ALPHA SHOT: One-minute Sample

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Sometimes we are flat wrong and the things we thought we knew are way off base.  Today we’re going to be discussing how to know when you may be wrong and what to do next.

My guest Jimmy Durbin teaches some high-value lessons about why men are so prone to having trouble admitting when they are wrong and outlines the steps he needs to take to grow into that kind of maturity.  This is the most valuable message in all of our 61 episodes to date.  Whoever you are, this will help you, trust me. 

Questions we answer today:

What makes us believe that we are right even though we are headed the wrong direction about something?
What are some indicators that we may be wrong about something?
What would an ALPHA do upon discovering that he is wrong?
How can we approach life with the humility that we may be wrong sometimes?
What about over-apologizing?

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Brad Singletary (00:02):
Every day, we make choices. We do our best in every situation everyone does, but sometimes we are flat wrong. And the things we thought we knew are way off base. Today, we’re going to be discussing how to know when you may be wrong and what to do next.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
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.

Brad Singletary (00:53):
Welcome back to the alpha quorum show. Brad Singletary here. I’m with my buddy and colleague Jimmy Durbin. Welcome back, Jimmy.

Jimmy Durbin (00:59):
Thank you very much for having me.

Brad Singletary (01:00):
We introduced Jimmy a few episodes ago. We had him on and shared quite a bit of his personal history, but I just wanted to review some of that. So Jimmy is in long-term recovery from multiple types of addictions and is currently working as a therapist has worked in the substance abuse population and mental health and a father of how many, three boys, three boys, all grown pretty much. They’re men. You’re great grandfather now, right? Yeah. So he’s moving on into a new chapter for himself and appreciate you being here, man.

Jimmy Durbin (01:37):
My pleasure. Thanks for having me back.

Brad Singletary (01:38):
So today we want to be talking about what do we do when we are wrong. Something men find very difficult to do is first admit, maybe to even acknowledge first that we’re wrong, but then to admit it and then to make that wrong, right again. So we’re going to be coming at this from some different approaches. The questions that we want to answer today are what makes us believe that we are right? Even though we’re headed in the wrong direction about something, what are some indicators that we may be wrong in the first place? What would an alpha do upon discovering that he is wrong? How can we approach life with a humility that we may be wrong? And lastly, how do we not overdo apologies? So I want to start first with this question. What makes us believe that we’re right. I think there are so many examples or places in our lives where we may be wrong. So in relationships and parenting work stuff you know, just projects and tasks that we may be doing. So Jimmy, what do you think makes us believe that we are right? Or what makes it so hard to admit that we’re wrong?

Jimmy Durbin (03:00):
Well, as a 52 year old white male, I think I’ve had some environmental surroundings that have told me that I’m right. Cause I’m male because I’m Caucasian. And so I think I learned to be right from parents, siblings, uncles, family members, modeling, watching them, knowing what I saw in my house and then how the story was told to others. So being able to see the difference between what my life experience was and how my parents were telling that story and seeing some variations that even if something’s happening, where it feels wrong, or it doesn’t pass my eyeball test, I’m being shown by my parents that it’s, I at least tell everyone outside that it’s still right. Are things are okay. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Brad Singletary (04:05):
So you weren’t just made to believe that you needed to be right, but that you should appear, right? Like that’s the way to be the way my dad used to say I had my dad on the show a while back and he shared some of his life lessons, but one of the funny things he used to say is I was wrong once it’s when I thought I was wrong, but I was wrong. And I really think he believed that at some point. So we have a need it’s, there’s pride and ego. We have these fragile egos. And I think we all do to some degree or another. And I mean, men, it’s hard for men to even ask for directions. That’s kind of a cliché thing, but what is it about that kind of thing? These simple, simple things asking for directions. You know, I had a problem one time in my life asking to borrow tools. So I needed, let’s say a, a saws, all, you know, a reciprocating saw or something. And I would be so embarrassed to have to ask a family member or a neighbor if they had that, it was like, if I’m a man, I should have all the tools I would ever need or have the money to go out and buy it. And what is, what is with that? What this, why don’t we, why don’t we get embarrassed about maybe I look like fool,

Jimmy Durbin (05:20):
It means I have to be vulnerable. Okay. and that can be a really scary thing. It means that I’m opening myself up to your critique of feedback, harsh criticism. And if I’ve learned as I grew up, or as an individual grows up, that you get critiqued or you get yelled at, or that’s a stupid question then to be vulnerable, becomes a really hard, difficult thing to down the window and say, you know what, I’m lost. Can you give me directions? Cause I’ve done that I’ve driven for hours trying to find a place. And my pride and my ego just would not like I’ll find it, I’ll find it. And you know, there’s a good quality about that too. Right. That perseverance and resilience. And so, yeah.

Brad Singletary (06:15):
Keep trying and work hard, be independent. A lot of that is drilled into us too. And maybe the side effect is this lack of vulnerability.

Jimmy Durbin (06:23):
Yeah. And just continuing to travel down this path and struggle, you know, and I mean, some of it can be, you know, what does it mean for an individual to ask for help, you know, based on what they grew up with and what that means for them and wanting to ask for help or being just admitting that we’re struggling. So I think it’s vulnerability.

Brad Singletary (06:49):
Have you ever, I’m just curious for you, Jimmy, and also for you guys listening to this, have you ever lost respect for someone because they admitted they were wrong because they asked for help, but that they don’t know something or do we gain respect for those people? I think for me, I’ve only respected that more in people. One of my friends who’s on the show and part of this is Taco Mike. He just, he talks about himself. Like he’s an idiot and he’s not, he’s brilliant, but he has no problem in any place in any situation saying, okay, I’m not familiar with that. I’m not, I don’t know that word. I’m not familiar with what you’re talking about, you know, help me out with this. And that just makes me respect people so much more when they can say, I don’t know. There was a time when I taught and I taught graduate school courses.

Brad Singletary (07:44):
These were students in a master’s program. And I thought that I had to, in the beginning, I kind of thought that I had to have every, I had to know everything or I would lose the respect of my students. And early on, someone asks a question and I said, I didn’t know. And one of them later gave me the feedback that, that made them respect me more. And I just thought, you know, I’m the same way I, if someone fakes it and they’re there, they’re there, being there pretending to have it figured out and refusing to accept that they may not have it all figured out. I don’t have a lot of respect for that person.

Jimmy Durbin (08:21):
I was that guy you were Oh yeah, absolutely. Okay. And I did judge and I did, and remember, you know, losing respect for someone. I feel differently today. I, I view it today as that is an act of courage. And I believe that there is a connection between my perspective back then and how I showed up in the world back then. And my inability to ask for help was more of a reflection of some self judgment.

Brad Singletary (09:06):
You were the one judging yourself, not the other people around you.

Jimmy Durbin (09:09):
Yeah. And so, but I was the guy who told you what you wanted to hear. And I would be off the cuff, make it up as I went seat of my pants and I lied. And do you think people saw through that? Yes. I mean, back then, I would have told, you know, like I, you know, I got, I’m a pretty good showmanship. I, you know, I, when I go out and and speak, I always say that I’m adjust guy. So I’m just good looking enough. And I’m just well, educated enough. And I’m just well-spoken enough that I can get over around, through whatever it is. But the truth of it is I was very thin plastic, you know, phony. And, and I do believe that people can see through that. You know, it may take whatever it takes, but I think after a while, you know, you can tell if someone’s just not authentic, it just, that energy is different. And the way they show up in individual’s lives is different.

Brad Singletary (10:14):
It may pass for some people, but people are intuitive enough and they can read the energy and they can know whether or not you’re, this is coming from a genuine place. Or if this is you just kind of faking it until you make it. I read an interesting story recently. Well, actually, I first heard about this from the book leadership and self-deception, which is a great book, but it talks about the story of, I think you pronounce this Ignaz Semmelweis, who was a Hungarian physician in like the 1840s. And he was a, he went into this, this clinic or this hospital, and he was trying to study why so many women were dying from dying during childbirth, the women and the children. They called it child bed fever, I think is what they called it. And some of the women were being delivered by midwives.

Brad Singletary (11:09):
And other groups of women were being delivered by doctors and medical students. And the death rate was about 1% for the midwives and almost 8% from the doctors. So these doctors were surgeons and they were literally going from one surgery to the next, without even washing their hands. And they, the idea was that a good surgeon has blood on his hands. They would be maybe performing an autopsy and then go to deliver a child in the, in the, and the mother and the child dies. And this guy studied all these things and he was looking at, okay, maybe is it, is it because some women deliver the child on their back, some women deliver on their side, you know, what are, what are the elements that make the difference and what he found out and he was hated for and beaten for? I think he was even beaten to death for this was that it was the very hands of the doctor who was trying to, you know, save the life and trying to bring life into the world.

Brad Singletary (12:11):
And he was the one ending the life. And I just think so many times where that doctor, this was ridiculed, he was ridiculed for suggesting that between operations or between medical procedures, that the physicians should wash his hands. And so much of that, I think we have that same kind of pride where we think don’t tell me, don’t, don’t try to suggest anything to me. It’s a refusal to be vulnerable and, and open to new ideas. We’ve talked about our upbringing and how we may not have had the best models of humility. So when we’re looking at a problem, there are usually multiple pieces of a puzzle. And if we’re trying to figure out why something isn’t working and we’ve changed two of the, two of the elements to the problem, and it still doesn’t work, we may not recognize that this is maybe the interaction effect of the two things not working.

Brad Singletary (13:12):
And I guess I’ve done a lot of things with like technology, like web design. And it’s like, I changed this and it’s still not working. So then I changed this one and I thought, surely that would have fixed the problem. Not recognizing that both of those things interacting together, continue to create the problem. Recently I had a situation with my, with my wife. She’s gotten into some gardening and we live here in the desert, by the way, it’s like 115 here today. Hope everybody’s surviving. But so she wanted to put together this greenhouse and she comes home and, or, excuse me, I come home after work and she asked for my help and we’re putting together this thing, it’s kind of like a tent. Think of, think of this, like a, like a, you know, eight foot by eight foot tent or something like that.

Brad Singletary (14:01):
And she had already started on putting these poles together and they were tough to get in. And so I said, Oh, well, maybe this thing, you know, maybe it was made in China. Maybe it’s just the wrong measurements. We just kind of have to force it a little bit. So I’m trying to put these poles in this little sleeve part of the, the greenhouse material and it doesn’t work. And so I got out the cooking oil, literally you’re committed. I was committed. It was, I’m trying to force this thing. And I’m twisting, I’m getting blisters on my hands trying to twist this like aluminum pole through the, through the hole of this greenhouse material. And then I remembered one of my friends was an engineer and he talked about how they were moving a bridge. They were literally like disassembling this bridge and they had to move an entire bridge.

Brad Singletary (14:48):
And the lubricant that they used was Dawn soap. So he, they had this like millions of tons of a road all put together in a bridge and they were trying to slide it across this, this metal thing. And, and, and they use Dawn dish soap. So I said, Oh, Dawn dish soap will work. So I’ve got cooking oil Dawn. So then the, then the dish soap from all the frictions started to get dry and sticky. So they’re not putting water down there. And after like an hour of wrestling with this thing committed to not giving up, I went back to the direction

Jimmy Durbin (15:24):
Other were in directions.

Brad Singletary (15:26):
Yeah. There’s always instructions. Yeah. And in big capital letters, it says, do not attempt to put the pole through the sleeve that we were trying to do. And so I recognized that I was wrong and that as much as I believe that I had the right approach. So then, then it took another hour to kind of undo everything I had done and then magically it worked like a charm. So I had to admit that I was wrong there, we do so many things like that, where we were just committed to finishing.

Jimmy Durbin (15:59):
So for me, that’s a good point of the balance between, you know, your resilience, your commitment, wanting to complete, and being able to ask for help or realize, is there a marker? What indicator do I have that this isn’t going correctly and finding the balance between that. So for me, this is a three, three stage process. Okay. So am I, or do I have self-reflection do I have an internal process where I can review, right. So in this story, at some point you stopped and said, okay, let me let me course correct. This is, I’m having some challenges, some struggles, this isn’t going as easily as I would normally think, right?

Brad Singletary (16:54):
Yeah. Maybe it’s not this material. Maybe it’s not the stupid poll. Maybe it’s not the cooking oil, maybe it’s me operator error. Right.

Jimmy Durbin (17:02):
And so that’s a process that you would have, or an individual would have to say, okay, not going as expected. I need to stop. So you stopped ask for help, which is in the form of those direct directions, get counsel, get some knowledge and then course correct. And that second part is, you know, being able to admit that I’m wrong. So we have a process where we can be introspective review and then go into a, okay, I need to admit that I was wrong. Of course. Correct. And then admitting that is probably that third step of what to do. Yeah.

Brad Singletary (17:50):
Back to the instructions. See if you see, if you miss something, you ask about indicators of how we may know when we’re wrong. One is one that I see, like in the, in the counseling and coaching world is feedback. If every boss you’ve ever worked with has told you the same thing, there, there might be some truth to that. You know, you’re on your third marriage and this woman complains about the same things that the last one did. Maybe there’s some truth in that maybe it’s worth taking a look at that, honestly, frustration. So me trying to jam this pole in the wrong hole, it’s frustrating. It doesn’t, it doesn’t make sense. I’m like, how could they be? How could they have been so wrong this factory with, with these engineers and people putting this stuff together and typing up the directions, how could they be so wrong? It was me so frustration. It doesn’t look right. It doesn’t feel right.

Jimmy Durbin (18:41):
Colin cowherd does a radio show, a sports ESPN. Yeah. So he, he calls that the eyeball test. Okay. He very simply says, you know, if I look over the environment, if something looks out of place, that’s a pretty good indicator. Like to trust my voice, to trust myself. Does it pass the eyeball test? Does it make sense? You know, at some point, if you’re having to jam this pole, that’s not passing, then I will like stop. Right? And then no, no, no. I’m not going to stop. Let me, let me get some grease. Okay. Brad stop. No, no, no. I know I need dish soap. Like what’s going on with you?

Jimmy Durbin (19:25):
Where’s the indicator. Like, where’s the marker to say, Hey, you know, stop like that. That’s what I’m talking about with that inner pure, that perspective and that indicator of like, and I’ve done it. How many times do I need to bang my head up against the wall before I’m actually going to stop? Or do I really need to get bloody? It used to be that I use I’d have to get bloody. I’d have to tear it up. And if I’m honest, it wasn’t that long ago I had a truck and unlike taco Mike, I’m not very mechanical. I know where the key goes. And the gas is the right foot pedal. And the engine indicator light came on and I thought, okay, well, I’ll, I’ll take care of that and got busy and didn’t and broke down on the highway. Cause the truck overheated and I lost the engine. So that was a $7,000 mistake, $7,000 delay. So I listened to those controls now, cause they’re actually there to tell me things, but you know, I know better. It’s not that big a deal or it’s, can’t be, you know, I’m gonna tear it up. You know, I’m going to put grease and shit shoved this thing down in there.

Brad Singletary (20:43):
Yeah. So the, I liked the idea of reading the gauges. I think that’s something that men can relate to read the gauges that may be frustration, anger, anxiety. If you’ve had repeated failures, you, you keep ending up with the same results. That that may be an indication that you’re wrong. If you continue to see others as the problem, if everyone around you, if everything around you, it’s the other political party. It’s the neighbor’s fault. It’s the, it’s the wives fault. The kid’s fault. It’s your parents’ fault. If, if you can come up with ways of blaming everyone around you, it could be possible that you’re just refusing to see your own responsibility. You’re just resistant to accepting your own contribution to the things you say.

Jimmy Durbin (21:29):
Yeah. In the addiction arena, we often say, we’ll just do a geographical, just move, just move. You know? And the response is always that as well, wherever you go, there you are, right. Like I used to have a mantra of, if I’m not the problem, there is no solution. I love that. I’ve been teaching that to people. If I’m not the problem, there is no solution that comes from taking ownership, realizing that there is a lot of power and being empowered. If I say, okay, if, if I am the problem, then what can be my solution? Because I spent years making everyone and everything else, the problem, because denial, pride my addiction, like whatever the case was, but when I’m in that space. And so I appreciate what you say about that because I think there’s a lot of validity too. If it’s always someone else, chances are, you know, to take a look in the mirror and, and get vulnerable. Right. And just admit, and then course correct. I think,

Brad Singletary (22:41):
I think the temptation to put the blame on other people is that it absolves us of any responsibility. That’s the, that’s just the easy way. And although, like in terms of like addiction, so many addicts have been traumatized, they’ve been bad. Shit has come to them from the hands of other people, parents, spouses, all kinds of, you know, wrongs have happened to them. And what I don’t hear in any of the healing that happens is for people to make a list of all the people that have wronged them. Maybe there’s some PR maybe some trauma needs to be processed in that way. But I know that’s not a part of the 12 step model. Yeah. Make a list of everybody. Who’s had been a jerk to you and been mean to you and who’s treated you unkindly. The healing comes from looking in the mirror. Brother, look at yourself, take accountability for the ways that you have been wrong. It’s, it’s fascinating to me. If you look at those 12 steps, how many of those have to do with your wrongs? Really? All of it is about hump. Isn’t it? Yeah. Taking ownership.

Jimmy Durbin (23:46):
It’s a process. I agree with you in that whatever label you want on the vehicle, addiction, overeating, eating disorders, personality, behavior, shopping. If you let that vehicle get you from a, to B to a level of admitting and awareness and taking responsibility, then change can happen. But until then, you know, if it, if it is always the, the other drivers around the road, if it is always the spouse or the kids or the school or the teachers or the government, then there isn’t any level of accountability to do some self processing to say, okay, where do I, where am I on this? Do I need to take any level of responsibility or am I wrong? And then of course, correct.

Brad Singletary (24:42):
Yeah. Wisdom is knowing the difference between what I can control and what I can. And if I’m the problem I can control that

Jimmy Durbin (24:49):
Time experience helps with understanding.

Brad Singletary (24:55):
I read this quote recently and it’s so profoundly kind of deep. I need your help with it here, Jimmy. But this is by Chris Jamie. And it says pride is pride. Not because it hates being wrong, but because it loves being wrong to hate being wrong is to change your opinion when you are proven wrong. Whereas pride, even when proven wrong decides to go on being wrong. That is just so powerful. So we think that we don’t want to be wrong. That’s the fear. It’s just, it’s kind of the irony of control. It’s the irony of, of right versus wrong. Because if we, if we, if we, if we stay stuck in our, in this prideful place, we just continue going on, being wrong

Jimmy Durbin (25:39):
To hate being wrong means that you’ll change your opinion when you are proven wrong. So if I don’t like something, if I don’t like missing three froze, or if I don’t like fill in the blank and I do, then I will do something in order to not have that reoccur again. So the change process, but if I’m in my pride in my ego and this one hits home for me, because as I’ve done my own work and kind of worked through and all the processing and education, all the messes that I make on the surface of the earth, I can usually funnel into three buckets. So I have a need to be right. I’m very entitled and I’m dishonest and it’s different forms. So for me, when you read that quote, I have, because I have such a strong desire to be right. And there are times that I would rather be right than be happy.

Jimmy Durbin (26:44):
And that shows up quite a bit, usually in my family relationships. And it happened this weekend, my dog threw up on the couch and the carpet floor. So I grabbed a rag and I was cleaning it on the floor. And she’s like, Oh, we threw up on the couch as well. Just, can you give me that rag? And the way I wanted to solve that problem was just take the fabric off the cushions and wash them. And I wanted to be right about that. And she wasn’t asking me to solve it or to even do anything other than just hand her the rag. But I was engaged in this. Well, no, it’s not that hard. Right. You just take the cushions off and then you can wash them and it’ll be done. And, and about halfway through, because I could see this look hurt on her face. I said, you know what? Just forget it. Just forget it. Forget I even said anything. So now I’m butt hurt. And so now she even feels like worse that she’s even bothered me and she hadn’t even done anything.

Jimmy Durbin (27:53):
And I stayed angry and sat back on the couch and was like, gosh, dang it. You know, I was wrong. I didn’t need to show up that way. She wasn’t asking me to solve anything to do anything, but I wanted to drive my point home. I wanted to be right about this. And so subsequently that night, I, you know, listen, I, I need to apologize. Like you, weren’t asking me to do anything other than give you the rag. And I was trying to drive my point and show you that I was right and get validation and ended up hurting you. And that’s just not the husband that I want to be. So I, you know, I’m sorry. And that cleared up the energy, but 24 hours,

Brad Singletary (28:37):
You know, what’s interesting in that is that you were trying to, you were trying to fix it. You were trying to be responsible. You were trying to be thorough. You were trying to be nice. You know, I find a lot of, a lot of men who have this, this kind of problem, including myself, we’re people pleasers. And so if we ever think someone brings something to us where we’ve done wrong, or we’ve not handled something in the right way, our need to be right in our need to please other people. And that makes us refuse to allow ourselves to be wrong. Does that make sense? The nice guy syndrome kind of thing, where we, we, we w you’re just so nice. It sounds like you’re trying to really take care of it and be a thorough you’re trying to clean up the dog’s mess. This is kind of, you know, your dog and you’re trying to do the right thing, but it, but it led to a problem because you were almost just overly concerned, overly feeling overly responsible.

Jimmy Durbin (29:33):
Yeah. And so thank you for validating me and you know, there, the other side of this is those individuals who apologize too often are chronically yes. Or habitually either because of the way they grew up and that just, they were made to, or, you know, when I was talking about my wife about coming on tonight, she’s like, I sometimes apologize too much or apologize for something that I didn’t do. She said that, or you said, she said that to me because it makes me feel better. And that’s certainly not been my experience, but that there are those, and that has validity of being saying, I’m sorry, apologizing for maybe even something that you didn’t do just to people please, or be the peacekeeper, if that’s your role. And I think that can be just as detrimental.

Brad Singletary (30:30):
Sure. Definitely overdone by so many people apologize when there is no fault of their own or apologize when it’s inappropriate to do that, or feeling responsible for something that isn’t really necessary

Jimmy Durbin (30:47):
Different way to go about it. Right. Because that can oftentimes be connected to self-worth where I think where I come from more, some narcissistic traits of just need to be right. And that resilience kind of, that we talked about and perseverance, and just, I’m going to put this pole on the whole it takes a different process or perspective in order to get to that place of, you know, admitting I’m wrong. We’re on the other side of the spectrum over apologizing takes work in self-efficacy, self-love realizing that your voice matters and that if you didn’t do anything, it’s, you don’t need to apologize. Like you’re okay. The way you are and finding your voice and, and, and standing on solid ground to know that it’s okay, that you don’t need to apologize. Like you didn’t do anything wrong. But if, again, both environmental situations, right. If, if you grew up one way or the other, it may be symptomatic of, of your childhood upbringing.

Brad Singletary (31:55):
So do you think there’s some narcissism in the people who over apologize as well? Like I say, I have a stomach ache and you say, Oh, I’m so sorry. Like, you’re the cause of my stomach ache. Yeah. That’s what I mean. That made me question yourself accidentally. You’re not, you know, you’re just feeling responsible for things that you’re not,

Jimmy Durbin (32:13):
That’s a good question. I know, as I’ve talked to different individuals about that, there’s a level of empathy. And I think for women, it can be different where there they are, sorry for that. You’re going through pain. You know, if Brad, you, as my friend were going through some difficult times or hard times, and you were sharing that with me. And I said, Oh man, I’m like, it’s not that I’m apologizing and I’m just trying to connect with you. Right. but I think as long as it’s a conscious decision and you’re an individual knows what they’re doing and how they’re connecting to that versus I think what we’re talking about is probably a little different arena.

Brad Singletary (32:57):
Interesting too. I read an article in psychology today about kind of the male female differences. And the author was making a, an interesting observation that the problem with men needing to be right is usually often is often coming from, from women. And, and they said, men don’t pick on other men for their need to be right. Much like women don’t pick on other women for being overly emotional. That’s good. You know, so there’s some interesting gender dynamics with that too. Let’s go on to our next question here, which you started on a little bit there, but what, what does an alpha do upon discovering that he is wrong? This building that I I’m working in here, beautiful building here in the, in the Henderson area of Las Vegas. And there are two identical buildings behind my office building. These are probably like multimillion dollar investments, beautiful colonial looking buildings.

Brad Singletary (33:53):
And the two buildings behind me, I think these are probably 10 or 15 years old. They never opened. So they’re, the windows are boarded up. It’s just, these are abandoned brand new buildings because as far as I understand the foundation was, was wrong. And so, because the foundation wasn’t poured properly, it’s it wasn’t saved in past inspections or whatever. No, one’s really willing to go in and put the money in to fix that. And it can’t be occupied. It makes me also think of a religious structure. My parents 56 years ago drove from Florida to salt Lake city, Utah, to be married in the salt Lake LDS temple. An interesting thing about the history of that building is that it took 40 years to build, but after nine years of building that, so Brigham young, who was the leader of the church at that time, there’s this, this, this movie that depicts the story of him sitting in this basement.

Brad Singletary (34:56):
They basically it’s taken them nine years and they finished the basement of it, but the foundation is cracked and he sits there and he says, you know, I’m going to, I’m going to just sit in this spot until I know what to do. And I think he sits there all night. It shows the sun coming up the next morning and he says, I know what we’re going to do. We’re going to dig it up. We’re going to start over. So what is it that the alpha does when he recognizes that he’s wrong? What do you do when you see that you’ve gone about things the wrong way? How do you, how do you fix it? I read a quote here from Marvin Williams who said is no better test of a man’s integrity than his behavior when he is wrong. So we’ve talked already about the acknowledgement that maybe I’m wrong, but then maybe we have to, we got to do some research.

Brad Singletary (35:54):
I often ask men when they have a particular problem, if they’ve ever Googled it. And they kind of look at me, have you ever Googled it? Have you ever checked out any YouTube videos on that? There was a funny thing a couple of Thanksgivings ago where we were making deviled eggs and I kept getting sick and tired of the, of the eggs, sticking to the, you know, you boil them too long or you don’t do it. Right. And you can’t peel the eggs. And I was determined that there’s a right way to do that and I was doing it wrong. And so I Googled it and my brother-in-law taught me this probably 10 years ago or so you can just Google anything, Google it. How do I, what’s the proper way to boil eggs so that they’re easy to peel. So you acknowledge that you may be doing something wrong.

Brad Singletary (36:42):
And then I think you do some research. Have you asked anyone else, have you, do you have a mentor? Do you have a tribe of men that you can go and tell on yourself too? You ever talked to a professional ever taken a course? You know, it takes maybe sometimes digging up the building and starting over. It takes disassembling the little greenhouse taken out the pole that you put in the wrong hole and starting over, going back to the instructions, we’ve got to admit it. What is the value? And just admitting it, like you’ve done a lot of work on yourself. You you’ve, you’ve seen lots of people through recovery and sobriety and now working in the mental health world. And what is the power, especially for men to admit when they’re wrong.

Jimmy Durbin (37:33):
Awareness is key. Okay. Admitting it means that there’s some level of awareness and then can change, can happen. You know, I’m reminded before I got into mental health and therapy was in the casino industry and convention sales and city center, which consisted of Aria Bedarra Mandarin crystals, and then a Harmon project. And I think they broke ground in 2006. And then it was in 2014 that the city finally deemed that Harmon project in uninhabitable, uninhabitable. Thank you. Never wanted to admit it. You know, you think of the process that a site has to go through in order to, and I’m sure someone knew and they were trying to cut corners or Hey, will X, Y, or Z. And so that part of Las Vegas Boulevard still hasn’t been developed. And when I was working back at MGM, they had, there were some talks of, well, we’ll just implode it.

Jimmy Durbin (38:55):
But they still haven’t done it again. I’m not a construction expert, but I think it would the damage to try to do that. It just seems insurmountable to me. So it just sits there vacant. So admitting that you’re wrong means that change can happen. There’s this awareness you know, in substance abuse that the 10 step alcoholics anonymous in the literature, they talk about, you know continue to take a personal inventory and when we are wrong, promptly admitted. And I think that’s a great blueprint for exactly what we’re talking about. Do you have, or what is your personal inventory? How do you review your day, your week? How do you review what interactions you had? We do it in business all the time, and we’re not attached re most of the time emotionally. Right. But it seems like when we go inward, we might be dealing with shame, a lot of emotions that stop us from taking inventory.

Jimmy Durbin (40:05):
But I think that’s a really healthy process for any business and for any individual to take a personal inventory, describe that for people not familiar with that language personal inventory. Yeah. So, I mean, we’ve kind of touched on it tonight. The, our ego, our pride in the AA literature, they talk about character defects. As therapists, we would probably say character traits, right? Not to put a negative or positive on it. But what drives us? You know, what, what beliefs do we have that propel our perspective that leads us to action. And do we have a way of understanding what that is? Those, those character traits, what is your pride? How do I show up? What kind of feedback? Like all the things that we’ve been talking about and what am I doing with that information? And again, if we do it in business and it’s essential, I would say in business, you want the data, you want the numbers taking it.

Jimmy Durbin (41:13):
How’s, it’s projected. How’s this gonna look? What’s my inventory. What’s good. What’s bad. What spoiled, what what’s taken up floor space, what needs to be removed? What’s a defective product. I need to get it back to get my refund or whatever that case may be like. You’re not going to succeed in business if you don’t have an inventory process. So it’s no different than that. We do it in our homes. I gotta go to the grocery store, let me take an inventory. Now I’m not attached. If I don’t have milk or I’m not attached. If the sour cream has gone bad or the cheese has mold on it. But again, when we do that, when we go on this fact finding fact searching mission internally, sometimes we get caught up in the spiderweb of the emotions and that’s where the alpha quorum, a good drinking buddy, a therapist, a parent, your best mate, can assist and help with that process. Like I’ve always say it’s really helpful to me to have a space in my life where I can be completely transparent and I can tattle on myself.

Brad Singletary (42:23):
I love that. When you talk about tattling on yourself, the, the men in my groups who seem to do the best are the ones that say exactly what they’re doing. And sometimes they get, sometimes they get, I mean, sometimes the other men will swear at them and say, what is your freaking problem? And they get a lot of kind of harsh feedback, you know, punch in the mouth. But those are the guys who are really reaching and they’re doing that inventory. And they’re using the voices of other men that they trust to, to help them get there. It’s interesting. When you talk about like, this was the 10th step you were talking about. So this is like, after the person has really made amends for major things in their life, they’ve kind of gone around and to take an accountability and, you know, done their apologies and done all the things that they, they need to make these major things, right. But this is how you stay. This is how you stay in a good place, is to continue to do that. And when we’re wrong promptly admit it. I love that. I love that little part promptly admitted,

Jimmy Durbin (43:22):
Great word. And, and yes, to your point. So we often refer to steps 10, 11, and 12 is the maintenance or the growth steps. Like these are the steps to help us. And again, no different than a business, stay healthy, stay profitable. And so continue to take a personal inventory and when we’re wrong, right? So that’s the second part of this is being able to admit I’m wrong. I think the more work I do on myself, the more work that I do with others, especially for men, when we can admit what our limitations are, it’s really healthy. If we can admit what our boundaries are, where our weak spots are, where the blind spots reside in our life, that’s healthy. And we don’t teach that society. Certainly doesn’t teach that. Oftentimes women will say they want the man on the white horse, you know? But there’s a level of vulnerability that comes from a man who can admit his limitations and be okay with that and subsequently asked for help. So to, to admit that we’re wrong, there’s a song entitled. I’m wrong. I’m sorry. I love you.

Brad Singletary (44:53):
Sing it for us Jimmy. I’d love to

Jimmy Durbin (44:56):
Not. But that’s, those are the lyrics, you know, and I think it’s powerful. I think it’s more often more powerful or let me speak for myself in my experience, it has been more powerful for me, oftentimes in my marriage or my very close relationships for me to say, you know what? I was wrong more so than to say, I love you. You know? And I’m okay. Today was saying I was wrong. I was flat out wrong and I hurt you. And I’m sorry. And I love you. And a man who can do that, I think is a man who’s done his work. Who’s self-confident who knows where he’s going and can be the father, the son, the friend that he’s always wanted to be in his life. And that’s a man who’s done a lot of work. And

Brad Singletary (45:55):
What about people who say, you know, Oh, apologize. And doesn’t change anything. You know, talk is cheap. Those are just words that doesn’t fix anything. It does no good to apologize. Do you believe in that? No, I don’t either. I I’m a person who appreciates apologies. And for me, it’s like, I just want to know that you understand that you hurt me. I can, I can forgive almost anything. I just want to know that you understand what, what happened here and how you affected me. Do you understand the cause and effect of, of, of your behavior? And I have to remember that for myself too.

Jimmy Durbin (46:30):
I mean, we’re human beings, we’re wired for connection. All of us have an essential desire to be seen, to be heard and to be known. And someone admitting that they’re wrong or I’ve hurt. You brings that person into existence. What a powerful, powerful way to, to connect. And if our society says anything, we’re quick to forgive. We’re quick. Like, it doesn’t matter what sports sport athlete, what politician, what leader holds onto a lie, denies, denies, denies, and then, you know what, okay, I did it. I’m sorry. And we forgive them like, okay, that’s all, that’s all I needed from you. That’s all I wanted. That’s all. Thank you. And now we can move on, but if that’s not there, which is why, and I’m glad you picked up on that because that word promptly admitted is key. And that is in and of itself its own process.

Jimmy Durbin (47:34):
So rather than react the way that I did with the cleaning up the, the throat with my dog, you know, it took me six hours to stop and go back and apologize. And I’m okay with that. It used to be days, weeks that I would just get upset and I’d transfer my energy onto people, places and things. And I didn’t have to do it, you know? And so what I tell myself, because I also believe in this process, it’s, it’s progress, not perfection progress, not perfection. So for me, it’s okay. Next time that happens, Jimmy just make it five hours, four hours. Like just constantly just take that inventory. Know what your markers are, what the indicators are and just work to get better. I’m not, I’m not going to be perfect at it. It’s okay. But I think oftentimes society teaches men that we need to vote our feelings off the Island and society teaches women to vote their bodies off the Island. And so men, we don’t talk about our feelings, women. We just don’t talk about our bodies and it’s just unhealthy. And it causes a lot of problems.

Brad Singletary (48:48):
It’s interesting. When you talk about the power of an apology in like relationships, when a person is digging their heels in what is likely the, you know, refusing to apologize, refusing, to acknowledge and validate the other person’s experience and how they’ve been hurt by you, what is their likely, what is their likely response? Cause I think that, I think the whole, I was wrong. I’m sorry. I love you. That’s that whole message. That’s disarming to the other person. If you put up, if you put up the barriers, if you put up the wall, put, put up the Gates and the, and the guard rails, and you put everything up to defend yourself, it just the, to every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. The more defensive we are, the more the other person attacks and so acknowledging wrong. And just saying those words, one thing that it does is it disarms the other person and now they don’t have in sales.

Brad Singletary (49:47):
They kind of talk, I learned this in a social psychology class. It’s the kind of thing that made me interested in this whole field was if you’re, let’s say you’re trying to sell a car and you know, that one of the things that might be you know, not be the best feature of this thing, you’re trying to sell, go ahead and tell it to them, to give them their own argument. And it’s not to manipulate is to validate, yeah, this one, isn’t the best on gas mileage, but it really has a high towing capacity or whatever it may be. And so you can take away the other person’s argument by just acknowledging how you’re wrong and sometimes admitting when you’re wrong means admitting that they’re right. Maybe it’s maybe we add a fourth line to the lyric. I was wrong. You’re right. I’m sorry. I love Jimmy we’ve this has been a great talk today, man. I appreciate the things you bring to this. Not just, you’re a smooth and sexy voice, but your actual wisdom and the ways that you’ve matured and the way you’re sharing that with men here. Final thoughts on how to admit when you’re wrong, stop trying to put it in the wrong hole.

Jimmy Durbin (50:57):
I love your story. You know, I think just as a recap, because your story just, it’s a full circle. What indicators do I have in my life? You know, read the directions, instructions, get feedback, have a place that you can take your personal inventory. Be honest with yourself, tattle, be just transparent with no shame, no judgment, admit that we’re wrong. And if you’re not there, that’s okay. You know, if you’re on some varying degree of that, that that’s okay too. Like just wherever you’re at, that’s just, that’s a marker. That’s just where you’re at. And if you want to improve, then, you know, do what you feel like you need to do within your circle of filaments to improve and you know, admit to yourself and to others. And it’s OK. Like if there’s one message, it’s okay to be wrong, you know, it, it doesn’t mean anything more than that. Then you’re willing to look at yourself to take ownership and be different. And that’s a very powerful thing, a very healthy thing. And I think we need, especially as men to teach more men, our children be mentors for, you know, a younger generation to, to, to be different, you know, to have that type of change, to create that kind of connection.

Brad Singletary (52:29):
That’s great. We’ve got a model that sometimes the what I find in like the counseling setting that people often need is just the language. And so that’s why engaging with a tribe, having a mentor, a coach, talk to your pastor, whoever it may be, your parents. Sometimes they can just give you the language. I don’t know how to admit when I’m wrong. I don’t know how to say, I’m sorry. I don’t know how, what is a good apology. You can get help with how to do that. So if any of the things that we’ve talked about today are problems for you. Reach out to us, Google it do whatever you have to do to alpha up. That’s kind of one of our little slogans here. And that means that you can acknowledge the ways that you need to be different and you do whatever it takes to improve yourself until next time, brothers, Alpha Up.

Brad Singletary (53:18):
Hey, thanks for listening to another episode of the alpha corm show. We believe that men change their lives by engaging with a tribe to improve their actions, attitudes, and attributes. You can check out the show notes on our website at alphaquorum.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook. And please leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to our show, Hey, this is a podcast not therapy. So even though we may feature professionals on the show, this is not intended as therapeutic advice. If you need someone to talk to please reach out to us and we can get you pointed in the right direction until next time, gentlemen.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
Gentlemen, you are the alpha and this is the alpha quorum.

ALPHA SHOT: One-minute Sample

PLAY FULL EPISODE HERE

Click your podcast platform below or listen to the embedded file on this page.

The 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant asked these questions: (1) What can I know? (2) What ought I to do? (3) What may I hope for? (4) What is man? These are the basic questions of philosophy.  The root of the word PSYCHOLOGY is  psyche, which is Greek for spirit or soul. An evolved man is many things, he is tender and he is tough. He is humble and he is confident.  He is grateful for what is and yet still constantly seeking.  Today we discuss REVERENCE. This is about deep respect.  This is about respect for life, respect for others, and has to do with the connections we can improve with a higher power, with other people, and even to the natural world. Reverence is about RECOGNITION of the purpose of life, the sanctity of life, the significance of life and it includes spirituality but not necessarily traditional religion. 

Questions answered in this episode:

• What makes it so tough for men to have their connection with a higher power?
• Is there any obligation following belief?
• What is religious practice do you do that does help you find that connection to your higher power?

Topics discussed:

Reasons why men find it difficult to connect with a higher power:

• Sometimes people find it difficult to have any concept of a higher power because they come from dysfunctional backgrounds such as having horrible, abusive, and distant fathers.
• Some religious models have unhealthy perspectives. They do things to an extreme which is opposite to the biblical perspective of God wanting to have a balance.
• When a person prays for something that didn’t happen, they don’t have the understanding of the purpose of prayer and that God is not a Santa Claus.
• It all comes down to readiness of being connected to a higher power because nobody is going to be able to make you do it.

The obligation following a belief:

• Find beliefs, systems, structures that work then study those and apply discipline towards them. It’s beneficial to people.
• If religion is a vehicle that works for a particular man, apply with caution and be thoughtfully aware of how much influence it has on you.

Religious practice that can help men find the connection to a higher power:

• Service (voluntary)
• Offering
• Efforts and Time
• Giving and Sharing
• Teaching the Fellowshippers

ATHEIST / AGNOSTIC

How can a person like that explore spirituality? How can a person not interested in the traditional view of God improve their spiritual life?

• It depends on what they are trying to achieve.
• You have a decision to make in improving your spiritual life.
• It can also start on sublime experiences.

Final words, when it comes to a man trying to mend a relationship with God:

• One of the things that God says is that if you seek me, you’ll find me. And if you want to find God, the first thing you do is look, and I think you can look in creation. Just like in Google, whatever you’re searching for in life, you’re going to find it.
• We start with the rules, but eventually, in spirituality, things have to move beyond that.
• There’s gotta be more to life than just me, even if it’s just others. We connect to God through relationships with others as well, because if he’s truly created everybody and we’re created in his image, then we can see him in other people. 

Relevant Links:

https://alphaquorum.com/
https://tacomoto.co/
https://bradsingletary.com

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Brad Singletary (00:00:00):
The 18th century philosopher, Immanuel Kant asked these four questions. What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope for, and what is man? The root of the word psychology is psyche, which is Greek for spirit or soul. An evolved man is many things; he is tender and he is tough. He is humble and he is confident. He’s grateful for what he has and yet still constantly seeking today. We discuss reverence. Reverence is about deep respect. This is about respect for life, respect for others, and has to do with the connections that we can improve with a higher power, with other people, and even to the natural world. Reverence is about recognition of the purpose of life, the sanctity of life, the significance of life, and it includes spirituality, but not necessarily traditional religion.

Speaker 2 (00:01:08):
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.

Brad Singletary (00:01:33):
Welcome back to the alpha quorum show. Brad Singletary here, you guys I’m so excited. Number one, this is our 77th episode! It’s been such a such an amazing, awesome journey. I think what we’re doing here is very meaningful and I get feedback all the time about how men and even their loved ones, 20% of our listeners are female, but I get feedback all the time about how they are stronger because of what we’re doing. Today, we’re going to continue the series on the red nine. We’re talking about reverence. I’m here with my buddy Taco Mike.

Taco Mike (00:02:04):
Hello!

Brad Singletary (00:02:04):
And we have a guest that I’d like to introduce. He is the founding pastor of discovery church and has been in ministry since 1983. He’s a graduate of Bethany university and Santa Clara university. He has a master’s degree in counseling and psychology and is an ordained minister with the assemblies of God. He’s also a licensed marriage and family therapist in California and Nevada and a national certified counselor. He’s worked for a variety of ministry and therapy settings. He’s been a youth and children’s pastor a singles pastor and started a counseling center in Las Vegas that included several therapists and became an internship site for UNLV students in the therapy field. He has worked in a psychiatric hospital for adolescents and children worked in a church counseling center and taught at three different universities.

Brad Singletary (00:02:59):
He supervised students in university counseling centers as well. He is an AAMFT approved supervisor and supervises, Marriage and Family Therapy and Clinical Professional Counselor Intern. He volunteers at the, as the lead police chaplain for the Las Vegas metropolitan police department and works primarily out of the Northeast area command. His wife. Jenell is an analyst with Las Vegas Metro police department, and they have two adult daughters and three grandchildren. Dean and Jenell had been married for 37 years in his spare time. Dean loves to golf and fish. Welcome everyone to Dean Sanner. Thanks for being here, brother.

Dean Sanner (00:03:41):
My pleasure. Pleasure.

Brad Singletary (00:03:42):
I think we’ve been working on this for like a year to try to get you in. You’re a busy man for a while. Yeah. So 1983, you were a pastor. I was eight years old. I think that you’ve been a, you’ve been pretty busy for some time and, and I think this is also good news for Mike for once. He’s not the oldest guy in the room. I’m pretty sure.

Taco Mike (00:04:06):
I don’t know. Pretty close. Maybe. Dean, that’s a hell of a CV. Um, can you believe you’ve done all that stuff?

Dean Sanner (00:04:07):
I can’t, I’m sitting there listening to it and going, oh my gosh, it makes you sound old.

Brad Singletary (00:04:12):
And Dean, I got to apologize if, if throughout this, if I call you Dave, I, I don’t, I think you look like Dave Ramsey. And so if I, if I say Dave, all right, so tonight we’re talking about reverence, you know, we’ve talked about so many things about what it means to be an alpha and of course we are not talking about the traditional worldly, you know, the animal kingdom alpha, where you’re just out there spreading your seed and, you know, showing off your six pack abs, we’re talking about being the highest version of you in bringing forth the best that is within you. And I don’t think that you can do those things without taking care of your spirit. You may be going to the gym. You may have tons of money. You may be successful in many areas of your life, but if there is no regard for what is within you, I don’t know that we can really fully become all that that we’re meant to be. So I want to start with, I guess, the big topic and that is about a higher power. I have a higher power. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with him, honestly. And I feel like I’m in a pretty good place with that right now. It’s been a little bit up and down. Maybe we’ll get into some of that later about why, but let me just throw out the question. First of all, you guys, why do we need a power greater than ourselves?

Dean Sanner (00:05:33):
Well, I guess if I was going to answer that, one of the things that I would throw out there is that if we had everything together, if we have life under control, if we ourselves are independent and fully capable of managing everything we face, some might say, well, I don’t really need a higher power then I know myself. I’m not capable of doing that. I’ve got a lot of flaws. The CV made it sound good, but not as good as I sound on paper.

Brad Singletary (00:06:10):
All right. So we, we may tend to think we don’t need that if everything’s going well, maybe we humble ourselves a little bit when they aren’t going well, I know that’s been true for me when I had a kidney stone. I never prayed harder either. That’s like that will, that, that will bring you to your knees for real. Mike, what are your thoughts about the need for a higher power?

Taco Mike (00:06:34):
I am a jerk. I will all, I continually work to replace God with myself. I think I can do a better job than a creator. And so I want to, my natural default state is to try to run my own affairs and to, to be the God of my own little head in my own little universe. And when that, when I’m in that state, I am the kind of person that nobody wants to be around and I can look back at my life and see that the greatest deepest mistakes and tragedies that I have created my own hand have come from me being in that head space. So I have a life lived. I have lived life experience now that I can see very dramatically, a black side of me and a white side of me, or a light and a shadow side of me and the shadow side wants to gravitate towards extreme ego selfishness at the highest possible level.

Taco Mike (00:07:32):
And then the light side of me wants to gravitate outside of myself and then to something else. And for me, investing that energy into a air quote, higher power, God deity, Buddha, whatever it is that you know, I think one of the things that I think is good to in this conversation is we, we may be approaching this topic from our own particular spiritual or religious context, but our audience may also have their own with their own vocabulary. So I may use the word God, and you can just insert some other word there. Higher power is a real good generic term. The universe, you know, there’s a lot of ways to do this. I think it’s a human it’s, it’s a through line of humanity throughout all time to come up with a higher power and then seek that connection to that. So I’m clicked into that too. And I’m tapped into that and I’m a different person. When I live my life outside of my own head space, aimed at a higher power.

Brad Singletary (00:08:34):
What makes it so difficult for people? You know, some of our audience are believers in the traditional kind of thoughts about a higher power or some deity, but for those who just struggle with it, what do you, what do you see? I mean, maybe even a Dean, should I call you Reverend or no? No, no. All right. I didn’t mention that in the introduction Reverend Dean Sanner. So, you know, you may even have parishioners or members of your congregation who tend, and there are there and they show up and they sing the songs and they participate, but still may struggle in their connection to God or a higher power. What makes it so tough for men?

Dean Sanner (00:09:15):
Well, I think there’s a lot of things. And I think Mike tapped into one and that is that our own ego says, Hey, I can handle it. I can take care of it. I’ll be God. And so we replace God with us as long as things are going great. And then when we get the kidney stone, when our kid gets sick, when our marriage is on the rocks, that’s when we start looking for something outside of ourselves, because quite frankly, we can’t control the world. And when you can’t control everything, you start losing. And when you get out of control, you reach to attempt to gain some control. And so I think part of what men do, men by nature, you know, name of this thing is alpha. You know, want to be in control, want to be in charge, want to run things.

Dean Sanner (00:09:58):
And a lot of the guys that I deal with, that’s what they want to do. And my work with the police officers are that way. In fact, their job is to be in control when they go on a scene and then when they go home, what do they want? They don’t want to be, have any control. They want to crash. They want to let that thing go. But when you talk about traditional, you know, traditional church type settings, yeah. There’s people in my church that, you know, come participate, et cetera. Most of them know they don’t have it together. That’s why they’re there. They’ve been able to acknowledge the fact that they don’t have that control and they submit that to God or God is they, they know him, but the struggles come in a variety of ways. People that come from dysfunctional backgrounds, people who’ve had horrible fathers, abusive fathers people have had distant fathers. There’s a whole variety of different ways and different filters through which we quote unquote, see God. And most often, you know, we tend to create God in our own image.

Brad Singletary (00:11:01):
Interesting.

Dean Sanner (00:11:02):
Instead of allowing us to see God, the way he tells us who he is, and sometimes that creates problems.

Brad Singletary (00:11:12):
It’s interesting. You mentioned about not having a good relationship with a dad. I found, I guess just kind of informally had done my own little survey in my head over the last 20 years or so when I’m talking to people about this, it seems like one common denominator. One common situation is that a man who struggles with a belief in a higher power did not have the masculine role model in his life. We were talking about, you know, in the Judeo-Christian sense of father in heaven, so to speak. And they don’t even know what it’s like to have a father right here in this place, or that was an unhealthy dynamic in some to some degree. So yeah, we’re talking about now, we’re this invisible father who lives in the sky, right? That’s, that’s difficult for some guys to really have any concept of if they haven’t had healthy modeling from, from male role models what are the things make it difficult? Maybe people were raised in some faith tradition and they they’ve been around it. They’ve had the, they went to Sunday school and they had some foundational things that were shared. Where do they lose it? Where do they lose the connection to that?

Dean Sanner (00:12:24):
Well, I think there’s probably a lot of ways you can lose it. You know? I mean, if you look at the prodigal son, people want to go out and do their own thing, and everybody wants to do their own thing. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care if you come from a religious background or not. You kind of want to say, Hey, I can do this thing. Now you’re 18. I can do what I want. I can drink. Now I can gamble. I can, you know, I can whatever. And I’m going to show you that I can handle this and it’s fine until you can’t handle it. But

Brad Singletary (00:12:53):
I think been there, I’ve done that stuff.

Dean Sanner (00:12:57):
I think, I think from my perspective and a lot of what I’ve seen has to do with extremes, when you get anything to an extreme, whether it’s religion to an extreme or non-religion to an extreme, any extreme seems to be hazardous. And even from a biblical perspective, God wants to have balance. Balance is healthy, extreme is unhealthy. So when you go to any extreme brings unhealthiness, unfortunately some religious models have that. They have the extreme side and it, most of it’s law based, right. Got to do this. It’s the rules. You got to go here, you gotta do this. You got to do that. And when that starts happening, now you go back to, you know, the people that Jesus had, the biggest problem with who were the Pharisees, the religious leaders, why? Because they were putting all these laws and regulations and rules on people. And then that’s where Jesus came into the picture was to say, Hey, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, I’ve come to give you life and give it more abundantly. Come to me, all you who are weary and I’m going to give you rest. And the weariness was from all these rules and regulations that people couldn’t live up to. And quite frankly, there’s a lot out there that we can’t live up to today.

Brad Singletary (00:14:11):
You know, that’s so interesting. I, and I, and I’m curious your thoughts on this too. But when I, when I have had difficulties, I said, I had a love-hate relationship with God. What I really have had a love-hate relationship with, with his religion. And I realized, honestly, this has only been in the past year, that where I struggled was that I was worshiping religion instead of worshiping God and I, and it, and they were just, they almost seemed synonymous that, well, this is, this is the vehicle to get me there. And so this must be, it must be the same thing. I’ve been trying to change that for myself. I still use religious practice as a method to connect, but curious your thoughts on, you know, the demands on people, Mike, the, you know, people are turned away. They were raised in some form of, of a religious type of group. And then they’re associating a bunch of demands with their connection to a higher power. They’re maybe they’re separate and very separate, but what have you seen as you worked with guys about that being stuck in that way?

Taco Mike (00:15:17):
Well, so I think the good pastor here just completely, I feel like you and I have had a hundred conversations where I’ve said the exact same thing, and I’m on record on this podcast, on this show, having really said very similar things to what we just heard and that, and that is a, that was a personal experience of mine, where I created a God in my image, in my own image, because, well, firstly, I wanted to replace God as often as I could. I only used him or went to him when I realized I was a stupid, simple, foolish child and could not wipe my own butt. And so I needed him to come do that for me. But as soon as my pants were on, then I was a, I was a scream. I was a, I was a loose baby wrecking my own habit until it was too much.

Taco Mike (00:16:11):
And then I cried again, desperate again. Yes. So I had this relationship with deity that was this push pull, go away, come here, go away, come here. This just really schizophrenic relationship. Okay. The other thing I did, so there’s that that’s a piece of data. Then another thing that happened was I, I was invested in a religious model Mormonism where that is a street. That’s a system, as all systems are now, let me be, let me just throw something here that’s that I think is worth noting. You can be in a family and that is a system and a, any church is a system and a school is a system and your job, your career, your company, the government everywhere, every time two people get together and have an idea about how to do a thing. They create a system and a hierarchy and complexities.

Taco Mike (00:17:03):
And then there are, there are that it’s off the rails. Whenever two people get together and say, oh, we should do a thing. It’s broken, it’s bad and it’s broken and it’s flawed. And there’s only some slight glimpses of greatness and true purpose. But for the most part, I don’t want to what percentage to assign to it. But for the most part, a lot of it is just garbage and nonsense and stupidity and off the original intent and the original focus of what it was trying to do. It goes, it goes out in the weeds and my religious community is such that it rewards performance and conformity. And it, it praises people who have enough serotonin in them to sit in the chair and do what you’re told and smile and sing and be polite and color in the lines. It rewards those people. And, and, and if you me, if I went, I couldn’t do that.

Taco Mike (00:18:11):
Then I would flip over to this. Well, then it’s all for you. You know, the Pharisees lived 633, 600 to 633 rules, right? The Levitical order was like 663 or 33. Somebody correct us in the, in the comments later, laws. Well, I would become very fatalistic. And when I broke, I just made up an arbitrary number in Mormonism. There’s you know what, X number of laws, we have X number of standards. And when I personally felt like, well, I’ve, I’ve broken X percentage that just F the whole thing, Chuck it all. And then I would do this really big swing saw back and forth, back and forth. I would try, try, try really hard to get God to love me again cause I just screwed up all this other stuff. And then I would try to earn it, earn my place back. And then I would just I’d know, I couldn’t make it.

Taco Mike (00:19:02):
I couldn’t do it. And I, so I was worshiping at the throne of religion, believing that it was religion, that would bring me to God, that would bring me peace, that it was my observance of religion and practice of religion that would get God to love me. And the most beautiful thing that is that happened in my religious career was to be disfellowshipped from it to have, I was sat at my own and this, I have no animosity towards this happening. I, in fact, this was the best thing that could have happened to me. I’m so happy this happened. And I’m so grateful for the people who were involved and that it did happen. I have the highest of thanks and regard and praise that it happened. What it did was it broke the unhealthy attachment that I had between my higher power and this earthly construct it smashed it apart.

Taco Mike (00:19:58):
It broke it because I had created a link that shouldn’t have ever existed. I morphed God into this human system and I polluted and corrupted a relationship that I could have had with him with this weird Morphy thing. And by getting disfellowshipped, it was the most brilliant thing that ever happened because then I could just say, oh, I don’t want to, I just closed the book of religion and opened the book of heaven of spirit of connection. And it’s been the most beautiful part of my, my spiritual sanity is now based on only pure connection to Kevin and the rest of it. And I’m a practicing Mormon, but it is only like I’m wearing these pants. And I have on this shirt, that is to say, it’s just, and people could maybe recognize you. Maybe you wear a lot of shirts like that. Maybe you wear a lot of golf shirts and then a lot of blue jeans and some of the well, that’s kind of his thing.

Taco Mike (00:21:05):
That’s his look. And so I look at the practice of my religion as if it’s like, this is sort of, you know, I always wear these shoes or shoes like this, and I wear pants like this. It’s just sort of a part dial. That’s part of my style. It’s sort of like my jam. It’s like who I am, but these clothes don’t make me who I am. Right. They don’t define who I am. And there is no, there is no eternal significance to whether I wore these pants or another pair of pants. What matters is who I am underneath these clothes. It’s a weird analogy. Take them off

Brad Singletary (00:21:41):
Those shows. We don’t need to see,

Taco Mike (00:21:43):
It’s a weird analogy, but who I am is who I am irrespective of the pants and the shirt, but the pants and the shirt do that is symbolic of who I am. I don’t wear leather jackets with spikes on them because that sends a message that that’s you know, do you just follow it?

Brad Singletary (00:21:58):
It’s a uniform,

Taco Mike (00:21:59):
It’s a uniform. Or it’s sort of projecting who I am as a person. That’s not who I am. And so that’s not how I dress. So for me, my, the practices in my religion, they do define me and they do shape me, but they don’t. I am firstly, connected to God. And then secondly, connected to a religion and only one of those anchors me. The other just helps me navigate my way through this life.

Dean Sanner (00:22:29):
That’s a powerful, that’s a powerful story right there.

Brad Singletary (00:22:31):
Dude, you got some feelings about that. Share them with us. I know that Mike’s been on this real journey. Had a similar experience. I was ex-communicated from the same church and I was, I was not bitter and angry, but I, but I kind of became that probably because I went, like you said, the other direction completely. I had a client the other day who talked about her sister had done some shady thing to her. She said, I’m going to kill her. And it hit me that day. Just last week. It hit me that, that’s what I thought I was doing. I had, I had some really unfair things happen in my life, in a, in a marriage, my first marriage. And, and I felt like, okay, so I was angry at God because I thought I was in the right place and why should the rain fall on me? And it did. And I think I was, I kind of had the attitude like this client, I’m going to kill you. It’s like I had the, I’m going to, I’m going to do everything you told me not to do. I’m going to go. I’m going to go down every path you told me not to do because I’m mad at you because you let this thing happen to me. And this has been 10, 11 years that I’ve been kind of working myself through that. And so that’s why this topic, we’ve, this is probably maybe the fourth time we’ve discussed reverence. And I feel like this is, I’m just now only now ready, really ready for this conversation because I’ve got my heart in a better place. But other reasons that men find this difficult Dean, what do you see? I mean somebody, you know, they prayed for something and it didn’t come true there can’t believe there was a flood, you know, and Noah and the animals. I mean like this is some, these are some colorful stories and things.

Dean Sanner (00:24:17):
They are no doubt. And there’s basically a lot. There’s a ton of reasons that we can have why we might not believe in God. And the whole idea of when I prayed for something and it didn’t happen. Understanding the purpose of prayer. God’s not a Santa Claus. So basically the bottom line is a lot of people they’ll get taught. Well, you just pray to God when you need something. Well, that’s only one piece of prayer. Yeah. God tells us to ask him for things because he wants to be in a relationship with us. And, and what, what you were talking about Mike was the whole idea of the difference between religion and relationship and religion is man’s attempt to find God relationship is the fact that God has found us. And when we’re trying to create constructs and I’m a believer in the church, see, I think the, I think God created the church.

Dean Sanner (00:25:17):
In fact, if he wouldn’t have created the church, it wouldn’t exist because man is so horrible at running things. It would have died by now. It’s bad enough. And in fact, what they’ve said about my organization I belong to the assemblies of God, is that I heard this one professor I had in, in Bible college, he basically said yeah, he says the assemblies of God. How did he, it, it’s a, it’s kind of like Noah’s Ark. It’s really stinky. That’s the best thing a float. That’s a good one. And and all of them, you can say that about any of them and, and, and vehicles are one thing. But here’s the problem. When we begin to say, and you alluded to this, worshiping the church, when you start doing that, now you’ve come away from relationship. God wants relationship.

Dean Sanner (00:26:11):
And what Mike talked about earlier was what king David said, man, looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. And that’s what God’s looking at. He’s looking at the heart, but what do we do? We create these things on the outside, these boxes we can check off. And when we do guess who feels good about it? We do. That isn’t what God feels good about. Yeah. He’s fine with behaviors, et cetera. But when it starts turning into all these things are saying, Hey, I’ve got to conform to this. I think all men rebel against that. And you’re not going to tell me what to do. I’m in charge. I’m a leader here. I’m running the program, not you. So I think the tension between, okay, where are the parameters in a relationship with God? How much freedom and autonomy do we have?

Dean Sanner (00:27:00):
And then how much does God have? And I think if you start looking in God’s word, he gives us guidelines, his guidelines and his laws aren’t to keep us away from things it’s to protect us. But a lot of times our perspective is, oh, what about this? What about that? Hey, some of the stories can be difficult to believe. Quite frankly, a lot of the liberal theologians don’t believe some of them. However, the key is what’s happening in your own heart. What’s happening in your own life. What’s God saying to you, I come from an organization that says, God wants to have a relationship with you. And he wants to talk with you. He wants to commune and connect and interact with you. And I think there’s a variety of ways that that happens. You know, there’s old spiritual disciplines disciplines of solitude, where you get alone, you settle yourself, you quiet meditation. Some might even call it. There’s a variety of ways to connect with a God, but you have to ask yourself, Hey, am I ready for that? Is that something I want to do? Nobody’s going to be able to make you do it. No, one’s going to, nobody’s going to be able to make a man do it for sure.

Brad Singletary (00:28:11):
Is there any obligation following belief? Like let’s say there’s a man out there and he thinks, you know, maybe, maybe, you know, his grandma took him to church as a kid and he thinks maybe there’s some higher power out there, but he’s afraid of what he’s going to have to do if he starts believing. Is that a valid concern? Are there things that you have to do? Do you have to clean up your life? Should you, because one of those the questions of philosophy, like basically how should I conduct myself? That’s a question where I think a lot of this, even the manmade part is graded. Like, okay, here’s how you should conduct yourself. I mean, even the alpha quorum is we’ve got the red nine. Here’s the way you should conduct yourself. And maybe this is priest craft. We got going on over here. I’m hoping it’s not, but we’re so to, to have a framework for, how am I supposed to behave? Are there duties? You become a believer. You find some connection to a higher power. And maybe that depends on this Eastern religious thought or is this Judeo-Christian stuff or whatever, but do we have to do something?

Taco Mike (00:29:16):
Can I jump on that? I know. I want to hear what Dean has to say, but something that Dean actually said earlier may just makes me want to say this really quick extremism. I know people who worship the Bible. I know people who reject the Bible. I know people who were worshiped Jesus and those who reject him extremism in any, in any of the ends of belief. I think that when a person devotes himself to the flawless outcome of some anchored belief, that person is, is set up for disappointment. So if a person says the Bible and I know people like this Bible is everything about it. Cover to cover true. The whole thing like, oh, that kind of, that kind of mindset prepare for disappointment. Someone who says, I believe in my spouse, they are the, the, you know, they hung the moon and they cannot fail. A lot of us are bad spouses ourselves, me included. But I think the broader picture I’m making is anybody who anchors themselves so completely on anything that is of this physical world. A person was involved when a man was involved, prepare for disappointment. The beauty that for me, transcends that. And, and again, this is something that you would, that Dina just touched on, and this is what I think a man can do. And this is what I would recommend a man could do.

Taco Mike (00:30:49):
Look through that. Look past that, find beliefs that work, find systems that work and find structures that work, and then study those and apply discipline towards those like the alpha nine, like 12 step, like a church, like a system. I believe systems are beneficial to people. They are beneficial to behavior. They’re beneficial to help me manage my thoughts. This is the point I was going to circle back to a Dean said earlier, this is what I think it behooves a man to do find a way to connect through meditation or centering or calmness or breathing or whatever it is so that a man can find a way to soothe and calm the inner animal that is inside of us. And if religion is, is a vehicle that works for a particular man, then, then I say with caution, I would suggest anyone pursue religion, comma with caution, anybody going into any system should apply caution and be thoughtfully aware of how much he’s getting sucked into that. And I know people in 12 step who have turned that into a cult, and I know people in all kinds of systems, they have become a cultist to their system. And I know people who politically there are political cults, there are scientific cults. We are saturated with cultism.

Taco Mike (00:32:26):
I would say red flag, red warning, caution to all of that. What is true and what is real for me beyond any of that, it is am at peace. Can I sit in a quiet room in a, in a, in a chair and let my mind just settle on something beautiful and something peaceful and something that brings me calm and joy that, and I think Dean just did a really lovely job when he kind of met, brought that into the conversation. I’m glad he did. To me, that is the heart and the key and the core of, of a practice flavored with whatever, whatever the sign out in front of the building says, I don’t think it matters, but if someone’s sitting in a pew and they don’t have that, there’s work to be done and there’s there’s work that can be done. This is a thing that can, that every man I think can and should do.

Brad Singletary (00:33:27):
It’s. So you’re a fascinating guy when it comes to your spirituality and I’ve looked up to you for that a long time, because you’re very much involved, but kind of hated at the same time. And you’re, and you’re a little skeptical, but you’re showing up at all the things, you know. So what tell, talk about, if you don’t mind some of the things that you do and maybe you too Dean, like what in religious practice do you do that does help you find that connection to your higher power? What are the, what are the activities that you can throw yourself into and say, yeah, I like this one, this one right here. This brings me peace. This is totally good. This enlarges me and helps me feel connected to God.

Taco Mike (00:34:06):
For me. Dean had said something too earlier about the church. God gave us a church. I look at the church, there’s a small C church and a capital C church. The small C church to me is the system. And the construct to me, that’s the small seat I bought participant in a construct and I willingly do I willingly do it because I think there’s value to that where I put all of my efforts is in this capital C church. And that’s the body, that’s the believers. That’s the, that’s those who present themselves. And so for me, I am all in, when it comes to service and an offering of my money and my efforts and my time and capacities to the body of fellowshippers with a capital C that’s for me, the capital C church, the small C church. It’s just the sign out front. And, you know, we sing these songs and we do things this way. I’m fine with that. I’m happy to go along with that. That’s, that’s my piece.

Brad Singletary (00:35:14):
So service seeing donation, you know, contributing, being a part of that, giving of yourself, mainly the youth, the youth connect,

Taco Mike (00:35:23):
Maybe that there, there it is. The kids I’m all in with. So in my, in my congregation, I’m sort of like the youth pastor to 14 and 15 year old boys, I’m all

Brad Singletary (00:35:34):
In, take them on trips. Do Sunday school type lessons have, have ice cream events and whatever, whatever you can come up with. And it’s all centered on trying to help them grow spiritually. Okay. So giving is a part of where, where you find that that’s, that is a spiritual practice. And do you think you could find that same activity and the one down the street? Could you find that same benefit if this was at Dean’s church, it’s about what your sacrifice and then giving to share with other people. How about you Dean? I mean, you’re running the show at your, at your church, but what about traditional religiosity increases your spirituality?

Dean Sanner (00:36:15):
Well, see, I don’t see myself as a real religious person and that’s because again, my, my view, my perspective of God is that we have a relationship. He’s my father, I’m his kid. I’m going to blow it sometimes, but there’s nothing I can do that’s going to cause him not to love me because the scripture tells me that nothing can separate me from his love. So it’s not based on performance. And so what I do is I base my perspective of God on who he said he was. And I have to, I have to work sometimes at getting my own construct or thoughts of who I think God is. I have to be able to push those to the side in order to know who God truly is. And I believe that God reveals himself in his word. You asked me something earlier, or you ask, Hey, what about these people?

Dean Sanner (00:37:19):
When they, they want to have some kind of connection with God, higher power, et cetera, but they’re afraid, oh my gosh, if I start going to the church and they’re going to start telling me, do this, do that, do the other thing, what we believe. Yeah. There’s some guidelines. The 10 commandments. Okay. Those are, those are clear guides. Nobody’s probably going to argue with those types of things, right? In fact, they’re in our current laws in our country. So those are universal. What we believe is that, yeah, God’s word gives us some guidelines. But beyond that, we believe that the holy spirit, the third portion of the Godhead, if you want to go father, son, and holy spirit, that there should be some conviction from the holy spirit telling us what to change. I’ll give you an example. There was a guy I know that pastors, a church in Colorado and they ended up somehow or other this this lady that was a dancer at a club, topless dancer.

Dean Sanner (00:38:15):
She ends up coming to their church, making a commitment to Christ, and everybody had heard about it. You know? And in fact, she gets this pastor’s phone number, calls him up at home. After he preaches this message out of Corinthians about how our bottle it body is the temple of the holy spirit. She calls him up and he’s like, he’s all worried that his wife’s going to be upset and all this stuff. And she says, Hey, is what you said true about our bodies being the temple of the holy spirit. Like God lives like lives in us. And he said, well, yeah. And she goes, so God might not be really pleased with some of the things I’m doing right now. And basically what was going on was she was feeling some kind of conviction. It was the holy spirit that was saying, Hey, I want to help clean you up and change you because I’ve got something better for you than this.

Dean Sanner (00:39:21):
And so my perspective is that it’s not the church’s job to impose something on people. When you have a relationship, you have a relationship with somebody, you have influence with them. And I have a relationship with God. So he should be influencing me. That change comes from him and it’s from the inside. And when it’s not imposed by an organization, it’s different because now I want to please my heavenly father, because he did something that I could never do. He gave me the power to overcome, to change, to be who he wants me to be. And does that mean I’m perfect all the time? No, but basically I look at it as, Hey, God wants to change me from the inside out. Not from the outside in, not just the clothes, not wearing things, not going through the motions. That’s the out, that’s the outward side. God, that’s what man looks at. God looks at the heart. So he’s got it narrowed down to a few things, you know, love God and love others.

Brad Singletary (00:40:26):
If we’re watching you on TV, if we’re, if we’re following you around with a drone camera, we’re watching Dean Sanner and we’re saying, oh, he’s doing it. He’s doing his, he’s doing his spirituality right now. I mean, you, you you’ve talked about the word, which means you’re reading. Yeah. You’re reading. I’m guessing that includes like prayer. Yes. I’m guessing there’s music, you know, that’s a, is that part of your, you know, your whole individual and into congregation worship stuff, music, reading service, Mike mentioned giving, you know, sharing of yourself. Sure. Teaching other people. Absolutely. We were just talking before the show. Dean is a, is a licensed marriage and family therapist. He talks about, you know, people that, that come to him with help with their relationships and so forth. And he’s basically talking with them about, you know, the, the, the, the, the spiritual side of things. So you’re not only, you know, you’re leading this thing. You’re hopefully trying to be an example to other people you’re reading, you’re using music, prayer, and you’re teaching other people.

Dean Sanner (00:41:30):
Yeah. And serving, sir. And Mike jumped on that. My service, my volunteer services with the police department, try to help officers to try to connect with them, knowing that they have to deal with a lot of trauma and trying to help them see, Hey, there’s, there’s ways through this stuff.

Brad Singletary (00:41:50):
I want to talk for a few minutes about the atheist, the agnostic, an atheist, maybe that’s the prefix a means not or without. So atheist means without a theistic belief, you, you have no belief in God agnostic. The A means not or without and that means, I think that means like knowledge or something like

Dean Sanner (00:42:18):
That from gnosis. Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Singletary (00:42:20):
So

Dean Sanner (00:42:21):
I believe there is a God, they just don’t have a faith in him. That’s

Brad Singletary (00:42:25):
So, I mean, there may, maybe there guys listening to show they’re intrigued by the title. They’re intrigued by Dean’s picture. They want to hear what Mike’s up to these days and maybe they’re atheist, but they want to have some sense of spirituality or they’re not ready, or they’ve had some, we’ll call it a spiritual injury. Maybe that’s what I’ve thought that I was dealing with it at one time, agnostic, atheist, a little bit bitter. How can a person like that explore spirituality? How can a person not interested in the traditional view of God? How can they, how can they improve their spiritual life?

Dean Sanner (00:43:07):
I would say it depends on what they’re trying to achieve. If you know, somebody is an atheist and they’re like, I’m not, I’m not really even interested in that dimension then what are their goals? What do they want to achieve in life? I think they have to find some sense of something outside of themselves that could define in some way, shape or form. What do I want to be? Do I wanna be a better dad? Do I wanna be a better husband? Do I want to be a better professional or worker wherever I’m at? And so I think they have to define or decide, Hey, what are my goals? And that’s going to move them toward that. Typically it’s something outside of yourself, but I’m probably not the best person to talk about the whole atheistic side, better with the, you know, the person who’s been injured.

Dean Sanner (00:44:06):
That’s a different thing. Cause a lot of people don’t understand that, you know, God can handle your anger. God can handle your emotions. He created them for goodness sakes. And so I encourage people, Hey, have it out with God, God can handle it. Not some kind of wimp. He can handle this stuff and let him have it. In fact, if you look in the book of Psalms, that’s what David did all the time. He’s constantly holler and hammering. And why are you doing this? What’s going on? My enemies are after me. What’s happening? We have this kind of American culturize view of God sometimes that we’re supposed to be somehow insulated from problems. Bible says the rain falls on the just, and the unjust. It comes to everybody. I don’t care who you are. Are you going to have a faith or not? It has to be a part from what happens to you, because what happens to you, isn’t as important as what happens in you.

Dean Sanner (00:45:04):
God wants to do something in me. He may use something that’s happening to me in order to change me again from the inside. But it depends on how we take that. Do I take this situation where I was in a situation where I had to foreclose on a condo I had in California lost my jobs. The economy went in the toilet and that’s what ended up having me move back to Las Vegas here. And I was mortified. I was like, I’m a need to get out of the ministry. That I’m a bad testimony. I can’t even pay my bills. I kept paying on that thing while I was living down here. Nobody’s in it. Finally, this person told me, Dean, stop paying on it. And long story short, we lost this place. And I was, I was like, ah, maybe I need to get out of the ministry, man.

Dean Sanner (00:45:52):
This is a bad testimony. Then other people were like, this happens to everybody. What happened? You lost your jobs. You went through, you know, you had to relocate and you can’t pay on something if you’re not living in it. And I walked away from that, with what I called my $25,000 refrigerator. I got a refrigerator that out of that place, that was my down payment and this $25,000 refrigerator it’s gone. But all, all that to, I think say this, Hey, a lot of things happen to us in life when things happen to us and those bad things happen to us. My perspective on that is, that’s when I say God, what are you trying to do in me? And as a result of that situation, when we went through the 0809 crash here in Vegas, I could identify with lots of people in my church that lost their homes. At the time when I lost mine, I’m ticked at God. I’m frustrated. What’s going on. I’m a bad provider, all this stuff, but what happened in the end, in the end, God used that situation for me to be able to identify with others that went through it.

Brad Singletary (00:47:00):
Now you have empathy now. Yeah, I can sympathize.

Dean Sanner (00:47:02):
Exactly. And I can relate. I can connect. I can minister. I can serve.

Brad Singletary (00:47:09):
It seems like you’re saying you have to make a decision. What is your decision about your belief? You know, what, what is, what is your goal? What is it you’re after? And at some point you have to make a decision. Am I going to pursue this or not? And if so, there maybe there are other decisions to make Mike the injured, the person spiritually injured thinks he should have some spirituality. That’s, you know, wellness. That’s a balanced person. That’s the man trying to, to be whole and trying to grow up, but just feels like he can’t do the God thing.

Taco Mike (00:47:46):
I think that a lot of American men are believing in a feminized deity and it is not serving them very well. So let me, so let me explain that in my religious practice, we had to, we had to speak with God in these reverent hushed tones. And there was a, there was a specific vocabulary that I was taught to approach God with. And I would be disrespectful if I addressed him as any, anything outside of these, these, these Anglican, your, these, these, these things, English Kings English terms that I would be disrespecting the creator of the universe that he couldn’t hang. If I didn’t address him, thusly, the debt that’s garbage. And then I had to read the only way I could read what he said was it was in it’s the same kind of language that I, the Shakespeare had to read God in Shakespeare nonsense.

Taco Mike (00:48:59):
And then, and then, and then I had to sit in a chair and put my, I had to wear a costume, my church costume. Right. Cause he wouldn’t, I would be disrespectful if I wore anything other than a business suit. Right. I had conducting business like Sunday business. I have to put on my business suit and go do my God business. Right. Wearing my church costume. So, and then the whole construct in, in a lot of American men’s mom was that it’s. And then the pictures of Jesus in the buildings that I would go to was this very gauzy, soft lit Fino Hallmarky Jesus. Right, right. The kind of Jesus who would like, just be, well, his hands would be soft and he’d be like, you know, exfoliated and lotioned up. And like, that’s the kind of Jesus imagery, the whole the, the American imagery that goes along with God and Jesus, in my opinion, is utter rubbish.

Taco Mike (00:50:09):
It’s mostly nonsense. And I don’t know where it started. And I don’t know whose perpetuate, well, I do know is perpetuate again, but it doesn’t serve me. It doesn’t work for me. And so for me, the the Lieutenant Dan guy in Forrest Gump, Dina talked about God is able to handle your anger. And some of us are pissed at the dad that we have, you know, we’ve, you know, we, we taint our relationship with him with all of this, this pain that we had that I have. And then I make it his fault. And then I can hate him for it. Cause he didn’t rescue me. When I had my little prayer moment, please rescue me from the stuff that I did myself or that just I’m in, I’m a broken person in a broken world. And I want it to be better than this.

Taco Mike (00:51:00):
And you’re not making it better than this, your fault then the IHU for it. So these like deep, dark angry resentments are in so many men. And then they’re offered this like, you know, this delicate, like this Jesus and this God and this heaven, who’s like, he can’t have like a lot of, I know a lot of people, a lot of men who don’t go to church because they don’t want to, they don’t respect that kind of deity. And I don’t either. I don’t respect the sweet, delicate I have to approach you and I will piss you off. Unless I, unless I say the words that I was supposed to say, I don’t respect that God. And I don’t want that God. And that’s not the kind of God that is going to work for me. So if you’re listening to this in your, as mad about the way that your church or your religion handed you, this nonsense imagery of what God is and who God is, and you’re as mad as I am about it, then reject it and ignore it and move on and find a way to connect with the, with heaven that is on that is, Dean has said this so wonderfully relationally, dig in to figure out who heaven is, who the higher power is for you call it whatever you want, form an image in your own head. Here’s something that was shocking to me, I guess, not shocking, but that was this wonderful discovery is Jesus was kind of a dirty guy who lived with dirt bags and hung around with people who had body language. They, they cost and they were kind of foul and gross and they were working men and they were kind of trashy. And they were kind of hard people. And they were the low, they were the lowest of the low, in many instances and Matthew, a tax collector was just a cheat. He was a, he was a criminal cheat. He was a cheater, scumbag, loan shark. He was despised. Jesus had with hookers. He now with transvestites, I’m putting that in there because that’s what I think. I think he hung out with people who had needle tracks in their arms at tattoos and tear tattooed the tears on their eyes, on their cheek.

Taco Mike (00:53:13):
I think he hung out with just people who were, who all there they’re really all there are. That’s all there are in life is people that have lived experiences and most of what passes his religion projects itself as the sanitized version of humanity. And I don’t respond to that and I don’t resonate with that. And so that’s my answer. That’s a long answer. So your question, maybe the general topic is what is it about men? What is it in men that causes them to find it hard to go to church or to believe in God? And I think that sums it up for me because the God that was presented to me didn’t resonate in my heart. And it’s, I don’t know if it does, if it does listen, if I’m offending you, I’m sorry. I apologize if that’s the God that you, if that all, if everything I just said, shat on, if that’s what is working for you, then please forgive me.

Taco Mike (00:54:05):
I mean, you no offense, but none of that works for me. And so it required me to pursue my own relationship outside of that. And I found it and I am on fire for it. And that’s why my religion is not meaningless. I don’t want to say I don’t want to be that strong. My religion is meaningful, but yet at the same time, it’s rather meaningless. It’s just an appendage to who I am as a, as a spirit centered man, comma. Oh. And I also happened to go to this church, but it’s just this right? You follow I’m saying, if any of this resonates with any man out there and you don’t have to go to church to find this Dean said this, and I’ll repeat back to it. You can find this in your, in the forest. You can find this kind of connectedness on a motorcycle, on a trip, watching a sunset.

Taco Mike (00:55:01):
You can find it holding the hand of your child, walking along the beach. You can find it looking at a painting. You can find this little spark of this can grow and it can, it can expand and consume and grow into your whole heart. And it’s all over. It doesn’t have to be in a pew. It doesn’t have to be in a church. It doesn’t have to be in front of some sacred holy book. It can be as simple. Like I just said, it could be as simple as sitting on your surfboard and a dolphin swims by. And it could be something that a client says to just shake something loose. That was never these two wires that never touched. And then just zap and they touch. And nothing else is the same from that moment forward. And however, that happens for somebody when it does, it’s just transcendent and so beautiful. It’s so meaningful. And I urge every man to have that. And however, that looks,

Brad Singletary (00:55:53):
I call that sublime experiences, you know, that we should seek those. And I think the truth is they’re everywhere. One of my most spiritual experiences in the last five years was floating on my back in lake Mead. I was there with my kids and I realized I’m in a gigantic cold, clear lake in the middle of the desert. And I’m looking up at the sky, no clouds. And it just that was a very spiritual in a way. I want to wrap this episode up last thoughts as it comes to Finding God, forgiving God, using religion as a means to connect. Tell us, I guess your, your final words, when it comes to a man trying to maybe mend a relationship with God, we’ve talked a lot about relationship, find a relationship for the first time with God and how religion plays into that.

Dean Sanner (00:56:47):
Well, I would first say one of the things that God says is that if you seek me, you’ll find me. And if you want to find God, the first thing you do is look, and I think you can look in creation. There’s a lot of different places you can look. And for some people like Mike was saying earlier, the church provides a construct that is able to guide certain people toward God, for others, their color outside the lines type of people. And they don’t tend to fit in to certain constructs. And one of my professors in graduate school, he was an Episcopal priest. He came up with these different levels of spiritual growth, if you will. And part of what he talked about was initially, and he kind of paralleled them off of Lawrence Kohlberg’s model of moral development, which you may be familiar with.

Dean Sanner (00:57:39):
Yeah. And he basically says, you know, yeah, we start with the rules, but eventually in spirituality, things have to move beyond that. And he talked about the, well, I shouldn’t say they have to move beyond that. For some people, they stay within the rules and the guidelines and that’s them. But for many people, it goes beyond that. And he related to different types of people, including, you know, Gandhi who would have been up at the upper echelon of spiritual development, if you will. I think it depends on the person. And that’s where it always comes back to me, have a relationship with God. And I think people have to, the seek and seeking can happen at a variety of ways. And we were talking about it. How does that happen? Well, for me, it happens with some solitude. It does happen with the Bible. I believe God speaks to me through his word. So he does, it has to be in a language I understand though it can’t be the Shakespearian stuff. And so we forget that the Bible wasn’t written in English anyway. So if you really want to get to the real you know, if you want to call it the inspired scriptures, it’s inspired in the original language. Hey, take those steps, move in that direction. And it becomes between you and God.

Brad Singletary (00:58:57):
If you want to find God, you have to seek him. And I think just like Google, whatever you’re searching for in life, you’re going to find it. In fact, Google that type in Google, how to find God. I promise. You’ll find that you’ll find a billion websites that could lead you somewhere. Go outside, look into the eyes of your children. Think of what it feels like when you’ve done a good deed. Those are some of the ways that you can find God. So as we wrap this up, I just want to talk about, go back to our original question. Should we have a higher power? I think, yes. I think we need that. I think I’ve needed that. My worst mistakes, my most miserable times in my life have been when I was kind of directionless. I wasn’t seeking answers. I wasn’t looking for any inspiration.

Brad Singletary (00:59:45):
I wasn’t reading any Staker texts wasn’t asking for help. I just thought that I had it under control and that I was going to be in charge of my own life. We had a guest early on in the, in our show David Brownstein, who was a Jewish rabbi. We asked him about the yamaka and why he wore that. And he said it was to remind him that there’s always something above him. That that is God. There, there is a God. And it’s not me. That was what he, when he talked about taught me that taught me something there. So I think we need a higher power. I belong to AA, alcoholics anonymous, and there are a lot of atheists and agnostics there. And some people talk about God as a good orderly direction. Some people talk about the higher power. What is the group?

Brad Singletary (01:00:33):
So together this group of people trying to be sober together, that group is higher than me. There was a time when, in my angry phase with God, I just couldn’t. I could not pray. I just could not read anything. I just didn’t want to. I realized one of the ways that I got sober was to realize that these people cared about me. They wanted to hear what I have to say. And they came to share their own stories and their own inspiration. And so I kind of connected to that a good orderly direction, or just that the higher power was this group of people that were better than me, collectively better, stronger than me. And I could lean on something better, stronger than me. I’m not alone. And I could have some guidance

Dean Sanner (01:01:17):
When the word gets stalled means that the whole is greater than the parts. I think we have to realize that we’re not all there is. There’s gotta be more to life than just me, even if it’s just others. We get, we connect to God through relationships with others as well, because if he’s truly created everybody and we’re created in his image, then we can see him in other people in others. And so for some, God’s going to be, the group is going to be someone else. But I think getting us outside of ourself and in therapy, you you’ve heard of the term reality testing. Sometimes you’ve gotta have you gotta bounce things off, somebody else, someone else, other people in order to get some perspective. And I think that leads it to, Hey, I’m looking for something higher for something greater than myself, something outside myself.

Taco Mike (01:02:14):
[Inaudible] I was thinking about when you’re on a sports team or you’re in some group and AA is a really great one, you are pulling for the group you’re pulling for the team you’re playing for yourself. You’re, you’re always trying to put in your best performance, but ultimately it’s for the team. It’s for the banner. It’s for the mascot. I don’t mean to say you’re playing for the mascot, but it’s for the, the like go go red tide or go rebels or go Knights. You know what I mean? It’s like, that’s your rally cry. And you’re all aligned around that banner and you’re moving the ball forward for that reason. And that’s a higher reason than just me. Number six. Okay. I think we have been created and evolved to be a creature that looks elsewhere outside and beyond when we’re in a tribe, we do things for the tribe when we’re in a club, when we’re in a team, when we’re in a family, when we’re in a church, when we’re in anything, when we’re policemen in a, in a unit, when we’re in the military and a platoon, yes, you are an individual and you have the needs that you have and the goals and desires that you have.

Taco Mike (01:03:18):
And you click that in with everyone else. And then the sum of that is much greater and more powerful than it is as just me. Number six on the team, Sebastian younger wrote a book called tribe. I suggest everyone read that. He talks about one of the reasons why one of the main vectors in PTSD is that when a man, when a soldier leaves the platoon he’s key goes home. There is a profound emptiness inside of him because he is no longer with that band of brothers. With that family, with that community who was, who was so focused on that higher power and the higher power. And I don’t mean a political mission, like who cares, who cares really? Like who cares? What the mission was? The mission was today. We’re going to go do this tomorrow. We’re going to go do that. But those are just missions details.

Taco Mike (01:04:13):
Everything about that. Platoon was say, it’s we save each other. We are in this together. We only succeed if we all succeed. And any group that has a mission is clicked in. We want to be sober. We want to do the thing. We want to do that thing. We’re together in this band. That’s our power not to replace God, but, but there is a power in that. And so what I’m trying to do is paint a word picture for somebody who has maybe has previous woundings about, I had a bad father and I can’t conceptualize God as a father because I had a really garbage earthly father. I totally am empathetic to that and understand that. So for some of us, we can start somewhere and we can start with some of the things we’ve talked about, just finding peace and beauty, connect to the nature, look at your, the eyes of your children, float in your back in the lake, look up at the sky.

Taco Mike (01:05:12):
There’s so many ways that you can just feel some peace and feel some ground in us. And then I think the second step is then to look for ways to connect yourself with someone else in some way that then you have synergy and then brotherhood, and to do something else. I believe if a man, or to begin the journey, at least with that, then he’s well on his way. And what that, what that turns into the, I believe that the higher power will sort of direct steps and, and direct influences and people will bump into that person and something beautiful will come from that. And I think that every man should be seeking that in some way. I think it’s essential. I think it’s, it’s in your red nine. I think it’s part of the human wiring. I think it’s in our DNA. I think it’s who we are as a created and evolved person to seek that and want that and need that

Brad Singletary (01:06:10):
You guys are so awesome. Thank you so much for being here. Dean really appreciate you here. I’m definitely going to have you back. Our next episode is going to be about just more generic kind of spirituality, things, humility, gratitude, forgiveness, and those kinds of things that don’t necessarily have to do with any religious practice, any higher power talk. So if anybody has given up on us because of this conversation stick around for the next one, because that’s what we’re going to talk about things that are very much of a spiritual nature. They may come from the teachings of religions, but it’s really things that have to do with your individual walk. Appreciate you being here, all of you until next time. No excuses, Alpha Up.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
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Part 3 of 6

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 3 ALPHA guests and I continue a 6-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 model of healthy manhood by helping guys rediscover the archetypes of mature masculinity: in this episode we discuss the WARRIOR.

• What is the WARRIOR archetype, expressed in its fullness?
• What are some relatable examples of men living this way?  
• What does it look like when a man is operating from SADIST energy? And relatable examples?
• What does the MASOCHIST act like? And relatable examples?
• How can a man fully access the WARRIOR energy within himself?

Many people are pretty uncomfortable and uneasy about the “warrior” form of masculine energy. Most of the time, that is because they have only encountered the negative side of that…the abusive shadow side of the warrior in us has victimized far too many people.  If a man’s warrior energy is repressed, it just keeps flowing underground and unchecked it erupts into verbal and emotional and physical violence. The archetypes are patterned in us.  There is no ignoring it because eventually it surfaces.  The key is to understand which of these energies is present and mindfully choose the discipline of the warrior within.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Brad Singletary (00:00):
Men are faced with unique challenges. And many of our failures come from operating with boys’ psychology instead of the mature and evolved man psychology. We often find ourselves asking what kind of man 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 continue 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 masculinity by helping guys. We discovered the archetypes of mature manhood. In this episode, we discuss the warrior.

Brad Singletary (01:19):
Back to the alpha quorum show. Brad Singletary here, I’m the founder and host of the podcast. Appreciate all of you being here. We have our guests, Jay, Jim, and Clint, back with us again tonight, we’re going to continue our discussion on this book, King warrior magician lover. Tonight, we’re talking about the warrior and the questions that we’re going to answer today are what is the warrior archetype expressed in its fullness? What are some relatable examples of men living this way? What does it look like when a man is operating from sadist energy and what does the masochist act like? And finally, how can a man fully access the warrior energy within himself? This segment is about living life as a man with the energy of a warrior, many people are pretty uncomfortable with the idea of the warrior form of masculine energy. Most of the time, that seems to be because they’ve only encountered the negative aspects of the warrior. That’s the abusive shadow side of the warrior in us, which has victimized far too many people. If a man’s warrior energy is repressed, it just keeps flowing underground. And when it is unchecked, it erupts into verbal and emotional and physical violence. The archetypes are patterned in us. They’re just built in. There’s no ignoring them because eventually they all surface. So the key is to understand which of these energies is present and mindfully choose the discipline of the warrior.

Brad Singletary (03:00):
Welcome back you guys. So just as a means of introduction to the basic topic, civilization is kind of based on war. I mean, we live in the United States of America because of war and different societies. And even in tribal situations, those separations are made because of war. So the book kind of talks about in a way this is necessary. I’m just curious, your thoughts about war as a necessary element of the human experience.

Clint Albright (03:34):
I mean, when you look back at any culture throughout human history there’s always been some sort of warrior class within the tribe that defends the, the tribe who, you know, make sure that they’re protected. So, I mean, I just think this is just a normal kind of part of human culture.

Brad Singletary (03:53):
Okay. I agree with that. So what is the warrior archetype express its fullness. We’re just going to talk about some attributes of the warrior. This is the healthy side. Remember that the triangular, the kind of the pyramid at the top of that is the warrior and then the bipolar dysfunctional shadows beneath and we’ll include the graphic and the, and the website version of this. But what is a warrior? Like what, what is a man when he is fulfilling the healthy warrior energy? You know,

Jay (04:22):
I think one word that comes to mind when you hear warrior is aggressive, not an abusive energy, but one that can usually be used for good, but a lot of times aggressive is associated. It has a negative connotation to it, and it should be a neutral tool that could be used for either good or evil. And so you have the immature man who might pick a fight just to pick a fight. And we see that his relationships will fail. If you, you know, you reign in that aggression too much, you kind of become the prototypical. You know, we need a Mister nice guy, nice guy syndrome. Yeah. Yeah. But the man who’s able to kind of integrate that aggression and harness it for forces that pushes him to compete and he can finish his goals.

Brad Singletary (05:06):
I like that about goals. You know, he has clear direction he’s fighting for, for a cause. Usually this isn’t like even self-defense, and maybe there’s a place for that in here, but really a warrior is a man who is fighting for a cause he has goals. There’s a clear direction. He has clarity about what it is he’s fighting for. There are some ideal that he’s, that he’s trying to protect or defend.

Clint Albright (05:34):
I mean, one thing I like about the warrior and how they discuss it in the book is that he’s willing to suffer to achieve what he’s after. So he’s, he’s very goal oriented. He’s willing to put himself through the paces, his biggest lows in his highest highs to make sure that he obtains that goal.

Brad Singletary (05:53):
Yeah. You said he’s willing to suffer. That’s interesting. That’s an interesting, we, maybe our nature is that we want to avoid suffering. We want to avoid pain, but the warrior, I wonder what that might look like. How, in what ways is he willing to suffer for something greater than himself? He exercises a lot of self control to know it’s easy to just kind of let loose when the adrenaline’s pumping and, and lose sight of the goal. And even in those moments, he’s, he’s exercising. Self-Control I thought you were about to say he exercises a lot and I hit, this is the fit guy in the room here. Is that a fat joke, Jim you’re to right off the bat, we got to talk about exercise. So he fights for what’s right? Again for others’ benefit, not just his own he’s mindful, just alert. Very self-aware

Jay (06:55):
What goes along with mindful is also, they’re not complacent they’re they, you know, they kind of go hand in hand that they’re always mindful. They’re they’re not complacent. They don’t put their guard down, loves the challenge, you know, loves to push himself to the limits and find out what he’s capable of.

Clint Albright (07:14):
He can push himself. And I think there’s a reason why you can’t stay complacent. Cause if he stays complacent too much, he’s going to start thinking about his emotions. And when he starts thinking about his emotions, it can really hijack the warrior experience.

Brad Singletary (07:28):
Yeah. I’ve mentioned that in the book that he doesn’t think too much. It’s interesting because there seems to be a balance between not thinking too much, you know, you’re not complacent, but you’re also not caught off guard. You’re, you’re not, over-analyzing, you’re not paranoid. You’re not thinking that everything’s a battle always ready to fight. Maybe that’s a little bit tough for me to understand that one, help me out on that. That’s a balance. There’s a lot of balance there. Yeah. So the, the overthinking, I think w talked about somewhere in there, it leads to doubt, you know, doubt leads to hesitation and hesitation leads to a lack of action. And I think probably if there’s any core attribute that goes along with warrior, it’s probably action. You know, he’s doing something active and that may be a fight he’s throwing his spear and cutting heads off with his sword or he’s you know, advocating for someone who’s vulnerable. He’s he’s taking action. And so to, to think too much is, is not to act. So, yeah, that’s, that’s a tough balance.

Brad Singletary (08:39):
You gotta be ready to be reactive in a split. Second on the more you think about it, too many scenarios start popping into your head and you’re just gonna make that challenge is so much more difficult. It’s kinda gotta go with the flow, go with the flow, be adaptable, be willing to change direction. I can think, I can imagine in a war type situation, there are probably many times maybe it’s more often than not that you have to adjust the strategy somewhere in there. You know, th this is the plan, here’s the map. This is what we’re going to do. The General’s kind of laying out the the path, but there’s probably some adaptability that has to happen there.

Jay (09:22):
Absolutely. You know, they, they have the, a saying of adapt and overcome. So they might have a plan in the absence of a plan is chaos. But along the way, you have to adapt that and you have to overcome it when that come with like a lot of training. Oh yeah, definitely. You know,

Jim (09:42):
From all the different scenarios, cause you never know what you’re going to come up,

Jay (09:45):
Which you have, you don’t have that training. And then that, that pre-planning then that’s going to cause that hesitation. Cause that doubt,

Brad Singletary (09:53):
I like the part where it talks about he contemplates his mortality. He knows that he could die. That’s one of the differences between, remember in this axis, I guess in the boy psychology and the immature masculine, that’s the hero. So he wants to win. He wants to, he wants to compete. He wants to do all those things, but it’s, it’s all kind of, he doesn’t understand his vulnerability. He doesn’t realize that he’s not Bulletproof. The warrior knows that he can bleed and he can die. And he’s got to, has to be aware of the, of the potential threats, but not overly thinking that not being overly suspicious and paranoid, but just maybe mindful is the word that you’re observant. You’re noticing you can kind of monitor what’s going on around you. And by the way, I guess I recognize that in our day and time, we’re not talking about hand to hand combat.

Brad Singletary (10:50):
That’s probably not going to come up for us. It almost came up for me today at the park. That’s another story. This this dude walked in the bathroom after my son had gone in my five-year-old, went to the bathroom at a park here. And I stayed out at the park with my four year old and there weren’t many people there. So I just let him go to the bathroom by himself. And this guy comes down and he said, Hey, your kid just all over the floor. And, and he’s like, and besides you’re supposed to be wearing a mask. And I said, I’m supposed to be doing whatever I want to be doing. Like w there’s no paper towels in there. What do you want me to do about the pee on the floor? I’m sorry that my five-year-old peed on the bathroom floor.

Jim (11:31):
He’s on his own bathroom floor serious. I’m glad you got that out though. Brian. Thank you. We had a moment.

Brad Singletary (11:40):
So we’re not talking about, you know, who we’re going to shoot today and w what, you know, with the hand to hand combat, or, or even that we’re going to be in any kind of war situation. These, maybe these are kind of psychological battles that we’re going to fight, or these are things that have to do with, you know, our energy on the job or our energy and our family and in our home, I don’t know. W what, what is the warrior even going to do in 2021, that the typical guy, what battles are you facing or does the typical man have to contend with, right.

Jay (12:12):
I think just in general at work or at home and in your relationships is one being present, stepping up to the plate and not being timid and passive, but being present, being there and being that solid rock for if it’s at home or at work being ready to go day in and day out,

Clint Albright (12:32):
I think also just fighting for your own needs and making sure that you’re being proactive and fighting for what you need to kind of either nourish your body or taking care of your psychological mind, whatever it needs to happen so that you stay in shape fit to achieve the goals that you want.

Brad Singletary (12:49):
Yeah. A lot of this is about discipline and decision making the root of the word decision. It’s similar to like scissors or incision. And it’s about cutting. So there may be things that you have to cut out of your life. The book talks about you’re a minimalist. I kind of liked that he travels light rid himself of excess baggage, no fat jokes, please, on that one, guys, a little excess baggage here, but seriously that you can travel light. Like, what does that mean in 2021? We’re not on a horseback, you know, going like Braveheart right now. So what, how do we travel light? What do we cut now? What distractions does the warrior now need to

Jim (13:38):
Financial toys? Sometimes people overextend themselves

Brad Singletary (13:44):
A lot of financial obligations and, you know, it just causes a lot of stress for that, for that person. So,

Clint Albright (13:53):
Because if this is like a need or a want kind of situation.

Brad Singletary (13:56):
Yeah, definitely. So we talked about, he’s trained for battle. He’s prepared for all kinds of different situations. He’s loyal to a cause a cause a God, a people, a task, a nation, something really larger than just individuals. So the boy you remember, that’s the hero. His loyalty is really to himself. He’s trying to impress himself with impressing other people. And the warrior in the mature sense is loyal to something really bigger than himself, but he does have to be disciplined with his mind and body. There’s self-control, he’s got to decide his attitude.

Clint Albright (14:39):
And I think this loyalty really speaks to the, the warrior, especially when we look later on to the bipolar sides and stuff where they don’t have that sense of loyalty, there’s sense of, you know, they’re kind of lost. And so this, I think in return kind of keeps that balance and that regulation that he’s looking for, that he doesn’t overextend into one side or the other that he has, you know, going back to the goal that he’s fighting for something that he truly believes in, that’s also going to help others and help them grow. He’s willing to sacrifice for the greater good.

Brad Singletary (15:12):
Yeah. And it’s interesting when you’re talking about the ideal or the decision that he makes ahead of time about what it is he’s loyal to, that keeps him from being emotionally reactive. That’s something we talked a lot about in the King episode, but if you know that what you’re fighting for is freedom or you’re fighting for some cause or some psychological battle you’re faced with you can stay true to that. You can stay loyal to that and not succumb to like your own emotional pressure. I love the saying. I think it’s Vince Lombardi fatigue makes cowards of us all. And if we’re tired and we’re forgetting what our purpose is, what mission it is that we’re on, we’ll fall into this emotional, like, mess where we can’t make good decisions. So great point there, Clint about loyalty, something you said earlier clan about he’s willing to suffer.

Brad Singletary (16:10):
So he loves challenges difficulty. He welcomes difficulty because he knows he’s going to be stronger for it. And I think about like literally the gym or being physically active. I mean, I don’t know how many times in the last year I’ve tried to get people around me to go on hikes or whatever. And they’re like, why would you do that? Why would you hike like uphill in heat? What are you thinking? And to me, it’s like, just see if I can do it. You know, just, I want to see if I’m going to have a heart attack.

Clint Albright (16:42):
I mean, like, whenever I go, hi, can you start off at the base and be like, with your friends? And you’re like, Oh, this is going to be so much fun. And then you get up about maybe two or three miles and you’re like, why the hell am I doing this? Where’s the escalator. There’s no wifi. I’m ready to fight like one star Yelp review on this. But then once you get through that adversity and you get to the top and you get to enjoy that, that view with, you know, your common friends, it was worth the suffering.

Brad Singletary (17:04):
There’s no better soreness than like the soreness from like a long hike or something physical. I know you do a lot of that kind of stuff, too gym where it’s taxing on your body, but you’re willing to do it because you know, there’s something in it for you,

Clint Albright (17:17):
The reward. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. At least speaks to the soul in a different way

Brad Singletary (17:22):
Reward. I did a couple of 50 milers as a young man, as a boy scout, we did a 50 mile like backpacking trip all week long and ended up raining all week. So 50 miles and then also a 50 mile canoe trip. And that was probably my favorite thing. It was just going down these rivers, we started in Southern Georgia and up in like, I don’t know, central Florida somewhere, just an awesome experience, but it was hard physically. So the warrior he wants that he knows that, you know, you push against hard things. You get stronger.

Clint Albright (17:52):
Yeah. Sometimes adversity, it can be the best, worst thing that could happen to you.

Jim (17:56):
Yeah. That mental challenge. It’s something else to push through and get it done. A lot of people quit. A lot of people will quit. It’s easier to quit.

Brad Singletary (18:09):
One of my roommates, a college roommate of mine played football together. He used to say in the middle of the drills and stuff, the mind tires before the body. And it was so true. And I just thought, well, my mind is tired, right? The mind tires before the body, the warrior is known to destroy things. And when we talk about like civilizations often were created as a result of war, sometimes the warrior, isn’t just this loving benevolent person. Sometimes you do have to slice people up and, you know, shoot them with the canons. So he destroys things. But w Y w in what, what kinds of things would be worthy of destruction? Why would a warrior be willing and ready to like maybe even fight to his own death? What’s he trying to create change growth? Yeah. He’s trying to make room for something fresher, something new, something that’s bigger than him. Yeah. Something that’s valuable. I mean, this isn’t just, you know, just for the sake of destruction, but some things need to be destroyed. It says in the book, corruption, tyranny, oppression, injustice, unfulfilling, lifestyles, jobs, situations, and even bad marriages sometimes need to be destroyed. I

Jim (19:31):
Like how it talks about the sizes attitude. You wake up with that mindset and you just try to keep that with you throughout the whole day. And that in itself is, is being a warrior. You know, that mind battle.

Clint Albright (19:48):
I think, I don’t think we touched on is even though he’s kind of detached from his own emotions doesn’t mean that he’s a callous person or that he’s not empathetic for what people are going through. He has difficulty having romantic relationships since he, he is detached from his emotions. However that doesn’t make him a callous person. He’s very able to empathize and connect and understand people’s suffering and the adversity that they’re going through. And it kind of builds him up to continue to face that adversity to face that cause and in whatever goal he’s also loyalty.

Brad Singletary (20:23):
Yeah. It doesn’t mean he’s cruel. It just means he’s not making decisions based on like emotion about anyone or anything, except his goal. The ideal that he’s after,

Clint Albright (20:37):
Like we talked about earlier, you have to be detached from your emotions. When we talk about war and confrontation, because getting those emotions involved might you hesitate, might make you pause, think too deeply about it versus just going

Brad Singletary (20:51):
With what you’ve been trained to do. It’s very much

Clint Albright (20:55):
Looking at the present moment and just staying in that

Brad Singletary (21:00):
One thing I liked, I don’t remember if this was, they were talking about the samurai or who that was, but there’s really only one direction and that is forward. And there’s really only one way to face an enemy. And that’s face to face. Don’t turn your back on the battle. You have to keep, you got to keep the enemy in front of you. And sometimes the enemy is yourself. Sometimes the enemy is sometimes the enemy is emotion. Sometimes the enemy is a person or a partner coworkers, but you have to face these challenges head on Jay’s in a battle right now. I think he’s girl is texting him like, no, are you sure? You’re at a, I’m just kidding. Looking at the outline. I would be a warrior and tell her how it is. If you’re listening, that’s not true in talking about being decisive and efficient. There was something in there that said he never spins more energy than he has to. Now that may sound a little lazy, but what do they mean by that? Never spends more energy than he has to. He’s always moving forward. You know, you can spend energy looking back and thinking about, you know, the past, but it is what it is. And it’s time to move forward. You can’t spend energy on that.

Clint Albright (22:27):
I also think he he’s putting his energy with a lot of intent. So if we know that he’s very goal oriented, if he’s very balanced, if he’s training all the time, working with others, to making sure that their goals are taken care of, he’s, he’s being very mindful of where he puts his energy. So he doesn’t over himself. Cause if he overexerts himself, then he might go into that emotional.

Brad Singletary (22:50):
Yeah. Maybe he knows some shortcuts. Maybe he knows a way to, you know, reach the goal faster. And he can not shortcuts as in cutting corners, but just a more efficient way to get there. I really appreciated that. It says the warrior is not dramatic or showy. I don’t know if he used the word showy. That might be my word, but this is, it’s not about his ego. He’s not just showcasing his power. He’s not just walking around thudding on his chest, whipping his, weighing out to show people. It all has a purpose. He has an unconquerable spirit. He’s not petty. Doesn’t squabble, don’t know ego. He’s not caught up in his ego with these things. One thing we didn’t mention that it talks about he’s good with weapons. What kind of weapons does the warrior in 2021 use

Jim (23:53):
Their mind?

Brad Singletary (23:56):
Yeah, I would say maybe that’s the primary tool of the warrior now is just your mind, how you think, how you discipline it. You know, if you ever fired a rifle or a firearm that hadn’t been cleaned, you know, it can kind of jam. And so you gotta keep your mind fresh. Maybe you’re reading, maybe listening to podcasts. Maybe you are attending events that kind of build you up the tools and weapons of the warrior today might be something you buy on Amazon. I don’t know. Working out exercise. Yeah. His body is a weapon in a way. And your body, if your body is driving the weapon of your mind, I’ve just noticed really actually literally in the last probably six or eight months, the power of water, just drinking water. And I literally, my, my, I can be foggy and I drink some water, like 32 ounces of water. My little bottle I have here, I just kill it. And in about 10 minutes, I swear, I’m thinking clearer. And so my, my mind is affected by how I treat my body, which is another weapon.

Jim (25:06):
Yeah. Other weapons, you know, along with water would be food, you know, giving you sustainable energy. Maybe even meditation might be another weapon to relieve stress, clear your mind. Definitely a lot of good weapons out there in 2020.

Jay (25:24):
Yeah. I think just, you know, training in general, no matter, you know, what aspect of your life you’re talking about. If it’s at work, it’s maybe taking a class or reading a book or listening to a podcast, you know, if that’s at home, it might be, you know, doing whatever. I don’t know, going to a counselor if it’s, you know, something with it, relationship wise, but you’re continually honing your skills and doing that training to be better.

Brad Singletary (25:55):
I asked a guy the other day, when was the last time you learned something very important that was new. And he really kinda S you know, I’m stuttering to say the word stutter. He really kind of stuttered for a minute. He couldn’t think of the last time he had like, had a new, bright, new idea or some new technique or method. Like you’re talking about Jay, you got to learn some skills. I hear men all the time talking about, you know, in this relationship, it’s different because we have different skills. We have different types of communication. And so as we fight for the survival of our relationship, the thing that’s bigger than me, we have to have new approaches to things.

Jay (26:38):
Yeah. I think it goes to moving forward and not becoming if it’s in your relationship or whatever it is. You’re always looking for new skills and new trades to make it better.

Brad Singletary (26:51):
It’s interesting how these different archetypes can kind of blend together. There’s a quote in the book about how the warrior lives not to gratify his personal needs and wishes or his physical appetites, but to hone himself into an efficient spiritual machine, trained to bear the unbearable in the service of the transpersonal goal and the transpersonal goal they were talking about. That’s really just, it includes the needs of other people. You’re fighting for, you know, someone in a vulnerable position or others who can’t defend themselves, but it’s, you’re caring for other people, but an efficient spiritual machine. I thought that was, that’s some interesting, like polarity with the idea of a warrior. You know, this battle hungry person who’s, you know, today is a good day to die, but who’s also an efficient spiritual machine.

Jim (27:44):
I’m in the middle of that. You’re talking transpersonal, I’m in the middle of a harassment, sexual or discrimination training at work. You know, when you see it happen and maybe you’re a bystander, you know, standing up for that person, you know, that’s kind of a warrior thing to step in and let someone know that that wasn’t right, what you did, what you said, lots of different ways to be a warrior.

Brad Singletary (28:10):
So what are some examples of warriors that, you know, people from stories or people in your real life that you believe kind of live that archetype in their story? You know, I think

Jay (28:22):
One that’s near and dear to a lot of people’s hearts here in the Las Vegas area is one October. And when you talk about individuals who display that warrior energy, you got to look at the police officers who responded all first responders, who, who responded on on one October, you know, they had to emotionally detach from their own doubts and their own fears. And as most people were running away from that situation, those individuals are running towards that. And it wasn’t for themselves. It was for a greater good.

Brad Singletary (28:57):
And I, one thing I, I work with a lot of police officers and I hear a lot about some of the training that they do. And that may have been just kind of an unimaginable situation that they’ve trained for a hundred times. You know, something that the average guy walking around, isn’t thinking about the things that these types of warriors are. And so the preparation, the discipline, considering what threats there may be and so forth. I mean, we’re in a gunfight, this person is still out there harming people in this very moment. Gosh, it just, it must’ve just taken so much courage. I’ve worked with some of these guys who have been involved throughout that whole experience, you know, right away. And then soon after, and then the next day, it’s just amazing. You’re right. That’s a great example of the warrior energy. Yeah.

Jim (29:49):
First responders. I mean, firefighters as well, people are running out of a building, a burning building and they’re running into it. That’s a different mindset. So strong mindset. And that’s really showing that you were truly being in service of others and making sure that you’re protecting,

Brad Singletary (30:07):
I guess, thinking about, you know, the warrior, I got to think about military personnel who are, they’re kind of signing up for that. You know, my wife’s brother was a, he was a cavalry scout with the us army. And he chose the job that he wanted was to be a Minesweeper. And so he was in front of his own group who was at the front of the line and he’s out there sweeping for mines and he wanted something difficult. He wanted something that no one else wanted. I just think that that just took so much courage. So plenty of people that are serving in uniform in various capacities, definitely living out the warrior energy as strong men. One of my favorite stories of a warrior is the movie gladiator. That’s the one with Russell Crowe. I think it’s like three hours long. I watch it every few months with my, with my boys.

Brad Singletary (31:03):
So he was a general, he was a general. And in the beginning of the movie, the question was whether or not he was going to stay with his troops, you know, stay with his soldiers or go back home to his wife and kids and he chose to stay. And then he finds out that you know, Marcus really is, was the emperor. And he was, he was soon going to die. And he named him this general, his successor and Marcus really is his son, commonness was jealous. Maybe he was acting in that kind of high chair, tyrant. He ended up killing his father. And then he, when he found out that Maximus, the gladiator wasn’t on board with his plan, he had his wife and son killed, and then he banished him to slavery. So he went from general, a very respected general to a slave.

Brad Singletary (32:02):
And part of that was to fight as a gladiator. Well then he Rose in popularity as a gladiator. And then probably my favorite part of the whole movie is he has comedies. Who’s kind of unrightfully taking his, taking his role as the emperor he’s killed his father and Russell Crowe. The gladiator has him down. I think he’s got a sword at his neck and the crowd is all cheering because they want him to die. They know that he’s kind of a tyrannical evil person, and they’re all kind of chanting for the, I think is what they were calling him. And he had an opportunity to kill him, but he didn’t, he walked away. And that was just a powerful expression of, it was a powerful statement. Yeah. He made a powerful statement about what it means to really be a warrior. And by the way, what he was fighting for was Rome. Rome is an idea. Rome is a dream and that’s what he was fighting for. And there was this corruption that kind of crept into the Senate in any way that movie to me is that teaches me. It’s, I don’t know, maybe it’s silly, you know, this heroic story, but it kind of teaches me about the kind of man I want to be. And for sure, in the, in the warrior energy,

Clint Albright (33:25):
No, there’s a lot of star Wars gatekeepers out there. So I’m gonna try to do some star Wars justice here. But for me, it was Obi wan Kenobi drought trilogy, whether you watch the Canon or not, he was always the kind of balanced warrior. He never, he always made sure like his paddle ones that, you know, you don’t over indulge into your emotions, keep your emotions in check. You know, he’s, he was very committed and loyal to the Senate and making sure that, you know, the light side, you know, was, was on the up and up. But he just shows a lot of these traits that we’ve kind of went over about what it means to be a ward.

Brad Singletary (34:03):
Yeah. I love that. That’s a great example, OB one. So in the bipolar dysfunctional shadow of the warrior is the sadist and the masochist. Now I know what some of you guys are thinking that this is some sexual thing out there, and maybe that creeps in at some people’s sexual life, but here we’re talking about a person who is either, you know, inflicting pain on other people are allowing pain to be inflicted on himself. So what does the sadist look like? This is the active kind of overachieving power, hungry shadow of the warrior,

Clint Albright (34:44):
Bringing up star Wars again, when you look at Anna Ken it was like the third movie. He becomes completely controlled by his emotions and he just totally loses himself. He becomes a Darth Vader and when Palpatine ordered order 66 to kill all of the other jetties, he was an akin was up in the room, killing the paddle ones, the little kids, and just total disregard for human life. And you know, he, he just really changed in that moment. He destroyed everything from the inside out and became this dark tyrannical, you know, figure in the universe.

Brad Singletary (35:30):
Yeah. So in the, in the warrior energy, we talked about he’s detached from his emotion and the sadist is also detached from emotion. He’s willing to fight. He’s willing to put people to death if that’s what he has to do, but it really controls his evil side. And they’re very cruel even to vulnerable people. Self-Serving them with no ethics, no loyalty, but to himself, it seems to come up a lot with these, you know, the healthy side and the unhealthy stuff it’s selfish versus unselfish loyalty to self versus loyalty to others, or to a principle or idea of value. I think these individuals are

Jay (36:14):
Also workaholics. They have a, you know, a hard time differentiating between how to behave at work versus at home. And, you know, you look at the sound of music with the Baron Von trap. You know, he had very high expectations for his family and he seemed to run his home exactly. Like he ran his troops and, you know, you see in the sound of music, you know, he has whistles for forum and they line up in a line things that you would see that he would do in the military that he’s now because he doesn’t, he can’t differentiate between the two. He’s bringing that at home. And you see that, like, you know, we talked about the military, how they have a hard time transitioning between the warrior mindset in war, and then coming back home and transitioning into the family.

Brad Singletary (37:02):
It was interesting. It seemed to be talking about like drill sergeants and stuff like that. You know, picturing bootcamp where they really have to tear the person down. And in that case, maybe there’s a, that’s a necessary part of the training, you know, weed out the weak or whatever, but it kind of describes this drill Sergeant personality as someone who isn’t afraid to create pain, to break the other person down,

Clint Albright (37:28):
Genuine with the workaholics. The book kind of mentioned this, that they’re able to do enter pain and get a lot of work done, but deep inside there’s anxiety, they don’t know what they want and they don’t know what they’re missing. They attack everything including themselves until they eat themselves alive and they burn out. Wow.

Brad Singletary (37:49):
Sometimes I wonder if that’s what I’m doing to myself. You know, I, I, I probably have a tendency to want to work too much burn the candle at both ends. And I say, it’s for a good cause. But you know, this whole review, this I’m like you guys, I’m actively trying to assess myself as we talk about these things. On the podcast, EV in my work with men, I say something to a guy and I’m like, hold on a minute. Do I do that? Am I that way? So yeah. What Clint just brought up. Like, I see myself for sure. I mean, I know I work a lot, but I can be very hard on myself when, you know, I don’t do something. Right. I make a bad decision, you know, I put a lot of blame on and

Jim (38:37):
Yeah,

Brad Singletary (38:38):
Yeah, you said he, he like eats himself and he burns out and that’s just crazy imagery of he’s eating himself, like destroying himself, thinking that he’s getting nourished or something.

Clint Albright (38:52):
And we’re both therapists here and we know that feeling of burnout. And I’m sure time to time when it starts sneaking up on you start realizing like, well, I’m not really taking care of the things that I need to start taking care of for my own self. If I need to be a warrior for the people who are coming into my office, I need to show up for my own self.

Jim (39:09):
So I stress myself out over these moments. Like recently we’ve been working seven days a week, 12 hours a day, and a lot of like personal care I’m not taking care of. And that stresses me out as well. You know, not being able to just have some alone time, whether it’s, you know, meditating, reading, exercising, and that causes additional stress. You know, once again, it just builds that I’m being extremely hard on myself. You know, I’m not getting the work done. I’m not getting the personal growth done. And it’s, it becomes stressful personally.

Brad Singletary (39:46):
I think you got to always be evaluating, checking yourself against your own standards and the things you want to be loyal to. So like something I pride myself in is always being there for people I’m available on the weekend and late at night. And if people are going through something like, Hey, text me, I will talk, talk through it. And that seems like I’m fighting as a warrior for someone’s benefit. And then I forget that my own children are in the other room. My own family is kind of needing me to be there. And I’m literally right in the middle right now of a process of kind of carving my schedule down a little bit and just trying to be a little bit more reasonable because I think I’m doing all this good stuff by helping people. 2020 has been rough in the mental health world. And so you know, I can’t work for a year straight 12 hours a day every, every day,

Jim (40:38):
You know, and it kind of brings up a question of, can you be a warrior in one place? And how do you find that balance between you’re a warrior at work? How do you be a warrior at home? Also at the same time, it always seems like they kind of pull against each other at times, and you can be a warrior over here, but you’re failing and you’re being more of a you’re bipolar shadows over here,

Brad Singletary (41:02):
Tyra. Yeah. I like the idea of just engagement. You know, you’re involved, you’re tuned in, you know, what’s going on, you know, what the needs are, you know, what the vulnerabilities are. And so at work, it looks one way at home. It looks like something different, but it’s still, you’re just tuned in. And maybe that’s what can help men. You know, you have to switch hats and change your uniform and come home and be a different person and your personal relationships, but really it still

Jim (41:32):
Does it all still come down to being present.

Brad Singletary (41:34):
Yeah. And I know, I know personally me, I have found that if I go straight from work and go home and don’t have kind of a decompression time, I find a hard time transitioning between the two. And so I’ve learned, Hey, give me five minutes. Give me 10 minutes. Just to kind of let me decompress shed off that coat of work. That when I come on now, I can be that present in the home. You do that quick. I need like six hours, like catch me in the morning, I’ll be in a better mood.

Clint Albright (42:07):
So one thing that was tough for me is like being in graduate school during COVID and doing tele-health at home, I didn’t have a place to kind of decompress. Like my bedroom is my office. And so I missed the days, like where I would, you know, get in the car, listen to music, kind of decompress on my way home. So I can’t shift that hat. So I have that little buffer space.

Brad Singletary (42:29):
Did you ever figure anything out that, how did you resolve that? Did you ever find a way to

Clint Albright (42:34):
After work? I would just put some headphones in, listen to some metal music and just go take my dog for a run. And that was kind of my best as well.

Brad Singletary (42:43):
Take your dog for her and his house. Come here a little man time. Let’s do a lot of peanut butter. My friend used to say, I got a one out hunting dog, and he’s going to hunt tonight. This sadist is also disgusted by weakness. He berates the weak, you know, he’s just criticizing. He demands compliance. His standards are unrealistic and there’s a great quote. I wanted to share this shadow warrior carries into adulthood. The adolescent insecurity, violent emotionalism and the desperation of the hero. As he seeks to make a stand against the overwhelming power of the feminine, which always tends to the masochistic or cowardly pole of the heroes, dysfunctional shadow. That’s pretty powerful. You know, when you’re being sadistic, you’re really, you’re really just operating out of juvenile insecurity, violent emotionalism. I think that plenty of times in my life, I wasn’t necessarily physically violent, but I was emotionally violent and that comes out of desperation.

Brad Singletary (43:58):
I just want to win. I just want to finish my list for my Saturday chores. I just want my kids to behave properly. I want something that is worthwhile, but I, my approach to it is coming out of a very immature place. That’s been something I’ve had to constantly work on. All right. The passive shadow, the masochist, what does this guy act like? What is, what is he thinking, feeling and doing when he’s in the bipolar of the warrior called the masochist, he doesn’t stand his ground. He’s the pushover with, without any boundaries, he lets people walk over him. You know, he does. He’s just really passive aggressive and lets people take advantage of him.

Jay (44:50):
Yeah. He gives his power away to the tyrants and the warriors.

Brad Singletary (44:54):
Yeah. Yeah. He hands it over to the, to the sadist in his world and he lets himself just get trampled on. He feels kind of powerless kind of reminds me of like, yes man. Yes man. Yeah, no boundaries. No self-respect yes.

Jay (45:09):
This is that employee that you see that can never say no, always gets walked on, gives and gives and gives. And then one day ends up exploding.

Brad Singletary (45:21):
I have one of those guys, seriously. I always tell them, you know, don’t be so quick to just say yes, you know, if it’s wrong or it’s bothering you, you know, stand up for yourself. He never would. And he finally let loose last summer, which was satisfying to see that, you know, yeah, you go to a, you go to a domestic violence class and you find a room full of nice guys. These are, these are Teddy bears. And they lost them because they were just getting walked on. They didn’t stand their ground and totally being a doormat to the, to the other tyrants and the other status in their life. These guys are driven by anxiety trying to find worth in their performance, but they never find it always seeking some accomplishment. And they never really, they never really get there because they’re just spinning their wheels with fear and anxiety. They deny their own worth.

Brad Singletary (46:24):
They can’t imagine themselves as a powerful person. They don’t see themselves as a warrior. Maybe they’re afraid of that whole energy because they have been victimized by some toxic masculinity, which may be, this will be seen as unpopular. But I believe that it does exist in the form of like the sadist in the form of the tyrant. That’s what people are talking about when they say toxic masculinity, it’s a dude, who’s being a jerk. So that person is just growing up with that toxicity and can’t, can’t get themselves to the next level or, or, or insecurity to get themselves the next level to get to, you know, that confidence and believe in themselves. And

Jay (47:12):
What we talked about in previous episodes of not being seen kind of reminds me of somebody who doesn’t have that discipline doesn’t have that goal mindset, that growth mindset.

Brad Singletary (47:24):
I’m working with a guy right now who has some very difficult kids. Children are adopted and that kind of brings with it some problems with attachment and different things in, in his case anyway, but he told me one time that he would get bullied in school, junior high, high school, he would get bullied. And he kind of feels like he’s being bullied by his own kids. And we’re talking, you know, nine, 11, 13 year old kids. And so he’s kind of masochistic in that. He just lets them control him and then quickly shifts over to the the sadist and becomes a Punisher and does regretful things. Remember when we shared this earlier, this is a theme repeated in the book. Don’t ask yourself if you’re doing this, ask yourself, in what ways do I do these things? Cause we all kind of become that. All right. So our final question here is how can a man fully access the warrior energy with himself? So a man feels kind of weak. He wants to tap into that inherent warrior. It’s just passed down through the generations. It’s in our genetics, it’s in our emotional and spiritual DNA. How does a guy train himself and become,

Jim (48:45):
Yeah. You talking earlier about not giving away as energy. So listening to all the noise around you from people’s opinions and thoughts is something you need to separate yourself from. So you can focus on your goals and shut down that noise and not give it energy,

Brad Singletary (49:05):
Man. That’s a great word. Noise. There’s so much noise. So much noise notifications on your phone. You know, what’s playing in the news just

Jim (49:15):
Angry people, jealous people,

Brad Singletary (49:17):
The neighbor, the people in line, the other drivers noise, man, tune that out noise everywhere. So detaching is a healthy part of this mature masculine way of being to detach, but not to be, not, not emotional, but just you’re saying Jim detaching from opinions.

Jim (49:37):
Gotcha. Still present. You’re still present. You’re in the moment. You know, you’re living in the moment, but there’s just a lot of haters if you will. Yes. Scott, let them go.

Brad Singletary (49:48):
Sometimes I think it takes with the haters. Sometimes it takes learning how to defend yourself. I think I’m okay.

Jim (49:55):
But that that’s energy, right? That’s energy. That’s energy use that I could use in a better purpose, right? Defending myself are really need to defend myself. Does it even matter? What purpose is it serving?

Brad Singletary (50:09):
Yeah. Does it give credibility to the hater to defend myself? So maybe sometimes you don’t, maybe sometimes you do have to stand up and be assertive. That’s something I will readily admit it didn’t come naturally for me. And that may be because of how I grew up kind of under the rule of someone who was a little bit tough, a little bit hard and I learned to be soft. And what I find with men in general is just that men are too hard or too soft. And it’s not what you’re thinking. JM. I’m not talking about the blue Pillsy.

Speaker 6 (50:41):
I told you that in confidence.

Brad Singletary (50:47):
So sometimes you do have to defend yourself. You’ve got to be assertive to be assertive. Really just means that I matter. And you matter, I’m going to handle this respectfully, but I’m not going to let you do this thing to me or to my family. Maybe you have to learn to defend yourself physically. I love the jujitsu and all those kinds of things. I wish that I was in the kind of condition right now. Maybe someday that’s something I could pursue, but just learning how to physically manage yourself in a situation. If it ever came to it, I don’t expect that’s going to happen.

Jay (51:24):
There’s something to be said about when you’re working out and you’re seeing the benefits of that. And you’re kind of honing your skills where you kind of walk a little bit higher. You, you feel a little bit better about yourself. Like you can do this, you know? So I think there’s something to that where, you know, workout, make yourself, make your body, you know, in shape

Brad Singletary (51:51):
Another book. I really like maybe we’ll review some time as the way of men by Jack Donovan, but he talks about men size up other men. We see a man and we’re instantly checking. We’re assessing whether or not he can be trusted whether or not he can help. If the hits the fan, whether or not he is going to be on my team or whatever. And so fitness, physical fitness, like in this room right now, there’s probably the least confidence in me in terms of like, if somebody came in and we had to scrap with something here. And so yeah, if you’re, you have a level of fitness that you can feel comfortable just walking around, if you, if there was a time, I, I wasn’t even comfortable to get on a plane with my physical fitness. I weighed 425 pounds at one time. That is, you’re kind of in a way, useless as a warrior in that sense.

Brad Singletary (52:40):
And for me, it wasn’t just the physical limitations. It was like, psychologically. I just felt like I had no power. I couldn’t, I couldn’t run. I couldn’t get on the floor and play with my kids. It was hard to wipe my. So yes, physical fitness, because that’s a lot of what we’re talking about is the mental training that you have to do. We’re not going to be swinging FIS in the street, but if you have the discipline and that it takes to get yourself in shape physically, you know, and I’ve been myself on and off with that, that, that goes a long way. Because if, if the, if your primary weapon is your mind fitness anyway, hit fat guy talking about fitness, go ahead.

Speaker 6 (53:24):
It’s more than just that, right? It’s more

Jim (53:26):
Than just physical. It’s mental, it’s spiritual. It’s emotional. It’s a lot of those it’s up there. Yeah.

Jay (53:33):
It’s honing all of your skills. So if it’s at home personally, or if it’s at work, once you start to hone your skills and you become more proficient and more knowledgeable, you have more confidence and you’re not going to be falling into your bipolar shadow as much, but you’re going to be stepping up and having that warrior mindset, knowing that you can do it lean into that adversity.

Jim (53:56):
You’ve gained skills and you have the wisdom.

Brad Singletary (54:00):
This may be a dumb thing, but I take a lot of pride in at my home. I go, I’m the last one to go to sleep. And I take a lot of pride in like checking the doors to make sure they’re locked. I want to secure my family. I want my family to feel secure. And you know, I’ve have an alarm system. I have a, the cameras and stuff like that, just to it’s like, it’s probably more psychological comfort for them that I’m kind of provide these things. They trust that dad’s gonna lock the door. It’s all good here. We’re safe here. So having a security mindset, I worked in a juvenile detention center for several years. These were kids up to age 21. This was a secure facility. So that means like a prison. And they would teach us things like, you need to know what is in this person’s hands. You need to just be tuned in like situational awareness. What’s going on around you. And again, you don’t want to walk around paranoid, but you should be attentive to what’s happening around you. And if you can just imagine yourself as a warrior, who’s there to protect, which I think is one of the important roles of men. You feel stronger, you have more confidence. What other things, if we want to tune into our warrior energy, how do we access that?

Jim (55:19):
Taking risks, not putting yourself in jeopardy, but challenging yourself to overcome fears, whether it’s, you know, I’m not saying you should free settle or anything like Alex Honnold, but you know maybe you, you, you, you know, you use the ropes and climate, or if you have a fear of Heights or if you’re swimming in the ocean or a fear of talking to a woman or whatever your fear is, you know, you get your mind, right. To challenge yourself, to take on that fear because what comes from it growth. Right? Definitely.

Clint Albright (55:56):
I mean, I literally have the Nike switch symbol tattooed on my foot. St just do it. So like whenever I go for a long hike or, you know, going into doing a speech or even being on this podcast, just put my right foot forward and just do it. Let me see what the best thing can come out of this. Even if it doesn’t go well, it’s a new experience that I can kind of integrate and all right, I did something scary. Wasn’t that bad. I can keep pushing myself to do more and more. You’re going to learn from it too.

Brad Singletary (56:22):
Clinton really does have that tattoo. He showed me one day, but he, I started getting nervous when he started to take his other sock off too.

Jim (56:31):
You shut the door. Now it’s a party

Brad Singletary (56:36):
In the book. The other book I mentioned Jack, Donovan’s the way of man. He talks about starting a gang and really what he means is a tribe. And you know, if you’re a warrior, you better have some soldiers. You better have some people that you can count on. And again, we’re not talking about, we’re going to shoot up, you know, the neighborhood we got to, you know, not like that. But part of your, one of your weapons is other men. And again, if we’re talking about emotional challenges and spiritual challenges and psychological difficulty I had an experience just a couple of weeks ago where I had to, I’ve got a group text with some friends and I said, dudes, this is what’s going on in my life. This is what I feel like doing, helped me. And they say, knock it off. You’re being selfish. You’re looking at this all wrong. And so I think there’s just, if one of our core messages with this is you got to have some people, you better have some warriors around you that are on your team and they kinda know what you’re after they know what your vulnerabilities are. And then you, you can protect them. You’re there going, man, if they need that,

Jay (57:44):
I think it’s really important to have that tribe. You know, I not too long ago, went through a, a tough divorce. And having those individuals around to talk to that were like-minded that you could bounce ideas off. Kind of like you said, like, Hey, let me run this by you. And you know, if they’re weak, they’re just going to agree with you. And that’s not what you need. You need those individuals who are going to be like, Jay. Now, come on, think about that or help you talk through it. So I think it is important to have a solid tribe of, of men that are with you.

Jim (58:20):
You got those, those like-minded men who give you honest feedback, honest perspective. That’s, it’s tough. Yeah. That’s, that’s important.

Brad Singletary (58:33):
The most unhappy that I’ve ever been has been when I was the most isolated, the dumbest decisions I ever made happen when I was the most isolated. And so if you’re a warrior in the battle of life, you’ve got to have some people that have your back, and that can tell you when your, you know, your armor isn’t properly set up and who can defend you and who can teach you and train you and challenge you push you,

Jim (59:03):
Be honest with yourself, you know, look at what you’re doing, right? What you’re doing wrong, you know, just try to pick it apart. Don’t overthink it. Don’t spend too much energy on it, but just be honest with your strengths and your weaknesses and work on those things. That’s great.

Brad Singletary (59:22):
All right. You guys, let’s wrap this one up. We appreciate you being with us. The next episode, we’re going to talk about the magician

ALPHA SHOT: One-minute Sample

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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 3 ALPHA guests and I begin a 6-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 model of healthy manhood by helping guys rediscover the archetypes of mature masculinity: the KING, the WARRIOR, the MAGICIAN, and the LOVER.

In this episode we discuss the archetype of the KING, and the dysfunctional, biploar shadows of the TYRANT and the WEAKLING.

“In any moment of sadness, loneliness, emptiness, uncertainty, or discomfort, ask yourself this.

 

What does my King say?

 

The King is that gentle wise loving elder within you, who connects you directly to an all-knowing and all-loving source.

 

To cultivate him, to know him, ask the question again and again, day in and day out. Ask it regarding your relationship. Ask it regarding your work. Ask it regarding parenting.

 

Keep asking until you get an answer. Keep asking until you know your King like a trusted guide and a good friend.

 

Keep asking until you have confidence that you can stay true to yourself in all moments, when your light is bright and when it is dim.

 

And when the desire arises to avoid what you fear, fill emptiness, eliminate loneliness, or cling to anything or anyone, ask the question.

 

You will feel a fullness, a knowing, a wisdom within that was always there but unknown until now.

 

And once you have cultivated yourself in asking, you will become the all-loving and all-knowing King yourself, with no neurosis, no self-betrayal, and peace within.

 

And you will notice he is you and you are him.

 

So ask yourself now and in the days to come. Make it part of your daily practice.

 

What does my King say?

 

And listen deeply within.”

 

(Stuart Motola)

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Brad Singletary (00:00):
Men are faced with unique challenges. And many of our failures come from operating with boys’ 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 continue six episode series on our review of the book King warrior, magician lover, I Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette. They described the difference between boy psychology and man psychology. If a very effective visual model of healthy manhood by helping guys rediscover the archetypes of mature masculinity. In this episode, we discuss the King.

Brad Singletary (01:20):
Welcome back to the alpha quorum show. Brad Singletary here. I’m joined once again by my awesome alpha guests, Jay, Jim, and Clint really appreciate you guys being here. We’re continuing the conversation about this book review and this isn’t so much about the book, but just talking about issues related to men. The questions that we’re going to answer today are what is the King archetype expressed in its fullness? What are some relatable examples of men living this way? What does it look like when a man is operating from tyrant energy? What does the weakling act like? And how can a man fully access the King energy within himself? This segment is about living life as a man with the energy of a King. One special thing about the King archetype is that he embodies all of the other mature masculine energy. He’s also a warrior. He’s also a magician.

Brad Singletary (02:17):
He’s a lover. This episode is about leadership. So what is the King archetype you guys expressed in its fullness? This is the pinnacle of the pyramid, the King. What does a King like?

Jim (02:32):
He listens, he’s strong, he’s giving compassionate.

Brad Singletary (02:38):
You know, that’s something that I think is important here is that he’s not just a leader who gets things done, but he understands his people. He understands their need he’s. He can, if he can love,

Jay (02:49):
He’s able to bring order to chaos that in a chaotic event, he’s the one that has the sound mind. He’s able to make those decisive decisions, bring calm to that Chaos.

Clint Albright (03:02):
He’s also able to kind of control what is inside and outside of his realm of control is able to have that locus of control, where he recognizes, where he needs to grow and kind of challenges themselves to be the best version of himself.

Brad Singletary (03:18):
I like it, it talks about he himself is centered. That’s kind of some of what you’re talking about, but a lot of times it’s where the King sat was literally in the center of the world. And the world was his kingdom, you know, the boundaries of his kingdom. And he was the center of it. All things kind of came from him. He’s center. He himself is centered as a, as a man.

Jay (03:41):
They also possess that practical wisdom from experiences. You know, they, they have the knowledge of how to do it the right way at the right time and for the right reasons that they have that through their experiences. I like it

Brad Singletary (03:56):
That he’s a negotiator, you know, he mens broken relationships. He can, he’s got to deal with people, maybe other Kings and other leaders of other armies and whatever’s going on. And so he, he can mend relationships with people I’m sure in his own court, you know, in his own family, the King energy is also maybe father energy. I thought that was interesting.

Jim (04:18):
Yeah. Like what Jay said about being calm and that helps us not to be reactive and making these impulsive decisions that to snowball into greater problems. These are also the type of people that embodied leaving a legacy. They IM they not only empowering themselves, but they make sure that the people around them they’re able to empower them. And so that they realize their mortality. And when they move on, there’s a newer life that’s going to be there and take over.

Brad Singletary (04:48):
One of the words in the book was, is generative. And that really means looking after the next generation. So Lehman and legacy. Yes. He’s not just thinking about what’s cool right now, he’s thinking about far down the road, what’s going to be good for the kingdom long after I’m gone

Brad Singletary (05:05):
Yeah, he’s a visionary.

Brad Singletary (05:10):
One of the things I like is it talked about he blesses the lives of others and the King was seen as connected. Maybe even to God, there was some kind of connection to the divine or whatever, and that he would bless people and would give gifts. He would recognize and honor other people. I’ve got a couple of quotes here from the book that are just powerful and think about this wherever you are, whatever in whatever way, you’re a leader in whatever way you interact with other people, think about how this could apply to you. The good King, always mirrored and affirmed others who deserved it. He did this by seeing them in a literal sense in his audiences, at the palace and in the psychological sense of noticing them, knowing them and their true, the good King, delighted in noticing and promoting good men to positions of responsibility in his kingdom.

Brad Singletary (06:04):
He held audience primarily not to be seen, but to see admire and delight in his subjects, to reward them and be so honors upon them. And that just, it gives me goosebumps, you know, talk about the father energy. Another thing in there kind of related to this is it’s talking about young men and what boys are missing. The authors say young men today are starving for blessing from older men, starving for blessing from the King energy. This is why in many cases they cannot, as we say, get it together. They shouldn’t have to, they need to be blessed. They need to be seen by the King because if they are something inside, we’ll come together for them. That is the effect of blessing it heals and makes whole that’s what happens when we are seen and valued and concretely rewarded or our legitimate talents and abilities and the young men need to be seen.

Brad Singletary (07:02):
And we’re all just looking for validation. We’re all just looking for significance and whatever strengths you guys have. I’m willing to bet a large part of that comes from having been seen by a mature masculine. Someone saw you, someone said, Jay, you’re a stud you know, Jay, you would be great as a teacher, Jay, you should go to college. Jay, you’re a good dude, Jay, you’re a good dad. People are affirming your worth. Someone did that for you. It would have been in your profession. Could have been, your dad could have been other family members, teachers, coaches. What do you think of that? I want to take a minute to talk about that King blesses. You know, he sees the good things in his

Jim (07:47):
For me is deep because it, once I was recognized, it inspired me to show that appreciation and let these up and comers know their worth and know that their potential is infinite. And just like you said, blessing them, but also helping them along the way when they succeed and letting them know that. So it just, that inspiration for me is, is very big. We see it, especially as a teacher and a coach, you see it quite a bit. And especially at the junior high level, it’s such an interesting time period anyway in their life. And they’re trying to they’re on that prefaces of childhood and adulthood and moving into all of that stuff and, and having the ability to give them praise and, and show them that they’ve been seen and helped develop them and help move them through that. And, you know, as a coach, leading by example, but also giving them that positive feedback and how much that, that would further them along in their growth.

Brad Singletary (08:48):
It’s, it’s powerful stuff.

Clint Albright (08:49):
I mean, coming from my own upbringing and everything, there was a time where I was a lot of stuff for my father passed away and I craved finding to be seen. I’m trying to find where I sit in this, in this world and in this realm and how I can become who I am. And I’m very blessed that I had some very inspirational, like male figures kind of come into my life and it was just show me the ropes. What does it mean to be an emotional man, how to sh go camping and enjoy nature as it is, and then take a moment to be present with yourself. It’s so important. I think for especially boys who don’t feel like they’re seen to find that, that space in their life to feel like they’re seen and they’re valued and they’re being validated.

Jim (09:33):
And it was like being an elder. I think there’s something very satisfying to give that blessing, to inspire, to let someone know that, you know, their potential is infinite. It’s to me, it’s very satisfying.

Brad Singletary (09:48):
It’s also modeling to them because they’re going to be a man, whether they are a boy or they’re a young man, they’re going to be in a fatherly role. They’re going to be in a leadership role. One of my first important real adult jobs was I talked to this guy was on his way to retirement. And I said, tell me, one thing that’s made the most difference in your career had been doing it about 40 years. This world is therapy war, but he was a, like a director of an agency. And I said, tell me one thing that, you know, you’ve learned is most important. He said, catch him doing it, right. Catch them doing it right like that. And I just, I try to do that with my kids, anybody I’m working with, I just want to reflect back. I want to hold up the mirror and say, you’re amazing.

Brad Singletary (10:31):
You got a great sense of humor. Look at those abs. I say that to my, I only got one kid with six boys. Only one guy got a six pack, but anyway, telling them what they are telling them, what their gifts, their talents, what examples, when you talk about when, when I was seeing like, what examples happened to you, what was the thing that said, I see you Clint, you know, you’re valuable. What was the message or the, you know, the display of like appreciation toward you that made you feel validated by a mature man?

Jim (11:02):
You know, someone in my industry who I had a lot of respect for, you know, his knowledge and then him letting me kind of go out on my own and start doing work for myself and learning from my lessons, you know, rights and wrongs. And then, you know, like you said, seeing you, and then giving you the praise when you did right, was what’s everything. It gave me like the strength to know that I can do this. Like I can continue to just grow from that inspiration. He gave me that’s awesome.

Clint Albright (11:38):
You know, for, for me, it was getting like the, the validation from my grandfather, because I looked up to him a lot after my dad passed away. And he was huge. He was a president of a major corporation, like had this huge long legacy and he had so much experience. And it was just great when he came after me, up to me, after my dad passed and you know, said, you know, Clint, you’re going to be fine. We’re going to be here to support you. We’re, you know, I see you. I just want the best for you. So whatever I need to do to be there for you, just let me know. And just even just that small little act made me feel empowered to kind of go out into the world and kind of take risks and start learning myself and kind of come back to him for when I needed that guidance or that support or that wisdom. That’s awesome.

Brad Singletary (12:24):
It could be a grandfather could be someone in your profession. You might be that guy, yourself, Jay, anything come to mind about how you were seen and validated as a worthwhile young man.

Jay (12:35):
I think growing, growing up with a father who was also a teacher and a coach, he was pretty intense. And so he was someone that, you know, I always strive to try to, you know, make happy or, or impress. And so growing up and then being able to have him take me under his wing, he was a track coach and, and finding some success myself in that kind of getting that validation for him. And when your chips are down and, and you’re, you’re struggling, he had a way of just being able to pull you off to the side and talk to you about, you know, he was always fair, but firm, you know, he would, if we screwed up, he got after us, but then he explained why. And so there was always that second component of, Hey, I’m going to get after you, but I’m also going to show you that I love you and that, you know, you can do this.

Jim (13:25):
And it always gave me that motivation to continue to just strive and do better. I like what you said, he pulled you aside and we’ll have that talk with you. I, I definitely believe in some of us refer to as PIP and dip. We praise in public and we discipline in private. And I think that so important. I teach that to a lot of guys coming up underneath me that you know, when there’s recognition that everyone know, you know, but when you got to discipline them, you’ve got to pull them aside. You can’t embarrass them in front of everyone. It really hurts your self-esteem and you’re doing nothing, but you’re breaking that man down. And for me, I’m here to lift these men up. So holding them aside is important. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, you have that tribe, if it’s it’s at work or is it as a coach or as a psychologist with your clients is yeah. You have to make, you have to find ways to, to pick them up and embrace them, but also make it fun. You know, I noticed that with, with coaching that when we had a lighthearted side of it also, and so that it wasn’t always go, go, go, go, go. But they could actually learn to enjoy it. Is when they found their most success.

Brad Singletary (14:31):
One of the things I think is cool about King energy is that you’re not basking in your own power. You know, you’re not parading around. Look at me, check me out now they’re fancy. You know, they got rings and crowns and all this stuff, but it’s not about that Jeffrey. So, but he’s making other people feel powerful. Think about the, that you’ve known in the ma masculine folks in your life who gave you that it wasn’t that they were this power and you were just leaching onto their power. They made you feel powerful. They told you what your power was like, that’s the sign of a true leader. If you asked me, so what are some examples of, you know, popular figures or people that guys may relate to? None of us know any Kings maybe, but who lives that energy that we know of?

Brad Singletary (15:18):
One, I guess for me is Ronald Reagan. I grew up with Ron Reagan. I remember being, you know, six or seven years old. And it was always like, Oh, the president’s on. You know, my dad would want to watch. And again, this is nothing having to do with anything political, but he was a pleasant leader. It was someone who had some charm and charisma. He was decisive. He made things important. Things happen in the world, made important things happen in the United States, United people. You hear people talk about, you know, Reagan Democrats. I read a quote recently where he said, you know, I decided to do this because even the Democrats don’t like what’s going on. And his point, his point was, I want to, I want to help everyone. He wanted to bless everyone no matter what their position was. And I think he was just a great example in my lifetime with somebody who embodied that.

Brad Singletary (16:08):
Another one for me, who kind of lives this way is Tony Robbins. I like him because I know that he has prepared. I think he has a high school education, but he’s educated himself. He talked about reading, like thousands of books. He went to teach and, and present the things that he’s learned to other people. I know that he kind of lived a lot of what he teaches. He lived that integrity. Somebody I read somewhere or saw something that he like for 25 years didn’t eat ice cream. Or he was like a vegan for 20 some, whatever he was doing. He did that. So strictly it was actually his current wife who tried to help him loosen up with some of that. Like, dude, it’s okay. I have some ice cream sometime, but he was trying to live, you know what he said, he believed enthusiastic teacher, great energy, all those architects remember the King really to be a King. You gotta be all of those. So to me, Ronald Reagan, Tony Robbins, those are two people that I think are cool that way. Anybody else have any popular figures? You know

Clint Albright (17:10):
I put Captain America whether in the comic books or in the movies and stuff, he just always seems like a very principled man kind of always looking out for everyone else. Making sure the team’s kind of taken care of has a sense of selflessness that you’ll always kind of put himself up first, you know, living with integrity, living with accountability. Always trying to challenge himself to grow.

Jay (17:38):
I’m going to dip into a little bit of Kansas history here since that’s where I went to school, but had an awesome opportunity to work with the football coach at Kansas state. His name is Bill Snyder and he came from Iowa and then came down to pretty much the worst college football program in America at the time. And he developed 16 core values or core traits for success. And he posted those in the locker room. And he, you know, he led by example, he led by integrity and these core values and it was, he praised him. He praised his athletes more than he would praise himself. And he wanted them to be good, successful men, not just good football players, some of those qualities were unselfishness, unity, integrity. Self-Discipline, you know, never give up attitude, no self limitations consistency, leadership and taking responsibility. So he, he had those, he posted them in the locker room. He knew his realm. He knew what his core values were and he never deviated from those.

Brad Singletary (18:44):
I’m sure they followed that they were inspired by not just him teaching them that, but showing it to them without his words, without the poster, they felt that from him. And it sounds like, you know, he had that father energy, a King energy, and they followed him because he was aligned. He was living congruently with what he already was trying to tell.

Jay (19:05):
Yeah, you look, you look at it. You know, he, he had his own elders in his coaching tree and you look at the people that followed behind him. You talk about leaving a legacy and you look at the number of people that have come up, went on and been coaches after him or because of him, it’s pretty impressive. Yeah. I think a lot of coaches embody that they have a lot of King like attributes and like that coach there, he left and he left a legacy. Definitely. Yeah. That’s awesome. So looking at the bipolar

Brad Singletary (19:36):
Or shadows of the King, we have the tyrant and the weak link. I want to talk about those. I want to talk about those and see what they may look like. What are their characteristics? So the tyrant, that’s the over-achieving dysfunctional shadow of the King tyrant that says a lot. He destroys, he tears down other people or other one of the things is a tyrant doing

Speaker 3 (20:02):
Great, have a new experiences due to the unknown threat or the lack of security himself or inner structure. Dude. You’re, he’s good.

Brad Singletary (20:13):
He’s smarter than me. I had, I don’t know if I liked that. I, I think I I’m feeling a little threatened over here. Right? How you saying he has more potential than you? There’s a possibility saying, man, this guy, you know, he’s like I’m 45 years old, man. I feel puffy. Pushy. I’m feeling challenged a little bit. No, seriously. I love that. Read it again because it’s layered in it’s there’s a lot of information.

Clint Albright (20:36):
So, you know, he’s, he’s afraid of new experiences you use wants to stay in the familiar because that’s what he can control. But due to whenever, you know, an unknown threat comes in, he lacks security to move himself and his inner structures. He’s very rigid in himself. Without deviation.

Brad Singletary (20:56):
So controlling, insecure, fearful of new situations. So he does what he knows how to do, which is push people around rules, by fear, those types of people, it be kind of narcissistic, you know, that’s a shallow ego and a fragile ego, but believes he’s special.

Jay (21:16):
Yeah. He’s kind and nice to your face, but then he’s cruel and backstabbing when you’re not around for his own gain.

Brad Singletary (21:25):
That’s some girl right there in one of the earlier shows Derek Johnson talked about, you know, women sometimes will, there’ll be nice to your face and talk about you behind your back. Men will talk to your face and talk nice about you behind your back. So that’s, that’s interesting.

Jim (21:42):
Well, I’ve definitely seen it in guys in my

Brad Singletary (21:45):
I’m into it too. Sorry. I didn’t mean to be sexist about that, but what else is a tyrant light?

Clint Albright (21:52):
They have a underlying rage that is based in a worthlessness and vulnerability to weakness,

Brad Singletary (21:59):
Rage, underlying rage based on weakness. And what’d you say, vulnerability

Speaker 4 (22:05):
Based on worthlessness and vulnerability to weakness.

Brad Singletary (22:08):
Vulnerability to weakness. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim (22:11):
You’re saying there’s like an underlying worthlessness

Speaker 4 (22:14):
Because he doesn’t know himself. He doesn’t care to know himself. He’s only projecting this false sense of security to everyone else because he himself is insecure

Brad Singletary (22:25):
Showing strength, not having any he’s abusive with his words, physically abusive, maybe sexually abusive. You know, he he’s, he takes what he wants. There was a guy in one of my men’s groups. The other day we were talking about an often discussed. The question is, why won’t she have sex with me? And how can I get more sex from my woman? And this guy said, sometimes you just got to take it. And sometimes you’ve got to take her. And I get that. Sometimes there may be a little bit of, you know, a little bit of spontaneity and a little bit of some of that maybe that shows up in the lover and you know exactly when to do that and exactly how, but this guy w the way it was being described, it seemed a little power hungry, a little selfish. You just take it like you just do that when she’s not down. I don’t know that that really kind of bothered me. And I think too many men want to walk around showing power. They have none. They don’t know themselves. I love you talking about, they don’t know who they are, they’ll know their own strengths

Clint Albright (23:24):
And kind of go into that father energy within the King tyrant duality is the father lacks interest in his sons and exploits their weakness and does not show up for their sons in the way that they need. So, you know, the angry father who stays angry, teaches his son to only be angry. And it’s just this continuous.

Brad Singletary (23:46):
Yeah, it’s a, it’s

Jay (23:46):
A cycle. You know, when you see that in domestic violence, you see that it’s normally, if there’s a man who is violent and sometimes it’s a women too that, that it’s, it’s a history. It’s a pattern that they have, have seen that in their own fathers and then have carried it on in their own, right?

Clint Albright (24:02):
Because all they know is internal rage, anger, resentment, and lack of identity.

Brad Singletary (24:07):
Remember, we’re talking about not if we demonstrate these things, but how we do it. Another concept that’s repeated in the book is that we alternate between these bipolar shadows. You know, I got to say like, I’m a father of six boys and too many times I become the tyrant. And I have to tell you guys, literally since reading this book and really digging into it this year 2021, that really made it a focus for myself. I catch myself, I pause a little bit sometimes, you know, I can, I can I’m just trying to align myself with the better part of me, but I, I do. I go from tyrant, you know, I’m yelling, swearing, being rude, critical. And you know, I saw some of those things. I, in my past, I had my dad on the, on the show and he talked about some of his weaknesses that carries on with me. And it’s a constant effort for me to not be that. And then, and then if I do that too much, and then I go weak and I let everything go and let it build up and six more weeks ago. And then there’s another kind of explosion like you talked about. So Hey, none of us here, by the way, we’re just dudes talking about some of our own experiences, the things that we observe, what we’re trying to do, we’re not here tooting our own horns.

Jay (25:23):
No, I think that was something that interesting when reading the book was sometimes I operate or a lot of times operate in black and white and that this book really points out that you can, you move between them. You can be the tyrant one day in the weakness and that it’s not all one or the other, you sometimes will move between each of them. And they’re kind of the bipolar opposites of each other.

Clint Albright (25:45):
Right? I think it’s very fluid and kind of based on the quality of your own thoughts every day, you know what, when you wake up every day, what kind of man do you want to portray to your kingdom? You’re constantly thinking about it. You’re constantly recognizing your feelings. You’re constantly, you know, trying to stay calm. You’re constantly trying not to be reactive. It’s it’s Oh, it’s tough.

Brad Singletary (26:09):
Examples of a tyrant. I thought of one, just maybe like, you know, an extreme example of this Adolf Hitler, what was it? 60 million people died under his rule, promised people one thing that he was going to build this grand, this grand culture, this grand, you know, existence and grand kingdom. So to speak kingdom ended up becoming a murderous tyrant. I mean, maybe one of the most evil humans who ever lived. And I think we have to check ourselves and say, how am I being this way? How am I, how am I being attire? How am I being Hitler right now? And hear it in our voice, we gotta hear it, see it in our motives. And that’s how we correct. Our course is reflect. All right, let’s go to the weak link. What is the weak link act like? This is the passive underachieving shadow of the King, the weekly, what does he do?

Brad Singletary (27:06):
What does he act like? I probably see these a lot more in therapy. And I do the tyrants the times they don’t want to be here. They’re power hungry. They don’t wanna be here. They don’t wanna admit mistakes that they might show up. They come twice. The weakling comes for 14 years and it’s still having a tough time changing. So I see a lot of these people coming in, they feel powerless. They just don’t have any, they’re not taking a lot of responsibility. Not everyone. Some people definitely are elevating themselves. And I push until they, till they can feel like they can do that. But what’s a weakweakling like?

Jay (27:43):
Started looking at this. What really came to mind is what we talked about earlier that a lot of these weak liens at some point in time, have a point where they snap and jump over to being a tyrant. And that’s where you, you, sometimes you hear it. Well, this person was such a nice person. And then all of a sudden they snapped. And so that’s what really resonated with me was that, you know, they’re, they’re the one who doesn’t stand up for themselves. They get walked over, they’re insecure. They think everybody’s after them. And then one moment, you know, they snap. It’s just because it’s all built up with inside of them. You’re saying they’re playing the victim. Yeah. For me. Why does this always happen to me? Yeah. And that, it just, you know, they, it’s not my fault.

Brad Singletary (28:25):
So how can a man fully access the King energy within himself, a guy shows up and he wants to improve himself. He’s alternating between weakling entire and he doesn’t want to do that anymore. What kinds of things can he do to increase that? You know, the, the benevolent King kind of energy, we talked about the attributes of the King. How does he obtain those?

Speaker 3 (28:50):
Being a good listener, definitely listening to your people and giving real honest feedback. You know, not just flying off the handle, being in the present.

Brad Singletary (29:02):
That’s a tough skill. That’s a tough skill for men, probably everyone from, from my generation and younger. There’s a lot of, I don’t know. I think about the video game era that we’re in and men really seem to have a hard time paying attention. They have a hard time listening, especially if there’s any emotions someone’s upset, we sort of shut down. We’re not even really hearing it. We’re planning. The next thing we’ll say, how do you learn how to listen? You’re not naturally good at that. How does a man learn how to do it? Practice, practice, practice,

Jim (29:33):
And put yourself in those situations and being conscious of it, being present about it, like really need to listen to what, what is this person really saying? I, and stop wandering off. And like some people listen and some people can’t wait to talk. Don’t be that person who can’t wait to talk. Just listen. I mean, even having to re if you have to repeat what the person is saying, just to making sure that you hear them clearly, and that validates that person’s experience and shows you that if you’re a leader, that is really funny. Cause once again, with guys working with me, when I tell them to communicate, it’s like going to a good, fast food place. You’ll tell you your order. They’ll repeat it back. And there’s that communication, right. And exactly what I was going to say. And you’ll get your order. Right. You know, you can be talking to someone and you can tell that they’re not listening because they’re thinking about how they’re going to respond right back to you. And I know, you know, we do it ourselves, especially in relationships when you’re having a discussion or an argument. A lot of times, you’re not listening to that individual. You’re thinking about how you’re going to respond instead of just stopping and fully listening to what they have to say.

Brad Singletary (30:42):
I think a lot of the, a lot of that in terms of listening and communication has to do with your attitude. We’re so defensive. And we think, Oh, here we go. Here we go. Complaints. You know, here’s, here’s something, something that my buddy Mike Spurgeon taught me, taco Mike is pull out some paper and say, hold on a minute. You know, I want to write this. I want to just jot some notes down. I want to make sure I get this that helps them pay attention. That helps them make sure he’s got the thing. So he’ll just write bullet points as they’re talking and he’ll review the list and say, okay, so this, this, this, you know, is there anything else? And I think it’s ed my, let a speaker and an influencer out there. He talks about, you want this data, whoever it is, whatever they’re telling you, you have to believe that you want it. You want to hear what they say. If it’s a complaint, you want to know what it is. It’s important to you ask for it, seek it. So you may have to change your attitude about what they may be saying and realize it’s important for me to know, you know, my wife is complaining to me, it’s in my best interest to listen.

Jim (31:43):
That’s that mindset, right? You can be just annoyed. Oh God, here she goes again. Oh God, this dude every time and you’re not listening, but that’s the, that’s the goals. That’s the skills you have to, you have to constantly think for yourself to be able to listen. If you’re wandering off, Oh, here she goes again. Or here he goes again. You’re not practicing those skills.

Brad Singletary (32:07):
What about, we’ve got something down here about being an effective leader. It includes a lot of that with communication. But what about the guy that kind of says, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m happy to just be a follower. Like I don’t need to be a leader. It’s not my personality. I don’t have a kingdom. I’m not going to be, I’m not going to be a pastor or a CEO. I don’t need to do this. What would you say to that guy?

Speaker 3 (32:28):
You’re the King of your domain. Yeah. Like if you keep with a growth mindset, you know, life is full of adversity. Take time to really understand how the diversity is affecting you. And to use that energy, to empower yourself and others be the examples of growth. So, you know, for the person who doesn’t know how to go out and, or does it feel like they have their own domain, take the time to understand what is the adversity you’re kind of facing? What are the things that have kind of came to you and you and your kingdom and start manifesting your own growth within it.

Brad Singletary (33:02):
I love what you said. You’re the leader of yourself. You’re the King of your life. You don’t have to have a million followers and you know, a big congregation of people that are praising you. You don’t have to be that kind of King. You’re the leader of yourself. That’s your domain

Jim (33:20):
Complacency. Don’t get complacent. It just, you know, you fall behind others are passing you, you’re not growing. It almost seems like a learned helplessness that they haven’t even got out of their own way, value yourself. And that they’ve kind of given up on themselves.

Brad Singletary (33:40):
Yeah. Like in the boys’ psychology, it was talking about their ineptitude is less than honest. So when they say, I don’t need to be that I don’t need to be elite. I don’t need to be some vocal, rah, rah guy or whatever. And yeah. Be yourself, have your own personality and your own strings, but don’t underestimate the impact that you can have. And it may be a very small circle. It may be your little family. It may be the people next to you in your cubicle. It may be people in your community.

Jim (34:12):
It doesn’t have to be on the grand scale. Yeah. You don’t have to be. This small impacts are huge too.

Speaker 4 (34:19):
There’s a quote that I got from the book that I really enjoyed. This was referring to the King. The ego of the man needs to think of itself, not a matter of power status, but as a servant of a transpersonal will or cause it is not, he should, he, who should be benefiting from his actions, but taking an active role in benefiting others within his own domain. Oh, I love that.

Jim (34:42):
Beautiful. I’m going to cry.

Clint Albright (34:45):
You know, even if you’re a King, you should still know what it feels like to be a shepherd so that you can also rise him up so that he can be successful. It’s about sharing your own wealth.

Brad Singletary (34:57):
There’s humility too. That’s another one of those things that the strong men out there actually have a great deal of humility. Maybe that’s remembering their humble beginnings and remembering empathizing with what it’s like to be that person here’s this little 18 year old apprentice or whatever who’s coming to me and he’s complaining. And like, what, what’s it like to be him? I had a couple of thoughts here just to close out this episode. One is a long quote, the King archetype and its fullness possesses the qualities of order of reasonable and rational, patterning of integration and integrity in the masculine, psyche, it stabilizes chaotic emotion and out of control behaviors. It gives stability and center. It brings calm and then it’s fertilizing and centeredness it mediates vitality, life force and joy. It brings maintenance and balance. It defends our own sense of inner order, our own integrity of being and purpose our own central calmness about who we are and our essential unassailability certainty and our masculine an identity.

Brad Singletary (36:10):
It looks upon the world with a firm, but kind, I sees others in all their weaknesses and in all their talent and worth it, honors them and promotes them. It guides them and nurtures them toward their own fullness of being it is not envious because it is secure as the King and its own worth it words and encourages creativity in us and in others. This is the energy that expresses itself through you when you’re able to keep your cool. When everyone else in the meeting is losing theirs. This is the voice of calm and reassurance, the encouraging word in a time of chaos and struggle. This is the clear decision after careful deliberation that cuts through the mess in the family at work in the nation, in the world. This is the energy that seeks peace and stability, order growth and nurturing for all people.

Brad Singletary (37:10):
And not only for all people, but for the environment, the natural world, the King cares for the whole realm and is the steward of nature. As well as of human society. I stole this last part here from another men’s group online. And it’s about how we can really go about the problems of our life. Trying to access this King energy. Leave you with this guys in any moment, sadness, loneliness, emptiness, uncertainty, or discomfort. Ask yourself this. What does my King say? The King is that gentle wise, loving elder within you, who connects you directly to an all-knowing and all loving source to cultivate him, to know him, ask the question again and again again, day in and day out, ask you regarding your relationship, ask it regarding your work, ask it regarding parenting. Keep asking until you get an answer. Keep asking until, you know, your King, like a trusted guide and a good friend.

Brad Singletary (38:17):
Keep asking until you have confidence that you can stay true to yourself in all moments when your light is bright. And when it is dim, when the desire arises to avoid what you fear, fill emptiness, eliminate loneliness, or cling to anything or anyone ask the question, you will feel a fullness, a knowing wisdom within that was always there, but unknown until now. And once you have cultivated yourself and asking, you will become the all loving and all-knowing King yourself with no neurosis, no self betrayal and peace within, and you will notice he is you and you are him. So ask yourself now and in the days to come make it part of your daily practice. What does my King say? And listen deep within you. (Stuart Motola)

This is such an honor to be sitting here with you. I’m learning so much from you, this study of this book and all the things that we’ve discussed here are just have been really helpful to me. I’m just a dirt bag. I’m just white trash with a job who’s trying to help people. And I want to improve myself and improve my life. That’s the whole purpose of the alpha quorum. Thanks for being part of this till next time. No excuses, ALPHA UP.