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Men are faced with unique challenges and many of our failures come from operating from “boy psychology” instead of the mature and evolved “man psychology”. We often find ourselves asking “what kind of men should we be?”  There are many perspectives about healthy masculinity and even more widely-varying ideas of what it means to be an Alpha.  Today my three ALPHA guests and I begin a six-episode series on our review of the book “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover” by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, who describe the difference between boy psychology and man psychology and give a very effective visual model of healthy manhood and help guys rediscover the archetypes of mature masculinity: the KING, the WARRIOR, the MAGICIAN, and the LOVER.

We explore the dysfunctional shadow energies of the immature masculine in ‘boy psychology.’  We talk about: 

The highchair tyrant the weakling prince the grandstander-bully the coward the know-it-all trickster the dummy the mama’s boy the dreamer.

We discuss what it looks like when men are still operating from an immature (boy) mindset and introduce the healthy mature archetypes in their fullness.

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Brad Singletary (00:00:01):
Men are faced with unique challenges. And many of our failures come from operating with ‘boy psychology’ instead of the mature and evolved ‘man psychology’. We often find ourselves asking what kind of men should we be? There are many perspectives about healthy masculinity and even more widely varying ideas of what it means to be an ‘alpha.’ Today, my three alpha guests and I begin a six-episode series on our review of the book “King Warrior, Magician, Lover” by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette. They described the difference between boy psychology and man’s psychology and give a very effective model of healthy manhood by helping guys rediscover the archetypes of mature masculinity, the King, the Warrior, the Magician and the Lover.

Brad Singletary (00:00:58):
Welcome back to the Alpha Quorum show, Brad Singletary here. I’m super excited about what we have going on tonight for you guys. This is going to be special. I got a room full of studs here. This bunch of alphas here joining me tonight. I’m going to introduce them here in a second, but I asked them to come in here tonight because of their strengths, the things that I know about them, the things they’re doing, the adversity that they’ve gone through in their lives and how they have managed difficult things and what they’re doing to strengthen themselves and other men around them. First of all, we have Jay Jay was an elementary and middle school teacher, as well as a coach. He’s now worked in the government sector for the last 16 years, which requires him to deal with people who are in crisis. He’s a twice divorced father of two and enjoys being at the Lake and traveling.

Brad Singletary (00:02:08):
Welcome, Jay, appreciate you being here, brother. Thank you, Brad. I appreciate being here too. We also have Jim an electrician of 25 years in the Las Vegas Valley. He’s currently working as an electrical superintendent for commercial and industrial projects throughout the Valley. He’s a divorced father of two boys ages, 27 and 16 enjoys a wide range of activities year round, and has a passion for the outdoors, inspiring and mentoring those within the electrical trade gives him purpose. That’s among many of your other strengths, Jim, that’s one of the reasons I invited you here because later we’re going to talk about the magician, but that’s someone who not only has special knowledge, but who shares it with other people. So as I’ve gotten to know you, and you’ve talked about mentoring other people that’s one of the many strong things about you that I really appreciate. Thanks for being here, Jim. Thanks for having

Jim (00:03:00):
Me, Brad. Appreciate it. Definitely.

New Speaker (00:03:02):
We also have Clint Albright he’s working in marriage and family therapy. He works with couples trauma and men’s issues. He runs a group called dude therapy, and that’s an acronym for dudes understanding deeper emotions here in Las Vegas. He enjoys helping men understand their deeper emotional selves. And after his father passed in a plane crash, he wanted to help others learn to overcome adversity, dude, Clint you’re, we’re kind of new our relationship. We met probably what about a month ago? Just wanted to collaborate on some of the work we’re both trying to do to help men. You’ve got some pretty cool things running up on the Summerland side of town. Is that the Northwest area over there?

Clint Albright (00:03:42):
Yeah, so I do D.U.D.E. Therapy over at Maternal Minds. Just really awesome experience. Just having guys just round talking about what’s going on for them and how to just be the best versions of themselves.

Brad Singletary (00:03:54):
I’ve gotta say that the, I appreciate your, you know, your education, your work as a professional, there aren’t many male therapists period, and there are many male therapists who kind of do male $hit. So when I, when I got to hear the, some of the things you were doing, I was like this dude, this dude is a dude and he’s doing dude therapy, Dudes Understanding Deeper Emotions, man. So glad to have you with us. I have a feeling that we’re going to be talking a lot. We’re going to, this is, this is this is a little bromance.

Clint Albright (00:04:24):
Did we just become best friends? So it’s good to have you here.

New Speaker (00:04:29):
All right, we’re going to, we’re going to talk about this book King Warrior Magician Lover. This is going to be hopefully a six episode series where we really talk about just kind of outline of the book. By the time we get through with all these episodes, you could have listened to the audio book yourself. So I encourage men to read this book. I’ve read lots of things out there in the manosphere. And to me, this is just, it hit me so hard. I’ve listened to this and read this and underline it several times this year. And I picked it up a couple of years ago. It didn’t really, I didn’t really find it interesting to begin with. I wasn’t in the right place maybe. And I think I heard another podcast is what got me looking back into it. And I think it’s just one of the best things that I’ve read in a long time.

Brad Singletary (00:05:12):
And that’s why I want to really break this down and share some examples from our own lives and examples of men who are rediscovering these archetypes. So the questions that we’re going to answer today, what is boys’ psychology? What are the negative attributes of boys that sometimes carry over into manhood? What are some examples of boys parading around pretending to be men? We’re going to talk about the structure of the archetypes in this book, we’re going to overview the archetypal energies for men and talk about why awareness of this knowledge will help men be stronger and more successful. So this segment is about becoming a man and how we must leave our immature boy, thinking behind if we want to have success and respect first, I just want to talk about some definitions. So archetype that’s basically just means it’s a representation of human behavior through characters.

Brad Singletary (00:06:09):
It comes from mid 16th century, the word archetype from the Greek ARCA to pawn, but it means something molded first as a model from RK, which is primitive and to posts, which is a model. So it’s just a typical example of a certain person or a thing. And young in psychology of primitive mental image inherited from the earliest human ancestors and supposed to be present in the collective unconscious. So King warrior, magician lover, we’re going to break these down in more detail in future episodes tonight, we’re going to talk about boy psychology and kind of what it is that men need to do in general. We’ll, we’ll briefly overview these other or energies. We’re also going to talk about shadows. So the shadow are the aspects of the character that deviate or stray from the kind of the standard expectation. It’s the dark side, it’s the negative side of each of these different energies and there’s an overachieving shadow, kind of a, an active shadow type that we’ll talk about and an underachieving shadow.

Brad Singletary (00:07:18):
So our first question tonight, you guys, what is boy psychology in general? Before we start, I just want to say that a true archetype never really goes away. The idea from this book and from Carl Jung is basically that these are kind of built into us, wired into us. And so through boyhood, we’re going to I’ll post a graphic that just shows these little graphic representations of these these little triangular pyramid type shapes, but the boy archetypes never really go away. So boy psychology is the precursor for man psychology. It’s just basically how a boy thinks versus how a man thinks and what I took from this, this whole section, this whole, a chapter on that is basically the boys primarily interested in himself. And so that’s expected, you know, an eight year old boy, you think he’s basically going to be interested in himself tonight.

Brad Singletary (00:08:11):
We had a birthday party for my my, my baby, my four year old, by the way, today is Jim’s birthday. And he chose to be here with us. It’s 8:30 PM on his birthday birthday. And I said, dude, we could’ve picked another night. Why don’t we do it on different night, besides where he said, Oh, I’m not doing anything on a Wednesday night. I’m like, yeah, you don’t have to try to be tough, man. Come on just another day. Anyway. So he’s primarily interested in himself. So my four year old guy, all these Spiderman things and, and these different little gifts for his birthday and his five-year-old brother freaked out, he freaked out. Yeah, because he wanted a gift. Where’s his gift? This isn’t fair. And so that’s kind of, we expected for a five-year-old boy, when you got a 40 year old man, we would hope that he’s outgrown some of that stuff. But I think we all know guys like that, who aren’t doing that? What are your, your thoughts, you guys, on boys psychology? What is it kind of, how do you see that in? Well, I guess boys, but maybe more importantly in grown man, even

Jay (00:09:14):
I think some of it is, is they, they take resources from the environment and then a lot of times they don’t they’re self-involved and, and don’t do much to contribute themselves. They’re used to the, you know, their parents, their mom doing everything from them and they’re just exorbitant all these resources without actually contributing all the time.

Brad Singletary (00:09:34):
That’s great. I heard one time or I saw somewhere, they were asking the question was when does a boy become a man? And the answer that they gave was when he, when he produces more than he consumes, I thought that was a pretty good definition. So you’re talking about taking resources from the environment. Yeah. He’s a taker taker, not a giver. Yeah.

Jay (00:09:54):
Just, you know, and they’re always looking for external validation. So there, it’s kind of like a drug, you see it like in, in men that have evolved where they’re, they’re always looking for that external validation. They’re looking they’re fishing for those compliments because they haven’t evolved yet. I mean, that goes just in psychology in general was, you know, five-year-olds, they don’t have their prefrontal cortex developed are all based in emotion. So, you know, they’re living in a world that’s just all based on emotion. So when they see anger, they project that anger.

Brad Singletary (00:10:27):
Sure. You talked about prefrontal cortex. Brain’s not even fully developed, not able to think like a, like a grown man would, but some grown men, even when the brain parts are all there, they’re still not able to see outside themselves. And

Jay (00:10:41):
They’re just in that huge emotional reactivity and just latching onto it like a parasite. Okay, great. I think with some of the boys being cuddled by their moms, they, they struggle with attachment from their mothers. Jay was saying they’re constantly seeking attention from others, but that detachment from their mother and able to contribute, able to in way stand on their own is you know, kind of that boy psychology.

Brad Singletary (00:11:11):
What about growing men doing that? So maybe the, you know, the, my two boys, they stay home with the mom all day. They’re very attached to her. I’m working a lot, you know, they’re four and five, my youngest that’s maybe expected what if you’re a 50 year old man.

Jay (00:11:25):
Yeah. Right. And at least from what I see that that kind of leads to unhealthy toxic relationships where this man grows up and he’s with a woman and he’s dependent upon her, just like he was with his mother as a child. He’s never really cut that in biblical horror,

Brad Singletary (00:11:42):
If you will. Yeah. He’s trying to recreate that caretaking and he needs, he needs this constant nurturing and that kind of thing. And some of that would be expected in a healthy relationship, but definitely I can see that part, the boy psychology. We’ll talk about that later.

Jay (00:11:55):
You know, and, and I think when we talk about that with, we see it in, in grown men that haven’t evolved is kind of talks about it in the book a little bit about the disappearance of witch rituals that back in the day tribes had rituals that kind of led these boys to be men. You know, I worked with an individual who grew up in Africa and a tribe there. And at 16, they were led out into the forest and they had to kill a lion before they came back. And that was kinda, yeah, that was kind of their, which ritual into becoming a man. And I think in today’s society, we’ve kind of lost sight of some of that and that these these boys, they then become men haven’t ever evolved and had those experiences,

Brad Singletary (00:12:39):
Young women ha there’s a, there’s a kind of a built-in biological Rite of passage or something that happens to them that the menstrual cycle begins. And that kind of is something that signifies that. And for males, there’s just really no such thing like that. And so I do, I did really like that part of the book where it talks about the missing ritual, you know, kind of where the boy kind of symbolically dies. And then he becomes a man after conquering really himself. And he does that through some battles, some hunt, some kind of you know, some kind of a ritualistic experience. Did any of you have anything like that? Did you have in your family’s culture, you know, did people in your lives do that? I mean, my family, we were deer hunters and, and it wasn’t necessarily expected, but it was like when I killed my first deer, that was that was kind of here guts in your face. And, and nobody ever said, Oh, now you’re a man, but it was just, it was kind of a ritual innocence. You know, here’s an animal, this is going to feed our family through the winter. And I felt that felt good for me. I was probably maybe 13 or so.

Jay (00:13:45):
I wouldn’t say it wasn’t really a ritual, but it was more of going away to college. I’ll admit that I was kind of probably a, a mama’s boy growing up and moving away, you shouldn’t,

Speaker 5 (00:13:56):
You should have told me that before I invited you on the show. Yeah. It’s, it’s out there in the world now. So my brother and sister will get a baby. This is, this is everybody knows now. Yeah. And that’s why you didn’t want to say your last name now.

Jay (00:14:12):
The third child, you know, we, we, we tend to, to cuddle up to our moms. So but going away to college, you know, when you are, are young and at home and, and have all of your resources there for you going away to college really forces you to grow up and develop some of those man qualities.

Brad Singletary (00:14:31):
Anybody else, do you have any thing like that, where it was this intended, you know, crossing the bridge and demand had or anything?

Jay (00:14:37):
I mean, mine was kind of ridiculous. My dad just took me out to go get my ears pierced and stuff. And we went to a rock concert and that was like my 13th birthday. And that’s when I kind of felt like, all right, I’m kind of leaving the boys side of me and kind of more into,

Clint Albright (00:14:52):
You know, taking care of myself and dealing with my own problems and being able to understand the things I’m going to through and find support for it. He didn’t take you to Pahrump. Did it, you didn’t go out there to the sunset. I was the gallery mall.

Brad Singletary (00:15:08):
All right. Do you have anything like that?

Jim (00:15:10):
No. Real rituals. You know, mostly raised by women, grandma, mom, and sister. And it was kind of like clean up after yourself, wash your own clothes, clean up your room. I mean, I was basically guided by the women and I didn’t have a lot of, you know male involvement on a hunting or going out to rock concerts.

Clint Albright (00:15:38):
I definitely resonate that with you because shortly after my dad passed away and it was really having to navigate this world and try to find peers to look up to and find that growth that I needed. I was, it was really challenging at times. I think that’s so very common. It talks about this in the book over and over about the, you know, the under influence of the mature masculine for boys and kind of an over influence of women. And they’re just kind of doing their job, doing their role, raising the kids and doing the best they can. God bless him. But there definitely can be sometimes some missing pieces to that. So when men are stuck in a boy, psychology, they’re controlling, threatening, and hostile behaviors in reality are just underlining their vulnerability and weakness of the wounded boy that, you know, they’re, they’re displaying all these characteristics that appear to be strength when really it’s just, they’re being they’re vulnerable and they’re hiding. Yeah. They try to act like a Savage and really it’s, it’s not at all that this is a weak person who has no sense of security with themself.

Jim (00:16:42):
Like someone who can’t just, they can’t control their emotions. They haven’t learned to deal with their emotions. They haven’t learned to recognize their emotions.

Clint Albright (00:16:49):
Yeah. That’s what cliff was talking about and totally not developed that. And they’re living on emotion purely. And I think this is the hardest thing is, is boys developing the men? You know, we’re not taught how to engage with her own emotions. We’re not taught to how to self-regulate that anger, the depression, the love. And so, you know, we’re just taught like, Oh, just pick yourself up by your bootstraps, figure it out. You know? And I think that really puts us at a disadvantage to really have authentic conversations with ourselves and others about emotions and what it means to be a man, an emotional man. And you have a bone to pick with you though. You say all these nice about them in the introductions. And didn’t say anything about me. I didn’t read yours or what you read it, but then uses that. Was it? Yeah,

Speaker 5 (00:17:34):
Because your mom was feeling, Oh my God, he said, he’s gotten a quarter. He screwed, wait, can we,

Jim (00:17:44):
We pinpoint that emotion on one of these high chair, tyrants, hold on,

Speaker 5 (00:17:50):
Hold on folks. When he doesn’t get what he wants to do, that’s me. That’s me to him. That is me too. Like you talk on that topic. That that’s me. I suck when I don’t get my way. And then I will Barraige you, until you redo it. If you bought me Spiderman toys, he’d be packing. It’s way over there. I can’t get to it. It’s closer to me

Brad Singletary (00:18:17):
Too funny. So what are the immature and problematic attributes of boys? So in this model, which I’ll, again, post the visual of these aren’t necessarily all negative. Some of these things are, are positive and the boy needs to kind of aspire to those things in boy hood. But we’re going to just talk about just the, the dysfunctional shadows of those things. And a really important part of this, something in the book that I underlined in a few places it was repeated is as we talk about the shadow sides, as we go through these, these next few things here, don’t ask yourself if you display those tendencies, but how you do it because we all kind of become these things and where we’ll share maybe some examples of public figures and people that may, may look like this. But so first the high chair tyrant, all right.

Brad Singletary (00:19:07):
So this is the active shadow. This is the overachieving shadow of the divine child, which we’re not going into that part here, but this is a boy or a man who needs excessive attention. He doesn’t give anything back. He’s demanding. What people give him is never enough. He’s a whiner, entitled, arrogant. He wants yes, men around him believes that he deserves attention without any effort. So we all like attention, but this is a boy or a man who believes that he should have that attention without producing anything pouts, sulks when he doesn’t get what he wants. Jaybird

Speaker 5 (00:19:52):
That’s right. Oh, you can’t

Brad Singletary (00:19:55):
Criticism. Has unreasonable expectations, hurts himself with his grandiosity. So he wants attention. He wants to be recognized, but he ends up causing problems for himself. And he makes slaves of his caretakers. Like totally, I’m seeing this in my, in my two little boys right now. If they don’t get what they want. They cause they make a lot of noise and they’re kind of get mean, but growing men do that too. So the weakling, the weakling is the passive shadow. This is the underachieving shadow of this divine child. So this is a guy that needs to be coddled. He’s playing the victim all the time. Can’t take responsibility. Nothing’s ever his fault. Maybe a hypochondriac, always complaining and always hurt. Always has a reason, some explanation, some justification for why he can’t, he’s unmotivated, has no initiative. And he’s mad when people don’t meet his needs for him. So we talked about the high chair tyrant and on the opposite, the bipolar shadow of that is the weak link. So the tyrant demanding wants everything, his way, the weakling kind of can’t do anything. What does this look like in the world of men and by deal with it

Jim (00:21:13):
People. Yeah, my field, you know, being in construction, I deal with a lot of these people on a regular, you know, most of them have dropped out of high school. Maybe that’s the only education they have as high school. They haven’t really learned to dig into their feelings and some of their paths and, and recognize, you know, these high chair, chair, tiring, or weaklings within them things. I can’t take criticism. I got guys working with me or for me, you know, I’m just trying to, I’m just trying to help them succeed and just try and help them be better in what they do. And, you know, hopefully that goes down to the guys below them. But when you talk with them, they get very defensive and they start deflecting and you know, it’s always someone else’s fault and, and it’s, it’s hard to get through to a man boy like that because he’s not really hearing you, you know, it’s always some other problem. It’s a schedule or it’s a, another guy underneath him or something’s wrong with the plan. So,

Brad Singletary (00:22:15):
So there’s obvious disadvantages to that. Like on the job, you know, in the work world of your work, what do you think these guys are like at home and in their relationship? You think it’s any different?

Jim (00:22:24):
I have to wonder about things like that all the time, like their, their car’s a mess, you know, their, their clothes. And I just, I honestly, I feel bad for their women and their wives and children, you know, they just, I see them as going home and shutting down and not really bringing to light some of these issues. Just kind of blowing it off as if it doesn’t exist.

Brad Singletary (00:22:44):
They’re mad at you as the super on the job. And they go home and get mean with the wife and kids. Yeah. Frustrated. They got called out. Now they go home and displace all their anger, the high chair, tyrant. They become that.

Jim (00:22:55):
How, and honestly, some of these guys, I, I feel like they get hammered at, at home so hard from their wives and kids that it’s coming, it’s coming to work is actually kind of relieving. Cause when they do something well, you know, I love to give them praise and, and, and, and show them that, you know, we appreciate them. You know, that’s kind of environment I try to have, but still tough when there’s something wrong. And then you’re trying to, you know, help them understand or overcome that problem. And they start deflecting, like they’re at home with their wives or deflecting and getting defensive. And it’s tough to get through to a man like that.

Brad Singletary (00:23:31):
So I’m here at nine o’clock tonight. Just kidding, baby, for listening. Sorry.

Jim (00:23:36):
I also think, you know, you see it, we’ve all probably had those supervisors or those managers or bosses that are real arrogant and they can’t take criticism themselves.

Jay (00:23:46):
And so they, you see them, they, they surround themselves with yes, men. And so if you’re one of those that ask those tough questions, challenges their authority, they usually will snap at you or, or knock you down because you’re not a yes, man. You’re not following in line with them. They just want people that are gonna agree with them. Know some of that you’re talking about.

Jim (00:24:05):
I just had recently my boss got into me tough and there was some other people associated with it. That was the reason for the problem. But when he came to me, I said, absolutely, I’ll address it. I’ll take care of it. The fault from another guy that just, wasn’t the time to bring it up, like understand what he’s addressing to me, fix that. And then at another time, bring that up, say, well, you know, we do have some other issues we need to address as well. But right now he’s trying to focus that problem with me. And I need to address that rather than deflect into someone else. And that arrogance, you know, that’s the boss. I don’t want to be. Yeah, exactly. Take criticism from all the way down to my apprentices from my boss, the way it should be.

Brad Singletary (00:24:49):
So any examples of this movies, books popular people out there that guys might notice it, this is what a high chair tyrant looks like or a weakling

Clint Albright (00:24:58):
Weekly. And you can boil it down to every romantic comedy that’s ever been made because you know, usually the girls, the pursuer, the guy draws does something bad. He’s a hypochondriac. It’s not his fault. I’m the good guy. I’m not the Phil in here. It’s, it’s all you. And so they kind of project their own insecurities to everyone out, but not dealing with their own self.

Brad Singletary (00:25:19):
Yeah. That’s great. That’s, that’s awesome. I, I hate those images of men. We did a show, one of our early shows. We talked about the doofus dad, you know, the dumb ignorant dad. Who’s just doesn’t even know anything and just kind of weak.

Jay (00:25:34):
Well, I know, I know we’ll get into it a little bit with the King and the, in the shadows with the King, but watched a little bit of game of Thrones in Joffrey in game of Thrones is, is a really good example of a high chair. Tyrant really didn’t do anything to deserve being a leader. Didn’t demand it all the attention and was arrogant in the end. It, it was his demise.

Brad Singletary (00:25:55):
I keep hearing about that show. I hear there’s some parts of it that I might enjoy

Jay (00:26:01):
There. There’s there’s a lot of parts in it.

Brad Singletary (00:26:06):
All right. Let’s talk about know at all, trickster. So this is the active or overachieving shadow of the precocious child. Now I have to admit is educated and intelligent as I am. I didn’t know what precocious meant. So I had to look it up. Precocious means having developed certain abilities or proclivities. It sounds like a Jordan Peterson word proclivities I’m at an earlier age than usual. So this is a smart kid he’s ahead of his peers, but the know it all trickster is the shadow of that. So the know it all trickster, he gets into mischief has a sense of superiority. You’ve noticed some of these things kind of blend and overlap. I just show off always has his hand up, but not to give the right answer to prove he’s smarter, tries to charm his way out of trouble uses deception, manipulation, smart, hurry, intimidates with his words, criticizes others, mistakes he’s envious, insecure, brags about himself, destroys things. His focus is on appearances and he has problems with authority. So no, it all trickster. What about the dummy? This is, this is the underachieving or passive side of the precocious child. This is someone who’s just naive. They have no vigor, a little bit lazy, slow, and an interesting part in the book. It talks about their ineptitude is less than honest, meaning they pretend to know less than they actually do. And they’re just kind of playing dumb so they can avoid responsibility. They avoid risks and that kind of thing.

Jay (00:27:45):
But I also think interesting with that is that they play dumb, but are early taking notice of stuff and kind of throw in and we’ll evolve and jump over to the trickster at times, too. And that we play where you see that, that aloofness in them as that they’re not paying attention and they, they do it on the down-low.

Brad Singletary (00:28:08):
That’s a great point about all of these shadow sides that we kind of alternate. If we’re living in the, in the weakling and we just do that long enough, we become the high chair tyrant when we’re fed up or whatever, and, and vice versa. You kind of alternate between these bipolar shadows. So good thought there, Jay. All right. You guys it’s about to get serious. Now we’re about to talk about your mama in, in preparation for this, I was thinking I haven’t heard a good your mama joke lately. You might have, you might have a good one. You share good. Yeah.

Jay (00:28:38):
Mama joke. Brad, yo mama is so fat or belly button gets home 15 minutes before she does.

Speaker 5 (00:28:48):
That’s a long belly button. That’s that? One’s deep. Got some wind things in another zip code.

Brad Singletary (00:28:59):
No, this is serious subject. I thought we would break the tension a little bit before we talk about moms and how that they’ve created problems in us here, but any other cool, your mama jokes, anybody.

Clint Albright (00:29:09):
Yo, mama’s so dumb. When you all were driving to Disney land, she saw a sign that said Disney left. So he went home.

Brad Singletary (00:29:22):
So this is, this is very serious. And when I’m working with men, I don’t know Clint, if you can echo this too, but when I’m working with men, a lot of it has to do with their relationships. Most guys aren’t coming to say, you know, I’m depressed and whatever the core of so much of their problems are their relationships. And this next one talks about the boy psychology of, of love. Really? So the mama’s boy, this is one of the arch, one of the archetypal energies here. This is the overachieving shadow of the Oedipal child. Now Oedipus that whole story. That’s a little crazy hazy. So Freud was the early psychologist who talked about the Oedipus complex, basically where it comes from Greek mythology, where right, the boy killed his father, ended up marrying his mother. And this is basically play the dynamic where the boy’s too closely tied to his mother and then gets hurt because of that, man, this is, this could create some tension because there’s a lot of men in the world raised by their moms.

Brad Singletary (00:30:23):
And that seems like a normal, healthy thing until we really start to explore what happens in their relationships after, you know, as they become men. So one of the common things here is that there again, two connected to mom, they’re over identifying. All of the immature masculine energies are tied in one way or another to mom. And then they are deficient in experiences with a nurturing and mature man. This is one of the reasons we encourage men to get connected with other men. The womanizer needs men, not women. And so as we talk about this, remember, we’re thinking not if we do these things, but how this shows up in our lives. So to connect to the mom never wants to offend or hurt her, not to worry mom in any way lives to please her acquiesces to mom’s wishes. Always the Don Juan syndrome is a womanizer, kind of obsessed with seducing women. In our day. There’s an excessive use of porn jumping from relationship to relationship. You know, can’t be tied down or satisfied by one woman. What is really looking for is the perfect union with a woman without doing the work. That’s a common theme with in boys, psychology. They want to all the stuff, one of the glory, they’re ambitious. They’re trying to do that. You get things and have good things, but they want to do it without the work. They want to do it without responsibility. It’s all kind of self-seeking. But this guy is caught up in fantasies that are never fulfilled and never satisfied. And a thought from another book that I highly recommend no more. Mr. Nice guy. He talks about nice guys, end up ruining their relationships with women because they unconsciously sabotage it.

Brad Singletary (00:32:08):
So that, and this is a key phrase and it’ll, it’ll make a shiver a little bit. They unconsciously sabotage it so that they can be monogamous to their mother. She’s the only one woman he wants. And it’s not necessarily sexually, of course, and it’s not her herself, but she represents an archetype of the goddess, this infinite love. And so he’s looking for this deep, amazing spiritual union, this constant orgasmic ecstasy state, and he’s hung up because he’s overly connected with mom. So that’s a hard one too. It’s hard. It’s a hard one to introduce, you know, so the guy out there running around with women, he’s just got sleazy things going on in his life. Can’t find a satisfying relationship. What, how do you see this stuff? You guys coming from attachment to mom, for me

Clint Albright (00:33:03):
Personally, being kind of vulnerable here after my dad died, I was having to take care of my mom and I can see how some of these things, some of these aspects still kind of play a role in even my life today, you know, love my mom care for deeply, but you know, I know I’m still kind of too connected. I know it’s had contention on, on relationships in my past. So it’s, it was really interesting reading this and seeing how just the, even just the small fused connection with mom can have reverberating facts down the road.

Brad Singletary (00:33:35):
This is all created accidentally. I don’t wanna, I don’t want to say that, you know, you’re taking care of your mom here, it’s order, maybe the man of the house at that point. And you had to do some of those things and that none of that is pathological on purpose. It just, it, it accidentally creates dynamics that caused trouble later. Now the thoughts on that, the mom’s boy being overly connected.

Jay (00:33:58):
I see it when we talk about not wanting to offend or hurt mom or, or make her worry that then that evolves into your relationships with the, with females, you know, that you get into a relationship and you fall into that. Mr. Nice guy all the time, instead of having an opinion and sometimes, you know, on Friday nights have a plan when she asked, what do you want to do tonight? Instead of saying, I don’t care, what do you want to do? Like, Hey, this is what we’re doing. And that we’re so afraid of offending them, that it kind of, I can see it in my own relationships that it results back to when I always wanted to just please my mom. Yeah.

Clint Albright (00:34:35):
I, I mean, I see that dynamic quite a bit and, and, you know, couples therapy, even individuals therapy where, you know, women will be the pursuer. The man will be the withdrawer because they’re so afraid to hurt or scared, you know? And it just comes from just such an intense place of vulnerability.

Brad Singletary (00:34:52):
This is powerful stuff, man. This is, these are deep, deep things that I think most men can recognize. Again, we’re not talking about if this is going on with you, but in what ways, the other side of this, the passive shadow here on the, this is the love axis. The passive side is the dreamer. And it’s interesting because I, I would probably have described myself in the past as a dreamer. But when I read this definition, so this is the underachieving shadow of the Oedipal child. This person is aloof. They’d rather be alone in their head to often kind of have their head in the clouds. Their relationships are with intangible things. Their relationships are with ideas and dreams and fantasies and, and really not grounded in reality. Or they’re not connected, no social skills. I hear this from guys all the time, you know, Oh, I’m socially awkward and I don’t want to be around people. I think this is a quote directly from the book. It says his depression is tied to the grandiosity in seeking to possess the mother. He finds it hard to do things because he’s too busy, dreaming and fantasizing of things he doesn’t want to work for to have. So the dreamer is a passive, you know, underachieving boy immature version of the lover. What does that look like? The dreamer, when I,

Jay (00:36:16):
I hear what you’re saying, it, it reminds me kind of something that’s come to light recently is it’s, it’s in cell violent extremists and that they classify them as in voluntarily celibate. And they, they view women as the enemy. And we’ve seen Canada just recently had an, an event where that was someone who had committed some violence. And it’s something new that we’re seeing that these people they, I think they would fall into this dreamer category. Yeah. It’s called incell violent extremists. And so basically they it’s basically your loser and your loners that haven’t had any relationships with females. They can’t get laid pretty much. And they’re, they classify themselves as in voluntarily celebrate. It’s not by choice. It’s just that women are the enemy now.

Brad Singletary (00:37:12):
Oh, I that’s the that’s where I got hung up with the involuntary part. So yeah, in the, in the, on the mature side of this, this is parallel with the impotent lover. Yeah. So the guy who can’t, he doesn’t know what to do, how to do, can’t make the connection, doesn’t know how to read the vibes and, you know take care of business, whether we’re talking sexually or in the relationship dynamics itself. So, wow. Okay. comedic note reminds me of step-brothers or seminary, welfare just aloof, just goofy living in their own dream in the dinosaur. No idea, kind of what’s going on in that, in the, in the realm with women or whatever, maybe it’s great. All right. So the next axis here is the grand standard bully, which is the active overachieving shadow of the hero grand standard bully.

Brad Singletary (00:38:09):
Man. I have images that come directly to mind on this. So this is a person that demands respect. They try to impress people. They get revenge when people don’t honor them arrogant kind of inflated sense of their own self-importance they take unnecessary risks. So they want to look heroic. But it’s all grandstanding. They’re all just trying to look cool. Maybe this is where road rage comes from. The people they’re superior that lash out when people don’t cater to their needs. Really, this is an insecure coward who hides his insecurities and he lacks the confidence to incorporate feminine energy. I really, this was fascinating to me. He lacks the confidence to incorporate feminine energy. And let me just say, each of you have some of those things, okay. You’re you’re men and you, you do man, but you have some sensitivities, you have some emotional intelligence.

Brad Singletary (00:39:08):
And what you lack in that, I know that you’re actively working on those things and you want to do that. And that’s, maybe we’re talking about incorporating the feminine energy. So this grand standard bully, he’s talking about sissy stuff, he’s talking about, that’s for girls, he’s talking about, you know, he rejects any of the feminine, especially in himself. It’s just fascinating to me lacks the confidence to incorporate feminine energy. So a lot of our listeners, you know, they, these are sort of anti-feminist and whatever, and they there’s. So many of these guys kind of have some issues with women in general, or feel that they’re superior, but what do you think of that lacks the confidence to incorporate feminine energy?

Clint Albright (00:39:50):
I mean, it kind of reminds me of just going back to, was it you know, the issues with mamas boy, not being able to value that, that part, the emotional part, you know, watching a good movie and being able to cry to it. Right. Like toy story

Brad Singletary (00:40:05):
Serious. Yeah. They’re hiding from it, their own emotion. Yeah.

Clint Albright (00:40:08):
And just see it as just pure weakness. Right.

Jim (00:40:11):
That for me took a while to, to understand when my father passed away, it took me a long time to actually grieve and, and shed tears for that. Like, you know, he taught me to tough it out and pick yourself up and, you know, just spit on it and keep going, you know, just, I had a lot of that for, for a long time. It wasn’t really, until the last 10, 15 years I cried at, you know, dog movie or grieved for him cat.

Brad Singletary (00:40:39):
So on on YouTube, I’ve tried those. So

Jim (00:40:44):
It’s tough. And like today’s society the way, you know, some old school men teach up and coming children, you know, they’re not really a good role model to have that feminine side in them, you know, to understand that it’s okay to have that in you and still be masculine.

Brad Singletary (00:41:00):
My, so my two little boys I’ve talked about a lot tonight. They’re, you know, I catch myself sometimes saying like, don’t cry and whatever, and then I correct it. And my, my, my words now my, my little phrase there is just it’s okay to cry, but use your words to, I want them to cry, but tell me what’s going on. Tell me what you’re feeling. It was named this. Are you frustrated? You know, is this, are you angry about something? Another thought you were talking about being afraid to cry? I can’t tell you how many men I’ve worked with. Who’ve walked away from jobs. Relationships they’ve walked away from things because they were afraid to cry. They would lie in a situation. It would lie. Why do they lie? Because they know if they told the truth, they might cry. That’s what they’re really afraid of and not afraid to get in their balls. Busted. They’re afraid of showing emotion. Anyway. One of the biggest problems with men out there, I think,

Jay (00:41:46):
Yeah. I, I think they, when they show that, that feminine side or they cry, they see it as a sign of weakness and they don’t want to portray that to, to anybody else. And so, I mean, like you’re talking about, it took you a long time to realize that it was okay to do that. I guess I, I feel fortunate. I grew up in a household where I had a dad who, you know, he was a leader and a coach and had that warrior mindset. But at the same time at home, he would cry during a movie. And he was okay with that. Yeah.

Brad Singletary (00:42:16):
It’s my favorite thing to do, actually. That’s all that surprised me. It’s how evolved I am.

Clint Albright (00:42:22):
I knew he had it out. I knew it. You feel the emotion, you get it out. And you’re able to kind of reset yourself and move on. You’re, you’re kind of releasing that stored up, pent up, just gunk. That’s just sitting in your brain and your body. And you know, like, like you said, I I’m grateful that I had a dad to also be able to show me that, Hey, it’s okay to cry. You know, when, when I can remember being seven years old and camping and got a huge stick stuck in my leg, I fell. And he was like, it’s all right. You know, cry. We’re going to go take it out. It was very supportive the whole way. And did it made me feel like I was anything less than like, he viewed me as his son. I viewed him as my dad and he’s there to take care of me. Wow.

Brad Singletary (00:43:06):
That’s man. That’s it gives me goosebumps. That’s exactly how it ought to be. I think so the grand standard bully, only people like that. Any pictures come to mind? Any, I mean, I guess I’ll say it. I, I, I think that a recent four years in the American landscape of politics showed us maybe a grand standard bully. And this is not in anything about political it’s about personality. You know, I don’t care what he’s policies are. That dude was a grand standard bully and demanded respect, tried to impress people would get upset, frustrated, talk down to people and things like that. Maybe there were, there are plenty of good things there. It’s not about his political record, but just as a man, if he, when he was on the show felt the same way the TV show that he was on.

Jay (00:44:00):
Yeah. I don’t think it has anything to do with your political affiliation at all, but it was blatantly obvious that he would lash out at people who didn’t cater to him, you know, through his Twitter or through press conferences, he would mock people and like his policies or not. I mean, it’s hard to shy away from that.

Brad Singletary (00:44:20):
Remember, we’re swaying, not if we demonstrate these things, but how we do it. So that, that goes for other men too. All right. Let’s talk about the coward. This is the passive shadow, the hero. This is a guy that avoids confrontation can’t stand up for himself. Whether verbally, psychologically, physically, he believes it’s bigger. You know, he’s a bigger man for walking away from something, even when it should, when he should fight, maybe he hates that he’s a coward, a little bit of a pushover doormat can’t make decisions for himself. Doesn’t really want to wear the pants in a relationship. Thoughts on the couch.

Jim (00:44:59):
That’s the guy who was eventually just gonna erupt like the volcano, you know, he’s holding all this stuff and he’s avoiding it. He’s not confronting it. And just one day just gets pent up and it explodes. And it’s not good either that way, because you can ruin a relationship really quick. And that one, that one moment, because you haven’t been, you know, addressing your passive issues for however long.

Brad Singletary (00:45:26):
Yeah. So you’re passive, passive, passive, just swallow it, bury it, sweep it under the rug. And then eventually that turns into aggression, evil, awful, kind of unhealthy aggression, the coward. So what are some examples of boys pretending to be men? So these are men walking around acting like boys. What do you see? How do you see, we’re talking about boys psychology and the difference. A lot of grown men out there that look grown, they’ve got muscles, they got a truck. They, you know, they’re doing man things, but they are behaving out of boy psychology. Some examples of that,

Jim (00:46:01):
Seeing that all over the place. Yep. Guys who bragging to others, what they have or what they know. They think they’re far superior than people. They work with their friends. You know, they believe that their worth is, is more valuable than others. It just, they can’t show humility. They can’t stay humble. You know, just, I’m better than you.

Brad Singletary (00:46:24):
You know, it’s a funny thing to me to see. And I’ve probably been a part of this before, but like walking past a dude in a store who like looks at you too on your, like what, you know, what’s up, you know, you want to F like, you want to fight, like you were in the mall, I’m just walking past, you know, or, or somebody sees you checking out their girlfriend or their, you know, and they become enraged because you just looked over and glanced. And somehow they feel threatened by that.

Jim (00:46:49):
Don’t, don’t have a bunch of tattoos and I’m staring at you and you’re going to get mad at me. You know? Like, I’m just checking out, bro. You want to go outside? You got a nice car, you got cool tattoos. I just want to check it out. Just checking you out. Your girl looks good. I’m just checking it out.

Clint Albright (00:47:01):
And I would see this all back when I was working at the day pools down on the strip, you would see this, this arrogance all the time, like, Oh, my self worth is tied to how many zeros I have on my bank account, not to how I treat people. And I remember this one guy gave me five grand and he’s like, go get some girls for me. And I’m like, that’s kind of not my character. I will give it to the guy who can do that. But you just see that, that sense of hubris. So you’re a pimp. Yeah. You’re

Brad Singletary (00:47:30):
Literally,

Brad Singletary (00:47:32):
We got pimp pimp, Clint, Clint, the pimp. Sorry, go ahead. Hubris. I saw that word a few times a book. I don’t even know what it means. Talk to me. It’s just,

Clint Albright (00:47:42):
It kind of goes in grandiosity. Just this kind of inflated sense of self that they’re bigger and better than everything, you know, you see, I kind of definitely a down, if you worked anywhere on the strip, people come in with this phony persona of who they are. And I would see that all the time, especially working in the clubs and day clubs of just men who were the at Hardy shirts and the true religion jeans and just being totally not themselves. So yeah, they’re wearing a costume almost.

Brad Singletary (00:48:14):
Yeah. The pride and round in a hero know, hiding their vulnerabilities. Yeah. I made this look like a bad, even though I’m not, I’m totally not lots of insecurity. Let me show, let me put on the uniform of a bad-ass what I think is that yeah, totally fraudulent, right? Yeah. I think real men see through that real women see, through that 10 years later,

Jim (00:48:39):
10 years later, personal experience, I also,

Jay (00:48:45):
They get it is the, you know, the men that are walking around, always with a victim mentality, you know, they’re, they’re the ones that, Oh, the girlfriend broke up with them or they can’t get a girlfriend because they’re snobs. Or they stopped going to the gym because their workout partner moved away. It’s like, they don’t take any responsibility. They’re always the victim for it.

Brad Singletary (00:49:04):
It’s the stupid governor, you know, it’s the, it’s, it’s Corona. It’s everything is some external factor, right?

Clint Albright (00:49:12):
Yeah. They’re just, they’re unable to take responsibility for any of their own actions.

Brad Singletary (00:49:17):
So the structure of the, these archetypal energies basically picture a triangle. The top of the triangle, the peak is the archetype in its fullness. This is a really awesome, integrated and consciously expressed version of that thing. So we’ll post a graphic on that in the bottom half as a shadow. So each corner of the triangle is the positive and the negative side of the shadow. It’s very effective. I don’t know I’m I like shapes. I like you know, imagery that, to teach me things through a framework like that, we’re going to quickly overview the archetypal energies for men really fast. Something interesting about this. We’re going to do a whole episode on each one of these. It’s interesting to know that none of these things can be done alone. Even Kings had advisors, they had a tribe, the Kings court, it was often called as a describe their council, their household, the King’s court traveled with the King and wherever he went, he would seek advice from the wise men of his court, which would include, you know, relatives, barons, Lords, leaders of churches, you know, bishops and so forth.

Brad Singletary (00:50:24):
Warriors are obviously not alone. While you can fight a battle on your own, you’re a better, stronger warrior. If you’re not doing it alone, magicians in order to be a true magician, you basically are having to teach that to others. And the lover. You can’t, you can’t really love if you’re trying to do it alone. I guess some people do a little, do a little loving alone, but to live these things in the fullness, you can’t do any of these things alone. So we need men. We need people gotta get connected. All right. Quick description of the King King is a leader. This one’s about leadership. Let’s go. You guys just throw in some things here for me. What does the King do? Was he like,

Jim (00:51:01):
He’s honorable, honorable.

Brad Singletary (00:51:03):
He’s the benevolent King. You know, he’s a giver. He’s not a dictator is guided by core values. Yeah. He’s got some values. He’s got some integrity.

Clint Albright (00:51:12):
He’s able to see many perspectives that help guide them knowing to the empowerment of self-regulation.

Speaker 7 (00:51:17):
Yeah. Wow.

Brad Singletary (00:51:19):
That was deep. Deep. Do it again.

Clint Albright (00:51:22):
He’s able to see many perspectives and help guide the unknowing, like the people to empowerment and self-regulation

Brad Singletary (00:51:28):
Tons of cool stuff there. He’s got vision. He empowers people so that they can self-regulate. That’s pretty cool. One thing I, I heard in an audio or something outside of this, but related about King energy is that he has compassion. If he doesn’t have compassion, he’s a tyrant. You can be a good leader. You can make things happen. You can get done. But if you don’t have compassion, if you’re, if you’re not a lover also, you’re not a good King. How about the warrior? What’s a warrior like? Well, he fights, Oh yeah,

Brad Singletary (00:52:02):
He fights. But he doesn’t just fight for himself. You know, he’s not out for himself. He’s a little bit detached maybe from his feelings. So he can be tough. He’s tough. But he’s usually fighting for a cause he’s fighting for other people. He’s fighting for something sacred. Maybe he’s fighting for, to protect others. You know, he’s fighting for a lot of integrity. Yeah. He’s got integrity.

Clint Albright (00:52:24):
I think it going on with that, it with integrity is just he’s with his morals and values. Like if you think of a samurai, you know, he he’s going to go out and he knows who he needs to attack, but he’s not going to attack the children or, or the women know he has a moral compass that kind of keeps him engaged so that he doesn’t go too far off left or too far off. Right.

Brad Singletary (00:52:43):
Yeah. Very disciplined. He’s fighting with the purpose.

Clint Albright (00:52:48):
Decisive will skillful.

Brad Singletary (00:52:49):
You mentioned earlier that talking about being led by emotion, he’s not dragged around by his own emotions. He really keeps that stuff in check. Yeah.

Clint Albright (00:52:57):
Yeah. He doesn’t think too much. That’s one of the things I wrote in the book is he only thinks as you know, on the battlefield, but he doesn’t get too wrapped up into his own emotional thoughts. Like he’s he recognizes them that they’re there, but he doesn’t go on the over intensifying thoughts. Like he’s not making it personal. Yeah.

Jim (00:53:16):
Not almost business. Like, yeah.

Brad Singletary (00:53:19):
I like too, that it talks about, he knows his limitations and he considers his mortality. That’s something really cool out there. And some of the stoic stuff about memento, Mori, remember you could die. And that’s some of the warrior, does he consider that? So he trains, he trains for it. He’s in good shape. He knows how to use tools and weapons. And those in our day may not be guns and cannons. They may be electronic means. He knows how to read. He knows how to find tools and get help, get his little army together. And then the magician has special knowledge. The magician is he’s, he’s good at technical things. He’s good at science. He’s good at math. He understands the stars and he just got special knowledge, I think is the best way to put that it can be any form, any career or any type of learning, but he also takes people under his wing. He has apprentices. He has people that he guides he’s the, the ritual elder. I love that term in the, in the book there he’s the ritual elder. He puts somebody else in position to do the things that he can do and learn what he learned, what he’s learned. Yeah. He has a passion for teaching. Sure.

Clint Albright (00:54:30):
Well, one thing I thought was cool out of the book is he’s able to kind of challenge the King’s arrogance. And he’s kind of like the detector. He’s, he’s wise his awareness and insight, but also has an understanding of the unknown and the unconscious of the underlying deeper energies that are at play. So he’s able to give perspective, he’s able to understand the complexity of how madness the world is, but he’s able to find that balance and teach others to kind of regulate their own energies.

Brad Singletary (00:55:00):
Love it. A lot of spirituality stuff that seemed to go along with the magician too, you know, he’s just connected to, I don’t know, planets and all kinds of cool things like that. How about the lover? Quick description of the level

Jim (00:55:13):
Is empathy, empathetic, caring, compassionate.

Brad Singletary (00:55:18):
I love it. Talking about libido and libido. We normally think of as just sex drive, but really that’s life, energy, passion for life. You know, he loves music, good cigars. He he’s, he sees the colors of the world. You know, he’s running around. I don’t know, looking at the world like an artist, like a photographer, enjoys a sunrise. Yeah. He he’s, he’s seeing beauty and he loves not just people, not just a lover of women, but he can, you know, he knows what he’s doing over there too, but maybe he can dance. Maybe he can be silly. Maybe he can have fun.

Clint Albright (00:55:53):
Kind of reminds me of like, kind of letting your childlike self come out and play. You know, it’s, it’s this very raw, honest part of you that like you said, as empathetic to the world around him, he understands the colors. He understands how people feel and how to either prop them up or calm them down. So intuitive. Yeah. He, he seems to be in tune and he just didn’t enjoy all of life’s pleasures.

Brad Singletary (00:56:19):
So you guys, we’re gonna wrap this one up, just let’s talk about how awareness these things can help men be strong. And that’s our whole purpose here is to lift guys up and, you know, give them tools and things point them in the right direction. And this book is one awesome resource that I’ve found. It’s really kind of, kind of lit me up. Most of my clients are probably sick of hearing me talk about this. The men that I work with, I’ve even shared this with women who were trying to understand their, their men and like, Oh, he’s, he’s in the weakling energy. You know, he’s, he’s, he’s being the sadist or he’s doing the, you know, he’s doing the high chair tyrant thing right now. And it just gives some language. It’s a little framework. It’s a nice visual framework for understanding where dudes are coming from and where they need to, what they need to do. And instead, give us a quick little, little summary, I guess you guys of how this can help dudes be better.

Jim (00:57:11):
Yeah. I feel like it helped me recognize and identify my past traumas and then start to live in the present moment and reacting beneficially to myself and others around me. You know, it’s helping me recognize my emotions out to act on them accordingly and turn a negative situation into a positive situation rather than, you know, so I’m just not, I’m living in the present. I’m not focusing on that, that, that negativity I’m recognize my emotions. And I’m just trying to address them in a positive manner. It’s okay to cry, Jim, we’re here for you, bro. Thanks brother. Appreciate you,

Brad Singletary (00:57:49):
Jay. Clint, why is this, why could this be helpful for men? Well, it kind of like

Jay (00:57:53):
What Jim’s talking about is just being fully aware of those. I know sometimes knowing my own life and ask why he acting like a child. Sometimes we don’t understand it. So know knowing all of these different archetypes in the shadows, as you can kind of understand in your own behavior, why you’re acting that way and then get yourself corrected. And then also just, you know, when you see others acting in those ways, understanding what motivation that comes from.

Jim (00:58:21):
Awesome.

Clint Albright (00:58:23):
You know, what I got out of it was just, you know, it’s, it’s understanding the deeper part of our souls. You know, it’s scary, it’s dreadful, like seeing that rawness that we don’t want to touch that emotional hot plate, you know, for us men to be really authentic to ourselves can really elicit our own insecurities and negative thoughts, judgments, however, just even acknowledging or validating our own struggles with the various art, these archetypes, you know, we can use these as a tool for growth. We can kind of visualize like when you see the triangles to see where, where are we sitting on the pendulum? Am I the tyrant or, or what can I do to maybe loosen that up a little bit and be a little bit more present? Like you were saying,

Jim (00:59:04):
I think too, Brad, with, with recognizing these archetypes within ourselves, then it helps us to give to the other men around us. And for me, I think that’s the most beneficial part is I can start recognizing another men, not that I’m skilled or trained or professional on it, but I do recognize it and you know, I can help

Jim (00:59:22):
Calm them down or bring them to the present moment or stop having them worry about the future and, you know, creating a lot of anxiety and stress for themselves.

Brad Singletary (00:59:30):
Dude, how many men do you supervise or are you in contact with, on a regular basis or have some leads?

Jim (00:59:36):
I mean, at the given moment, it’s about 50, but it can range from 20 to the most has been about 200.

Brad Singletary (00:59:44):
So Jay you’ve done leadership things as well. You got men around you. What I want to say is just that you guys, who aren’t professionals probably have more influence in the world of men than even Clinton. I mean, I have a see 40 or 50 people a week. It would say half. Those are guys, you know, have those are men maybe 10 or young men. And so I have the ability to influence, you know, 30 men a week. You talking about 200, you talking about 50 to 200 people, you got people all around, you are looking at you and watching you. There’s also young men in your life, young adult men or teenage boys. Yeah, I, I love what you’re saying, Jim. This is not only for our own awareness, but part of our growth is helping others along the same path. We’re gonna wrap this one up. You guys, thank you for being here. This is part one of a six part series. We appreciate you being with us and as always, no excuses, Alpha Up.

Brad Singletary (00:00:06):
We live in troubled times. If there ever was a time for men to step up and be leaders, it is right now while the coronavirus may not be affecting you and those around you directly, yet it will. Estimates are that one in 10 Americans will get the virus. You will likely not die from this illness they say, but the impact has already begun in terms of anxiety and worry. We see this in the grocery shortage. It is affecting the economy. People are losing their jobs and your wives and children need your strength. Today we’ll be discussing how you can be a man of strength when everything is falling apart.

Brad Singletary (00:01:19):
Welcome back you guys. Brad Singletary here. I’m here with my friend and mentor, Mike spurge and taco Mike, welcome back, Mike. Oh dude, you flatter me. Thank you. Good to be here. This is a, so right now we’re in the midst of this torrent of Irish thing and we’re keeping our social distance, whatever. That’s right. Six to six seats, 60 feet apart. It’s rough. I do want to get closer. Trust me. God. So before we start today, I want, we wanted to talk about, you know, how to be a man in difficult times, but just wanted to check in with you. It’s been a few months since we’ve recorded and published a show. So tell us where you been. What have you been doing, sir?

Mike Spurgin (00:01:54):
It is. There’s been a lot of water under these bridges since we’ve last talked. There’s a lot of new things on both sides. I think that’s been going on. So maybe, I don’t know. We’ll start with, so I’m out of my job and I left it. Wait, how long has it been? Six months. Hello Brad. How long has it been since we’ve done these? Five months? It was like October last time we recorded. Okay. I think it was a little bit before that I bounced and started doing my own thing. I’ve got a couple of side hustles that, that seem to be paying the bills and working out good selling some I do some motorcycle parts and take some guys on the Baja trips and then just have some other little side projects that are working out. Things at home seem to be really good.

Mike Spurgin (00:02:38):
Let’s see what else? You know, I think maybe I’m just super happy and super stoked to be. I think finding and looking for and finding and then trying to pursue things that make me super calm and super happy. That’s sort of like my objective and agenda for like what I do for work. I, I have this little mindset and it seems to be working out that if I do the next most right thing and the thing that really like sparks me in and gets me going, then the money will just sort of like trickle along and follow along. So I’m not, I’m not doing anything specifically pursuing money as the objective. I’m doing things to do the next right thing. And then the money just is as a natural result, sort of an outflow. It’s like, it’s like water flowing out of a rock. And, and I’m, and I’m grateful and happy for it and to receive it, but I’m not pursuing that specific as the end goal. It’s just a nice outflow from it. So that’s sort of attitude and mindset seems to be working out for me and I’m going to continue doing it that way until I feel some reason to, to change that. But I don’t think I will. What about you dude? What’s new with you?

Brad Singletary (00:03:45):
These are good for me, man. My marriage is stronger than ever. My kids are healthy. I feel blessed. I’m just a very eager to be back in the saddle here with the alpha corn show. You got a new office, this cool office? Yeah, that’s new. So I do men’s groups here. That’s part of my, my clinical practice and also something that we’re going to introduce in the future with alpha Corum, some men’s kind of mastermind groups and so forth. So I needed a bigger space. How’s it called? Giant. Yeah, I’ll post some pictures. I my, my boys and I built these shelves and are in my garage and picked out all the artwork and just tried to make it look cool in here. I live here it seems like so feeling good about things man. Life is good. I dropped about 20 pounds at the end of last year and a feeling

Mike Spurgin (00:04:29):
You look cute. I like the metal legs on this table.

Brad Singletary (00:04:33):
I bought those from a guy in New York. There was probably people here who could have done it but I bought this from this guy shipped them to me. I gave him the specs cause I want it to line up over here and just wanting to have the rustic

Mike Spurgin (00:04:45):
Metal look. It looks, it looks good. It looks kind of manly. This is, I know you probably have women clients that come in here but this is like kind of like a studly looking joint with the Buffalo on the wall and the like whiskey bottle kind of looking things over there. That’s cologne bottles. I don’t have whiskey in there and we’ll drink the cologne later. I’ve been to one of your men’s groups and it was a, it was a very cool experience where, you know, I think there were like seven or eight dudes in here and it was really free flowing. I do as you know, I do a lot of 12 step stuff and guys sometimes don’t bring sort of themselves to the table. They hold back their reserve and you can, you can sense that. I think these guys all were bringing their full selves into this little discussion that we had and I think that this is a, a cool room to do it and I think you’ve got a good thing going here.

Brad Singletary (00:05:36):
Well Mike came to that group when he told part of his story and I tried to record that, but the awesome amateur sound technician, I am, I messed that up. I had the microphone plugged into the earphone and put it in the output or whatever. Fast afterwards. I have a few minutes I recorded on a, on my phone. So I’m going to post that at some point. Really good stuff that you about things you’d learn. So let’s get into our topic today. So we’ve got the Corona virus going on and it really makes us ask the question, what do we need to be? I think there’s a lot of fear out there. Most of my sessions last week probably saw 40 45 people last week and everyone began talking about this and where they stand with it. Most of the sessions, the entire visit last week was about what’s going on for them emotionally and at home and what’s happening with their job and just really dealing with the panic of all this.

Brad Singletary (00:06:29):
So the questions that we want to talk about today are the things that exist in the average guy that may create challenges for him. What’s maybe weak or what are some of the things that may make him struggle in situations like this? What are the principles that men can govern themselves by in a time like this? What are some of the things that men need to be doing to pervert, preserve their own strength and help their families? And how can men be supportive of others within their own families, other dudes and to the larger community. So I guess I just want to start with some of the things that I think men are already dealing with that show up at a time like this. I believe that change reveals weakness. Change also reveals strength. But one of the weaknesses that I find is I’ve worked with men this week and I looking forward to hear what you have to say about this too, is just fear.

Brad Singletary (00:07:29):
Men are afraid of losing something. They’re afraid of financial loss. They’re afraid of how this could affect their own family. Surprisingly not too many people seem to be worried about the health aspects of it, but just the economy and how this is gonna play out for them and their careers and you know, the F the finances, how are they going to pay their rent? So forth. Any thoughts on, on that type of fear that you are hearing from people? So you’re saying then that the guys that come in are the clients that you have. Everybody has this as a topic. Everybody brings us up. The session sort revolves around, this is a master under Eliza under everything. Yeah. Whatever issue we had been working on, that all kinda got put aside and probably 75% of what I talked about with them this week was what’s going on right now.

Brad Singletary (00:08:19):
Yeah. And the main concern was like financial concerns that they’re having. Yeah. I think some people are afraid of like, you know, the government, there’s all these conspiracy theories and just what does this mean in the bigger picture, on the grander scale, on the world stage, what’s happening? And there’s a lot of lot of fear out there about things that people can’t control. And you know, I guess I’m just trying to direct them back to the things that they do have influence over, which is their own choices and actions and their attitudes at home and so forth. So, so when men are expressing these fears, are they in panic? Are they in like full free fall or are they just saying that, you know, I’ve got sleepless night over some of these worries. Yes. Some were talking about, you know, not being able to sleep or they’ve began drinking again.

Brad Singletary (00:09:04):
There’s, you know, they’ve kind of fallen back into some of their poor coping strategies and so forth. They’re they’re, you know, they’re irritable and they’re just having, there’s just tension so it shows up in a lot of different ways. But a lot of that really I think is just about their doubt, their doubt about, you know, their own ability to stand up and kind of be the man and they’re just very mistrusting of what they’re hearing in the news or, you know, th th either either thinking that things are under-reported or over-exaggerated in some way. And so they’re, you know, maybe doubting the, the political decisions about closing things. Why do we have to close the school? Some guys are kind of doing the tough guy act kind of saying, this is, you know, this is this is ridiculous and, you know, I’m just gonna carry on with my life and I’ll go to the store if I want to.

Brad Singletary (00:09:55):
And just it’s, it’s a little bit ridiculous what I’ve, what I’ve seen and I think that’s why I wanted to do this show. There’s plenty of reports and news things out there and plenty of people talking about this. And as I left today, I told my wife what we were talking about. She said, Oh, capitalizing on coronavirus. Huh? So, no, I just think that our audience is you know, they need to hear from us. It’s been so long, number one, but also what does it mean to be an alpha at a time like this?

Mike Spurgin (00:10:24):
You know, I had a conversation with a guy the other day and he was kind of rabbit hauling some of these conspiracy theories that maybe, just a quick thought on that. I think that there’s this strange threat of narcissism that that happens when somebody falls down the black hole of these conspiracy theories and, and, and there’s a little bit of like pride and arrogance that creeps into that in a weird way.

Mike Spurgin (00:10:43):
That’s sort of like, I know more, I have it figured out. I’ve got an intellectual advantage over some other things, some government, some whatever. I know more or I’ve cracked that code, like I understand at a deeper level, at a more profound level than anyone else. And here’s what I, here’s, let me, let me give you, let me like take a bunch of your time and then fill it with this very sacred knowledge that I’ve been able to like gather and, and, and through sleepless nights and like endless hours of just angry sort of like clinch job, you know, self-talk. Like I figured this out in the meantime, think of all the time that that dude has not spent time preparing himself, calming himself, sharpening his blade, getting himself ready to be very useful. Cause in my opinion and in my experience, the dude who has the most to say has the least to give. Interesting. So the dudes that I often meet up with or talk with or encounter who have

Mike Spurgin (00:11:54):
The best insights and the most, you know, they’ve made the biggest discoveries that everybody else needs to hear about often. Not always, but often those dudes, like they got nothing. They got, they got nothing to help me with. They’ve got nothing to help other people with unless you’re talking about consuming time. So if that’s the metric, then they’ve got plenty of that that bring in a lot of that to the table. But if you’re talking about really useful resources that’s just kind of a void there. So I think that there’s a strange bit of self aggrandizing narcissism that happens with, with fellows who like really deep dive this stuff. And I just think that there’s no purpose to it and there’s nothing to be gained. You can, you can have all kinds of mistrust and doubt about anything. But you know, here’s the bottom line.

Mike Spurgin (00:12:43):
There’s, there’s not one damn thing that you’re going to be able to change really on a, on a, on a huge level. Everything is, everything is, I like to, I like to live my life at the smallest possible level and go out from there rather than backwards. So if you’ve got all these great ideas about how to save the world, then hurry up and become president or King or emperor potentate or prime minister or whatever the hell that is, like get up there and make those changes. But if that’s not your trajectory in life, then don’t stop. It’s just a waste of time, wasted time or your mental energy is, it’s just a real, it’s a fool’s chase. It’s fool’s gold. So, you know, I don’t want to call anybody out. I don’t really want to stomp on your parade. Like, if that’s your hobby, then I hate to take that away from ya.

Mike Spurgin (00:13:29):
But I just wonder how much more useful we could be if we would just really get at the heart of living and serving and abandon all that stuff. I wonder if, you know, part of the speculation is just people trying not to get caught off guard. We’ve been hurt by things in the past, you know? And so I wonder if some of that, just to play devil’s advocate a little bit, I wonder if some of that is just an attempt to not be taken by surprise and so they’re imagining every single possibility, you know, this is a, this is terrorism, you know, this is a, this is a government takeover and the, the, all these crazy ideas and so what maybe people are really trying to do is prevent further pain for themselves, but they’re not really taking any action anyway. Like you say, they’re just talking about it.

Mike Spurgin (00:14:14):
The people that have the most to say are doing the least and it’s taken away from the time and mental energy that you could be, you know, placing towards some kind of action. That’s what I’m, I guess that’s what I’m hearing you say. I think so. That’s a good summary. Did you know you get these guys in here that sort of like runoff and want to want to w how do you counsel them? What do you say to somebody who’s got all kinds of theories about all this stuff?

Brad Singletary (00:14:38):
I talk about the serenity prayer, man. You know, what is it that you, what is it that you have control over and do you have the courage to accept those things that are within your realm of influence and your sphere of influence that’s

Brad Singletary (00:14:52):
You and your home and your family and your words and how you spend your time and your money. And that’s all you need to be focused on, brother. That’s it. All this other stuff. Maybe it’s so maybe you’ve got to figure it out, but what good does that do you, the dishes are in the sink and the kid’s diaper needs changing and there’s stuff that in the garage that you need to be preparing. Let’s get to work.

Mike Spurgin (00:15:14):
I agree with that. I, I like to imagine that, that, that guy who is spun out, you know, we only have so much bandwidth, right? The pipeline of the brain can only process so much and do so much. And if 50 80, 70% is consumed with all this stuff, then that is those are wasted resources as far as I’m concerned. So I would, I would urge somebody who sort of like caught in that spiral to, you know, it’s addictive too. There’s a dopamine hit, there’s a, there’s a nice little piece of dopamine that happens when somebody feels like they’ve really figured something out. It’s the same thing that happens when you have a victory in a strategic game or just some like score at work or make a sale or whatever. That’s all. Just sort of like chasing fields. And I understand that. Like, I’m not, I’m not going to dump on the guy who’s chasing those fields.

Mike Spurgin (00:16:03):
That’s fine. Everyone’s got their own little game, their game, they’re playing, you know, a race they’re running. So no judgment, no value, good or good or bad. Really at the end of the day with all of this, it’s just chasing feels pointless right there. Super pointless. So if somebody can begin to extract themselves out of it, I think they would do themselves and the people around them. A good favor. If the can lack of confidence. What is it about guys you know, we talked about control. I think that that’s a huge generator of fear because this is stuff that’s outside of our control. There’s not a damn thing any of us can do about this. Like locked down. If your work has shut down, if you were going to casino and it’s closed, there’s not one thing you can do about that. How, how does confidence and control sort of like merge into each other? Cause I see that merging. If I don’t have control then that’s going to erode my confidence in cause those are the big things that I can’t control. Then I’m going to maybe lack my ability to deal with the small things. Probably be frustrated. My wife frustrated the kids. I’m frustrated. The bathroom door handle doesn’t open up like it’s supposed to frustrated the garage is too crowded to get get. I can’t find what I’m looking for. Like that would just compound into frustration. Are you seeing that happen?

Brad Singletary (00:17:28):
Yeah, for sure. People are so caught up in the big ideas and the, you know, the big abstract stuff that’s out there, the big, you know, the conspiracies and whatever and they’re not focused on, they’re not engaged in the present. And that’s, that’s what an alpha does. He’s in, he lives in the present. I think he’s aware of the bigger picture, but he’s living in the present and he’s engaged with right now he sees happening around

Mike Spurgin (00:17:50):
Him. He sees what’s within his power and he takes control and takes action on that in the here and now. So this like desire to have control over the, the, the huge areas of life. I think we both agree that’s wasted time because then there’s dirty dishes in the sink. The kids want to go out inside and play. His wife needs a break. She needs the kids to be gone for a little bit. He probably would, would be better off being consumed with that sort of stuff. Yeah. Consume yourself with the here and now. Okay. so a couple of thoughts that I had about, about this particular one was this was kind of funny when I, when I came up with this, the earth doesn’t give a shit about us and this is kind of evidence of that. And it happens when there’s a tornado or a hurricane or an earthquake or whatever.

Mike Spurgin (00:18:40):
Like the earth doesn’t care that we live on it and it doesn’t give a damn about what we do up here on top of it. It doesn’t. And so when something like this happens, it’s sort of like piercing this bubble of this thought that we’re special. And I think a lot of us individually have that feeling of like, I’m special that my life is special, my life has meaning. Now listen, this sounds like I’m devaluing or I’m diminishing the individual worth of each person. I’m not doing that. I’m just talking on like this generic sort of abstract where each one of us looks at our lives and our place in our house as if it’s some carved out little palace and it’s, and it’s very special and very unique. And you know, wind, wind con flies around it and yeah, it gets rained on, it gets wet.

Mike Spurgin (00:19:28):
But like we’re super, I’m super special. I am this one unique little entity and all of the chaos of the universe and somehow I’m just going to make it through. And that’s probably this mindset that’s maybe happened for the last, I don’t know, many, many years, especially if you’re a millennial or maybe like you and I are. We’re in our forties. There haven’t been any real disasters or calamities in my lifetime. There have been no Wars. There has been nothing that has upset the natural balance. Maybe like the gas crunch, but I was a kid. When was that? In the 70s I mean there’s nine 11. I mean there’s 11 there’s been some blips for sure. There’s been some blips, but like this to my mind is probably one of the, if not the biggest, like sort of like, you know, big things that have come along.

Mike Spurgin (00:20:15):
And so if I am super again think about like things in terms of narcissistic programming, if I believe that I’m super special, then my world’s going to be rocked by this. The fact that maybe like my, my work clothes, these things can tend to like de stabilize and upset people in a huge way. And so the takeaway that I sort of like look at this as like dirt doesn’t care about us. It kinda doesn’t even want us on it. And so when one of these things happen, it just is sort of like this humbling equalizing thing that says like, Hey rich guy, you’re not that special. And Hey, super strong dude with the muscles and the, the really white teeth and the, the no tan lines, you ain’t that you ain’t that big of a thing. Like your job’s in a shutdown and put you on the street and the world doesn’t care.

Mike Spurgin (00:21:03):
It doesn’t care about if your name’s on the side of a building, it doesn’t give a crap about any of that. It doesn’t really want us on it. Oh, so true. So these, this thing and things like it kind of handle this humbling effect. I think it’s good for us. I think it’s good for all of us. Me too. It’s good for me to just like kind of think about that. And then, you know, the other thing, and we kind of talked about it already, is this loss of control. You know, we live in the United States and Brad, you and I, like we’re white dudes. We’re white males in the United States of America. We’re the most powerful fricking dudes who have ever walked the planet. Like we, you and I can, can control more resources at our fingertips. We would be gods if we could trans, if we could get in a time machine and take everything that we have, power and authority over our vehicles and guns and whatever, a five gallon can of gas.

Mike Spurgin (00:21:56):
If we took, you know, just a handful of things back a hundred years, like straight up, we would be gods because of the power that we have. So that’s interesting. So some of that’s kind of, I dunno if it’s being taken away, but some of it’s being muted a little bit and that’s probably freaking some people out and that’s okay. That’s natural. It’s probably normal. It’s okay. But a lot of us probably are, are kind of losing our ass because we just don’t feel like the ground is under us. We feel like some of it’s being taken away from us a little bit.

Brad Singletary (00:22:32):
Yeah, you don’t have toilet paper and water. You don’t feel like much like a God when you have that stuff going. That’s so crazy that people are doing that. I, I haven’t spent any time trying to explore that, but do you know why people do that?

Mike Spurgin (00:22:44):
No idea. I, I don’t know why toilet paper became the thing. I just, it’s the craziest thing ever. I don’t think I want to know. I’m not going to spend any time trying to figure it out, but it is a weird thing. Then I’ll just finish out. So like loss of control, you know, there’s some, some, some of us we were S we so much want control. The illusion of control seems so attractive to us. It, it sort of exposes itself. Like I was thinking about a guy that I was with not too long ago and his food came in it. And again, here’s two white dudes in the United States of America or out in a restaurant, his food comms and whatever he ordered, it wasn’t exactly what he was looking for. His expectation was not met and the dude was like very controlled and very measured and he was pissed and he told him like in no uncertain terms with like a stiff jaw told the waiter like you did a bad thing, you’ve done a bad thing here and the chef, this is a disappointment.

Mike Spurgin (00:23:42):
And then the guy took it back and then the whole time he was consumed at the injustice of like they pry him the wrong food. So now you know, and that also comes out with you like order something on Amazon and it shows up and it’s the wrong color. Sarong size. Oh my God, how do I, why do they know who I am? Or traffic gets reroute or somebody cuts you off or somebody cancels their plans on you or the flight gets changed. And like we know so many people that just can’t deal with that. This experience is probably really good for them. Yeah. It’s probably really, really good for them. Very humbling, very humbling. We’re not that special. We are not that special. The earth doesn’t care that we’re on it. I love that man.

Brad Singletary (00:24:34):
So what are the principles that men can kind of live by at a time like this? What are the things that will help us? Just the idea, the, the, the attitudes, I guess that will help us be our best at a time. Like this. For me, one of them is responsibility and I don’t mean responsibility to go out there and save the world, but to fully be aware of our duty, to provide and protect, you know, we, that that I think is a sacred role, especially for fathers and husbands. So we should first take care of ourselves and our own family. Real men feel a responsibility and they take actions to assist the vulnerable with some of the vulnerable people are in your home. Your wife may be, would not be able to you know, defend herself and the tribe at home if she had to.

Brad Singletary (00:25:28):
Maybe your children couldn’t provide food or take care of necessary things that you might need to be looking after. And so we’ve talked about control already, but to know what you can control and what you can, I just think we should spend zero energy on what we can’t control and just feel a sense of responsibility. Not just for ourselves but for, for others around us. You know, I there were, I’ve used social media a couple of times to find out where others needed some help. Someone needed some some water, nursery water and some like baby formula and things like that. Someone who had lost their job they had a child with special needs. I wasn’t able to get her connected, but I used everything I could to try to help this person find some some childcare for this little girl who was who was actually her granddaughter that she had custody of.

Brad Singletary (00:26:26):
And so I just, I th I think, and that’s not me doing it the right way. I just felt a sense of responsibility for, okay. I know people in North Las Vegas, I know people that may be home. I know some teachers who may be home. I knew some people that may an opportunity, it would be nothing for me to ask, Hey, is anyone available to help this person with that little girl? They are still working, excuse me, the granddaughter. And so responsibility just says that we can do some things. We can’t change the whole trajectory of this thing in the big geopolitical sense or whatever. But we can handle our household, we can handle our own attitude. We can look around us and see if there may be those that we can help. Also, something that, you know, this has created some resourcefulness in, in me and my family for sure.

Brad Singletary (00:27:18):
Just creativity. We’ve made things in the kitchen that we probably never would have attempted in pantry dinners. Yeah, seriously. Yeah. I mean, we were grading potatoes the other day and my wife is, she’s Polish and she said, you know, this calls for some potato pancakes. And it was just like, so this is kind of a comfort food, potato pancakes. But it was a, it allowed us to kind of be creative and I just think we have an opportunity to live life in waves that we may not have had before, you know, conserving water and doing things like that. That just to be a little more mindful of what’s happening in it. Although I don’t want to live in a scarcity mentality. I just want to live in a, in a place of like mindfulness about what’s going on and okay maybe I don’t need to be driving all over town.

Brad Singletary (00:28:10):
Maybe I want to save the gas in my vehicle or whatever. I loved the, I don’t know where this came from. I think it was a wall, world war two thing talked about fix it up, wear it out, make it do or do without, which kinda had to do when times are tough during war. You can do without some of the things that you may have grown accustomed to and live with a little bit simpler life, you know, if you, if your income has is diminished because of all this or your you know, just being stuck at home, be creative, be resourceful, see what you can come up with. And I think that that’s a principle that men can live by. Also for me, reverence. And we’ve talked a little bit about humility and just to be appreciative. You know, I love the, the, the focus.

Brad Singletary (00:29:01):
You see some things through social media. People talk about prayer and just calling on your higher power, seeing how you can serve other people, recognize that we’re connected. And you’d be surprised how little there is, you know, how little contributions can actually make a big difference to other people. And so when we see ourselves connected to other people and just recognize that this could be it, you know, this is probably not the end of the world. I’m not talking about that. But this could be, this could be it for me and maybe I need to have a, a little more humble, kind of reverent, gracious attitude at home with my family. You know, this be my parents who were in their seventies this could be, this could be hard on them. And so if I see myself as connected, more connected to my loved ones and just society as a whole, I think I’m a little more respectful, you know, and I maybe I would honor the, the you know, the council, I guess for us to keep our distance and so forth. And those are just some of the top principles that I think will help us to be the kind of men we need to be during something like this. How about you Mike?

Mike Spurgin (00:30:14):
So I like your wife was making those potato things. So we have this wheat grinder, like it’s a big fricking machine and it’s a got a motor in it and a hopper. And then my wife is very, very thoughtful and responsive about responsible about things like this and sort of having like a pub. We’ll start pantry and reserve food and things like that. We have these can’t number 10 cans, these big cans of wheat, like wheat kernels. And so my son who’s, you know, looking at this as an adventure and he should. And I am too. I think we all are in my house. I think we’re looking at this as a bit of an adventure because it’s new, it’s novel, it’s different. Like this is really sort of turn normal life on its head and that’s, that’s straight up good. It’s, it’s a straight up good thing because it’s shattering all the old like habits and patterns that we were in, which may or may not have like served us.

Mike Spurgin (00:31:07):
And so all of that is sort of like swept away. And so we’re recreating like new schedules. Like everything’s new, everything is kind of like up ended. And, and for that 100%. So we wanted to make some bread. We make bread off, not often, but occasionally. And so w I don’t know who had, who had this idea, but let’s break out that wheat grinder and let’s grind wheat, the wheat beans. I’m not saying that right, but you know what I mean? And we’ll make flour, we’ll make our own flour. And we did. So we brought that thing out and we made it and we probably would not have done that had this have not happened and that’s going to be a fun memory. And so some day we’re going to be on the other side of this and it’s not going to be that far off really.

Mike Spurgin (00:31:48):
And I think that if we are, if we have a mindset of if you have an alpha mindset of leadership and how do we guide our families through this and keep, keep ourselves calm as well as them, then I think all the memories when this thing blows over are going to be good ones. They’re going to be really, really good ones. So you know, some of the thoughts that I have about this exact topic and that question was what are the principles that men can govern themselves by in a time like this? For me, I’ve got a couple. One of them is I think that a man would do well to continue to live a life of discipline, self-discipline. And so I think what that looks like is wake up on time. Get your whatever time you used to get up and go to work.

Mike Spurgin (00:32:24):
Get up at that time unless it’s maybe crazy and you worked overnight hours. But I think if you kept a normal schedule, you know, wake up at six 30 get and get up, get out of bed, get dressed, get dressed for the day. Don’t spend the day in pajamas. Make yourself look as presentable as, as is necessary for the things that you’re going to do that day. If you went to work in a suit, don’t do that. But just, you know, don’t wear pajamas and flip flops all day either. Make yourself presentable, look like you’re ready for whatever. Make the bed set about your day. And if your day doesn’t look anything like it used to. So I work at home now and so my day really doesn’t look any different than it always did. But if I used to go into a job and now I’m going to be at home, what I want to do, I think what I would try to do is structure a day that looked disciplined and organized.

Mike Spurgin (00:33:12):
I think that the, the concept of discipline will also come come through with the, with the guy figuring out and looking at his, his new routine. Like the other thought too is see this thing as a gift. Imagine the whole stole schedule that you used to keep for most of us is being handed back to us. So we used to, you know, couple of days ago, our time was given over to somebody else. Like somebody else owned our time. We went to a job, we rent, we re, you know, if we get a paycheck, we rent ourselves to somebody who trades us money for time. That’s sort of like put on pause right now. And so now time is yours. You get to do whatever you want with your time. Why don’t you rent? Why don’t you sell yourself your time? And so what might that look like?

Mike Spurgin (00:34:01):
That might look like a fluxion your hustle muscle. You might need to figure out if you got to, if you got to generate some dough, I think it’s time to flex your hustle muscle. That might mean you need to make something, sell something, create some value, go out and do some for, do something for somebody and then we’ll trade you either money for that or something else of equal value. This could be the opportunity for dudes to like look at what they’ve been doing and then get fed up with it. I think I think there’s a ton of dudes, I think there’s a ton of dudes who are super pissed and unhappy at this life that whatever that life is that they feel like they’ve gotten themselves locked into. What did you mean what it already was before this happened? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, getting up and trading money for time and, and doing it for some of the, they didn’t give a crap about them and you know, maybe even being involved in work or pursuits that you know, weren’t their own.

Mike Spurgin (00:34:54):
And so what if this is just like a big opportunity to hit this reset button, this master reset button in your life and just clear all that away and stop worrying about that like you were being ha. Well I think this is a huge gift of the universe. A lot of us are pissed. Maybe that energy needs to be flipped. Maybe anybody who’s pissed about what’s happening here really could, could do themselves a big service by looking at it on the opposite and saying, I’ve just been handed maybe the greatest gift of my adult life. An opportunity where for like the next four weeks, nobody really is, nobody’s got their thumb on me. I’m not under anybody’s control. I get to think and choose and do and, and, and create a narrate to myself what it is that I, I want to like revamp myself into. If somebody were to look at this with that sort of mindset and then take each day and, and, and hustle up tangible things, intellectual things regarding whatever kind of their, what their future could look like. A lot of us sit around and we say, Oh, what if I make you, do we make excuses? I do. I’ve done this. I’ve made excuses that I haven’t taken steps in my life because I don’t have the time.

Mike Spurgin (00:36:06):
The university is handy you all the time you need. And so if somebody isn’t sure about what that, what that could look like, then I think you go on a vision quest. I think you figure it out. I think it’s a time to like reset a little bit. Yes. And, and whatever that, whatever you need to do. Just sort of like tap into that. Like get it done, get it done. If you need to go on a hike, if you need to lock yourself in a closet, get a pad and a paper, turn the lights off, close your eyes, open your eyes, sit in the sun, sit in the shade, take a four hour shower. Like I don’t even know what it is for you. You’re gonna have to work that out on your own. But like some of us neglect figuring out who we are and we’ve put that off.

Mike Spurgin (00:36:51):
And so we were living this lives. We’re living a life of, you know, a hamster in a wheel just spinning, spinning, spinning, and it’s not our wheel. And, and, and, and none of it feels like it’s in our control. What if the university just handed you all the control you could ever need in your whole life? It handed you your life for four weeks. I think that’s how long this thing’s going to take. So any one of us who were out there bitching and moaning and complaining that the government is about ready to plant a chip in your forehead or whatever. I think that that is, that is, that is, that is brain power misspent. Yeah. I, I’m not knocking it. I mean, maybe that’s gonna happen. I don’t know. But what I think isn’t going to happen is, is some of us getting our shit together, getting our asses in gear and using this to reset and do you great word that you said, or revamp or revitalize or rebuild or whatever.

Mike Spurgin (00:37:45):
Our own personal lives, our own personal, the trajectory of our lives. It can happen right now. This, this could be the best four weeks of our entire life, of the life of our country, a life of our family. This could be the most amazing time that we’ve ever been handed. And F all the news reports that say we’re all going to die. We’re not all going to die. If those reports that say, you know, the tanks are rolling through, like, I don’t got time, I ain’t got time for, ain’t nobody got time for that. I got time for that. You know, what I need guys should be spending time on is self-reflection goals. Things I want to do, things I want to create, figuring out how to be a better man, how to alpha up if I spent four weeks, if I spent the next four weeks drilling into that, talk to me in a month, come see me in a month and let’s like let’s high five each other. That’s the kind of alpha thing that a guy could do with the next four weeks. If you come to me in four weeks and you have more theories and all you’ve done is right, played video games and watch until mental masturbation. Like if we talk in the last, Hey, what have you been up to bro in four weeks of, you know, video games and, and news reports and internet surfing and black hauling, all that stuff. I don’t know what to say to that. I dunno.

Mike Spurgin (00:39:14):
This is a gift. That’s how I’m seeing it. Let me finish out here. So, you know, to be able to like hang out with our families and our wives for, for this period of time is a huge gift. Like look at, I guess the, I guess the overall mindset is look, every one of these things, everything that’s involved in this, everything that it touches as a gift and I think that has profound power to really like flip switches on and our brains and turn this experience into something that otherwise it would be not, I think it would be great if we were to say thank you for everybody’s still working. Like even grocery store clerks and the delivery drivers. These are people who are out there, you know, getting it done, making it happen. If you’re one of those hats off to you guys who are first responders, military medical people, medical staff, if you know, like a nurse or somebody in medical service, like let’s figure out a way to collectively give them a big, high five love. And Brad, what do you think? What do you think about anything I’ve said? Any of that Landon with you. Oh, I love it.

Brad Singletary (00:40:13):
I see so many people who see this as just a vacation and they’re just kind of, or maybe they’re down, maybe they’re scared and afraid or they, they have a sniffle and they think this is, I’ve got the, I’ve got the virus and I need to, you know, I’m going to isolate myself. And they’re really kind of exploiting the opportunity to be lazy. And I just think, you know, if there’s a, if there’s a gender that’s more lazy, maybe it’s men and I, I love what you’re saying about still stay engaged. I mean, you don’t go to work, we’ll get up and work anyway. There’s plenty of work for you to do on recalibrating your life or on reconnecting, you know, whatever, whatever it may mean. Interesting that here we are in the first week of this and we are in new here. We’re back on the show and we’ve kind of really got some new energy. We’ve been planning to do this, but this is how you and I are doing that I think is by returning to something that w that we love and see as a way to construct another people. So I love it. You’re saying stay engaged, keep working. Even if you don’t go to your job, get up,

Mike Spurgin (00:41:14):
Hustle, work your ass off. Like I guarantee you if you looked around your house, you’d have 40 hours of work on your house projects. I do projects and things that haven’t been done or need to be done better and need to be were done. You know, like, I don’t know about you, but I probably have all kinds of business ideas and inventions I want to do and things I want to create that. You know, I’ve used the excuse of, I don’t really have time to focus on it, to voting energy to it. Here it is. Here it is. So if anybody is out there and they’re listening to this and, and you’re down and you’re depressing your bomb that you know, whatever it is that you counted on has been taken away from you. Have a cry, have a moment. Take a moment like that’s valid.

Mike Spurgin (00:41:53):
It’s totally legit. It’s totally valid to, to take a tear, take a knee, have a moment, you know, be bummed about that. That’s completely fine, normal and acceptable. Then get off your ass. Take that moment. You know whatever you need to do and take that moment. Get up and then get to work. Get to work on yourself. Get to work in your house, get to work on your relationship. Get to work on your future. It doesn’t keep doing your job and maybe you’re one of those lucky people who have your jobs just now transition to home. We’ll get your laptop out and get to work. Start busting ass like don’t let anybody else tell you how you should feel. Don’t let the news tell you how you should feel about this. Don’t let anybody get in your head and tell you what you’re supposed to think about this.

Mike Spurgin (00:42:40):
I tell you what a hypocrite right here I am telling you what you should think about is they wouldn’t have caught that if you didn’t tell them. So I will. I will suggest what, what I’m doing to think about this. What I’m thinking is is that this is an opportunity. Every part of this is an opportunity. Every single slice and dice of this is an opportunity and I’m not going to waste it. I’m not going to lose it. I’ve got four weeks, I’ve just sort of looked at this as somebody handed me, somebody took 12 months and then gave me one to do whatever I want with and I’m going to freaking exploit this thing. I’m going to like milk this. I’m going to continue doing a lot of things that I otherwise am already doing, but I’ve got new stuff like this has sort of energized me to like click up and do some new things, some new ideas that I want to like make happen. And I think that I would not have just sort of, you know, I’m just, I’m looking at this as, as if it’s some just sort of like gong or chime has been wrong in my head and I’m sort of snap me to like a new bit of attention or focus. I’m going to bring this, I’m going to bring this tile out and give you, get every drop out of it. I can. That’s awesome. Oh

Brad Singletary (00:43:48):
Man, I love that. I am, I just can’t wait to share this with everybody that I’m working with right now because some of them need to hear this very message here. What do you think men need to be doing to preserve their strength and protect their families? So we talked about being engaged, being live in the present, stay busy things for you to do. I just want to mention taking care of your body. So even for those who are the hustlers who were taking advantage of this opportunity, you still need rest. You still need to drink water. I talked with a physician the other day, a client of mine actually, and he was talking about how water drinking water alone may protect you in ways that you just don’t even understand. So just good healthy principles the best you can. I’ve kind of had this little sniffle because I’ve been, I’ve been kind of eating the cheap food right lately and it’s, it hasn’t been the best for me.

Brad Singletary (00:44:42):
So I’m just looking for ways for myself that I can continue to take care of my body. And you know, I’m a soldier, I’m a soldier in this, in this thing and I’ve got to keep myself healthy and strong. And also I think to find ways to show love to the people in my circle, you know, reach out, show some charity toward other people. And maybe that, maybe that showing love, you know, means also to show some love to yourself. Read your own gauges. There’s always a light that tells you when you need an oil change or when the fuel is low. So check in with yourself and look at your own needs and see what may be missing. If you, if you feel that there’s an unmet need, see if you can identify what it is and get after it. Great opportunity here. I love what you’re saying about this should be seen as a gift. Mike.

Mike Spurgin (00:45:47):
So one of the things you had down here too is show some charity to others. You talked about that with that experience with that lady. Why do you think that if we, and I’m not doing this, I gotta I gotta admit I’ve thought about it. I’ve thought about ways. We went to the grocery store and, and got some things in my wife who’s very thoughtful in this way. Got some extra supplies that we specific she had earmarked for somebody specific. I haven’t done that yet. I’ve thought about it. You know, have you heard any of your guys come through where they’ve done some of that stuff? Done some of that stuff?

Brad Singletary (00:46:23):
Yeah. You know, people are checking in with, you know, elderly members say of their church or their community or just checking in with the neighbors, Hey, do you have what you need? And just kind of saying we have plenty. Something that was impressive to me was divorced. A guy who’s divorced and kind of has this bitter connection with the ex wife. He kinda checked in and said, Hey if there are needs over there we, we, we got you covered over here. You know, if you don’t have enough flour, sugar, water, whatever it may be just let me know. He was also looking after his own children, but kind of put aside the, the tension of this, of this kind of nasty divorce and offered, you know, himself and his supplies up to what he may have kind of considered as an enemy.

Brad Singletary (00:47:12):
So just people checking in with their, their kids friends, families, you know, kids in the neighborhood, kids that go to school with people in your normal kind of circle. I think asking questions and just checking in with others. That’s just a pretty alpha thing to do to seek out the vulnerable, don’t be taken advantage of and you don’t have to save everyone and don’t spend your last dollar on someone else if your family’s in need but see what you can give. I just think that’s, that’s what an alpha does. He finds a way to strengthen other people. One of the things that we did, I was kind of caught off guard by it and I thought it was a little crazy but I loved it. So the other day my wife pulls out the Christmas decorations and put all the Christmas lights back up on our house.

Brad Singletary (00:47:57):
And so we have snow man in these big blowup Christmas things out there. Seriously, it’s going on Christmas lights around my house or I’m expecting an HOA, fine hearsay. But she put this big sign out front that she just hand painted and said, spread cheer, not fear. We will make it, you know, we’re going to be okay. And there was some little hashtag thing and she posted it and sh she, she got, I don’t know, a couple thousand likes and the news channel contacted her and they wanted to come and interview or, and take pictures. They never did. Probably they had plenty of other bigger stories. But it was just cool. That wasn’t the purpose. She just and there were a lot of haters on that. People, people really kind of commented on her like, you’re crazy, you’re just trying to get attention. She said, you know what, there are children who are stuck in their homes and if they’re out walking their dog or driving by as they go to the grocery store in this bleak time and they see a snowman in our yard, maybe that brings him a little bit of light, you know?

Brad Singletary (00:48:52):
And so I just, I, I think to see us all as connected and, and you know, I loved her little line there. Spread cheer, not fear.

Mike Spurgin (00:49:01):
That’s amazing. That’s ho send me a picture or send me that post. I need to see this. It’s making me think about I’ve probably brought this guy before Sebastian younger. He’s the guy who wrote a book called tribe. And in that, one of the anecdotes he talks about is how during times of collective calamity statistical instances of things like depression, anxiety, all of these psychological maladies that seem to be like just chronically inflamed generally during these sort of like tragic times go down crime goes down. Violence goes down, drinking goes down. All of the things that people do to self medicate and then be irresponsible. That seems to take a back seat to the collective need of the community. This, this general feeling of altruism that’s always there, but seems to take a back seat to selfishness in times of calm and Plenti during these collective calamities.

Mike Spurgin (00:50:09):
Then people’s focus is towards the tribe that collect the needs of the tribe. And selflessness comes out and becomes a key marker to survival. And what your wife has done is a small slice of that. And, and I think that a guy, any, any alpha guy would do really, really well to kind of copy that. You don’t have to put decorations in your yard, but to do things even in your own house that create for you a feeling of confidence and optimism. We’re going to get through this. We’re going to be fine. Yeah, but you know, school is closed. I know. So let’s, let’s jump on Khan Academy and let’s learn something. You know, you’re in a trade, you know a lot. You are, you are skilled, you’ve got all kinds of talents and abilities that you’ve spent, you know, a career honing. Do your kids know the fine points of, you know, the, the, the work that you do, do they understand?

Mike Spurgin (00:51:16):
Like, have you ever apprenticed your son into some of the things that you do that come so naturally to you but would be like this amazing gift to give him or your daughter? Does she understand? You know, some of the complexities of, you know, whatever your work is, this and the kids are home now and, and where we live in Clark County, Nevada, in Vegas, the school district is just throwing up his hands. It’s like we don’t know what to do. We’re not going to do anything. And it’s kind of a, it’s kind of a big thing. And I’m not, I’m not pointing a finger coming down on, cause I, I don’t want to be in their shoes. I have no suggestion. I have no suggestions. So I empathize and acknowledge what a tough spot they’re in. So this is an opportunity. Every, every dad, every alpha, every guy, every dude should be thinking about ways that he can now sort of like shepherd his children into some training and some like this, the time to homeschool, it’s time to homeschool.

Mike Spurgin (00:52:13):
And so parents can alpha up. Again, what a gift, what a gift, what if a kid, what if a kid, what if, what if a teenage kid, right? How a teenage son this month where his dad gets to spend all this time with him. And maybe do some projects or whatever. What if this is the exact thing that that kid needed to change the trajectory of his life. We look back and we think, well, you know, everything counts. Everything matters. You know, what’s that thing? The butterfly flaps, his wing and the over here and then now on the other side of the world, there’s a hurricane from it. I don’t know if I’m doing a very good job with that little visualization, that little story, but you get the idea. So everything has a ripple, everything matters. And so again, to go back to what I was saying earlier, this could be a huge sort of like Mark moment for, for all of us if we see it that way.

Mike Spurgin (00:53:01):
And, and let me, let me drop in my little things and then we’ll finish this one out. So I think that a guy would do well to the question here was what are some of the things that men need to be doing to preserve their own strength and protect their families? So you know that I forget who said this or where it came from, but you know, like on an airplane when the oxygen mask drops, you got four people in your row. They all need them. You’re the dad, you put yours on first, you don’t do the kids and then you last, you do yours first and then you do the people that you serve. So men need to be, dudes need to be taking care of themselves. Like they need to get their crap together and they need to pull it together.

Mike Spurgin (00:53:44):
And so T again, take a moment, like if you need to, if you need to have a a moment of tears, make it happen. Like, dig into that. Like don’t mope your way through the next four weeks. Take a day, sorted out. Call a buddy, call one of us, do a thing, figure this out. Like, get on top of of this for yourself emotionally, spiritually, all of that. Get that worked out. Get that work through. It’s not a onetime thing either. Like, I’m, I’m not delusional. I know that if you lost your job, you’re not going to just like you know, sit in a dark room with the blinds pulled, have a tear and then snap. I’m, I’m good. Like I get that, but pull in some resources like you need alpha up and do what needs to be done and then get on with it, get on with this.

Mike Spurgin (00:54:38):
And I think there’s all kinds of ways to also, so, so that was sort of like get your oxygen mask on and then there’s ways to blow off some of the steam and some of the pressure that is undoubtedly building up, not even inside of you, but in your family. Like you’ve got this dynamic now where some of us have never been home for like a full day of sunlight with our kids and our wives. Some of us have never had that. We’ve never had one entire day of sunlight where we’ve all been together in the house together. We’ve, a lot of us have different schedules where a wife has gone and kids are gone, the husband’s gone, whatever. So there’s a lot that’s new going on here and that’s stress and pressure. So dude’s maybe you need to figure out what, what your hobbies are.

Mike Spurgin (00:55:21):
Maybe you don’t have a hobby even neglected that, which is fine. But now it’s time to maybe figure that out. So get the guitar out of the attic. Get the basketball pumped up, get your track shoes out, get some new laces in them, whatever it is that can and should happen. Find ways that you used to. And I think that the secret to this would be, don’t invent something new. Go back in time. Go back to what’s worked for you in the past. Don’t try to like figure out now how to, how to hang glide now. Never done that. Go backwards. Get your baseball cards out from underneath the bed, whatever it was, the reliably and, and, and you know, brings you a little bit of joy, a little bit of tranquility. It’s a touchdown to sort of like a happy time. Do that. Get that for me.

Mike Spurgin (00:56:08):
Funny. I don’t know if it’s funny, but Legos. I love Legos, man. I love Legos. You know, I love about, I love the tactile experience of like the little bits and pieces. I love taking chaos. You dump a bag out and it’s just chaos. And then I’ve got this instruction book that is what’s order and control. It’s order and control. And so I can take a pilot chaos and then through following steps I can create order and control. And what I imprint onto my little time screwing around with Legos is that I know that life ordering controls and illusion. So I know that I’m a realist and I know that in my own personal life there is no order in control, but I can like, I can have that through this little experience and it just really works from, it’s very calming and very centering and settling.

Mike Spurgin (00:56:54):
So whatever it is that helps get you centered, dive into that. I might also throw out, be a good time to like sit in a chair and read a book, sit in it. I was thinking the other day, when’s the last time I sat down with a magazine or a [inaudible] or a book or something. This is a great time. Again, a gift. What a gift. What a gift this is. Move your meat suit. Like exercise your meat suit. Yeah. Get outside man. Move around. Do some stuff with your body. Do some jumping jacks. Like th feel that feeling of what it is to get a little sweaty when your heart pumps a little bit. Get some, get some of those. Just get some of that endorphin. Go and get endorphin rush from like moving around. It’s a real thing. Make that happen.

Mike Spurgin (00:57:36):
And does put the kids to bed. Here’s the last one. Put the kids to bed. Put some like Rose petals on the floor. Play some Barry white. Oh, Oh baby. And see what happens. Like why, why not let this be a full experience where you are trying to fully tap into like everything that is real in your life. And so if your relationship with your wife is stale, see what you can do for that. See how you can like serve her. Be kind to her, be attentive to her. Be in court, the hell out of your wife. Why not? You got four weeks to do that court that court the hell out of your wife and see what happens. So those are some of my thoughts on like what, what could a guy be doing to be taking care of himself? I think there’s more, I’d love to hear what some of the suggestions in the comments of this episode might be, but those are mine.

Brad Singletary (00:58:34):
All right, so we’ve talked about the last question a little bit already too. How men can be supportive of others, you know, with the communities. I’ve talked about some of that just to listen and you know, ask people how they’re doing, what they may need. I found a little quote here, this goes back to something you were talking about, about Sebastian younger two book about try. But this I think I found this on social media, but just want to read this a little bit here. It says, years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected me to talk about fish hooks or clay pots or grinding stones, but no Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur or thighbone that had been broken and then healed.

Brad Singletary (00:59:21):
She explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You can’t run from danger. You can’t get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for a prowling beast. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. So a broken femur that has been healed as evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who has fallen bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. I’m helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts. Meet said, we are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized. I love this because this is a great opportunity to do that. Even though we’re isolated. Check in with your friends. Call your aunt, your grandmother that you haven’t talked to. Check in with people.

Brad Singletary (01:00:10):
Recognize that we’re connected. And that’s what makes us, you know, civil, intelligent beings is that we can take care of our own. Another thought that I have about taking care of others and ourselves is a to not be too serious. There’s a lot of really cool humor out there right now. My favorite little meme that I saw was a, I used to cough and this is true for me. I used to cough to cover a fart. Now I far to cover a cough. I’ve just been all about these funny, these funny things is kind of keeps things light and I’m hope it’s not offensive to anyone, but I just I think we gotta to have some fun and not take this so serious, not be a scared whimpering, you know? Don’t be so nervous about all this and just appreciate it as an opportunity. Like Mike said so many times. So what about you Mike? How do we take care of our community and other people and then we’ll wrap up with our final points?

Mike Spurgin (01:01:06):
Yeah. you know, I really didn’t throw any notes in here. Other, you know, I put down the oxygen mask one, we talked about that. Maybe this one for me is to I think it’s important to like, maybe I’ve mentioned this before, like just figure, figure out what you’re feeling, figure out what you’re thinking and get to the heart of it. I know that there’s a lot of emotionalism that floats on top of, some of those people are mad and that’s probably the general mad and frustrated. Like you have to think if there were two emotions that dudes are probably feeling the most fear would, maybe it’s a trifecta. There we go. That’s the Trinity. So it’s fear, frustration, and then anger. I think those three are the things that dudes are feeling. And you know, dudes are, it’s a classic thing like guys don’t feel, guys don’t cry big boys and cry.

Mike Spurgin (01:02:00):
Men don’t, men don’t have emotions. We all feel emotions. Yeah, we do all the time. We just did just send her around anger. Right? That’s typically the emotion that a dude feels is anger and frustration. And so that’s probably happening a ton and my thought on that would be Le let shit go. There’s no reason to get angry about any of this because there’s nothing anybody can do about it. Again, maybe to drop back some we talked about earlier, what in the hell is a guy right now? My neighbor, I’m making this up, but let’s say I made my neighbor at the mailbox and he’s all pissed. He wants to like bend my ear, just flap his jaw about how like pissed off he is it everything. What the hell does that do for anything? Why don’t you tell me about what you’re going to do about that roof?

Mike Spurgin (01:02:43):
You need to reroof that friggen house neighbor dude. Like why don’t you tell me about that tree, that dead tree that I’ve been looking at for for two years now. Why don’t we talk about that stuff? Cause that you can control all the rest of this nonsense that you’re, you’re jamming on about like I don’t give a shit about any of that. I don’t care about that. That has nothing to do with you. Me, our life staying alive. Helping each other living extra. So I think it would be super helpful for a dude to figure himself out til they get centered. Okay. Be angry, be frustrated, be be those things and then get to work, get to work, get to work. Like let that shit go, bleed that stuff off, have your moment and then let it go. Get going, get your hustle muscle on, get down to business like let’s, this is business time.

Mike Spurgin (01:03:31):
So whatever a dude needs to do to get into that head space. Like I know Brad and I, I know we’d like to help you do that. I bet you have plenty of people, plenty of resources and if you don’t, here’s a call out. I think. I think you need to like, I think you need to ask yourself serious questions like, well, I don’t have any friends. Why don’t I have any, why, what kind of life? This could be like deep, deeply self-reflective. What kind of life have I been living all these years that now in a time where like I could probably use somebody to talk to. I don’t have any friends. I have. In fact, I’ve had a conversation with a guy not that long ago and that was kind of the punchline of the conversation. He had all kinds of like everybody was, he just had, he just, it was endless.

Mike Spurgin (01:04:15):
His problems were endless. The complexity of his life seemed to be just outrageous, outrageously endless. Like every, we would talk about something for about 40 or 60 seconds and then that would like [inaudible] would like pinball, him to a new, Oh, and then you still like he would say, Oh, and that reminds me, or Oh, and another thing. And it would turn into another avalanche of just going down this, you know, road. I dunno how it came up, but kind of towards the end of it, it just sort of like dawned on maybe both of us at the same time like ms do damn your friends didn’t have any friends, didn’t connect with anybody, didn’t have anybody. Kay cared for, cared for him and, and such a pissy attitude about some of the things in life. I honestly, I mean this isn’t very charitable, but I was seeing like no wonder, you know how many friends you’re a, you’re a pain in the ass, right? Right. You didn’t want to be around you like you’re a TA, you, you’d be a terrible friend. You would just be a suck. Like you would just suck energy and time out of everybody else. Like why would anybody want to be around that emotional vampire? Totally. So anyway, this the, again, all of these things, these are gifts that were being handled so we can figure this stuff out. So I don’t know, that’s probably not very clear about that question, but that’s my thought on that.

Brad Singletary (01:05:33):
That’s awesome. I think what we’re saying, a lot of this as we wrap up here is just to be grateful. You know, things have always worked out. When I think about hope, when I think about, you know, there are some uncertainty around us right now and if we need hope, the best way to look forward and project into the future, knowing that it’s going to be okay is to look behind you with gratitude. If you look back and consider all the ways that you’ve already been delivered, you’ve already been through. I mean your, the day of your birth was freaking traumatic. There was a time you couldn’t even wipe your own ass or walk. Okay, you’ve fallen down, you’ve been hurt. There’ve been so many painful things you’ve been through. This is, this is new territory, but how do you know it’s gonna work out?

Brad Singletary (01:06:18):
Cause it always has. If you’re breathing and you’re alive today, everything has always worked out. And I have a little thing that I share with people about changing the what if too. Even if we get stuck in the what if, what if this happens and what if I get sick and what if people die and what if we’ll play that on out to the end. Because even if it does happen, even if you get sick, there’s a 98% chance of your survival. And if you go to even the worst case scenario where someone that you love is deeply affected or or dies from this, you’ve got to go. If you’re going to think that, go ahead and play it on out cause it’ll be sad and it’ll be inconvenient and it’ll be hurtful and painful, but you will carry on and you’ll figure it out. Just the way that you’ve always done. Final points. Mike

Mike Spurgin (01:07:03):
And alpha always finds a silver lining in any situation. This is no different. We’re gonna make it, you’re gonna make it. Everybody you know is gonna make it. And if even if they don’t, Brad, that was beautifully said. You’ll be fine. Everything will be fine. Stay, stay hopeful. Stay positive. Standard, routine. Don’t get sucked into avoidance distraction. Don’t, don’t fall down the endless running, running through all the episodes of a series. Don’t watch all 47 episodes of breaking bad or whatever it is. Put some, put some checks on yourself. Like if, if, if that’s helpful for you, then that’s fine. I don’t, I don’t want to take that away from you, but like throw some, throw some boundaries around that. Give yourself 45 minutes a day to like, you know, surf Facebook or whatever. Stay away from porn. Stay away from drinking. This is not a time to like smoke more weed. None of those things are going to be helpful. None of that fogginess is going to, it’s going to dull your blade. All that stuff is going to dull your blade right now. You need to be sharp for yourself, for your family, for everyone around you. And so this is not the time to to numb out and to dumb down. It’s exactly the opposite. Like your life needs you, the world needs you, your family needs you. Hell we need you. And so

Mike Spurgin (01:08:27):
None of that serves none of it. None of it’s going to none. You’re not going to look back on this four weeks and say, damn, that was like, I remember that as being [inaudible] all that time I was stoned. Like I was so, so great. Man. I’m so happy I spent a whole month stone. Like, Hey, this dude, let me tell you about may when month is this February, March, let me tell you, March of 2022, that was the best month of my whole life. I was like stoned for four weeks while the world went to hell. Like no that’s not, it’s not any to be proud of. That is nothing to be proud of. Be a support, be a support to the people around you. I would like to see an alpha guy build some, use this time to like build some reserve and margin into, into the system of your lifestyle.

Mike Spurgin (01:09:20):
So you know, the world is built on this false belief that everything will continue just as it has been without interruption. And that’s for like we talked about earlier, for you, for you, the life of you and me so far, that’s kind of what’s happened. Like we flipped that light switch and the power in my life, the power is always turned on. Every toilet I’ve ever flushed. Like it disappears. Things like that. The car always starts, there’s always gas at the pump. There’s always food on the shelves. Like those things are constants, but that may not be the case. This isn’t going to change like this little coronavirus thing. In my very own personal opinion. This is nothing like this is just a blip. This is anomaly. All of us are going to bounce back, everything’s going to be just fine. But what I think this does is it indicates to us that this, again like this world we live on, this world doesn’t care that we’re on it and it’s going to do something to some of us some other time that is going to like, you know, shake our world literally, figuratively, whatever.

Mike Spurgin (01:10:18):
And so this is a really good time for an alpha to get his shit together and that might look like getting some food under your bed. If you want to put a knife and a machete and a gun in a drawer, do that. If you don’t have cash, it’s tucked away somewhere and make that happen. The things that that you can do to like put your oxygen mask on, you need to alpha up and do that. Like I’m strongly suggesting this is a time to really consider that kind of stuff. And if the work that you’re doing doesn’t make the money that you need to make and want to make, then like figure that out. If you’re not even in the trade that you think you should be in or doing that, that figure that out. So this is really, this is a time, this is a gift.

Mike Spurgin (01:10:58):
This is a gift of time to work through all that stuff. And so right now I’d like to see dudes alpha-ing up and then I, I’d love to figure out a way that we can sort of like check in with each other. And I don’t know, maybe we could use a Facebook page something, but I’d love to hear guys, if you’ve got goals, if you’re going to create some goals for yourself, if you’re going to invent some new things, some new systems for yourself, it will be amazing to hear some feedback from, from, from the audience, from, from us about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. And maybe ways that we can support each other. And if you like, we could collectively sort of like, I don’t know, support that whole, the energy behind that. We’ll figure that out. So maybe that’s just my final statement. It’s like don’t fall down the black hole of escapism behaviors. They’re super tempting, especially right now feeling like, you know, of not having control, not, not knowing what’s going to happen. I know I want to numb out. I just want to blast out of this thing and, you know, zap out of it. Have a tear. It’s a crazy time. I totally get it. Have a tier and they get to work.

Brad Singletary (01:12:03):
I love it. It’s an interesting season of our lives. It’s an interesting season of, in the world’s history and it’s an innocent great season in your life. Speaking of season, this is season two, episode one of the alpha corn. We’re glad to be back. We’re here to help men improve their lives by engaging a tribe to improve their attitudes, actions, and attributes. Hey, give us some love on a, on iTunes like us on Facebook and follow us on,

Mike Spurgin (01:12:29):
You know,

Brad Singletary (01:12:30):
However that goes, I don’t even know exactly. We love you guys. We’re, we’re gonna w you’re gonna hear from us more. We’re looking forward to what’s about to happen here for the alpha quorum for now, Brad Singletary and taco Mike. You guys take care and alpha. Up Be well,