DISTRACTIONS & DOUBT: A Case for Silence

LLet me tell you about my day. I know that is a sentence that, coming from anyone but a girl you are actively trying to sleep with, instantly kills any desire to keep listening, but I promise that it’s relevant to your happiness, self confidence, and future development as a man.

 

I woke up on a cold Saturday morning at 6:30 AM confused as to why I was already awake. Considering I had been up until 1:30 AM the night before playing video games with my roommates, I had assumed I would be sleeping in. Normally, I wake up just in time to shower, brush my teeth, and comb my hair so I can be late enough to work that my day feels shorter but not so late that I get in trouble with my boss. Luckily, I work hard enough at a flexible company that I can get away with it, but that’s besides the point. Seeing as I had “time to kill” on a day where I really had nothing planned, I grabbed my phone off the pillow and opened YouTube to continue the video I was watching as I fell asleep. My earbuds were still in my ears from the night before.

 

A mix of YouTube, TikTok, and Podcasts I listened to while playing games kept me entertained until I finally got out of bed at 9:30. I took a quick shower, my phone resting in the shower caddy so I could keep watching YouTube, brushed my teeth, and drove to grab breakfast. On my drive, I relistened to the 5th book of a LitRPG series I have listened to 4 times already. There are 3 different series that I listen to in a rotation, each with between 8-11 books that are anywhere from 15-25 hours long. Over the past 2 years, I’ve probably listened to the same 30 stories 3 or 4 times and can nearly recite entire chapters. After I got my breakfast (Krispy Kreme doughnuts), I drove home to relax and play some video games. I definitely needed to relax after my arduous morning of watching videos and driving 30 minutes. Since none of the 100+ games I own on my computer looked particularly interesting (of which I have completed maybe 20), I bought a new game and watched more YouTube while I waited for it to download. Once it did, I played until 1:30 while continuing to watch youtube on my second monitor. I had been hungry since noon, but didn’t want to go make something for myself. Once I was “too hungry to cook,” I told myself I could eat out for lunch as long as I finally got a haircut while I was out.

 

The hairstylist was surprised at how long it had been since I last got it cut. It had grown to the point it was impossible to make it look good, so I told her I had just been wearing a hat to work every day to delay getting it cut. That 20 minutes was the first part of the day that I didn’t have some form of entertainment in my ears, and as soon as the harrowing experience of making small talk with a stylist was over I immediately put earbuds back in, grabbed a sandwich, and drove home to play more video games.

 

The one positive I can say is that I went to the gym and got a good back and biceps day in (while watching another YouTube documentary). Now I am finally getting around to writing the blog post I have been thinking about for the past 2 weeks, and it’s taking a lot of self control to not put on one of the Focus playlists on Spotify. Considering I got a haircut, worked out, and am doing some writing, I would say today was a pretty productive Saturday!

 

Now if you’re a man in your 30’s or 40’s with a wife, kids, and a good career you may be thinking, “Why the hell do I care that some 23 year old is wasting his day off?” If you’re in your teenage years or early 20’s like myself you’re probably thinking “That’s a pretty damn good day.”

The point of this all is that at no point in my day did I voluntarily choose to take the headphones out, look away from the screen, and sit with my own thoughts. Why? Because I don’t like what I have to think about. Confronting my own mind means thinking about some uncomfortable things.

 

I have an amazing job that I actually love doing, and I have the added bonus of being good at it. I can honestly say that I work for the best company in Las Vegas and am genuinely grateful for the opportunity to work there, but creeping in the back of my mind is a healthy dose of doubt and discomfort I don’t want to process.

 

I ask myself questions like…

  • Am I just in the honeymoon phase of the first year at a new company?
  • Do my coworkers actually like me, or are they just being nice because we have to work together every day?
  • Do I really have what it takes to turn this into a career?

 

Even when I meet every KPI goal that I’m given, create new tools and processes that have been proven useful to my entire department, and have made profit for the company that covers my salary dozens of times over, I still get anxious. Instead of worrying that I am not good enough, I worry about setting too high a bar that I might not be able to beat next year.

 

I also just broke up with a girl I had been dating for 9 months. The breakup was amicable and a long time coming, but you always have that doubt on whether making the decision to end things was the right call.

 

  • Was she the best I was ever going to get?
  • Should I have given more time to try and make the relationship work?
  • Am I a horrible person for hurting her feelings?

 

When you take the time to address these doubts, things start to clear up and you realise your problems are a lot smaller than you think. When I take the time to sit in the discomfort of my doubt I can answer every question nagging me, and once I do I begin to feel secure, self assured, and ready to tackle the real obstacles ahead of me. I can take the constant buzzing in my head and filter it out, blessing myself with a clear, focused mind. It usually takes less than a half hour of quiet discomfort, but instead of working through my doubts I dam them up behind endless hours of noise and distraction. The river of ideas moving through my brain is stopped by YouTube videos, podcasts, video games, work, and audiobooks until the dam breaks and what would’ve been minor stress turns into a nervous breakdown.

 

The sad part is, most of these distractions are sold to me as things I am doing to become a better man. I’ve listened to the library of “manosphere”, alpha, self-help books enough times that I could teach a course. I listen to podcasts that teach me about business, finance, psychology, biology, politics, and economics. My case for the time spent gaming is less convincing, but none of this time is actually ever helpful because I don’t take the time to listen to understand, learn, and apply the words I am hearing.I am listening to distract instead of listening to understand which makes all that time nearly useless in the long run.

 

This is a phenomenon I see in a lot of the men around me, and I think we are doing a disservice to ourselves. Almost everyone I see either has headphones in, is scrolling through social media, or playing games every waking minute not spent working. Even when we spend time with our family, the majority of us are doing something on our phones. If we can learn to love our own minds and be comfortable with only our thoughts to entertain us, we can learn to attack the negative and strengthen the positive in the stories being told between our ears. When we disconnect from our distractions and partake in the voluntary discomfort taught by the Stoic philosophers of old, we free our minds to attack life instead of defending our ego from our doubts. We obtain clarity, and are able to take all of the valuable words taught in books, podcasts, and music and actually use them to improve our life. We free our hearts to make meaningful relationships with the friends and family who bring lasting joy into our hearts.

 

I know that my constant need for noise is just a band-aid that I am going to have to rip-off if I want to Alpha Up. I am committing today to put an end to the endless distractions, and I hope you take this same opportunity to rejoin the world that exists outside the space between our earbuds so you can Alpha Up with me.

091: LEARN TO LOVE – with Donald “Butch” Williams, Esq.

091: LEARN TO LOVE – with Donald “Butch” Williams, Esq.

091: LEARN TO LOVE – with Donald “Butch” Williams, Esq.

Moto racer, marathoner, former LDS Bishop, current law practice owner, Harley rider and Las Vegas Rescue Mission volunteer Butch Williams joins the Alph Quorum Show and speaks of the profound lessons taught to him by the mature men in his life. He shares experiences about struggles early in his marriage and how he and his wife partnered up to heal and build a beautiful life together. This humorous, wise, and gentle teacher, a man of pure masculine energy, shares some unforgettable stories, passing along bold and very charming bits of ALPHA wisdom. You’re gonna love this conversation. 🔺

Our guest today was born in Las Vegas on February 2nd. 1966 He’s the youngest of five children. His father worked a variety of jobs when Bush was a kid. His father started the Las Vegas Motocross Club and later the Las Vegas Bicycle Motocross Club. Every Saturday and Sunday, he spent at the motocross and bicycle motocross track with his family organizing and running events.

Butch also raced both BMX and motocross himself. When Butch was about 14 years old. The track was no more feasible to run. His dad started a plumbing company, and Butch began to learn the trade of plumbing, which also worked a variety of other jobs and high school, including being a dishwasher at Marie Calendar’s and driving a delivery truck.

When he was 19 years old, he decided to serve in LDS Mission which had joined the church approximately three years earlier. He served in Alaska and had a wonderful time there. Upon returning home, he attended college at UNLV and then received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Construction Management from Brigham Young University in 1991. While at BYU, he met and married the magnificent Paula Jones from Woodburn, Oregon.

They have six children, five of whom are married. They are the grandparents of ten grandchildren, which attended law school at the MCGEORGE School of Law in Sacramento, California. He graduated in 1994 and returned to Las Vegas with his family in 1997. He started his own law practice. He mostly represents contractors and subcontractors in construction issues. He also practices in the areas of real estate and business law.

Approximately seven years ago, his son in law, Drew Starbuck, graduated law school and came to work with Butch. Mr. Starbucks practices primarily in real estate planning and probate. They own the firm Williams Starbuck.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00:10 – 00:00:02:22
Donald “Butch” Williams
Risky move. I’m like the heck you are.

00:00:05:06 – 00:00:05:28
Donald “Butch” Williams
And he did it.

00:00:06:05 – 00:00:18:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
He would walk to my house every night and he would just walk the neighborhood with me every night. He said, how about the plan of going home and learning to love your wife and.

00:00:18:20 – 00:00:22:11
Donald “Butch” Williams
Have her learn to love you? What I garnered from that.

00:00:23:13 – 00:00:27:15
Donald “Butch” Williams
Was this concept of one on one time. He said, Just hold on.

00:00:28:06 – 00:00:31:15
Donald “Butch” Williams
Just hold on. The light will return.

00:00:32:29 – 00:00:35:10
Donald “Butch” Williams
So he turned me in to the Nevada State Bar.

00:00:36:05 – 00:00:39:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
Wrote a letter on me, said, Mr. Williams told me to go.

00:00:39:20 – 00:00:40:16
Donald “Butch” Williams
F myself.

00:00:42:27 – 00:00:47:24
Donald “Butch” Williams
If I need a car. I got a call from bar counsel. Who is this porch? Williams?

00:00:48:15 – 00:00:49:01
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yes, sir.

00:00:49:21 – 00:00:52:01
Donald “Butch” Williams
Did you tell that lawyer to go F himself.

00:00:52:24 – 00:00:53:17
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yes, I did.

00:00:54:13 – 00:00:58:00
Donald “Butch” Williams
Can you not do that anymore? No, I won’t. And I’ve never done it again.

00:01:04:05 – 00:01:23:23
Speaker 3
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. This is the Alpha Corps.

00:01:30:21 – 00:01:56:23
Brad Singletary
Our guest today was born in Las Vegas on February 2nd. 1966 He’s the youngest of five children. His father worked a variety of jobs when Bush was a kid. His father started the Las Vegas Motocross Club and later the Las Vegas Bicycle Motocross Club. Every Saturday and Sunday, he spent at the motocross and bicycle motocross track with his family organizing and running events.

00:01:57:08 – 00:02:19:01
Brad Singletary
Butch also raced both BMX and motocross himself. When Butch was about 14 years old. The track was no more feasible to run. His dad started a plumbing company, and Butch began to learn the trade of plumbing, which also worked a variety of other jobs and high school, including being a dishwasher at Marie Calendar’s and driving a delivery truck.

00:02:19:20 – 00:02:47:14
Brad Singletary
When he was 19 years old, he decided to serve in LDS Mission which had joined the church approximately three years earlier. He served in Alaska and had a wonderful time there. Upon returning home, he attended college at UNLV and then received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Construction Management from Brigham Young University in 1991. While at BYU, he met and married the magnificent Paula Jones from Woodburn, Oregon.

00:02:48:25 – 00:03:18:22
Brad Singletary
They have six children, five of whom are married. They are the grandparents of ten grandchildren, which attended law school at the MCGEORGE School of Law in Sacramento, California. He graduated in 1994 and returned to Las Vegas with his family in 1997. He started his own law practice. He mostly represents contractors and subcontractors in construction issues. He also practices in the areas of real estate and business law.

00:03:19:08 – 00:03:42:19
Brad Singletary
Approximately seven years ago, his son in law, Drew Starbuck, graduated law school and came to work with Butch. Mr. Starbucks practices primarily in real estate planning and probate. They own the firm Williams Starbuck. But I’m so glad to have you here, man. I have been I’ve had my eye on you since I started this whole thing and thought, That’s it, dude, I want to get in here.

00:03:42:19 – 00:04:02:13
Brad Singletary
So we ran around in some of the same circles here, probably ten or 15 years ago, and I’ve moved to the other side of town, and maybe you’ve moved out of that neighborhood, but I’ve watched you with your family and what you have going on. And I just thought this is the exactly the type of man that I want to highlight once we get around to being able to do that.

00:04:02:13 – 00:04:13:29
Brad Singletary
So welcome here, man. I really appreciate you driving all this way. Drove up to my building today and I see this black Corvette and, and I knew exactly who was here.

00:04:14:21 – 00:04:18:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
It’s an old one. It didn’t cost very much or whatever.

00:04:18:06 – 00:04:46:11
Brad Singletary
It’s super sweet. So again, thank you for being here, man. We’re just we’re just trying to help men level themselves up, whether that be through education or through learning how to have be better in their family or through emotional intelligence, you know, recovering from addictions and just being good men. And so anyone who knows you, I’m sure, would safely say that’s a good dude to be highlighting as a good as a good man.

00:04:46:11 – 00:04:48:05
Brad Singletary
So thank you again for being here.

00:04:48:19 – 00:05:05:18
Donald “Butch” Williams
I’m glad to be here. And I surely don’t deserve any praise. But but I life life has been good to me. Challenging but good. And if there’s ever a time to spend on raising young men to me and it’s now, right?

00:05:05:18 – 00:05:23:22
Brad Singletary
Yes, totally. That’s one of the reasons that we feel good about what we’re doing. We have a smaller audience but I think we’ve had listeners from 39 different countries through this whole thing. And so we’re hoping to just continue to grow this and appreciate you being a part of a part of this here today. So talk more about your family.

00:05:23:22 – 00:05:28:23
Brad Singletary
You’ve got ten grandchildren. Are they are most of your kids here in town or they live in other places or.

00:05:29:06 – 00:05:49:10
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah, so we’ve got my oldest son, Tyson, and his wife live in the San Diego area. They’re in Carlsbad, California, OK? They’ve got three little kids and yeah, he runs a shelter business down there. And as a couple of other things that he’s involved in, we’re trying to get him back to Las Vegas, but he seems to like that surf too much.

00:05:49:11 – 00:05:57:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
I bet. So I’m sure he Sanford coming home. He won’t be back My daughter, Kayla.

00:05:57:21 – 00:06:17:01
Donald “Butch” Williams
Kayla Starbuck, she’s married to Drew Starbuck, OK? And she’s wonderful. And a matter of fact, when she met Drew when they were in college, he wasn’t sure where he was going. And so she helped him figure out where he was going. And next thing you know, he was in law school and next thing you know, he’s practicing with me.

00:06:17:16 – 00:06:23:04
Donald “Butch” Williams
So never underestimate the power of a magnificent woman, right?

00:06:23:04 – 00:06:24:03
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah. You can keep.

00:06:24:04 – 00:06:28:02
Brad Singletary
Your eye on in there. If he’s working with that, you can you can always be watching, right?

00:06:28:02 – 00:06:37:15
Donald “Butch” Williams
All the time. He’s great. He’s he was in the Marines, and so he came in with maturity and just just a good guy. Good, humble guy.

00:06:37:25 – 00:06:39:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah. Looking for a little girls.

00:06:39:13 – 00:06:45:00
Brad Singletary
I looked him up. I looked up on your website and looked up you and him and saw your pictures and read a little bit about him. It’s impressive.

00:06:45:08 – 00:06:45:29
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah, he’s.

00:06:45:29 – 00:07:00:18
Donald “Butch” Williams
He really is that good. We just love him to death. Then I have a son named Zach. Zach’s married, and he just finished law school. He decided not to come to work for Dad, but he’s working for a big firm. I guess it pays more money. I don’t know.

00:07:01:16 – 00:07:02:15
Donald “Butch” Williams
He’s doing well.

00:07:02:16 – 00:07:26:19
Donald “Butch” Williams
And I’ve got a daughter named Hailey. She’s up in Utah. She’s married to Vince Miller. We just love this guy. He graduated with a master’s in accounting, but his love is the army is. Well, his father was next in line to be the chaplain for the United States Army. Wow. And decided he didn’t want to quite go that path.

00:07:26:19 – 00:07:38:08
Donald “Butch” Williams
But Vince has followed his father in the military, and he finished Army Ranger training last year. And just now he’s trying to be a Green Beret. So I.

00:07:38:13 – 00:07:40:03
Donald “Butch” Williams
Now yeah, he’s a he’s a fun.

00:07:40:03 – 00:08:09:27
Donald “Butch” Williams
Kid. Plus, he likes to go fishing. And I like that so I got a place to fish. Hey, yeah. I have a son named Josh. Josh is married here in Las Vegas. He’s working in the construction industry. And finishing his education at U and LV in my last girl or child, I should say, is Alexa. And Alexa just finished flight attendant school for Breeze Airlines, which is, I guess, a subsidiary of some sort to JetBlue.

00:08:10:08 – 00:08:11:19
Donald “Butch” Williams
OK, so maybe we’ll get some.

00:08:11:19 – 00:08:16:21
Donald “Butch” Williams
Free flights out of all of this. I don’t know how many passes like Buddy passes and I like free.

00:08:18:19 – 00:08:23:04
Brad Singletary
So your wife, you said she’s from Oregon. You met her at school. You met in college, right?

00:08:23:04 – 00:08:36:24
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah. She’s amazing. She is from a little town called Wood or I should say named Woodburn, Oregon. Her father is a veterinarian. I thought I might be marrying into money. I come to find out he’s a farm vet.

00:08:38:06 – 00:08:40:17
Donald “Butch” Williams
Right. Like I came to further find out.

00:08:41:09 – 00:08:42:29
Donald “Butch” Williams
If it cost more than the price of the.

00:08:42:29 – 00:08:48:19
Donald “Butch” Williams
Cow. They usually just shoot the cow as the oldest of six kids.

00:08:50:05 – 00:08:51:20
Donald “Butch” Williams
She’s just great, you know?

00:08:53:00 – 00:09:06:05
Brad Singletary
So you we talked a little bit about your career. You have a law practice here. You do like construction stuff. That’s a majority of what you’re doing. It is. And then your son in law.

00:09:07:03 – 00:09:07:10
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah.

00:09:07:11 – 00:09:08:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
Drew Starbuck, yeah.

00:09:08:14 – 00:09:28:27
Brad Singletary
And then your son in law, Drew. He does some other things, real estate and different types of types of practice there. So you started that three years at three years after you graduated. That’s pretty quick. I, I mean, I don’t know much about the practice of law, but it seems like three years after that’s fast doing your own thing.

00:09:29:03 – 00:09:51:07
Donald “Butch” Williams
It was probably too quick. But, you know, I had worked three different jobs in three years out of law school now. I never got fired but I always just felt like I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing. So I came home one day kind of in a somber mood. And my wife was five months pregnant with our fifth child.

00:09:51:26 – 00:10:09:23
Donald “Butch” Williams
And I said, Honey, I’m just I just don’t know what it is. And she said, well, start your own practice. I said, I don’t have any clients. I said, Maybe one or two. She said, It’ll work out. I said, But you’re five months pregnant. We don’t have health insurance. It’ll work out so the first call I made was to the baby doctor, I’ll never forget.

00:10:09:24 – 00:10:13:03
Donald “Butch” Williams
Call you. Do you accept a payment plan.

00:10:15:14 – 00:10:18:10
Donald “Butch” Williams
And he said, We’ll work it out. So I.

00:10:18:21 – 00:10:35:16
Donald “Butch” Williams
I went to the bank, and in those days I’ll never forget the guy. I believe his name was Larry Woodrum. And he was at Bank West of Nevada, and somebody said, You got to go see Larry. He’ll loan you money. So I walk in and I sit down with this guy, and I’m sure my head was hung down low.

00:10:35:25 – 00:10:50:25
Donald “Butch” Williams
I said, Can I borrow $50,000 to start a law practice? 15 minutes later, I had $50,000 in account. Wow. And all magnificent part of that, as I look back of the story, is that two years later I called him. I said.

00:10:50:25 – 00:10:51:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
Larry.

00:10:51:16 – 00:10:57:01
Donald “Butch” Williams
Can you take your $50,000 back? I never had to use it, and I’m tired of paying interest on it.

00:10:57:13 – 00:10:58:18
Donald “Butch” Williams
Wow. So.

00:10:59:03 – 00:11:04:14
Donald “Butch” Williams
You know, I don’t think people get loans that easy anymore in Las Vegas. But but that’s how it worked out.

00:11:04:14 – 00:11:15:00
Brad Singletary
And it seems like your wife had all the faith in the beginning. She kind of pushed you toward it and said, don’t you worry, like it’ll work out. And you had the courage to make a big leave. That’s that’s impressive.

00:11:15:13 – 00:11:46:17
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah. I’ve talked to a lot of young men who wanted to start their own practice, and they have asked me over the years how do you do it? And I would ask them a question, how much do you give to charity every month? And if the response was very little, then I would say, you’re not ready yet. Now, the reason I said that is because when I was going to start my own practice, I was actually racing motorcycles again.

00:11:46:17 – 00:12:04:17
Donald “Butch” Williams
And I was out at the track one night and I was talking to a friend of mine and he asked me a question. He said, How much do you give to charity every month? And I said, I don’t know, 40 or $50. And he told me, You’re not ready to start your own practice. Wow. And I said, Well, how much do you give?

00:12:04:17 – 00:12:23:27
Donald “Butch” Williams
And he told me. I said, Well, that’s my house payment. He said, Yeah. He said, When you learn that concept, you’ll be fine. And so what we did is I actually went home that night and I was kind of mad at my friend. That is being a little judgmental, but we went home that night and I talked to my wife about it.

00:12:23:27 – 00:12:56:02
Donald “Butch” Williams
I said, Honey, I think there’s something to what he’s saying. If we’re going to start this, we get we got to give more and she said, OK, so we did. We immediately started to give more. And, you know, the phone has always ring. So here I and that was 1997 and now we’re in 2022 and even through the recession the phone rang and so every young person that I have given that counsel to whether it be in the practice of law or other business, their phone is ringing.

00:12:56:08 – 00:13:09:06
Brad Singletary
Well what, what is the principle there like? I mean just that you are you have the kind of maturity, you have the kind of, you know, selfless maturity or something. How does that work? What is the math on that?

00:13:10:08 – 00:13:39:02
Donald “Butch” Williams
I don’t think it’s earthly math. Right. You know, my parents, when I when I decided to join the LDS Church and in the end serve a mission, they were OK with me joining the LDS Church. But when I decided to serve a mission that didn’t go over or as well originally as what I thought it might, but they knew I was dedicated because I, I worked and I saved about 12 or $13,000 and this was back in 1984, 1985.

00:13:39:02 – 00:14:03:17
Donald “Butch” Williams
So it’s a lot of hard work and a lot of savings. When I came home from that mission, my money was still in my bank account. I had no idea that they had paid for it. Wow. And I asked my parents what, what did you do, why they said, well, we just decided to pay for it, but now we’re going to give money every month to a charity because we recognize our business had never done so well so you know, those are things stick in your mind, right.

00:14:04:15 – 00:14:04:25
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah.

00:14:04:25 – 00:14:27:05
Brad Singletary
That’s great modeling from your parents who didn’t necessarily share the same faith but but respected what you did. And even though they started to show you, you you originally showed them you taught them something that they reinforced you carried that and spread that same message to young professionals out there. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s why you’re here right now, that kind of thing, man.

00:14:27:05 – 00:14:28:29
Brad Singletary
I got goosebumps thinking about this.

00:14:29:15 – 00:14:43:29
Donald “Butch” Williams
And that was pretty powerful. Another thing I did as soon as I made just a little bit of money is I put $1,000 cash in my pocket. In that thousand dollars cash has been there now since 19, I guess 1997. So please don’t mug me.

00:14:44:05 – 00:14:51:25
Donald “Butch” Williams
If I’m black for every black Corvette, that guy’s got money in his pocket. But the concept again, I was a.

00:14:51:25 – 00:15:02:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
Little kid and this guy walked into our house on 560 Saint Louis and downtown Las Vegas. His name was John Vann. Who he was a friend of my father’s. And he pulled out.

00:15:02:13 – 00:15:07:19
Donald “Butch” Williams
This wad of cash was a little kid in a in a lower than middle class income.

00:15:07:19 – 00:15:33:25
Donald “Butch” Williams
I’m looking at that thinking I don’t know what he does, but I’m in, you know. Right. I said John, why do you carry that that money? He said, so I can say no to people if I need to. Now, that stuck with me, too. So as a young lawyer, if somebody walked into my office and to this day, even if they’ve got money if something doesn’t feel right, I know I’ve got enough in my pocket to feed my family for a little while.

00:15:33:28 – 00:15:35:00
Donald “Butch” Williams
Wow. And so that.

00:15:35:00 – 00:15:36:22
Donald “Butch” Williams
Concept, you mean.

00:15:36:22 – 00:15:42:07
Brad Singletary
Carrying $1,000 cash in your pocket, all this your whole your whole life since you were a young, younger man.

00:15:42:07 – 00:15:43:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
Since 1987.

00:15:43:13 – 00:15:45:05
Brad Singletary
Oh my. You have it right now. You have.

00:15:45:05 – 00:15:49:15
Donald “Butch” Williams
Right now. Oh, that’s the coolest. Thing I’ve ever heard. I mean.

00:15:49:20 – 00:16:08:21
Brad Singletary
I can think there’s a lot of reasons for that. Like, I don’t know in the world of like, you know, alcohol, I’m in recovery from alcohol. And I would hear people say things like, you know, they want to just keep one beer in their refrigerator just to prove that they don’t need it. It’s there, but they don’t they don’t need it.

00:16:08:21 – 00:16:17:13
Brad Singletary
They’re kind of flooding themselves with some exposure. And so you got money and you could spend it, you could blow it, but you’re you’re just hanging on to it. That’s kind of cool.

00:16:17:13 – 00:16:32:03
Donald “Butch” Williams
That’s why I can spend it. And if I spend it as soon as like the users, they have just a little bit more. But when I get, you know, so there’s a little fluff there. So if I can somebody needs something, I can buy it right? Or get out of a tight situation or however you want to say it, all of that.

00:16:32:04 – 00:16:35:04
Donald “Butch” Williams
But at the end of the day, there better be a thousand.

00:16:35:21 – 00:16:36:23
Donald “Butch” Williams
So I can say no.

00:16:37:05 – 00:16:42:03
Brad Singletary
I need I’m going to I’m going to steal that trick. No, I got to tell my wife, when I get on the air, open up the safe for me.

00:16:42:03 – 00:16:54:18
Donald “Butch” Williams
We got to get 1000. Just keep it on Venmo. I don’t know how to use Venmo, but my wife sure does. So she knows how to talk to that Amazon guide to ensure comes around a lot. It’s guy I.

00:16:54:18 – 00:16:58:18
Brad Singletary
Thought my wife for a while was having had something going with the UPS driver, you know, like.

00:16:59:07 – 00:17:00:26
Donald “Butch” Williams
All right, I hear you.

00:17:00:29 – 00:17:18:15
Brad Singletary
We didn’t welcome Jimmy Durban. I just want to he’s been on the show before. You guys know him and but he is also another stellar guy. He just wanted to be here tonight. Drove up in a pretty special looking Harley Davidson that was pretty sick man. That was impressive. What do you what are you driving out there?

00:17:19:11 – 00:17:28:10
Jimmy Durbin
It’s a Harley Roadster. Oh, 2019. And it’s full disclosure. And being transparent, it actually belongs to my middle son.

00:17:28:24 – 00:17:31:15
Donald “Butch” Williams
So I can’t take credit for that.

00:17:31:17 – 00:17:35:19
Jimmy Durbin
Mine’s in 94 heritage soft tail OK or of a cruiser bike.

00:17:35:19 – 00:17:37:17
Brad Singletary
You told me how to get somewhere quick and so you.

00:17:37:22 – 00:17:39:15
Jimmy Durbin
Yeah I had to get here fast keep it.

00:17:39:15 – 00:17:40:06
Brad Singletary
Warm for you.

00:17:40:25 – 00:18:08:16
Jimmy Durbin
I think also just to kind of give the audience a feeling when I when I came in and met Butch you could feel the love I could feel the love speak for myself kind face um sharply dressed and then when you read the intro birthday’s February 2nd mine’s a third oh. Very well meant to you and Elvis as well.

00:18:08:16 – 00:18:37:28
Jimmy Durbin
Right. And so I, I’ve appreciated what you said because I think that’s how men can help men is these little nuggets, these things that there’s this wisdom that you gained along your own path and the things that stuck. And so I really appreciated you sharing those two things because that’s that’s what I want to learn from you. Right?

00:18:37:28 – 00:19:13:01
Jimmy Durbin
Is how have you continued to keep your heart upfront? Right. Oftentimes you talk about having a a soft front and a hard back. No concept from Bernie Brown of being vulnerable as a man, being tender, authentic, transparent, and also having a hard back and being a protector and a leader and a fighter and a mentor for these young men that you talked about, for these young lawyers that you talked about, for your family and your your son in law’s.

00:19:13:01 – 00:19:24:19
Jimmy Durbin
And so what else would you say to your younger self as you gain this wisdom now sitting as a 56 year old man in this chair.

00:19:25:04 – 00:19:51:10
Donald “Butch” Williams
You know, I went through something in 1995 that I haven’t shared with a lot of people, but I was just out of law school starting salary was $36,000 a year, wasn’t necessarily horrible in 1995, but I had $65,000 with a student debt. Wow. And I had three children and my marriage fell apart and so I ended up living with my parents.

00:19:53:01 – 00:20:20:22
Donald “Butch” Williams
My wife’s trying to decide you know, is he going to come home? I’m trying to decide what I’m doing, where I’m going. And I remember just laying up at my parents one night staring at the ceiling thinking to myself, I don’t know where I’m going. I just am so discouraged, so down. And this old guy knocks on my door and he happened to be my LDS bishop.

00:20:22:19 – 00:20:38:27
Donald “Butch” Williams
And he said, May I speak with you for a few minutes? I said, Yeah. I mean, I couldn’t say no. He’s a nice guy. Even though I had anger in my soul, I just couldn’t say no to him. And he came in and talked to him and he said, But what are your plans? I said, I don’t know.

00:20:38:27 – 00:21:04:24
Donald “Butch” Williams
I guess I guess I’ll get divorced and figure out what to do from here. He said, I guess that’s a plan. He said, How about the plan of going home and learning to love your wife and have her learn to love you? And I said, I don’t know how that’s possible, but he left that evening and it again, it just stuck in my mind.

00:21:04:24 – 00:21:43:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
So I, I went home and this, this little bishop, about six foot six tall, he would walk over to my house every night after and he had 11 children on a school teacher salary. So big time hero right away he would walk to my house every night and he would just walk the neighborhood with me every night. And he would talk to me from everything about physical intimacy with my wife and how I could improve that to emotional intimacy, to dating, to communication.

00:21:43:17 – 00:22:00:22
Donald “Butch” Williams
The things that I guess I just never learned at home. And I guess why would I have learned them? I mean, my parents had a great relationship, but we didn’t talk about these things. And, you know, my wife and I we always just we always talk about the first five years of our marriage being. We don’t talk about that.

00:22:01:16 – 00:22:20:28
Donald “Butch” Williams
And then we talk about from 1995 on and it’s just been the most magnificent marriage. I mean it’s really, it has been but again what I garnered from that was this concept of one on one time.

00:22:21:28 – 00:22:23:09
Donald “Butch” Williams
Well, you know.

00:22:23:18 – 00:22:36:18
Donald “Butch” Williams
He gave me his precious resource of time and so I try to do the same. I, you know, I’m not great at it, but if I see a need, I recognize just a simple text message, probably not enough.

00:22:37:21 – 00:22:54:17
Brad Singletary
You know, he was kind of in this automatic role of mentorship or stewardship with you. But in. So did he push for that contact, you know, or were you, you know, asking him to, hey, come take a walk or you said he just would show up? Yeah. I mean, that’s cool. So I think every man needs a mentor.

00:22:54:17 – 00:23:31:11
Brad Singletary
Every man needs a bigger tribe of, you know, six, eight, whatever number of people. But to have one person at a critical time in your life care for you. He’s busy. He’s got 11 kids at home and he’s leading the congregation and he’s got you that he’s kind of singled out as someone that’s worthy of his time evening, you know, this special time to come and walk and talk with you that is that’s one of the coolest images that have ever been, you know, painted on this show to me is you walking with a man who’s talking about all of the deep things, all of the things that maybe you wouldn’t want to talk about

00:23:31:11 – 00:23:43:08
Brad Singletary
with anyone else. You made it comfortable somehow. You made it comfortable to do that. What what was it about him that made you feel like you could comfortably talk about those personal subjects?

00:23:43:15 – 00:24:11:08
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah, I think just his warmth. I mean, I just felt like I was walking with God in some respects. Right. I knew that he was a confidant. I knew he had wisdom. I mean, even as a I was 28 years old, so still pretty young. Right. But I could just see, you know, just his love for me and I then fast forward what, 20 years?

00:24:11:08 – 00:24:38:15
Donald “Butch” Williams
And he called me to be a bishop in the LDS Church, last thing I ever expected. But the concepts that he taught me I was able to put into play as people would come to me with marital issues and other issues. And I thought, man, God, I mean I that was a really painful process. In 1995 I got to know God better, I got to know my wife better, I got to know this bishop better.

00:24:39:10 – 00:25:03:19
Donald “Butch” Williams
But then as I fast forward, I think to myself and God, God could see these things play out. You know, he could see in the future that if I listen to this guy, good things would probably happen in my life, you know, if I didn’t, if I went out on my own and did my own thing, then I might pay a different price and have a harder time having a relationship with God, at least for a season.

00:25:03:27 – 00:25:06:14
Donald “Butch” Williams
So it was a painful process, but it was wonderful.

00:25:08:06 – 00:25:45:20
Jimmy Durbin
Brad just put out an episode about reframing and in his thoughts just from a very raw, beautiful authentic place of the Alpha Quorum and what that is and what type of man in his heart that is and how it should project in the world so I appreciate you relating that story because I oftentimes think, as you just indicated, we really don’t talk about before 1995, 1996, right.

00:25:45:20 – 00:26:26:04
Jimmy Durbin
We, we get this idea that well we’ve had this pain and it’s healed and so it’s behind us. But in the end as a result of that we kind of create a silo and those individual silos that happen to us as men, then we don’t allow the healing process and the learning process and the grace that happens. And so would you mind just sharing like what the struggle was like, what, how did you get to that mental place, emotional place, spiritual place like because I’m sure I can relate to it.

00:26:26:04 – 00:26:44:17
Jimmy Durbin
I, I’ve been to that place. There might be someone listening who’s there and I kind of believe that we’re all we’ve either gone through, we’re going through, or we will yet go through that place that you were back in. So do you mind sharing that?

00:26:44:21 – 00:27:13:21
Donald “Butch” Williams
No, not at all. One of the things that he asked me to do was go to the church and listen to a talk from a guy named Jeffrey Ah, Holland that was coming to town. Well, I had so much anger and frustration in my life at that time. I think just being poor for so long, going through law school, I mean, when my wife and I were in law school, I had $1,000 a month scholarship or rent was 550 a month.

00:27:14:20 – 00:27:27:26
Donald “Butch” Williams
We paid our tithing. So now we’re down to 900 a month and we never went on welfare. Well, you know, you live that way for a number of years of just, you know, impoverished, if you.

00:27:27:26 – 00:27:28:15
Donald “Butch” Williams
Were making.

00:27:28:15 – 00:27:28:20
Brad Singletary
It.

00:27:28:20 – 00:27:49:00
Donald “Butch” Williams
Barely by me, you know, and we always made it you know, by the grace of God, we always made it. But, you know, there’s frustrations and I’m spending, you know, 12 and 14 hours a day studying and there’s little kids at the house and all those things are, you know, they’re just going to lead to a tough situation if one doesn’t get it squared up.

00:27:49:20 – 00:28:03:10
Donald “Butch” Williams
And I didn’t, I didn’t have it squared up. I felt my job was to work and get through law school and make money as fast as I could. So I took that same attitude into the profession that first, and then I got humbled.

00:28:05:05 – 00:28:06:14
Donald “Butch” Williams
Right. But anyways.

00:28:06:14 – 00:28:24:01
Donald “Butch” Williams
Jeffrey Holland was coming to town and this old guy, Roy Ford, says just come with me, just come with me. I said, I don’t want to go. But again, I didn’t want to say no to him right there. I just loved him. You love somebody. You don’t want to say no. So I remember I remember sitting in the back of the building that night.

00:28:24:01 – 00:28:46:17
Donald “Butch” Williams
And Jeff, our Jeffrey, our Holland stands up at the pulpit. And this is what he says. I’ll never forget it. He says, If any of you are feeling dark tonight like there’s no light and that you might never feel light again, I just want you to do one thing for me tonight. Well, soon as he started down that path, you could imagine my right eye open to what?

00:28:46:17 – 00:29:17:04
Donald “Butch” Williams
All my left eye open to and then his counsel was so simple, but I’ve used it many times in life. He said, Just hold on, just hold on. The light will return. And it did then, and it has numerous times since. So that’s my encouragement to people. When you’re in a dark spot, try to just hold on. You’ll notice that God will put certain people in your life at that time.

00:29:18:07 – 00:29:25:07
Donald “Butch” Williams
Even if they’re uncomfortable to you a little bit. They might be those those angels that.

00:29:25:27 – 00:29:27:10
Jimmy Durbin
Especially if they’re uncomfortable.

00:29:27:10 – 00:29:34:08
Donald “Butch” Williams
To express you. Yes, especially if they are. So, you know. Yeah.

00:29:35:25 – 00:29:56:22
Brad Singletary
You said something earlier about what the guy said to you when you were in. He said, you know, what is your plan? He said, What about the plan to go and learn to love your wife? And that’s an interesting thought about learning to love, because I guess maybe when we’re younger, we just think, you know, you either love someone or you don’t.

00:29:56:22 – 00:30:17:28
Brad Singletary
And but this is like you have to learn how to love. What did that mean to you back then and what were the kinds of things you needed to learn? Like you you obviously were interested in her. You married her. You have a family. You know, you’re she’s a beautiful to this day, a beautiful woman. I mean, but you had to learn how to love what does that mean?

00:30:19:22 – 00:30:48:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
That’s a great question. And maybe a little more background would be helpful. So I met my wife when when I was at BYU, we fell in love immediately was just instant infatuation. And so we got engaged two weeks later and married three months later. Now, it’s public knowledge now, but it but it wasn’t for years. But my wife had had a child when she was in her senior year of high school.

00:30:49:04 – 00:31:12:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
And this was a by the way, she told me about it immediately when we got we’re starting to get serious and of course, as a young guy, I’m like, oh, no problem. Well, she had given the child up for adoption. And back then, adoptions were were very private. Right. So I guess I always felt this little bit of maybe jealousy.

00:31:12:13 – 00:31:40:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
Maybe maybe she didn’t love me as much as she loved her boyfriend. Who she had the child with. So, you know, just inadequacies on my part. Right. And being vulnerable is the right word. But I should add that for many, many years, until we were able to by the grace of God, three years ago, we were able to make contact with this.

00:31:40:17 – 00:31:40:29
Donald “Butch” Williams
Wow.

00:31:41:09 – 00:31:41:17
Donald “Butch” Williams
And.

00:31:42:01 – 00:32:13:08
Donald “Butch” Williams
Oh, he’s just wonderful. It’s everything we ever dreamed of. That’s maybe a story for another day. But anyways, so I just always felt like, you know, kind of second fiddle just, you know, and I realized one thing this bishop did is he said, you know, the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to fly that guy down from Oregon because he and Paula, your wife, they never had really a chance to to separate.

00:32:14:03 – 00:32:33:01
Donald “Butch” Williams
And then, by the way, there was nothing going on with Paula and her ex boyfriend for for all those years were married, nothing like that at all. But my bishop could tell that there was something holding me and Paula from progressing and one of the it was just a really out of the box thinking, right? Yeah.

00:32:33:03 – 00:32:33:28
Donald “Butch” Williams
We’re going to we’re going to.

00:32:33:28 – 00:32:42:01
Donald “Butch” Williams
Fly down her ex-boyfriend so they can walk up and down the strip and say goodbye to each other because they never got a chance to years ago because Paula’s parents.

00:32:42:01 – 00:32:46:27
Donald “Butch” Williams
Broke them up. Wow. What a risky move. Yeah. I’m like the heck you are.

00:32:49:11 – 00:32:51:12
Donald “Butch” Williams
And he did it. He did it, OK.

00:32:51:20 – 00:33:21:00
Donald “Butch” Williams
And it was wonderful because for some reason, it released my heart and and I was able to say, yeah, she she does love me and everything’s OK. And this guy had gone on and married and has a wonderful family and like I said, just a few years ago, by the grace of God in that app, 24 in me, we were able to finally, after all these years, find this this child and man just awesome.

00:33:21:00 – 00:33:21:12
Donald “Butch” Williams
Wow.

00:33:21:12 – 00:33:22:15
Brad Singletary
That’s super awesome.

00:33:23:26 – 00:33:50:12
Jimmy Durbin
So when Brad asked that question, the way I heard it, the way I heard him ask, that is I choose who I love. And I heard that in your story. And then I love my choice. Right. And so how else in your years of marriage with your sweetheart and under what circumstances and situations have you had to learn to continue to love your choice?

00:33:50:21 – 00:33:52:01
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah, it’s great.

00:33:54:01 – 00:34:10:15
Donald “Butch” Williams
One thing my mom said to my wife and I often in our first number of years of marriage is you’re not dating. You got to keep dating. You got to get out of town a couple of days. I’ll watch the kids. But again, in my stubborn self, you know, I just need to work. I need.

00:34:10:20 – 00:34:11:22
Donald “Butch” Williams
To. Right.

00:34:12:23 – 00:34:38:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
Well, you know, after 1995, I took that counsel and so we began to date every Friday night. We don’t miss now I was on a campout or something. We’d go out Saturday night. We then began to take a trip once a year, twice a year for a week away from the kids. But the most important thing, getting back to that old bishop, he said every day do an act of kindness for her every day.

00:34:39:06 – 00:34:46:07
Donald “Butch” Williams
And he said the same thing to her every day, every day, every day. He said every day. So you know how many candy.

00:34:46:07 – 00:34:50:26
Donald “Butch” Williams
Bars I’ve woken up over the years? She still thinks my greatest joy in life.

00:34:50:26 – 00:34:54:02
Donald “Butch” Williams
Is a is a Hershey’s it’s not Hershey’s a CS.

00:34:54:07 – 00:34:55:24
Donald “Butch” Williams
Sucker. It is a.

00:34:55:24 – 00:34:57:03
Donald “Butch” Williams
Second greatest joy life.

00:34:57:03 – 00:35:03:04
Donald “Butch” Williams
But so I found a lot of those. In the meantime, I’m I watched a lot of dishes.

00:35:03:04 – 00:35:12:12
Donald “Butch” Williams
And, you know, just, hey, I’m going to the kitchen. I’m just you want water? Do you want anything? You know, common sense things, right? We love those. We serve. We we know the contents.

00:35:12:12 – 00:35:13:00
Jimmy Durbin
Of little things.

00:35:13:00 – 00:35:18:01
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah, but but if we’re not serving someone, we it’s really difficult to love them.

00:35:19:01 – 00:35:42:17
Brad Singletary
I notice you’ve done that so much. I don’t. I don’t. I don’t know if it’s a good place to transition, but you’ve done a lot of service throughout your life. So you talked about the charity thing in the beginning. You know, sharing that with young attorneys. You know, if you’re if you’re not paying anything to charity, you may not be ready to start your own practice that represents an attitude of giving and sacrifice.

00:35:42:28 – 00:36:01:29
Brad Singletary
Talk about some of the other things you’ve done. You mentioned camping trip. Was that like scouting type stuff? You’ve done some you’ve done some volunteer teaching. You’ve done the most recently. I think I’ve seen you do a stuff at a like a homeless shelter maybe, or talk about some service opportunities that you’ve taken advantage of.

00:36:02:10 – 00:36:22:09
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah, I’m pretty involved with the Las Vegas rescue mission. You know, I didn’t know anything about the Las Vegas rescue mission. And here I was serving as a bishop in the LDS Church, and somebody called me one day and said, Hey, we’ve got this 18 year old boy here from Colorado. Can you meet with him? Yeah, try to help.

00:36:22:22 – 00:36:43:04
Donald “Butch” Williams
I meet with him and I realize I don’t know what to do. With this boy. You, the way nice kid moved in from Colorado was was not LDS. He just showed up to Vegas wanted to start a new life. So I called my wife. That’s always a good place to start, honey. I got this kid in my office.

00:36:43:04 – 00:36:51:24
Donald “Butch” Williams
I don’t know what to do with him. I mean, what am I going to do? Give him a food order or something? I can’t move them into our house because we’ve got daughters at home still. And she said.

00:36:51:24 – 00:36:52:16
Donald “Butch” Williams
We’ll call.

00:36:53:00 – 00:37:15:15
Donald “Butch” Williams
Heather Gibbons. I said, Oh, I know Heather Gibbons. So I called Heather. And Heather just is well connected in Las Vegas as far as just knowing where the charities are, knowing what resources are available. I said, Heather, can you come see me? She shot right over to my office. She said, OK, but here’s what you do. You take this boy to the Las Vegas rescue mission.

00:37:15:27 – 00:37:39:08
Donald “Butch” Williams
They will put him up for a couple of weeks, no questions asked. They’ll feed him. And during the day, he’s got to leave the premises, go out, try to get a job. Come back at night. I said, Well, I don’t know much about this place, but I like this a lot. So I started to learn about it. And, you know, every night at 5:00 as you may know, they they open their doors and they’ll give anybody a meal, no question asked.

00:37:40:23 – 00:38:15:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
I love that. But I tell you what I love more is that they want to help people with addiction. And somehow, some way, they hope that out of the four and 500 people that they feed one meal a day or two, that a few may come forward and say, I don’t want to fight the addiction anymore. And the first thing they ask for unless something is changed, which I don’t think it has, is they’ll take you in for long term addiction, recovery but you got to give them your phone number.

00:38:16:10 – 00:38:38:01
Donald “Butch” Williams
You got to get rid of your sources. And if you’re not ready to give up the phone, you’re not ready to get help yet. I just fell in love with the organization, so I began to contribute more resources and time to do that organization. There’s many more out there. You know, it’s finding a charitable organization that you connect with shouldn’t be too.

00:38:38:01 – 00:38:39:12
Donald “Butch” Williams
Difficult for most of us.

00:38:39:12 – 00:38:48:29
Brad Singletary
So why do you do it? I mean, why you’re busy. You’ve got a law practice, you’ve got five children and grandchildren. You got, I’m guessing, what, season tickets to the Golden Knights?

00:38:48:29 – 00:38:57:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
I do I mean, there’s a lot of stuff going on that’s part of that. A motorcycle Corvette. You got to got wife. You got everything.

00:38:57:13 – 00:39:03:05
Brad Singletary
Like, what makes you want to go to the Las Vegas rescue or whatever places to serve? What makes you do that?

00:39:04:07 – 00:39:29:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah, I guess I’ve never thought about it that much. It’s just maybe it’s innate, maybe it’s natural. Or maybe it’s because, I mean, how many people have just stepped out over the years and either lended me a hand or I remember one time we were driving back from Sacramento excuse me, from Las Vegas to Sacramento. The year was 1993.

00:39:30:17 – 00:39:55:23
Donald “Butch” Williams
So picture this. I got my wife, I’ve got two kids in the back in this rag down old Hyundai, and we’re heading up to 95 to go through Reno on Memorial Day to get back to Sacramento, to go to law school. And I break down in the sweltering heat this was before cell phones. I look at Paula and I said, what do we do now?

00:39:56:04 – 00:40:24:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
Pray. Well, we’ll pray. So we prayed right then this guy pulls up behind me and he’s an older fella. So I got out of the car and I met him and he said it looks like you got a problem. I said, I do, I, I blew the timing belt. He said, and I said, why did you stop? He said, I was in my home up in Yerington, Nevada, up the road a number of miles.

00:40:24:24 – 00:40:31:19
Donald “Butch” Williams
And I looked to my wife and I said, hey, we need to go. We need to go right now. She’s like, Where are we going? He says, I don’t know, but we’re going somewhere.

00:40:33:27 – 00:40:50:16
Donald “Butch” Williams
And anyways, to make a long story short, we piled my wife, myself, and those two kids into their car. You know, they could have just taken this to Reno and dumped us at a hotel for the evening, but they didn’t do that. They took us all the way to Sacramento that night.

00:40:50:26 – 00:40:51:09
Donald “Butch” Williams
Wow.

00:40:52:07 – 00:41:11:08
Donald “Butch” Williams
And so you know, when you have people over the years that reach out to you and just help a little bit, it’s just not hard to give back, right? I feel like I hold my. All right. I owe my whole life try in some way to give back for all the blessings I have. I mean, I just I’ve just been blessed.

00:41:11:22 – 00:41:11:29
Donald “Butch” Williams
I mean.

00:41:12:07 – 00:41:45:21
Brad Singletary
That’s why you’re here when I say, you know what? What makes you do it? You said I didn’t even think of it. I mean, you’re sacrificing. I know that you’re donating. You know, money, time, resources, every, you know, volunteering over there. And I’ve also seen you re try to recruit people. So we’re friends on Facebook. And I’ve seen this, so, hey, they need, you know, we need an extra server or two tonight, you know, like you’re arranging these things and you’re not only going there for yourself, but you’re bringing some folks along with you, like that kind of leadership toward something so selfless.

00:41:45:21 – 00:41:50:05
Brad Singletary
I mean, that’s just, you know, coolest kind of man. Yeah.

00:41:50:20 – 00:42:12:27
Donald “Butch” Williams
Well, I like I really like somebody’ll tell me, hey, listen, I’m having problems with my teenage kid. He’s just he or she’s just they’re becoming abstinent or they’re just they’re becoming secluded and they don’t want to help anybody. And they’re back talking. I said, all right, I’ll pick you up at 345. You and the kid so I’ll bring him in the kid to the shelter.

00:42:13:12 – 00:42:29:23
Donald “Butch” Williams
And after a night at the shelter, that kid those eyes are opened up a little bit about about real life. So I think that’s a nice way kind of to give back to you, I guess. Not that I’m, you know, I’m just trying to help a kid. Yeah. Who? Right.

00:42:30:08 – 00:42:39:04
Brad Singletary
Some perspective. He gets to serve. He gets to contribute, but he also takes away something from that, too. Absolutely. And I’m sure you do, too. I’m sure there’s some.

00:42:39:10 – 00:42:40:00
Donald “Butch” Williams
Every time.

00:42:40:07 – 00:42:52:10
Brad Singletary
No gratitude and just some. And I can just picture you’re you’re sitting there, you know, with a prayer in your heart for these people. And, you know, you’re you’re trying to extend love and positive energy while you’re there.

00:42:52:20 – 00:43:13:14
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah. Can you imagine just one person out of the 500 saying, tonight, I’m going to start over and all of a sudden they go through their the program over there and then they go get educated or get into a profession. And ten years down the road, they’re taking people to the rescue mission to get help. Right. That’s the that’s the payback, right?

00:43:13:14 – 00:43:14:09
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah. Pay it forward.

00:43:14:09 – 00:43:15:10
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah. You pay for it.

00:43:15:11 – 00:43:15:23
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yes.

00:43:16:02 – 00:43:36:28
Brad Singletary
So how did you learn to be a man? You’ve got all these great qualities. I just I really think that there are some men out there and you you guys seem you who are listening. You know what I’m talking about? You just see people in every aspect of their life just seems seriously good. No one’s perfect, but you can just tell that they are bringing a lot to the table.

00:43:36:28 – 00:43:39:28
Brad Singletary
And I think you do that. But who taught you how to be a man?

00:43:40:28 – 00:43:44:17
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah, I don’t know. I think I’m still learning. That’s why they always had me work.

00:43:44:17 – 00:43:46:01
Donald “Butch” Williams
With the youth, because I’m still a kid.

00:43:46:01 – 00:43:48:17
Donald “Butch” Williams
My wife tells me I’m a kid. I don’t really understand it.

00:43:48:22 – 00:43:49:22
Donald “Butch” Williams
She said she raised.

00:43:50:01 – 00:43:51:11
Donald “Butch” Williams
Seven kids, but I’m only.

00:43:51:11 – 00:43:52:08
Donald “Butch” Williams
Counting six.

00:43:53:04 – 00:44:02:26
Donald “Butch” Williams
So I don’t know. You know, I really do still feel like I’m learning. I do. I mean, I was listening to a grade. I like Joel Osteen. Oh, yeah. People don’t, you know.

00:44:02:26 – 00:44:05:10
Donald “Butch” Williams
But I like him a lot. I like him, man. You know.

00:44:05:10 – 00:44:33:07
Donald “Butch” Williams
He’s positive and just I was just listening to one of his talks the other day about learning like I never get too old that learn. So he went on for 35 minutes about things we can do to learn you know, he said that every year most people spend 300 hours in an automobile. He said, do you realize in 300 hours how much you can learn if you listen to it, talk or listen to something to.

00:44:33:07 – 00:44:34:21
Brad Singletary
Make your video book or something.

00:44:34:21 – 00:44:35:24
Donald “Butch” Williams
To teach us if you’re.

00:44:35:24 – 00:44:53:15
Donald “Butch” Williams
Into sales, how to become a better salesperson and if you’re a lawyer, how to be a writer, you can go on and on, you know, if you’re working in the church as a pastor or whatever. But the concept was, don’t ever quit learning. And so I think I’m still working on this being a man thing. I still like a little bit of risk.

00:44:53:15 – 00:45:15:12
Donald “Butch” Williams
I still like a joke a lot. Sometimes it go over well, sometimes I don’t. But I think it started out with my dad. You know, my dad, he was he’s a big time hero to me. He was raised here in Las Vegas in I guess he was born in 1937 and so other four or 5000 people in Las Vegas then.

00:45:16:08 – 00:45:35:19
Donald “Butch” Williams
And he comes from a pretty troubled background. He was in and out of facilities and he fell in love with my mom when he’s about 14 or 15 years old. But my mom came from a good background and my grandpa had enough of my dad. So my grandpa had the sheriff take my dad on the edge of Las Vegas and say don’t come back.

00:45:36:10 – 00:45:37:25
Donald “Butch” Williams
So my dad.

00:45:38:02 – 00:46:00:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
So my dad ends up working in orange farms in Visalia, California, and then he went to San Francisco. In the meantime, my mom had been married, had a child, and my dad got word that she was going through a divorce. So he hauled back to Vegas and he saw her at one of these like little happy days diners in the fifties.

00:46:00:06 – 00:46:23:12
Donald “Butch” Williams
Right. And he her nickname was Shorty. He said, Shorty, you know, we’ve been apart a long time. Don’t you think we should just get married now? And she said, yes. And he became a man. He became a man. And I never saw my parents fight. They never made much money, but they always worked together. They did everything together.

00:46:23:21 – 00:46:41:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
They were just buddies. And, you know, some of his techniques were kind of fun. Like he told us one time, us boys, I don’t think I’m going to ask you again to make your beds he never got angry. Well, we didn’t make our bed. The next day, our beds were on top. The roof.

00:46:42:18 – 00:46:42:29
Donald “Butch” Williams
There was all.

00:46:42:29 – 00:46:46:09
Donald “Butch” Williams
Kinds of things on top there. If I’m 56 St.Louis bicycle.

00:46:46:09 – 00:46:54:19
Donald “Butch” Williams
Parts shoes, it didn’t get put away. A bed sits on the roof, but he never got angry.

00:46:55:14 – 00:47:07:24
Donald “Butch” Williams
He anger was not in his makeup, so he would discipline, but never with anger. Oh, my gosh. That sounds like Christ to me. I’m a teacher better way, but I’m not going to get angry. Angry about it.

00:47:08:27 – 00:47:12:16
Donald “Butch” Williams
I love that. Yeah, I’m going to try that. Yeah. No.

00:47:13:22 – 00:47:16:27
Brad Singletary
I’ll have the h.o.h. Getting after me. Like, what is all that stuff.

00:47:16:27 – 00:47:24:15
Donald “Butch” Williams
On your roof? Well, they got tile roofs now, and so i’m not sure how that would go. We had our rocks on our roof. What makes.

00:47:24:15 – 00:47:25:28
Jimmy Durbin
You think it won’t be your stuff on the.

00:47:26:04 – 00:47:26:18
Donald “Butch” Williams
Shelf?

00:47:28:24 – 00:47:32:08
Donald “Butch” Williams
I’d be careful with that one. Right. There might be.

00:47:32:24 – 00:47:51:08
Brad Singletary
So your dad was a great example of that. You said he became a man. That’s a process. That’s a like, you know, that’s it’s not just we don’t age into it. Something has to happen to us. I think. I mean, so what what did you what else did you see from him or other men in your life that demonstrated how you become a man?

00:47:52:01 – 00:47:52:19
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah, I think a.

00:47:52:19 – 00:48:13:08
Donald “Butch” Williams
Lot of hard work and that was one thing is that he he had a tremendous work ethic and and, you know, that concept of like, attract like. Right. It’s just it’s a beautiful, eternal concept. Usually you’re going to attract people that are like you in some ways. Otherwise you just you just bounce off each other, right? And so I got to watch his friends too.

00:48:13:08 – 00:48:41:25
Donald “Butch” Williams
And all of them were just young, trying different businesses, you know, staying out of trouble. My mom and dad both knew they were alcoholics and one day my dad missed work. So he was very functional. But one day he missed work and he never drank again. That was it. And I thought to myself, here’s a guy that comes from nothing that has every excuse in the world because he was abused as a kid.

00:48:41:25 – 00:49:07:20
Donald “Butch” Williams
All these things to not be a man. And he decided he’s going to be a man. He’s going to be a good husband and a good father, and he’s going to work hard and be loyal. And he was all of those things he never had to say. And I watched it right. You know, when we’d go work at the track as a nine year old and an eight year old kid on a Saturday morning, pulling out of bed at four in the morning to get in the back of the truck, to ride.

00:49:07:28 – 00:49:08:23
Donald “Butch” Williams
To to go.

00:49:08:23 – 00:49:17:29
Donald “Butch” Williams
Under the Charleston underpass and on to the I-15, out to Craig Road in the back of the truck. When it’s cold in the winter and hot in the summer. He didn’t have to say anything. It’s just we’re.

00:49:17:29 – 00:49:20:17
Donald “Butch” Williams
Going to work. Let’s go. Right.

00:49:21:05 – 00:49:45:27
Donald “Butch” Williams
So I’m just blessed. Blessed to have people like that in my life all the way through. My first my first boss coming out of law school, a guy named Norm Kurtzman. Wonderful. Wonderful man, fought in World War Two. He was a boxer he was so ethical. And I remember asking him one day, hey, how many billable hours do you want from me?

00:49:46:03 – 00:49:46:12
Donald “Butch” Williams
Right.

00:49:46:12 – 00:49:49:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
Lawyers, billable hours. Well, he was a little bit.

00:49:49:06 – 00:49:54:24
Donald “Butch” Williams
Cross-Eyed and he was cantankerous. And so he’s kind of looking at me, but he’s looking over there.

00:49:54:24 – 00:50:00:26
Donald “Butch” Williams
You know, we’ve had these conversations before right I was scared of him. He says.

00:50:00:26 – 00:50:20:07
Donald “Butch” Williams
Don’t you ever talk to me about billable hours. One day in my life. You give me your hours every week. And then I’m going to give the client the fair hours. Clients are not paying for your education. So you go on and you work and you learn to do the product right incorrectly. Don’t you worry about billable hours.

00:50:21:04 – 00:50:33:21
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yes, sir. Well, again, that concept concept sunk in and so when I hired my son in law and we had the same conversation about how many billable hours a week, because that’s what.

00:50:33:21 – 00:50:35:03
Donald “Butch” Williams
The law firms are telling the.

00:50:35:21 – 00:50:37:04
Donald “Butch” Williams
Well, yeah, I said, don’t.

00:50:37:04 – 00:50:49:16
Donald “Butch” Williams
You ever talk to me about those billable hours. You give your hours to me. And then I would look at the hours. Why did it take so many hours to do that project? I’m dying over here. But after a.

00:50:49:16 – 00:50:57:22
Donald “Butch” Williams
Few years, they get efficient and then they can keep their billable hours and it doesn’t matter. Right. But what a pure concept. Yes. That’s also ethical, right? Yeah.

00:50:58:07 – 00:51:19:11
Jimmy Durbin
So it’s nice to see that that those things weren’t lost on you, that you have paid it forward. That it allows you to be the man that you are and have the heart that you have and and be transparent and share this vulnerable story about the struggle you had in 95 with your wife and that all those things added up.

00:51:20:25 – 00:51:23:25
Jimmy Durbin
So thank you for that. Appreciate it.

00:51:24:13 – 00:51:45:29
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah, no, it’s wonderful. But like I say, you asked the question, well, you know, becoming a man and and I answered it. I was kind of serious that I’m still becoming a man. So I got COVID in December of 20, 20. And it wasn’t the nice version about day 12. I said, I don’t know if I’m going to make it through this or not.

00:51:46:06 – 00:51:51:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
I never went to the hospital, but my oxygen kept getting closer to that 90. Right. That 90.

00:51:51:13 – 00:51:51:25
Donald “Butch” Williams
Mark.

00:51:52:20 – 00:52:10:25
Donald “Butch” Williams
And I was so miserable. Anyways, I did overcome it. And by the grace of God, I guess I got to stay on earth for a while. Longer, but a couple months after that, I began to have what you professionals refer to, and I didn’t know what they were then. Ruminating thoughts.

00:52:11:10 – 00:52:12:01
Brad Singletary
Rumination.

00:52:12:01 – 00:52:33:24
Donald “Butch” Williams
You’re you’re going to lose everything you everything you’ve worked for, you’re going to lose. You’re going to lose it. And they would not all of a sudden I was up all night sweating, heart palpitations. My wife has suffered from some anxiety and depression in her life. And one day I woke up again. This was only a year ago now and everything was dark.

00:52:34:16 – 00:52:49:26
Donald “Butch” Williams
For the first time in my life, I I’ve always been an optimist other than the 1995 heartache I’ve just been this optimist. You know, everything is going to be OK for everybody else, including myself. And then it hit me. Depression and anxiety.

00:52:50:05 – 00:52:50:27
Donald “Butch” Williams
Wow.

00:52:50:27 – 00:53:14:23
Donald “Butch” Williams
And so we got me into counseling and because she said, OK, that’s it, we’re done messing with it again. Power over. Good woman. We’re done with this. You’re going to be OK. But you have to you got to listen to me. I’ll listen to you, honey, because right now I feel so low. And she said, OK, so she got me into counseling, and that was helping and but it wasn’t enough.

00:53:15:17 – 00:53:38:29
Donald “Butch” Williams
And so finally she got me into a psychiatrist and they put me on Lexapro, and it took about two weeks. And all of a sudden, things started to clear up. And I was like, OK, my gosh, I feel OK. Again, this is I mean, I was just so grateful. So I been open about it. I have not.

00:53:38:29 – 00:53:39:28
Brad Singletary
That is great.

00:53:40:04 – 00:53:47:19
Donald “Butch” Williams
And just telling people this, you can turn this around. Sometimes we can’t, right? Sometimes.

00:53:47:19 – 00:53:59:01
Brad Singletary
Well, but so that’s good to know because I didn’t know that. But I think I might have known that you had COVID, but you were you were just been the epitome of energy. You’ve been one of those guys. I mean, you’re a runner right? You’re still running.

00:53:59:01 – 00:53:59:28
Donald “Butch” Williams
I am still running.

00:53:59:28 – 00:54:05:08
Brad Singletary
You’re a runner. I mean, you’ve done like marathons and. Right. You’ve done all that. You’re like a real runner.

00:54:06:05 – 00:54:12:28
Donald “Butch” Williams
I’m serious. Like, I’m like me and if I run, I’ve got to go to the bathroom, you know, if somebody is chasing me. Yes. Yes.

00:54:13:26 – 00:54:18:12
Brad Singletary
So you so health and energy and that kind of thing. But to talk about.

00:54:18:18 – 00:54:18:27
Donald “Butch” Williams
Total.

00:54:18:28 – 00:54:27:28
Brad Singletary
Crashing after this COVID thing, having some thoughts that maybe seem to be out of control, get help. Listen to your wife, start counseling and medication and. Yeah.

00:54:29:02 – 00:54:31:05
Donald “Butch” Williams
That’s why you’re here. Well, she told me, she.

00:54:31:05 – 00:54:42:23
Donald “Butch” Williams
Said, but you never do medication without counseling, ever. Well, how would I have known something like that? Other than that, she’d been down the path. I’m like, OK, I’m listening to you. I’m all ears.

00:54:42:23 – 00:54:58:20
Brad Singletary
Was there any was there any hesitation or I mean, were you it was just that bad that you would do anything bad? What about a year ago? What about in the past? Would you have been the type to I mean, I think it’s clearly that you’re pretty humble, but you also have you got a smart aleck in there.

00:54:58:20 – 00:55:13:28
Brad Singletary
You know, you’ve got you got some you got you have a rowdy sense about you, too, you know? So, like, did that ever have would you always have been OK with that or is there some old school part of you is like, I don’t need that you had to fight through.

00:55:14:14 – 00:55:47:20
Donald “Butch” Williams
You know, not at all. And I don’t say that with any false sense of humility, but it was so miserable. I always thought I understood kind of what depression was or anxiety was because I’ve read about it, lived with it, saw other family members with it, but I didn’t understand it until it hit and I wouldn’t wish it upon anybody except for the lessons learned blessings come from it.

00:55:47:28 – 00:56:14:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
And one of the blessings is through counseling. I learned, you know, how to meditate more, how to get myself more in the present. I mean, I just remember going to dinner and looking at my cell phone 25 times thinking there’s an important email that’s going to come or an important text message. And now I go to dinner and I put my phone to the side and I look at my wife’s hair or I say, I can stay totally in this conversation now without thinking of anything else.

00:56:14:06 – 00:56:37:24
Donald “Butch” Williams
But being sitting right here with two wonderful men in the city of Henderson, Nevada, with lights on and air conditioning blowing, counting my blessings and I could never do that before, even though I always felt like I was kind of a humble guy. I could never stay completely present and so I remember talking to the counselor a while back.

00:56:37:24 – 00:56:49:00
Donald “Butch” Williams
He said, What do you worry about? I said, I don’t ever want to feel like I felt a year ago any good counselor just like yourself, Brad. He said, But would you be open to it?

00:56:51:02 – 00:57:07:00
Donald “Butch” Williams
I said, I guess I would be, because right now I’m going to live in the moment. I’m going to live right now. I’m going to consider the lease of the field. I’m not going to take a purse or scrape with me anymore. Yes, I’ll save for the future. Yes, I’ll still plan for the, you know, the things that I can control.

00:57:09:17 – 00:57:10:23
Donald “Butch” Williams
But I’m going to live today.

00:57:11:26 – 00:57:23:22
Brad Singletary
That’s another one of those things that I’ve just been so impressed with, as I’ve kind of just watched you from a distance here the last few years. I mean, you see things like, you know, you’re dancing that at the hockey games.

00:57:24:15 – 00:57:25:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
Like a fool.

00:57:25:25 – 00:57:27:26
Brad Singletary
And when I say like a fool, I mean, there is.

00:57:27:26 – 00:57:30:10
Donald “Butch” Williams
Nothing foolish about it. That’s a man who’s alive.

00:57:30:28 – 00:57:34:29
Brad Singletary
You’re not afraid of what you look like. You don’t have much rhythm. Why are you kind of that’s pretty.

00:57:34:29 – 00:57:38:04
Donald “Butch” Williams
Good, you know, rhythm. But that’s not the point you’re feeling.

00:57:38:04 – 00:57:47:11
Brad Singletary
The music, you’re feeling the environment or or there’ll be these like, I forget what you call them, but these are little like, you know, donuts with the granddaughters day or whatever.

00:57:47:11 – 00:57:49:12
Donald “Butch” Williams
And that’s every Friday. Every Friday.

00:57:49:12 – 00:57:53:24
Brad Singletary
OK, so you got some little rituals where the grandkids come over for mourning or what happened?

00:57:53:24 – 00:57:58:16
Donald “Butch” Williams
No, no, no. I get up, I get my exercise in. I hit the donut shop and then I show up at their house.

00:57:58:17 – 00:57:59:16
Donald “Butch” Williams
You go to their house, I.

00:57:59:16 – 00:58:00:07
Donald “Butch” Williams
Go to their house.

00:58:00:23 – 00:58:01:18
Brad Singletary
Like, here’s some.

00:58:01:23 – 00:58:04:09
Donald “Butch” Williams
Here’s some big old fries. You go.

00:58:04:09 – 00:58:11:17
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah, that’s right. Yes. And then we we actually send donuts to the ones that live in California because we can’t be there. Right, all the time having delivered there.

00:58:11:17 – 00:58:14:27
Donald “Butch” Williams
So we haven’t delivered. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a pretty.

00:58:14:27 – 00:58:18:04
Donald “Butch” Williams
Cheap way to say, Hey, Grandpa and Grandma, I was thinking about you, right?

00:58:18:20 – 00:58:20:18
Donald “Butch” Williams
I guess so. Yeah. No, we have a good time.

00:58:20:27 – 00:58:41:11
Donald “Butch” Williams
You know, I think ever since I was young, I think it was my dad, too, probably. But trying to make somebody smile, right? You know? I mean, it matters. Maybe that’s the only time they’re going to smile the whole day. Maybe for a week. It’s the only little bit of joy they’ve had. You just never know what is going on in somebody else’s life.

00:58:41:11 – 00:58:51:10
Donald “Butch” Williams
And so I think that’s kind of an innate gift. I really do. Right? You know, maybe sometimes it’s not a gift at all. Sometimes it goes too far. And I got to answer to the boss, if you know what I mean.

00:58:51:25 – 00:58:57:25
Donald “Butch” Williams
I’m not talking to God. I’m talking to the other boss. My eternal boss. So sometimes I go.

00:58:57:25 – 00:59:00:08
Donald “Butch” Williams
Too far and I kind of back it off a little.

00:59:00:21 – 00:59:05:12
Donald “Butch” Williams
Bit. But it’s OK. She’s she’s learned she’s had.

00:59:05:12 – 00:59:06:08
Brad Singletary
To learn how to love.

00:59:06:08 – 00:59:07:21
Donald “Butch” Williams
You, too. Oh, yeah.

00:59:08:08 – 00:59:09:07
Jimmy Durbin
Yeah. That part of you.

00:59:09:17 – 00:59:10:12
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah, right. Yeah.

00:59:10:12 – 00:59:52:18
Jimmy Durbin
Grab nice and talk about you know, today I call myself Jimmy but for 42 years prior to that, it was Jim. And then when I got into recovery realizing the individual, the part of me that crosses the line, that pushes it too far is my ego, is my pride, and it’s being driven because of maybe that my feeling or I’m feeling insecure insignificant or that I don’t matter, I did something wrong or I’m not in control.

00:59:53:23 – 01:00:13:20
Jimmy Durbin
And so I’m trying to my ego’s trying to make up. Jim’s trying to drive the car, so to speak. And I’m just curious as to what you’ve noticed, because I think that’s the other thing about being a man is being able to talk about our weaknesses, about being able to kind of own that piece of it so that we can then apologize, like you said.

01:00:13:20 – 01:00:32:00
Jimmy Durbin
And, and of course. Correct, right. In that part of awareness and being mindfulness. And so how does that show up in your life? How does that manifest when when that ego, when that pride kind of kicks in? And what’s your process for OK, being aware of that and then of course, correcting.

01:00:32:11 – 01:00:32:26
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah.

01:00:33:28 – 01:00:58:21
Donald “Butch” Williams
In in my business, right. A lawyer, there’s just so much of that and I’m guilty of it as the next person. But I think the man upstairs has been kind to me in that I usually know when I go too far. I remember I remember years ago I had a case with this guy and it was just getting more and more contentious, more and more contentious.

01:00:59:15 – 01:01:05:18
Donald “Butch” Williams
And finally I said something I shouldn’t have said. So he turned me into the Nevada State Bar.

01:01:05:18 – 01:01:07:02
Donald “Butch” Williams
And wrote a letter.

01:01:07:02 – 01:01:10:24
Donald “Butch” Williams
On me, said, Mr. Williams told me to go f myself.

01:01:13:07 – 01:01:21:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
So I made a call. I got a call from bar counsel. Is this puts Williams? Yes, sir. Now, when bar counsel calls you, you’re.

01:01:21:13 – 01:01:21:27
Donald “Butch” Williams
Shaking.

01:01:22:02 – 01:01:26:04
Donald “Butch” Williams
Right did you tell that lawyer to go F himself?

01:01:26:25 – 01:01:27:21
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yes, I did.

01:01:28:17 – 01:01:35:11
Donald “Butch” Williams
Can you not do that anymore? No, I won’t. And I’ve never done it again. But things have heated up over the years.

01:01:35:11 – 01:02:03:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
Another situation that I had with a lawyer that I just love and respect, but it just, you know, our clients are going at it so heavy. And so we start sometimes take upon ourselves the personality of our clients, and it just went too far. And so I just thought about it. After a contentious conversation, shut my door, got on my knees in my office, prayed to God that, you know, hey, listen, we’re only fighting about money here or something, right?

01:02:03:13 – 01:02:25:27
Donald “Butch” Williams
In the big scheme of things. And the impression was send him a cookie basket to his firm right now. So I asked Robin, my assistant, would you send a cookie basket over there? And that healed it just like that one cookie basket. And we were healed and we were fine. We’ve had probably 40 cases with our respective firms over the years, and they’ve all resolved, you know, in a friendly fashion.

01:02:25:29 – 01:02:46:05
Donald “Butch” Williams
So I think just like you said, we all all of us have egos and they’re going to come through sometimes. And if we just have certain rituals in our lives and things we can we can keep some humility, right? It’s not always going to happen, but we know when it’s gone too far. We know when the red flag comes up, right?

01:02:46:14 – 01:03:05:24
Jimmy Durbin
Yeah. And like, I appreciate that word, ritual finding a series of actions that I can take every day regardless of how I feel. And I to me, that plugs into why you do the service and why you pay for it and why you talk to these men. It’s just having this ritual to keep the ego in check.

01:03:06:14 – 01:03:35:24
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah. And everybody has their own way. I mean, I get up every morning and I’ll read scriptures for 20, 30 minutes and then I’ll exercise and then I’ll get going for the day. And if someone says, well you have to be up at 430 tomorrow, then I guess I get it. I’m getting a bit 3:00 because I’m concerned about ever changing that that, that thing, if you will, for lack of a better word, that I feel has carried me in life.

01:03:35:29 – 01:03:44:12
Donald “Butch” Williams
You know, academically I really, really struggled in high school I graduated deal with Las Vegas High School with a 2.2 GPA.

01:03:44:28 – 01:03:46:14
Donald “Butch” Williams
So I never thought this guy.

01:03:46:14 – 01:04:03:28
Donald “Butch” Williams
Was going to college. Right. It was I just, you know, I just couldn’t sit in a room without and focus on an academic things very well. And then I went on that mission well, when I was on that mission, they had this little prize you would get if you memorized a hundred scriptures.

01:04:04:15 – 01:04:06:09
Donald “Butch” Williams
Well, I really had to work hard at that.

01:04:06:25 – 01:04:20:23
Donald “Butch” Williams
But I did it took me six months or something, but I memorized every one of them. Well, again, you’re in your younger years, right? And you’re thinking maybe I could go to college but when I came home, by the grace of.

01:04:20:23 – 01:04:28:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
God, you and Elvie would let anybody and even me. It was a long time ago. It’s not that way anymore. I’m sure but they let me.

01:04:28:06 – 01:04:29:05
Brad Singletary
I’ve been a fan for.

01:04:29:05 – 01:04:31:10
Donald “Butch” Williams
Life ever since. Oh, you bet I am.

01:04:31:27 – 01:04:53:00
Donald “Butch” Williams
So I signed up for college again. Never thought. And none of my family member had ever got family members had ever gone to college that all of a sudden I said, Hey, listen, it’s taking you three and four times to understand complicated concepts when the guy next to you gets it. The first time I recognized that very early in my life.

01:04:54:05 – 01:05:15:28
Donald “Butch” Williams
So I said, you better learn persistence so I’ve made my mind up very early. You might beat me, you might beat me in the courtroom, you might beat me in a debate. But I’m going to work harder because I know I have to work two or three times harder than you to be able to stay with you in this arena.

01:05:16:21 – 01:05:32:18
Donald “Butch” Williams
And so I think, again, by the gift of God, you learn your weaknesses. If you if you ask them and if you spend some time at them and then you just work through them, just you know, if brains, natural brains is not your not your thing, well then persistence better be.

01:05:33:23 – 01:05:55:27
Brad Singletary
And that’s so great. You’re just the openness to like, OK, I may have this deficiency in some area, but I still want and deserve and believe that I can reach these other accomplishments. I just have to work harder. I mean, that is one of those traits that’s that’s some of the, you know, traditional masculinity that seems to be missing today is just, oh, OK.

01:05:56:04 – 01:06:15:01
Brad Singletary
Well, guess it means I need to work hard. I guess I need to push harder and I can do this. I just have to it’s going to require more from me and I love that you that you’re saying this right now. Like, OK, I, you know, didn’t even do well in high school. Now you’re an attorney, now you’re balling.

01:06:15:01 – 01:06:29:07
Brad Singletary
Now because of hard work and persistence and that discipline. So you’re talking about a little bit of a morning ritual. You have some you talked about reading scripture exercise. Is that running pretty much mostly or.

01:06:29:07 – 01:06:47:25
Donald “Butch” Williams
I’ll run four or five days a week and go to the gym and lift weights a couple of days a week. Just something to get the blood flow right. It’s getting harder as you get older, but I don’t miss very often. Even this morning before church, I walked six miles. I just I just need to be out breathing air and thinking and focusing.

01:06:47:25 – 01:07:00:05
Donald “Butch” Williams
I usually listen to a talk or something positive or listen to good music. Nothing too crazy on the you know, I might be the only person in the gym that’s listening to a, you know.

01:07:00:05 – 01:07:06:17
Donald “Butch” Williams
A spiritual, spiritual thought or spiritual music. Because I’m trying to get my spirit.

01:07:06:17 – 01:07:08:21
Donald “Butch” Williams
Tuned up before the world takes.

01:07:08:21 – 01:07:10:28
Donald “Butch” Williams
Over at about 8:00 because the.

01:07:10:28 – 01:07:12:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
World’s coming right.

01:07:12:06 – 01:07:12:22
Donald “Butch” Williams
Every day.

01:07:13:10 – 01:07:30:27
Donald “Butch” Williams
And so I’m just trying to tune upright, and some people don’t have to do that. Mike, my wife, is a very simple faith. I wish I could be more like her. Like her faith in her hope is just so she doesn’t need an hour to do that every day. Well, guess what I do or my ego will take over.

01:07:31:16 – 01:07:33:14
Donald “Butch” Williams
So I just have to know where you are right now.

01:07:33:16 – 01:07:34:28
Jimmy Durbin
Great awareness. Yeah.

01:07:35:16 – 01:07:55:07
Brad Singletary
I have a couple more questions for you, but one is what major error do you see men making? You’ve been around a lot of guys. You’ve been around a lot of people professionally as a leader. And you talk about as a as a bishop. I know you’ve done some things with the young people in your church. You’ve had like lots of opportunities to serve.

01:07:55:07 – 01:08:18:04
Brad Singletary
Just you’ve been a community man. I mean, you’ve been all around the place. What do you see guys messing up on what? I mean, if our average listener is a 40 year old father, let’s say younger father, you know, maybe has a couple of kids working fairly functional, but what kinds of things do you think average guys are missing out on or not doing well?

01:08:18:04 – 01:08:23:04
Brad Singletary
Not paying enough attention to mistakes they’re making see any patterns.

01:08:25:05 – 01:08:28:09
Donald “Butch” Williams
I think one is just trying to learn to listen.

01:08:29:06 – 01:08:31:09
Donald “Butch” Williams
It brings me back.

01:08:31:09 – 01:08:35:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
To the Bishop days. A couple would come in and be at each other’s throats.

01:08:35:21 – 01:08:39:07
Donald “Butch” Williams
You know, it’s his fault. It’s her fault, it’s his fault, it’s her fault.

01:08:40:00 – 01:08:44:09
Donald “Butch” Williams
And at first I thought I had answers that, well, I this is.

01:08:44:09 – 01:08:49:23
Donald “Butch” Williams
A real easy fix, you know, maybe, maybe you guys should do this. Maybe you should do that. That didn’t seem.

01:08:49:23 – 01:09:04:07
Donald “Butch” Williams
To work very well. And then it hit me one day. Just let him have it out a little bit. Just listen. Just slow down and listen. And once I did that, they would go, boom.

01:09:04:07 – 01:09:15:07
Donald “Butch” Williams
Boom, boom. And then they would look at me like I was a miracle worker. Hey, that was great. Oh, my high five. I didn’t say anything. I just listened so.

01:09:16:27 – 01:09:47:05
Donald “Butch” Williams
You know, it’s the best thing in life. Well, that’s that’s an exaggeration, but one of the wonderful things in life is maybe you are the smartest person in the room, but nobody has to know about it. You know, when you walk into a room and you’re humble and you’re listening, then people want to talk to you, then you know what the issues are, whether it be your wife or your child or somebody you’re trying to mentor, you don’t know the issues.

01:09:47:05 – 01:10:09:05
Donald “Butch” Williams
If you begin to talk to you quick, you just got to listen. And guess what? Listening takes time so that’s to me, it’s I know it sounds so simple, but it’s not simple. But if but if we and I I’m still working on this. Trust me, if we’ll work on the concept of listening, we’re probably going to go pretty far in life.

01:10:11:00 – 01:10:23:23
Brad Singletary
What keeps guys from listening and why don’t they? You’re saying it takes some time to do that and maybe patience, but what else? What other obstacles do men have keep them? Why don’t we listen very well?

01:10:23:23 – 01:10:24:20
Jimmy Durbin
Can I jump in here?

01:10:24:20 – 01:10:26:14
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah, yeah, jump in. Yeah.

01:10:27:15 – 01:10:51:06
Jimmy Durbin
Feedback. I got quite a bit in my late twenties and thirties. Jimmy, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care because it was always about me. I always wanted to impress you. I was coming from a place of, you know, negative beliefs about myself or whatever the situation was. Or I had to prove myself.

01:10:51:06 – 01:11:17:21
Jimmy Durbin
And so I had to be the smart, you know, whatever that was. And so I wasn’t listening. I was talking about me and I just kept hearing this feedback from different people in my life at different times of, like, just shut up and lead with your heart. And I think when I first walked in that same space with you, that’s what hit me was here’s a guy who I can see his heart.

01:11:17:21 – 01:11:24:24
Jimmy Durbin
I can see the love in your eyes. I can it radiates in your face, this countenance, the glow, despite the fact that you’re bald.

01:11:25:03 – 01:11:45:02
Donald “Butch” Williams
You ready? And you see the glow there. You see, I had like five years left at the front and I lifted off and my wife’s like, word your hair go. I said, Honey, somebody took a picture of my bald head two weeks ago and showed it to me. So I just finished the job yeah. I think it’d stay in that way now, but I don’t know.

01:11:45:03 – 01:11:46:29
Donald “Butch” Williams
Looks good. It looks good.

01:11:47:26 – 01:11:49:00
Brad Singletary
Kind of like it myself.

01:11:49:00 – 01:11:52:12
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah, it’s not bad. But. No, I know.

01:11:52:12 – 01:12:16:02
Donald “Butch” Williams
It’s it. It takes time. It’s a it’s a skill. I’m still working on it sometimes. But you met. You answered your own question. You might not know that, knowing that you did, because we’re moving along, but you said two things. Time and patience to be a listener. It’s going to take some time time’s only measured in men, so we have a limited amount of it.

01:12:16:02 – 01:12:20:11
Donald “Butch” Williams
So that leads into the next thing. A 40 year old guy with three kids at home.

01:12:20:20 – 01:12:21:28
Donald “Butch” Williams
He don’t have a lot of time.

01:12:21:28 – 01:12:35:23
Donald “Butch” Williams
In his mind. He’s like, I got to go here. I got this, I got that, and impatience. And most of us are not born with that one, right? So we have to learn it over time. So time and patience.

01:12:36:09 – 01:12:57:01
Brad Singletary
I think, too, that if you believe that there is something valuable coming from the other person, I mean, to listen also requires that you respect who’s talking and you respect who’s who’s out there. Even if it’s your children, they’ll tell you important things if you just listen. I remember listening to a an audio book or, I don’t know, some influencer of some kind.

01:12:57:01 – 01:13:07:18
Brad Singletary
And he said he was talking about like your wife complaining at you or something. And he said, you want that data, that’s information you want. Don’t act like don’t shut yourself down.

01:13:07:28 – 01:13:08:16
Donald “Butch” Williams
Hear it.

01:13:09:17 – 01:13:16:01
Brad Singletary
Hear it, and then you can do something and then you can minimize it by taking action and listen. But you have to listen first.

01:13:16:08 – 01:13:43:05
Jimmy Durbin
And I think what comes with that time and patience, at least for me, was the realization that no matter who was in front of me, there is value. They have something to offer. But because of my ego and my pride and my judgment, you don’t have you don’t have anything offer. And that is that is the ego. That is my pride of of believing that and instilling that.

01:13:43:05 – 01:13:44:28
Jimmy Durbin
And so I don’t have to listen.

01:13:45:23 – 01:14:09:16
Donald “Butch” Williams
That is so good. Before I came here, I was at a different meeting, and this church leader stood up and he said, I want to show you this picture, and it’s a picture of Christ. And he’s getting ready to heal someone, but you can’t see the person he’s healing. He goes, Do you notice that kids and he’s talking to a group of kids, even this 56 year old kid.

01:14:09:16 – 01:14:43:16
Donald “Butch” Williams
And I’m like, I know where he’s going with this. He says, Christ can’t see the person when you go serve someone you never want to think that they are less than you or anyone else. In other words, you want to be on the same plane. Everybody’s got a story, and it’s usually a pretty good story. And when you take time to listen to anyone, you’re going to probably get some nuggets that are going to bless your life.

01:14:43:20 – 01:14:55:22
Donald “Butch” Williams
I mean, I’m sitting there listening to you guys today and I’m just thinking, man, I’m just learning from these guys. They think they know I’m learning. I’m sitting here learning from these guys, you know.

01:14:56:05 – 01:14:57:11
Jimmy Durbin
Which is why men need men.

01:14:57:20 – 01:14:59:01
Donald “Butch” Williams
That’s why I’m in me then.

01:14:59:11 – 01:15:17:10
Brad Singletary
That’s right. That is exactly why. So tell me something that you’re still trying to figure out about life. You know, you’re saying you’re 56, you’re still growing, still learning to be a man, but literally something that you want to still maybe begin or still round off in your life.

01:15:17:24 – 01:15:51:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
You know, I saw that question is a precursor. What am I what am I still trying to learn so this is going to sound a little generic, but but I do mean it. I’m still trying to learn more about the nature of God. I’m still trying to understand how you know, his compassion can be there for even a guy like me raised in downtown Las Vegas, maybe I’m still trying to get better at my profession.

01:15:52:06 – 01:16:15:26
Donald “Butch” Williams
I mean, I’ve thought about this concept of retiring and, you know, these types of things and just doesn’t feel right. It just feels like I can still learn and maybe be of some benefit to my clients. If. Right, if they want me to do something that maybe I can help them with it, you know? So I think it’s just this concept of ever learning ever learning whatever’s around us.

01:16:16:11 – 01:16:20:04
Donald “Butch” Williams
I don’t know what tomorrow brings. So we’ll see.

01:16:20:13 – 01:16:45:24
Brad Singletary
So what is the most alpha attribute about you? And we just I just did a podcast before this one that I’m kind of trying to define that because I hate the way the world looks at the alpha male that’s such an ugly caricature. But Alpha being the highest part of you, you know, the best, purest, most, you know, the most, the strongest brightest piece inside you.

01:16:45:24 – 01:16:54:16
Brad Singletary
What is, what is that for you? Something that you can really be proud of and own as a talent or gift. What’s special about you? What is your superpower?

01:16:55:24 – 01:16:56:18
Donald “Butch” Williams
I don’t know.

01:16:57:14 – 01:16:58:05
Donald “Butch” Williams
I saw that.

01:16:58:05 – 01:17:00:27
Donald “Butch” Williams
Question, too, and I wanted to punch that thing down the.

01:17:00:27 – 01:17:03:11
Donald “Butch” Williams
Field. You know, but then I.

01:17:03:22 – 01:17:09:21
Donald “Butch” Williams
When I painted it, I felt like our punter in high school one time, he put it and it went right off his foot into the stands, to the right.

01:17:10:05 – 01:17:13:19
Donald “Butch” Williams
And I never seen 180 degree punt before. And we.

01:17:13:19 – 01:17:16:02
Donald “Butch” Williams
Saw it. I’m not going to mention his name, Jim Capper.

01:17:16:02 – 01:17:19:08
Donald “Butch” Williams
But if you’re out there, our best punt die or saw in my life.

01:17:20:04 – 01:17:44:24
Donald “Butch” Williams
I don’t you know, this is really a tough one, right? Because it makes you talk about maybe equality. You you have figured out about yourself over the years that maybe you could pass on. Right? I mean, really isn’t that kind of the core of the question I would say just keep working at it. Whatever you’re doing, just keep working at it.

01:17:45:19 – 01:18:10:22
Donald “Butch” Williams
You know, if you’re in a tough spot right now, tomorrow’s probably going to get brighter. And if it’s not tomorrow, it’s going to be the next day if you keep working at it. Right. I remember an old, old guy named Jeff NGO Bush gave a little talk one time and the first reminder that he gave himself every day is, I am a child of God.

01:18:11:13 – 01:18:18:11
Donald “Butch” Williams
I am a child of God. My mom used to say to me, hey, Butchie, you know, I don’t like you sometimes.

01:18:18:19 – 01:18:22:21
Donald “Butch” Williams
But I do love you. There’s some days I don’t like you, but I love you.

01:18:23:08 – 01:18:44:16
Donald “Butch” Williams
And so I look at God that way. You know, there’s some days he’s not going to like the decisions I make because they’re my decisions and they’re prideful and they’re, you know, but I know he loves me. And I as I jump into scriptures every day or listen to a talker, I’m reminding you of that love. I, I, I see that love in the eyes of all those at the Las Vegas rescue mission.

01:18:45:12 – 01:18:56:16
Donald “Butch” Williams
I remember walking to church one day as a bishop. This guy was walking right to I’d always walk to church because it was a one mile walk to my church from my house. And with having six kids at home, it gave me a chance just to.

01:18:56:16 – 01:18:58:19
Donald “Butch” Williams
Clear my mind a little bit and go try to be.

01:18:58:19 – 01:19:22:15
Donald “Butch” Williams
A bishop right in. This guy is walking at me and he’s big guy. He’s burly, and he’s tattooed from head to toe, and I’ve never felt like I was a real judgmental person, but I’ve judged and I’ve judged wrongfully, you know, that guy’s walking that me. All of a sudden I went from his tattooed body into his eyes and I could just see the light of Christ in this guy.

01:19:22:27 – 01:19:45:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
And I said, That guy right there is your brother. And things changed that. How I viewed people from that day forward, I just, you know, nobody’s less than you. Nobody’s better than you. If you’re going to compare yourself with someone, if you really find it necessary to compare yourself with someone, go ahead and compare yourself to God. You’ll get yourself humble because you know, he creates worlds without end.

01:19:46:00 – 01:19:46:16
Donald “Butch” Williams
And you’re.

01:19:46:16 – 01:20:01:13
Donald “Butch” Williams
Sitting here just trying to make $10, keep a little money in your pocket to pay the bills next month. Right? Right. So I mean, just keep working, right? Do the best you can, stay humble and keep working. Things will work out. They do.

01:20:02:13 – 01:20:30:01
Brad Singletary
You just have so many stellar qualities, man. When I someone asked me before what what I thought it meant to to be an alpha. And I read this book recently called King Warrior, Magician, Lover and to me, that kind of this book is about archetypes and that we all possess these different archetypes. So that of King Now that would be like the good leader, you know, a benevolent king he’s giving to his kingdom and whatever he’s king.

01:20:30:01 – 01:20:55:07
Brad Singletary
That’s the leadership area. And then warrior is the guy who’s fighting for the good, you know, fighting for the right thing. That’s your profession. You know, maybe you’re you’re a warrior that way. You’re a warrior. We’re talking about that. The Las Vegas rescue mission, helping, helping in good causes. You’ve been involved with a lot of those things. Magician means you have specialized knowledge, not only that, you have specialized knowledge, but that you share it.

01:20:55:13 – 01:21:16:16
Brad Singletary
So unlike a street magician, this kind of magician is someone who would teach their tricks. And you’re doing that with your son in law who’s in your practice and all the young attorneys that you’ve been able to influence. And then lover lover is a guy that’s showing up with donuts at the grandkids every Friday or, you know, dancing in the stands at the the Golden Knights hockey games.

01:21:17:09 – 01:21:35:26
Brad Singletary
You you just you just a grateful person. I’ve just seen some amazing things from you and I really appreciate you being here to to to join with this man. And I and I hope that we can, you know, I don’t know, continue our friendship. I guess we haven’t been super close, but I’ve known you for probably 15 years.

01:21:35:26 – 01:21:57:20
Brad Singletary
And a guy came to me one time to work with me. And you were called as his leader. You were in that period and he said, I believe that God knows who I am because this person was, you know, he’s my pastor, he’s my bishop. And he is a person that I believe is going to help me in my life.

01:21:57:20 – 01:22:16:13
Brad Singletary
And and I remember hearing just how you two this guy was kind of like the man who influenced you way back and that you treated him that way. Maybe you had him in your home and all these kinds of things. And it’s just it’s just great to know that there are men like you around. You’ve got these great polarities.

01:22:16:13 – 01:22:54:21
Brad Singletary
So on one hand, you know, you’re running every morning. You’ve got you’ve drive, you ride a Harley, you have a black Corvette. And yet, you know, your biggest goal is to continue to learn to understand God. Like you don’t see those kinds of things in people, you know, motorcycle, motocross rider back in the day, marathoner Harley Davidson, you know, Corvette driver and highly spiritual talking about tenderness, you know, the love and people that kind of that is the most brilliant, beautiful stuff that I’ve ever seen in guys.

01:22:54:21 – 01:23:05:02
Brad Singletary
And you just you really represent that a lot. So thank you for who you are and for being willing to come and share with us a little bit here. Do they Jimmy, do you have any closing thoughts or questions or.

01:23:05:02 – 01:23:28:13
Jimmy Durbin
No, I just Butch here. I appreciate thank you for showing up in the world you know, thank you for the difference that you make. I still think you punted that that question. You know, I think your superpower, you love your love. You found a way to fall in love with yourself and it it shows up. And so thank you.

01:23:29:01 – 01:23:54:11
Donald “Butch” Williams
Man. You’re welcome. And I and I’m never going to forget the term it was worth driving out here for a lot of reasons. First you see again, Brad. But second of all, I’m never going to forget that terminology. A hard back and a soft front that that just that’s the the the new saying for this week just hard back sometimes your back’s got to be hard that world’s coming at you but you can keep your front soft.

01:23:54:16 – 01:23:55:05
Donald “Butch” Williams
I love it.

01:23:55:05 – 01:23:56:09
Jimmy Durbin
Yeah. Keep your heart open.

01:23:56:10 – 01:23:58:17
Donald “Butch” Williams
Oh, so good. So good.

01:23:58:25 – 01:24:00:21
Brad Singletary
I’m just soft everywhere I’m soft in.

01:24:02:11 – 01:24:10:21
Donald “Butch” Williams
I need to harden up a little bit like these two guys. A little myself. Great. Soft. Yeah. What’s that joke from the eighties?

01:24:11:14 – 01:24:13:24
Donald “Butch” Williams
We used to tell each other. You get Dunlap Disease?

01:24:13:24 – 01:24:24:07
Donald “Butch” Williams
Yeah. You know what’s dumb about disease? When you’re barely done, that’s over your male rash. I don’t know where they get these things. The eighties were a great time to be alive. Hey, would.

01:24:25:25 – 01:24:36:01
Brad Singletary
You guys, we just want to highlight some of the best men that we can get our hands on. And I think we’ve scored big time here tonight. This Lou Williams, I meant to ask you how to why the name Butch.

01:24:36:09 – 01:24:41:07
Donald “Butch” Williams
You know, you wonder if you’re going. That’s Alpha from day one when they start calling you. But you’re a.

01:24:41:07 – 01:24:42:21
Brad Singletary
Total stud when they do that.

01:24:43:04 – 01:24:45:12
Donald “Butch” Williams
So that is a story.

01:24:47:16 – 01:24:47:24
Donald “Butch” Williams
When.

01:24:47:24 – 01:25:05:04
Donald “Butch” Williams
I was born, my mom wanted to name me Don because she had an Uncle Don. That was just a talk about a humble guy. I remember him as a kid. He’d come into our home and he he was so humble. Adam Langley was his name. Well, I had another Uncle Don, and.

01:25:06:02 – 01:25:10:14
Donald “Butch” Williams
He was a little rougher. So my my mom my mom.

01:25:10:14 – 01:25:11:29
Donald “Butch” Williams
Wanted to name me after the.

01:25:12:20 – 01:25:15:11
Donald “Butch” Williams
More humble Don. Good. Don. Yeah, yeah.

01:25:15:29 – 01:25:21:10
Donald “Butch” Williams
And my dad said, Well, I’ll tell you how we’re going to solve this problem. I’m just going to call him Butch.

01:25:22:03 – 01:25:25:01
Donald “Butch” Williams
And that was it. I thought I had it.

01:25:25:01 – 01:25:25:26
Donald “Butch” Williams
Shaken in high.

01:25:25:26 – 01:25:27:12
Donald “Butch” Williams
School. Nope.

01:25:28:19 – 01:25:29:17
Donald “Butch” Williams
College? Nope.

01:25:30:24 – 01:25:36:03
Donald “Butch” Williams
Law school? No. Got into the professional world. A few clients call me.

01:25:36:03 – 01:25:37:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
Don, and it’s still Butch.

01:25:37:06 – 01:25:39:07
Donald “Butch” Williams
So I imagine that’s.

01:25:39:07 – 01:25:40:10
Donald “Butch” Williams
Will be on my tombstone.

01:25:40:10 – 01:25:42:03
Donald “Butch” Williams
When I get creamy.

01:25:42:03 – 01:25:46:02
Donald “Butch” Williams
Cremate it off the coast of Hawaii. I heard you can do that for 300 bucks.

01:25:46:02 – 01:25:50:06
Donald “Butch” Williams
I said, Why not? You know, I like the North Shore. Throw you.

01:25:50:06 – 01:25:51:08
Brad Singletary
In a volcano or what.

01:25:51:08 – 01:26:01:17
Donald “Butch” Williams
Do they do? It’s a Neptune society. 300 bucks. You know, they sizzle you and put you out on the ocean, man. That way, when I’m resurrected, man, I’m in one cool area. So I’ve got.

01:26:01:17 – 01:26:04:08
Donald “Butch” Williams
That in my trust right now. But my wife says I have to change it.

01:26:06:16 – 01:26:09:04
Jimmy Durbin
Tell her the new thing now is composting. So you just want to be.

01:26:09:18 – 01:26:10:00
Donald “Butch” Williams
Stuffed.

01:26:11:17 – 01:26:12:09
Brad Singletary
Into a tree.

01:26:12:09 – 01:26:13:27
Jimmy Durbin
And then spread the dirt all over.

01:26:15:14 – 01:26:20:17
Donald “Butch” Williams
Oh, that’s a little stuff going on there. Yes, it is. And it’s great to.

01:26:20:17 – 01:26:21:19
Donald “Butch” Williams
Be with you guys. Thank you.

01:26:21:19 – 01:26:22:13
Brad Singletary
Thank you, man.

01:26:22:13 – 01:26:24:02
Jimmy Durbin
Thanks for coming in, you guys.

01:26:24:08 – 01:26:27:10
Brad Singletary
Until next time, no excuses, Alpha.

01:26:29:14 – 01:26:34:16
Speaker 3
Gentlemen, you are the Alpha and this is the Alpha Quorum.

01:26:40:11 – 01:26:41:12
Donald “Butch” Williams
There it is.

 

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

070: THE MAGICIAN – A Review of King, Warrior, Magician, Lover – Part 4

070: THE MAGICIAN – A Review of King, Warrior, Magician, Lover – Part 4

070: THE MAGICIAN – A Review of King, Warrior, Magician, Lover – Part 4

Brad Singletary, Clint Albright, and guests Jim and Jay 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 MAGICIAN.

Topics:

  • Magicians are masters of technology and are the ritual elders
  • They have special knowledge that is passed down
  • Initiation is important symbolism
  • They continue to share magic by giving it to worthy apprentices
  • They put themselves in sacred space and understand things both seen and unseen.
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 psychology and give a very effective model of healthy masculinity by helping guys rediscover the archetypes of mature manhood. In this episode, we discuss the magician.

Intro (00:58):
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 (01:22):
Welcome back to the Alpha Quorum show Brad Singletary here. I’m here with a bunch of magicians. As we talk about this topic tonight, you’re going to find out why these guys are themselves magicians. They don’t know this, but I chose them to be in this series because I think they’re all of these things. These are kings. These are warriors. These are magicians and they’re lovers. Welcome back to Jay Jim and Clint Albright. Thanks for being here. You guys. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thank you. So the questions we’re going to answer today, what is the magician archetype express in its fullness? We’re going to discuss some relatable examples of men living this way. We’re going to talk about the bipolar shadows of the magician, that detached manipulator and the denying innocent one. We’re also going to talk about how a man can fully access magician energy within himself.

Brad Singletary (02:23):
This segment is about living life as a man with the energy of a magician. That’s such an interesting title. That’s such an interesting word. As we talk about these archetypes. When I thought of magician, I did think of some old school image. You know, some wizard type person who was, I don’t know, casting spells. He has a wand. I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking of like Lance Burton or who who’s the magician. David Copperfield is Lance Burton, a magician who was Lance Burton, crazy. You’re thinking of Chris angel, Chris angel. So that’s, you know, those, those street performer type magicians. One of the differences about this, the, the mature masculine magician is that he, unlike the performers, he does tell his secrets. He does show his methods. And that’s one of the reasons I’m calling these guys here, magicians tonight. They each have special, very specialized training in their professions, but they also here are teaching you who are listening right now. And that’s part of what the magician does. So let’s get rolling here, dudes, what is the magician archetype expressed and its fullness? So this is the healthy side. This is the mature masculine, he’s a grownup and he can do certain things. What does he do? What does he know? What’s he about?

New Speaker (03:52):
He’s the knower of specific knowledge, even if he doesn’t realize that he has that knowledge, or it might be commonplace to him. You know, someone, you know, a doctor who knows how to set bones and fractures or an auto mechanic who can rebuild an engine or the airline pilot, you know, who knows how to land a plane to them it’s commonplace. And it’s easy because they have those skills and that knowledge, but to others, those things are shrouded in mystery.

Brad Singletary (04:23):
There’s a great quote from the book that talks about what is magician energy. It says all knowledge that takes special training to acquire is the province of the magician energy. Whether you’re an apprentice training to become a master electrician and unraveling the mysteries of high voltage or medical student grinding away night and day, studying the secrets of the human body and using available technologies to help your patients, a stockbroker, a student of finance, a trainee, and one of the psychoanalytic schools, you are in exactly the same position as the apprentice shaman, or which doctor in tribal societies, you were spending large amounts of time, energy, and money in order to be initiated into rarefied realms of secret power. You were undergoing an ordeal testing your capacities to become a master of this power. And as is true in all initiations, there’s no guarantee of success. So special knowledge you said Jay or what was the phrase that you use? He’s a knower of special knowledge. We’ve given some examples here. What other attributes does the magician have?

Clint (05:36):
As architect of Awareness and insight, but also has an understanding into the unknown, the unconscious, the underlying deeper energies that are

Brad Singletary (05:45):
Yeah. He sees beyond the obvious. It doesn’t,

Clint (05:50):
I think in black and white he’s like thinks in the radiation.

Brad Singletary (05:54):
Yeah. There’s, he’s, he’s beneath the surface of things and there’s complexity that he understands. That’s not common knowledge. This isn’t common sense. Maybe common sense is coming from the warrior, but the magician has a deeper understanding of things.

Jim (06:11):
It’s like, he can see the whole picture, that apprentices just seeing the small pieces, but he’s not seeing the whole puzzle. And that magician can, you know, paint that in this mind and help build, create design, that image.

Brad Singletary (06:28):
I like that it talks about technology and whether you’re, this is, you know, medieval times and you’ve got a horse in a sword or you’re in 2021. And you’re talking about, I don’t know, the tech, the technologies of the day, Elon

Jim (06:42):
Musk or bill Gates or Steve

Brad Singletary (06:44):
Jobs somewhere. I saw something about Steve jobs said that, Hey, you know what somebody is saying about him? I don’t know if he said this, but that what he did is really nothing different than magic. And I’m not really an Apple fan, but I believe that that’s kind of really what this is. This is. Can you imagine the things that Elon Musk knows to be able to do the things that he’s done? So a master of technology, the knowledge that he has comes to him little by little. So you talked about the apprentice and I want to talk about in some of your professions or your past like career training and so forth, kind of how that works, but he acquires this knowledge little by little, he doesn’t jump into the deep side of the pool. You don’t throw him on the, on the big job right away. It’s like, here’s the nuts and bolts and give me the screwdriver

Jim (07:37):
Or less than that. It’s they want to choose you pushing a broom

Brad Singletary (07:41):
And the trash pushing a broom. It’s like, you know, that’s how it goes. It’s like righty, tighty lefty, loosey. I mean, those are, we got to start with basics and the magician is the one who’s teaching that guy. So that’s what I mean about these men here are, are, are that because they’re doing that in, in their own professions, they have special knowledge that they’re relaying to people who are seeking something.

Jim (08:08):
Yeah. It says, you know, in the book, there’s a part that talks specifically about that, that many human magicians in whatever profession or whatever walk of life are using their knowledge and technology proficiency for the benefit of others, as well as themselves. And they’re working to turn that raw power to the advantage of others.

Brad Singletary (08:30):
Something that you hit a lot on in the King episode, Jay was about experiences. And I noticed that that comes up again for the magician that they’re, they’re kind of using that what they’ve experienced in life or with the particular power that they’re handling they’re using their experience to, to guide them through the present. Yeah, absolutely.

Jay (08:56):
You know, there’s a lot of professions out there that you know, use their experiences and their wisdom, you know, being involved with law enforcement, our experiences are really important and you have the opportunities to relay that to other individuals through field training and you get new officers who come in green and fresh and don’t have a lot of that experience. And it’s, it’s valuable to be on a call with officers who have 10, 15, 20, 30 years of experience, because those experiences are valuable and you can go into a situation and, and see things that maybe someone without that experience wouldn’t have.

Brad Singletary (09:37):
Yeah. You’re the OG, you’re someone who’s seen it and been there and done it. And you can, they they’ve, they, they learn to trust themselves because they first trust you I’ve disclosed before that I’m involved in alcoholics anonymous. And there’s a guy on there tonight in my meeting who is about to celebrate his 29th birthday tomorrow. So he’s 79 years old at age 50, he became sober. But like, I can, I can learn to do what I need to do because this guy has been doing it for 29 years. He’s got special knowledge of how to maintain a life of discipline and a kind of spiritual fitness. So, yeah. I’m curious about professions. If we could take a minute, you guys and talk about what did you have to do? What are the, what is the rookie go through? What is the process of initiation into your own field or the things that you’ve done in the past?

Clint (10:31):
I mean, for us, like I said, you know, you start pushing a broom and you’re moving up to learn in the parts and pieces that go into our work. And there’s a lot of it. We put things underground, we put things in concrete. We put things in brick and wood metal and it’s trial and error. It takes time to memorize all that stuff. There’s tens of thousands of different parts. And then you’ve got theory, you know, AC DC and it takes time. It takes schooling. It takes on the job. And then also being with a good magician or a good electrician to instill that knowledge down to them, because that can, that can be negative. That can actually ruin, you know, an apprentice, working them with someone who isn’t confident, you know, maybe a, a mass KIS type magician where they’re unsure of their knowledge. Now they’re trying to train someone and it doesn’t really work all that well. So it takes an understanding of the people working with you, their abilities, putting them with people who they can train, teach them their abilities. It’s a lot of work. It’s not just, you just get in there and start turning nuts and bolts lefty loosey righty, tidy. It takes, thought it takes patience. It takes you know, skills and wisdom that, that you can pass down to these these apprentices.

Brad Singletary (12:07):
So Jim’s an electrician. I think he mentioned that, but you’re, is it you’re a superintendent, is that right? So you made an interesting point there about, it’s not just, I can bet you that Jim, isn’t just very skilled in the electrical crap, you know, the parts and pieces and the, and the, and the like mechanical side of it all. But the people, cause I’m guessing you’re not running wires, you’re running dudes, you’re running other leaders. And so you’ve had you, you’d not only have the magic of how these electrical things fit together, but how people fit together and how my approach for this person. It’s fascinating to me, all of these things, all of these archetypes blend together. So this is King, this is magician. You’ve got knowledge of people. And,

Jim (12:55):
And a lot of those people don’t realize these archetypes within themselves, all these different personalities and, you know, reflecting back on myself, like as I was a young electrician and I would have an apprentice under me, I’m learning their personalities, I’m learning how to teach them. And then that evolved into a foreman’s position where now you’re, you know, you got a crew of electricians and apprentices and you’re, you’re not only giving them the work, laying them out, but you’re also trying to understand their personalities and put people where they’re going to succeed, because that’s the only way I can succeed is if you know, they’re in the right place to help us succeed, you don’t want to put confrontational people together. You don’t want to put people in, in areas are not as experienced. And then you, you know, you move up the ladder even more and now you have foreman underneath you and you’re trying to teach them those skills.

Jim (13:49):
You know, it’s not just at that point. It’s not just the electrical trade, but it’s people skills too. So, you know, you’re trying to work some magic where, you know, people have had a tough time in 2020 with the coronavirus and lost stuff and lost, you know, family members. And yeah, it puts another strain. Another, it puts a, just another, it puts another layer of stress into someone’s work. So, you know, you’re trying to teach, you’re trying to, you know, bring up these people below you, but then you’re also dealing with the personal sides of it too.

Brad Singletary (14:28):
You mentioned earlier about how the magician sees the bigger picture. And that’s what it sounds like you’re describing is that you’re seeing layers of the process that the layman doesn’t, you know, the, the, the rookie w what do you call them? The apprentice. He doesn’t even, he’s not even thinking of it.

Jim (14:47):
Even you have a young foreman and, you know, he calls me up a concern of some of his subordinates or his people underneath them. I’m like, well, did you ask the guy what he’s got going on? You know, maybe he slept on the couch last night. Maybe his mom had a heart attack. You might want to kind of dig into those things where you start making some assumptions.

Brad Singletary (15:08):
So, Jim, I want to take a picture, right? So Jim’s looking at Miranda now, he’s got his glasses, just hold that. I’m going to take a picture. I’m going to put this on, on the post. Cause he’s, he’s over here looking like, like a, like a wizard he’s over here looking like you know, looking through the top of his glasses, like he’s, you know, he got a little gray, he’s got a little, little white hair coming in the beard there and just wisdom. And it takes, what did it take for you to get to that 0.2, three decades of this?

Jay (15:36):
Did you guys just become best friends?

Jim (15:39):
The moment he likes my gray now I can’t post a picture childhood drama. So what about you guys, your professions in terms of, you know, the magician it talked about is the ritual elder. It’s the person who knows and who leads you along the path into the initiation. Now you have this power, you have the authority to go and do the magic. Talk about your, how that worked for you.

Jim (16:10):
The magic is in the bedroom.

Brad Singletary (16:14):
That’s next week. Okay.

Jay (16:18):
You can say, you know what? I started out professionally as a school teacher. And besides going and getting your degree, part of that is you have to do student teaching. So, you know, you talked about Brad, you talked about, you know, learning your skills and your knowledge incrementally to really kind of what student teaching is, is you’re, you’re paired in a, in a classroom and you don’t just jump in and you’re not teaching the full day. You know, you first, you, you monitor on me, watch what that teacher does, and then they might let you just do one lesson. And then the next day it’s two lessons. And then the next day it’s, you know, half a day. And then you progressively get to the full day and every day after class, or after every lesson, you’re sitting down with the teacher and they’re talking about now, what you did well and what you did not so well, and you’re learning those things.

Jay (17:07):
And you’re learning about classroom management and managing your time and working through all that stuff. And so they’re that initial magician and imparting all of their wisdom and teaching it to you so that then you can carry on and do that yourself. I feel like that helps create flow. It’s something, you know, talked about here. They’re teaching you to eventually get into that flow state. And I see that with guys all the time, where they set a ladder up and they go up to do the work and they got to come back down and readjust their ladder. Then they take some material up and they’re like, Oh, I forgot something. So they got to go back and get some material and they come back and then they forget a tool. They haven’t gotten into that flow state. They haven’t into seeing

Jim (17:50):
The whole picture. When you are in that archetype, you are flowing and it just, you get everything you need, you get your questions answered, you get your material and you just start flowing. And that is a great state right there. Wow.

Brad Singletary (18:08):
That’s, that’s magic. It’s magic, totally being in a magical kind of flow state.

Brad Singletary (18:14):
How about you, Clint, you know?

Clint (18:16):
Being a younger therapist to understand, and to take in this wisdom. I think I had to take a lot from my own life experiences, like losing my father or going through the route 91 shooting and, you know, spinning better part of 10 years going to college to have all this education. And I think education definitely brings a sense of wisdom. And, you know, as I went through grad school, I can remember the first time I saw a client and imposter syndrome hit me pretty hard. And I just kind of think back to what my peers said, my mentors books I’ve read, and just try to grasp on to the wisdom and making sure that I don’t falter shake during those moments. And, you know, being a therapist is a really weird profession. You have people come in from all walks of life who have variety of different issues. And they’re kind of looking to you to find the wisdom that they need in order to grow. You know, it’s a, it’s a very privileged job and I absolutely love what I get to do. It’s, it’s a complete honor to guide people through their worst moments of life and to see them gain that wisdom for themselves and to walk the life that they want to live. Wow.

Brad Singletary (19:29):
Awesome. Yeah. So I’m in the same profession here is Clint and it like has already been said, you know, just starts a little by little, you start observing and then you do your own hours and then you’re being supervised. And then you meet weekly with the supervisor. And then the time comes when you kind of set loose. And that’s the state I’m in now is that I no longer, I’m my own kind of licensed person who I don’t have to really report to anyone. And I do continue to seek out, I guess, supervision from my peers, you know, colleagues that I trust, but I love the idea that you’re just, we’re learning in little bits and pieces. And then once you’ve learned it, then you become, you become the mentor. So part of this we’ll talk about here somewhere is that you’re not only learning from a magician.

Brad Singletary (20:18):
You got to become that. And in order to do that, you’re the teacher, you’re the instructor, you’re the leader, you’re the supervisor. And to me, that’s one of the most fulfilling things. I love nothing more right now. I have a few interns that I’m supervising and we meet every week. They talk about their cases. It’s just really cool to share some little secret that I’ve learned in sometimes the secret it’s not in the book. Sometimes it’s the opposite of what the book told you to do. And I’ll say, well, here’s how I might approach that. Or here’s one way that some people might look at this and it blows their mind. It’s the coolest thing ever to just see the lights come on for people. I think I, I really love this, this archetype, this

Jim (21:03):
Part of the book has a great feeling.

Brad Singletary (21:06):
So mathematics, engineering, astronomy, law, medicine, chemistry, any specialized knowledge. Another thing it talked about was the secrets of language. And we happen to have here tonight, some great communicators. But when you think about your jobs and the things that you’re doing, you know, you have vocabulary, Jim, you know, words that I’ve never heard before. Jay knows topics and concepts that I’ve never considered. And the same with Clint, even though we were in a similar profession, that’s kind of the fingerprint of the magician is his language, the things he knows how to say, think of the words that a doctor knows. He knows words that we don’t know. And just by knowing the word, you have some framework for understanding,

Jay (21:51):
I feel like you could expand on that too to body language. Okay? Like there’s times I can see people working and they’re not saying anything, but I can tell they’re having a tough time body language. I can sometimes walk by people and I can see they’re in there. They’re having a tough time. They’re frustrated, but they don’t want to say nothing to me because they don’t want to know. They don’t want me to know that they’re not that they’re purposely slowing down, but it’s taking them longer to do something. So, you know, I just say something, Hey, how’s it going? What’s happening. And you know, maybe I can share some insight to help them and, and make their job easier so they can succeed because that is the goal at the end of the day.

Brad Singletary (22:28):
It’s amazing. You’re, you’re kind of talking about the magician sees the invisible. This is the words that they’re not speaking. These are the things that you don’t literally know, but you know, there’s an intuitive process. You’re sensing that someone is feeling something habits in therapy all the time. They’re not saying anything, you know, the content of what they’re talking about. It may be the opposite of what, your sense in their feelings. And so to, to just take note of that, read between the lines, that’s what a magician is doing. I think a lot of times,

Jim (23:00):
I think they’re also, they have that. You talked about that insight, but also understanding, you know, cause and effect Virginia’s from that experience, that someone who’s younger and doesn’t have those experiences, isn’t going to understand almost kind of like that 30,000 foot view that you’ve been there. You’ve done that. So we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, let’s not, let’s not do it this way, but this is why. And then redirect them and go the other way. Isn’t that the story of the bowl, other than the sun overlooking the field of, of cows and teach us Sage master, let’s hear this that says let’s run down and bang. One father says, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, let’s walk down and bang them all

Jim (23:52):
That’s wisdom. He had foresight. The sun was just like real quick hurry fathers. Like, we’ll go get them all.

Brad Singletary (24:03):
That’s what electricians talk about at work. We do.

Clint (24:06):
I do. It’s horrible. It’s horrible. What we talk about, I think going back to like you know, body language, the language that you use, like you, you being a boss and seeing your workers and everything. You’re also a BS detector. Since you’ve gone through all these trainings, since you’ve have all this wisdom, you can, you know, when to call them out and say, Hey, this isn’t the right way of doing things. And don’t sugar coat it for me, just own it. And construction is funny like that. You know, we hide a lot of imperfections sometimes, or sometimes we leave a lot of loose ends and yeah, I’m constantly drilling them with questions and they get frustrated and they get irritated with me, but there’s a purpose to it, your failing, which in turn, all of us fell as a group. So, you know, we need to bring all those hidden or those issues to light so we can address them so we can get them taken care of so we can move forward and succeed.

Jay (25:03):
And the body language, they, they, they absolutely express it to me. I see it in them. I see it in their eyes. I see it in their jitteriness or in their short statements to me. And they’re not given all the details. Oh, and we, we see that. Do you talk about body language and cues? And in law enforcement, we call that pre attack indicators and being able to identify those movements, those looks, they might not be saying anything, but they got that 30 mile stare and they’re fixing to fight. So understanding what those cues are and being able to hone in on can be the difference between life and death in our profession.

Brad Singletary (25:43):
Yeah. You can see through things like manipulation and denial. Discernment is strong with the magician. He knows when there’s a Wolf in sheep’s clothing, he knows the tricks. I love the book, the 48 laws of power. It’s really kind of a dark book. Have you heard, have you heard of that one? If you saw the cover, you might recognize it, but the 48 laws of power, I forget the author’s name, but he kind of really talks about all these. It’s almost like this is a way to have power, but it’s more like the tyrant power, the manipulator power, how to manipulate. And there’s all these little secret things that you do to you. You know, like I can’t even think of some of the things in the book, but it’s really kind of scary, but I’ve encouraged people to read that. Not because they want to become this manipulative person, but so that they can sense manipulation when it’s happening. You know, when someone isn’t committing to something, you can realize, maybe that’s a manipulation. So yes, the BS detector is strong in the magician. He sees what isn’t there and he knows that what he does see, isn’t always what it seems like he sees.

Jim (26:52):
So we once again have the same for that. And that’s, you know, don’t believe anything that you hear and only 50% of what you see.

Brad Singletary (26:59):
Ooh. So this is just a weird kind of side note, but something that I noticed when I graduated from college, you see the, you know, the Dean or the who, the president of the school, and he’s conducting the graduation ceremony and we all have this, these weird things on this. There’s a gown, there’s a little thing coming off of your little hat. The mortar board is what they call it. And it’s like, and then I remembered seeing like preachers on TV. And I’m like, why is the preacher wearing like a graduation outfit? And then, and then you go to court, I’ve been there a couple of times, but you see the judge and he’s wearing this robe. And like, what is this about? And, and, and it really, these things originally denoted those who had taken clerical orders, they had the mystery, they had the, they had the, the they’d gone through the rights and the secrets and the oats and the tests and all the things that kind of initiated them into higher knowledge.

Brad Singletary (28:00):
And one author talked about this is borrowed finery. The robes proclaim a primary concern for things of the mind and the spirit sobriety of life and concentration of purpose removed from the largely mindless mechanical routines of our everyday world cap and gown. And now inst that the wearer had accepted certain rules of living and had been tested in special kinds of knowledge. It’s just fascinating to me about this stuff goes back centuries and centuries, thousands of years of human history, and here we’re going to dress up. And, and even when you think about, remember when they pronounce you graduated, they, you switch it from the right side to the left side. And some of this there’s even similarities in certain religious ceremonies and things like that where it’s similar. So the bestowal of knowledge sometimes comes with symbols and that’s something that I really dig.

Brad Singletary (28:56):
I’m kind of an artist in my nature and I love symbols. And even the, the Alpha Quorum logo, if anybody’s interested, there’s some symbolism to that, but there’s a spiritual aspect to the, to the magician in ancient kind of tribal societies. The magician was like the Holy man, maybe the, the, the medicine man, but there was a spiritual side to that. And there was also an interesting thing about sacred space. So the magician spiritually kind of understands the link between the seen world and the unseen world, like the human world, the world of nature and the world that we can’t see. Remember he’s not just seeing the electrical currents or, or manipulation. The worker, he’s seen things maybe that are supernatural, or he has an understanding of things like astronomy and how that matters to the world he can navigate. And isn’t all this stuff just kind of tied into one big truth and like the light of how things operate sacred space was kind of the container of raw power in the book.

Brad Singletary (30:04):
It talked about the arc of the covenant. You know, this is old Testament stuff. And then in the movie Raiders of the lost Ark, they were, they were taking the arc and, and it started to fall and some guy reached up to steady it, and he, and he dies on the spot because he didn’t have the, he didn’t have the privilege. He didn’t have the, he wasn’t a magician. And only, only people with certain authority could, could kind of touch that because it was a sacred thing. So this is like the, the sanctuaries in the churches and the temples and the prayers and the things you’re seeing, you’re asking for divine power to come down. And I really kind of relate a lot to that side of the magician that they, they put themselves in sacred space. And that might be nature. That might be your canoe.

Brad Singletary (30:56):
Think of the ritual magicians, who would like draw a circle around themselves. And it’s like, I’m claiming this ground. You know, this is, this is a Holy space, or I’m doing my, my ritual and whoever they’re praying to and whatever they’re doing, but we can enter this sacred space by listening to certain music preparing for this today, I was listening to you would probably all laugh if you heard it, but it’s this arm mantra. It’s like, I don’t even know what, who does the arm chanting? And there’s no words. And it’s just, this, it’s like 432 megahertz, I don’t know. But it’s about focus and concentration, alpha waves, beta data, Delta waves, there’s all this different kind of science about tuning into concentration and relaxation and calm. So sacred space is of course, yes, the, this is the Holy ground of your, you know, your synagogue or whatever you may belong to, but also maybe it’s in your vehicle when you’re coming home from work. And you’re listening to your music to get you in the spot to be able to go home and be cool for your woman, you know, and take care of your kids and calm yourself from the chaos of the world. I just love the spiritual side of the magician too. Any thoughts on that? You guys?

Clint (32:13):
Yeah. Like where you took it there and that cool. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I had an old boss coming up as an apprentice. He used to always tell me, you know, he had his hat on for work, but when he came home, he made sure he, you know, it was an imaginary hat, but he made sure he hung it on the tree before he walked in that door.

Brad Singletary (32:30):
Yeah. It’s like this symbolic, you know, disrobing of that side of me and I’m changing into another kind of identity. So I love like the symbolism of, I mean, I really do. I like the symbolism of like religious things and just anywhere, I mean, a logo of a company, there’s all kinds of hidden messages in places

Jim (32:51):
A long time since I read it, but I’ve started generals come from something old, like Sumeria Sumerian or Egyptian or five stars represent like, you know, a high authority figure. And here we are with our military, the highest rank is a five-star general. Wow.

Brad Singletary (33:08):
Yeah. So these are magicians who are playing a vital role, that five star general, that’s the ritual elder. He’s preparing the next generation of leaders in generals to kind of become like himself. One of the, one of my mentors in life talked about leadership is to duplicate yourself and think about in your trades and in, in your professions, you’re trying to teach this guy what, you know, and if you’re the learner, you’re trying to learn what this guy knows. And so the passing along of this special information, I don’t know this is this is such a cool topic to me. So let’s talk about some examples of the magician when, when men are living this way, who was that like? I thought of one, but it’s maybe a crude example. So this is a TV show house. I th I don’t know if it was called house MD, but he was, this was a teaching hospital in New Jersey and this genius who was kind of a jerk Dr.

Brad Singletary (34:06):
Gregory House, he was like this healer, and there was all these like mysterious illnesses and they couldn’t put the pieces together, but he would always like intuitively just find the answer and kind of cure these people’s problems that defied all previous kind of understanding. But he would also, he would kind of play mind games with some of his colleagues and he was a teacher. So it was a teaching hospital. So he’d have all these, I don’t know the term, maybe residents that were kind of following him around and he would pick their brains and quiz them and kind of play a little, but he, he always kind of figured it out. He was a jerk, he was addicted to pills. He had a lamp, you know, and he was kind of an, but that’s an example of someone, if anyone, any of you are familiar with that show house there’s the doctor who wasn’t just, didn’t just have the ordinary stuff. He had this intuitive sense and could really like apply information that nobody even knows how he put it together. It was just a genius. What examples of a magician? Do you guys know

Jim (35:11):
Tesla? All right. Tell me about that. He is the person who helped create AC theory in the electrical world. While some people were pushing DC, he was pushing AC, which for us, that’s what we use a lot of is AC electrical. It’s, it’s just a better use of electricity. So, you know, this guy basically changed

Brad Singletary (35:38):
The world in some ways, just think about that. It just, it just looks like magic to me to think about, we don’t even, we don’t even care what it is. We just flipped the lights on and it works, or we do the thing and it works. But Jim is one who has like the special knowledge of like way deep underneath and why it does what it does. Super cool.

Jay (35:57):
You know, kind of going on what you were talking about, Brad, as far as being a teacher, being a mentor is I think about my dad who was a school teacher. And I, I always go back to, I don’t remember how old I was probably 10, 11 years old and my dad’s my dad. And I knew he was a teacher. And I remember him getting a call one day from the principal of the high school that he taught at, who had been offered a job in a different town. And he called my dad and wanted to talk to my dad if he should take that job or not. Wow. And it really, it had always just stuck with me because, you know, the principal, you, you always look at as man, that’s, that’s the principal, that’s a top dog, that’s the top dog. And he’s calling my dad and asking for his advice and, and it really kind of stuck with me that he must have that knowledge and that experience that other people are going to kind of that mentor for others out there.

Brad Singletary (36:56):
Yeah. He respected something in him and could, you know, kind of trust his understanding of things. Even if he had a different position, he knew that he had like developed something in himself that was trustworthy. Yeah. That’s awesome. All right. So what does it look like when a man is operating from the detached manipulator energy? This is the active shadow. This is the unhealthy guy. Something I think about is that he still has the knowledge, you know, he still has, he knows things. This D this manipulator knows what’s going on in the world. He he’s got the special knowledge, but he’s, you know, a lot of times trying to sell it, he’s trying to gain from it in some kind of selfish way. And that’s not to say you shouldn’t sell a service, or if you have a special, you know, I charge money for helping them through their problems, but this is a person who’s doing. So with manipulation

Jay (37:53):
To go along those lines, Brad, I, I think of the, the salesmen who I call it, like bread crumbs. They, they give you a little bit, make you think that you can be just like them, or you see the classes online advertise for, you know, real estate classes. They get you to that, that hook get you in there. But they really don’t quite give you all the information. It’s like MLM stuff like multi-level marketing or whatnot. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so they’re, they’re making you believe that, Hey, you can be just like me, you can be successful. And they have the knowledge, but they’re not wanting to give it all out.

Brad Singletary (38:30):
Yeah. That’s what a sales letter is. You know, I’ve done some training, looking at online marketing and stuff like that. And the sales letters to kind of get you pumped. It doesn’t really tell you anything, but it makes you think they’re going to tell you, but now if you just put in your credit card and then they’re going to upsale you, and it’s just, it’s kind of a racket, really in a lot of cases, one thing the book talked about was like propaganda ministries, controlled press briefings. It’s funny because this was probably written 40 years ago or something 30 years ago, this book censored news, artificially orchestrated political rallies. I’m quite sure that some of this has gone on in the last 10 or 12 years and are in the United States. So this is the power shadow, the over achieving shadow of the magician. They don’t guide others. Like the magician is helping you along mentoring you. This person leads you down a path. You don’t even know where you’re going. They’re using like deception and so forth.

Clint (39:29):
It reminds me of like, what was it? Bernie Madoff, Bernie Madoff. Yeah. Agreed to see if all those people screwed people out of millions and millions of dollars went to jail for, it said that he was investing all their money. They were good to great return. And it was a pyramid.

Brad Singletary (39:45):
Yeah. Was that in Ron or was that in? I want to say around that time. Yeah. I remember I remember hearing about it. I didn’t quite follow exactly what they were. What happened? One that I learned about through actually teaching some graduate courses was about women smoking cigarettes. Okay. So the tobacco companies came to a guy named Edward Bernays. He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, famous early psychologists. And they said, Hey, we want to sell more cigarettes. Well, at that time, it was taboo for women to smoke. But for men, it was always portrayed in the media. And the advertisement says like this, this was a classy man. He has power. And this was right when women, women couldn’t even vote. I don’t think at this point, but he said, Hey, look, you’ve got half of the half of your market. You’re not even tapping into.

Brad Singletary (40:36):
So he was trained. He had special knowledge about psychology. And he said, we need to tap into the unconscious like drives of these women. And what was the unconscious drive while it was to have power, because they were really oppressed at that time, he said, let’s stage, we’re going to stage this thing where we’re going to show women smoking on TV. It was mind blowing. And so there was this parade, it was like one of these, you know, Macy’s some famous parade and it was black and white TV. And they showed these women gathered in a group, marching, just puffing the hell out of these cigarettes. And they called them torches of freedom. And one of the, one of the guys was even saying, this is, this was a phallic symbol. And, and, and, and almost represented, you know, not, not literally maybe the, the male penis, but it represented male power. And here’s these women. And then, you know, you end up with like the, I think it’s Virginia Slims, the little slogan, you know, we’ve come a long way, baby. Like, Hey, look at these women, these classy women who can smoke. And so now they’ve doubled their market just by tapping into like unconscious psychological energy for women needing, you know, to feel equals and so forth in that crazy

Clint (41:53):
Advertising.

Brad Singletary (41:55):
So much of that like subliminal stuff. And just the emotion. I remember I did some classes on marketing and they talked about, you got to, you got to appeal to emotion.

Jim (42:05):
You have think tanks for that, just to appeal to someone, to generate and increase sales. Yeah.

Brad Singletary (42:15):
Alcohol, commercial. It’s always the fun people with the pretty girls in the, and it’s, and it’s amazing. And that’s what location, so what people want is that feeling. And so they say they’re selling the hope that they can have this feeling if they just drink Heineken or whatever, nothing against, I mean,

Jim (42:35):
I think withholding information is, is a big one too, because you know, for me, I can’t grow if someone can’t take my place. So if I’m withholding that information to me, I become, some people might see it as job security, but I see it as just becoming like stagnant. And there’s no growth with being stagnant. So withholding information, this person’s not growing, you’re not growing. You’re not able to move on. You know, there’s a lot of manipulation with withholding information. It’s almost like a form of power, a form of control.

Jay (43:13):
You’ll see that that not only does withholding the information, they’re unwilling to share that information. So there might be five people in the office or on the work site that could potentially do the job, but they’re like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I got it. I got it. I got it because they don’t want to share that information because then they get to keep it for themselves. And that’s, you know, that job security. Yeah.

Jim (43:33):
Yeah. You’re kind of piecemealing a job rather than sharing all the information. And I hate to say it, but there’s a lot of smarter guys out there that work underneath you and they have a lot that they can bring to the table as well. I mean, there are magicians in their own, right? So giving them the whole scope or as much as you can, you know, share with them can actually benefit everyone in a hole. You might find a shorter, quicker, easier way to get it done.

Jay (44:02):
Yeah. I think that’s where you see the difference between the detached manipulator and the magician magician is they both have the knowledge. One’s willing to share it and be the mentor and build people up. Or the other one is willing just to keep it for himself.

Jim (44:15):
He has a lot of insecurities. He’s scared of losing his position or people finding out that he doesn’t have the knowledge. And I mean, in my field, we have so much to remember to learn, you know, that’s why we have code books so we can reference that stuff. You can’t retain. It all. You can’t remember it all, you know, you just gotta, You know, your tribe, you gotta be able to lean on your tribe, your warriors for your, for your help.

Brad Singletary (44:40):
One example in the book was about medicine and that in, you know, the highest paid people are the specialists, you know, the oncologist or whatever. And that they say, I don’t know if I, I mean, I’m guessing this happens in every profession, but that they might withhold information that would heal the person because they could profit from the medicine. I think that there was a comedian. I don’t know if it was Chris rock or somebody like that talking about, you know, ain’t no, Hey, ain’t no money in the cure. It was money in the treatment. And I think that was like, I really feel like that’s true sometimes. Like, and we need you to come back and listen for this prescription. You need to come every month just so we can monitor it and whatever. And it’s just, this built-in kind of manipulation that’s happening.

Brad Singletary (45:25):
Instead of saying, I had a doctor one time that told me I had something going on, I can’t remember what it was, but he said, it’s sugar, the more sugar, the sicker, you’re going to be in everything in every part of your body get rid of sugar. And it w it was just like old Asian guy, doctor, you know, he just, he had an accent and he, I felt like it was Mr. Miyagi telling me something that was important. That was like valuable. A doctor telling me don’t eat sugar. You would think they all say that. And maybe nowadays we’re hearing more of that stuff. But think of the simple truths that aren’t being shared, that would help people. That’s a detached manipulator. Another thing it talks about is that he he’s not only hurting others, but he also hurts himself. He’s caught in this continuous web of like pros and cons.

Brad Singletary (46:15):
I know people like that and they message me and they’ll say, Hey, which is better, this one or this one. And they never really pull the trigger. And it’s always just this, you know, the wheels are, yeah, the wheels are spinning. It’s not really anything substantial. They’re afraid to make the wrong decision. So they don’t make any decision. They’re kind of the always argumentative. The, they got the yeah. Buts. Yeah. But this could go wrong. And what about that? And they analyze the out of the things that they could just take some action on. So they’re detached in that way. All right. Let’s move on to the denying innocent one. This is the passive shadow of the magician. What are they like?

Jay (46:57):
I think they’re kind of envious of those who act. They want that power and that glory and status that they see in other individuals they’re not willing to put in the work. They, they see someone rich or they see something, somebody do something good, but they don’t really realize all the hard work that went in on the backend to get to that point. And they’re not willing to put in that work.

Brad Singletary (47:21):
Yeah. So they’re, they’ve got this kind of jealous side. They want glory and fame and they want the status, but not the right.

Jay (47:31):
Yeah. You’ll, you’ll see them. They’ll see somebody, Oh, that looks cool. And they start to do it. But after two weeks, they’ve lost interest because It’s too hard.

Brad Singletary (47:38):
I think there’s also a manipulation that goes with this too. So maybe they’re sabotaging the successful person someone’s on track and they’re really doing big things and they sabotage it and then they kind of a catalog. What, who me and they’re kind of playing dumb. And you know, there’s this gas lighting almost. So they’re making you question your own intuition. Like, well, wait a minute. I thought this was all worked out and figured out and they create problems maybe to keep you from success and reminds me of the trickster. Yeah. The, yes, very similar. There’s a quote that I saw somewhere in kind of preparing for this from Theodore Roosevelt who hated this type of person he said, talked about, this is one of those cold and timid souls who knows neither victory nor defeat. So there an innocent one that denying innocent one, gosh, that’s disgusting to think about. And remember, we’re supposed to be pondering. Like how, how do we do this sometimes too? Do we play dumb? Do we kind of deny we should claim our innocence when really we’re just, we’re not being responsible. I think we can.

Jay (48:55):
I’ll admit, especially in relationships, kind of that passive aggressiveness, that when we get called on it, we kind of play the innocent. I didn’t, I didn’t have any bad intentions or ultimately, you know, you know, what you were doing

Brad Singletary (49:10):
Puts you in a defensive posture, kind of faking this naive, pretending that you’re innocent. You’re the innocent one. All right. So how do we fully access the magician energy? A man realizes he doesn’t want to be a manipulator. Doesn’t want to be a, you know, sabotager the denying innocent one. How does he start to develop this magician within himself?

Jay (49:36):
Like we’ve kind of talked about already before is one. You have to find a mentor, someone who gives you guidance directions and advice, but also you become a mentor yourself and that more and more men are apps have absent fathers, or don’t have a good relationship with their father. Therefore they’re missing those good examples of what, you know, men should emulate. And so having that mentor yourself and then turning around and being one yourself to others that’s why I think, you know, programs like big brothers, big sisters those types of programs that give those individuals that haven’t had a good role model, an opportunity to, to see what one should be like

Brad Singletary (50:18):
This part of the book we talked to earlier in one of the other episodes about initiation and rituals and so forth. So I was heavily involved both as a young man and as a young adult leader in the boy Scouts of America. And so I was selected to be a part of the order of the era, which was kind of the honorary, this honorary kind of arm of scouting. And there was all this like symbolism, there were secret words. We went through this thing called your deal where, you know, you go out into the woods and w w for us, it was actually to where we had at summer camps was this nice, you know, there’s a Lake and there’s just this nice camping area where they did all the summer camp. And we just basically did service, but on very little food, we had a boiled egg for breakfast.

Brad Singletary (51:07):
We had an orange for lunch, and you’re working, doing like cutting down trees, hauling wood, you know, digging holes and fixing, patching up the trails and so forth. And you had to be silent. You had to be silent. Oh, and the night before they walk you out. And by the way, everybody’s dressed in native American garb, like feathers and everything. And back in those days, you know, there’s no technology or anything. So they walk you out alone and drop you off in the middle of nowhere. And you just have to sleep on the ground right there. And we’ll pick you up in the morning. I mean, I’m like 13 years old scared me plus to be, I don’t know if I’m sleeping on ants. I can’t see anything. I just, and so I eventually, I probably cried, probably cried myself to sleep, but I just curled up and went to sleep the next morning, wake up and work all day.

Brad Singletary (51:59):
And that night there’s this ceremony, this huge bonfire. And they come and they just, there’s this kind of ritual feeling to it kind of based on native American culture, very, very cool stuff. And there were these kinds of memberships statuses, and you, you know, there was a, there was a handshake, there was a couple of really cool things. And so one of the things the book mentions is if you haven’t done things like that, some kind of Rite of passage, or if you’re a mentor for a young man to allow there to be some kind of symbolic initiation into this new power. And we’ve talked earlier about graduations, high school, college graduations, there’s, you’re wearing weird clothes. You’re doing things that are, you know, it has meaning it’s just a ceremony of some kind. And I, that, that was really cool. I love this symbolic,

Jim (52:48):
The spiritual stuff. I feel like for a man to access his magician energy is to find purpose, to find purpose and what he does. And that gives him direction. You know, that gives, helps him create flow. That helps him access strengths within himself, that he may not have known even had. So yeah, definitely purpose will help you along your way. This is also mentioned in the book. And I think it’s similar to the last archetype is needing to be regulated the other archetypes.

Clint (53:27):
So the magician inherently is in a position of power. And if he’s going too far to left to right, the other architects kind of check them.

Brad Singletary (53:37):
Yeah. He becomes a, if he’s not checked by the King, he becomes a manipulator. He’s not checked by the lover. You know, he’s maybe detached or the, the, the one who sabotages. I really liked that these all really kind of fit together in some way. You gotta be all of these. That’s the idea of this whole book to be a healthy, mature man. You’ve gotta be all of these things and let each part of you influence the other part of you

Jay (54:05):
Actually, that’s this part of the book. And there was one part that talked about that the magician, the magician alone does not have the capacity to act. This is the warrior specialty, but he does have the capacity to think. And it really kind of set home that, yeah, they all do kind of work together. And that, that, you know, we talked about the warrior earlier in having all the skillsets and being able to go and have that mindset, but the, the knowledge to do that stuff,

Jay (54:31):
It comes from, let me do the magician,

Brad Singletary (54:36):
Going back to the sacred space rituals, draw a line in the, you know, draw a line around, you do something deliberate. That is an attempt to like connect you with energy. You charge your phone, your phone’s running dead. You plug it in. There are ways. And if you think about it, and this may not have anything to do at all with the traditional religious idea of spirituality, but to connect with something that charges you, you know, charges, your battery, puts you into some universal energy, your intelligence flows through you, meditation. That might be one of those things. It may be for me being in the water. When I’m in water, I grew up in Florida, we had boats and we were always at the beach or in a river. And had a Creek running behind the back of our house. Just water for me is a sacred space where I can just really connect to something like really deep something pure in there.

Brad Singletary (55:34):
And now I just, I’m afraid to take my shirt off and go places. But I was like, it was like a form of meditation for you. Yeah. It just brings me into the here and now, you know, when you’re, if you’re swimming, I ask clients a lot of times, when’s the last time you went swimming. And the very depressed people say, Oh, 12 years ago, I went swimming. If you’re in water or doing anything that you’re just immersed in it, the thing, whatever it is, I came at midnight or what, you know, out on your boat, it is kind of meditative because you’re so focused on the thing. You’re back in a trailer. You’re not worried about what’s going on in your bank account, that noise. You’re not thinking about not thinking about noise. So this, this sacred space is a yeah, it’s a deliberate, intentional effort to just charge up.

Brad Singletary (56:24):
And I think that’s very important for a magician. I agree that magician too. I mean, to fully access it, you can’t stay stagnant. You’ve got to constantly be learning, exploring definitely. That’s the ways to, on that magician energy within you, just because you’re existing. Doesn’t mean you’re living. Yeah. Ask questions, read books, Google. I mean like seriously, you can just learn so much if you’re just open to it. And if you believe that there’s information that you want, you know, if you believe there’s information out there that you need and that someone has it, Jay can teach me a lot of things about a lot of things in Clint and Jim. And that’s part of the, by the way, that’s, that’s why we’re sitting here. It’s 10 30 on a Wednesday night. Everybody’s got to get up early. And I’m just, this, this has been a magician kind of meeting here tonight.

Brad Singletary (57:17):
This whole thing, this podcast, the idea of the quorum and having people kind of supporting other men, Hey, I’ve got something. You know, one of my clients is a, he wants to learn about welding. He’s 40 years old. He wants to change jobs tonight. I’m going to go home and post in the Facebook group who in Vegas is a welder. And would you let some dude come to your house and like spark up your welder and like, tell him what you think of the profession. That guy’s a magician and the guy who’s coming to learn will probably soon be that someday. Man, this has just been a very valuable thing for me to have you guys here appreciate your like involvement. I’m liking this chemistry. I’m liking this flow. I’m like we got regular contributors, you know, on the news channels. They’ll be like, so-and-so contributor. You know, you’re I want you to routinely come back. We still have two more episodes. I wish we could send people to you. Somebody might connect to your voice here that comes up. We’ll talk about it. Somebody may want to talk to Jim. My son actually said he wanted to buy you an ice cream or something and chat with you for 20 minutes about electrical a of ice cream.

Brad Singletary (58:27):
Thanks guys. We appreciate you being here till next time. No, it’s

Speaker (58:32):
Alpha gentlemen. You are the Alpha and this is the Alpha Quorum.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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BOSS – Why Leading Too Loud is Faux Alpha

EPISODE 60

BOSS

Why Leading Too Loud is Faux Alpha

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060:

BOSS

Why Leading Too Loud is Faux Alpha

Host Brad Singletary interviews his father, Emory, in this Father’s Day 2020 Special.

“Today, I’m interviewing a man that has shaped me more than any other man. He’s been on this planet for three quarters of a century. He’s been married for 56 years. He raised six children professionally. He’s done everything from being an over the road trucker a commercial fishermen, an international business executive, a hospital business manager, practice manager for a surgeon, an administrative director of a hospice organization and owner of multiple corporations. He’s volunteered with the red cross boy Scouts of America. And he spent decades serving in his faith community and volunteer roles. He graduated from Florida state university, but of course holds honorary doctorate degrees from the school of hard knocks. Our guest today describes what it means to be a real man and how he has grown over 75 years of failures and successes.”

Brad’s dad begins by sharing the example his father set about restraining emotional reactions when he broke his own father’s tooth with a pair of pliers.

Emory describes the problem with the ‘faux alpha’…men who are too angry and self-oriented, leading too loud thereby pushing people away.

He recounts mistakes he has made and what he might have done differently. Taking supplements, drinking water, exercise and planking have kept him healthy into his 75th year, 23 years after an 8-vessel bypass which was previously thought to only have been remedied by a heart transplant.

He teaches how an Alpha can bring life wherever he goes with friendly conversation and how strong negotiations begin with simple engagement.

He shares a story of how he worked for free with a failing non-profit who was being evicted from their office building until he found ways to increase revenue sufficient to pay for a brand new multi-million dollar facility which was paid for in cash.

Brad’s father was an expatriate business executive and lived in Jamaica where he learned what it meant to be a minority, reversing some of his upbringing in a racist environment in the South.

He shares what he hopes for his sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons: that they live lives which reflect a relationship with God and enjoy a happy home life. In this Father’s Day Special, Brad and his father get up close and personal about their own relationship and what they have learned together about being a good man.

Alpha Up.

 

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Brad Singletary (00:00:01):
Today, I’m interviewing a man that has shaped me more than any other man. He’s been on this planet for three quarters of a century. He’s been married for 56 years. He raised six children professionally. He’s done everything from being an over the road trucker a commercial fishermen, an international business executive, a hospital business manager, practice manager for a surgeon, an administrative director of a hospice organization and owner of multiple corporations. He’s volunteered with the red cross boy Scouts of America. And he spent decades serving in his faith community and volunteer roles. He graduated from Florida state university, but of course holds honorary doctorate degrees from the school of hard knocks. Our guest today describes what it means to be a real man and how he has grown over 75 years of failures and successes.

Intro (00:01:09):
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 (00:01:34):
Welcome back to the alpha quorum show you guys, Brad Singletary here. I have a very special plan for you tonight and what we’re going to be discussing. I actually have my dad here. He’s our first guest. Who’s joining us from North Florida. It’s about 10:00 PM there. I hope you daddy, I hope you’re awake and that you’re going to be able to make it through this. You think you can do it. I’m also joined by my oldest son, Jackson. He turns 17 this Sunday, and I think that’s pretty special because it’s father’s day on Sunday and it’s his last birthday as a child. So he’s a w I guess we’ll call him a pre-alpha. He’s been kind of a fan of our show and some of the topics I’ve had to ask him, not to listen to a little bit mature in nature, but thanks for being here, Jackson and my dad, my mom is actually listening in my dad, asked earlier if it was okay for women to listen.

Brad Singletary (00:02:32):
And I explained we have like 30% of our audience is women. I think they’re in a desperate attempt trying to figure out what they need to do to get their man straightened out. So we’ve got a great show planned for you today. I wanted to talk with my dad here and have something that we could share together about what it means to be a man. My dad raised four sons, four strong, who were doing very well in life, and he’s done some great things and has also had some hardships too. And you can’t live for 75 years. You’re going to, you’re going to be 75 this year. Right? Right. You can’t live that long and not have a few things figured out. So I’m just so happy to be doing this. I’ve kind of wanted to do it for a long time. We had some other guests that were lined up that didn’t quite work out and I thought this was a perfect opportunity with father’s day coming. So tell us a little bit about yourself first, maybe. What are you doing these days? What’s your life like right now? And then we’re going to get into some, some historical lessons and things that you’ve learned throughout your life.

Emory Singletary (00:03:39):
Well, of late, I have been working as a copywriter for people who are in the helping business, helping families and relationships and husbands and wives. And it is very fulfilling. I’ve been able to bring into that a lot of the things that I’ve learned along the way. And so yeah, one time I looked forward to being totally retired and going to the, to The Bahamas and to Hawaii by now. But I am helping some of my family members to do some things that is important to me. And so I’m really enjoying what I’m doing.

Brad Singletary (00:04:23):
So I want to start with our first question here. What do you see? You know, a lot of men you’ve been around men your whole life, what do you see that men do poorly? How do you think men are failing? What are we not good at?

Emory Singletary (00:04:36):
I think a lot of times you stood up building relationships with family or fellow workers, et cetera. Men sometimes get into a sort of a foe, alpha stance leading too loud, too condescending, too. Self-Oriented too angry and, and drive others away.

Brad Singletary (00:04:58):
That’s interesting. It fo alpha. I love that. So they’re there, they’re pretending maybe they’re loud and colorful. We’ll talk more about that.

Emory Singletary (00:05:06):
I think sometimes in our fast paced world, we get things figured out and we figure that’s the way that things should go. And if anybody crosses us a family member and fellow worker, or even a boss, sometimes we just get red in our eyes. And we we can’t control that sometimes. And it’s not very smart.

Brad Singletary (00:05:36):
So stubborn, hardheaded, little bit disagreeable.

Emory Singletary (00:05:39):
Yeah. I’ve heard some people do that.

Brad Singletary (00:05:46):
Yeah. So I promised that I wouldn’t tell stories. I’m going to let you be the one telling all the stories here, but so when you started that answer, it was really, you said, instead of being, you know, instead of building relationships, they create this, this persona of a pho alpha, and then what followed after that?

Emory Singletary (00:06:06):
Well, but not by leading too loud,

Brad Singletary (00:06:10):
Leading to that

Emory Singletary (00:06:12):
Being too condescending or, and too self oriented, too angry. And yeah. Actually drive other people away with that kind of behavior. We, man, we even really want to show that we’re in charge or that we’re man. And we, we instead make all those potential lovers of us around a school away. And it happens too many times.

Brad Singletary (00:06:41):
So even if we’re right, you know, we, we, we have the right logic, we’ve got the right rationale. We maybe have the right answer, but you’re saying, when you’re leading too loudly, you, you push your resources away and the resources so many times or other people, you said lovers of, of you people who could love you, but we pushed them away with our correctness. We think we’ve got the right answer. You’re doing it wrong. And those are, those are things that actually take us in the wrong direction.

Emory Singletary (00:07:10):
And we may have the right answer, at least in our own eyes. But unfortunately this world is not made up up of me. This word world is made up of me and you and others. And we, in order to get along we need leaders who can lead us there, not push us there. And that sort of, I think what the alpha group is all about is trying to figure out how to lead, how to be pure in our motives and in our behavior. And once we can get there probably surprising how many people will follow us.

Brad Singletary (00:07:56):
There’s always this argument about what is the alpha do. And we’re relating this back to the animal kingdom and all these different things. When I think of a novel, I think people are following him. People are following him because they can trust him. There’s some reliability, there’s some consistency there, their principles. And that’s what we’re trying to teach people here. The first you have to lead yourself and then you lead others and there’s a, there are better ways than others to do that. So you’re saying leading too loudly. I love that little phrase that we can push people away. You

Emory Singletary (00:08:29):
Mentioned earlier that I’ve been in a lot of places and a lot of employers, a lot of businesses, one thing that I think both alphas and the other side sometimes have a problem with is as far as careers go, it’s allowing drugs, alcohol, or ambition without merit sometimes to make them sort of proud, they think so that they assume too much about how employers or other employees or spouses or others would think of them, maybe even children also. And so they sometimes act as if employers are those other people. They exist to tolerate their anxiety or their anger or their their way. And I’m sure a way to drive away all those people, including the employers, because we tend to want to be right, not the greater power coming out and us. And so it makes us uncooperative, not even tempered unsteady and undependable in the eyes of employers and houses and children and others. There’s just a better way. I wish I had found that better way earlier in my life.

Brad Singletary (00:10:00):
It’s interesting. Earlier you were saying, things can get in the way, and you mentioned drugs, alcohol ambition, and I’m kind of blown away by that because ambition, we think about ambition as a positive and maybe with the right mindset and the right heart ambition is a good thing. But you’re saying that could be negative. Ambition could be negatively affected your life.

Emory Singletary (00:10:24):
It can be so powerful that it pushes away people. Yes. You know, you’re right. And yes, you know how to do it. And yes, you know what to say, but the people around you sometimes don’t feel that way. And so they kind of assume too much about how everybody else should act. And so it turns out that they, we LIFO alphas in the alpha state, don’t do anything to draw people to us. We only tend to drive them away, whoever it is. And so it’s important to bear that in mind, as we go through life with all the ups and downs that we have to encounter that you, you can’t be right every time, at least in the eyes of those around you. And so, even though it was a good idea, even though it was the right way, if others around us don’t agree, then we sometimes have to go along to get along. And people who don’t learn that lose their jobs, they lose their spouse, they lose their children. And I think that it’s important to discover that early on, if you can,

Brad Singletary (00:11:47):
I was heavily influenced early in my adulthood by Stephen Covey. And some of the things that he talked one was seek first to understand, and then to be understood. And what he’s really saying is listen, and make sure you understand the other side first, he also talks about production and production capability. I think that’s the terms you use, you know, production and PR. So you can kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, but you’re not going to have any more goose. And so your idea might be the right one. And if you iron fist it through, you’ve alienated your team, you’ve alienated your family. You’ve alienated people that ultimately could actually provide more. And, you know, synergize is another one of his words there. So it seems like part of what you’re talking about is be willing to listen as much as you speak, make sure you’re understanding and that you’re not being too forceful. I love this thought leading to loudly. So what were some of the lessons that you learned about manhood from your own father? I did not. I never knew my grandfather. He passed before I was born. Tell me about him. We got some generational stuff here. My dad and my son are here. Talk about your own father and the good things that he taught you about being a good man.

Emory Singletary (00:13:04):
Well, he was a good man. One time I was helping him do something and I was working the pliers on a, on a, I think it was a plumbing thing. And and I was working with the pliers and I hit him in the mouth and actually broke, broke a tooth. So I didn’t do that on purpose. My sort of uncontrollable hands made it happen. Wasn’t my fault. Anyway, so I, yes, that had been me. I would have gotten pretty angry. My father didn’t, he was a quiet man. Being quiet in that situation might have might’ve led me to to less than perfect behavior later because I was trying to be the man. And so I learned pretty quickly that I had to be a good man. I had to be a good alpha. I had to be contained there, constrained, I guess, is the right word in what I did and what I said. And that led to a lot of the opportunities I’ve had in life is that I learned from my father what to do in some cases and what not to do. And that is, you know, I think an alpha has to take charge when they need to. They have to at least be an active partner in any, in any situation. And one thing I had decided early on was that I wanted to be, I didn’t want my mother, my, my wife to be the alpha of the family.

Emory Singletary (00:14:51):
But at the same time, I had a lesson or two to learn about how to be a better alpha and I’m still learning.

Brad Singletary (00:15:01):
So you’re this thing with the pliers, you had the pliers, you’re holding something, you’d lose your grip and it’s instead of slipping and busting your knuckles, your hand hit his mouth. And he, with the pliers knocked his tooth out, broke his tooth and he just kind of calmly re he didn’t react. He wasn’t angry. He just, he had, he exercised restraint

Emory Singletary (00:15:25):
Affected it, but it wasn’t,

Brad Singletary (00:15:27):
That would have been awesome to have a dad like that. I just, I’m still looking for the chance to break your tooth

Emory Singletary (00:15:44):
About my children. Did I?

Emory Singletary (00:15:50):
Yeah. I have six children. Did you say that? Yeah, I thought that was right. I lost count sometimes, but anyway, I have a son in Taiwan. He’s an internet guru, self employed. I have a daughter in Idaho falls. Who’s a medical administrator. I have a, a nurse practitioner in Florida, his work to a large medical group. And in Florida, I have an engineer, a son with a defense contractor. Who’s doing very well. He’s a six Sigma expert out in Las Vegas. I have a therapist, son who is self employed. You may have run across him out there and an Albuquerque. I have a businessman contractor who’s in the air conditioning business and doing quite well and Albuquerque. So I have a, those are my six kids. I also have a wife, is a therapist out of all of them. They have all excelled in their chosen careers. And you’ll notice that most of them got out of Dodge. They live far away from me,

Brad Singletary (00:17:06):
One move across the world to get away.

Emory Singletary (00:17:11):
But that’s yeah, that’s probably make airplanes for, right.

Brad Singletary (00:17:16):
I don’t know if you read through some of these questions that I sent to you, and I don’t know how you feel about airing some of this stuff out, but I’m curious, 75 years, what, what are some of the mistakes that have taught you the most? I believe that so many of our lessons are learned the hard way. What are some things you’ve learned the hard way as a man, as a man, as a father,

Emory Singletary (00:17:37):
Hinted at some of them, but my anger, my selfishness, my, you know, really getting on kids, things like that, that, and not only kids trying to be one of those office with my wife I believe over the years, that is that has cost me a lot of points. It would probably make everybody move far away love and compassion, or the lack thereof has taught me the right way to go. And I hope that I’m doing better these days. But while I’ve enjoyed a broad background, I’ve lived in a foreign country. I’ve also lived in about 25 different homes. I’ve been a member of 15 or so different cities. Looking back, I would have enjoyed a little bit of engagement in a community for a long period of time, a little bit more stability for me and my wife and, and especially my kids.

Emory Singletary (00:18:46):
At one time, we had kids going to high school and different cities because of moving in the middle of the school year. And so one went to where we went and one stayed. So I’ve had lots of things like that. Wow. We thought it was the right thing at the time. It turns out it would probably would have been better to have been more stable in that sense. I think kids need stability. I would do that differently if I could. And you have to control your anger, you, your breasts, miss you like learn how to communicate without your eyes getting red, the way I expressed it live a life where possible maybe all their, you know, no, they can trust. You can rely on you and they want to be near you. I had a fellow the other day who did some work for me.

Emory Singletary (00:19:46):
So I reached down to pay money left and I didn’t have enough money to pay him. I said, you know, I’m going to have to go to the bank. And let’s say, I take you some money by. And he said something that is worth hearing over and over and over again, he said, Emory, I there’s one thing I know about you. I can totally trust you. And if you say that you are going to do something just, you know, look out my window until I see you, but cause you’ll be coming. That makes me feel very good. That makes me think that maybe there is a little bit of concreteness in, in my being. And it gives me a certain amount of pride knowing that there are those who trust me, who feel like they have been able to look into my life and know a little bit about me and they feel that way about me.

Speaker 5 (00:20:46):
So other

Brad Singletary (00:20:48):
Other mistakes that have taught you things, you know, that maybe you don’t know when you’re 28 years old, but you, you know, when you’re 68 or 58 or 48, what kinds of things did you figure out that some of our listeners may be in the middle of that? You could speak some wisdom into them,

Emory Singletary (00:21:07):
You know, moving around too much, being, not being there for some of my kids because of that, moving and looking back, I think I would have enjoyed a little bit more stability in my own life. That’s, that’s one of the biggest things.

Brad Singletary (00:21:27):
So you talked about the moving around and, you know, kind of chasing these different career opportunities and things like that, which gave you a great variation of experience, but it had an impact on your family and your kids. And that’s something you feel kind of bad about looking, looking back with some regret, what would have helped you be more stable professionally?

Emory Singletary (00:21:48):
Well, some of those same opportunities I, I moved off for or separated from family for, could have been had maybe, maybe a lecture degree by having that everybody living in the same house, kind of family, everybody living in the same community. And so there was a period of time when, when that wasn’t case. And I felt like even though I was able to carry on a lot of good things in my life personally, I had other responsibilities and I should have taken those responsibilities a lot more to heart so that I could have done what was most important to me. But at the time, you know, when you see the dollar signs and you see the opportunities and it’s so easy to leave behind those, you love the most. And sometimes I would do that. I’ve lived out of town a lot. That’s not a very good way to have a family.

Brad Singletary (00:22:57):
So what are some of your big wins? What are some things that you’re really proud of yourself for doing or accomplishing? What makes you feel good as you look back over your life?

Emory Singletary (00:23:07):
Well, I have been married to the same woman for 56 years. I think that’s quite an accomplishment and I’m very proud of that. She, more than anybody has hung in there through, through all of those things that I mentioned that I sort of regret, but she she’ll keep me a few more years that would be worthwhile until I, I kick the bucket. And it’s, and if my children are honest, true, and trusted and have a relationship with God that is by their lives. That’s another thing that would be worthwhile to me. It would keep me on the positive path. I’m building a real good tribe, a pretty good people, all, and it already make, it, makes it all really worth it. They are worthwhile people. I have, I have a little family birthday list and on the wall and there’s 62 people on it. That’s my, that’s all of my people down lines,

Brad Singletary (00:24:21):
Kids and grandkids and breed

Emory Singletary (00:24:23):
It’s growing rapidly. So there’s a few that aren’t even on that list. I don’t think because they’re growing too rapidly for us to make it a little name tag. That makes me feel very good. It makes me feel that in whatever way I might have them things that could have been done better. One of the things my wife and I have done is built a pretty good tribe and they’re all good people. We love them.

Brad Singletary (00:24:57):
Someone asked in our Facebook group recently, someone asked what is w w what do we mean when we say alpha made me really think about that a lot. And I thought of three things that have to do with life. I shared this in the last episode that I think an alpha has life. He creates a life and he preserves life. And I want to break those down a little bit and get your thoughts on some of that. So the first one about having a life. So you’re alive, you’re keeping yourself alive. You’re taking care of yourself, health wise, you know, mentally, physically, spiritually, financially, you have a life you’re taking care of you first in a way, not to be selfish, but if you are the resource to the people that follow you, you gotta be strong. Tell me throughout your life, maybe some of the practical things, let you know, taking care of Emory. What have you had to learn? What have you had to, what have you figured out about say, taking care of your body financial things having a life of your own, like being the master of your own self.

Speaker 6 (00:26:06):
Yeah. I’m taking more supplements than I’ve ever taken. Yeah. Everything from vitamins to things that treat this or treat that

Emory Singletary (00:26:17):
I’m also I’m in the past year or so. I’ve lost 50 pounds.

Brad Singletary (00:26:25):
Wow. Are you serious? I guess it’s been a while since I’ve seen you make a visit. Okay.

Speaker 6 (00:26:32):
Well, I try to stay out of the pictures with my skinny self, you know, anyway, I’ve I’ve really been working at it. I, every morning I get up at six o’clock for the first 30 minutes, I drink a lot of water to get myself hydrated from the night I exercise right now, I’m doing a lot of work outside because of summer. So I don’t actually go walking, but usually the reason I don’t go to walking is because I usually take my walk behind mower and other opportunities to work in my yard as exercise. And not only that, I take all my medication directly and I have a little problem with a skin cancer sometimes because probably because back in my day, when I was running around on the beach and we didn’t have any suntan lotion, remember this was quite a few years ago. And so every so often I now we’ll get a little skin problem. And I, I immediately have it taken off. I’m about to have another one done. I’m trying to take care of myself that way.

Brad Singletary (00:27:50):
So many men are just really resistant to medical treatments. And what was it like 33 years ago or something? You had a heart attack and you’ve gone through several things like you’ve lived 30 or 40 years longer than you might have. Otherwise here you are 75 talking about waking up drinking water, taking supplements for you right now. Exercise is yard work. My dad lives on the four acres, four acres in the swamp and Moses with a push mower.

Speaker 6 (00:28:21):
Well, I have a riding mower and I use that when nobody’s looking.

Brad Singletary (00:28:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (00:28:30):
Well, people are trying to see if I’m getting any eggs.

Brad Singletary (00:28:34):
That’s when you let it go too long and now you gotta make it up quick.

Speaker 6 (00:28:40):
But that sort of activity has caused me to, I used to hire my yard work done, but I don’t anymore. And that’s probably been the biggest champion of me losing 50 pounds. It’s just, you know, getting up and doing things. I think that’s important. I’m planking right now.

Brad Singletary (00:29:01):
Are you serious? You I’m like a fat slob over here. My old man, dad is planking and waking up and drinking water. Like, come on. You were supposed to make me look so bad. Tell me about that. Let’s hear about this. Well, I’m impressed. I’m impressed. Do you even know what this is? You’re up to a couple of minutes.

Speaker 6 (00:29:24):
Yeah. That’s not very nice.

Brad Singletary (00:29:27):
Yes, that is my son says he’s 17. My son says, yes, it is a long time.

Speaker 6 (00:29:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot longer than, than a couple of minutes should be where I’m at, but I’m taking it slow. And I also

Emory Singletary (00:29:42):
Get on my inversion table daily. So that kind of takes all my kinks out from sleeping all night. Other than that, that’s about all I do. I I don’t drink it. You know, any sweet drinks. I try to just keep myself healthy. I want to live a couple more years anyway. Yeah. I want to live a few more years. So I’m trying to take care of myself a little bit better these days, about 20 years ago or so I did I maybe 23 years or something like that. I had heart surgery because of my cogged up artery. I weighed a little bit more. I and I had a heart attack. I had moved from Florida to Utah folks at the university of Florida in Gainesville, big hospital. They’re very good on most things, but they would not operate on me. I was saying they would have to wait and I would have to get a transplant.

Emory Singletary (00:30:54):
So moving to Utah was a big help to me because when I got there, the cardiologist that I went to see said, why don’t you get these specials fixed so well, they wouldn’t do it down there. And so she sent me up to salt Lake and dr. Jones there gave me a bypass surgery and he actually bypassed seven vessels in my heart. And the eighth one, they couldn’t bypass it. I think they ran out of spare parts. And so they split the eight 20 open, cleaned it out and then grafted it back. And so I had basically an eight decile involvement in that operation in my heart. Since then I’ve had a couple of catheterizations and have been found to be totally clean. And that was 20 years ago. So my heart is in the best shape ever. You know, prior to that time, I was, I was about ready to cook. And so I’m very thankful for that. So I’ve been spared 20, 23 years or so. I’m trying to make the best of it. I spend a lot of time studying and beating and, and I’m very very happy, very pleased with the way things are going. One of these days I might make some money.

Speaker 7 (00:32:38):
So an has life. He

Brad Singletary (00:32:40):
Creates a life and I don’t mean necessarily by fatherhood there, but an alpha, when I talk about creates life, he see, he see, he creates life at the party at the church event, at the family reunion, in the job. He creates life when there’s work to do. That’s something that I, I feel like I can really look back at my time with you. And, you know, you always kind of had a pretty fun personality. You always were able to laugh at things and keep things fairly light. You taught me about attitude and when we had hard work to do

Speaker 6 (00:33:14):
Crack the whip,

Brad Singletary (00:33:16):
Well, yeah, but it was, it was a matter of like mindset. You decide if this is something terrible to do or not, you decide if this is something that you can handle or not. So talk about that, creating life, wherever you go. You know, I think that’s pretty alpha that you’re, you’re adding value in whatever thing you’re involved in. You’ve been a part of volunteer situations and church assignments, and you’ve done so many things. And how do you, how do you bring life to places?

Speaker 6 (00:33:46):
Well, I get looked at kinda kind of funny sometimes because I speak to almost everybody I see, and I don’t know if that’s good or bad. If I catch somebody I will speak and I’ve gotten him some very good conversations that way I’ve never gotten into a bad conversation that way. I feel like if somebody saw to it to be there and available and they were willing to talk, then, then they might need somebody to talk to. So I sometimes whoever I’m with might say, how do you know those people? I never seen him before.

Brad Singletary (00:34:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (00:34:28):
I just think there’s so many people that just live without interaction with other people that it’s important to try to see them and recognize them and to put myself out there, not, not not as an offering or anything, but as, as another warm human who is in the same space and who’s willing to say hi, you know, go ahead. You can, why don’t you go next? I get such smiles. And when you’re not, when I’m nice to people and I try to be that way, of course that’s hard sometimes, but most of the time it works.

Brad Singletary (00:35:13):
Is that something you had to learn to do? I feel like I’m that way. As an adult, as a child, I was very shy. So my dad is right. He talks to everybody, the cashier at the grocery store, wherever it is, there’s some jokes, some corny comment or something. That’s just kind of hilarious when you think about the whole body of work there, but is that something you had to force yourself to do, you know, a skill that you had to acquire the ability to just be friendly and public? I think that’s a great example of what it means. Talking about an alpha brings life and alpha creates a life that you show up. And there’s someone who maybe they look like they’re having a bad day and you make a lighthearted comment or you try to engage them in some little conversation and you never see them again, but here’s a moment of warmth. Does that something you had to learn how to do

Speaker 6 (00:36:00):
To tell you the truth? I don’t know where that comes from.

Brad Singletary (00:36:03):
You don’t remember.

Speaker 6 (00:36:05):
I think I’ve just always, that’s my personality and probably have always been there.

Brad Singletary (00:36:12):
Okay. So creating life, taking life, wherever you go. What about things like a job? You’ve got a manager you’ve got, you know, the supervisor’s a jerk and the plan that they’ve got you on, the job you’re doing is just garbage. You don’t like you, don’t like what’s happening. You think you’ve got a better way. How can you bring life to a situation like that? We disagree with the whole thing. You don’t like the leadership.

Speaker 6 (00:36:37):
I have never had a problem in talking with a supervisor about the way things are going or with a manager. I’ve never had any problems with going to the top. And in some way, maybe it doesn’t look like a deliberate thing that I’m doing, but that I’ll try to bring it around to the topic that I really wanted to talk about. And then they start asking questions and say, well, yeah, that is a problem. How would you handle that? And then all of a sudden, my advice is being solicited. When, if I had gone in and said, you know what you should do that might not have gone over too. Well, I like it when people ask me to get involved, whatever it is that I really wanted to get involved in, but tried not to be too, too pushy about it, not getting there.

Speaker 6 (00:37:45):
In other words, I waited for that moment, maybe about bringing up something totally different that I knew that I was, they would be comfortable talking to me about it. And then all of a sudden we’re talking about other things. And that has given me a lot, lots of opportunities. I had someone tell me one time that they had been asked to take over a job as a practice manager of a, of a medical practice, large esteemed medical, medical practice. They, they wanted to know what I thought, could they do it? I said, well, sure, you could do it. But if you feel like you might have problems and I’ll give you, I’ll give you an answer that you can give to them. You know, I would like to do it, but I feel weak in several areas. And if I could have Emery Singletary, be a consultant and help, help me learn these things, I would take the job. And I was hired at a very nice hourly rate to give this person the training they needed. And they were very successful at their position. They were able to say something that they wouldn’t have really thought about. I spent quite a bit of time in that practice working with the person who was the new practice manager and giving them the benefit of my experience. I was able to, to make money off the field and my my protege, there was able to become very successful at what they were doing.

Brad Singletary (00:39:39):
Wow. There’s so much alpha in that little store. I didn’t, I never knew that. So someone is being offered a job, managing a company, or an aspect of, of a medical practice. They had some insecurities, not sure they could do it. They came to you. They went in the job offer process. They went back and said, if you will hire me and this person as my consultant, I’ll take the job. That is correct. That’s one of the, I know you don’t like my swearing daddy, but that’s one of the most badass things I’ve ever heard right there. And they did it. So a couple of layers of alpha, there there’s someone who says, I want to bite off something here that I’m not sure I can chew. I’ll need some help. And they’re asking for, you’re not only being offered a job you’re saying, hire me and someone else. That is that is so great. And then you, you show up as a consultant, the protege takes your advice becomes hugely successful. That’s that is a cool, cool,

Speaker 6 (00:40:44):
Well, that person happened to be a quick steady. So after just a few months, my services weren’t needed anymore. Cause they were Johnny on the spot. And by the way, that person today supervise as a staff of over a hundred. Wow. So they are very capable.

Brad Singletary (00:41:04):
So a lot of what you’re saying is we’re talking about bringing life. It starts maybe with a conversation you might, you’re talking about some chit chat with the manager, the director, the supervisor, the CEO, and it, it kind of naturally some of your opportunities have naturally flowed out of a conversation. And so many men, I think they just kind of want to, they don’t want to make noise, make waves. They just want to kind of do their work and go home. And they’re miserable. And just like the lady in the grocery store that you just chat and say, hello and hi. And you know, whatever you’re saying, that opportunities have come to you before you didn’t insert yourself and say, listen, I know a better way. And you guys are doing it all wrong. You engage, you create a relationship, they see your sparks flying and they see that you have some capability and some intelligence, and then they, they turn around and give you some, you know, higher levels of responsibility started with a conversation, started with friendliness, started with engagement.

Speaker 6 (00:42:07):
It just seems like I’ve found in my, at least in my experience might not be the same for everybody. But the direct way is often the wrong way. Given the, given the any abilities that I may have are not that important compared to compared to helping other people climb that ladder. And I’m just very, very, it just excites me when they succeed.

Brad Singletary (00:42:39):
There was a story that I heard my mom talking about about, there was a time you worked for free for a long time for a company. And you talk about that. And what that was about, that sounds pretty awful. A long

Speaker 6 (00:42:53):
Time, there was a medical company that had a, they had actually been evicted from their property a few months before I became acquainted with them. And they were hurting financially. They were in the red. I offered to work with them for a period of time without pay in order to be able to help them find the way out. And they agreed to allow me to do that. So after one visit to one of their facilities, I came back and and started doing some reading about something I never knew about before. And it was a way of getting money from Medicare. That was like five times what they were getting. And I even went to the state health agency and talked to them and I came back and put together a program after a little more than a year later, I left their employee as a director of administrative operations because they had suddenly come into money and they paid for before I left the architecture and contracting was finished.

Speaker 6 (00:44:24):
They were, they were under my direction for brand new office building. So they never had to pay rent again. It was a multi million dollar office building by the way. And they paid cash. It was because of a simple billing situation with Medicare. And it was very, I sometimes look for, look for problems in a way that are probably different than most people, I think outside the box and that, you know, that hasn’t always worked out, but most of the time it does because people just seem to be stuck on doing the mundane and what they’ve always done. And when they think outside the box, it turns out that there’s more success there.

Brad Singletary (00:45:22):
Wow. That’s super cool.

Speaker 6 (00:45:25):
Anyway, I did enjoy that. So that thing, and when I left there, it was because I moved out of state. I had other opportunities, but I’ve always looked back on that is just thinking that did the right thing. And this, this, by the way, was a nonprofit organization. They had to spend the money because it’s nonprofit, you know? And so, but just in the course of a year, so they had multiplied many times when they had the Nike, because they, they build it. Right.

Brad Singletary (00:46:00):
You also had an opportunity to work out of the country. Talk about that. Not necessarily the job, but just the decision. Why would you do that kind of thing? What were some of the, the cool opportunities that came along with that?

Speaker 6 (00:46:16):
Well, early on, I I was with a company that had multinational operations and India in Jamaica, and I was placed in charge with the production of those areas. I was the production manager, so I traveled to India and set up operations there that had not been done before then. I worked in Jamaica for a while, helping them solve some software problems. And then along came my vice president one day and said, you know, what we really need to do is we need to put somebody in Jamaica. And by the way, they invited me and my wife to Jamaica, I knew something was up.

Brad Singletary (00:47:05):
Okay.

Speaker 6 (00:47:06):
They invited us both to go and enjoy a week in Jamaica. And we stayed in a nice hotel and we enjoyed it and we traveled to other, other niches around we were in Montego Bay and for lodging and they had two operational units there total of about 400 employees. The the company wanted me to take charge of those two operations and possibly put them into one, one operation and join those two together. So that’s what we did. And we lived in Jamaica for two years and that was very exciting time. We enjoyed that very much and I still am in touch with one of the, the friends that I made in Jamaica today, this very day that we’re talking I was I was talking about cause he lives in New Jersey now and he’s he’s very nice kid there.

Speaker 6 (00:48:17):
There were several of the Jamaican people when I not two years was up that we were able to get into the United States to work. And some of them are now citizens of the United States. That’s worked out pretty well for them. After the two years, we were able to kind of in keeping with my modus operandi, we were able to have a Jamaican lady become the manager of that whole operation. And previously it had always been somebody who came in there from the outside from the States. So my two years was made up of management training every Saturday, all the supervisors and the managers would meet. And that would be a management training where we would talk about various ways to lead people and that sort of thing. And so out of that came, you know, somebody came forth as the leader of that group. So we left the Jamaican in charge when I left. And I enjoyed that very much.

Brad Singletary (00:49:28):
So what about the decision? I mean, they talk about move to Jamaica. You’re comfortable here in the States. You’ve got your family here, move out of the country, live in a, I guess, is that a third world considered a third world country, you know, li live in this place. You don’t look like you don’t look like anybody who lived lives there. You know, this is a very different life. What an adventure number one, but how did you work through the feelings and the fears and that’s, that’s super alpha to do what you did there. How did you get there?

Speaker 6 (00:49:59):
Well, I think one of the things I learned, I was, I was raised in the South and some of my feelings toward a black race were, I mean, I hope I don’t offend anybody by saying this we’re, we’re kind of real Southern. I felt I felt a little intimidated because I looked around and all of a sudden I’m the minority. And I learned so much just from that simple idea, I’m the minority. My wife would go down to the to the market, right by herself or with a Jamaican friends that we’d met. There weren’t any people there that looked like her. And so I thought she was very brave. Of course, she had her rewards too. We had a gated apartment complex. It would give Dan and it had, there was a pool at our back door. We watched the ships come and go from Jamaica, the Harbor there, Montego Bay.

Speaker 6 (00:51:10):
It was just a very present experience. Most of the time we never had any trouble or any anything that we’d call a crisis or anything like that from living there really enjoyed it a lot. And I think that the key though, is that it sort of set me straight on some of my own upbringing about racism. I learned I, I accepted those folks, all of them that has just peers of mine and that I was the boss, but still they were friends and they still are to this day. And that was 20 years ago or so. And I was just really thrilled with the experience. I don’t know why I’m trying to get all this experience here about the croak. And I still love they get new experiences, but I still got a lot to learn. You know,

Brad Singletary (00:52:14):
One of the things I’ve always admired about you is that you did whatever you could, you did whatever you had to. So there might have been situations in your past where you go to work in a suit and tie, something happens there to that opportunity, that job, the company you worked for, or whether it was your own business or whatever. And the next day you find yourself having to do something different and you’re driving a truck, whatever you had available, whatever was, whatever opportunity showed up, you took it and you committed a hundred percent. That’s something that I’ve really admired is that, you know, things are going to change. The economy changes. Something happens with the company you worked for and your next step may be a step down. You hope that you’re not in that situation, but that has been something you’ve adjusted very well to, with a great attitude.

Brad Singletary (00:53:06):
And you’re just taking advantage of whatever you have. Whatever’s whatever’s within your reach, even being a commercial fishermen, our family, we were, we were crabbers. We, we did that for years. I don’t even know how long exactly, but I remember multiple seasons of that, where we took our little boat and we ran our line of crab traps. And, you know, even after school, my brothers and I, we would go out and this was our, this was our living. And that wasn’t a living like we had been used to it at other times, but it was what we could do. And it was something that worked out. It was what we needed to be. Talk about that the ability to adjust and adapt

Speaker 6 (00:53:52):
To make an all of us are feelings. That number one, we can do anything. I hope that’s everybody’s feeling because I don’t think anybody is, I don’t know this destiny. It’s been hard for me to believe, man, there’s certain destinies that I appreciate. But as far as what we do, as long as we it’s honest and, and, and a worthy, and like you say, it things in the bread there’s nothing wrong with any occupation. I think these jobs that are here for us to, to work, if we, of course, we want to get the best one we can at the moment, but having done that, for example, did not spammy me at all from getting jobs that were very good jobs later on. When we moved back to North Florida, rural North Florida, I’ve been here for about 12 years. When I got here, that was why that my age 64.

Speaker 6 (00:55:05):
So I was 64. I, I, I probably wasn’t going to get on any, first of all, there’s not any executive type companies around here. There’s a where I live now. And so I decided one of the ways that I could bring in a little though was to become a trucker. And that’s when I did that. It was not very popular around my house because my wife didn’t want me gone all the time, but she tolerated it. And she was working also, and, you know, in her career and we kind of traded stories. We sort of felt like that wasn’t a good way to, to be on the, on the endings stroke care. So that maybe what we needed to do is kind of get together all the time. So that’s, that’s what we’ve been doing now for several years and doing other things is trying to enjoy life.

Brad Singletary (00:56:01):
You’ve also done some other things. Like, I don’t know, I don’t know if you still have the bees to do doing some beekeeping. You’ve, you’ve done all kinds of different gardening things and planting and, you know, working your land there. And so many like projects, what, what motivates you to do those kinds of things? Learn something totally new at an old age, take on some new thing, never done. What what’s that all about?

Speaker 6 (00:56:25):
Well, I don’t know. I philosophically and scientifically, I love bees. I know that bees bring us a living and without them, and they arrested me dying off, you know, but without them agriculture, as we know, it would not exist. They pollinate and crosspollinate and all that stuff. And they’re very important to our survival as a people. So I said, well, I could do that. So I got a couple of, couple of hives of bees and unfortunately me being off, doing other things and being too busy and so forth, my bees finally left me. Yeah, I wasn’t feeding them enough sugar water, but during that same time, I I’ve planted some citrus trees. In this part of Florida and North Florida, the climate has never been, it never felt that this was a good place to have citrus, but on this property, there’s been orange trees for about the last 30, 35 years. Those are two that I planted before, before coming back here the last 10 years. And so out, back by my Creek, I planted some more, another orange tree and a Tangerine tree and a grapefruit tree and the tree and a pear tree and some grapes. And we, we

Brad Singletary (00:58:11):
Like a fruit salad over there.

Speaker 6 (00:58:13):
Yeah. Until just recently, I had grapefruit on my tree last fall. And, and now there’s little grapefruit about twice the size of a log roller, you know, a big marble about twice that size or my grapefruit, right. And around there, they’re growing so out. It won’t be long before we’ll have more great food and they’re just loaded. So you can grow grapefruit in North Florida.

Brad Singletary (00:58:47):
It’s interesting. You’re talking about bees and you know, you’re saying philosophically and scientifically. You’re what I like about that is that you’re connected to the things that make the earth. You’re talking about something that holds the whole world together bees. And although you’re not doing that anymore, it’s something you wanted to experiment with. It’s something you said, Hey, I can, I can get a beehive going here. And I love that adventuresome experimental, like play with life a little bit, play with nature, learn, see if you can grow a fruit in a place that nobody says you can grow a fruit there. There’s something really neat about that. Why?

Emory Singletary (00:59:26):
Well like that adventure isn’t you you’ll have to ask your mother what she thinks.

Brad Singletary (00:59:36):
Oh my goodness. I’ve got a couple more questions here for you. One is, so you talked about some lessons that you learned from your father. What about from your wife’s father? I know you guys were married at a young age. You’ve lived, you know, when he was alive, you lived around him and there was lived live nearby, and there was a lot of involvement with him. And what about manhood lessons? Did you learn from your wife’s dad? Father-In-Law

Emory Singletary (01:00:07):
Well, he was a beekeeper and had a lot of bees and he would take his bees to, to the citrus groves and South Florida once a year or so, and leave him there for a while. And that would help the citrus growers. And it also helped him gather up some honey. So everybody was happy. So I was always kind of impressed with his entrepreneurship there. He also was an insurance executive and he owned, owned some land and, and so forth. And so he was a pretty good seller. He treated his kids pretty well. My father-in-law was as a man’s man, he might say he liked to hunt and fish and you had a boat and he would go out and catch mullet fish in a net that was kind of the the staple around here. If you could get a few melons and, and some swamp cabbage, man, you’re in hog heaven there, you know? And so he was a supplier of some of that.

Brad Singletary (01:01:27):
I’m going to ask you one last question here, as we wrap this up, we may need to do another, another episode with you at some point, because I think there’s just so many topics that I would love to hear more about from you personally, but I think other men could learn from that too. But if you could summarize a few things that you want, your sons and grandsons and now great grandsons to know about being a man, what is that?

Emory Singletary (01:01:52):
I think the biggest thing is just if my children are honest, true, or trusted, and they have a relationship with God that’s reflected by their lives, that would be, that would be worthwhile. That would be something I would wish for them. Of course, I’d also like to see them have a good family life that I might see them employed and work that is important. I’d like to see them

Speaker 6 (01:02:20):
In a happy home relationship with the posterity that that makes him as proud as as I am a vine. And I am, I love my tribe, my kids, I love my wife. I, I want to be everything I can be for her. And hopefully make some examples for my kids. I’m very error prone sometimes in my relationships. I, I hope to gradually work all that out before I croak. And I’m sure that there’s one thing that I, I don’t go around. I don’t wear my religion on my sleeve, but there’s one thing that I really, really hope is true about most religions that is forgiveness by a loving God. And that, that whenever I go on to meet pain and on earth, that I’ll be, I’ll be able to have some reward. It won’t be because I’ve earned it necessarily, but because I’ve came down on him to make up the difference.

Speaker 6 (01:03:45):
And I’m hoping that that’s what happened. I’m very aware these days about things I do wrong about mistakes I made and I strive to overcome them and be a better man. I think that if all of my kids, if all of my people that observe me from time to time and pay attention to, to me and my teachings, if they, if they to get anything, anything from all this discussion, it would be that, that we hopefully will all love one another and do what is right. And if that’s the case, this would be a very happy existence. And that’s what I,

Brad Singletary (01:04:43):
Well, thank you so much for your time. It’s been too long since you and I have talked and here we were here about an hour and a half, just talking about meaningful things in life. You know, one of the things that we teach men that they should do is have other good men around them. And that may be friends that may be family members. I happen to have a very good father. I know not everyone has that. Some don’t have a person. They could call dad at all. Some fathers weren’t present or maybe have passed on. If you, if your dad is talk to him and ask him questions, I remember feeling very humble as a probably 18 or 19 year old. And I took a drive of my dad and we had a, probably an hour long drive somewhere. And I said, teach me.

Brad Singletary (01:05:31):
And I just want him to teach me some things. And I haven’t always been that humble and interested in what he had to share. But as you can see here, here’s a person who’s lived three quarters of a century. He’s done all kinds of different things and met all kinds of people and has experienced wins and losses. And he can share some things with me. Same is true with my brothers. I have four, three, excuse me, three very capable brothers. And they’ve had to punch me in the mouth before. Sometimes literally, sometimes it’s it’s critique. And if I’m open to that, that’s what helps me be a better man. But I’ve got to tell the truth about what I’m doing and who I am and the mistakes that I’m making. And some of the best feedback I’ve ever gotten have come from my father, my uncles, my grandfather, my brothers, and now my friends here locally that have more access to in contact with you, need men in your life.

Brad Singletary (01:06:31):
And they’re all around you. If you don’t have a father figure that you can trust in and that you can learn from, I can bet you there’s a neighbor. I can bet you there’s a man in your church. I can bet you there’s a person somewhere in your circle who can share some wisdom with you. We need that. And that is how humans have survived all these centuries and all these thousands of years is learning from other people. What not to do. I appreciate my time here with my dad. Hey, hope you all have a happy father’s day, hoping to get this episode published before then, appreciate you being with us. Appreciate your trying to alpha up until next time. Take care of yourselves and find some good men around you that you can lean on and find some other men who need to lean on you.

Brad Singletary (01:07:26):
Take care of brothers. We’ll see you soon. Hey, thanks for listening to another episode of the alpha corm show. We believe that men changed 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

Speaker 3 (01:08:10):
Gentlemen, you are the alpha.

Brad Singletary (01:08:14):
Yes, the alpha quorum.

 

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When You Should Never Say “I Don’t Know”

When You Should Never Say “I Don’t Know”

It happened again today–twice–by two different people.

There is no more counterfeit humility known to man than the use of the easy-out reply “I don’t know” when asked for an opinion.  Two men did this today in my office and it put the nail in the coffin for me for my theory that this is one of the most likely of indicators that a man has become weak and lazy.

In the first incident, it was a man of maturity.  A former engineering professional who is struggling in his marriage after impulsively quitting a career of 35 years due to a new female manager’s bossy ways. This reactive move put he and his lady in a bad spot, first financially and now emotionally

This man is a former soldier who had spent time abroad serving in the United States military. He had been an avid runner, even completing marathons, I believe.  Today, the flashing red warning-light buzzing about my office was his frequent use of the escape-artists most elementary tool:  “I don’t know.”

When we are asked about matters of fact or of information that we simply do not have, the best and most honest answer may indeed be an admission of innocent ignorance.  I’m not talking about never being able to admit your lack of knowledge on a subject.  I’m talking about your opinions.

In this case, his wife asked, “what can I do to be more supportive?”

Maybe that’s a tough question.  Maybe that requires some contemplation and brainstorming. I triangulated the dialogue by suggesting he instead say, “let me think about that one, Babe.  I need a minute to just work on that question.”  That’s a pause button on the football game while you go take a piss, instead of abandoning the whole televised 4K event.

Give yourself a minute, dude.  It’s normal to need to think for a moment. Or a day. Or a week.  But to follow a request for an opinion with I don’t know is just pure and simple indolence.

The other fellow that did this today was a teenager.  He was nervous about being in a therapists office and wasn’t sure what it was all about since his mother brought him in without much explanation about this encounter with me.  But he had been playing a particular musical instrument for 5 years and when I asked what his favorite musician was, he did it, too.  SMH.

Really, bro?  You’re in an advanced performing group with this specialized instrument you play and eat, sleep, and breathe this thing and you can’t tell a fat, bald stranger your favorite artist?  He really froze up!  Surely for him, there is some anxiety or some other deeper issue going on that we will address as part of our work together.  But this is an everyday deal for me as I coach and counsel men and young men in all kinds of situations, seeking help for a wide variety of difficulties.

The principle I am trying to teach here is that of discernment.  We must decide.  Perhaps ALL of our thinking is judgement in which we must figure out between options.

  • Am I too close to this car in front of me?
  • What time do I need to start getting ready to be on time?
  • What is the most appropriate thing to wear to this important interview?
  • What do I want for lunch?
  • What can my wife do to help me?
  • What is my favorite _______________________?

 

Discernment is one of the Red-9:  the nine attributes of an Alpha.  That characteristic means many things and part of that is to “have my own opinions and assertively express them, even if they are unpopular.”

Sometimes you won’t know.  Sometimes you need more information.  Sometimes it isn’t convenient to discuss.  Sometimes you don’t want to cast your pearls before swine.  Sometimes, you’re being a chicken shit and you need to decisively figure out your opinion and express it.  To me, that is one mark of a strong man: he can easily express his opinion on a variety of topics, especially of ordinary, every day matters that he won’t first need to do a book report on.

Carry on, brothers. Try to never say you don’t know.  Go get your Alpha game on.