mine who is an insolvency practitioner into the business.
He spent the day in the business, then he came up to the office one morning and just said, “Garth, you better sit down.” I said, “Get out of here. Stop winding me up.” He goes, “Honestly, I am not winding you up. This is serious. Not only has Piers not paid tax on national insurance for you the last two years, but he also has not paid it for your fifteen employees. If you do not close down today, you could go to prison.” “It was that serious, Donald.”
I then rang up Tracy to tell her, thinking she would go, “Come on, darling, we will do this out.” It is not the best time in the world. This is literally the conversation. “I have not been in love with you for the last year. I do not want to be married anymore. Please do not come home tonight. You will not be welcome. End of.”
The whole world implodes. Twenty-year-old marriage. Torched.
Business torched, life torched, finances torched. There is no inkling of it. This beautiful girl I have married, this woman I have been with. It is like this door opened at the back of her head and this alien came out, and she was sitting there smoking a cigarette, ramrod straight back, telling me, calling me, effing this and effing that. I thought, “What is the matter with you? What is going on?” “It’s because I do not want to talk to you anymore. I do not want you coming home.” Literally for six months, Daniel, I did not go home. I was living in my office. We were getting to the dark side. Do you want me to do it?
This is where I want to go. Let us say this is the first major act in your life. You took a pretty typical path, getting married, building a career, etc. It all implodes. Your whole life ruptures. This is truly the beginning of the next chapter. You went into darkness. I can imagine.
Not straight away, I guess, because initially it was shock, disbelief, thinking, “No, we will be okay.” Another 2 or 3 weeks, she will come through this. We have been together for this long. All my friends, all my family were saying the same thing to me. I could not go home because she did not want me home. I was literally sleeping on the top floor of my office in Carnaby Street. What happened then? Because as these weeks went on, it just got worse and worse. She was just being so vehement, so vile, so venomous. It was horrendous.
I fell in with my creative director, who was a bad egg. He really was. I got into the world of narcotics. I was taking cocaine on a regular basis with him. I was going out drinking vodka, martinis, until I really could not see. I would stand. Because I was missing the companionship of being with my wife, I was missing our sex life. If I could not pull a bird, I would buy a woman. I really did degrade myself. It was not because I wanted to degrade myself. I was so lonely, Daniel. I cannot tell you.
I was incredibly lonely. I just remember one day, I had been in a whole haze of drugs, and I was with these two women, and I just remember getting a call at 6:00 in the morning on my mobile, though, like a drug thug. It was my mom. I thought, “Mom?” I do not know why I picked up the phone, and she goes, “Garth, love, me and your brother and sister know about the drugs. We know about the women. We love you. Please come home now.” How does my mom know? This is my family. I was mortified.
I thought, “I cannot go home. Why do I go tell Mom? What am I going to tell my brother and sister?” Anyway, I showered, and I changed. I got myself together, had a couple of cups of coffee, got on my motorbike, and rode to my mom’s. Sorry, I might be upset now. She was there, my mom, my brother, and my sister. They just hugged me. She said, “We love you, darling. We do not care about the drugs or the women or anything like that. We are here for you. If you need me, I am here.” I ended up staying at my mom’s for a year. I needed that mummy love.
How old were you at that stage in life?
I was 42 then.
Back home with mom.
As confident as I was, as effusive as I was, as God-getting as I was, if people looked at me the wrong way, I just wanted to cry. I had nothing left. I had absolutely nothing left.
Navigating Darkness: Facing Clinical Depression And Isolation
You are on your own, and then the anxiety and depression kicked in.
Big time. Clinical depression. Try to help us understand that whole chapter. I did not actually realize I was at the clinic because I have never really been depressed in my life. I have always been a God-getter. You have down days. When people used to say to me, “Just bloody pull yourself together. I had never had clinical depression in my life.”
What compounded it, that first week I was staying with my mom, because I had been doing drugs so much, I woke up in the middle of the night, I think it was about three nights being with my mom with these incredible chest pains, and I honestly thought I was going to die. I thought, “This is my death now.” I am not even being dramatic there. I could not breathe higher than this. My mom called the paramedics. They turned up, and I had double pneumonia, so they just did not help. Anyway, I got over that, and then the depression kicked in.
The reason I knew was that I would stay in bed until 4:00 in the afternoon. I would get up, then I would go and fall asleep in a chair until 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening. At the slightest thing, it is like my heart was going, “What am I so frightened about? Why am I scared?” I went to see the doctor under my mom’s orders. All doctors, they just give you a whole lot of tablets and say, “Take two of these a day, take three of these at night, and take one of these in the morning when you wake up.”
What medication were they giving you?
I cannot even remember.
Anti-anxiety, anti-depressant?
Antidepressants.
They are trying to numb you, basically.
Yes. They just numb the pain. They said it might take six months, but it will help. I left it for a week, and I remember reading a book called Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. If you have heard of that book. He was talking about taking control of your life again and taking charge. Even when you cannot get up in the morning, the best thing to do, soon as, the alarm, as soon as the alarm goes off, shut the bed covers off. He said, “As soon as you get your feet on the floor, you are winning already. If you can get your feet on the floor, go and brush your teeth. If you can brush your teeth, have a glass of water. If you can have a glass of water, start doing a ritual in the morning.” I thought, “I really like the sound of this.”
This is like putting basically one foot in front of the next. Baby steps.
That first week, that very next morning, bear in mind, I was in the blackest place here, very dark. I set the alarm for 6:00 in the morning. To my credit, bed covers off, feet on the floor. When I brushed my teeth and had a drink of water, I started to walk up and down and breathe. Tony Robbins always used to talk about this breathing where you break state. You breathe in, then breathe out. You touch your fingers and thumbs together. I did that for two minutes. I did two minutes of exercise. Nothing major. Maybe 20 squats, 20 push-ups, 20 sit-ups, 20 leg raises. I walked up and down doing a lot of affirmations.
When you do affirmations, what would you be saying?
It was about I love God. I love the universe. I am grateful for God. I am grateful for the universe. I am grateful that I am alive today. I am grateful for my two children who give me the will to carry on, the will to get up every morning, to see their little faces every weekend. I give thanks to God for my mom, who gave me all that k stuff. I got into Wim Hof as well. I used to finish off with a freezing cold shower. From that first week, I could feel a turn going on in my head. Subtle, but I could feel it.
Taking Control: The Power Of Morning Routines And Action
I was not staying in bed until 4:00. I was up at 6:00 every morning. That was twenty years ago, and I am still doing that routine now, Daniel. What happened then? A week had gone by. I had not touched these drugs at all. I had a eureka moment. I thought, “I am going to become a kickboxing instructor. I literally flushed these tablets down the toilet.” My mom said, “Love, what are you going to do? The doctor says,” I said, “No, forget doctors, Mom. I have a plan.” I rang up this gym in London called Living Well.
I said, “Look, I have this system. Come to us and tell us about it. I got on the tube, which again was a big thing, the first week of coming out of this, beginning to come out of this depression. I presented. I said, “I have got this great system. I do all to funky music. I have got some great moves.” “Great, we will give you three classes a week starting from Monday.” You would think I would be elated, would you not? I was not. I was terrified. I had no system. I had no music.
You just made this up and just proposed it to a gym, and they said, “It sounds great. Let us go.”
Do not get me wrong. The moves, because I have been a second-down black belt kickboxer for about twenty years. I started when I was eighteen. I got the technique and stuff, but I thought, “No, because I should have set that gym up two years ago.” When the first incident happened. Anyway, I went away. This gave me purpose. I was terrified. What I say to my clients nowadays, fear is just excitement without the breath.
Fear is just excitement without the breath. When you get scared, you go—but if you breathe, you take control. Share on XSay it again. Fear?
Fear is excitement without the breath. When you get scared, you go, “If you do not breathe, it is like, but I breathed,” I thought, “No, I am going to do this. I was picking my music.”
Before you got it, how long were you in that state of darkness, where you were like not getting out of bed? How long did that last?
Six months.
You skipped over that very quickly. Before we move on, I get how you broke out of it. Six months. I just want the audience to appreciate six months of staying in bed until 4:00 in the afternoon. Getting up and falling asleep again. Are you sleeping during the night, or is your mind racing? Talk me through a day in the life of when you were in that six-month period.
I could not even tell you what happened at night. I just remember it being the darkest, blackest pit I had ever been in in my life. The walls seemed completely unscalable. I was having really dark thoughts. I do not think I ever thought I was going to top myself off. This is going to be the end. I did remember having one dark thought one Friday, not necessarily that I wanted to end it, but what is the point of being here? It is all over. I remember my mom knocking on my bedroom door, saying, “Do not forget, love, Josh and Amy are coming tomorrow morning.” I thought, “My kids.”
Coming back to your kids, how old were your kids when you were going through this?
Six and five.
Did they notice, did they see you in this state?
No.
Did they notice there was something up?
The thing is, I have always been very close to my children. From the second they were born, they would be the center of my universe. They have never been put to one side. However, to answer your question, if I was feeling particularly dark or particularly, I couldn’t take them to the park today. My mom, my sister, and my niece just stepped up. A lot of the pictures of the kids when they were little were with my mom, my niece, and my sister, so they took up the slack for me. I remember when she was being a complete bitch to me, and she kicked me out for the final time.
I remember my son, who was six, and my daughter, who was five stood there, and my son was desperately holding back tears, and my little girl, sorry I am getting upset again, just hanging onto my niece, saying, “Daddy, please do not leave.” That bitch just said to me, “You better go now.” As cold as that. They have always been my loves. They are my best friends now.
They really are. It was a very dark place. Again, the precursor to that other book, Hal Elrod, Living in the Light, was a book called Shakti Gawain. This was bringing me back to reality. There was a chapter in that book where he said, or two chapters actually, I am getting goosebumps thinking about them. We said, “One of the reasons you suffer from anxiety, when your life crashes and burns and everything is taken away from you, if you imagine life being a river, a raging river, and your life is on this riverbank that is gone, and you are hanging on with your finger, clinging on with your fingertips, I have got to get this life back.
If you let go, trust in God, trust in the universe. Let this river take you. Wherever it takes you is where you are meant to be.” That gets you to the ultimate destination, but there might be a little tributary that you go down. That looks interesting. It might lead here. I thought, “I like the sound of that, because hanging onto the riverbank, I recognize straight away.” There is another chapter.
What was the name of that book? Living in the Light, Shakti Gawain.
The other chapter was about when you are in the deepest, darkest, blackest place you ever think possible, you think there is no way out, and the trap door opens if you fall into the light. That trap door opening was, I am going to become a kickboxing instructor.
When you're in the deepest, darkest, blackest place you ever thought possible, and think there's no way out, the trap door opens and you fall into the light. Share on XRebuilding Identity: Transitioning To Personal Training And Coaching
Unbelievable. You just said you got yourself out of it, you went and started the kickboxing practice, and then where from there?
That was the beginning of one insane, brilliant journey because I did the class on Monday. Fifty people in there. It just grew exponentially, and I was in my element because I have always believed in being a leader. It is easier to be a leader than a follower. I have always set the bar high for myself. I will be there, standing on one leg, chucking out 50 roundhouse kicks, doing 100 push-ups, and “Are you doing that, Sensei?” I am Sensei. I was just loving it. Over a period of weeks, I had a lot of my students saying, “Can you train us one-to-one?”
I could be a kickboxer, but at that time I was not a personal trainer. I decided to go back to university. I became a PT. I also got a degree in nutrition. To this day, Daniel, I do not know where this lady came from. She was obviously sent from the universe. A lady called Cotty, and she was a psychotherapist in London. She had a place in Kensington. I trained her for six weeks. She was very Hungarian, very East European.
She said to me, “I tell you what, darling, I love you so much. I fix their brains, you fix their bodies.” She literally gifted me this client base around Kensington, Chelsea, Mayfair, Knightsbridge. I was going into a multi-millionaire’s home. There were Ferraris, Porsches in the drive. I would be sitting on just pecan-ran sofas with these beautiful women, slimmer pencils, and these men who were fit as anything, telling me how unhappy they were with their lives.
Isn’t that ironic?
It was crazy, honestly. Even though I felt as though I had the experience to give them advice, because I had been through that, I did not feel qualified to. Again, always being proactive, always looking for that window of opportunity, and always diving through it, regardless of whether it was going to work or not. I thought, “Let us look into life coaching.” I did an online university course and became an advanced life coach.
I put a lifestyle consultancy in Paddington because an advertising friend of mine said, if you need office space, mate, we have offices above the building. You can have it rent-free. That kind of friendship you cannot buy, Daniel. Especially in Paddington, London, in the day, it is like a prime area. The consultancy did really well. What I found, though, was that I found Life Coaching a slow process. I do not know if you believe in therapy, but it has its place. What I found with the therapist is that if you have PTSD or you have had a significant emotional event, it is a wound. That wound has got to heal over. However, a therapist keeps picking away at it. That wound never really heals.
You are saying the therapist is focusing on the trauma of the patient/client. What they are doing in the sessions is really the reason why you are coming to see the therapist. You want to unpack and heal the trauma. The trauma itself becomes the centerpiece of the sessions, of the discussions. It is almost in perpetuity. It is like the reason why you came to me was this trauma. It never goes away. Even though we have overcome the trauma, it still presents itself sometimes. You get triggered, etc., but we are always talking about the trauma.
That is exactly it. You do not really heal from it. You have got a crutch for life, which I do not believe in. It was Zig Ziglar who said, “It is never too late to have a happy childhood.” He talked about NLP and things like that. I thought, “I like the sound of that.” I bought a book on NLP. I thought, “I am having some of that.”
It's never too late to have a happy childhood. Share on XExplain what NLP is.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming. It is the programs that run your life. If you think that your conscious mind is the smallest part of your brain, your conscious mind is five percent of what you do every day. Your unconscious mind, which is 95 % of your thought process, is what runs the ship.
Would you say the unconscious mind is the autopilot of the person? It is what we are doing all the time, and we are not really thinking about it. We are just doing it.
You would not want to wake up every morning and have to learn how to tie shoelaces again, would you? Learn how to brush your teeth every single morning. That is all automatic. It happens in the background. It is a bit like a modern warplane. You have got a pilot, and you have got a navigator. The pilot just literally steers the plane, but the navigator controls everything. The navigator is your unconscious mind. You are making conscientious decisions with this part of your brain every day. NLP goes deeper. It actually does so very successfully. It helps you pinpoint where that initial trauma happened. As Zig Ziglar said, “It is never too late to have a happy childhood.” I then decided to become an NLP practitioner. I also became an advanced clinical hypnotherapist.
Advanced clinical hypnotherapist?
Yes. I did it all at the same time. What they teach you there is that you can keep people safe in the present, and what you do is take them back to the past. You take them to that significant emotional event or that PTSD. You deal with it there in the past while they are safe here in the now. You deal with all the trauma there, and you come back to the present completely healed. That memory is still there, but because you have taken the sting out of the emotions, it does not have the same effect on you.
Can you give us an example of an anonymous patient who had a certain trauma and explain?
Healing Trauma Through Neuro-Linguistic Programming
Of course, I gave a talk at a company called BP International, a petroleum company. There were 75 people in the audience. I met this lady called Dawn. She was the executive assistant to the managing director of the company. She was paying particular attention when I was talking about communication skills and body language, because I was a public speaker before I transmorphed into everything. As I was packing up, she was hanging around me, and I knew she wanted to ask me something. I was being very slow, packing things up. She said, “Bye.”
I said, “Bye, Dawn. Did you want to ask me anything?” She goes, “I do not know. I feel a little bit embarrassed.” I said, “Why?” She goes, “I suffer from this depression and anxiety.” I said, “What do you think it is then?” She goes, “My brother passed away ten years ago, and I never got the chance to say goodbye to him.” I said, “Why do you not make an appointment? Come and see me, and we will see what we can do.” She goes, “No, I do not think that is going to work.”
I said, “You have got nothing to lose, Dawn. You have got my number.” Anyway, I got a call on Monday, and Dawn came to see me on Tuesday. What I did was put her into a trance, and a trance is not like you see on TV where you go, boom, and he is like this. It is very gentle, it is very calm, and it is very relaxing. I took her back to the past. I took her on a journey. I floated her out of her body, took her down her past timeline, met her brother, and I said, “Is he there with you?”
She goes, “Yes.” I said, “What would you like to say to him?” She goes, “I would just like to say goodbye and how much I love him.” I said, “Do that. While you are there, give him a big hug and tell him how much you miss him.” She did that. She came back to the future, back to now, and she sobbed uncontrollably for about 25 minutes after the event. Now this is called an AB reaction. This is quite normal.
What is it called?
AB reaction. She was just like, “I do not know how to describe it.” I said, “You do not have to describe anything. When you are ready, just go. I am here for you if you need me.” I did not hear from her for about three days. I still have the email somewhere. She sent me an email and said, “Garth, I cannot thank you enough for the burden you have lifted off me. I wake up in the morning now happy. Even the girls at work have been saying to me, ‘Dawn, what pills are you on? What is happening?’”
She said to me in the session as well that they had a branch of this BP office in the US and she had always wanted to go there. She goes, “Even my boss has noticed a difference in me, and he has put me up for promotion for the job in the US. I cannot thank you enough.” That happened in the course of 40 minutes, Daniel. It was like that. I have had that happen so many times.
Explain the NLP. I am going to assume that when you are working with NLP, you are trying to rewire someone’s mind, whether it is to change their set of beliefs, maybe how they perceive themselves. What do you do with NLP, and how does it work?
Imagine you have had a traumatic event. Imagine the traumatic event is the end of your garden. Every day you walk across the lawn to that traumatic event. As you keep walking on that grass, you wear a path in the grass. You wear a trough in it. What you do, you do not go that direction anymore. You change direction, and you look at that problem from a different angle, and then you reframe it. For some people, a fire might be nice and warm, and “Let us stand in front of it.” For somebody who has been burned by that fire, that is going to be traumatic. They are going to run away from a fire. You have got to recount it in their mind, and you do not change the memory.
You just change the association of the memory so it is not traumatic anymore. Instead of having it in the trauma drawer, you put it in the that happened, and I have dealt with it. Your life today has been created by your perceptual filters, your values, your honor system, the way your parents brought you up. I would say to a lot of my clients, “Would you accept that your life today was created by the thoughts you had yesterday, the day before last week, last month, the month before that? Would you accept that?” They go, “Of course.”
I said, “Imagine this for just one second. If you were to change your thought process from this second now, and you had a different thought tomorrow, the day after that, the week after that, how much would your life change exponentially?” They go, “I never thought of that before.” I said, “This is where we start. What you try to do is deal with their past traumas first. You clear the decks, and then you try to change their internal dialogue because many people speak to themselves in such a negative way. They talk down to themselves like they would not speak to their best friends. They think it is normal. I try to change that internal dialogue.
Where do you think that comes from, though?
Filters, experiences, families, values. For me, the way I was treated at that agency, where I was betrayed. Some of my top values are honor, trust, integrity, discipline, and hard work, and they just betrayed every one of those things. I could have let that shake me, and I could have crashed and burned. I could have just rolled over and died. I thought, “I will be an employee in this business.” No, my honor would not let me. My integrity would not allow me to do that. Some people would just roll over. They carry that for years. Whether it is a company betrayal, a relationship betrayal, or just something significant that has happened in their life. Significant things do happen in people’s lives.
Overcoming Life Ruptures: Rewiring Internal Dialogue
I’ve had a couple recently. The common thing that I see happening is that, and similarly goes for you, which is when I look at your journey, we all have ruptures that happen in your life where we all come to a point where a significant challenge presents itself, knocks us off our feet, our world implodes, we lose everything. The arc is the same. The story is a little different, but they are all the same. As I said, similar arc.
There’s a different story, different characters. What I find fascinating is that it is the same thing over and over again, which is that you could have gone through your experience and been beaten up by what you experienced. As you said, you had that point where you thought that was it. “I am never going to be the same guy again. My life is just going to be shit from here on in.” What you have done is you have taken that experience, and not only have you used it as an opportunity or a gift, but you flipped, like, using your NLP, you have flipped the framing upside down and taken it to turn your life around.
Completely in a major way, but you have taken it a step even further, which is you have taken that gift of turning your life around, but if I look at what you have done, you have used it to help many others to overcome their challenges and their darkness, to put them on the right track, and help them turn their life around. There is one thing about turning one’s life around and using it to say, “I am going to reset my life, work out what my values are, work out who the real Garth is, and get on my merry way and pursue a different path and be positive about life,” etc.
You could have done that as well, and you could have just stuck to being a kickboxing instructor and got your life together, got your own gym, built a business, a new relationship, and a very happy ending. You have not done that. There is something that was within you that you wanted to use that experience to help other people navigate the same thing. I was thinking about it before we had our discussion because a lot of my guests have that same. I had a guest recently who was a heroin addict for ten years. He lost absolutely everything. His lowest point was trying to get $10. He tried to sell his shoes for $10. That is because he needed to get the next hit.
That is dreadful.
What did he do with this journey? He did so much wrong to all those around him. What he did with that journey was create a rehabilitation center in Malibu. Since then, it has been going on and celebrating its 25-year anniversary.
What a victory.
He has saved 40,000 people since. Very similar to yourself. My point is you took that darkness and those challenges and all those things, and you took your power back. You rebuilt yourself, and we cannot estimate the challenge it is to come out of a six-month depression of sleeping all day. I have experienced something similar. It’s like you think that there is no way out, that is it. That your life will never be the same. It is just going to suck for the rest of time.
Just to touch on that, your life is never the same again. It is different.
I agree. From my experience, all I was thinking when I was in it was, when is the old Daniel? Is the old Daniel ever going to come back? Where has he gone? You come to a point where you realize, “No, Daniel is not coming back.” You do not want the old Daniel back. You let go, and you are trying to welcome the next version of who Daniel is going to be. You do not worry about what the old Daniel was. What I wanted to say to you was how amazing it is that what you have done is your purpose in life. Label it at a very high level as helping other people, and it is usually helping other people overcome the challenges, darkness, and the traumas that they have, trying to help them reset their lives and build a brighter future for themselves.
I just love helping. I love being around people. The more people are receptive to me, the more energy I give them. Before I became a life coach, because you have got to coach yourself. He asks you what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are. I just realized that my strengths, unconsciously, were being good with people, building rapport, building empathy. When we used to work through the night sometimes, I was a current member of a, I think it might have been a martial arts thing I read somewhere, about winning. If you win people’s hearts, you win their minds.
If you win people's hearts, you win their minds. Share on XWith my staff, I just used to treat them with the utmost respect. If they had to work through the night, they would work really late. The following week, I would make sure that the wives had a bunch of flowers, and I booked dinner for both of them at a restaurant. I never had any internal politics in my business. People would, and we would have a meeting every Friday as well. Guys, what is happening?
They would be as honest with me as I was with them. I thought that was my strength. I am really good at communicating with people. I do not know how I do it, but then, when I learned about body language and communication skills, etc., you can actually see the model of how we actually work. You can then teach that to other people. When I started doing workshops on confidence building, body language, communication skills, honestly, I had an absolute ball. It was fabulous.
The Art Of Unconscious Communication And Life Coaching
Life Coach is, I would say, a relatively new career choice or a new type of guide or role that exists. Help us understand it is interesting that we are talking about Life Coach because I actually have been thinking a lot about it personally, in that I am thinking I, in the future, am going to want to have my kids have a Life Coach. Now I see myself as their father, as a guide, an educator. I want to be a role model and teach them a lot of these things and pass on my knowledge. When there is an emotional connection or relationship, being a father-child relationship, I think that can sometimes be a challenge to act as a life coach. You want them to learn like you are learning from a teacher.
I have got good knowledge now for you, actually, because somebody told me many years ago, you cannot wear two hats in the heart of somebody who loves you. You can be a dad, but you cannot be a coach. You cannot be a mentor. You can be a role model.
I agree with that. Hence why I have been thinking about this concept of the life coach, teaching them life skills. If you were just, help me and the audience understand when you say, “I am a life coach.” What exactly are you doing and helping your clients with? Give me the spectrum of skills that you are trying to impart to your clients as a life coach.
One of the biggest things that people do not actually realize is unconscious communication. My major clients are professional people who outwardly have got it all. They have got prestige. They have got power. They have got incomes. They have got the house. They have got the family. People respect them. Inside, like I said to you when I was in my advertising, something is screaming out that something has got to change. I try to get to the nub of what that screaming is.
Where is that voice coming from? What does it mean? Now, with a lot of people in terms of communication, especially when I used to do corporate workshops, Robert Mehrabian did this great flow chart years ago where 55% of any communication is physical, 38% of any communication is the tone of your voice. Only in 7% of any communication, do people listen to your words.
55% of any communication is physical, 38% is the tone of your voice, and only 7% of people listen to your words. Share on XIs not that fascinating? No one really cares what you are saying. It is how you are saying it and how you physically present when you are speaking.
That is exactly right. A lot of people are not really tuning in to me and you at the moment. They are looking at our body language. They are picking up the intonation of our words. There is only a certain amount of it that will resonate with people. That is just the way things are. When you actually present that to people, it is an absolute mega revelation, honestly. I am primarily visual, as you are, but I think you have also got a fairly kinesthetic. You are in touch with your emotions quite a lot.
What makes you say that? Why do you say that?
I am just looking at your eyes and the way you move. You are quite auditory as well. You like to listen because you cock your head to one side slightly.
Say that again. Break it down.
When I am speaking to you, you listen internally, your head cocks to one side, and I can see your eyes moving down to the left-hand side because you are actually taking in what I say. You are internalizing it.
One of the signs of body language, if someone cocks their head a little bit, it means they are listening intently. Is that what you mean?
Yes. You have got people who are primarily visual. You have got people who are primarily auditory, so they listen more than watch, and you have got people who are kinesthetic, so they are more in touch with their emotions. Now, if I am a visual person, and I have done this 70 times in workshops, speaking to somebody who is kinesthetic, I say, “Can you see what I mean? Can you actually see?” What? I have got to, “Do you get a feel for what I am actually saying to you? Do you understand what I am saying?”
All of a sudden, they go, “Yes, I get that.” I do a little test with people as well, where they fill in a little questionnaire. It tells you primarily whether you are visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. What you find is all people who are visual, unconsciously, I get them to put their hands up. They are all sitting on the same side of the room. All people who are auditory are sitting in a group together. All people, they are all sitting there and they do not know it because birds of a feather stick together unconsciously. You make friends with people who are like you unconsciously. Without even knowing it.
One of the funny things about it is when people do this, I said, “How many people got a D in their score? There is only like a handful. D stands for digital.” They said, “What does digital mean?” I just go, because they listen. “Words are their prime.” They went, “Yes, I am.” It is fabulous, honestly. I mix people up. I put visual people with kinesthetic people, kinesthetic people, and auditory people.
Honestly, it is such fun. It really is. Learning how to communicate with people, because eye movements are very intrinsic as well. If you are a naturally right-handed person, your eyes move in a direction, accessing information from your brain. If you know this stuff, Danny, honestly, you can never stand in a bus queue or the supermarket again without thinking, “Yes.” It is fabulous, fun, honestly, it really is.
Give me the spectrum of skills you are teaching clients. If I come to you and say, “Garth, I want you to be my life coach.” What are you going to impart to me?
I need to know what you want a life coach for.
The different stages of life you are going to be, it is basically, “That is fair.”
It is not like one size fits everything. I have to tailor what I am going to do to that. For example, with Dawn, I could not just teach her to be a better communicator. We had to deal with her past trauma first. Address whatever she wanted to know so she felt better about herself.
It is very tailored basically for what people are looking for, and you are helping guide them through whatever stage of life they are in, etc.
There are certain formulas you follow, like what are your values? What is your honor code? What makes you go, “Yes,” I need to find out the basic makeup of a person. I also need to know, are they visual, are they auditory, are they kinesthetic, are they digital, so that I can tailor my communication skills to make friends with their unconscious mind. Building that rapport, building that empathy, is paramount to having any success as a life coach, as a person.
Now, I want to conclude. We are going to go through the whole journey here. It is something that I think about, which is like, “Why do I do this?” Why are you doing this? This platform is all about trying to platform predominantly men so that the audience can hear that what we are all experiencing, we are all going through very similar things. We are all experiencing the same similar type traumas, similar challenges, trials and tribulations of life.
Creating Space For Men To Open Up And Share Wisdom
What I am trying to do is encourage men to open up to each other and share those experiences, make themselves vulnerable, form deeper bonds, and share the wisdom. Here I am literally just trying to platform men so that like having someone like yourself, people can understand one’s life journey, what we go through, how we come out of it, the access, different types of, different types of techniques or see what is available out there.
They go, “A bit like your Dawn.” We are like, “I actually think I need a bit of a reset in life. Maybe I need to do this,” etc. Given all that, what do you wish someone had told you sooner? What advice or guidance do you think you missed out on in your journey as a younger man that, if you knew it, if you had had it, would have armed you with better life skills, let us say?
If I were honest with that, honestly, I could not answer it because I would not know. I was on a mission in life. I have always been a leader. As I said, I have always led from the front. My goal was to get married, get a Ferrari, a business, make sure my kids were brought up properly, get a bigger house. Maybe it was along that line. I always thought I was headed in the right direction. For me, falling into that hole, where the bloody hell did that hole come from? Why has it been concreted over? Why am I in the dark? I had no inkling. I had no idea. As I said, my ex-wife gave me no clue at all.
Complete boom. As far as I knew, she loved me to pieces. Complete shock. Initially, I would have said, “I do not trust people anymore,” but that is an absolute lie. I love trusting people. I love being around people. Because I am a very energetic person, if somebody is tuning in, I will give them as much as they need. I will fill them right up. By filling these people up, I fill myself up. Your cup has got to be full before you can fill somebody else’s. I could not answer that question because I did not know anything was wrong. I did not know any better.
Your spiritual cup has got to be full before you can fill somebody else's. Share on XFinal Reflections: Lessons On Leadership, Gratitude, And Kindness
Garth, it is time to conclude, but I ask my guests five questions at the end of every episode. I am going to do it right. Here we go. Strap yourself in. Who would you like to say sorry to, given the chance?
There are not that many people I have abused in my life. Nobody.
That is a good answer. What are you proud of being or doing in your life?
Being me. Being focused. Being a leader, being a goal getter. I like being goal-oriented. I like to have a mission.
When did you receive kindness while needing it most, but expecting it least?
Mumsy. Go back to live with Mom. No, Mom would never really want to do that. Bless her. She has passed away now. God rest her soul. After about six months, it does get uncomfortable living with your mom. “Do not worry about making my bed, mama.” “No, I will make your bed, love. What do you want for dinner? No, you have got to eat. Do you want some?” “I do not want any cake.” When I look back on it now, it was beautiful. It has not changed since the world. I would never shout that back now.
Of course. What did your mother or father teach you that you frequently remind yourself of?
My father taught me never to drink because he used to drink to excess. Our mum, she was just a hardworking mumsy. She did three jobs at one stage when my mum and dad split up just to keep us three in clothes and food and a home. Absolute stalwart, solid person, gorgeous person, heart of gold, beautiful lady.
Final one is, what is your superpower?
Being Garth.
Good way to end, Garth. I appreciate it. Thank you.
No, I am really glad, Daniel. Thank you for inviting me on.
You are doing really good stuff. As I said, I love the fact that you took the darkness, not only turned it into light for yourself, but you are turning it into light for many others, and you are paying it forward, which I just think is phenomenal. I love that.
I have found my best. Thank you for that. I appreciate you saying that. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
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About Garth Delikan
Garth Delikan is a mindset and lifestyle coach, speaker, author and advanced clinical hypnotherapist whose work is rooted in one defining belief: your past may shape you, but it does not have to decide what happens next.
His perspective was forged through experience rather than theory. After reaching the top of a successful career in London advertising, Garth saw his professional life unravel through betrayal, the collapse of his own business and the end of a 28-year marriage in rapid succession. What followed was clinical depression, severe anxiety and a period of rebuilding from the ground up. Rather than return to the life he had lost, Garth began creating a new one, first through kickboxing and personal training, then coaching, NLP, hypnotherapy and public speaking.
