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

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

FULL TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ALPHA SHOT: One-minute Sample

PLAY FULL EPISODE HERE

One in five people have a diagnosable mental health disorder. Someone you love has a mental illness. Today we’re going to discuss common mental health disorders, how they look in everyday life, what causes them, and how men can respond to their own potential illnesses and support others so they can be successful in their treatment.

We interview Matt Marx, LCSW, who is working as a mental health clinician in the Las Vegas area.  We describe four common mental health disorders including PTSD, Bipolar Disorder, Major Depression and various forms of anxiety.  We teach men how they might recognize the need for further evaluation when the emotions or behaviors the see in themselves or their loved ones are cause for alarm. We discuss medical assessments, how to communicate with a prescriber who may evaluate you for medication, how to deal with loved ones who struggle, and other super helpful tips.

*While we feature professionals on our show, the content is intended informational entertainment purposes only.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

 Brad Singletary (00:00:02):
One in five people have a diagnosable mental health disorder. Someone you love has a mental illness. Today, we’re going to discuss common mental health disorders, how they look in everyday life, what causes them and how men can respond to their own potential illnesses and support others so they can be successful.

Intro (00:00:31):
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 (00:00:58):
Back to the Alpha Quorum show. Brad Singletary here, I’m the founder of the Alpha Quorum and the producer and host of the Alpha Quorum show. I’m here with a good friend of mine, a true soldier in the work that we’re going to be talking about today. My guest is a licensed clinical social worker who was working full in an agency, providing assessment diagnosis and treatment for mental health disorders. He was born and raised in Las Vegas has been married for 18 years. He has four children from the ages of eight to 16 and he enjoys spending time outdoors and he loves a good ginger joke. Welcome to my guest, Matt Marx longtime. No, see, but it’s good to, good to have you here, man. I feel like you’ve been avoiding me. I didn’t want you to know that that’s how I was feeling, but no, it’s been probably what a couple of years since we hung out.

Brad Singletary (00:01:47):
Is that maybe, probably so part of the problem is Matt lives on the other side of town clear on the it’s like he’s almost in California or Utah on the other side over there and I’m, and I’m way down in the Southern part of the city. And it’s like a 45 minute drive. And so I think we had a barbecue on the 4th of July or something. We did it a while back, but Matt and I worked together during his his clinical internship. And we talked about his cases and it’s just been great to see what he’s doing professionally. We’re going to take advantage of all that knowledge and wisdom that he has from his education, thousands of hours of practicum experience, internship, fully licensed at the highest level in his field right now, and is doing some good work. Appreciate you being here, Matt. Thanks brother.

Matt Marx (00:02:41):
Absolutely. Thanks for having me glad to see the mothership or the Alpha Quorum.

Brad Singletary (00:02:46):
Yeah, we got a nice place. I feel lucky to have this. I do men’s groups. And so right now I’m doing four men’s groups and some of those are online, but when we’re here in the, in the office outside of the Corona crap got to have a nice, nice place to meet here and also record this amazing show. So welcome everyone. We just want to encourage you to give us some feedback about what you think of our show. You know, we have about 15,000 downloads. I think we counted the other day. We’ve got listeners from 39 different countries and we try to mix it up with the content that we share with you. So what ideas you have, we’d love to hear that and the feedback about the things you’ve heard already. Thank you so much for being here.

Brad Singletary (00:03:33):
So today we’re going to be talking about mental health, mental illnesses, and how these things show up in everyday life. What they look like in relationships, what causes mental illness, how common these things are in our lives likely is it that someone that we’re we know is dealing with this? What should a man do if he suspects, he has some disorder and how to handle a loved one with a suspected illness. So let’s start with some of the most common types of mental illnesses. Now, there, there’s a, there’s a thick book. That’s about 800 pages that has all the criteria. We just wanted to hit a few of the common ones and things that people seem to talk about, and really just help you understand in plain terms about what that may be like for you and what you should do about it. So where do we start Matt?

Matt Marx (00:04:23):
One of the ones we see over and over again, and there’s a lot of misunderstanding about is probably PTSD.

Brad Singletary (00:04:29):
Okay. PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder. Okay.

Matt Marx (00:04:32):
When we talk about PTSD, PTSD really is there’s something really, it’s our brain’s way of dealing with really bad things that have happened to us and how we avoid consequences of those actions in the future, right?

Brad Singletary (00:04:47):
Say really bad things. Does that mean like what, what types of things we’re going to do a whole episode on trauma later, where we’re going to really go deep dive into this stuff, but just in a generic sense, what type of that things?

Matt Marx (00:04:58):
On the surface level, or looking at near death experiences for yourself, or a loved one that can be hearing about it that can be actually experiencing it can be witnessing it. It also can be watching something bad, happened to a family member or part of your job on television. Right? So really what we’re looking at is bad things that could have happened between you found a close family member or a really close friend near-death experiences, really bad car accidents sexual trauma, that kind of thing. So our brain’s way of dealing with, “Oh, this really horrible thing happened to me. And I don’t want to experience it again. So I’m going to give you reminders. I’m going to give you ways to avoid it, and I’m going to not let you forget what these bad things happens, because I never want to experience it again.”

Brad Singletary (00:05:52):
Yeah. So you don’t ever want to be caught off guard again. So here’s all this warning signal that’s happening in your body. So just circling back to the the types of things. So what about, you know, violence? You know, your mom and dad were physically abusive to each other. You fell out a tree, broke your leg. I mean, could that, does it have to be near death or can it be something where you, it was just a scary situation.

Matt Marx (00:06:15):
Everybody experiences trauma differently, and everybody has different coping mechanism. This is your brain’s coping mechanism, right? So maybe, maybe not. We have what we consider acute, which is a single car accident. For example, one thing that happened to you or we have chronic. So yeah, maybe your mom and dad fighting one time, wasn’t enough. But if you grew up in a household where they fought continuously and they never quit, and they kept throwing stuff at each other and the cops come coming all the time that might elevate, and you might develop some of those symptoms where your brain is trying to avoid that. And as an adult, it’s damaging to your relationships because, Oh, wait, I was modeled this behavior, how do I not do this in the future? How do I not experience this again?

Brad Singletary (00:07:06):
I had a really wild experience here probably a year and a half ago. I was at the gas station, just went to get gas. And as I go into the store to probably buy a monster energy drink I, there was, there were, these two kids are about 21 years old or so, you know, early twenties. And they were kicking this dude windows in, he was driving a Mercedes or BMW, nice car. And these guys were kicking the window. And I thought they were trying to break in. I thought I’m walking up on this violent situation. What happened was this guy was slumped over in the driver’s seat and the, his car was running, the doors were locked. And I think that they knew something was happening to him. So they were, it couldn’t get in the door handles. So they’re kicking the windows in they pull this guy out and they’re basically doing CPR on this guy who I, I don’t, I don’t ever know what actually happened to him.

Brad Singletary (00:07:57):
Paramedics came the fire, the fire truck came and all this stuff. And it was such a trip for me. Like for probably two weeks, I, it was hard to sleep. I felt strange being alone. I had this anxiety feeling and that was I think, a traumatic experience. So I was shaken up for a couple of weeks. It was just weird for me. I remember seeing this guy’s face. I remember hearing what the paramedics were saying. They’re frustrated. They can’t get, can’t get a pulse, you know, and I’m, I’m standing within like three feet from this whole situation. There was the th th th these vivid details to me, you know, the guy has this gray purple looking face and there’s, there’s like slobber. I mean, it was just, it was, it shook me up a little bit. So it lasted days and days, but it sort of went away.

Matt Marx (00:08:42):
The important part is you’re like, okay, this happened for a couple of weeks. So when we’re looking at the experience of PTSD, PTSD specifically is more than a month. And under the month, the over-under is a month. If it’s under a month, it’s acute stress it’s something that, okay, wait, this is something that we’re going to get over. And there’s very few, if any lasting long-term effects, next time you see somebody gray on TV, it might be like, Oh, wait, I remember this time. And it can bring up those memories, right. If it’s over the month and we’re still having problems after a month, then we might want to try to get some more help. Right.

Brad Singletary (00:09:22):
So the part of the criteria is that you’ve experienced something terrible. That could be all kinds of things. Some people talk about even things like infidelity, or just a very stressful traumatic, I think the criteria talks about a life-threatening situation. Correct? Sometimes we don’t know if it’s life-threatening or not. We don’t, we don’t know what’s going to happen. We may believe it’s life-threatening. But,

Matt Marx (00:09:44):
And kind of going back to your example a little bit. Yeah. That was, you know, a stranger, if that was your mom, right. If that was somebody who was close to you, that’s going to affect you infinitely more. Right. Right. And so, so that’s why we look at, you know, typically it’s stuff that people that we know, right. And these horrible events that happened to us. So then our brain wants to say, okay, this horrible stuff’s happened to us. How do we prevent it from happening to us in the future? Okay. We have symptoms where it comes in and reminds us when we’re not thinking of it. I’m walking down the street. Doo doo doo doo doo. Oh, wait. I saw that guy. That was so horrible. What if that happened again? What if I walk up? What would I do if I walked up to the 711 up the street right there, and I saw a guy in his car lumped over his steering wheel. Okay. Those are intrusive thoughts. Okay. Okay.

Matt Marx (00:10:42):
Other things that we’re looking for is you feel bad. Like, why couldn’t I help that person? What’s wrong with me that I didn’t see that guy. Home-Built yeah. So I have this guilt, this survivor’s guilt. They have a couple of different phrasing for it. Why would deny not have the wherewithal to bust that window open and pull that guy out? Why didn’t I call 911? Why didn’t I start CPR? Right. It’s not your fault. There’s nothing you could have done. Those guys are already a handle of it. Like every, all those steps is already being taken as not your fault.

Brad Singletary (00:11:17):
Right. But your brain, you’ll some sense of responsibility for it.

Matt Marx (00:11:21):
And being the way your brain is, it wants to feel bad about it. Okay. Another part about that too, is you change the change the way you feel about the situation. Right now. I can’t sleep. Now. I worry about it. It bring it up all the time. I have behaviors. Like it doesn’t really matter because you know, at the end of the day, are we even really safe, right? You have these weird thoughts that are contributing to that, that source of the trauma. Another important aspect of PTSD is we want to avoid people, places, and things associated with our trauma. So in our example, I don’t want to go to 711 because I’m gonna re I’m gonna walk up on this guy who is about to die. And I want to avoid that at all costs. I get feels horrible. So I don’t want to do it.

Brad Singletary (00:12:20):
Yeah. You’ve experienced something. You’re afraid that it’s going to happen again. Any, any things, TV shows, movies, stories, words. I mean, there’s endless numbers of stimulus that you want to stay away from because you’re afraid you’re going to feel those same things again. So avoidance behavior.

Matt Marx (00:12:37):
We have negative feelings. So in our example, we, don’t not only do we not want to go to 711 we used to enjoy going to seven 11. So we’re not going to go to the convenience store anymore, because what if this happens again, right. I feel bad. I don’t want to, I want to avoid it. It makes me feel sad. Whenever I see that 711 I’m always looking over my shoulder. When I show up the 711, all of these are the big clinical term is marked alterations and arousal. We experienced life differently now because of this event. Okay.

Brad Singletary (00:13:16):
Is that where you become anxious, you know, arousal, like you just, you get to, you get upset, you find emotion, you’re crying. You’re arousal, what does it mean then?

Matt Marx (00:13:25):
Absolutely. So we’re always looking over our shoulder. We freak out when we shouldn’t freak out. Like we have these heart rate, heart rate goes up. We, we don’t experience things. We don’t experience going to that store like we used to.

Brad Singletary (00:13:42):
Sort of, your physiology is all tweaked out and you’re breathing hard or you get tense or you’re.

Matt Marx (00:13:47):
And our brain is saying, Hey, and usually what I do, and I’m explaining this to my clients is I get a pencil and I flopped myself in the head and our brain says, “Hey, I don’t want you to do that anymore. I want you to, I want to avoid that. That was bad. I don’t, I don’t want to experience that anymore.” So it does that in several ways. And that’s where we find. And that’s how we develop that PTSD and how that, how that now reacts to us. Now, we kind of had this example of finding this guy lumped over in his car. And we’re freaked out about going to 711 now, now in our relationships, how much worse is that if we have a loved one or spouse, that’s a survivor of sexual trauma and we get in an intimate situation and she, and he, or she freaks out. And is that detrimental to our relationship now? And how do we, how do we better understand that going forward?

Brad Singletary (00:14:47):
Yeah. So you say your wife has dealt with you know, some sexual assault at some point in their life and all of a sudden out of the blue, or maybe as a chronic issue, there’s, she’s triggered by that. And she goes into this weird place, or she shuts down or begins to cry or has some reaction.

Matt Marx (00:15:05):
Triggers are, are amazing on, on how they affect us. If I go back, like I remember my dad worked in a construction field where he used a pipe machine and sometimes I can walk through home Depot. And there’s a section in the plumbing section where they have a pipe machine set up. And if I smell that pipe machine, I’m six years old again. Right. If I smell the perfume that my mom had when, when I was a kid and she hadn’t her master bedroom and, and you walked through a department store and you smell, they’re like, Oh yeah, my mom used to wear that. Right. Like, so smells bring us back. I like that. It just smells and touch and all those different things

Brad Singletary (00:15:48):
Read data that you’re something you see,

Matt Marx (00:15:52):
See like, yeah. So, so then it reminds our brain and we’re right back in the middle of that trauma, no matter how long it’s been sometimes.

Brad Singletary (00:15:59):
So the pain of the situation is so strong that your brain is kind of recording. Like, Oh, remember this, when you smell this, when you see that thing happen get far away, you know, fight or flight response shows up and you and your, the arousal is up. So there’s some anxiety you may become angry because your brain is saying, I know this is not good for you.

Matt Marx (00:16:21):
Right? And so back, you know what I, my visualization I use a lot is that the pencil smack myself in the forehead saying, Hey, remember, remember, I don’t want to go through that again. And it’s hard for us that didn’t experience that to help our partners through that. Right?

Brad Singletary (00:16:43):
So that seems protective though, if it’s your brain saying, I don’t want you to go through that. How does it become a problem? How do these symptoms like create issues where, you know, life is more difficult now because of this?

Matt Marx (00:16:56):
Let’s just roll back to 711, I, our convenience store. So it makes life more difficult now because your vehicle needs fuel. You need to be able to go to a gas station and fill up. So if you’ve developed this, this fight or flight response to going to fill up your gas tank and going in to get a soda that is now a problem, right. That we, we would call that clinical significance. And that is an activity that we need to be able to do.\.

Brad Singletary (00:17:26):
Can’t do it anymore. Can’t do it without serious repercussions.

Matt Marx (00:17:31):
Yeah. Now on the other hand, one of the, yeah, one of the examples I use, is a guy in hurt. I go to grocery store. The example I use is what if I get a really bad car accident and I take a big whiff of my air freshener, and it was a new car smell or another smell, let’s say, it’s a leather smell, take that big within. Right. And then I rolled my car three times and that was a traumatic, horrible experience. It was an acute, traumatic, horrible experience. Now I have no problem getting in and out of a car, but I tell you what, if I get that new car smell or that the other car smell I freak out. Now we can do a lot of work. We can do a lot of exposure, or when you’re rolling through the carwash, I’ll go ahead and get the cherry. Right. And how often does that really bother you to smell that smell? So, yeah, you can have a trauma response, but it depends on, on is it had, does it have that clinical significance where you want to work on it?

Brad Singletary (00:18:37):
So avoidance really kind of, that’s the natural, that’s the natural instinct. You want to avoid this stimulus, avoid the situations, avoid the things that remind you of that, but that kind of ironically perpetuates the anxiety. So exposure is one of the ways to do that. We talked about causes of PTSD. We get through the symptoms there. Yeah. Okay. We talked about what causes it, you’ve gone through something terrible. This is, this is affecting you beyond 30 days in ways that, you know, creating anxiety, you want to avoid this stuff. There may be anger. There could be re-experiencing, you know, nightmares. There could be just the random kind of flashbacks type of thing. What do we do about it? So I’ve had something happen to me and I can’t, I can’t live my life in a, in a normal, healthy, adaptive way with, with, with the stuff that’s going on inside me. What, what does the guy do?

Matt Marx (00:19:36):
Well, first and foremost, like don’t confuse this with treatment. It’s really important to get somebody who is qualified, who can help you develop a treatment plan and help you get and work on your defense mechanisms in your brain, right? Help you overcome some of these challenges as we’re going to mental health forever. And I was listening to like NPR or something, and I was coming home from lunch and they were interviewing Karen pants and they were talking something about PTSD and, and soldiers. And she just said, PTSD is a diagnosis of avoidance. And I’m like, why? I’ve never heard it said so plain. And so simply, right? Like that is like 20 minutes of me talking to somebody. If I, if, if I just cut that out and said, PTSD is a diagnosis of avoidance, what do we need to do to overcome our avoidance? And what do we need to do to grab those that by the horn, I’m a really big fan of identifying, talking describing and coming up with definitions. And so then when we talk about definitions, we can come, come away with cognitively ways of overcoming some of avoidance tendencies.

Brad Singletary (00:20:49):
Yeah. We’re going to do a we’ve got a whole episode plan. We’ve, we’re already setting this up to really go deep, deep dive into some of the treatment options for that. But basically you’re saying just, you know, get help, find someone that’s qualified. I’m a big fan of some people discouraged this, but I’m a big fan of, you know, you might begin with Googling it. Not because you’re trying to diagnose it or rule anything out, but just see what it says on the National Institute of Health website. See what the Mayo clinic has to say about it. Look at a few sources and say, they’re going to give you a list kind of similar to what we’ve gone through tonight and just see if it, if it fits at all, talk to some people, it may take building up some courage. One thing about men where our audience is mostly men, you know, we could have broken our leg, fall, fell off a cliff, there’s blood and it’s swollen, and we can’t even walk. And we don’t want to go to the doctor. So to go in and talk to a stranger about our emotions and our feelings. And, you know, I have nightmares at night. That seems like, I mean, you guys are afraid to look like a pussy. I don’t want to go talk to them about, I cry sometimes. I don’t want to go talk about how I can’t go to 711.

Matt Marx (00:21:58):
How about this? If you don’t go tight, talk about it. You and you’re never going to go to seven 11, and you’re always going to cry and you’re never going to be able to sleep. And you’re just spend the next 20 years. Why live with that right back to if you broke your leg. Yeah. You’d go see a doctor and he let him put three pins in it. And you’d give you a couple of pain pills and you and your walk with a limp for a little bit, and then you’ll figure it out and then you’ll be fine. You have diabetes. So you go to the doctor, he gives you some Metformin, gives you insulin insulin injections if you need it and you learn to live with it and you move on with life, why do we think of mental health any differently? Like, dude, I just want you to be better. We have 80 trips around the sun. You’re going to be affected by this for 40 of them are, you know, wait until you’re sick. You’ve done 60 trips around the sun to, to deal with this. In the meantime we exhibit anger. In the meantime we get agitated. In the meantime, we can’t go to 711. I love Slurpees. Like it would be horrible if I couldn’t go to 711 and get a Slurpee.

Brad Singletary (00:23:02):
Sleep at night, have sexual issues. Don’t want to be around crowds of people. Don’t like the 4th of July. Can’t, you know, experience life in the way that you want to.

Matt Marx (00:23:12):
Yeah. So we can work on it. We can, or you can work on it and get through it now and not put yourself through that exercise for the next however many years.

Brad Singletary (00:23:25):
So one of the things that we described there and we talked about PTSD is anxiety. That’s one of those arousal things, but I find that it’s one of the most common mental illnesses, anxiety. I want to break that down a little bit. I find a lot of people don’t really know what that means. You know, they, some people, you hear the word I’m anxious and they think that means I’m eager. I’m ready to go. I’m ready for my vacation. I’m anxious to go on vacation. And that’s, there’s a whole misunderstanding. I think with a lot of people, if you haven’t looked into this and done some reading, or you haven’t talked about it in your family or never been really exposed to it. And so I know that for example early in my career, I was working with this couple Matt on some couples counseling and I worked together for six or seven weeks with them. I’ve got homework assignments here. You’re going to go on dates. And you’re going to do these, all these lovey-dovey couple, you know, marriage things to improve their relationship. And I realized six or seven weeks into it. This is, this dude has anxiety.

Brad Singletary (00:24:31):
And I hadn’t properly assessed for that in the beginning. And so the problem was he had become an angry jerk, but that was stemming from anxiety. So let’s talk about what is anxiety? How was it experienced? What causes it, how do people deal with that? So anxiety let’s go for it.

Matt Marx (00:24:46):
So anxiety is more than just fear. Like anxiety is typically overwhelming and we don’t know how to experience it. And we’re always on edge. We’re always keyed up. We’re always muscle tension irritable, right? So the irritability with that is I’m scared to go do this. I want to avoid it. Therefore it’s easier for me to yell at my significant other, and I won’t have to go do this again, or they’ll leave me alone about it.

Brad Singletary (00:25:21):
So irritability is just fresh. You’re F you’re easily frustrated. It’s easy for someone to get under your skin. You you’re, you’re barking at them. You’re snapping at people and you’re being,

Matt Marx (00:25:32):
You know, you might be rude or do one of my favorite movies and this is going to sound goofy. I love inside out. Oh, I love inside out. Yeah, too. That is probably the best. Like sometimes I want to have it as required watching before I even sit down with like the oldest graph has person, bill heater does an amazing job expressing what anxiety is. Anxiety is our is our warning system. So with generalized anxiety disorder, right? Or just having general anxiety, our protection is over overwhelming. Now we kind of talked about that a little bit in PTSD, but there’s not that trauma component where we’re scared of that. It, you know, anxiety comes from trying to protect us from the craziness of the wild before we had houses and we’re sleeping outside on the ground all the time. Like, Oh yeah, we’re scared of snakes because they can come and they can hurt us. Oh yeah. We’re scared of big animals. Cause they can come and get us, except for now that we are domesticated and now we’re living in houses. We, we can’t turn that, turn that off. Right. So always on edge. We’re always looking for that next shoe to drop. We don’t feel like we’re doing a good enough job at work. Even though our boss is like, Hey, you’re doing awesome. I want to give you a promotion like Ali, when we, for the other shoe to drop, it’s not bound in reality. Sometimes

Brad Singletary (00:26:57):
That move, you talked about inside out, by the way, that’s an animated movie. And I have six kids. And so we would often go to the movies before COVID of course. And I usually will just sit on my phone and, you know, zone out while we’re in the cartoon while we’re in these, these animated movies. But this one was about it’s about emotions. My favorite part in that movie. It’s so funny. I think the fear was the green guy, the little skinny green guy. And he S so it’s the first thing.

Matt Marx (00:27:25):
No, there was purple, fierce. Purple. Okay.

Brad Singletary (00:27:28):
Purple but skinny kind of dorky looking thing. And it’s the first day of school and they’re like, Hey, you’re running late. What are you doing? And he’s got this big stack of papers. And he says, Oh, I’m just mad.

Matt Marx (00:27:39):
You can list of everything that could go wrong. How do you spell meteor? Hold on. The followup to that joke though, is she gets up to, to introduce herself and she totally bombs at any takes this big stack of all the horrible things that could have been done. And he’s like, how could I first seen this and throws it up in the air, that big stack of papers.

Brad Singletary (00:28:01):
One way that I describe anxiety is, you know, it comes you’re right. It’s a, it’s a warning system. And it’s a, and it’s kind of a fear response and it comes into form. So you can have these body sensations. So you’re sweaty, your muscles are tense, your stomach hurts. Your heart is pounding. Those, those kind of physical symptoms, and some people only have that. They just get this anxious feeling in their body here. I I’m defining it with the word. You’re not supposed to do that. But

Matt Marx (00:28:32):
Times like, for me, it’s difficult to remember concentrating difficulty remembering, and my mind goes blank. It doesn’t matter how many times I said this. Right. I’m like, hold on. Yeah.

Brad Singletary (00:28:45):
So you’re it. You’re feeling it in your body? When I was in, I don’t know, seventh to eighth grade, I had this serious sweating problem. Like I literally would have to wear two t-shirts to school because even that didn’t help my whole arm pit all the way down to like middle of my waist, just this huge sweaty mess. And I didn’t know it at the time. I had no idea that that was some, some anxiety, so it can be in your body. And it could also be in your thoughts, you’re worried. You’re, you’re afraid. Anticipating things, you, you, you just expect bad things to happen. What’s the word in there? A sense of impending doom. So you just, or you can have all of that. The thing about anxiety is yes, it is protective. So we have the fight or flight response. Some potential threat shows up and in, and in our ancestors’ past, that may be, that was a bear. Let’s say, bear shows up and you’re living your family in a cave. And the fight or flight response is your body’s energizing system. To say, you need to fight this bear, or you’re going to die or flight, which means run away. They’ve also added freeze. We’re going to talk about this more in the, in the trauma episode. So this is good. We need that, but we can be

Matt Marx (00:29:59):
Hacked. We can be tripped, tripped out. We can

Brad Singletary (00:30:01):
Be. You ever seen a scary movie? Yeah. My wife loves scary movies. I can’t, I don’t know why you would be entertained by getting too scared out of you, but

Matt Marx (00:30:11):
Wire you’re entertained by this my heart. So I crazy. I, I try to,

Brad Singletary (00:30:18):
I sit there with her sometimes and keep my eyes closed. And I think the most reason why we watched, I asked her to, I told her I couldn’t do it anyway. I have this sensitive sensitivity to anxiety so we can be triggered. We know this is a fake, we know this is a Hollywood film done with CGI and this isn’t, there’s no real threat, but our body doesn’t know the difference sometimes between these threats. And so we can imagine the worst thing happening. We’re we’re creating this scenario that doesn’t even exist. So we have this mental cognitive, these, these thoughts or images, so thinking anxiety, and then we can feel it in our bodies as well.

Matt Marx (00:30:59):
One of my favorite things to kind of point out to people sometimes is like, look, these are automatic responses, right? They’re automatic. Do you think about having your heartbeat? No. Okay. Then that’s something that your brain controls. Do you think about your breath? Well, sometimes can you control your breath a little bit? Okay. Can you, what about your fist? Can you ball up a fist? Can you move your arm? Well, absolutely. But your brain controls all that your brain is what controls your body. Sometimes it does it on purpose. Sometimes it’s your subconscious saying, okay, we’ve got to beat. We gotta beat. We gotta beat, Oh, you know what? This is scary right now. We need to move. We need to up the beats, hope we need to open up the blood vessels so that we need to breathe heavier so that we can either run bite or, you know, just kind of hide. What are we going to do? Our pupils dilate. Like there’s a whole bunch of physical reactions that our brain tells our bodies to. Do

Brad Singletary (00:31:54):
You remember fear factors that show still on fear factor? No. Remember that show where they would eat the bugs and they would win prizes or whatever fear factor. Anyway, one of them was, there was a they had this crane or this big tower thing over like a Lake. And it was maybe, I don’t know, a hundred feet up to whatever the distance was, way up in the air. And there were strapped to this, to this pole thing. And they had had a heart rate monitor on them. And you think this is going to scare the out of you, and it’s going to make your heart race. But you could see in the camera’s kind of zoomed up in the person, way up in the air, on this tower. And if their heart rate went over, whatever number 120 or whatever it is, they were going to drop hundreds of feet down into this water.

Brad Singletary (00:32:35):
And I guess that they knew that, you know, this wasn’t going to harm anyone, but they didn’t want to fall and they wanted to win the prize. They wanted to win the contest. And so you see people in there talking to themselves and it’s like, Oh, I’m calming down now. Now it’s now it’s an 89. Okay. I’m feeling better now. Now, now I’ve got my, my pulse rate down to 85 or here we go, I’m calm. And another person would just be freaking out. I gotta find it. I bet there’s a clip of that somewhere on YouTube, but we can control the pace of our heart. We control our breath.

Matt Marx (00:33:05):
Yeah. Don’t look down. Just look up. You won’t realize that you’re hundreds of feet in the air. If you just look up

Brad Singletary (00:33:11):
Also another cool movie thing was from American sniper, Chris Kyle was there. He’s got somebody in his scope or he’s training. I don’t remember what part of the movie was, but he’s, I ended up as target and you can barely hear it in the movie. You kind of miss it if you don’t pay attention. But he says, if you control your breathing, you control your brain. And that’s one of the things that happens when we’re anxious, we start eating fast. And then our body is like, Oh no, see, look, you feel this, this must mean there’s something bad going on. And so we misinterpret all that and we get more scared and more freaked out unless we know what it is. So. All right. So we’ve talked about how we experiences in daily life. How does it affect us? You know, in relationships or what’s the, we talked about like symptoms, but why does it suck? Why, why, why does it, you know, because I am too scared to leave my house. Can’t leave my house. I, the sky is falling.

Matt Marx (00:34:09):
Yes. Something bad is going to happen to me. If I don’t do this, then this is what’s going to happen.

Brad Singletary (00:34:16):
Yeah. There’s also that with this could, there could be avoidance and it’s not necessarily related to trauma like PTSD, but I’m scared of judgment from people. I’m scared of looking like a fool. So I don’t want to go to the event. I’m skipping out on things. I’m missing life. I avoid the, the job interview because I’m afraid I’ll, you know,

Matt Marx (00:34:36):
Oh, the foolish. I don’t want to speak in public because I’m going to trip over my words and I’m going to forget what I’m saying. And by the way, when we talk about memory loss and, and clarity thought, like that’s a symptom of anxiety. So now we’re freaked out that we’re going to stand up in front of a room full of our peers. We’re going to stand up for a rueful people. And we’re going to stand up there and say even though you’ve prepared, even though you’ve written a beautiful speech, even though you’ve had speech writers help you out, that fear comes across. And then you forget how to like, read, like shut down. Like you’re up there, like hooked on phonics, trying to learn how to read all over

Brad Singletary (00:35:16):
Again, graduate school. Oh my

Matt Marx (00:35:19):
Gosh. All right. You stand up there. Like I know this, but so that’s how anxiety affects our daily life. Now, now take that very specific example that a lot of people have experienced. And now we, we ratchet it up three more points and that’s our daily experience driving our car home from work. We may not have ever been in a car accident, but we understand, or you know what? I would love to catch that flight to Tahiti. I love to do it. It’d be awesome, et cetera. I’m not getting on a plane. You’re going to tell me you’re going to get in a tube full of the people and hurdle yourself through the air at how many miles an hour pass. Okay, well, hold on air travel, exceedingly safe there’s websites. You can go on and see the odds. Like how long does that plane flight have to fly back and forth before there’s a problem, right?

Matt Marx (00:36:21):
But you had that fear. And by the way, it may not be fear of flight. These are very specific things, but generalize over so many different things. I don’t want my kids to go to play sports because what if they break their leg and they walk with a limp, the rest of their life. I don’t want my kids to play outside because the sun beats down on them. It’s too hot. I don’t want my kids to. And why aren’t I, by the way, you and I experienced all this stuff. Why aren’t we well, cause I have this anxiety. I have this fear. Whether or not it’s fair, whether or not it is accurate, I don’t want to experience it.

Brad Singletary (00:37:01):
Great. So the very common thing, generalizing anxiety disorder, the most common diagnosis out there, as far as the last, I heard different forms of anxiety, things like OCD. We won’t get into all that, but what do we do about it? So we, we recognize is happening. We know I’ve got sweaty hands and you know, and I’m, and I’m tense and I’ve got muscle aches and I have, you know, my stomach cramps up every day. There’s a staff meeting, or I believe that they’re going to fire me every time. There’s a conference call. You know, I understand this is a problem for me.

Matt Marx (00:37:36):
All right. So one of my favorite, one of the things I’ve learned the most in graduate school was this answer. It depends. Okay. So, and when we talk about it depends like it depends on severity. It depends on what it is, if you’re to the point and have you waited so long and narrow to the point where you can’t leave the house and you can’t do any of this other things, and you know what, maybe we might suggest talking with the prescriber to get that under the control so that we can then treat other, treat it. If you know what I’ve got this very specific thing that I’m scared of, and I need, need to overcome, then we’re going to do some insight. We’re going to work it out. I know that there’s that website on statistics on airborne travel, because I had to work that through with somebody just a couple of weeks ago. And okay, well, let’s look up the flight between United Las Vegas and lax would have to fly for 472 years before they had a fatal accident. That’s a statistic. Wow. Right. I

Brad Singletary (00:38:36):
Did that before. I had a real fear of flying. And what I did was I actually went through the FAA website. I think it is. And I read every incident report for every American, you know, airliner air travel company and all the way back to nine 11. And every single one was like the food cart, you know, ran over someone’s toe. And they wrote an incident report. You know, there, there was turbulence and the flight attendant twisted her knee and it was all this mild, mild stuff that, that kind of helped me that did help me.

Matt Marx (00:39:10):
And then that fear of flying. And then I wrote, then I was reading some of this stuff like, cause I kind of did that same, same exercise. And the runway was IC. They made a turn and the one tire went a little bit wide and it fell off the runway, right? Like no harm, no foul, except for, we’ve got to write everything up.

Brad Singletary (00:39:33):
One of the things I recommend that people do with this and anything, any, anything they come to me with really is look at, let’s go check out your medical health. You know, when’s the last time you had blood work done. I just had a whole extensive blood panel done on myself. They did this whole panel and everything was everything checked out, but there’s all kinds of things. You may have some deficiency in some minerals, something, you know, and that kind of tells them what, if there’s any medical treatment they might do. You know, if you’ve got blood sugar problems that can affect how you feel emotionally, that can affect what’s happening in your body. And then you’re like, Oh no, I’m sweating terribly just as anxiety. And so I’m afraid, no, this is, this is a blood sugar issue you’re having, this is something that you got to Hartford

Matt Marx (00:40:17):
And you got blood that Snickers commercial. Right? Like I love that. And I point that out to some of my clients all the time. Okay. Hey, look, you know, that, that thing I hear have a snake, like there, Sasquatch running around there. I hear how the Snickers and then it’s your girlfriend all nice and sweet again. You’re you? And you’re hungry. Yeah. You’re not, you’re not the same. Right? Like, okay. So that is a physical effect that affects some of our emotions. So your thyroid, if your hormones are out of whack, then your emotions are going to be out of whack. So sometimes we have to have these rule outs. Is it part of a medical condition? Substance abuse gets kicked out when we talk about mental health health a lot. But if you’re in the middle of substance abuse, of course, that’s going to amp your anxiety.

Brad Singletary (00:41:02):
Yeah. They say a while I got a drink just to, just to calm down. Well, no, you’re just chasing withdrawal. And so by the end of the day, end of the Workday, you’re anxious because you’re, you’re chasing this cycle.

Matt Marx (00:41:12):
We’re out of Nevada and in Nevada, marijuana is illegal and I don’t have a plus or minus. I don’t care. What I care about is we’re not honest about marijuana use. And one of the things with marijuana use is it helps with, they say that, Oh, I have anxiety. Therefore I need to smoke weed. What I’ve kind of found is that exacerbates some of that anxiety. And when we never talk about it and it’s never open, weed was taboo for so long. And so, but now we don’t have this social construct to say, Oh, well maybe we shouldn’t use it here. And we shouldn’t use it. They’re

Matt Marx (00:41:50):
Not all my anxiety. People smoke weed. But 95% of my weed smokers have anxiety. Oh, interesting. And that’s not a formal thing, but that describes it fairly well. And one of the things I love to tell him, he’s like, Hey, remember when you were a kid. Yeah. Remember when you wanted to go out and play. Oh yeah. And your mom said, no. They’re like, well, yeah. And they’re like, not till you get your laundry done. They’re like, Oh yeah, yeah. I did that. And you know, that happened to you all the time. Like, remember when you’d pull the sheets back and you dump all your clothes underneath your sheets and then for the sheets back over all your clean clothes and then take their dirty clothes hamper to your mom and be like, Hey, I got to go down with the laundry. Right. And you never did the laundry. You just masked the problem. Just moved it. Yeah. So, so I mean, that’s my soap box on that is like, Hey, listen, we just mask this problem. We’re going to put the sheets over it. We’re not going to deal with it. It’s still there. We still need to overcome it. We still need to deal with it. Put your feet in the dragon with a bit of water.

Brad Singletary (00:42:56):
Yeah. You might get some haters on that I’ve had, in some ways I think something like that, we got to do a whole nother show. I don’t care. But yeah, I do. You do you, but be honest about it. Yeah. Be honest about it and make sure that there aren’t other things in general, we’re talking about like with medication and stuff like that maybe is a good place. There are plenty of chemicals that could help you with these things. Sometimes it might be cannabis products. Sometimes it might be benzodiazepine. Sometimes it’s an SSRI or some other, you know, medication, beta blockers I’ve even seen prescribed for this stuff. So in general, when we’re talking about medications, so somebody says, I’ve got a problem with one of these disorders we’re talking about. They go to the doctor, they say, okay, I recommend you take this medicine. Here’s this SSRI, here’s some Lexapro or whatever it may be. How should a guy be reasonable about looking at that? Some people reject it completely and say, there’s no way in hell. I’m taking a psychotropic med. Others would say, yeah, I need more double it up. Can I get three of them? You know, and they maybe want to overuse it. So what’s for the person who’s just beginning to treat their symptoms with medication. They go to the doctor and they’re given something, how might they reasonably and rationally approach that?

Matt Marx (00:44:14):
So medication super tricky because back to my favorite grad school answer, it depends, right. It depends on what the, what the underlying cause of that, that it needs to be treated by the psychotropic medication. Right. So if, and what, we’re going to go to the diagnosis that we’re going to go to here and I’ll go to bed is bipolar. Okay. That’s going to be a longterm treatment. Something that is anxiety, especially in anxiety that is it’s popped up very recently. It is conceivable that you might only be on it for short term. However, I do know several people that have been on psychotropic medication for depression and anxiety for a very long time. And so I’m a big fan because it works. I’m a big fan because if you’re so anxious, you can’t leave the house. It helps you get to the point where we can work on it. It gets you out of the house. It gets you to where, where we can then explore and figure out what’s going on. Yes,

Brad Singletary (00:45:20):
You may just need a little bit of help. Ultimately, this is, this may mean a whole change in all areas of your life. You know, spirituality, relationships, what, how you’re thinking. But if your physiology is out of whack, your heart’s racing and you can’t, you can’t slow down that arousal. We talked about earlier, it’s going to be hard to think through the cognitive behavioral therapy that you’re going to. And so the medication can just kind of help stabilize, you know, equalize some of your chemistry a little bit and, and it may be temporary. Maybe long-term

Matt Marx (00:45:51):
Acute. You break your leg. Yeah. You, you might have something going on just for a little bit. Right? Same thing with mental health. Sometimes it’s acute. Sometimes it’s chronic, right? Sometimes we have chronic diseases and we have acute diseases, acute diseases like breaking your leg, chronic disease like diabetes. And so same thing with mental health, we have stuff that’s super short-term and we can deal with it fairly quickly. And then we have stuff that you might take a little bit. We might have to look at it a little bit longer, and it kind of depends on you, your prescriber, your, your, your team, your prescriber, your therapist, your family, and you.

Brad Singletary (00:46:32):
So when it comes to working with the doctor, I’m a fan of, of medic medical intervention in general. I just think science is amazing. Medicine is a beautiful thing that we’ve figured out so much, and it’s not a fix all for everything, but I think it should have, it has its merit and it should be considered respectfully and really looked at with some, with a rational mind. It may take people. Sometimes I took three different medications for anxiety. After my divorce really had a hard time and I ended, I took three different ones. What helped me was to F I talked to my family and I found out my sister had been taking Lexapro. I had no idea. Well, knowing that that works so well for her. She’s my sister. We share some chemistry. We share, share some genetics here. So I went to that one and it was the, it was the magic trick.

Brad Singletary (00:47:20):
And I probably took that. Maybe it was probably like five years. And I finally got to the point where I felt like I didn’t need that, but it may take some time for them to get to that to get to, you know, figure out what it is you want. One really cool thing that I learned is so in like medical shorthand, there’s all these little abbreviations. And you know, if you’re talking about treatment, you might write it like TX talking about symptom. You might write S X, well, RX, we’re talking about prescription or medication. Why do they write RX? Do you know the answer to that?

Matt Marx (00:47:55):
I know history is HX history,

Brad Singletary (00:47:58):
X yeah. Behavior BX, or there’s a lot of different things. So recipe it’s from recipe. So it’s the Latin or whatever, whatever the language is, but it, but it comes from about it’s about recipe. And, you know, literally used to mix it up in that little crucible thing and crush up the medicines and whatever. And they had, would kind of identified this recipe. Well, how do you have a recipe when we’re such complex chemical beings that, you know, I mean, if you look at female chemistry, for example, there are different every day with hormones and whatever you, if a guy, you know, you put on some weight, you lose some weight. Now your chemistry is different. You’re three years older than when you started, your chemistry is different than the recipe might need to change. And so this is not something that you’re going to, they’re going to give it to you.

Brad Singletary (00:48:46):
It’s not like, Oh, you have, you got a toothache. Here’s some medicine. And you know, as soon as you’re done just quit, this may be a long-term thing. So when one of my clients has gone to a doctor and has some kind of psych med, I tell them, give it at least a year. Not that particular medication, but talk to your doctor every time they want you to come in every month or whatever it is for a year. By that time, they might have something figured out. And it just gives people a reasonable expectation about this. Could you could take the fourth pill before they really know, or am I taking it in the morning or am I taking it at night? You know, so

Matt Marx (00:49:27):
I’ve seen miracles happen. Yeah. Seriously, just with a little white or blue or green or whatever color you take the blue pills, mind your business. No, I think that’s a great answer though.

Brad Singletary (00:49:45):
So right. We talked about medication. People are going to probably want to do some, some therapy. You know, there’s some, there’s so many cool things that you can do to learn to deal with this. We won’t get into them now, but you got to talk to some professionals. If this is getting in the way of your relationships, your parenting, you can’t do your job. You’re afraid to go to the mall. You know, you in your pants sometimes when something scary happens. Oh, one thing we missed on the PTSD, maybe I’ll paste this in later. Another symptom of PTSD is the startle response, you know, an exaggerated startle response. So you get spooked and you and your jolt and you’re, you know, it’s, it’s more than just something scary really happened, but it’s exaggerated. And it happens all the time that start over. Yeah. Hypervigilance that’s w

Matt Marx (00:50:36):
So just kind of a bookend on the medication. It works because it works. Conversation is an honesty with your prescriber are key. Don’t think just because you’re doing better, you should stop. Because one of the reasons you’re doing better is because it might be because of the medication. A lot of medications take a while to build up, like more than just a day or two, like a week, two weeks, three weeks, and they need to be titrated or they need to be taking, I need to ramp up and they also need to ramp down and you need to do that with your prescriber, the dangers, especially with something as chronic, it was like bipolar. I’ve seen several times with several different clients where you know what I’m doing. Awesome. Woo. I’m good to go. I don’t need to take this pill anymore. Why should I have to take this pill? I’m doing great. Yeah. I was, I was a mess three weeks ago, but I’m doing awesome now. And then they take the pill or they stopped taking the pill and they crash and the dangers of hospitalizations kind of go up. So be it.

Brad Singletary (00:51:44):
Yeah. That’s, he’s so right about that, that you can, there’s all kinds of like rashes with some of these medications. You can put your body into shock if you suddenly stop, but like, you totally have to be to begin and end this stuff with the, with consultation, with your doctor. Now, one thing, I guess I’m a fan of too, you mentioned communication is you, you need to learn some language, you know, that your doctor’s visit is going to be quick. You know, some of these are 15 minutes. If you’re lucky to sit with your prescriber, so you need to know the language and you might prepare for those with some bullet points. Maybe you’ve done some reading about anxiety. And so you have racing thoughts, for example, or whatever. If you say racing thoughts, the doctor knows exactly what you’re talking about. If you say, I’m have this perspiration, you know, the sweating issue, or I’m having be able to describe heart palpitations and know that that’s the name for it. Because if you just go in there, I don’t feel well. And I’m, I’m scared. And I, and they don’t know if this is in your mind. And so you got to learn some of the buzz words, I guess, for how to describe what it is you’re feeling. And those things are out there. Just do a little reading on it.

Matt Marx (00:52:53):
A really great resource is if you’re seeing a therapist and say, Hey, how can I accurately describe this to my prescriber so that I can get some of the best medication Brad and I can rattle off? Oh yeah, the heart palpitations. I’m experiencing cold sweats. I’m experiencing night sweats. I’m experienced so we can help. We as clinicians and we, as trained professionals can help you accurately articulate. I’m a big fan. I don’t care if you’ve been seeing therapists for 10, 15 years. Okay. My first two or three sessions, we’re going to go over definitions. We’re going to go over. This is what this is like, this is how our body reacts so that we have that vocabulary so that when we talk to, okay, you know what, this time for me to go to prescriber, I’m going to go to my nurse practice, psychiatric nurse practitioner, my psychiatric per PA physician’s assistant. I’m going to go to my psychiatrist and I’m going to say, this is how I’m experiencing things. This is how my body’s reacting. I need help with these five major symptoms.

Brad Singletary (00:54:01):
Yeah. So being able to do that really starts with educating yourself. You can do that with a professional. There’s tons of great material out there. We’ll post some links to some good websites we can read about symptoms and mental health. And again, the point is not to circumvent the medical or professional world it’s to prepare yourself for it, to be able to go in there and explain what’s happening. Think of how complex your emotions are and your thinking patterns. And what’s going on with your body. Boy. That’s if you can, if you can just be prepared with some of that. So educating yourself really important. Some people are really nervous about medication or starting their kid on, or they don’t want to start taking something heavy or whatever. I saw a good little, I dunno, comic strip or something one time. And it’s this guy sitting in his doctor’s office.

Brad Singletary (00:54:46):
And he says, you know, I don’t feel well. And the doctor says, well, you need to drink more water. You need to get more physical activity, get more sunshine talk to more of the people that you love, give some service in your community. And, and come talk to me in two weeks. And so there’s so many things. If you’re not ready to do that, yet, there may be plenty of other things while you’re eating and drinking. I swear to you, if I eat a bowl of spaghetti, I’m going to be off in about an hour. It’s great. Does this thing to my blood sugar, what happens? You know, if I eat a big old thing of like Panda express, like fried rice, if I eat a bunch of carbs, I turn, I get, I turned into the Hulk, man. I don’t know what it is, but what you eat, what you drink, sugar does that for some people, I’m not a dietician.

Brad Singletary (00:55:29):
I’m just saying those things matter. If you, if you haven’t been outside in three weeks, there’s no fresh air. You’re smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. You know, you might not need psych meds. You might need to quit freaking smoking. You ha you, you know, you’re eating, you eat potato chips and haven’t showered in three weeks. Those things might help you feel better if you, if you change that up a little bit. So if you’re not ready to jump into medication, understandable, I get the controversy. I get the fears. You may end up with that, but make those decisions with some people that you trust, you know, a professional’s going to shoot you straight family members sometimes don’t know what they’re, you know, that they don’t have a lot of knowledge about this stuff to to share, but open it up to someone and, and hopefully people that you trust, do some research on your own and consider talking to a professional and they can guide you to, you need to check this doctor, Oh, maybe you a sleep study, ask your primary care physician about that.

Brad Singletary (00:56:26):
So what’s going on with your body is going to affect what’s happening with your mood and your behaviors and so forth. So, all right. So another super commonly misunderstood disorder is bipolar disorder. What’s funny to me is people just throw this term out there. Like you’re, you know, somebody has a mood, somebody gets angry, you know, you’re pissy at the family event, a family barbecue. And you’re like, Oh, they’re so bipolar. They think they’re describing behavior. But w what we want to do is break it down. I’ve even heard of people that have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and given medication. And they don’t even know what it is. I talked to a person when I was at another clinic that I worked at, who had medication, had been doing treatment therapy for a couple of years, and didn’t even really know what it was.

Brad Singletary (00:57:14):
So I busted out the DSM and kind of went through the criteria. And they were like, thank you. I had no idea. That’s what this is I had to, there was some parts of that. I had no idea, you know, there’s no, their mood is kind of weird and they, and they have these problems maintaining stability. But so we’re going to go through some of this because it’s, it’s common. It’s also commonly misunderstood. If you get off at something, doesn’t mean you’re bipolar. We hear that stuff a lot. And or if someone is, is a, is a little different now, or they’re, you know, they’re going through something. And we, we want to throw that out there at the same time. Other people clearly have the symptoms of that, and it’s just missed it. I’ve seen 50 year olds. They live their whole life, maybe with this, their whole adult life anyway. And no one ever knew it, no one ever suspected it. They never got checked out. They’ve had problems that we couldn’t go. We could go back and say, see this one, see what happened there. What happened in this event, in your life and all these, this pattern. So we want to talk about the patterns and take it away, man.

Matt Marx (00:58:13):
Okay. So I went to break it down to its simplest explanation. I usually take my hand and I make a wave that goes up. It goes down. Now the waves about six inches tall. And we as human beings normally go through this type of emotion, right? We have highs. We have lows. We might go dip down just a little bit. We might dip up just a little bit. We win the lottery. We dip up on a background of dies. We dip down a little bit. That’s normal. That is normal behavior. What I’m looking at, and I’ll raise my hand as high as I can. We typically call that mania. So we, we, we live life super high. And then all of a sudden something happens, something clicks. And then I make my hand go as low as I can. And I say, as low as I can, I guess and say, okay, now we can’t get out of bed.

Matt Marx (00:59:07):
So we went from being super awesome spending money that we don’t have. We went from having difficulty concentrating. We, we went from doing things all night long, staying for days at a time we go from, from all those symptoms and, and criteria, what we call mania. We go from those emotional highs to the deepest, dark, as love as a depression. I can’t get out of bed. I have feelings of worthlessness. I’m super sad. We’re going to talk a little bit more about depression as its own on its own, but just understand like depression is a symptom and it is a diagnosis. So we can have depression associated with PTSD. We can have associate depression associated with anxiety. We can have depression associated with bipolar. So bipolar is really that mood and stability, where we have super highs and super lows. We can re cycle rapidly, like within a day, or we can set up a cycle more long-term it can take two or three, a couple of weeks, but we’re experiencing super highs and super abnormally, super high as an abnormally, super lows. And it is affecting our behavior, our relationships, our jobs, every aspect of our life. We don’t just see it. Oh, you know, when I’m at home, I get super happy at home. I get super sad. No, when I’m at work, I take unnecessary risks. When I’m in a good mood. When I’m in a bad mood, I can’t open up my door and I just cry in my office.

Brad Singletary (01:00:47):
Unnecessary risks. Like what kinds of things like your, Oh, it can be taking could mean and not necessarily at work, but in general, what does that mean? Risk-Taking

Matt Marx (01:00:55):
Okay. Sorry. I touched on it just a little bit. So risk taping, spending money. You don’t have gambling with money. You don’t have, and we’re not talking about a gambling disorder by, you know what? I’m so awesome. I can’t lose elevated. Self-Esteem I’m so awesome. I do everything right. I’m Bulletproof. Oh my gosh. And you know what? I do everything perfect. Nobody else does anything near as well as I do, dude, you just took, you just took a vacation for a month and the company’s still here. Yeah. But I’m awesome. So this elevated self sense of self-worth

Brad Singletary (01:01:30):
Is that different from just say a narcissist. So he’s always, you know, narcissist always thinks that about himself, but this is different with like bipolar, because it kind of comes and goes. Right.

Matt Marx (01:01:40):
Well, yeah. So, so that’s the peak, right? So we had these awesome peaks in behavior. We have these awesome peaks of narcissism and then, Oh, wait, everything falls apart. And I go crash and back to the deepest, darkest lovers of depression. So how can somebody have the dichotomy of I’m super awesome. I I’m the most important person ever. And then, Oh, wait, I’m worse. And then like a week later, I’m worthless. The week later I can’t get out of bed. It doesn’t matter what I do. I’m I’m done. There’s a very highest suicide rate associated with bipolar. The scary part. Is it the depression part? That’s not where we worry about added bipolars with suicide suicidality. It’s when they’re at the top and Oh, I’m feeling awesome. Oh, wait, I feel myself going down and I don’t want to experience that again, dude, is it feels great to be up. Yep.

Brad Singletary (01:02:43):
People describe it. Just like euphoria, like you’re on a drug you’re just super productive. You’re creative. And I’ve heard people I’m going to stay up all weekend and write a book. You know, my mind is just popping with all this potential and all these things and I feel so good. I’m getting it done. And my garage is clean and everything’s wonderful,

Matt Marx (01:03:03):
Which is great. But then you go to read the book and it’s super tangental. It’s got word salad. Oh yeah. I was going to clean that up and post and you’re like, Oh, okay. Like, like people brought in these things that they’ve, they’ve written and I’m just like, I have a really good imagination, but I can’t follow this. And then I start questioning my ability to read. So, so we’re just kind of all over the place and yeah, we’re doing tons of stuff for not getting anything done. Yes.

Brad Singletary (01:03:33):
There seems to be some similarities with like hyperactivity and ADHD, some of those symptoms and whatever. And apparently a lot of, a lot of children are diagnosed with ADHD when it’s really something more like a pediatric bipolar. But so can’t not sustaining attention. You’re, you’re, you’re sped up. You know, you’re really talking really fast. So that looks like the hyperactive ADHD kid talking really fast, but this is February. This is happening. This is, this is only this, this 10 day period or this several days or something that’s happening. This is not who they are all the time. So they go through these uncharacteristic changes. They become super different.

Matt Marx (01:04:10):
It’s an it’s untypical characteristics. It becomes typical for them. It becomes characteristic of them. And so when you’re suffering from this, you go for the, all these highs, you talk super fast. You don’t let anybody, I can tell people on the phone when they’re being manic. Like I can’t say, hi, my name is Matt. Like they’ve wrote a whole conversation and they don’t come up for air. You. And I might call that pressured speech when we’re getting educated. And we talk about, okay, you know, go to your provider and say, listen, I talked with my therapist. I talked with this professional. He identified several symptoms that I’m experiencing and said, medication might be advantageous. And you hand them this list. And they’re like, Oh yeah. Oh, and there’s the F 31.9, like, okay. And I know exactly what to have in that 10 minute consultation you have with that provider.

Matt Marx (01:05:07):
They know immediately that this person is suffering from, from this disorder. They have the, the coding for it. And by the way, you, as a layman might not understand the code, you know, have the access to coding. So that comes up here like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me verify these symptoms that this person’s feeling a good clinician will say, okay, well, let me verify these symptoms. And that may do a couple of handful of rule. Lots of things that, but okay. Yeah, you’re right. I’ll we’ll, we’ll go with that. One thing I find that

Brad Singletary (01:05:42):
A lot of people are mistaken about is they, they think it’s, you know, you’re always up or you’re always down, but there could be long periods of kind of baseline stuff in between. I mean, you could, you could be totally normal for the year and have a depressive episode, you know, November, December and be fine in January, February, and then March and April, you go manic again. Is that, is that correct? So you’re constantly up constantly down. It’s not only the extremes. There could be some range in between.

Matt Marx (01:06:12):
So when I’m making that motion with my hand where I’m going all the way up, and then I go all the way down and everybody else kind of rolls in the six inch area. What I try to tell my, my clients is, look, your mood can be a lot like a hot air balloon. You’re going to do something. You’re going to add some heat on your way down. You’re gonna add some heat. And then a few minutes later, you’re going to rise up and you’re going to be cool for a little bit. And then that hot air is going to cools off. What do I need to do to heat that air back up? And you’re constantly riding this wave and what are we got to do to normalize behavior? What do we have to do to, and by the way, we can start feeling manic.

Matt Marx (01:06:53):
Okay, well, you know what? I start feel manic. Maybe I need to not go on Amazon right now. Right? Because in that main you’re like, Ooh, I need this, I need this, I need this, I need this. I need this spending sprees. Okay. You know what I’m feeling manic right now, or I’m filling all my way up trusted, loved one can use change the password on Amazon, right? Like I feel common. I’ll go ahead and browse. I’ll put a whole bunch of stuff in my wishlist and work it through. And then a week later, you know what? I didn’t need any of that stuff. Awesome. Sweet.

Brad Singletary (01:07:31):
Yeah. Impulsivity is one of those things. I, one of my clients this very, soft-spoken kind of gentle. I don’t know. She might’ve been 50 or 60 years old, just this Midwestern gal with these conservative values or whatever. She, on a manic episode, one time went and got her entire back tattooed. I mean, this is not this, I mean, we’re talking, this looks like some Tommy Lee stuff or something. She put on her back. And she came in and brought pictures to the group and it was like super bizarre for her normal way. Super out of character, very impulsive dropped, you know, I don’t know, $1,500 to get her whole back tattoo, took her the whole weekend. And that’s a little,

Matt Marx (01:08:10):
But that’s a little bit crazy. It’s outside the norm. Other people do things like,

Brad Singletary (01:08:16):
You know, the blow and a bunch of money. We talked about that, but just like, I’m going to buy some real estate. I’m going to drop some money on a down payment, on a house this weekend. And they haven’t really thought it through. So impulsivity is really bad in that mania.

Matt Marx (01:08:29):
One of the really bad parts about the mania is, and it’s hard. It’s hard to tease out, but risky sexual behavior. You know what? I should be able to have as many partners as I want. That’s fine. And dandy. That’s a choice. Are you being, are you each having safe sex with all these random partners? Like, cause if you want to have a whole bunch of partners, that’s fine, but you need to be safe about it and make that conscious choice. Well, no, I just, I, you know, that’s outside of character. Okay. Then that’s outside the character then. And so how do you T it takes professional to help you kind of tease out what’s a choice and what’s mania and what’s impulsivity. And then how do we like a hot air balloon? Do we need a lot of cool offs who don’t raise so high? Do we need to heat it up? So we don’t raise so low talking with your prescriber, making sure your medications on point talking with your therapist to make sure, Oh, you know what, I feel my way. Sometimes it’s rapid. Sometimes it’s slow. What do we got to do to kind of keep it even keeled?

Brad Singletary (01:09:33):
Yeah. So the one, I think the phrase in there in the criteria about this is like pleasure seeking. So you talked about sexual things. Definitely. That’s a common thing. You know, it could be other forms of that pleasure seeking one, one of my clients you know, he was masturbating like 20 times a day to the point he’s, you know, damaging the tissues on his, on his junk down there because he, he, he just couldn’t, he would just go into these deep places of just seeking pleasure, just physical stimulation to the point that he was like, literally damaging his body. And he wasn’t normally doing that. And so you do that 20 times a day for a week and you’re in bad shape. You know, that that’s really not good. People have gotten infections. And you know, they’re often with, with you know, some anonymous partner and that’s not how they normally roll.

Brad Singletary (01:10:21):
Now, they’ve got an STD pleasure seeking risk taking what are some other things there impulsivity, the rapid speech arrogance. That’s something that I see almost always with, with mania is just arrogance. Like I’m a such a bad, you know? And it’s, it’s, it’s more than just confidence. It’s more than just self-assuredness. It’s like, you really think you’re cool. There’s this? What is it? Talk about a sense of self-importance I think is how it’s worded in there, like an inflated sense of self-esteem or inflated. I had a client one time, this guy was like 75 years old, retired. How does, you know, Toyota Camry just lived in the retirement community and he got in a car accident because he was racing these teenagers. So that’s an example of that, you know, risk-taking kind of behavior, he’s at a red light. He sees these kids he’s manic and he he hits the gas on his Camry and I don’t know the balls it up. Yeah, totally crashed into the light pole or whatever. And so risk-taking

Matt Marx (01:11:27):
So w and when we talk about painful harm activities, like I know people that have been in that manic state spend a lot of money and then digging themselves out of that financial turmoil is pain is really hard to do sometimes. But the other side of that is catching the major depressive episode. And when we talk about depression, again, depression is a symptom, but it’s also its own diagnosis. When it is in conjunction with, with that mania, then we’re going to look at bipolar depression States. We’re having, we feel awesome. And then we had, we don’t have any diminished in our interest in pleasure. Right. I have zero sex drive. I have

Brad Singletary (01:12:13):
Nothing’s nothing feels good, no fun anywhere. Yeah.

Matt Marx (01:12:16):
Significant weight loss. When you’re not dieting, depressed mood, not being able to sleep or sleeping way too much. You go from goal-directed activity. I’m going to write a book in a weekend, too. I’m not getting out of bed for two weeks, right? I’m not getting out of bed. I don’t want to get out of bed. Other people noticing that your feelings are, are, are, are up and down. Anybody that’s lived with somebody with bipolar or has been around them, seek can see those mood swings. They can see them in text messages and they can see them. They can hear them in phone calls and they can see them when they’re right in front of them, right in front of them. Because I really liked the person when your baseline. You’re a lot of fun when you’re up, but then you crash. So you have that fatigue. When you’re down, you have the feelings of loneliness. We go from feeling, I have those narcissistic type qualities all the way down to, I’m not smart enough to get out of bed. Right. I can’t do this. I can’t get up. I can’t do any of this diminished ability to think. We kind of covered that a little bit with anxiety, but I’ve got this mental fog. And I can’t recall my, this information. I know it inside and out. I just, I just want to go back to bed. I just want to lay back down.

Brad Singletary (01:13:32):
Can’t put it all together and concentrate, stay focused,

Matt Marx (01:13:36):
Recurrent thoughts of death. And when we talk about just thinking about it over and over again, sometimes it’s, we’re going to hurt ourselves. Sometimes we can’t get away from this. Like that’s when we need to really talk with somebody and help work out. Some of those, some of those emotions and thoughts

Brad Singletary (01:13:53):
I’ve been there, you know, I’ve, I’ve definitely been there for sure, with depression. You can kind of creep up, you know, you look at everything around you, you just, everything is negative. Nothing’s working out. There’s just, I think what a lot of men don’t necessarily connect with with depression is the sadness part. You know, some guys will sit and cry all day and that happens, but maybe that’s rarer than things like fatigue, lack of motivation. Just can’t do the things I gotta do. I can’t get up and crashing. Oh, okay.

Matt Marx (01:14:27):
Yeah. Like a lot of my, a lot of my guys in, in practice, I see a lot of, a lot of guys, they get angry and I don’t know how to express this. Therefore I’m mad at my boss. And so I kicked my dog coming home. Like, it’s not okay to do that, but I can’t kick my boss. I can’t yell at my boss. I’ll get fired. Therefore there’s the dog. And it just lays there. And East Bay eats food, right?

Brad Singletary (01:14:55):
Yeah. Maybe there’s a, just a feeling of powerlessness and everything. And then when there’s an opportunity to lash out at somebody, it shows up as aggression or anger that could, that could be depression.

Matt Marx (01:15:08):
Yeah. I don’t know how to express. I feel in a certain kind of way. I don’t know how to express it. Can’t you just leave me alone. If you can hear that, like you can hear and feel that. And people sometimes so many

Brad Singletary (01:15:20):
Is your you’re just kind of too high. That feels really good for most people. They don’t, they don’t want to medicate that because it’s like great. They, they clean their house and, you know, write a book and create a YouTube channel and do all these kinds of cool creative things, or, you know, detailed the refrigerator. And it’s all productive. And they like that energy. But it can become destructive. You’re doing irrational things. You’re taking risks. You’re pleasure seeking you’re out there being ridiculous in sleep all weekend. That’s where an extreme is. That’s where you can have psychosis. You know, you, you really, there could be paranoia or hallucinations, all kinds of different things can come out of that. When you, when you’re not sleeping, depression is not enough. It’s not enough energy, not enough motivation, not enough. Hope there’s just, you feel hopeless, maybe sad. People do cry. People do cry sometimes for no reason, they just can’t stop. Suicidal. Thoughts is probably, of course the most alarming one. We’ve done a couple episodes on, on, on suicidal things. And of course, if you’ve, if you or anyone, you know, is feeling that way ever, you must talk about it. You gotta, you gotta get help immediately.

Matt Marx (01:16:32):
So depression we’ve already covered a lot. And all those feelings. The difference when we have major depressive disorder is when it stands alone. Or maybe when it’s with anxiety. So when we don’t have trauma where we don’t have excessive mood swings, when we don’t have medical things going on with us, kind of as a diagnosis of exclusion, but we have all those other symptoms, then we’re going to go ahead and talk to you about depression. Again, medication helps talking about it, getting out. Sometimes we need to change your CIR circumstances. Okay? So what’s your lifestyle like right now, if you’re sitting on the couch and you haven’t gotten dressed in three weeks and you don’t know why, well, let’s start there and see how that improves. That’s, let’s start with low hanging fruit and go from there as conditions. We usually like to start with the least restrictive first. So if we can fig figure out ways that we can help you overcome before we get to some of the more drastic intervention.

Brad Singletary (01:17:35):
Yeah. We’re not going to start with electroconvulsive shock therapy. We’re not going to, we’re not going to start there. No, let’s, let’s talk about this and see, see what’s happening.

Matt Marx (01:17:43):
As fun as Peter Bankman is like, that’s not where we start.

Brad Singletary (01:17:47):
So timeframe. So everyone experiences a down period a down day. I very often, for example, we’ll have like, just, just a down day, man. I don’t, I’m just, I’m not feeling it. I don’t want to work. I don’t wanna, I don’t want to talk to anybody. I just want to isolate. I want to listen to all my sad songs. I just want to kind of be by myself. I don’t feel motivated. And I just, blah, and it’s, you know, a day, sometimes, maybe two in a row where we’re talking about this is like major depressive episode is we’re talking about most of the day, every day for like two weeks. So everyone has this down period of time, this down days, or a down hour, a down afternoon, a down weekend, that’s just pretty normal. But when you’re, this is day after day and it’s affecting your life and it’s affecting your ability to function in all your roles as a, as a parent or a husband or an employee is getting in the way.

Brad Singletary (01:18:49):
Now we’re talking major depression, right? So we’ve kind of been presenting this as if this is the demand, the guy in our audience right now, who’s listening to this who may be having some of these problems in his life and how he might consider it could be a mental health problem. What about if it’s your wife? You know, you’re, you’re a person you live with a loved one, a friend, someone close to you, you see these patterns, you heard this podcast and you’ve read some articles. You kind of know this looks like this is mental health, they’re unaware, or they’re resistant. You know what, how can a man be, you know, take the role of leadership and positive supporting kind of energy towards so many loves when they may have a mental health problem.

Matt Marx (01:19:33):
My favorite education, sometimes we fear what we don’t know. And we, we fear, Oh, this is going to cost me a lot of money. This is going to cost me a lot of this. Oh, wait, I don’t know how to deal with this. I don’t know how to handle this. So education really points a big, a big shining light on it. Now I’m not saying that you go get a degree in it, but maybe you show up to a therapist, say, you know what? I need help with dealing with my wife who suffering from a, B and C or this person in my has all these erratic behaviors. I don’t even know how to deal with it. So I go, you know what? I’ve never laid eyes on your wife, but I tell you what, here’s a diagnosis that matches some of the things we’re experiencing.

Matt Marx (01:20:19):
When we deal with people that have that diagnosis, here’s how they’re experiencing things. And we give them some insight. Like, I don’t know that’s what your wife’s got going on. However, when we have these drastic moves, she’s way up and way down. Maybe when she’s on her way up, we help support her in this way. And then when she’s on her way down, we supported this way and say, you know what? I’ve talked to this great guy. Maybe you should, maybe you should think about talking with somebody and see if they can help you out and get you out of your funk. Maybe when we S when we notice, or our partner discloses this trauma and they freak out and we notice trauma responses, maybe we should get educated on PTSD. I think we’ve covered a lot of that stuff, but if you go talk with a professional and say I need help navigating this.

Matt Marx (01:21:10):
Like one of my favorite phrases is, you know what? As, as a therapist, as a social worker, I take people that are in bad positions and I help them figure out a way to be in a better place, no matter what that is. Now, if you’re a better places I need to have, I need to have to learn to live with my significant other awesome. That’s where we go. If you’re better places, I don’t know how to deal with these mood swings. I don’t know how to help her get, get you help. That’s may helping you get to a better place.

Brad Singletary (01:21:42):
I heard some statistics one time about in a, in like a marriage or a significant relationship. If the man has mental health problems, the woman is more likely than average to stay with him. She’s more likely to stick around more than the guy without mental health problems. When a woman has mental health problems, the man is more likely to leave than the outfit than someone who doesn’t have mental health problems. That’s weak. If you ask me, that’s a matter of stubbornness, it’s a matter of being disagreeable like men, are we just we don’t want to be inconvenience. There’s some self absorption. And so one of the red nine, a couple of the red nine things that I think of that come into this is resourcefulness. Educate yourself, figure out what the figure it out. You can do that. That’s what a man does. He figures out what needs to happen.

Brad Singletary (01:22:33):
And if your wife had epilepsy and she fell down on the ground and has seizures every other day, you wouldn’t say to her, well, you don’t love me anymore. You know, why do you keep doing this? You wouldn’t be, you wouldn’t have that attitude. You would, you would take care of her, you know, and you would, it would be her hero and you would protect her the best she could. What if she’s angry and pissy and yelling, and she’s being weird in whatever way, consider that this could be, this. This could be medical issue could be mental health problem. This could be something that can be improved, but it may take, you’re really stepping up. So be engaged, be involved, go to the appointments, encourage it. You might have to pull up the phone number. You might have to make the appointment. You might have to go with her lovingly. Just prompt her along, go to the appointment with her, give your perspective. I always no matter who I’m working with, I want to talk to the parent, the spouse. I want, I want some collateral information because they may go there and say, I’m great, doctor. Everything’s good for me. You know, I feel good all the time. I’m, you know, I’m, I’m on top of my game. I’m on top of the world. I don’t know why my husband said to come down here.

Matt Marx (01:23:46):
I don’t even know what I’m doing here.

Brad Singletary (01:23:48):
So yes, you have perspective. So be engaged, be involved, be patient recognize that this, these hardly ever are just character problems. So many times the negative things that show up in our behavior and stuff like that, this is somebody dealing with something. They don’t even understand what’s happening within themselves. I look forward to an episode here soon, we’re going to talk about trauma and how that may be at the core of so much of what we’ve talked about tonight. But guys, this topic is important because there’s a high likelihood that you or someone you love does now, or will in the future deal with a mental health episode or some illness, some chronic situation. If you’re prepared, you won’t be afraid if you’re prepared. And if you’re understanding and you have good vision, and you can have a sense of discernment about what this, what could be going on, what’s normal, what’s risky.

Brad Singletary (01:24:39):
You know, this things are looking really strange with myself or this person. I’m doing these weird things. They’re doing these weird things. This is getting the way of my life. Reach out to someone. If you have nowhere to go, if you have nothing, no one to talk to. You can get in touch with me. I’ll also put Matt marks his information out there. If you want to reach out to us. And you know, we’re licensed here in Nevada, but we can get you set up wherever you are to help you know, how to find who you might need. So we appreciate you being with us tonight, Matt, any final words, how would you summarize our message tonight? What are we saying? Let’s wrap it up here.

Matt Marx (01:25:16):
Nothing that we discussed tonight as a character flaw. Yeah. All the, everything that we discussed tonight is the way people experience their life. And we’re just trying to help you live your best, best life.

Brad Singletary (01:25:33):
Once again, we appreciate you being with us reach out to us. If you would like some direction about where to go from here, appreciate you being with us Alpha up. Gentlemen you are the alpha is the Alpha Quorum.

ALPHA SHOT: One-minute Sample

PLAY FULL EPISODE HERE

An alpha is engaged. He lives in the moment, recognizing the value of his opportunities and he seizes them like a soldier captures his enemy. He’s a master at influencing the energy around him. He works hard and plays hard, keeping his own emotions and reactions in check and taking care of whatever’s important in the moment. He’s not just a dreamer, but a doer. And he fearlessly puts himself in situations that bring life to himself and those he is associated with.

Today we welcome back a man who epitomizes what it means to be an alpha, especially in his ability to live life with no excuses and instead strives to engage himself in every situation with strength.  We begin talking ADHD and managing distractions.  Justin shares how he has learned to use this condition as a superpower by “making friends with it.”  We discuss how to focus on the demands of home life, which include allowing your partner to be “Alpha too.” That means that if they are highly invested in order and cleanliness, you can “take orders” without having your value threatened.    Finally, Taco Mike and Justin discuss the value of play, and specifically outdoor adventures with other men as a requirement for lasting friendships and personal fulfillment.     🔺️

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Brad Singletary (00:00:00):
An alpha is engaged. He lives in the moment recognizing the value of his opportunities and he seizes them like a soldier captures his enemy. He’s a master at influencing the energy around him. He works hard and plays hard, keeping his own emotions and reactions in check and taking care of whatever’s important in the moment. He’s not just a dreamer, but a doer. And he fearlessly puts himself in situations that bring life to himself and those he is associated with. Today we welcome back a man who epitomizes what it means to be an alpha, especially in his ability to live life with no excuses and instead strives to engage himself in every situation with strength.

Speaker 2 (00:00:51):
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 core

Brad Singletary (00:01:16):
Back to the alpha quorum show. Brad Singletary here, I’m here again with taco Mike, you’ve made this whole thing famous. This, this should be the taco Mike show, I think because it always kind of sucks if you’re not on the show. So, so glad you’re here tonight, brother too kind. Thank you, Brad. Also welcoming back again, Justin Mackie Justin is the 20, 20 alpha quorum father of the year.

Justin Mackie (00:01:41):
Thank you, Mike. That’s impressive. I was here the whole time.

Brad Singletary (00:01:48):
So today we’re talking about engagement, which means that a man participates in life with good vibes. He isn’t just involved. He manages himself and he brings value to the situation he brings value to the time that he has, whether his activity is alone or with other people. I wanted to include Justin on this taco, Mike for sure is definitely has strength in this area too, because you play a lot. You do a lot of cool things. I follow you on Instagram. At one point, I asked you how in the world could you afford to do all these kinds of things? He said, it’s not about money. It’s about I’m the master of my time or something along those lines. And you seem to spend a lot of time enjoying leisure. Your recreation is important to you. When I say leisure, I don’t mean relaxing and lazy.

Brad Singletary (00:02:39):
I mean, you just really doing whatever you want. I’ve seen you all over the place, doing cool things. In talking about engagement, you know, being fully present you told me that you had no something about ADHD, which I think is kind of a, it’s sometimes a little bit over discussed, but also for many men under communicated, you know, that that’s something that people should know more about. And so if being present and listening and being where you are and being able to have the energy to do what you need to do is an important attribute of a solid man. Something like ADHD could get in the way. Do you have ADHD?

Justin Mackie (00:03:20):
You know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve never been diagnosed with it. I mean I don’t know technically, but I would, I would definitely say that I check all the boxes personally. And yeah, I, I I’ve struggled with it. He has to track of what he was saying.

Speaker 5 (00:03:38):
Yeah. Squirrel, squirrel

Taco Mike (00:03:40):
Check, check, check. Okay.

Justin Mackie (00:03:43):
And, and it’s I went from it being a struggle to being something that if I can, if I can keep it in the right place, it’s a massive benefit. And so for me, I, don’t only try to overcome it and stay focused and stay on task, but use it like it’s a superpower to allow me to do many different things at once and, and be productive in, in spin many plates. So what did, what

Brad Singletary (00:04:19):
Did it look like, you know, in your younger life? Or how would we, if we’re watching the video of your, of your story, what do we see that we started to say that Justin Mackey he’s a little attention deficit or whatever, what do we see? Is it hyperactivity or is it more the attention side of things like concentration? Yeah.

Justin Mackie (00:04:36):
Yeah. You know, I was, I was never really a big, ah, when I was young, I was, I found it hard to read and, and comprehend what I was reading. You know, and I don’t mean comprehended as in, I read the words and didn’t understand them. I mean, comprehension to the fact that I would read three phase three pages or I’d get to the end of a chapter in a book that I had to read at school and realize that I was reading the words the entire time, but there was no story playing in my mind. I was thinking about airplanes or motorcycles or girls or, you know, whatever. But I was physically reading a book. I was physically reading.

Brad Singletary (00:05:17):
You guys are moving, but your brain is in another place.

Taco Mike (00:05:21):
Like when you drive somewhere and then you just realize like, oh, I’m here at work. How did I gain that?

Justin Mackie (00:05:26):
I’ve done that. Yeah, absolutely. It’s scary. Isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Singletary (00:05:31):
So you’re disconnecting from the thing you’re supposed to be doing. Yeah. So that probably caused trouble with grades. You said school and Sophia

Justin Mackie (00:05:40):
Really a, a great student because, you know, I wasn’t, I wasn’t engaged. I had a hard time when I was younger in school with, with looking to what I was being taught as being relevant in my life. Like, you know, w why am I, if it wasn’t relevant, if, if the couldn’t tie it in for me, or help me see that you learning this right now is going to help you do this down the road. I was like, yeah, I’m out. This, this is pointless. So, you know, I was, I was elsewhere. I was planning in my mind.

Brad Singletary (00:06:16):
I hope those teachers are following you on Instagram. I hope not eat those, eat their words that they probably,

Justin Mackie (00:06:23):
Well, I mean, that’s, you know, a lot of what, you know, number one, Instagram, isn’t real. Right. So let’s all be real about Instagram. I mean, that’s, you know, not where my life really looks like. I mean, yes, I take those pictures. Yes. I was in those places. Yes, I’m doing that. But you know, I, there’s not pictures of working late at night or on weekends or early in the morning, or, you know,

Taco Mike (00:06:47):
Trying to get the boys to bed, trying to get them to clean their rooms,

Justin Mackie (00:06:50):
Brush their teeth. Yeah. My wife to come back home, you know, all that stuff.

Brad Singletary (00:06:55):
So you’re saying you’ve turned that into a superpower, like, that’s, that kind of follows with the episode that you’re in way before, where you were talking about,

Speaker 5 (00:07:05):
You know, multiply it,

Brad Singletary (00:07:07):
Leverage it. You’re saying I’ve leveraged a freaking mental disorder, which I’m not saying you have ADHD. It is what it is, but I’ve harnessed that for my benefit. That’s a bad-ass

Justin Mackie (00:07:19):
Right there. Yeah. You know the first time I really, I really heard somebody that I look up to put it that way. I, I don’t profess it all to be the one who came up with that. And then I was like, wait, I do that. There’s a guy named Mike Paty, Mike Paty lives in Sandy, Utah in the aviation community. He’s a God. And if you get a chance, look up Mike Patey on, on Instagram or on YouTube, Instagram

Brad Singletary (00:07:49):
To tag him in the show. Yeah. So

Justin Mackie (00:07:52):
Anyway, he and his, he’s got a twin brother and they speak on stage at ADHD conferences and their entire pitch is we’ve taken this and made it our superpower. And, you know, I listened to them and I actually, I got involved watching his YouTube videos because of his aviation content. And then somehow it led me into like, well, hold on. He does this too. And that led me down that path. And, and so, yeah, I think that as somebody who struggles with ADHD and, and remaining focused, you can also use that as you know, I’ve come to learn that most people aren’t able to have five different things going at any one given time,

Brad Singletary (00:08:43):
Especially men, that’s literally true scientifically about the male brain so that it would be a superpower. If you can entertain multiple thoughts or multiple projects or multiple things, that’s why women are so often frustrated with the guy who’s not listening or whatever. Cause he, they really literally can’t really think typical guy can’t really think of more than one thought at one time. So if you’re, if you’re saying you’ve noticed that you could do that, that’s pretty cool.

Justin Mackie (00:09:09):
Yeah. There’s, there’s a lot of things, you know, I do a lot of planning for our motorcycle trips and adventures. And a lot of times there’s three or four of them being planned at once. And you know, everything that goes along with life and planning and, you know, that’s I think that that’s one of the ways that I’m able to do a lot of the things I’m able to do back to back to back. And it’s not it’s, it’s not exhausting. It’s still fun. I’m onto the next thing. It’s, I’m not stuck in the past. I’m onto the next

Brad Singletary (00:09:42):
Taco Mike you’ve I’m not trying to diagnose you here either, but you’ve talked about being a little scatterbrained or whatever at times all the disorders [inaudible]

Justin Mackie (00:09:53):
Just to open page, put your finger down.

Brad Singletary (00:09:57):
So do you relate to what he’s talking about? Cause you seem to always have a whole multitude of things going on and tons of energy and just focus. But you know, you said your wife hates how your garage, how you keep thinking your tools are disorganized or whatever is this,

Taco Mike (00:10:13):
Do you relate to this super spazzy brain? And that’s why Justin and I are buds and why I want him to play the, do all the action scenes. I’ll

Justin Mackie (00:10:19):
Do the love scenes in the middle of my life. You do the action scene. Okay. And that’s your stunt double. You can

Taco Mike (00:10:24):
Step up. This is why I think so, you know, some birds of a feather flock together and being scatterbrained is a superpower. And I completely agree. I’ve, I’ve dabbled with that concept of taking your deficiencies and turning them into your superpower. And I, and I have experienced that in the 12 step journey that I have personally walked to my own life. And I’ve walked it first for myself. And then after for others living in active step 12. And one of the things that has been real to me is the fact that everybody who comes into 12 step has a shitstorm story to tell they’ve all got, nobody cares, really what your story is like, oh, cool story, bro. You know, like somebody comes in and they’re like this and that. And the other thing and yeah, it just interesting story, but I don’t care. I don’t care that those details are your details. I may care about you and I care about, but your story doesn’t make you special. And the more you think you’re, this is a little minor tangent. And then I’ll jump back to, I was talking about, I just feel like I should mention this ADHD all over the place. See,

Justin Mackie (00:11:33):
Right. Even when I talk, I’m sort of scared of

Taco Mike (00:11:36):
When someone thinks they’re special, that level of narcissism is debilitating and then we’ll continue to trap them. I just wanted to make that point to veer back the through-line. I think of, of a 12 step journey, a healthy through line for me anyway, is my catastrophe. My own personal catastrophes are my hidden superpower because I am no longer afraid of personal catastrophe. I’m no longer afraid of embarrassment. I’m not afraid of what people will say behind my back. I’m not afraid of failure. I’m not afraid to, to self-inflict failure. I’m not, I’m virtually, I’m not afraid of death. I’m virtually immune or beyond feeling. Maybe that’s not the exact way to say it, but I’m beyond caring about the outcomes of certain things. My wife and I have faced huge trials and I’m not afraid of divorce. I’m not afraid of, I’m not afraid of there’s so many things that I am just not afraid of.

Taco Mike (00:12:34):
That’s not to say I want to invite them, but they don’t scare me. And I’m not sitting on the edge and the ledge looking over the canyon, wondering when will I get pushed? I don’t care if I get put, I don’t care. Like it doesn’t matter. I don’t really care. So to be at a place where you can, just where I can just look super critically at all my flaws and faults in, you know, the dumpster fire that is my, the totality of my life. And then to look for ways to, to see strengths in that. And then to find like the opportunities there to me, that’s like, you know, our other show, we talked about tools. So why wouldn’t I look at the Dole knife in my tool box and think, well, what kind of, how can I Polish that? What can I do?

Taco Mike (00:13:25):
Like I’m not going to throw that knife away. Cause I, I, maybe I can’t. Right. Maybe there’s just, maybe I’m predisposed and I’m wired for certain personality attributes. I can’t separate myself and I can’t solve it. So how can I be F Y how can I make friends with it? It sounds like you’re friends with your demons. You’re friends with the shadow side of you. And I don’t mean to disparage any of these, the many, many personality. I’m not seeing this personality defect, but many of the personality ticks that you have that I have, that we all have. These are not, these are not negatives. These are positives. That’s, that’s a beautifully mature and beautifully responsible and super alpha place to get to. It sounds like this, what’s his name? Mike PD, Paty. Paty is doing it. Do you guys have any examples, Brad, I’d love to hear what you have to say about this of other dudes, you know, who have these flaws, these demons, again, I’m not saying that any of these are demons, but I’m just throwing it out there that do you know anybody with some of these things that could be labeled as these deficits and yet they’re somehow kicking in spite of that?

Taco Mike (00:14:39):
Yeah.

Brad Singletary (00:14:40):
Yeah. Things like OCD, you know, someone’s really particular, very detail oriented or whatever, and they continue to do it until it’s perfect. And their, you know, their efforts may look a little rigid, looks a little psychotic, you know, when you’re locking the door a hundred times and it has to be in a particular, you know, to the melody of like, you know, Yankee doodle or whatever. And if you, if you mess it up, you gotta start it over. But on the job that person’s killing it, or they have, you know, their, their place is really clean or they have, I would say there’s things like that, that I know about where people have what looks like a weakness, but they can capitalize on that. Somehow harness

Taco Mike (00:15:19):
It, use it, turn it into the super power.

Justin Mackie (00:15:23):
I was having a conversation actually with my brother just this morning, actually. And we got on the topic of, of something that I think is really common. And I don’t, I don’t know that it’s a disorder or a tick or Paula, what you will, Brad, you could probably shed a little light on it, but it’s imposter syndrome. And I think that’s a very huge limiting factor for a lot of people that if they can get to the point like we’re at with ADHD or, or something else like that, or like, you’re, you know, Brad, you’re making the example of somebody with an OCD that makes that a benefit in their life. You know, somebody that’s feeling imposter syndrome. I think that’s a major limiting factor that people get over and it’s super common. And I was talking, I had the conversation with my brother about it this morning and we were laughing about it. Cause he was telling me about the way something made him feel. And

Taco Mike (00:16:16):
Was he kind of admitting to it? He was copping to it. Yeah,

Justin Mackie (00:16:18):
He was. And he was laughing about it. Cause he’s like, I don’t know why I feel this way, but this is the way I was, I was in this meeting and I felt this way, you know, and we were having that conversation and we laughed about it and overcoming it. And I think that it’s about overcoming those types of things, whether it’s ADHD or whether it’s imposter syndrome or whether it’s an OCD or something that is a limiting factor.

Taco Mike (00:16:41):
It’s about money beliefs about like who you are as a person. I’m not enough. Nobody loves me. I’ll never like make it in this job, this title, this, whatever you could spend, that thousand different ways

Justin Mackie (00:16:53):
You really could. And I mentioned in the previous podcast that I was on with the guys that about being in sales and I spent a lot of years in sales and I was a student of sales. And I started when I was young and sales is to me the best thing that ever happened in life because it unlocked life’s potential for me. And I think anybody that’s able to replicate, whether it’s in sales or something like sales to achieve, you know, what you can in that space by unlocking your potential or being kind of forced to either quit or unlock your potential is a huge benefit. So in that space, there’s fear. Everything is based on fear in sales. Yes. It’s, it’s fear of rejection. So you’re, you’re going to go up and you’re going to say hi to somebody. You’re going to take the up Braddon.

Justin Mackie (00:17:56):
And, and you’re going to go say hi to somebody you don’t know. And you have no idea ahead of time how that conversation’s going to go and you have to be okay with that. You have to swallow that fear and you have to swallow the fear of rejection and you have to swallow the fear of imposter syndrome. And you have to swallow all of these fears to get what you want, which is a paycheck. And I think people that can take themselves down that road, whether it’s, you know, in sales, I’ve helped. A lot of people get into sales that were struggling socially or struggling in life. And sales literally like rejuvenated their life because they had to face all of their human fears.

Brad Singletary (00:18:37):
I taught them that they could do the thing that they feared. They just had to take a step.

Justin Mackie (00:18:43):
Well, you get a take. What other thing can you do in your life? Where you have to take 50 ups a day where there’s 50 new people walk in the door and you have to go, hi, I’m Justin and shake their hand and greet them. And what other opportunity do you get in life to take that many ups it’s law of large numbers. You know, you survive because you, you got to figure it out. You know, if you’re fearful of that. So, so

Brad Singletary (00:19:11):
We’re talking about engagement. So this is all doing Mike, you’re talking about the fearlessness. This is we’re talking about doing when it comes to, you know, on the job, people, men, most of the guys listened to the show probably hard workers and they do well when it comes to like family stuff and being at home. One of these red nine things talks about, you know, you work hard on the job and you work hard at home. There’s just work to be done later. We’ll talk about leisure and recreation. But like when it comes to the doing overcoming the fear or resistance internally or distractions or whatever it may be, how do you guys stay focused in your household with your families? That’s a good question. Brad, let me ask you this. Just curious real quick, be honest. Do you play video games?

Justin Mackie (00:20:03):
I have a video game console. I love video games. I do enjoy them. I haven’t played video games in years. But there’s been, there’s like a one game came out a couple of years back and a buddy had it and I sat down and played it and I beat it like in one night and kind of dove into it and play it ever again. Like I stayed up until three o’clock in the morning, drank mountains, did the whole thing and I don’t play video games, so,

Brad Singletary (00:20:29):
Oh, you’re balling. That’s I don’t know. I just, my video games never trust TV. I know Mike hates TV because he spells it like this T E E that’s like I’m not a TV guy. I don’t, I don’t, I want, I don’t need to be entertained, but yeah. So being engaged in your family and your home, you know, the trash has got to be taken out there’s things to do. You got the honey do list and we kind of cliche thing about, oh, you don’t have to keep reminding me every six months. I’ll do it. You know, I’ll get around to it. But some of that is because we’re busy. We do need to check out. We do have to relax. We got to sleep sometimes and all that. But I think far too many men are just checked out. I mean, I know guys right now who are living in Las Vegas, 110, 115 degrees, there is nothing cooling their home. It’s an older home with a swamp cooler, which is broken. And because he doesn’t ask the question, take the up, do whatever he’s living inside his house. And he’s okay with that.

Taco Mike (00:21:31):
You mean the ma he’s accepted the misery because of his, his inability to like change his circumstances, his, his unwillingness to like take an up, he’s just resigned to his fate. Like, well, me then, you know, I guess I’ll lose it here. Yeah. Yeah. That’s kind of

Brad Singletary (00:21:47):
Any man who’s failing or is broken. There’s a level of disengagement. He’s checked out spiritually in his relationships. He’s checked out from his job. He’s checked out. So how do we stay checked in? And I’m guess I’m particularly talking about at home. That’s not the funniest place. Yeah,

Justin Mackie (00:22:05):
Yeah, absolutely. You know, my wife choosing the right wife is, is how I do that. You know, my wife and I don’t have a perfect marriage. It’s never been perfect. I don’t think anybody’s marriage is perfect. It’s had its ups and downs, but I love her to death. And she’s very opposite to me. You know, we’re, we’re opposites. What she finds important. I don’t really find so important. And what I find really important. She’s like, well, what are you even worried about?

Brad Singletary (00:22:32):
She’s like, she’s good looking and smart. You’re not exactly none of those.

Justin Mackie (00:22:38):
She’s a bulldog at home. Cleanliness put away organized squared away and that’s like her domain. And I’m more lax with that stuff. You know, I’m not a slob, but at the same. And I like, I like a nice clean space, but you don’t mind if there’s a spoon in the sink. Yeah. I’m, I’m not thinking about it. My mind is like, my mind is elsewhere. My mind is not there. Hers is. And I’ve found that having that other half, that’s worried about what, you’re not her eyes on the other ball. Right. I just have to be cognizant of that and follow her lead. She asked me to take the trash out. I take the trash out now. I’m never going to think like, I should take the trash out. I’m

Brad Singletary (00:23:28):
Not anticipating it the way she does. Nope.

Justin Mackie (00:23:31):
And she understands that about me. You know, at first in our marriage, she was off because she had to ask me to take the trash out. Like, do you not also see that the trash is full?

Speaker 5 (00:23:44):
That’s funny. Every man’s heard that line. And if it’s trash, it’s something else it’s mow the lawn or the roof needs the toilets

Justin Mackie (00:23:53):
Answer, which is what I say, which how I’m still married. I have no idea. God bless her. So what I say is like, well actually I was thinking about the motorcycle ride. I’m going on next week. And I didn’t even see the trashcan. I didn’t know we had, I didn’t even

Justin Mackie (00:24:10):
What, where are we right now? You know, like, literally I’m, I’m physically here, but I’m, I’m not here.

Justin Mackie (00:24:19):
And so I have to work on that, you know, it’s she reigns me in do

Brad Singletary (00:24:25):
So I, in the previous show, I introduced Justin as one of the most alpha guys. I know. And he’s telling me he’s at home, he’s taking the orders. And I think that’s kind of cool because you you’re, you’re you understanding like your strengths and, and you know, your complimentary strengths and how she’s better at that. And you’re okay for her to remind you. You’re okay for her to ask you. Okay. For her to tell you and you, and you just do that. That’s kinda cool. I don’t, I don’t think we’ve gotta be running around. Like, we’re the dictator of our home. Some guys are taking this leadership thing a little too far and they think they’ve got to be the boss of every time the trash goes out or whatever you’re taking away.

Justin Mackie (00:25:05):
Oh yeah. I take orders at home. That’s that’s her domain like a good soldier should absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. That’s that’s her wheelhouse. I respect that. And frankly, I don’t know what I would do if it wasn’t that way, you know, maybe she’d be okay with spoons in the sink, but I think everybody has something that they that’s important to them. And, and in a relationship, if you’re lucky enough for that to be opposing a lot of areas, you’ve got to embrace it. You know, let them, let them take the lead, let them, let them drive.

Brad Singletary (00:25:41):
What about the kids and Mike, any thoughts on like engagement in your home with your family, doing the little jobs, being focused when your kid’s trying to tell you something? That’s a little bit hard for me. I have six of them. So that’s you know, I wish some of the older boys had more to share with me now, and I wish I would’ve taken better advantage of that. But how do you stay tuned in engagement in home in the home

Justin Mackie (00:26:07):
Screens are not babysitters numero UNO screens are not your friend at all. At all. My kids have iPads. They have computers. They have, you know, and, and we like, I mean, short of putting them in a lockbox they’re, they’re not in their possession. They don’t have control of them. They’re 10 and 12. And if they had control of them, they would literally just stay in their bed and watch YouTube all day. I was just reading

Brad Singletary (00:26:38):
The other day. The American pediatric association recommended that especially young children, no more than one hour, a day of screen time. And most kids, I think everybody just said, it’s okay during Corona, but that’s probably more like 12 hours a day. The average kid spending 12 hours a day watching kind of passively watching something. So screens are not your friend. What other ways can we be connected? Well, and for men too, I think, I think dudes doing that way too much. We’re watching their show. They’re on YouTube guilty. Even if they’re learning their shows, their their video games, man. And it’s just, it can be, I think, a healthy sense, a healthy way to decompress, but it’s a matter of like how you don’t have air conditioning in your house and you live in the desert and you’ve watched every episode of anything. I lost respect for you. Yeah. Any thoughts Mike, about being tuned in engaged with your

Taco Mike (00:27:37):
Yeah. So when, when Justin was talking about his wife, it made me think of a couple of things. First of all, I think you’ve talked a lot about respect. And so I know men who believe in this unrighteous dominion principle, and there’s this biblical concept that a lot of religions will have a subculture of. And that’s the man, the husband is the leader of the house. And there’s a lot of BS programming that happens with people in religions who practice religions of all kinds of different flavors, where there’s this super sense of self for the men get this very super dominant, almost aggressive dictator. I’m the final answer of everything. Everything needs to come through me, which is, self-righteous just like, I’m the swinging in this house. And I, every, that’s it you’re an. If you’re that guy, you’re an. And there is no scripture that backs you up.

Taco Mike (00:28:40):
That you’re just a jerk. If that hits you in the balls, then write me about it. Send me an email. I’d love to have a beverage with you and look at you eye-to-eye and have a conversation about that because I’d love you to commit to me. Otherwise, there’s too many dudes out there who run around their house with their pants, pulled up almost to their and they act like they’re the emperor of this little domain and this little kingdom that they’ve created. And everybody needs to fear them rather than love them and respect them. And you’re an. I know who some of these guys are, and I have zero respect for that. None because that’s not respectable. There’s nothing. You’re just a jerk, an alpha lives in his home as a member of his home. And his wife is alpha too there in the animal kingdom.

Taco Mike (00:29:30):
There are animal societies where the females are the alpha and the, in the chimpanzee societies in, in the great apes, in the societies of the great apes. It’s very often the woman is the alpha. The males are protectors. The males server, the males freak. They have, they have a co equal role in those societies as the woman, that’s the alpha, the female, she sets the tone. She drives the culture of the group, the fam the tone of the fan, everything that sort of transpires in the family unit. She runs it, she owns it and the males they respect it. And that’s not to say that she might need a little tune-up, it can happen. And just like we all do, we all do. Yeah. It’s so the role of the, of the alpha male within his alpha kingdom, which is his home with his co equals alpha wife, this is a real deal.

Taco Mike (00:30:33):
And if you’re expecting your wife, if you’re the kind of man who is expecting your wife to serve you and to bring you your food, and then to take the plate away, and then to do the thing, like you’re a jerk, it just is. And I know, look, I know what the excuse is. I work all day, she’s home all day. Like I know all those, I’ve heard them all. I know him. And there’s some validity to that. I don’t mean to disk fully discount, that there is some power in that, in that, in those statements.

Taco Mike (00:31:05):
However, there’s also the reality that you just might be a jerk and you may be separating yourself from the full love of your wife and the full love of your kids because of your ego and your attitude. And I say this in love and compassion, because there have been seasons in my life where I am, where I was that guy. And so it’s, it’s a criminal calling out a criminal, a jerk calling out a jerk so that Justin can be a bad-ass and then obey his wife. That’s how you alpha. I know all of us, I know, I’ll speak for all three of us. That there’s a great concept of lead follower. Get out of the way. And there are times where your wife is the alpha, because that’s her role. And everyone in the household should listen to her and respect her and obey her. And there are times where the dad is the alpha and that same rule applies to him. However, that Scepter of authority is he’s is not only shared, but at times it’s handed completely over to one or handed completely over to the other. That is that is, that is the, that is the idea that that’s the ideal of how power happens in the home. And so this is a really important topic and a really important point to make. I’m sorry. No, this is,

Brad Singletary (00:32:29):
This is important because we’re talking about taking the actions. We talk about actions, attributes, and attitudes. You’re saying this all starts. The actions you take really depends on your attitude and how you’re seeing each other, what you think of yourself and what you think of her. And maybe the same could be true with your kids. You know, what is their role? Are they to sit down and shut up and be seen and not heard? And so maybe it starts with the evaluation of who are these people, to me, how important are they? To me that might determine the actions you take on whether or not you do try to notice the trash or the, my big thing is taking the trash out on. So our trash days, Friday. So for the longest time I wasn’t doing that and she got mad and I would say, you know, I work and I gotta get up early the next day.

Brad Singletary (00:33:16):
And Friday’s my long day. And I had all these excuses and then we were separated for a year and she was the one that actually left our home. And guess what I did, I learned, and I had to take the trash out because she wasn’t there to remind me she wasn’t there to do it. Yeah. Men who aren’t engaged with their lives and their, whatever. You’re not celebrating. And you’re not participating in, it’s going to go away, whether it’s your money or whether it’s your family, your wife. And so, yeah, attitude. That’s a great point, Mike, about, you have to understand the roles and respect those. And sometimes you just don’t have to be the one who’s barking out the orders. You need to be the one to get up and say, I’m on

Justin Mackie (00:34:02):
It. You know, Mike, to piggyback on that point, which I love that point. And I think you’d set up beautifully in a marriage. If you’re only one decision-maker, you’re only 50% of what you could be an alpha male who can give instruction and get instruction just the same and recognize when they should be doing which they’re empowering their partner. They’re empowering their wife to use her intellect and to use her power and her knowledge of things. That’s a tool, right? Yes. We talked about tools. Yeah.

Brad Singletary (00:34:42):
That’s also tribe. We talk about, you’re a dummy, if you’re not using other people’s perspectives and we talk about men, you need men. Yes. You need men. But the person in this world that knows you better, even, I would say then your own mother, because when you were with your mom, you were a child, she’s known you your whole adult life. Hopefully you’ve had that length of relationship. She knows you. And if you’re not listening to that and willing to receive influence from her, you’re probably messing it up.

Justin Mackie (00:35:07):
Yeah. And if, and if it, you know, if a guy’s rule in his house with a hammer and nobody else gets to make any decisions, or, you know, he’s probably not asking his wife how she feels about the decision he’s about to make. He’s probably just making it because he thinks that that’s the alpha thing to do. When in reality, you know, it’s, it’s not that black and white. You’ve got to back that up a little bit.

Brad Singletary (00:35:32):
Let’s talk about play. There’s work to be done. There’s working our jobs work at home. You to play pretty hard. You know, you got some cool toys and you do some cool things. What’s the value of that? Why do you go off and leave town and spend money and rally up your boys and go do these things? And how does it benefit other aspects of your life? So engagement means you also can check out and, you know, scratch the itch that is adventure that men need and just fun, leisure. You’re walking on the beach, or you’re doing some crazy thing on the side of a mountain with

Justin Mackie (00:36:11):
Your dirt bike. I worked a lot of years not doing any of that stuff, wanting to do those things. I was in the retail business. I was in retail sales in automotive and power sports, and very rarely got to do those things and really wanted to do those things. And I decided about 10 years ago that I was going to orchestrate plans in my life to be able to have freedom of time and to have freedom of time, that was going to require me to be able to go do things without my wife and my kids, as well as with my wife and my kids. And to be able to go do things without my wife and my kids meant that I had to make for sure that she had a really good foundation at home without me and for us, that’s largely, you know, her parents, we live in the same town as her parents do.

Justin Mackie (00:37:06):
And if it wasn’t her parents, it would be, or I would make for sure that she has a really good friend circle so that I can go do those things. And I know that things are good at home. She’s not sitting on the couch, counting the hours until I get home. And if I’m two hours late, she’s been at home by herself the whole time. And I think that that starts there. You have to, if you desire to do those things in your life to go have adventures with your buddies or with your spouse or with your family, which you should go do all three, I think it builds relationships in a way that you can’t bond at Buffalo, wild wings. You can’t go down there for an hour, you know, to in Mike and I’s case, you have to go almost die with your friends on a, yeah, it’s gotta

Speaker 5 (00:37:54):
Be changing your shorts in front of each other, right?

Justin Mackie (00:37:57):
If you almost die with somebody, you’d be surprised with the kind of bond it creates. So, but it’s my point. There is. I think that it’s there’s a number of things that you have to, you have to build these foundations to, if those are something, some things that you want to do in your life, do you want to go have adventures with your buddies and your family? And you have to build your life to accommodate those things.

Brad Singletary (00:38:24):
You’re saying you, you want her to bucket to be full before you take off and kind of do your thing and whatever you want her to be supported. She’s had her own alone time or whatever she may need. She’s all set up and prepared, and kitchen is stocked and whatever’s necessary. She’s in good shape. And she’s more comfortable with things you might need to do for your own self.

Justin Mackie (00:38:48):
Yeah, absolutely. That’s correct. I mean, if things aren’t good at home, if you have a wife and you have kids and you want to go fishing with your buddies, or you want to go on an extended weekend with your, with your friends, riding dirt bikes or whatever it is you want to do, you gotta make sure that that mom was good at home. Because if she’s not, you weren’t gonna have any fun. Sure. You might be able to leave town, but it’s going to suck, you know, it’s, you might as well not even

Brad Singletary (00:39:13):
Go and she’s building resentment and stuff like

Justin Mackie (00:39:16):
That. And then when you come home surprise, you know, that’s it’s not going to be any fun. And so you do, you have to build that those building blocks up, you have to make for sure that mom has got what she needs and everything’s good at home. And she’s got a little bit of her own life to have, and has the things that she needs other than just you, if you’re all that mama’s got, and you’re the only thing happening then you’re probably not going fishing with your buddies.

Brad Singletary (00:39:47):
So smart dude. I’m just like this. Guy’s got some figured out. I literally, so I have like 23 years of behavioral health experience and relationships and all that. And I have literally vinted to Justin here about my own relationships and have gotten a ton of good feedback and wisdom from him. He wouldn’t be doing as well if he didn’t know some things, so good stuff right there, man, take care of her first. Yeah. Set her up with what she needs. Then you can go take care of what you need to do. That’s cool. Mike, what’s the value of play to

Taco Mike (00:40:21):
Springboard off of what Justin has said. One of the primary reasons why I launched our business and decided to get out of sort of the nine to five situation was the reality that I saw the ticking clock of the time window that I had left with my son. Because you look at any teenage boy, what is 17, 18, 19 by 19, they’re probably gone. Yeah, whatever it’s going to be, that’s going to capture their attention. Didn’t happen sooner than that. If it didn’t happen at 17 or 18, I’m just seeing the generally by 19, every young man typically is gone. And so I just woke up one morning in a cold sweat, right? Metaphorically thinking like suck. I only have X number of years left. And I had this strong feeling that I need to go to everyone. One of his boy scout camps, I need to go to every time there’s an outing and an adventure and an invitation to go to anything there’s father and son outings.

Taco Mike (00:41:23):
There’s church level, camp outs. There’s scap. Yes, everything like every game, every whatever. And it just occurred to me the only way that I’m going to be able to do that as if I have, we’ve talked about this, Justin has talked very, very solidly about this. I need to have total authority over my time. Every minute of my time needs to be mine and needs to be mine to decide and no one else. And so I thought, well, I need to like get my in gear then and really make something happen. And that was probably the moment that I decided to launch our business and to take that step. It was, it was, that was the core reason. So to answer your question, the relationship that I have with my son and with my wife, when we go and have adventures, it is, and Justin just hit this too.

Taco Mike (00:42:11):
I only want to make memories. That’s all I want to do. I only want to have experiences. And the only way he could do that is have complete freedom and then complete time control. And then I’ve chosen to use those assets to deploy them as much as possible into my wife and my kid. And of course, selfishly to now that would be, it would be wrong of me to not say that I don’t also take some of that and spend it on myself, but that’s where I choose to, you know, spend a lot of it. And then I echo what Justin said about taking care of your home. There was lore in native American tribes and then in, in primitive cultures where there, there are cultures within cultures. So if you have a tribe, a tribe consisted maybe of 150 people. And so the, the, the number of tribes, people that were in anyone try was fairly limited.

Taco Mike (00:43:01):
And then within that, there would be the men’s culture and then the women’s culture. And then the men would have be a culture within a culture and they would plan and prepare their outings and their hunts and their conquests and their battles and all that stuff. And they, they would not ever dare leaving the vulnerable. So their women, their children, the elderly, the infirm, they would never, ever, ever leave the society unless they were sure and confident that it would be self-supporting in their absence. And so what Justin is basically saying is the primitive concept of take care of yours, and then they will take care of you. So if you haven’t taken care of your wife and your home front, then how can they take care of you and allow you the latitude to go out and be that sort of conquering beast, man, who wants to go have adventures and do those things. So he’s just spoken a massive truth, a completely I concur doctor,

Brad Singletary (00:43:59):
How does adventure and fun? You both seem to enjoy the outdoors and motor sports and things like that. How does that stuff help you in the other aspects of your life? Why do you need to do that? Is it necessary? I think it’s necessary.

Taco Mike (00:44:14):
I think it’s hard wired into testosterone that it’s, it’s an absolute fundamental requirement.

Justin Mackie (00:44:19):
Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Singletary (00:44:21):
So what are the things you do? What are some of the typical activities? How does it bless you in the other parts of your life?

Justin Mackie (00:44:29):
On the last podcast I was on with you and Mike, it was we, we talked about relationships and we talked about the value of, of relationships in life and how relationships really are the greatest currency and to have tools. And those tools are, are, are your circle, your tribe. You know, the, the, the best tools that you have in your toolbox is the people that you know, and their skills to help you. And there’s no better way to bolster those kinds of relationships that are life, lifelong relationships. The, you know, I think most people have a friend or somebody that they can not talk to for two years, and that friendship never changes. Those kinds of friendships are built on adventures. You know, you, you, I mentioned Buffalo wild wings or the bar, or going to the park and, you know, your a kid’s birthday party. And, you know, there’s all this stuff going on. You’re never, ever going to build a longstanding relationship with people that are going to be meaningful or could be meaningful in your life. At those places, you go hiking or living out of a tent and, or going on a motorcycle adventure with those guys one-on-one and you go live in the dirt with them for four or five days. And there’s a bond there that’s completely different than any other way that I know how to create it.

Brad Singletary (00:46:02):
Wow. So the benefit of that for you so much as the relationships that you form on that, do you ever do any of those things alone?

Justin Mackie (00:46:11):
Yeah, I do. I’ve, I’ve done a number of solo rides and I absolutely love solo rides. I haven’t done one in a number of years. I went to Canada a few years back on my adventure bike. And it was, it was incredible, but it’s it’s just a different experience.

Brad Singletary (00:46:30):
Well, and maybe the relationship you need to foster sometimes is with yourself, with yourself, with your higher power with, you know, that needs attention too. And I can’t do that if I’m surrounded by. So that’s valuable to be alone and experience connectedness to Justin.

Justin Mackie (00:46:49):
I find a lot of enjoyment today. I find that my buckets way over flow, overflowing of ventures, I’m very fortunate to get, to do a lot of going and doing stuff. That’s really fun with friends. And I really find enjoyment today. The most enjoyment in bringing new people in to do that, that their bucket isn’t overflowing or even close to full yet some rides back, a friend that I share kind of planning responsibilities with, for adventure rides, his name’s Dominic, he’s a member of the alpha quorum. He suggested to me, let’s, let’s invite everybody. And I was like, man, you lost your mind. Like, I was always the guy that I six to eight people, max, you know, it was an elite group guys that were very good riders. I didn’t want to ride with anybody. I was, I was kind of a snob about it.

Justin Mackie (00:47:49):
Right. And he was like, man, there’s so many people that want to go on these rides that have never been on one let’s invite everybody. And I told him he was insane out of his mind. And he finally convinced me, just let me do one ride. You plan it. Let me just invite everyone. And we went on this ride with 24 people. It was a complete hot mess. Right. But it worked. And like there were 24 people that I think probably half of them had either never been on an adventure motorcycle ride or hadn’t been on one in years. And even though it was a hot mess, everybody was like, when is the next one? That was incredible. That was amazing. And we had amazing camp nights out and Mike disappeared every day and would show up at camp with some crazy story that he found a Volkswagen bus and some hippies to hang out by the river with.

Justin Mackie (00:48:44):
And I mean, you know, it was, it was, it’s one of those things that like, it’s, you’re doing it. And you’re like, this couldn’t be written into a movie. Like there’s no way to replicate this other than to do it. And, and since that ride, that dominant convinced me to be a part of where we just invited everybody. We’ve done numerous 20 plus people rides today. And we’ve kinda got it figured out. It’s not a hot mess anymore. And it’s hugely gratifying to be able to put something like that together, that I’m comfortable with, that other people look at and they’re like, well, you know, how do you plan this? They don’t even know where to start. You know, we just have done it for so many years that put it together and go do it. And to see the enjoyment that people get out of it. And the fulfillment that they get out of it is just really the reward.

Brad Singletary (00:49:37):
Amazing to hear you talk about that. I’ve never done a, person’s never done that. But to hear what Mike has said about these kinds of things and you, now, this is a lot more mushy and a lot more, you’re talking about things of the heart. This looks like a bunch of loud, crazy dudes out there tearing up the mountain side or whatever this is. You’re talking about touchy, feely. You’re talking about loving your friends. You’re talking about making connections there. This is a whole different, I think this will be shocking to some people who listen to this show who aren’t into the Moto world. They’re going to be surprised to hear this same theme keeps coming up. This is not about, you know, jacking off with a machine. This is about I’m ready to edit that. This is like, anyway, it just, it seems like it, it really is much more than I ever thought it was about.

Justin Mackie (00:50:39):
There’s a big part for me, where you have this group of people and you have this plan and you’re going to go from point a to point B. And there is unknown peril between point a and point B. And you can plan where you want to stay and you can plan the route and you can plan all this that you plan. It always unwinds. You have a ride leader and you have somebody that’s, you know, you should have your together. And you have this group of people that all needs to stay safe together, and you need to deliver this package from point a to point B. And it’s a human, it’s a, it’s a group of, of human humans that are in a package together. And you’re all going to go forth into the peril unknown because when you leave on a motorcycle into the wilderness there’s animals and sticks and rocks and mechanical failures and you know, human error and all of the different, yeah.

Justin Mackie (00:51:40):
All the different perils that exist in that type of sport activity. I’m not a veteran, but I, we ride with a lot of guys that are veterans. It’s like that experience. And for me, somebody being, that’s not a veteran, but I love our military. And I love that brotherhood. I think it’s the closest thing you can get to that kind of brotherhood, you know, without being somebody who, who served. And I think that’s one of the reasons that a lot of veterans gravitate towards that world is because it’s, it’s very similar. It’s, it’s a brotherhood.

Taco Mike (00:52:15):
One of the reasons why a military platoon, a military engagement, the brothers in the military group, there’s a great book out there by a guy named Sebastian younger tribe. He was a career journalist and then spent his whole career embedded in military groups. And then when he, when he retired, his editor said, which, what, where are you going to go with your career? What are you going to write? What’s your first book? And he said, I’m going to write a book about PTSD. And I’m going to take the position that my position is. The root cause of PTSD is the separation of the brothers, the breaking up of the brotherhood that these guys have when they’re clicked together in a platoon, that is a primal that group of men who are there to keep each other alive, goes all the way back to the CRE, the ancestors of the human species, homo sapiens.

Taco Mike (00:53:03):
They are, you can draw a straight line directly from that tribe all the way back to the first human tribe. And when they’re in that group, they have activated all of the ancient DNA and it, and it is right. And it feels right. And it’s so primal and so real and so vivid and so exciting. And you just, you just lay testosterone over the top of that, like frosting and it’s, it’s just you, it right. I’m at a loss. My vocabulary falls away. I cannot explain how for a man, what that’s like. It is everything it really is. And so the S the, the, the thesis of this book is PTSD is as a result of the breaking of that brotherhood, the separating of that bond, because everybody goes back home and they go back to their job at Costco and at the insurance office.

Taco Mike (00:53:59):
And they go back into their jobs and their lives, and they have no brotherhood, no connection. They have no direct link that goes back to primal, man. Right? So when Justin and I are talking about recreating that, and we form a platoon of dudes on motorbikes, or you form a platoon of guys who go on a hike or 50 mile hike, or a river rafting trip, or a fishing trip or whatever, or a hunting trip, what happens within the group of those men is they somehow knowing or unknowing, they are activating a straight direct line that goes all the way back, a Telegraph that goes back to the first man to the first, the first tribe they are now officially members of that ancient tribe. And the power of the, this is a weird thing. Hear me out the power of the ancestors comes forward.

Taco Mike (00:54:48):
And then it just saturates itself in that newly formed tribe. And then every brother in that tribe is energized by that ancestral power. It’s, I’m talking crazy talk, but I, I get it, but I suggest that it is real and it is true. And, and it’s, it’s a thing. And so when Justin says, we sit around a campfire after day of like trying to keep each other alive, and we’re trying to deliver this package. Isn’t that what’s happens in the platoon. All that matters is that we survive this day and we get to sit around a fire. And there’s, isn’t there power in staring at a flame. Yeah, because ancestrally, when we had a fire, we were safe, then the animals were kept away. We knew you cook. We knew we had warmth. The fire represented life. We would, we would make it another day if we could just have another fire.

Taco Mike (00:55:37):
And so the there, I’m telling you, when you, when you have a group of dudes who have had an adventure, and they’re sitting around staring into the glowing yellow, they have just plugged electrical cords straight into the ancestry of humanity and of being a man. Yeah. All the way back to the beginning of time. And I can’t explain it, and I have a hard time putting it into words, but that is what’s happening. And so when dude, sit on a couch and play video games, I would suggest that he’s, yes, that’s, that’s, that’s a false flag of that. But I, I would suggest that most of what men do in their private time, that is self-destructive is this really failed attempt to try to tap into that and to try to become part of that. And it’s a missed opportunity, what would be next level?

Taco Mike (00:56:28):
So what did you say about the sales? What’s the word, the phrase we were singing a lot. Take it up, take it up. So the dude who’s, who’s sitting there playing video games. He can take an up and he can translate from false reality to true reality and actually get plugged in if he would go and associate himself with some other group of like-minded dudes who find something that they can, it can be sports, it could be music, it could be anything, but to get plugged in, to get like activated in a community of dudes who were, who out, then I would suggest that you do need some adrenaline. You do need some adventure, you do need risk. So I don’t know if you can run around with a musical instruments and have a life or death experience, but I challenged somebody to do it. But if you can inject into your group, sweat and risk and reward and all of those things, whatever the interest is, who cares, it’s motorcycling, whatever your interest is, you inject all of that into it. You have just plugged in to the power of the, of, of the earth. Yeah.

Brad Singletary (00:57:33):
It’s interesting. When you’re alive, even the travel itself, you’re talking about the destination, we’re delivering a package. So it’s not just going to sit in the woods to camp or whatever, but you have a mission. You have a purpose. You’re going from here to there, there are places you want to get to along the way. And then you’ve talked about this too, before Mike about resolving the problems, working on fixing each other’s stuff, or this guy got a bum leg or whatever is going on and you let your like helping each other get there. That’s cool stuff, guys that aren’t into dirt bikes. What kinds of things and what comes to mind? What other non Modo adventures do you might you recommend for people?

Justin Mackie (00:58:15):
Yeah. There’s hiking groups. I mean, you can go on Facebook. You can. There’s actually, I think there’s a website. That’s I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s, it’s like a hiking forum and people have, you know, they go hiking in Mount Charleston or wherever your local mountain is. You can go hiking with groups of people. Cool.

Taco Mike (00:58:34):
REI and join the music. Like you just go on the REI website and there’s local chapters of hiking, camping, adventure groups, things like that. Yeah.

Justin Mackie (00:58:41):
I think, you know, there’s there’s guys that, you know, if you hang out the local fish shop efficient is your thing. I know guys that surf that live on the coast so that they’ve got their group and they’ve got their set that they surf and that’s their deal. And I think he, you gotta find what you gotta find, what your deal is. You gotta find your tribe. I mean, playing video games, like, and I’m not a proponent of playing video games, but there’s a similar feeling that you get, like I’ve played modern warfare and some of these other new video games that are these war fighter, first person shooter games, where you’re operating in a group of people and you get a little bit of a feeling, you get a taste of it. And it’s just a sliver, but Brad, there’s a feeling that Mike’s trying to get to it. And I don’t, I don’t really know how to put it into words, but there’s a, it might sound silly to that. There’s a feeling that when you roll out down the road with your buddies on your bikes and you’re like, you’re all together and you’re moving as one and you kind of have this, this mass fluid motion together. I’ve never felt that kind of strength. I mean, you literally feel invincible your Cowboys on a round up, you

Speaker 5 (00:59:53):
Know, you’re going from Canada, Canada, Canada, Mexico, with 10,000 head of cattle or what it’s totally

Justin Mackie (00:59:59):
Stupid because frankly, you’re more exposed than if you were sitting in a car by yourself, right. You’re not invincible at all, but that’s the feeling that you have. Like, you literally feel like you’re rolling into battle with brand new tanks and nothing can touch you. Bring it. Yeah.

Brad Singletary (01:00:20):
All right. So how does this, when you come back from that, you’re saying you have this power, you have this rejuvenation, you feel connected to other men. You’re connected to the ancestors. You’re feeling this primal need. You know, when you come back to the job, when you go back to the wife who says the garbage needs to be taken out, how does that carry over? What’s the residual effect. And because it’s quite an investment you’re taking time away, it’s there’s cost to it or whatever, but what’s the result all next month for the next year

Justin Mackie (01:00:54):
When right when you come back, I find that right when I come back from from a motorcycle trip, first couple of days are tough. It makes you question your daily existence. And I think that as tough as it is, it’s a huge benefit because we all need to have a point every so often where we step out of our reality and completely remove ourselves from our current reality, from our current routine and have the ability to have two or three, maybe four days where we’re doing something like motorcycling, where literally you can’t think about the things at home,

Brad Singletary (01:01:37):
You better be paying attention. You better. Yeah.

Justin Mackie (01:01:39):
There there is. No, I can’t. I mean, I can have ADHD all I want, but I can’t think about nine different things. And I’m trying to stay alive on a motorcycle. And when you get home and you’ve been on a bike for two or three days, and you’ve lived minimalistic, minimalistically, you know, you’ve had a toothbrush and some toothpaste, if you’re lucky and a change of underwear. And if you’re lucky, you brought two pairs of socks and a t-shirt and you’re, that’s, that’s about it. Some water, you get home to all your crap that drags you down. And that you’re worried about in the garage or sitting outside in the sun or all these different materialistic things that we encumber our lives with. And I know that for me personally, I come home and it’s like, I struggle with the urge of like, just taking everything I own and shoving it out on the curve with a free sign, you know, because I just, I want to, I want to go to this minimalistic lifestyle, but it, I think there’s a balance there to be had. And I think that stepping outside of your

Brad Singletary (01:02:42):
Routine mundane every day

Justin Mackie (01:02:45):
Makes you reevaluate your choices in life. And everybody should understand that you can reevaluate your choices in life every day. If you want to and make new ones, you don’t have to be stuck in it. But I find that it’s hard to look from the outside, looking in. If you don’t leave it ventures, do that. Wow. That’s powerful.

Taco Mike (01:03:10):
Brad question for you. Once upon a time you were a college athlete, kind of a bad-ass one. And then when you were on a team, you were in this cohesive unit ready to go do battle against the opposing teams. There was probably an energy and a power and a comradery in that. Can you describe it?

Brad Singletary (01:03:25):
Yeah, it’s probably the last time I felt alive, you know? I mean, it’s been, I think I, I finished all that when I was about 23, maybe 24. And it, I have been seeking something that has that feeling ever since. Never found it. And so, yeah, I mean, you have a common purpose. You meet up at a commonplace there’s language, there’s culture. There’s like stuff. There’s things you talk about the shiny objects and, you know, there’s the weight room and the field and the equipment and so forth. So yeah, sports. I have a client who is involved in a softball league and he, when it’s the season is on, you know, he’s playing three or four nights a week. I thought, why is this a problem? Why is this a problem for his wife? And the problem was he wasn’t taking care of things beforehand, but yeah, sports, you’d never too old.

Brad Singletary (01:04:14):
There’s old men who are golfing. That’s a little mini journey. There’s nothing life threatening there. Maybe if you’re old enough for heaven for, in Florida serious. So athletics, that’s a, that’s a great way that there’s a, there’s definitely a group feeling that comes with that. I just think some men are, they’ve never had the experience. They didn’t do it as a kid, never went in scouting. They never were on a team. They never had anything like you’re talking about. They don’t have the means to do that. Where do they go? I love the idea about hiking groups. That’s free to walk out and

Justin Mackie (01:04:50):
Free. It’s free. As long as you don’t go to REI, aria is not free.

Justin Mackie (01:04:54):
It was so cute when $10,000 later you’re so outfit, you just

Brad Singletary (01:04:59):
Got to get back to your resources and figure out why you’re not doing what you love to make the money, to be able to do the things that

Taco Mike (01:05:04):
You really do. Tell me about this guy that that’s the softball player and his wife. So this is an interesting little, little sidebar, and it goes back to what Justin was saying. I would suggest if if if an alphum man has not laid the groundwork, just like we talked about that tribal society, those men, aren’t going to leave the tribe unless the, unless they know their elders and women and the vulnerable, the children are taken care of. As soon as they feel comfortable and confident in that, then there, then they’re free to go. W do you know of guys that are going out and recreating at the and neglecting taking care of the tribe before they leave?

Brad Singletary (01:05:44):
Yeah. So many times it has to do like substance use and stuff like that. So they go to the softball tournament. All good. She’s totally cool with that. But now you’re drunk and you’re doing blow up all night until this is all over. And you end up who knows where to come dragging in the morning, not feeling like taking the trash out or whatever that is. And so they’re overdoing the stimulation. I think that’s why so many men do have addictions. They don’t have the stuff like you’re talking about. It’s like sensory, there’s a need for like sensory stimulation. And when there’s nothing there, isn’t, there is no

Justin Mackie (01:06:17):
You’re introducing drugs at that point to get that

Brad Singletary (01:06:20):
Feel some euphoria and what you’ve guys have described, I’ve seen your videos and pictures and things. I’m blanking. That’s what they’re after. This is a whole other kind of high. And so when men blow it, they do it too much. They do it too often. She hates it. It’s cause they end up at the strip club after the softball game or they’re, you know, being irresponsible, they’re overdoing it. And they haven’t taken care of things at home first

Taco Mike (01:06:44):
That shuts my mouth because I know those guys and I don’t understand it. That’s sort of like given an opportunity. How do you explain, how do you, so what do you say to a guy like that? How do you, how do you like, just try to give him some sense of like a reality check on that?

Brad Singletary (01:07:02):
What you’re doing is necessary. Men need this kind of thing. Good on you for doing it. Good on you for having a little physical fitness in your life. You’re running around softball practice or the game or the tournament or the golf every Saturday morning or whatever it is. But you have to, you can’t just be engaged in your. You gotta be engaged on your job. You gotta be engaged at home. And then yeah, go out and have the adventure and have fun. Everything you guys are talking about has to do with, we worked first and then we played. So he needs that. And I tell the wife, the woman in his life, yes, he needs to do that. You should support it. He’s got to do it. Maybe there’s limitation. Maybe don’t come home at four in the morning from softball game, the end of that night, but it’s necessary. I think that stuff is necessary. Any variation of this stuff? I think it’s just hard to find maybe around here, the desert, these things you’re talking about, you guys have means that most many men I work with don’t have. And so

Taco Mike (01:08:04):
That might be true. I mean, we may be in a little bit of a privileged class to be able to go and buy these motorcycles and we have the time and means to go and do these things. And they’re

Brad Singletary (01:08:13):
Playing pickleball at the city park down here for free. I mean, there’s, there are, there are things. And if you’re not making excuses first, I think you gotta be convinced of the need for this stuff. Connection, engagement, sweat, like involvement. There’s a goal. There’s something competitive about it. I’m sure you guys get into little games and little things that are like, watch my wheelie, you know, see what I can put on it the before.

Taco Mike (01:08:38):
So there’s the ceremony of the buildup and the preparation and all that. And then the execution. And then afterwards, there’s all the like daydreaming about the next one. And then busting balls. Like, you know, you did a thing or you whatever, and it’s just, there’s a whole, it’s a circle. And then this circle needs to overlap to the next circle. Each one needs to bleed a little bit into the next one and the next and forever. And you have, you

Brad Singletary (01:09:02):
Have an inside joke about something that only you two know about. There’s a little, that’s a relationship that all busting and stuff like that. That that’s one of the important ways that men bond is. You gotta have a little story. You got to have a little colorful thing that happened that maybe you two only know about, or you in this, that we’re on this trip. Those are all of these tribal bonds. Yes.

Justin Mackie (01:09:26):
Mike took care of that for us. When you wrecked my bike. Oh

Justin Mackie (01:09:30):
Boy email, send me a message. I’ll send you pictures of how I crashed Justin’s motorcycle.

Justin Mackie (01:09:38):
That was a good bonding experience. We bonded. We bonded. So close that’s was

Taco Mike (01:09:43):
Death was closed, but no one I did not die. Why would a guy think he’s so entitled to go out? This is just really high level of immaturity to take the gift that maybe your wife is giving you and say, yeah, that’s fine. Go out, go, go with your buddies. And then to really like hyper sort of abuse that opportunity. That’s some high level immaturity or am I seeing it wrong? No, it’s

Brad Singletary (01:10:06):
Just it’s self-centeredness you know, and I think it’s easy to be engaged. When is your hobby? When is your thing, your boys, your special thing that you do that you’re into, that’s easy to stay connected to and it’s easy to have the energy for it. It’s easy to justify the expense. It’s easy to, but it’s, he’s got a problem with just narcissism.

Justin Mackie (01:10:31):
This can have, I mean, these men have children at home wives, whole thing, whole package,

Brad Singletary (01:10:37):
Let’s say, and they saying, oh, they’re great. Dads. They’re really involved, but he can’t look me in the eyes. He can’t hug me. He can’t tell me, he loves me. He can’t buy me anything for my birthday. He can’t do all these other things. And then she and there’s a resentment and just bitterness. So he’s not really done. The first thing in the other episode, Justin talked about his greatest resource was relationships. All, everything we’ve really talked about in these series of these episodes we’ve been on is about the people. Yeah. Dirt bike trips into some crazy terrain. That’s about the people it is and the guy who needs to soldier with PTSD, what’s wrong. It’s the people. And I was so shocked to hear that of all the things like Justin has done of all of his little toys and all the trips and the things that he can experience in life, what he values most and sees most important is the people. And I just think a lot of men were not naturally good at connecting understanding and really bonding with people. So that’s where we get into trouble.

Justin Mackie (01:11:47):
I think it should be said that, I mean, for a grown man with a wife and kids to think it’s okay to go out and get hammered drunk all night and do drugs, is, is, I mean, so far beyond even rational thinking, you know, I, I’ve never understood why, why any grown person sees that as okay. You know, it’s not, you know, you gotta be able to, you, you can’t have any success, any level of success in your life. If you can’t function at a high level, under massive amounts of self willpower and control and be in complete control of your faculties and, and go to bed at a decent hour and get up and keep the ball rolling, you know, with alcohol and drugs, you can’t do that. You you’re giving up that option. And so I see that as something that, you know, college kids do, I don’t have any responsibilities. You know, they’re doing dumb. You know, a grown man. That’s got kids and a wife and a, probably a job and you know, that’s not okay.

Brad Singletary (01:13:05):
You know, it’s interesting too, when you look at what really drives addiction, it’s a lack of connection. It’s a sense of disconnection. I mean, I don’t mean the kid who’s just partied in college or whatever, but someone who’s really stuck in addiction, they’re feeling isolated. I’m willing to bet. I would be interesting to kind of poll or to look at some of the people you guys do these rides with. And they spend a lot of their time engaging in like high quality experiences like that with other guys. How many of them, I don’t mean, you know, have a shot, smoke a cigar here and there. I’m wondering how many of them are ruining their lives with addiction. I would say probably not many because they’re connected. They’re stimulating their senses with the bikes and the, you know, and the adventure that comes with that, right? I’m guessing these are not a bunch of, here’s

Taco Mike (01:13:56):
Their stupidity. That’s going on. There’s, you know, tomfoolery and all that. But these guys are not like crack heads. Yeah.

Brad Singletary (01:14:03):
It’s interesting how we end up talking about relationships. And if we’re talking about engaged in maybe one of the last I want to talk about here is being able to listen, being able to love the people in your life, being able to be selfless. How in the world do you find the energy to do that stuff? The people in your life don’t have good vibes, but you do. How do you maintain how to engage when it’s the energy is not okay around you?

Justin Mackie (01:14:38):
Well, if, if it’s at home, I bring it to light. I pointed out, whoa, hold on, stop here. This is anybody else not having fun because this isn’t fun. So let’s change this and just bring it right to the forefront. You know, if I see it, I’m going to make for sure that everybody else sees the same thing and is in agreement that this isn’t what we want. This is not the reality we want to be in. So what are we going to do to alter this reality? And just bold face, make a choice that you’re not going to accept it. You’re going to change it, whatever it may be.

Brad Singletary (01:15:18):
You’re like hitting the pause button is what you see here. Exactly. Okay. With you. Cause it’s not okay. And this can be reverse. We can change.

Justin Mackie (01:15:26):
What’s happened. Exactly. And through that communication, I think that changes everything. If you could say, whoa, hold on, stop screaming, stop screaming, chill out, turn the TV off. But then the garbage can, let’s talk for a minute. Just literally, like you said, that’s a great way to put up, push the pause button on the remote and have a quick little like, whoa, they’re very cool with what’s going on right now. Cause I’m not

Speaker 7 (01:15:52):
This sucks. That seems to right. The ship. Wow. That’s awesome. So that’s leadership, right?

Taco Mike (01:16:00):
That’s leadership. Somebody bang up. You’re not getting sucked into the,

Brad Singletary (01:16:05):
We’re saying an alpha participates with good vibes. You don’t, you’re not just there at the Christmas party. You’re you’re happy to be there. You’re pleasant. You’re you’re not in Hawaii. I heard this tonight before you guys came in, they were in Hawaii on this special family trip with the grandkids. And the guy is just pissy about, he’s just fault finding about every little thing. This place is too busy. We might as well have gone to LA, you know, and just pick it apart. So he’s there, he’s involved, but that’s sucky a sucky level of engagement. If you got poor attitude, that’s true. Right? You can’t just, you know, be at the Halloween dance. Hmm. You have to be in control of what energy you’re bringing. How can you influence the energy and the environment that you’re in. You guys have super smooth, like charismatic energy. That’s just positive. And I know you have your bad days, but how do you maintain positivity?

Speaker 7 (01:17:11):
Desire, desire

Taco Mike (01:17:13):
For an outcome. I want the outcome of my life. I want them wake here’s here’s. I think I’ve said this before, but I want my work for my funeral backwards. I hope that my funeral is a dance party at a skating rink with a hot air balloon rides and like balloon animals, a guy, a CLA weird clown in the corner make a balloon animals. And then I want everybody to have hopefully, ideally some funny story where like, remember when Mike did this dumb thing or whatever, I want it to be a party. And the only way that it’ll be a party or for me to be remembered as somebody worthy of a party is that the wake I leave behind the boat of my life, passing through the waters is one that people can surf on. And there’s there’s joy and enjoyment. And that’s the wake I want to leave behind me. And so that is a result of attitude. Like conscientious, mental thought choice. What thoughts? I love the little analogy of the guy sitting there being pissy in Hawaii. Dude. You’re in Hawaii. It look around and yes, you’re probably costs you more money than you planned on. And yes, the year with your in-laws and you probably are annoyed by, you know, a lot of things.

Brad Singletary (01:18:25):
Yes. It’s humid. Yes. It rains every afternoon.

Taco Mike (01:18:29):
You’ll find something to enjoy and then listen, listen. Right? You’re committed.

Justin Mackie (01:18:35):
Just own it. Yeah. Make the best of it. You’re committed. You’re committed.

Taco Mike (01:18:40):
And so I just choose just for me, I just choose to get into it, whatever it is. It’s probably sucky most of life. You know that one poem it’s great. You should look this up. It says something along the lines of life is like an old time train journey. It is the, the, the track of your life, the train of your life, that’s on the track. It’s bumpy and squeaky and loud and you can barely, you barely get any sleep. And the engine is putting out hot ashes and they’re blowing in your face and it’s uncomfortable and you’re jammed in there, but comma, but every now and then the it clears up and there’s a cool breeze to the window. And you see a beautiful Vista and that’s the moment live for that moment. Capture that moment. The other stuff is just sort of the necessary evil to get to that moment. And that’s, that’s the men. That’s the thought choice that I make.

Brad Singletary (01:19:32):
We need to do participate in life to be involved with the event. The thing be engaged with our family, but also to have some good energy. That’s the alpha has good energy and he can influence the energy and he can control his own level of energy. People are pissy, it’s hot. Something’s going on? How do you maintain your frame? How do you maintain your mindset of you’re in control of yourself?

Justin Mackie (01:19:57):
It’s a huge responsibility for, for men and for alpha men in a family situation, because you do set the tone. And I think that reminding yourself of that continuously is incredibly important because you have to understand that your kids are going to follow your lead. Your wife’s going to follow your lead. And however you set the tone, you’re creating your own reality, whatever it is you, you act up about, it’s gonna follow you,

Brad Singletary (01:20:28):
Dude. I’m going to steal your thing about I’m committed. That is so cool. Whether it’s like the marriage, whether it’s the trip that you’re on, I’m committed. I’m, I’m here, I’m on this, going back from Hawaii. I’m not going, yeah, we got four more days. Like, what are you going to do, bro? Committed. I can make the best of this. I can really, I can turn it around.

Justin Mackie (01:20:49):
You have to be committed to it. If to understand that you don’t have a choice in that commitment, you made the choice in that commitment. When you got on the plane in LA, your choice left. Then

Brad Singletary (01:21:01):
I was at a recent family event in the Pacific Northwest where they don’t have air conditioners. And it was during a hot spell. Yeah. And we were indoors in a wedding and it was like, man, this is kind of rough. You know, no air conditioning, 105 degrees in Seattle, in a wedding, in a suit with a, with a mask on, they make you wear a mask. So it’s like, what is my, what is, I can be pissy about this and I can be mad, or I can say, this is a beautiful family event. I’m recognizing the value of it. And I’m saying, and I’m here to bring some value, I’m here to take some pictures. I want to see the slide show. I want to dance with the, with the new couple I’m committed. I’m gonna use it. I’m gonna steal it. I’m gonna teach people that. Nice. Any closing thoughts on being engaged? You’re an alpha, you know how to handle the moment. You know how to handle the day. You know how to have fun, whether you’re at work or it’s time to take out the trash or you’re going out with your friends on an adventure, any final thoughts on living life with engagement.

Justin Mackie (01:22:08):
It says a lot. When you check your phone, I do this all the time and I I’m working on stopping it. And I think it’s become the normal in our society. It used to be checking your watch. There was a respect thing. You didn’t check your watch when you were with somebody because it meant that you were ready to go. You were signaling to them. You know, it was a body language thing that you were, you were done listening. You were not engaged, like jingling your keys. Yeah. Right. Checking your watch. It was a body language communication. And that today checking your phone. And I think that turning notifications off that you can on your phone really helps people. I try to take my phone and put it down, face down instead of face up. Cause then, you know, you, when you’ve got the notifications on the screen comes on and you see, you got a text message and it’s probably just, you know, some alert that you have that your bank giving you your balance once a day or something. And I don’t think, I think we’ve as a society forgotten what that says to the other people around us, you know, when we’re engaged in a conversation or in a meeting or at lunch or eating and we’re checking her phone.

Brad Singletary (01:23:25):
It’s funny. The apple watch is, is really bad because every text is coming on the watch. And so I’m old school and I’m thinking of the watch thing when people are doing this every 30 seconds all the time, it’s like, I want to be like, yeah,

Justin Mackie (01:23:37):
For sure. That’s it, that’s the communication, right? That’s the body language. Yeah.

Brad Singletary (01:23:43):
Bring us home. Taco Mike engagement.

Taco Mike (01:23:46):
Want what you have, have find ways to desire the things that are right there in front of you, the looking outside of your current situation at someone else’s situation and then feeling bad about what you lack, what you don’t have is cancer. And so spiritual cancer, this guy in the moment, right? This guy in the moment, like everything is about being in the moment and spiritual cancer is looking at somebody else’s situation and then having an ache about yours. There is nothing that any read Viktor Frankl’s man’s search of half search for happiness, just re meaning man’s search for meaning that’s it. I just re-read that, not, not too long ago to sit on a train, headed to Auschwitz and to, for him to look out the window and for his mind and his heart to just be full of, he, he found ways to be in his moment and to find joy in a breadcrumb in his pocket.

Taco Mike (01:24:53):
There’s a there’s he talks so much about just eating the little piece of bread that he was given, but then saving a tiny piece of it and putting his pocket and then reaching in his pocket and feeling that breadcrumb. And then fantasy it just having, just being at joy with the fact that he didn’t have what he had. And he was realistic about that, but, but he had a bread crumb. He had something to eat. He was in the moment, or he could look out the window of the train, going to Auschwitz and see a sun set. And just remember back when he looked at sunsets in the past and what they meant to him and the people he was with. So that’s really dramatic and kind of depressing downer to bring that in. But the reality is, is like every one of us, regardless of our situation are better off than 99.9, nine, nine, 9% of the world. And to be first hashtag first world problems to be sitting in Hawaii. Now we’re picking this guy, this poor guy, like we’re breaking his back, but I’m, it’s a great sort of analogy. What kind of first world problem is it? When you’re like the wedding you’re fed and you’re healthy, it’s a feast.

Brad Singletary (01:26:05):
It’s a fancy feast.

Taco Mike (01:26:07):
Yup. And you have money to get to Seattle. And then you’re going to leave and go to a hotel and enjoy a pool and air conditioning and a bed, a nice comfortable bed. Right. All of this stuff. And for us, for a man to just be a belly Achor, to be a and a moaner and a complainer about all of the little things is just to miss the mark of life. It’s to look at things that are unimportant and, and consequential. And then to set those memories. Justin talked so much about like our kids look at us and our kid, what is our, what are we leaving? Like, oh, dad’s dad never has fun. Dad never leaves to go on trips. Dad always is complaining about the money. Dad’s always, he doesn’t want to go there. Cause you know, he doesn’t like grandma and grandpa and he doesn’t want to visit the thing.

Taco Mike (01:26:52):
Like, that’s just, if that’s your wake, like, that’s what you’re leaving behind the wake of life that you that’s, that’s the memories. Like that’s the tone that you’re setting for your life. And it’s just choices. It’s just attitude and choices. We talked about that. So that may be a bit of a wrong answer to your question. But the reality is, is we are so freaking blessed with so many things. And if you’re alive and you have family to be with and you have kids to play with, then just dig in and do the work, do the inner work, the soul work to figure out how to find joy in that and live, live in your life. And just fricking ring that wash rag out and get every drop out of it.

Brad Singletary (01:27:40):
I told you, man, I don’t know if you knew Mike like this before, but master teacher, thank you both for bringing this stuff. All of your experiences. This really, I would like to be a man. Like I see you guys are, thank you so much for being here. And you know, this is something that you’ll, this is going to be captured. This is going on the internet and it ain’t ever going away. So I hope kids will listen to it someday. And people at your funeral will play all the, all the episodes episode, episode 75,

Speaker 5 (01:28:09):
By the way, this is episode 75,

Brad Singletary (01:28:12):
We’ve done 75 episodes, really 75, 75,

Speaker 5 (01:28:17):
Congratulations. More than an hour.

Brad Singletary (01:28:18):
Each if an average book is about five hours in length, let’s say to read what’s five and a 75 math guy. I don’t know, seven, six, we’ve got 15 books worth of content in 75 podcasts episodes. And Mike is the one making it hot. So anyway, you guys are awesome. Thank you again for being here. Until next time. No excuses alpha up

Speaker 2 (01:28:47):
Gentlemen, you are the alpha and this is the alpha quorum.