EPISODE 73

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Episode 73 of the Alpha Quorum Show with Taco Mike from TacoMoto. Mike discusses what he’s been up to and drops WISDOM. We discuss how the Alpha accepts responsibility, never plays the role of a victim, and never victimizes others. Host Brad Singletary and Taco Mike call men out for their excuses and share some insights about how to Alpha Up and be a man who accepts responsibility.   

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The Alpha Quorum Show is produced by Evolved Worldwide, LLC. © 2021 Evolved Worldwide, LLC.  While we may feature professionals on the show, this content is meant to be educational entertainment and not to be considered professional advice or ‘therapy’.  It’s a podcast. But you’re gonna love it.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;06 – 00;00;01;21
Brad Singletary
No one’s coming to save your a**.

00;00;02;01 – 00;00;04;11
Taco Mike
What do you do when that needs not met, do you pout?

00;00;04;12 – 00;00;07;13
Brad Singletary
We all just have this basic demand that we get what we got.

00;00;07;16 – 00;00;08;13
Taco Mike
It’s not sexy.

00;00;08;14 – 00;00;12;04
Brad Singletary
That is misery. When you put the power in someone else’s hands.

00;00;12;04 – 00;00;12;27
Taco Mike
It’s Super beta.

00;00;12;29 – 00;00;21;25
Brad Singletary
You cannot find peace. If you’re obsessed with injustice, where’s the wisdom that you missed? Where’s the method that you overlooked?

00;00;21;28 – 00;00;32;05
Taco Mike
A dude who is alpha doesn’t accept victimhood. He accepts responsibility and culpability and then puts his face to the wind and just marches on.

00;00;32;08 – 00;00;33;16
Brad Singletary
Guess whose fault it is?

00;00;34;17 – 00;00;58;02
Taco Mike
If you lit that fuse, you own the explosion. If you did anything, you created any spark, you own all of it. It’s all yours. The Alpha just owns it. This is leadership. You accept it. Shut the f up. Shut your hole and take it and listen. And Alpha figures this out.

00;00;58;03 – 00;00;59;08
Brad Singletary
What truth is there in that?

00;01;08;27 – 00;01;30;01
Speaker
If you’re a man that controls his own destiny, a man that is always in the pursuit of being better, you are in the right place. You are responsible. You are strong. You are a leader. You are a force for good. Gentlemen. You are the Alpha. And this is the Alpha Quorum.

00;01;33;24 – 00;01;45;05
Brad Singletary
Welcome back to the Alpha Quorum Show, Brad Singletary here. I’m so glad to be back with my buddy Taco Mike. Dude, it’s been so long. I think it was last summer we last recorded last summer, maybe in the fall.

00;01;45;19 – 00;01;46;28
Brad Singletary
It’s been a little bit too long.

00;01;46;28 – 00;01;47;20
Taco Mike
But it’s been a minute.

00;01;47;29 – 00;01;51;03
Brad Singletary
Yeah. Glad to have you back here, man. I thought you were mad at me for a little while.

00;01;51;07 – 00;02;12;27
Taco Mike
Not even one second. Not even. Not even the tiniest bit. No. Just busy, dude. Just trying to, like get a little business going, focusing on that sort of thing. But it’s it’s at a point now where I think that I can leave it alone a little bit and do some more like extra curricular stuff curricular that maybe I was more involved in, but had to step away from. But I’m back.

00;02;13;10 – 00;02;30;04
Brad Singletary
So you’re doing your own thing. You got you running your own business, you got your family involved, you got some employees, you have a whole, whole huge operation. It’s pretty cool. I noticed you were asking about some importing goods from other countries and things like this is this is the real deal.

00;02;30;15 – 00;03;19;08
Taco Mike
It seems to be our little motorcycle business is just really ramping up and taking off. I don’t I don’t know if there was a void. You know, sometimes you step into an industry and there’s a void in a vacuum and it needs like the talents and skills that you bring to it. Sometimes a guy will get into an industry and he cannibalizes away from existing sort of suppliers or other other vendors or whatever. And I think in my case, I don’t know that I’m cannibalizing. I think we’ve just created a bit of a new attitude or a new sort of focus on the little dirt bike area, the little world that we sort of live in. And maybe it’s just new. Maybe we’re just creating something new, but it feels very new to me and fresh and I’m being I’m being told that. And so it’s super empowering and I’ve used this my only example with some guys that I’ve had conversations with.

00;03;19;08 – 00;03;59;02
Taco Mike
So many people are intimidated because there’s a business or or a trade or whatever they want to get into. But there’s somebody already there. There’s somebody already doing it. You know, maybe it’s saturated. Maybe there’s already four or five other guys doing and you’re like, I don’t think I can get any traction. I don’t then I don’t know how I could break into that. To that, I say, just do it because none of none of those other people are, you know, one’s coming in with your experience, your background, your your wisdom and knowledge, passion, your passion, your vibe. You just all of that. Nobody’s got that. That’s the X Factor. Nobody’s got that. And so just get in there and see what, see what you can do. Just try to make something of it. And that’s what we’ve been doing. It seems to be going well.

00;03;59;17 – 00;04;58;25
Brad Singletary
You obviously have a lot of respect. You’ve got customers from all around the country and all around the world, it sounds like. And you’re bringing you to that. You’re saying you’re you’re the magic. This is not just. Motorcycle parts. This is Taco Mike. You know, this has this is like your whole taco moto is just you. I love your branding. All of the things you’re doing, you just seem like you do it so well. One of the reasons I keep guys like Mike around and really, there’s no one like Mike Spurgin, but you just seem to succeed at everything. I think you’re I think you’re so committed to getting it done, doing what needs to be done, and you’ve done that in your personal life. And that’s one of the reasons I’ve really felt blessed to have you part of this show and this whole thing, and even in my life as as kind of a mentor, when I’ve told other folks about you, I tell them, Mike Spurgin is my mentor. And whenever I’ve had an issue, I go to you and you just always have the right wisdom. It’s probably just because you’re so much older than me.

00;05;01;28 – 00;06;19;14
Taco Mike
That’s it. That’s all it is. I’m just a couple of clicks older, older brother. Thank you, Brad. That’s very flattering and over spoken. I appreciate that, that you over praise. I have people that modelled that to me when I was coming up and who set very, very high bar and very good example to me of somebody who’s living a life of as much service as possible and as much capacity as possible, I mean, here’s the thing you can have a heart of service, but then if you don’t have the gas in the tank, then your intention is misapplied or can’t be applied. And so it it’s been model to me many times through through my own mentors that I have to. I have to eat and prepare, and I say that figuratively like I need to. I need to consume the knowledge and wisdom of the world and internalize that as much growth as I can for myself so that I can be as strong and capable to myself, for myself as possible. And then when I’m I’m, I have margin, when I have capacity and buffer, then share that out and that that was model to me. And so that’s sort of a that’s a basic template for, I think, who I am as a person. I appreciate you recognizing it. I try anyway.

00;06;20;14 – 00;07;24;24
Brad Singletary
So we just we just finished the series on this book review King Warrior, Magician, Lover and again, Mike has just seems to be just the quintessential alpha. If you ask me King or just I don’t know what he’s like as a lover, but I know that he loves life and that a lot of that talked about passion for life. Tonight, we wanted to talk about responsibility. A while back, someone asked, What is the alpha core all about and what are our principles and what are the things that we are trying to teach men? And so. I think I was just sat down with a pencil and a paper one night and just kind of started to scratch out some things, and I came up with these nine things responsibility, resourcefulness, reverence, energy, endurance, engagement, discipline, discernment and distinction. We talked about we kind of overview these in a in a previous episode. Matter of fact, that may be the last one we recorded together a while back, Mike and I. But tonight we wanted to dig in a little bit to responsibility.

00;07;25;08 – 00;08;11;14
Brad Singletary
So an alpha is responsible. He does good. Just a few bullet points that we wanted to dove into tonight. first is that he meets his own needs with integrity. He’s never a victim, never a villain. He’s never blaming others and never harming others. He’s reliable. He follows through, keeps his promises. He has boundaries. He knows who to let in and who to leave out. He admits his wrongs and makes amends, and he accepts the things that he can’t change and changes the unacceptable things that he can. So let’s get started here tonight, man. When we talk about. Men need to meet their own needs with integrity. What comes to mind for you about meeting our own needs?

00;08;12;03 – 00;08;21;20
Taco Mike
This comes from your read nine and thank you for creating this. I’ve read through this. I probably need to print this. I don’t even know if you have that available.

00;08;21;24 – 00;08;33;18
Brad Singletary
Well, I mean, yeah, I’ve actually I’ve started three or four different things. People have asked about this, Hey, I want a poster. I want to put this on my wall. I want to put this in, you know, in my office or whatever. So we’ll get some I’ll get something cool set up for you.

00;08;33;22 – 00;09;55;18
Taco Mike
I think that would be important and helpful for guys. There’s a lot of guys who don’t have they didn’t have good modeling. I mean, that’s the that’s the key to my life is I’ve had very, very good modeling. And if I could fall back to anything, it’s not. And so if a guy didn’t have modeling, then maybe you as being the model with your red nine and then these these data points for these key points, these be ideals to live for and ideals to look up to responsibility. Meeting your own needs with integrity. We kind of like freaked out a little bit about this. This is something that I think a lot of dudes don’t even understand what their needs are. Do you think it’s possible that there’s dudes out there who? What are some of these like? Mostly, they’re like feminine conjectures, they’re just concepts, you know, like you need to hold space. Think of like some of the psycho talk psychobabble, talk like you listen to Oprah or whatever, and the chicks are saying like, you need to hold space for yourself and you need to like, find out you need to do self-care. What you’re saying? Yeah, OK. So that none of that works for me. None, none of that vocabulary language hits me at all. So how do you how do we define what a dudes needs are? Does a dude even typically know what the hell this even means that he has needs? And then how can you sort of like get at the heart of them and then figure out how to defend them and then how to how to meet them? Do you think that most of your dude clients understand this concept?

00;09;55;21 – 00;10;31;05
Brad Singletary
They don’t they they have an idea for their desires, you know, most of them talk about sexual need, they know that. But even on basic things like food and sleep, and a guy doesn’t realize how thirsty he is. And so he’s got a headache and he’s yelling at his kids. And really, he needs water. At such a basic level, I think we don’t even realize what our body needs, what our spirit needs, what our mind needs, what our emotional health requires in order to stay strong. And so I think it’s good that we’re having this discussion to to help kind of, you know, share some of this with guys.

00;10;31;19 – 00;10;41;29
Taco Mike
Do you think there’s a lot of programing that happens with men’s, with men, where they’re just told to ignore their needs to power through to put, you know, to a like just nut up? That comes in like.

00;10;42;01 – 00;10;43;25
Brad Singletary
Pull up your bootstraps and keep moving.

00;10;43;25 – 00;11;16;04
Taco Mike
Yeah, don’t you think? And so that sort of like pushes down the reality that no, at some point a dude is going to hit the wall like you’re going to run out of the battery is going to go empty and then you’re going to bonk. While the one extreme is sort of like that Oprah talk. The other extreme is like, ignore it and just push on at somewhere. There’s a healthy balance in between sort of like those those two places, those two bookends for me anyway. I think you’re right. There are just the basic What is the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, right? What are those?

00;11;16;05 – 00;11;23;22
Brad Singletary
There’s five William Glasser basic needs are survival, power, love and belonging, freedom and fun.

00;11;24;10 – 00;12;24;15
Taco Mike
You could tag on to those what you just mentioned earlier like. Food, hydration, sleep, so much, just the core concepts like staying alive, keeping your body alive, then you’ve got these, these are more like conceptual. Mm-Hmm. These are more like emotional, right? I could ask myself, have I spent any time in self-reflection evaluating what my needs are? Do I even know? Do I have any piece of paper or do I have any concept of what my own might mean, Mike? What are the needs like? What are the core key fundamental needs that I have that are not? I almost want to like brush over food and sleep. But then again, no, because how many of us know guys, maybe it’s us who? Are basically functioning on little sleep and then over cramping and overcompensating with like the wrong kind of food, energy drinks, that sort of thing, like that’s a super saturated synthetic type of being. It’s not sustainable. That’s that’s a collapse waiting to happen. Have you seen that?

00;12;24;17 – 00;13;03;22
Brad Singletary
Yeah, for sure. I mean, if you think about yourself like, you know, you know what your motorcycle needs, you know, the engine needs, you know what your your air conditioning, your air conditioning unit needs to be serviced so many times a year and whatever. And so if you’re if you’re a machine and you are the resource, if you’re an alpha, then you’re a resource to your family and your community. What do you need to keep yourself functioning at the highest level? I’m guessing that you do all kinds of fine tuning stuff with your with your dirt bikes, things. I wouldn’t even have any idea where to begin, but you know you got to get the spark plugs. You got to do all these very precise things to keep it optimally performing.

00;13;03;22 – 00;13;04;13
Taco Mike
Great analogy.

00;13;04;14 – 00;13;58;23
Brad Singletary
And so we need those same things. So from basics like food, sleep, emotional needs, we need Maslow talked about esteem needs, you know, we need to feel some sense of power. William Glasser talked about that love and belonging. We need to fill some freedom and also to have fun. To me, the idea that we meet our own needs with integrity really says we’re not waiting around for someone to come and rescue us. I think it’s Mel Robbins who famously says no one’s coming to save your ass. And if you realize that you are responsible for your own happiness or your own health, your own business, your own income, your own education, the success of your family, the success of your marriage. And even though it takes two, you have to recognize that you’re responsible. You got to keep your side of the street clean.

00;13;59;05 – 00;14;07;14
Taco Mike
And doing it with integrity adds an extra component to that because if you have financial responsibilities, you have needs your financial needs. You go out and you steal your money or you.

00;14;08;06 – 00;14;09;07
Brad Singletary
Do something shady.

00;14;09;11 – 00;14;39;16
Taco Mike
Shady, then you technically be meeting your needs. But then there’s no integrity. And so there’s do you like your self-worth is diminished and then the respect of your family when they know that they’re. I know, I know people. You probably knew too who are, you know, their shady dealers and then people around them know that. And there’s just not a lot of respect for that, dude. Some of these dudes are powerful because they command the operations, business employees money. People are attracted to that. But yet there’s no respect. There’s no respect for that person.

00;14;39;16 – 00;14;56;03
Brad Singletary
And they have no inner peace. If you’re not living congruent with some correct principles. You just you really have a diminished fake sense of power. It’s like you talked about before cotton candy. It’s not even all that real. It’s not all that substantial.

00;14;56;05 – 00;16;15;07
Taco Mike
Yeah. So like, you roll around in your big car with your guns, I’m just using this. This is like hypothetical. You got your your entourage, your posse, your your drop in cash. All of that looks commanding and and impressive, but it’s it’s worthless. It’s funny because there’s just nothing behind that. There’s no spiritual integrity behind that. There’s no there’s no depth to that. Another thing to maybe I think we’ve hit on this earlier is how do you meet your needs sexually? Because that’s a big one. That’s key that’s important to dudes. How does that happen with integrity? Here’s a thought that I had when I was doing some notes here. I happen to be acquainted with a guy whose wife wouldn’t give him a blowj*b for whatever reason. Like, maybe that went on for a long time, maybe years. And so clearly this chick had either some sexual hang ups about that or she had some hang ups about him. Mm hmm. Doesn’t matter. Who cares, he decided to go out and to have that need met without integrity, and that ended their marriage. So how that situation? And of course, I have no firsthand view in any of this. But looking at it from externally looking at it in this way, what stop that guy from going and seeing a therapist? What stopped him from wading through that?

00;16;15;08 – 00;17;16;03
Taco Mike
How did he go to that point? I don’t want to make excuses for him. I don’t want to condone it. I want to give him any excuses. I don’t give him any coverage. But in my opinion, when you were married and in marriage, everything about that relationship is fluid and dynamic, and there’s give and take. And if you are not. No one’s going to come and save your ass. If you don’t feel like your partner is meeting, some need that you have. Could it be worth evaluating that? Need to find out if that need is even legit or respectable? Does that need even have integrity? If you want your wife to do something super ridiculous, that’s that’s outside the bounds of sort of the integrity of of a proper relationship, proper marriage, your needs, your quote needs, you’re out of bounds. It would be very helpful for you to understand what these needs are and if they fit and fall within the parameters of being alpha and being a respectable person, being somebody who who gives and then commands respect, that makes sense.

00;17;16;03 – 00;17;26;22
Brad Singletary
Yes, it makes a lot of sense. Is it an actual need at all? Is it even a need, the need? Is it a preference? Is it a desire? Maybe oral sex isn’t a need.

00;17;27;18 – 00;18;23;20
Taco Mike
I don’t think it’s a need. And I think that there probably could be no real reason why his wife wouldn’t be able to accommodate that owing to the reality that there’s probably some hang up there that with some patience and some love and some some endurance could have been worked through. But he just short circuited that and opted out. So I think there’s some categories here. I think there’s what is your need, what you know, how do you identify what your needs are? That’s your self-worth. You need to sit down and do is that need even realistic or a value? And then what do you do when that needs not met? Do you pout let’s how do you react to someone you perceive is not then handing you this? All of these needs met on a plate, right? How do you coach somebody through you got a guy in the office and he’s like, my wife, there’s people that do you have guys who are just pathetic, their needs aren’t being met.

00;18;24;13 – 00;19;19;13
Brad Singletary
We had a show with Jimmy Durban a while back, and he talked about almost all of his problems fall into three areas. But one of those areas was entitlement. And so much of what we think we need is just really an entitlement. It’s just an expectation and unrealistic expectation may be something that I must have. And if I don’t have this thing, we all just have this basic demand that we get what we want. We’re like children until we mature. We’re just like children kind of walking around pouty and feeling like a victim when things don’t fall into place in the way we. Imagine that they should. So, yes, many men are just complaining about, especially in their relationship, that the person that they’re counting on to meet their needs isn’t. And they’re not recognizing their own contribution to that problem.

00;19;20;07 – 00;19;22;23
Taco Mike
How do you call it King Baby syndrome?

00;19;22;29 – 00;19;24;01
Brad Singletary
King Baby syndrome?

00;19;24;01 – 00;19;44;03
Taco Mike
Yeah, that got me thinking about that because here you have a grown ass man. Or at least you should be anyway. Who is pissed? His family pissed, his wife pissed at the world. He’s a victim because people aren’t meeting his needs because his needs are ridiculous. Potentially drop into that really quick. We explain that King Baby Syndrome Thing.

00;19;44;06 – 00;20;07;16
Brad Singletary
King Baby syndrome is basically just that you’re walking around mad that people aren’t making special exceptions for you and kind of laying out the red carpet for you everywhere you go and acknowledging all of your strengths and really celebrating you as this kingly type person and you’re not even deserving of that. And so you’re frustrated and upset and angry and butthurt.

00;20;10;03 – 00;20;10;23
Taco Mike
That’s a great phrase.

00;20;13;01 – 00;20;21;01
Brad Singletary
You’re butthurt because people aren’t falling all over you and just, you know, accommodating everything that you think you need.

00;20;21;20 – 00;21;11;05
Taco Mike
Yes. Air quote need. So again, we sort of like, we circle back. What if some of the things that you think you need are just nonsense? They’re both at their absolute pathetic. I can identify in my own life plenty of times where I was mad at my wife and would hold resentments because she wasn’t meeting some unspoken, unenunciated need that I had made up in my head. So I just created like this whole menu of things that I needed this other person to do for me. So for me to be happy, they needed to perform and do these functions and do these things. And if not, then I’m pissed. And then I can resent, and then I’ve got justification for that resentments that whole. That whole headspace is absolute. That’s just bullsh*t.

00;21;11;05 – 00;21;31;06
Brad Singletary
It’s misery. You’re forcing yourself into a place of misery because you almost can never be satisfied that way. If you’re demanding to be satisfied, you never will be satisfied. And so I think meeting your own needs with integrity means that you’re just you just stop waiting around for for bread to fall out of the sky.

00;21;32;23 – 00;21;38;20
Taco Mike
Do you have any examples of anybody who’s just in pure and utter misery because of these unrealistic needs that they have?

00;21;39;06 – 00;22;20;18
Brad Singletary
Yeah, if you’re sitting around with a checklist and you’re watching kind of monitoring everything that the people in your life are doing or not doing and you’re keeping score, you’re going to be miserable because if your happiness depends on other people, you’re never going to have it. And so meeting your own needs with integrity, it’s just taken an individual accountability to that. You know, I’m not going to wait around to be rescued. I’m going to take care of the things that I can for myself and those things that I can’t. I need to determine whether or not that’s an actual need at all. Is it realistic? And am I doing anything accidentally to keep it from happening?

00;22;21;13 – 00;22;44;27
Taco Mike
It’s so unflattering to me, guys who live in this like I’m a victim of of all of my circumstances. I’m a I’m a I’m a baby and no one has been treating the way I need to be treated. This concept of victim thinking it’s it’s not sexy, it’s not respectable. It’s Super Bayda. How does a guy get past that?

00;22;45;14 – 00;23;36;19
Brad Singletary
Yeah, I think that thinking is rampant even in the in the men’s literature and, you know, the men’s messages out there, all this stuff about, you know, the war on masculinity and all this kind of stuff. I just I’ve always just felt like that’s whining itself. You’re in. Maybe there are some of those things could be true out there in the big picture sense of society’s view of men and all that kind of stuff. But I just think that is also a little bit that’s a little bit better. Yeah, I just I connected to that in the beginning and just thought, Yeah, I see some of that happening, but it does mean zero good to go around crying and bitching and moaning about that stuff. And instead, I need to just level my own ass up and handle my business. Handle my family. See what influence I can have in the world. And just be a light instead of talking about everybody else’s darkness.

00;23;36;23 – 00;23;57;00
Taco Mike
Dude, that’s money. And that’s not going to make you any friends sort of in that whole men’s group movement, because so much of that is exactly this. Like men are being, we’re being put down, men are being fathers rights. There’s so many slick splinter areas and categories that that that all like threads itself into. It’s all just whining, isn’t it?

00;23;57;06 – 00;24;29;02
Brad Singletary
It is. And either you can do something about that or not. You know, I’ve had situations in my life where I felt like things were unfair, and maybe some of that came because I was a man. I don’t know, but that’s misery. That is misery when you put the power in someone else’s hands and you. When otherwise you could make a difference in your own situation. But if you’re looking at it like injustice, there’s that’s a miserable place to be. You cannot find peace if you’re obsessed with injustice.

00;24;29;14 – 00;26;03;21
Taco Mike
Haven’t we all seen situations where someone is like, So you’ve got to do it and he is treated like legit? Everyone would. Everyone would view that and would say, that guy got a bad deal. How important and valuable is it for a dude in that situation, then to figure out ways to calmly, rationally with lots of forethought and care? Figure out ways to like, improve and overcome the creepiness of that situation by just doing the work, by just figuring it out, like figuring out what he could do. Like you said, to level up and then to change hearts and minds. So he’s in some situation where somebody like giving him a bad judgment. Maybe it said, I don’t know a divorce settlement, and he doesn’t feel like he got a fair shake or whatever. Boo hoo. Like, oh, that sucks. Then what’s up, what’s stopping that dude from every day figuring out how to work towards a changed outcome? A different outcome? Get into the head of the people who who have sway. Some guy didn’t get the promotion you can think of like tons of examples of ways where somebody can legitimately feel like they’re a victim, become a grown ass man and figure out what to do to overcome that. Some of it may be absolutely fixable. Preventable, repairable. Some of it may not. Some of it may be much bigger than you. But what good comes of you just whining and crying and feeling victimized and powerless against some? It’s always some system, right? It could be. It’s the system in your family, at some external system. It’s a political system like courts.

00;26;03;21 – 00;26;06;03
Brad Singletary
It’s the job. It’s the corporation, whatever.

00;26;06;04 – 00;26;12;29
Taco Mike
It’s always somebody else. Some somebody else is like holding me down and holding me back. I’m not diminishing the reality that that exists.

00;26;13;00 – 00;26;13;27
Brad Singletary
Sometimes it happens.

00;26;13;27 – 00;27;02;07
Taco Mike
Sometimes it happens. So like if you wanted to throw up sort of like the whole Black Lives Matter movement, most of that is completely and fully legit. Most of what happens in sort of like this persecution from a group or a person in a position of authority to someone else. So much of that is is legit and real. What is imagined, though, is that we can’t do anything about it and we’re stuck and we’re powerless about it. The people that changed their own lives and changed the worlds are the ones who then they just don’t settle. And then they go about change and transition through peaceful, respectable alpha type work like every day, just putting in the work. That makes sense. Yeah.

00;27;02;09 – 00;27;15;00
Brad Singletary
You either have options or you don’t. You either have some ability to adapt to it or not. I think to many men, like you said, settle for the belief that they don’t have any options when they really do.

00;27;16;00 – 00;28;10;27
Taco Mike
And too many people and I don’t think it’s just men, but too many people, in my opinion, then complain, whine and moan when they’re treated unfairly what they think is unfair. I respect people who are treated unfairly. I mean, that happens. How amazing is is the dude who just puts his head down and quietly goes about changing the world, changing the system, changing his family, changing his career, whatever, in spite of the fact that he got a bad deal. That’s a dude who that’s a leader, in my opinion. The leader, the guy who’s like on the TV news, red faced screaming at the camera. To me, that’s not a leader. To me, the guy who’s a leader in his family is the one who just sort of has that. It just steals our pride. It just it just gives him fuel and resolve to put his head down and put in the work.

00;28;12;02 – 00;29;36;02
Brad Singletary
You talked about kind of the injustice that happens to people, I knew a guy one time who. He had been paying child support for years in cash. And the ex-wife, after several years took him back to court and said he’d never paid in child support, though at all. Now that’s injustice in a way that is injustice, that that was a deceptive, dishonest thing. And now the guy is still he’s going to have to pay this twice. And guess who? Guess whose fault it is? And the moment this dude accepted like this is on me, this was a bad choice. This was a bad way to handle this. This is how it. This is not how it should be done. I’m paying some what Dave Ramsey calls stupid tax. I’m paying some stupid tax because there’s a way to verify what you’ve spent your money on. And cash is not a good way to do that. And so if you find yourself in a situation where you have been victimized, just really look at it and see, where’s the wisdom that you missed? Where’s the method that you overlooked? And sometimes really, it’s just purely, you know, if you’re a child and you’re being sexually abused or something like that, that’s that’s true victim victimizing. And that’s no one’s fault. And you can’t really do anything about that. But when you’re a grown ass man.

00;29;36;02 – 00;29;49;28
Brad Singletary
Unfair things are going to happen to you. You got to be looking about how you can protect yourself, how you can, what’s the backup plan, what contingency, you know, what kinds of things can you do in case it goes wrong? How do you show that you’ve done the right things?

00;29;54;21 – 00;30;09;19
Taco Mike
I think to you, you sort of denoted there’s maybe two levels of victimhood. There is truly being a victim. Someone breaks into your house and shoots you in the leg. You’re a victim. You did nothing, potentially nothing. You could, though, examine. So maybe to your point, you could go back and say, Did I not lock my door? Did I not have a good do? And I have good lighting outside? There are plenty of instances. Here’s here’s. Check this out this conversation not too long ago with the guy who was just railing on an ex-wife who’s kind of crazy like them. I know her. I know him. I know sort of some of the details of the rescue, but she’s kind of bonkers. He picked her. He picked her. So when they started dating and I, I even asked him where there are plenty of red flags that you saw there, like you guys are, you guys are starting to date. Did you truly, honestly have anybody come to you, your dad or your best friend or something like this chick danger like fire? Like watch out? He’s like, Yeah, I blew through stop signs. I blew through red lights because I was horny and she was hot and whatever, and he just had all these reasons.

00;31;02;18 – 00;31;27;25
Taco Mike
And now it’s super duper complicated and it’s it’s super messy. But he picked her, so he is a victim of her. She’s doing some crazy stuff. It’s kind of his fault. So isn’t that a little bit about what you’re saying, like, this dude is a victim, but he also needs to accept responsibility because he got an illicit relationship with her. He put that ball in motion. It ran him over. It’s like the Indiana Jones thing where he like, grabbed us the idol and then the ball comes out and everybody’s trying to kill him. Well, he grabbed the idol. He brought that on himself. He did it. He put all of those things in motion. So some dude is having a really terrible life. He’s miserable. Bad things are happening to him. How much of that’s his fault? It’s potentially, in some instances, none. And that sucks. It sucks when there are like car crashes that come out of the blue, that kind of thing sucks. And I think that’s a different kind of switch. I don’t think we’re talking about that kind of situation.

00;32;09;13 – 00;32;30;18
Taco Mike
I think what we’re talking about is a dude who finds himself in a legit bummer deal. And there is there is a chain of custody that at some point goes back to some decision or some something that this dude put into play, that this is the fruit that’s being borne out by those seeds that he planted a year ago, two years ago, 20 years ago, where he did or didn’t do things that could have prevented this miserable piece of victimhood. Now he’s he’s the Indiana Jones guy. He’s getting run over by the he grabbed the idol. He did that. The story about you’re talking about that dude who who who thought he was in good faith was doing the right thing. He’s paying his wife, keeping with child support like all that made a lot of sense. Maybe he was paying in cash because he thought he was keeping off the books. And it’s just maybe he maybe it gave him some bit of satisfaction of like, I’m a badass, I’m paying my ex-wife in cash. Like, who knows what sort of like dynamics were at play? And then it came whipsawed around and bit him in the ass. So it’s kind of his fault.

00;33;15;29 – 00;33;16;23
Brad Singletary
That’s kind of his fault.

00;33;16;24 – 00;34;05;00
Taco Mike
It’s kind of his fault. And then his wife was kind of a bit about it, right? And then deny and then made him pay twice. It’s kind of her fault, too, but he picked her. And so it just it all sort of like revolves or it’s just these planets are in orbit around each other at some point a dude who is alpha. Doesn’t accept victimhood. He accepts responsibility and culpability in the things that are going bad in his life and then puts his face to the wind and squints his eyes if he needs to and just marches on and just goes forward. Whatever you need to do to come to terms with that. Have a cry. Have a beer. Take a shrug. You know what I mean? Stomp your foot, whatever, and then just get to work. Just get to work.

00;34;05;18 – 00;35;06;11
Brad Singletary
Oh, I love that so much, man. That’s that’s exactly the type of thing we’re talking about. Earlier, you were talking about this guy who’s going around with all the money and he’s got this entourage and he’s got all this. He looks powerful. But he has no integrity. We’re talking about a man who’s facing every day things in life and taking ownership of his own problems, taking ownership. This is on me or here is something unless you got T-boned in a in an intersection. Even then, you could say, where you doing defensive driving? Did you look before you entered into the into the intersection? I mean, just maybe very little actual victimization and a whole lot of mindlessness on the part of men who were going around allowing themselves to be hurt. I’ve been that person before and you know, you get a few scars and you kind of learn some things about life and so responsibility. He meets his own needs with integrity. He’s not a victim. He’s also not a villain.

00;35;06;28 – 00;36;26;12
Brad Singletary
And that really just means that he’s also not doing harm. Don’t be the bad guy. Don’t be the jerk. Don’t be the person who’s victimizing someone else. You know, that’s where true victimization can happen is when you’re doing it, when you’re lashing out physically, verbally. Anything that you may be doing to cause harm for someone else, if there’s a need, if you’re defending your home from an intruder. Yeah, you better break bad and get it done. But don’t be a villain. And that language comes from the the drama triangle, the Karpman drama triangle, maybe I’ll include a graphic on that, but basically talks about when there’s drama, there’s a villain or persecutor, they say a victim and a rescuer. And so not being a victim, not being a villain says you could be a rescuer. You know that what I believe is that you may need to rescue people sometimes, but for sure, don’t see yourself as a victim or you’ll never get anywhere. And don’t be the villain. Don’t allow yourself to be the bad guy. Don’t allow yourself to be the one that’s always having to apologize. Who’s always having to correct the good things you blew up over?

00;36;27;12 – 00;36;34;10
Taco Mike
And it’s interesting the concept of gaslighting, which is a little complicated. Doctor, would you explain why that is.

00;36;35;06 – 00;37;26;27
Brad Singletary
So gaslighting that comes from a movie? I think it was an old black and white movie called Gaslight, but that’s basically denying maybe someone’s calling you out on your behavior or they’re trying to bring light to your improper things that you’re doing. You call them crazy. You’re making them feel like. This is about their perception, and this couldn’t possibly be true. It’s really denying responsibility. It’s denying responsibility and manipulating the other person to question their own perception about what’s really happening. They have a sense that this is going on or are you said something? And then you say, I never said that. I mean, even denying denying something that you’ve done is a form of gaslighting. It’s really a it’s a it’s a it’s kind of a psychopathic narcissistic.

00;37;27;12 – 00;37;46;27
Brad Singletary
It’s a very self-absorbed thing. Some people, I think, probably do that and they don’t realize they’re doing it. Is this kind of an unconscious level of just ego defense mechanism? Sure. But really gaslighting, that’s how I would explain it, I guess is just. You’re manipulating your way out of responsibility. Yeah.

00;37;47;13 – 00;38;35;16
Taco Mike
Well said, so to me, they’re sort of like rungs on the ladder of gas gaslighting at the lowest, maybe most innocent level is maybe we’re all sort of like guilty of this. We just don’t want to believe that it’s our fault. Right? Something happens. And then it’s just that first bit of like ego protection that that comes up and you’re like, what? You know, it’s just sort of that shock of like, I don’t want to face it, like, Oh, my goodness, I I don’t think I did that, OK? And then and then that’s like just at that super super, super low level and then where it becomes toxic, like what you described where somebody is. The narcissism starts to creep in and then manipulation and then somebody who is like, completely psychopath like a psychopath.

00;38;35;16 – 00;38;38;14
Brad Singletary
Sociopath, antisocial personality disorder. Yeah.

00;38;38;15 – 00;39;15;22
Taco Mike
OK, now obviously, that’s like top of the chart. Hopefully, none of us are involved with somebody who’s gaslighting us from a psychopathic level. Hopefully, all of us are in relationships with decent, well-meaning people who then are trying to push back response a bit, sort of like becoming a bouncing ball. It’s like becoming one of those screens where the, you know, in sports you train, you throw the ball, but then it comes right back at you. So the person who’s like gaslighting wants to be that screen, like, they don’t want to take anything that I want to take ownership of anything.

00;39;15;22 – 00;39;48;25
Taco Mike
They don’t want to take responsibility for anything and anything that is thrown at them, whether it’s real or not, they’re just their first reaction is like defense mechanism. That’s not Alpha. That’s narcissistic, and it could be psychopathic. An alpha, here’s what’s being said and then. Accepts all of it, so here’s here’s sort of what I think. This is my opinion. I think what an alpha does is he accepts all of the emotions from the other person because he he is unable to control what’s coming at him.

00;39;49;02 – 00;40;59;00
Taco Mike
You can’t go into another person’s psyche. You can’t go into their history. You can’t go and see what’s how, all the things that trigger them. So when somebody is coming at you, you just have to. If there’s any validity to it, then it’s all true. It’s all real. All of it. If they’re telling you 50 things and 49 are their swing and a miss. But one of those was true. one of those was real. You own all of it. It’s all yours because you don’t get to go into that again. You don’t get to go into their head and then edit through their perspective and their lived experience and then modify how your actions triggered them or cause some reaction in them. If you lit that fuse, you own the explosion. If you did anything, you created any spark. They think of the guy who’s charged with arson because he started a forest fire and he tries to then. But I was just weed whacking, you know, I was just I was just doing the thing and then the lawn mower hit a rock and then the rock. And then you saw force fire you. Right? Does that make sense?

00;40;59;01 – 00;40;59;21
Brad Singletary
Yeah, totally.

00;41;00;02 – 00;41;44;21
Taco Mike
So if you do something that creates a forest fire for another person, it’s your fire. It doesn’t matter if it burned down a one tree or 1000 acres of sea. And then here I can imagine the guy with who started the forest fire gaslighting back to the to the fire inspector. But I was only or you should have cut more trees, you know? Think of all the ways that he would then try to weasel out of that. It’s not my fault. They didn’t. They didn’t do. They should have cleared the grass. Or do you just imagine or like the neighbors? It’s nature’s fault. You didn’t rain that much this last year. It’s it’s everybody else’s fault. If you do anything, it starts a fire and you had any spark. Any of those sparks were yours.

00;41;44;22 – 00;42;44;19
Taco Mike
You own it. So what? I think? An alpha accepts all of the bullets that are being shot at him from the other person. 49 of those bullets, right, kind of to keep going with analogy, they’re just that person’s very strong, visceral, emotional reaction. OK, but you have to own that. That’s yours. Again, there may be one or two things that are legit real, you really did those one or two things, but you just have to take it all and then hopefully you’re your alpha enough. You’re wise enough and mature enough to let them explode at you and you take it. And then when they cool and they will when they see you. This has happened to me and I’ve been on both ends of this. When they see you being wise and calm and.

00;42;45;02 – 00;42;45;22
Brad Singletary
Receptive.

00;42;45;22 – 00;42;53;07
Taco Mike
Receptive and acknowledging that and humble that sort of steals the fire out of them, that sort of takes that you’re.

00;42;53;07 – 00;43;50;29
Brad Singletary
Not so disarming. Yes, it’s so disarming versus defensiveness. You just increase the attack. They’re going to bring the big guns now. You put the walls up. You put, you know, you put up the the armor and they’re just going to come with with sharper weapons at you. That’s that’s what happens when you when you hear it and you assume that there is some truth in it. Usually these things aren’t just coming out of nowhere. They’re not just being totally pulled out of the air out of thin air. I ask guys all the time he’s complaining, she says this, you know, and she says that and I say, what truth is there in that? And that’s a struggle. That’s a struggle for the ego to kind of say. Maybe it’s all true. Maybe it’s half true, but there’s truth in it. Here’s what it is. Here’s what I should have done could have done. Here’s what I’m not doing well. Yeah, great points, man. This is this is this is valuable stuff, you guys, I hope you’re taking notes on this stuff right now.

00;43;51;22 – 00;45;24;21
Taco Mike
I think the Alpha just owns it and then figures out a way to chill the situation, to de-escalate the situation. Think about being like hostage negotiators. Think about like how someone is trained and their mindset is de-escalate de-escalate. And that’s your role. That’s your responsibility. Is the father in the house is the husband. This is, in my view, this is the role. This is being alpha. This is leadership. You want to talk about being a leader in the home, being a leader and a family. This is what that looks like. You accept it and then you figure out a way to communicate back. And what I’ve done in the past when things have been very highly charged, is to take a piece of paper or just maybe mental notes. Valerie Dimmock, who forever is a hero to me. She’s a great therapist in town, taught me this. Listen to everything they say. Make notes, if necessary. Do not interrupt with your rebuttal of those those miss balls. Write the things that are just either not true at all or sort of true. But you want to like, no, I want to correct the record. Shut the f up. Shut your hole and take it and listen, and then if you do truly feel it’s about now, some of this stuff is just sort of like, you know, mouth vomit. And it doesn’t need to be revisited. It’s not. It’s not productive or necessary to go back. Somebody throws five things at you. three of them are just them being kind of.

00;45;24;21 – 00;45;25;24
Brad Singletary
Irrational, emotional.

00;45;25;24 – 00;46;33;06
Taco Mike
Emotional and crazy and stupid and you know, all that, and that’s fine. Don’t even revisit those, because they probably will later on realized like, well, I was bringing stuff up for my mom and when we were when I was 18 and you know what I mean? Like, they realize that too. But the one or two things that are legit? I put this in that format. I need to visit that. And so I should write that down. And then that’s where the conversation happens. That’s where we negotiate and deal and do that later. Make your talking like your talking points will come later. Let them have the floor. The speaker has the floor. So this is the art of war. This is the I like the art of conversation. The art of negotiation. I’m a bad alpha if I don’t know how to argue. I’m a poor alpha if I don’t know how to negotiate, de-escalate. I have no tools. If I don’t know how to do these things, I have no tools. How can I be a resource? How can I be a valuable resource to my community, to my family, to the people who look to me to be an alpha? If I don’t understand these things and have these resources, I am no leader.

00;46;33;11 – 00;47;03;03
Taco Mike
I’m not a leader. So to me, an alpha figures this out. If you need to see a shrink, then do it. If if I have stuff that I need to work through because I can’t take this emotion, like if I’m the kind of person where I just cannot, I’m not equipped to take that sort of like an attack and barrage. I need to figure that out because life isn’t going to continually just put me around people who are nice to me and tell me what I want to hear and how can I live a life like that?

00;47;03;15 – 00;47;42;05
Brad Singletary
You’re talking about tools, man. I love the one. And I actually since you shared that in a couple of those shows that we’ve done about taking notes, listening and taking notes. And, you know, is there anything more I’ve been? I’ve been sharing that with my clients ever since. I love that because it makes you shut up and makes you show that you’re listening. If you’re actually writing this stuff down, that is that’s super powerful. That is just amazing. What’s interesting is you ever watch these like political debates and somebody, you know, one of the speakers is talking in the other one, they’re writing some things, OK, they’re just writing it down that just jotting it down. They don’t have the chance to speak right now.

00;47;42;22 – 00;48;30;23
Brad Singletary
This is what they’re saying. This is what I need to take note of. And when you talked about that in relationships, man, super valuable. But yeah, I could use that. But I’ve shared that with people. That man, what a better way to de-escalate and to say, I’m listening so hard. Hold on. Let me just get some paper real quick. You really slow it down versus what most people do. They’re picking on the the details of it. And there again, well, that’s not it. Was it Wednesday that was Thursday. And it’s just it’s the stupidest kind of we end up with these stupid arguments that are not even about the issue because we don’t want to hear it because we don’t have the balls to accept that we might have made a mistake or hurt someone. So I love that tool you’re talking about. You’ve got a lot of tools. That’s why you’re who you are.

00;48;30;29 – 00;49;41;00
Taco Mike
Gary Chapman, whose books everyone would do well to read relationship author The five Love Languages. Everyone should know that name or become acquainted with who that guy is. Talks about the skill of conflict and how to use conflict. Interpersonal conflict to the advantage of both. It’s very good, very often for there to be sometimes these these conflicts because it’s it’s a release. Think about like remembering a teenager, you pop a pimple. There’s like this weird, twisted satisfaction in like the release of that, OK? There is this emotional pimple that sometimes happens in these relationships and they pop, and it’s sometimes ugly and red and disgusting and messy. Think of a pimple popping OK. That can happen in relationship, and it’s always better on the back side. It can be. It’s not always because sometimes people don’t do it well, but it can be. It can always be healing. It can be. So learn techniques. Learn these tools. Talk to Brad, talk to me.

00;49;41;00 – 00;49;41;23
Brad Singletary
Talk to Mike.

00;49;41;29 – 00;50;08;05
Taco Mike
Doesn’t matter, but figure your shit out so that when you get into a heated pressure cooker situation, you know how to handle it. That’s alpha. You want to know what an alpha looks like. He can take being attacked. He can. He can sit down and shut up and take it. That’s alpha to me.

00;50;08;25 – 00;50;12;22
Speaker
Gentlemen, you are the Alpha. And this is the Alpha Quorum.