The Mark Groves Podcast

The world is loud right now and most of us are drowning in it. This solo episode is a direct conversation about what it actually takes to come back to yourself when everything around you is competing for your attention, your nervous system, and your sanity. We get into why safety is the baseline of every relationship, why you don’t need to share your opinion about everything on social media, and w...

Most high achievers are not building from ambition. They are building from wounds. In this episode i’m joined by Mandy Balak  and she truly is the real deal. "She has built empires from grief, scaled companies from shame, and finally figured out the one thing that changes everything. We talk about what it actually costs to keep running on empty, why your business is always a mirror of your in...

We're drowning in screens, and I think that's exactly why our relationships are struggling. Every unoccupied moment of our day has been filled with content and we've lost our capacity for boredom, which means we're losing our capacity for real intimacy. In this episode I talk about the burnout of building a business online, why I don't think a "healthy" relationship with social media is even possi...

Most people don't realize that their frustration with people who aren't available has a lot to do with their own unavailability. In this special episode I discuss 3 questions from my audience and how to handle their relational challenges. Why might we be holding on to or daydreaming about an ex? Why can't my partner fully commit or tell me they love me? How do I know the difference between settlin...

Today I’m comin’ at ya with a short but sweet solo episode and sharing some things I’ve read lately that have blown my mind and brought some newfound awareness to my behaviour. I hope sharing these reflections offers insight into your own circumstances, behaviours and ways of being in the world so we can all move together towards creating a more loving, open, boundaried and secure space! 00:00 Int...

What if the worst thing that ever happened to you was actually the thing that was always meant to find you? JP Francia almost drowned in his own bed from acid reflux. After a decade of failed medications and sleepless nights a simple remedy from his grandma changed everything. What followed is one of the most unlikely and inspiring entrepreneurial journeys you will ever hear. We get into gut healt...

At some point you have to stop being the student and start becoming your own authority. Not because teachers and mentors are not valuable but because the whole point of learning from them was always to find your way back to yourself. We get into why we unconsciously hand our power over to controlling or domineering people, why your autoimmune issues and your silence might be more connected than yo...

Most of us are brilliant at staying exactly where we do not want to be and building a perfectly rational case for why we cannot leave. The if-then loop. When this happens THEN I will. When the kids are older. When I have more money. When the time is right. Sound familiar? In this episode we  get into why that loop is not a plan but instead a prison, and why resisting the system just builds a...

There is no such thing as the wrong choice. I know that sounds confronting depending on where you are in your life, but every choice you have ever made, even the ones that blew your life up, were revealing something. The shadow, the wound, the place where you still were not free. We get into why we freeze instead of evolve, why your symptoms are actually trying to bring you information, and why th...

Here’s the thing nobody wants to hear but everybody needs to: If you do not go towards your pain you will become the kind of person who creates it. The betrayals you have not processed, the patterns you have not examined, the grief you have been numbing with your phone and your drinks and your situationships... all of it is running your life right now whether you see it or not. We get into why you...

Something is competing for your attention right now and it is not neutral. The world has never been louder, the news has never been more relentless, and we have never had less boredom, and that is not an accident. Because when you are constantly focused out there you lose access to in here. We talk about why anxiety is often just your inner voice trying to get your attention, why protecting your p...

There is a question that will cut straight through any relationship fog you are sitting in right now. Could someone else love them better? Because if the answer is yes and you are still holding on, you have to ask yourself why. We get into why the life you were taught to want might be the very thing making you miserable, why your body is always the first to know when you are living out of integrit...

Something is happening to men right now and we need to talk about it. Not in the way the internet does, with shame and hot takes, but in a way that actually gets to the root of the problem. Because the energy that destroys when it is unintegrated is the exact same energy that protects and leads when it is not. So why are we trying to crush it instead of initiate it? In this episode we get into fat...

In this episode, I have an honest conversation about something that I think every parent needs to hear right now. What are we actually signing our kids up for when we hand them a smartphone? Because the data is becoming really hard to ignore, and what is happening to our kids, especially our girls, is not okay. We talk about why social media hits boys and girls differently, what it is actually doi...

In this episode we’re going to talk about betrayal, and not just the kind that someone else does to you. Because here is what I have come to understand: almost every external betrayal is preceded by a betrayal of yourself. The moment you said yes when you meant no. The moment you agreed to a dynamic you did not actually want because the need to belong was louder than the need to be honest. We expl...

In this episode, I want to talk about sobriety, and not the kind that starts with a rock bottom. The kind that starts with a whisper. A quiet voice inside you that says, what if life was better without this? We explore why the truths we know but refuse to live actually block us from receiving the next level of guidance we need, why quitting drinking is so often less about the alcohol and more abou...

In this episode, I sit down with my favorite human optimization master, Drew Canole, to talk about something that is getting a lot of attention right now: is optimizing your life actually stealing your joy, or is it the path to more of it? We dig into why your vices are not just bad habits but doorways to the parts of yourself you have been avoiding, how your purpose is actually the reverse of you...

 In this episode, I talk about something that most of us will never admit out loud: that we can become addicted to our own suffering. That the wound we carry, as painful as it is, can become the most familiar thing about us, slowing life down to a pace we can control and keeping us locked in the same relational cycles wondering why nothing ever changes. We talk about why forgiveness is not about t...

In this episode, I want to talk about emotional fluency and why I believe it is the most important skill you can develop in a world that is becoming more digital and more disconnected by the day. Because here is the truth: AI can mirror your emotions but it cannot regulate your nervous system, and that is something only another human being can do. We talk about why your feelings are not problems t...

Are you wondering if you should stay or go? Because here is the thing, it is never really just about the relationship. It is about you, your patterns, your upper limits, and the stories you have been telling yourself about what love is supposed to look like. We talk about why staying for the kids might not be the noble choice you think it is, why both people have to be all in or the healing is jus...

In this episode, I share the story of quitting Instagram and what that period of separation taught me about endings, growth, and what it actually means to return to something. What started as a personal reckoning became a much bigger conversation about what these platforms are actually doing to us - how they're designed to hijack your nervous system through shock, rage, and dopamine hits, and why...

In this episode, I want to encourage you to think about one thing - are you actually living your life, or are you living next to it? We explore what it means to stop being adjacent to yourself, why the things we use to numb the gap like alcohol, screens, and other people's opinions are actually keeping us from the most important relationship we will ever have, and why the journey to find yourself...

In this episode, I explore inner authority and why so many of us have been conditioned to fawn, shrink, and give our power away in the face of authority, whether that's a parent, a boss, a partner, or a system. True devotion to yourself means having your own back, and that requires accessing the part of you that can say no, draw a boundary, and meet injustice with the full force of who you are. We...

In this episode, I explore how our relationship with technology, and specifically our smartphones, has quietly become one of the greatest threats to our most sacred relationship: the one we have with ourselves. Devotion isn't just a spiritual concept, it's a choice we make every single day, and every time we reach for our phone we are either honoring or abandoning that relationship. We dig into th...

In this episode, I explore the profound difference between commitment and devotion and why that distinction might be the thing standing between you and the life you're actually meant to live. Commitment lives in the mind; it's strategic, rigid, and safe, but devotion is sacred. It's the full surrender to your mission, your dharma, the great work of your life. We dive into why so many of us stay st...