ALPHA SHOT: One-minute Sample

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Men are faced with unique challenges and many of our failures come from operating with “boy psychology” instead of the mature and evolved “man psychology”. We often find ourselves asking “what kind of men should we be?”  There are many perspectives about healthy masculinity and even more widely varying ideas of what it means to “be an alpha.”  Today my 3 ALPHA guests and I continue a 6-episode series on our review of the book “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover” by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, who describe the difference between boy psychology and man psychology and give a very effective model of healthy manhood by helping guys rediscover the archetypes of mature masculinity: in this episode we discuss the WARRIOR.

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

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

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Brad Singletary (00:00):
Men are faced with unique challenges. And many of our failures come from operating with boys’ psychology instead of the mature and evolved man psychology. We often find ourselves asking what kind of man should we be? There are many perspectives about healthy masculinity and even more widely varying ideas of what it means to be an alpha today. My three alpha guests and I continue a six episode series on our review of the book King warrior magician lover by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette. They described the difference between boy psychology and man’s psychology and give a very effective model of healthy masculinity by helping guys. We discovered the archetypes of mature manhood. In this episode, we discuss the warrior.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim (23:53):
Their mind?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim (38:37):
Yeah,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ALPHA SHOT: One-minute Sample

PLAY FULL EPISODE HERE

We’re continuing the conversation about this book review and this isn’t so much about the book, but just talking about issues related to men. The questions that we’re going to answer today are what is the King archetype expressed in its fullness? What are some relatable examples of men living this way? What does it look like when a man is operating from tyrant energy? What does the weakling act like? And how can a man fully access the King energy within himself? This segment is about living life as a man with the energy of a King. One special thing about the King archetype is that he embodies all of the other mature masculine energy. He’s also a warrior. He’s also a magician. He’s a lover. This episode is about leadership. 

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

Special quote: 

“In any moment of sadness, loneliness, emptiness, uncertainty, or discomfort,  ask yourself this. What does my King say?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does my King say? 

And listen deeply within.” 

(Stuart Motola)

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Alpha Quorum Website

Brad Singletary, LCSW

Private Facebook Group for Men

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Brad Singletary (00:00):
Men are faced with unique challenges. And many of our failures come from operating with boys’ psychology instead of the mature and evolved man psychology. We often find ourselves asking what kind of men should we be? There are many perspectives about healthy masculinity and even more widely varying ideas of what it means to be an alpha today. My three alpha guests and I continue six episode series on our review of the book King warrior, magician lover, I Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette. They described the difference between boy psychology and man psychology. If a very effective visual model of healthy manhood by helping guys rediscover the archetypes of mature masculinity. In this episode, we discuss the King.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brad Singletary (38:17):
Keep asking until you have confidence that you can stay true to yourself in all moments when your light is bright. And when it is dim, when the desire arises to avoid what you fear, fill emptiness, eliminate loneliness, or cling to anything or anyone ask the question, you will feel a fullness, a knowing wisdom within that was always there, but unknown until now. And once you have cultivated yourself and asking, you will become the all loving and all-knowing King yourself with no neurosis, no self betrayal and peace within, and you will notice he is you and you are him. So ask yourself now and in the days to come make it part of your daily practice. What does my King say? And listen deep within you guys. This is such an honor to be sitting here with you. I’m learning so much from you, this study of this book and all the things that we’ve discussed here are just have been really helpful to me. I’m just a dirt bag. I’m just white trash with a job who’s trying to help people. And I want to improve myself and improve my life. That’s the whole purpose of the alpha quorum. Thanks for being part of this till next time. No excuses, ALPHA UP.

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

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

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

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

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Alpha Quorum Website

Brad Singletary, LCSW

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim (00:58:21):
Awesome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Brad Singletary (00:00:10):
Welcome back to the Alpha Quorum Show. Brad Singletary here, I’m your host, the producer and the founder of the Alpha Quorum. I’m so excited about what we’re doing tonight. Listen, this is, I know it’s been a month or two since we released an episode, but this is a first for us on many levels. First of all, we have a huge panel here tonight from people who live here in Las Vegas, all the way to other West coast places. And on the other side of the world, we got the thunder from down under we’ll introduce everyone here a little bit later, but our purpose tonight is to talk about the Alpha 360, which was a first time, I kind of a wellness fitness challenge for men, the idea was to compete and to strengthen ourselves in many areas. Some of you are familiar with things like the,u75 hard Andy Frisella, lots of different challenges out there.

Brad Singletary (00:01:30):
30 day, 60 day, 90 day challenges. Many of those have to do with fitness or diet. And so we wanted this to be more of a well, 360 degree type of challenge that has to do with, you know, mental health, emotional health, just wellness awareness of yourself and your struggles and how to get through those things. We’ll talk about those steps here a little bit later, but first I want to introduce my guests here. I’ll just start with those on the top of my screen. Jeremy, introduce yourself. Give us a little bit of an introduction about yourself and why you wanted to do this.

Jeremy (00:02:07):
My name’s Jeremy I’m a father of two and a near five-year old and a near six month old baby here. And I’m married to my wife. I am an engineer at Intel. I’m a process engineer helping manufacture and develop the process of manufacturing chips for the company. I stay very busy with work. I stay very busy with family. So I wanted to do this challenge to kind of spend more time on myself, not just on my work and my family.

Brad Singletary (00:02:43):
What part of the world you live in Jeremy?

Jeremy (00:02:45):
I’m up in Oregon on the Northwest coast,

Brad Singletary (00:02:48):
Right on. And I’m just curious, what was your connection to the Alpha Quorum? Like did someone invite, you know, someone else who’s involved or how did you get connected with us in the first place?

Jeremy (00:03:00):
One of my primary hobbies is riding dirt bikes, riding adventure, bikes, or bikers. There’s a lot of guys coming over from the dirt bike ribs from the riding groups. So I know quite a few people have joined the, a car on Facebook group.

Brad Singletary (00:03:14):
Well, it’s good to finally have a face and a voice to so many of our, of our fans and followers and friends on on this Facebook page or dirt biker. So thanks for representing them. You’ve done well in this challenge, Jeremy, we’re going to hear more from you later about how you did all right. How about you, Paul?

Paul Charette (00:03:31):
Uh my name is Paul Charrette. I am a a therapist mental health here in Las Vegas. I’ve been a therapist for 15 years and in the last two years, I’ve also dip my toes into life coaching as well.

Paul Charette (00:03:48):
I joined the challenge at your invitation brag. We belong to a Facebook group together for a therapist and we’ve struck up a friendship and you invited me into the group and yeah, it was great. It was, it was, it was great to have that camaraderie and, and sort of a fellowship to make some changes and better myself. So thanks for having me on this to Paul. We’ve talked on the phone before about some different things, but first time I’ve seen you and I’ve got to say you’re rocking that beard, man. I am. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. It’s, it’s a skill, a skill. It gets hidden with the pandemic, but you know, all right, Jared, how about you, sir?

Jared Brown (00:04:31):
Hey guys. Great to be with you. So I guess you could probably tell where I’m from. I’m from Australia. I guess I’m a proud and proud Aussie father of six children ranging from ages 21 through to six. So between, between that and work and family life, I, I can be busy. I currently am in the earth moving industry at the moment. Just trying something a bit different, I guess, living out a childhood dream of when I used to play in the sand pit

Brad Singletary (00:05:08):
Earth moving, he moved, he moves the whole earth.

Jared Brown (00:05:11):
Yeah, that’s correct. That’s how it rolls

Brad Singletary (00:05:13):
Excavation type stuff or [inaudible]

Jared Brown (00:05:15):
Well, all the above. So I don’t just, I, I have a number of tickets and I operate a lot of machines, so it was something that presented itself. And I just went from one machine to another going up they’re all the same. They all just look different, but they’re all the same. So it was all, it was all a challenge. And I, I took a challenge. I like a challenge. And when I’m not, when I’m not doing stuff with the family, I’m doing stuff by myself. I like to go and chase pigs for, for a hobby. And I usually take my older boys with me as well.

Brad Singletary (00:05:50):
Yeah. I saw you posted a picture about that big hog. You shot here. I didn’t even know you could shoot guns in Australia. I didn’t know. You could do that, I guess can do so or.

Jared Brown (00:05:58):
We can, you know, we’ve got access to some, a big property, about three hours from my place and, and yeah, that’s our recreational hobby right on.

Brad Singletary (00:06:09):
All right. Thank you for joining us here, man. So it’s like six o’clock on a Saturday night here, or maybe almost six 30, but it’s what noon, noon, 1230 over there. And are you in Brisbane, Brisbane? Yep. Is that Queensland Queensland?

Mike in Vegas (00:06:26):
Ah.

Brad Singletary (00:06:29):
All right, Michael, how about you, sir?

Michael (00:06:31):
Okay. I’m Michael, I’m a husband. I’m a father of five kids. All five of them are adopted all different all different races and creeds and colors. We consider ourselves the United nations in Henderson, Nevada, because we got them all here. I’m a drama teacher I’ve taught in the school district here for 21 years. None of those years, I was a school administrator after those nine I repented of my sins and went back to teaching theater because you have to. Yeah, anyways, so, and I joined because of Brad, interestingly enough, Brad actually helped us with the adoption, the final part of the adoption of our youngest child. And that was 16 years ago, I believe crazy. Yeah. And we did that brat. So anyway. Yep.

Brad Singletary (00:07:28):
Thank you for joining us, Michael, how about you Mike and Vegas?

Mike in Vegas (00:07:33):
So I am, let’s see, live in Las Vegas. I own a catering company. I’ve got five KIS there from 26 to 12, and then we also have kind of three kids that we’ve kind of adopted along the way. Our girls best friends. So they’ve lived with us at the task. I don’t know. I, I got induced the program, Brad told me about it. I work with him with her group and and he was doing this challenge and I said, yeah, let’s go for it. I no, I like to do a lot of different things outside of my family. And this was just an opportunity to continue to improve myself so I can give more to my family

Brad Singletary (00:08:25):
Right on. Thank you for introducing yourselves over. I’m curious if you don’t mind sharing how old you all are. Jeremy. I don’t know if you said that. How old are you? 32 32 Paul 47, 47, Jared

Michael (00:08:41):
44 before Michael 56

Brad Singletary (00:08:46):
56. And Mike

Mike in Vegas (00:08:50):
52.

Brad Singletary (00:08:52):
It looks like the fittest one here is maybe the one here. Michael. I think you you’re probably the fittest. And by the way we have we, we used, we had a little we’ve got a discord server. I think that’s what it’s called. And Michael on the discord server shared a couple of shirtless pics flexing in the mirror, the old mirror selfie. And unbelievable how, how fit you are, sir, for your age? I I’ve got like 12 years to catch up to you. So maybe I’ll get there.

Michael (00:09:18):
Oh, I was young, foolish and naive when I took those pictures. That was like three months ago. What are you talking about? Well, I was younger and more foolish and not either or

Brad Singletary (00:09:32):
So just tell me, I want to just, just have me, have you share with me some of your thoughts about this whole thing in general? So what we had here is a challenge that consisted of things. We try to pull things in from the red nine and the red nine. Those are just things that I believe make us stronger men and allow us to be more just well-rounded and strengthen ourselves in different areas. So we had, here are a few other things. So we’ve talked about attitude, actions and attributes, and in the attitudes section, this has to do with reverence responsibility and resourcefulness. So the requirement was to do so. The requirements were to not complain and admit when you’re wrong, read fiction at least 20 minutes, a day, 30 words of written gratitude, meditation, or vocal prayer, or some other kind of spiritual practice, or some kind of a, like a worship service and the action category.

Brad Singletary (00:10:36):
We have engaged in meaningful connection, serious household investment track, or record all the foods that you eat, drink only water, or at least one gallon of water, strenuous physical activity, share your progress on social media, under the attributes we have. So discipline, discernment, and distinction. So abstain from an addictive habit give service to an individual organization, engage with a tribe for real talk or process your emotions by journaling. What did you think of this list of requirements? Maybe this was too complicated, too long, too much to do. All of you did very well to track this stuff every single day for 60 days. So impressive. What’d you think when you first saw this

Jeremy (00:11:25):
I’ll start. I you know, I’ve shared with us with friends before, but I usually tell people if you want to get something done, keep it simple and, and make a list. And I do this in my personal life with little house projects, projects on the vehicles, things like that. I make a list and I usually make it something I can get done in a day. And if I can knock out one thing in a day, every day for a week, my will dwindle, it’ll get smaller. Life gets more complicated when you let your list get too big and you’re not keeping track of it. So when you have a list of things you can focus on every day to improve yourself, I think it makes it a lot easier. Yeah,

Jared Brown (00:12:10):
No, I was just going to say, I just thought it was a, I guess, a good kick in the pants for some of it was to, for me to realize that for some of it, I was doing it without actually acknowledging that always doing it, you know, and, and I guess you know, a chance to probably a better myself and better my habits that I’d already formed that just, you know, needed a bit of fine tuning.

Brad Singletary (00:12:34):
I love that. I love that perspective. All you were going to see something.

Paul Charette (00:12:38):
Yeah. I liked how inclusive and all encompassing. It was all the different categories. There was something in there that I think everybody could gravitate towards that they were good at and something that they might need to strive for or work harder at. So I thought that was a good balance between working on something that your, your strength is in and maybe something that, that need to maybe improve in your life and the accountability piece where, whether it’s just knocking down, writing down your points every day or, or posting it is also something that I find it improves your likelihood that you’re gonna do those things. Cause you’re not just accountable to yourself, you’re actually accountable to, to other people. So I think that’s a really hard for me as well was, was being able to do that.

Brad Singletary (00:13:22):
So yeah, I wanted it to be flexible. So like on the, on the 75 hard challenge, for example, they want you to work out twice a day for 45 minutes, two workouts a day to 45 minute workouts a day. And one of them have to be outside. That’s difficult to do. I’ve actually started that challenge twice and didn’t finish. And I wanted to, I wanted to, I wanted some credit if I, if I’m like hanging out with my family or hanging Christmas lights, I wanted to, I wanted to, I wanted to get some credit for that. So we tried to weight each thing. So a strenuous, strenuous physical activity, for example, I think it was worth three points, you know, right. Writing some gratitude down in a journal, maybe that’s one point. And so obviously some may be easier or, or, you know, more difficult than others.

Brad Singletary (00:14:04):
And I think if we look at those points, like Jared ended up being the, the, the grand prize winner there. And I think it’s because of some of the key things that he hit. There were some things that you didn’t do every day. But the ones that kind of had the most weight, that’s what elevated your score. And I won’t even, I’m gonna, I’m not going to talk about myself as a, as a competitor. I’m on the list there somewhere. I’m not in the top five, that’s you, that’s you, you guys here, so, all right. Michael and Mike, what are your thoughts on when you first kind of look at this?

Michael (00:14:39):
Some of those things I was already doing um, I had just started working out. And so that was, it was nice. I had trainer for a while, but my money ran out, so I had to do it on my own. And so what was really nice is that I knew that I was reporting to somebody and so I report to the group. And so there were some things I went, dang. I, I, I don’t do that. I, you know, I but some things I, I did and I figured, okay, I can do these things. Like I used to be a journal keeper. I stopped. So it was a great time for me to pick up that habit. And it was, it was nice to do that. And talking about gratitude, that just my silly little things that I was grateful for. You talked about the journal writing and that’s, I put my, my, my gratitude and process journal together. And I I really liked that because I found that I was happier once I recognized everything that I was grateful for, or just one thing I was grateful for for a particular day. And that, that really helped.

Brad Singletary (00:15:49):
How about you, Mike overall impressions? When you see the list of like requirements, all the things you done, by the way Mike did a challenge, we did the 75 hearts together. And he, he actually won that challenge, got at an Alpha Quorum T-shirt for that a while back. And it was from that first experience that we, we wanted to build some more, you know, some different, I guess, dimensions to this thing. So, Mike, what’d you think when you saw this?

Mike in Vegas (00:16:17):
You know, I liked it because it seemed to me like I was doing a lot of that stuff, but there was some days some days I’m up at five o’clock and I’m running all day long. It’s 10 o’clock at night. And you know, I was like, Oh, I haven’t had the meaningful workout, or I haven’t done this. And it just, rather than going home and watching TV for an hour before I crashed again, you know, it was like, you know, I’m gonna go work out. So it was me just being honest and realizing that, you know, I can either trade personal time doing something positive, or I can trade personal time vegging in front of a computer screen or from an of a TV. And I’m sorry, it keeps me honest like that. And just really focusing on me rather than on strictly entertainment.

Mike in Vegas (00:17:04):
And also, I also do a lot of work with men and you know, I go to meetings most days, so it was great. You know, one of the aspects in there was working with a group of men or, and kind of doing self-help self-development. So I was grateful that that was in there because it made me realize the benefit of that. And probably the biggest thing is I’m, you know, I’m a chef, so you follow a recipe and at the end, hopefully you get a good result. And whenever I do challenges like that, if I follow the recipe at the end, I look and see if it’s a worthwhile result. And sometimes I don’t want, I question what’s the recipe, but if I follow it, then either I find out if it’s good or not, and as I followed this program, I realized, you know, there was a lot of really good things about it. And I saw myself stretching and I saw myself keeping it on task a little bit more than I would be otherwise. And that in itself was a rewarding process.

Brad Singletary (00:18:06):
So in this challenge, what did you begin to do that you weren’t, didn’t, weren’t in the habit of doing before, but you found a lot of fulfillment from that. For me, it was journaling actually. So I’m a, I like to write, I’m a, I’m, I’m an introvert actually. And so writing comes easier for me than speaking and sharing my feelings and so forth. And one of my problems in the past, I’ve gotten in a lot of trouble with text messages or things I post on social media and I need to do that. I need to write, but it’s not always something that I should share publicly. And I guess I’m an open book and I’ve, and I’ve, and I’ve done a lot of that. And I, and I think it’s good to do some but I needed a place where I could really just kind of dump my feelings. And this may be a paragraph. I use the app, I think it’s called journey. I just found it for this challenge, and that was really meaningful for me. The journaling part, that was one that I wasn’t really doing ever that I found most fulfilling. How about you guys? Jeremy?

Jeremy (00:19:10):
One of the aspects was a meditation, I think was an option on there. Mindfulness is another way to say it. I they can ask my wife she’ll agree. I’m pretty active. I never want to sit still in life. Like I’m always doing something. So taking some time to just unwind, think about the day, think about the progress I’m making on the challenge. That was good for me. And just taking a moment to breathe. I think it’s good to be active and, you know, be productive on a daily basis, but I think subconsciously it takes a toll on you. It’s a bit stressful. So it’s just good to take some, take a moment for yourself. I think

Brad Singletary (00:19:51):
Describe that a little bit. Like I’m guessing a lot of these dudes never, they don’t even know what meditation is and never tried that. So for you as this, like, you know, you’re sitting Indian style on a bamboo rug. I mean, what, what are you, you know, listening to like spa music or w how do you do, what did, what was your method for that?

Jeremy (00:20:10):
Personally, I’ve got a couple of yoga mats they’re just comfortable to sit on or kneel on or whatever. You know, just take a moment to sit down, relax, close my eyes, focus on my breathing. Think about the day, think about my goals for tomorrow. Thinking about things I might’ve done wrong today, you know, did I make a mistake? Did I overreact to someone? Did I get upset with somebody when I shouldn’t have those kinds of things? Just thoughtful process,

Brad Singletary (00:20:43):
Right on how about you, Paul? What’s something that you found most fulfilling. You weren’t really doing at all before?

Paul Charette (00:20:51):
I think it’s easy to come home and complain and, and think of all the things that went, went wrong in your day, and what’s going wrong in your life, in the world and so on, so forth, but to take the time to be grateful and write down that gratitude and what you’re thankful for each day, and take a moment out to think of what that is, whether it’s personally or professionally, and then sing it down on paper and actually reflecting on it and kind of reviewing the patterns and whatnot and saying, wow, these are there’s a lot for me to be grateful about has been really rewarding. And it’s something that I plan on doing moving forward, kind of keeping a running journal every day or running tally every day. At least one thing that I’m grateful for in my life, especially in these times where things are just so chaotic, that’s been really helpful for me to kind of get through the day, the week, the months and kind of just see some light at the end of each tunnel every day. So that’s been great.

Brad Singletary (00:21:45):
Right on how about you, Jared?

Jared Brown (00:21:47):
Yeah, look for me, it was probably to be honest, engaging more with the family, you know? Yes. I was engaged in, in, in what the family was doing, but was I really engaged or was I just merely a presence? And for, for me, I guess it was I guess having a look at where I was and being actively involved, being actively engaged. Yes, I was there. Yes. I was doing things, but I’d always probably be thinking to myself, I’d rather be in other places and doing other things. Yeah, that’s it.

Jared Brown (00:22:21):
But you know, it was, it was a chance to reevaluate well and truly, and, and, you know, get my priorities right. And be able to set them back to where they needed to be.

Brad Singletary (00:22:33):
Did they notice, did your family notice well first I guess, let me ask, did they know you’re doing the challenge and did they say like, wow, dad’s, you know, he hangs out with us a lot more, he’s more involved. Did they notice it?

Jared Brown (00:22:47):
They, they, they did. And especially, especially my wife, you know, cause I’d always come home from work. And first thing I do is put my feet up and sit on the chair and, and you know, I, yes, I’d been at work all day and my wife stays at home and she’s a housewife and she’s, she’s very good at what she does, but I guess I took that for granted expecting her to do, I guess, labor my part of the load that, that I probably should have shared. And for, for me to physically realize and engage in that was, was just a I guess for myself, a relief of, of where I was heading

Brad Singletary (00:23:23):
Right on. Man. How about you, Michael, something that you started to do the hadn’t really been doing before that meant the most?

Michael (00:23:32):
Oh jeez this isn’t, this isn’t really going to answer the question. I’m a grumpy man, you know I really am, and so trying to, and, and I can be grumpy about anything. It doesn’t matter. And so it was it was I think it was Paul who said the writing gratitude. Cause I don’t, I don’t do that a lot or I, I mean, there are times I say thanks or I, you know, I stop and go, Oh, but just know I mentioned, I’m a teacher and I teach theater and not just acting, but I also teach how to build sets. And how do you teach kids how to build a set for the stage? How, how do you do that online? The kids need to get their hands dirty. They need to bang their finger with a hammer. They need to see what it’s like to actually pick up and move things, how to run the light board or a soundboard. And so, as I was writing things that I’m grateful for, I went, okay, this is silly. I’m going to start crying. And I don’t want to it’s, I was so grateful for this challenge because not necessarily the 360, but it was the 360 that allowed me to do this. So, yes. But I I’m grateful for the challenge that I’ve had this year and 360 made me aware of it that I now have to teach it this way. And so I got to learn more. I got to learn my craft a little more. And so that’s one of the things that I, I really appreciated was looking at the gratitude. And I found, my family found too that as I was nice, really, my wife was the one that she saw that I wasn’t as grumpy wasn’t as and I really think it was because I was writing every day, recognizing every day what I was grateful for, even, even the things that are challenged is like stupid COVID, you know, there you go.

Brad Singletary (00:26:05):
It’s amazing to me, how many of you’re talking about family stuff and how this, you know, even though this is you focusing on yourself and on your own emotions and coping with that stuff better, the outcome affects so much more than just yourself and it’s affecting family members or household. And it’s impressive. I’m really glad to hear this stuff from you guys. How about you, Mike?

Mike (00:26:27):
You know what, as I was listening to everybody else, and those are all really good take backs from the whole thing for me, it was really just, I generally don’t complain, but if I don’t think about not complaining, then it’s out of my mouth before I actually realized that I’m complaining. So it, it was one of those things where I had to think to myself, okay, if I’m truly not complaining, then I went into every interaction, looking for my part in it and kind of what I might might’ve done wrong or, or being, I guess, open-minded to objective and every interaction. And as a result, I find myself, I found myself catching myself mentally complaining before it came out of my mouth. And for me, that’s the, that’s the hardest thing, because once it’s done, I can’t take it back. And then there’s, I’m in the doghouse or there’s, I’m making a man’s or I’m sorry, or I didn’t mean that where this was a great challenge for me, because in most interactions, especially with my family, I really was step out, okay, let’s not complain about this.

Mike (00:27:36):
Let’s talk about this objectively because and that really made a big difference was just going into it with the mindset. I’m not going to complain, let’s get the facts and then let’s figure out how to solve the problem rather than solving the problem and nagging them at the same time. So for me, that was probably the biggest then. It was great, especially in the holiday season, my kids were coming back from college. There was a lot of things going on. And there was, there wasn’t really any fights at all this holiday season when there usually is a couple of just when you get a bunch of people together, you’re going to have disagreements. And, and usually that comes from complaining. And at some point,

Brad Singletary (00:28:17):
I don’t know if this is the same question, but when I’m having another, another curiosity, I guess, and it has to do with experiments that you did with this, like something that you just, you, you only did it because it was in this list. Never really attempted this before. So you, weren’t a big fan of it at all. You felt silly doing it, but you just kind of made an attempt to do, to take one of these actions. What, anything come to mind that you, you just really stretched yourself to do it, even if you didn’t continue it through the 60 days, if you just made some heroic effort.

Jared Brown (00:28:54):
Oh, look proud. I don’t think it’s so much, you know, making, making the effort. I I’ve always been taught, you know, if you stretch yourself and stretch yourself far enough, that it hurts that that’s when you begin to grow. And for myself, it’s always, it’s always been that philosophy. And it’s not so much that, you know, all these things were new to me, you know, sometime in life, I have seen pretty much majority of what was on that list. I guess it just purely gave me a focus to be able to exactly assess where I’m at in life and, and, and gain some refocus to, I guess, stretch myself to do the things that I probably wouldn’t normally do.

Brad Singletary (00:29:40):
Okay. Anybody else? Something that you really had to reach in order to attempt?

Jeremy (00:29:47):
I would say similar to what Jared said each individual item, you know, we’ve all thought about at one point probably, but the challenge was doing all of them at Watts every day. So what was very unique about this challenge is it, wasn’t just a fitness challenge. You’re not just saying, Hey, I’m going to work out every day for 30 minutes. It’s you got to pick from each of the three categories and you gotta hit them all. And doing that every day for 60 days is challenging for sure.

Brad Singletary (00:30:20):
Wow. I love it. So just being intentional about how you’re going to spend your time, what you’re going to focus on, kind of choosing the thing that you’re going to let being well-rounded I guess that’s the best way to say it. Okay. How about you, Paul, Michael, Mike?

Michael (00:30:35):
Yeah, I think focusing on things deliberately and with purpose, rather than kind of just maybe going through the motions with certain things knowing that you’re, you’re, you’re tracking things or you’re, you’re accountable for them, or you’re reporting them rather than just kind of maybe doing some of those things, but packaging the whole thing together. Like other people have said not just one or two things here or there, but that whole package together. I think it’s like the, a, the whole was equal then more than the sum of the parts that, that sort of effect where you put it all together. And it has a cumulative effect that you don’t even recognize necessarily by just doing one of those things or two of those things. I think getting that benefit out of it that you didn’t necessarily, or I didn’t necessarily see coming when you just look at the individual things versus the whole package, if that makes any sense.

Brad Singletary (00:31:27):
Okay. Appreciate that.

Michael (00:31:28):
I was just, I was thinking about the reading non-fiction I mentioned before I’m a teacher, I’m a teacher, but I’m a drama teacher, you know, so we tell stories, we show stories. So I’m used to reading a lot of scripts or things pertaining towards a high school level age kids. And so I started because part of it was fitness the challenge and my wife, heaven forbid is plant-based vegan and Lord have mercy on us all. And, and I she she’s been trying to hit me to read one of these books and one of the books is how not to die. And so I’ve found out all sorts of ways, how not to die of certain things. Like I know heart and diabetes and all those other kind of fun things, fun things. And and I, and I, I learned some things I didn’t, didn’t say, Oh, honey, I’m going to be a vegan incidentally, just so you guys know Oreo cookies are vegan.

Michael (00:32:49):
No animals are harmed in the making of an Oreo cookie. It makes me feel really happy for I don’t know, the, the vegan people, I guess, for them. But I, I learned some stuff and I go, Oh, you know, that’s, and, and so I read a lot of health kind of related books, but I, I read my uncle’s personal history. I, I found out that I actually had family that came over on the Mayflower. And so, and it wasn’t my uncle who came over on the Mayflower, but he had, he had his journals and stuff like that, but he also went into the family history. And so there was family pride sense the kind of hit me. So that was, I don’t know if that answered your question, you said my name. So it’s like, Oh, okay. I’m an actor. I’ll take stage. So

Brad Singletary (00:33:53):
How about you, Mike, something that you, what was the question? Something that you attempted that you hadn’t really done?

Mike in Vegas (00:34:00):
Well, I’ve been doing a lot of that stuff off and on, but I think that I was doing it sometimes grudgingly because I wanted the results. And I think somewhere in the challenge that switched from having to do something, to getting to do something because I was trying to be a better person. So for me, the whole challenge was really about a total mental shift positive that, Hey, you know what I get to do these things. I’m in a place, you know, in my family and in my career. And, and a lot of the tour, I can take the time to do these things. I’m am in invested deeply in my faith, but I also have my own life out of it to where I have activities that I do that are aren’t with the family. And there’ve been times in my life where, you know, years would go by and I, I looked up and didn’t realize I hadn’t really done anything for me.

Mike in Vegas (00:35:01):
It’s just been running and kids from one, one practice to one lesson back and forth, back and forth, and then trying to get a little work done. And then when the honeydew list, and then trying to get into bed and start the rat race all over again. So for me, it was just an opportunity to get, to do all these things. So it was a kind of total mental shift of gratitude, get to do these things and grateful that I have the physical health. I can do these things and the wherewithal to be able to figure out how to multitask all those different things together. So really it was just being grateful for the challenge, not looking at it as, wow. All right. I got to do this again. Oh, I gotta do this because I’m a competitive person and I want to be competitive, but it was more out of a sense of gratitude and an opportunity to do it rather than trying to win. It was more, Hey, this is going to be good for me. So let’s, let’s do this in a positive way. And I think that’s really, what would, the big takeaway for me was, is doing the task in a very of, Oh, I get to do this. I get to do this. And and benefit from the results.

Brad Singletary (00:36:15):
Cool, appreciate that. So I’m curious about the physical aspect the, the diet, the water and the strenuous physical activity. That’s something that I, while I did well with the water I didn’t do quite as well with the, with writing down my writing down my foods. I’ve, I’ve struggled with weight throughout my life. I actually had weight loss surgery. What was it? Three or four years ago and was on weight Watchers and things at different times. And one of the things I found most helpful was just to write it down. If I can track it and record what I’m doing. That’s, that’s where that kind of came from. That’s the magic of something like weight Watchers, whatever you eat, just write it down, increases your awareness, and you’re in your you’re tuned in to what you’re putting in your body. So let’s talk about food water the strenuous physical activity. And what kind of what’d you do? What kind of things do you do? We’ll, we’ll wrap this up here in 10 or 15 minutes, but I’m just curious on the physical part, because there was a lot of, it was kind of weighted heavily toward the physical activity and in that, in that section. So go ahead.

Jared Brown (00:37:20):
Okay. Just, I was just going to say probably the water challenge was, was probably the hardest one for me. It’s never, I guess water’s never been part of my strict diet before, but I guess my background of being a tradesman used to, I guess, start the day with, can have coconut upon a sausage roll. That was, that was breakfast. And for me, it kind of, you know, kicked the habit where I had to have some sort of sugar stimulation during the day, or, you know, as soon as I got home. But for, for me, this has probably been the really, really best part of the challenges I have comfortably, you know, towards probably about the middle of the challenge, being able to consume the, the the gallon of water. So

Brad Singletary (00:38:07):
Did they talk about gallons or do you go by litters or what

Jared Brown (00:38:10):
We go by, we go by litters over here. Cause my understanding is a gallon for you guys is about four liters.

Brad Singletary (00:38:16):
Well, yeah, around there, four liters. Yeah.

Jared Brown (00:38:20):
So yeah, for, for me it was yeah, four liters of water a day. And to start with it was, it was quite I guess, hard to stomach, but now that’s, that’s all that, that, that my diet consists of is now water. Oh, nice.

Brad Singletary (00:38:36):
Yeah. Anybody else do only water? Like so not just the gallon day, but you only drank water. I didn’t, I wasn’t able to do that. Most days I got the gallon of water in, but it didn’t want only drink water.

Michael (00:38:47):
I, I would say because of working out I was, I was told to take a lot of protein and so I drank a lot of protein kind of things. Cause it, I found it was easiest. I don’t live plant-based, but obviously it’s a big part of my life because of that. So I did supplement with like protein shakes, but but I also, I put so much into the protein. I felt like I was, I was eating more than, you know, I throw in stuff, but I still did like the gallon of water. My house during the summer, we, we forced our kids to drink water. They don’t ever want to drink water. And so we had the glass, we have glass glasses or glass mugs, and we found that you could use a Sharpie on the glasses and just take tallies or hash marks on those glasses.

Michael (00:39:44):
And so we knew, Oh, okay. We’ve, we’ve had that much water today. And so that that’s helped us in the past. And so but I, yeah, I, I think I addressed that issue of the water. I did more than a gallon. We also there was a phlebotomist that I was that I spoke with you know, the vampires who take your blood for medical reasons or for donation reasons. And if you donate blood or, or platelets, it helps with the helps with the the draining of your blood, I guess. And and it goes a lot faster, especially if you do platelets, platelets can last couple hours donating those. So that was something that I really had to get mindset again, to do that.

Brad Singletary (00:40:52):
Other guys, physical stuff, the diet recording, monitoring your food, a gallon of water a day or strenuous physical activity.

Paul (00:41:02):
Yeah, for me the, the drinking of the water and the kicking, the bad habit kind of went hand in hand. It’s, it’s difficult. I find it challenging to drink the water. And unlike Jared, I haven’t actually kicked my Coke habit yet. So drinking the Coke every day was something that I found throughout the challenge was something where I would fall off. And it was, it was that challenge of giving up the Coke and drinking the water. Instead. It was, it was probably my most consistent challenge throughout the throughout the challenge. So it gives me something to continue to aim for. Cause I know it helps decrease weight and all those other things. As I, as I see my weight expanding it gives me something to aim as this challenge is over, but it was something that I struggled with throughout the throughout the challenge. Okay. Jeremy?

Jeremy (00:41:53):
Yes. So the the fitness aspect, there were primarily three items, water, food, and you’re working out the water thing. I sort of had a head start on when I was younger, I drink a lot more Coke. Everybody likes Coke, boop Pepsi. Right. But you know, in the last five or six years, I started realizing it’s wasteful to be drinking calories, right. We all have a waistline. We can improve on why drink calories when you can not drink calories. Right. So I started drinking diet soda. It’s a step in the right direction. It’s not ideal. Then a three to four years back, you know, I’m realizing before COVID working onsite at work, we have access to free soda. All we want, I’m still drinking diet, but I’m starting to say to myself you know, for every cup of soda, I should at least be drinking a cup of water to try to take another step in the right direction, try to get more water intake. And you know, trying to get more and more water per unit volume of soda, essentially. That’s what, that’s the direction I was heading. So going into this challenge, I definitely was taking in more water already. But I wasn’t tracking it. And so with this challenge, I started to realize what a gallon means of a cup in my kitchen. Roughly six of these cups is equal to a gallon. So actually here you go.

Jeremy (00:43:26):
I simplified it. I got a drink at least six of these every day to meet my, my goal there. I don’t think there was a single day in the entire 60 days where I only drank water. I do need a little bit of caffeine. Cause like I said earlier, I’m always on the move and yeah, I’m addicted to caffeine and most people or everybody drinks something.

Brad Singletary (00:43:45):
Yes, me too. That’s that’s, that’s my new year a challenge that’s going to be that’s my next thing is the only water that’s, that’s what I’m really pushing for. Now. How about you, Mike?

Mike in Vegas (00:43:54):
You know, I found that as I well, about 18 months ago, I was probably 70 pounds heavier. So I’ve lost a ton of weight and part of that was exercising and drinking water. And so water was kind of a habit that I’d formed into, but as I increased my exercise to more strenuous, it seemed like I was craving the water and all the other things, I didn’t see it all. So those weren’t that difficult of the challenge, watching what I eat kind of a, that’s a tough one because I cook for probably, I, I cook for a bunch of vegan vegetarians, regular people everyday, probably anywhere from 60 to 90 meals a day. And so I cook all this really good food, but then I find myself grabbing a thing of donuts and eaten it on the way as I’m delivering it.

Mike in Vegas (00:44:51):
So I didn’t really good at good job at tracking my food. I don’t really track it that much because I’m constantly working with food tracking. It’s just a little bit onerous, but I figured that I’d done a few days and when I did that, I felt good about myself. That’s probably the hardest part of this challenge is just, I think I just I’m food so much. So it’d be like somebody who works with IT to limit the number of hours they spend on the computer each day. It’s or to track it because it’s, I don’t think about it because I’m around food so much and constantly tasting. And, and honestly the hard part is that I don’t eat all day long because once I’m cooking it, I feel, I, my body says, are you already eating it because you’re smelling it.

Mike in Vegas (00:45:40):
And then I realize it’s, you know, 10 o’clock at night and I haven’t eaten anything all day long and then age isn’t good for my waistline. So that was probably the hardest part of this challenge is just the tracking of the food. The water in the seniors exercise. I really enjoy because for me, that’s my downtime for the day. I wouldn’t say that’s my meditation time, but in some respects it is because I get plugged on w plugged in with a book, you know, mostly it’s nonfiction and I’m, you know, multitasking, I’m exercising, I’m reading a beat in a book or listening to a book online or talking to friends or catching up when something social. So for me, the excising was just really if I don’t exercise each day, then I’m just not a happy person because I incorporate so many things and just getting out and exercising.

Brad Singletary (00:46:32):
What about the physical activity strenuous? So in the like 75 hard, they talk about two workouts a day. One has to be outside 45 to 45 minute workout today. That’s that’s of course I would love to get to that point where I could do that, but I’m just wondering what kinds of things you did to improvise or to make it work. You’ve got families, you’ve got children, you have jobs and you have, you know, whatever limitations you may have. How did you adapt your, you know, how did you get some of that done given ordinary dude life where you’ve got, you’ve got responsibilities. You can’t just be a gym rat all day long, maybe. How did you handle the time that it takes to, to, to be physical and just curious, what kinds of things you did on the physical activity?

Mike in Vegas (00:47:17):
Ready for me? You know what it’s I, I walk and I usually try to get a four to five minute mile. We’re not four to five, four to four to five miles per and sometimes I traded sleep for walking, but it’s funny, but I, the next day, what I didn’t wasn’t as vigorous and I didn’t have as good a day. I didn’t sleep up. So I was perfect in the exercise for the challenge, just because I’ve through past experience. If I don’t go out and do something vigorous, then I just don’t feel as good the next day. So for me, it really was walking and I always do that outside. I don’t like the treadmill and a guy. I just think outside the weather, the vitamins from the sun or just the weather, it’s a, it’s just a great place for me to just get away. But it was just the vigorous exercise was, you know, visually walk probably. I probably averaged anywhere from a 10 to 15 miles a day, just with my normal activities. And then walking on top of that,

Brad Singletary (00:48:27):
Goodness gracious. Okay. I’d say that’s pretty strenuous, 15 miles a day. You do it pretty good

Jared Brown (00:48:34):
For me. I had to, I had to make it fit in during the day, while I was, while I was at work. So for me, I’d actually physically get myself out of the machine and I would jump on a shovel. I would jump on the manual labor side of things and I would, I would exert myself that that, that was probably the best opportunity that I knew I would have. So that’s what I had to do.

Jeremy (00:48:57):
Moving the earth manually. There you go.

Jared Brown (00:49:00):
Yeah. That’s it exactly

Brad Singletary (00:49:03):
Taking advantage of the opportunity that was already there? Yes, I did more.

Jeremy (00:49:10):
Push-ups in these 60 days than I’ve ever done before. Often times I’d find myself doing it after 10 or 11 o’clock at night where I’m saying, you know, I’ve been busy all day, but I haven’t checked that item off the list yet. And unlike Mike here in the Pacific Northwest, we don’t get a lot of sun, especially this time of year. So fortunate for you. You have some sunlight, but it’s wet here. It rains a lot. So I have a treadmill. This is a very multi-purpose room. I’m in here, got my office, got my wife’s office and a treadmill and the other side of the room. So this is where it happened. Pushups and bicep, curls, stretching, and hitting that treadmill running and walking.

Brad Singletary (00:49:54):
Dude, if you do that, you’re going to have a healthy life. I mean, that’s, we sometimes I know I try, I try to over-complicate things like that. I’m like, okay, I’ve got to join CrossFit, but I haven’t, you know, haven’t done any exercise in 15 years, but I need to start CrossFit or I need to do some crazy, crazy things. And sometimes you just walk, you, you put your hands on a shovel, you know, you, you, you put, pick up some dumbbells or do some pushups and it just doesn’t have to be that you don’t have to overthink it. So

Jared Brown (00:50:24):
Mindset, sometimes Brad, I think, you know, and, and, and I guess the sense of security we get ourselves into, you know, we really have to go to the gym or can we just change our lifestyle and, and, and do things that are, you know, right in front of us that needed to be done.

Michael (00:50:42):
And, and I’m going to say I don’t sit down in my job when students are there. Cause I’m in the theater, I’m in the classroom, I’m on the stage, I’m in the shop behind. And so I’m constantly moving. And I, I probably last school year before the shutdown, I was getting easily 25 kilometers cause that’s what my little thing was set to on my phone, easily 25 kilometers in a, in a week’s time just going around and around on the school. So now I’m sitting down and and my wife has said, you know, honey, you need to work out. We like you better. And so

Brad Singletary (00:51:33):
Not so grumpy when you’re working out, is that what

Michael (00:51:36):
So grumpy, you know, and I don’t chew out the kids as much. And, and so really I, I needed a gym and and gratefully, they’re, they’re really inexpensive ones here. And and I knew that I wasn’t gonna do it right if I didn’t have somebody accountable. So just really, it was just a few weeks before the three 60 challenge is when I, when I started and I wanted to make sure if I was going to work out that I wanted to do it right. That I didn’t, I didn’t want to strain anything. 56 isn’t old, but the fact is my, my body, when your doctor says to you, you’re not young anymore. Thank you very darn much. And so I, for me I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t screw it up. So luckily I was able to afford 15 sessions with, with somebody and now, now I’m doing it.

Michael (00:52:37):
And it also helps any physical thing. You know, having, having accountability the three 60, but now I have a buddy that I go, go work out three days a week at the gym. And he just, he just wants to, you know, he doesn’t want to turn into Arnold Schwartzenegger, he, he just wants to be fit. And one thing that he discovered when he, when I told him I was tracking things, he didn’t change his diet. He just started tracking and he lost 10 pounds just from a couple of months of tracking his diet because he became aware of what he was eating, but he didn’t, he didn’t change it. I mean, he didn’t stop eating this and start eating that he just, Oh, crap, I don’t need, you know, seven donuts. Quinn’s six and a half. We’ll do.

Brad Singletary (00:53:31):
And Paul, how about you on the physical thing? Physical stuff. Strange physical activity.

Paul Charette (00:53:37):
Yeah. So for me things have changed over the last couple of years regarding physical activity, exercise, things like that. Prior to 2018, I was walking probably two, two and a half miles every day at work, going from building to building and seeing different clients. And at, in 2018, at the beginning of the year, I had a spine surgery to correct an issue that I’ve had since birth. And so ever since then walking and physical activities been more difficult. So even in fact at work, I now have a motorized cart to get from place to place, which on the one hand, you know, saves me on one hand and it kind of increases my durability and whatnot. On the other hand, I’m much less active physically. So I have to find myself walking in between groups. Stretching has become a huge part of something.

Paul Charette (00:54:37):
That’s very, very important to me. And, and vital to, to trying to to be healthy. I walk with a forearm crutches. I’ve walked with forearm crutches since I was seven. So it’s those metal crutches. And so it’s, it’s basically lifting your body weight as many times as many steps as you take. So that’s a form of physical exercise as well. So it’s something that I constantly have to be aware of and be flexible with as my, my physical condition develops over time. And as I get older, as, as other people have said I found once I hit 30 and you know, now I’m 47, but once I hit 30 things became a lot more difficult and it’s becoming increasingly difficult over the years. And then while the surgery in 2018 helped correct things and it reduced a lot of pain.

Paul Charette (00:55:26):
It’s also slowed me down to a certain degree as well. So it’s kind of a mixed bag sort of thing, but I’ve always had to make those adjustments throughout my life. 2018 was my 27th surgery. So it’s always been that idea of recovery and, and, and physical therapy, those sorts of things. And it’s basically just put your head down and go go until you drop. That’s kind of what my, my mental philosophy has been my entire life. I’m going to go on until I drop and then I’m done. So I don’t know when that’s going to be. So I constantly have to reevaluate those things. And this challenge kind of challenged me to do that, that unfortunately in my own head, it’s, it’s unfortunate that for me, it’s mostly about stretching and whatnot, but I’ve also had to remind myself the importance of that, that it’s not about lifting weights and doing those types of things for me, it could be, but I haven’t quite found that right balance of how to do that well with some of the limitations that I’ve, that I’ve had over the year.

Brad Singletary (00:56:22):
That’s some alpha $#i+ right there. He’s been on crutches for 40 years. He’s doing a, he’s doing a fitness challenge. That’s pretty, that’s pretty cool, man. Just even like you talking about lifting your body weight, that’s strenuous physical activity, lifting your own body weight everywhere you go with your, with your arms, I suppose. I mean, you’re just taking a lot of adjustment to ordinary and you’ve been dealing with this since birth and you make me feel like such a slacker. Thank you for sharing.

Paul (00:56:58):
We all got our thing, you know, everybody’s, everybody’s got their challenge.

Brad Singletary (00:57:02):
So I want to wrap up here in a few minutes. I don’t wanna keep you guys too long. I want to just talk about the last part of it. Actually, I guess, two more questions, you know, the discipline or the, you know, abstaining from something, if you care to share anything about what that was, and then what would you change in the future?

Brad Singletary (00:57:18):
Because I think this can, I think this is going to catch on, I think we can maybe trim this down and, you know, clean it up a little bit, fix the process. I don’t know if we want to have a start date and end date or just people pick it up when they want to, but suggestions about what we can do in the future. But first the part about discipline and, you know, engaging with a tribe, talking real, talk with other men. I want to share something, I guess this is, this is pretty personal for me. And I guess as the leader of this thing, it’s a little bit embarrassing, but this is I think what the kind of thing that men need to do. So I have a history of addiction to many different things, processes, substances, and so forth.

Brad Singletary (00:58:04):
During the COVID thing, I relapsed on a, on a, on a couple of my primary addictions. And it was during this, during this 60 day challenge that I had to admit some powerlessness over that. Someone asked me about was I powerless, which is one of the first step in the, in the addiction recovery, the 12 step programs. And I was pretty pissed off because it was like, no, I’m not powerless. I had long periods of sobriety from this. And I, it took me several days to answer this guy’s text message who was kind of calling me out and asking if I was powerless. So I eventually it admitted that I was got back into my my AA program and started sharing some real talk with my people, my wife, even my kids, my parents, my best friends and people that I trust, you know, faith leaders and so forth. And so abstaining from the addictive stuff. That was a huge one for me. And it’s made probably the most difference of everything that I’ve done here. How about you guys tough things on the discipline of avoiding a habit, some of you mentioned soda and some of that. Yeah.

Jared Brown (00:59:17):
Well look, I guess, guess Brad, it’s not just soda, you know, for, for a while there, I was pretty reliant on energy drinks as well. That was a big staple in my diet. I guess, you know, I, I thought I was invincible there. I didn’t need much sleep. I would work constantly. And, and, you know, if, if the job came in yet, I’d go do it. And, and, and for, for me, I guess I had, I had support my, my father is a biochemist and Yeah, I certainly didn’t get any genes of, of that whatsoever. But for, for me, he’d always sit me down and he’d talk to me and he’d, he pulled me aside and he’d go, you know, what’s really in this stuff that you can share me? And I went, no, I don’t. And you know what, dad, I probably don’t need to know what’s in it.

Jared Brown (01:00:11):
In, in the end I did, I did listen to what, to what my, my father had to say, because I, I guess he’s been probably one of the most influential people on, on my life thus far, and nine times out of 10, when your dad says that, you know, it’s going to do something, it will do something. And I actually had a friend of mine two years ago, who couldn’t kick that.

Jared Brown (01:00:40):
And in the end it ruined his heart and it killed him. It killed him. He was consuming copious amounts of energy drinks every day. And in the end, he lost the battle to it and his body gave in. So it is real that the struggles in life are real. I’m not going to show you that for one minute, but you know, when, when I’ve got people like my dad on my side, who said, look, I’d really strongly suggest that, you know, you have staying firm that you don’t do it. And I went well, you know, that’s enough for me. And, and even, even more recently, I I’ve been struggling myself to weight-wise. And just before the challenge kicked off, I actually was down visiting with my doctor. And I’ve known my doctor for probably 25 years now. And he just looked at me square in the eye.

Jared Brown (01:01:40):
And he said, Jared, because you’re who you are, I can look at you. And I can tell you you’re fat was not, his, his words were not obese. You are fat. And I kind of, you know, I kind of found that a bit hard to swallow and, and I left the room, came home and I said to my wife, I said, well, I’ve worked out what I’m going to be in life. And that’s a fat slob because that’s what the doctors told me I’m going to be. And for me, that was, that was the kick I needed was for someone else to tell me and, and, and see where my shortfalls were. And I guess since the start of the challenge so far today, I’ve managed to lose nearly 32 pounds. And it’s awesome. That is that, that is diet based. That’s, that’s changing what I’m eating, not eating every five seconds because, you know, I was bored or I think I need to, you know, I’ve been able to, to cut a lot of things from my diet, such as candy, or as you guys call it candy here, we call it lollies you know, soft drinks, energy drinks, all those things that, that, that, you know, are really not good for you. And, you know, I’ve, I’ve still got a goal. I’ve still got a goal to lose at least another 24, 25 pounds. So hopefully, hopefully next time you see me, I’ll be half the man that I, that I am today. Yeah. And it is, it is a struggle. It’s real. I don’t, I don’t care what anyone says. It was real. And it was a struggle.

Brad Singletary (01:03:08):
Yeah. And I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight. I I’m still, I’m still drinking these monster energy drinks, four of them a day, I think on the can it says no more than three a day. And okay.

Jared Brown (01:03:18):
I think to your point, it has to actually,

Brad Singletary (01:03:23):
Yeah, I’ve got a, I’ve got a family of heart disease and it’s just that, that, that is that’s my next thing. Some of the other things I had to stop or even more critical. But that’s, that’s definitely, I mean, I’m looking to do that maybe by the first of the year, before the first of the year. So thanks for sharing that. Jared, anybody else

Jared Brown (01:03:43):
Don’t, don’t wait to start it, Brad, start it tomorrow. Don’t don’t wait as, you know, that’s, that’s what I’ve always been taught, you know, when we’re not here to wait. I’ve always taught to grab the bull by the horns and run with the ball and eventually that ball will stop and then you can do what you want to the bull don’t, don’t wait for it to come to you. You’ll have to go to it.

Mike in Vegas (01:04:05):
I, to I’m in AA my sobriety date is 91515. And for that I’m grateful. But because of that, I’ve got kind of an addictive personality and there’s some things that are going to kill me a lot quicker than others. So there’s some addictive habits that I just haven’t given up. And I’ve tried everything to stop everything all at once and it just wasn’t sustainable. So during the challenge, I really didn’t drink any energy drinks and it’s not so much about energy drinks. I just like drinking. I just, a gallon of water is no big deal because I could, I drink two gallons of water. I just liked to drink a lot. I have a huge cup and I’m always got something in it. So really it’s just changing my mindset to, Hey, you know what? I’m not going to do soda anymore.

Mike in Vegas (01:04:52):
I’m just gonna drink nothing but water. Hey, you know, I don’t need that second donut. I don’t need the first donut to begin with, but it’s just doing things in a way that I’m not these things aren’t good for me, but somewhere inside of me, it’s like, yeah, but you’ve already denied yourself of this and this and this. And are you going to keep on denying yourself? And and for me, it’s getting out of that mindset of, of denying, but just doing the right thing. So I didn’t check that box once the whole 75 days, because there was always something that was addictive that I was partaking of, but they’re a lot less than they used to be. And and at 52, I’ve still got a few years to keep on kicking off those few things and not do things in excess and working toward that goal. But my first and primary focus is just to remain sober.

Brad Singletary (01:05:50):
You talked about going to meetings. So one of the, one of the things was engaged with the tribe of men. And I just think, you know, if you’re going to an AA meeting several times a week or some type of a recovery meeting group therapy, any, any type of work like that, that is, that’s a man who’s leveling up. That’s a man who’s trying to be his best. And if it’s a Sunday school class or an AA meeting or a men’s therapy group support group of any kind, I just, I think that is as valuable as trying to work on your six pack. Abs. So you said you, you were doing that quite a bit. You got a lot of points from attending meetings often through the week. That’s pretty impressive

Mike in Vegas (01:06:31):
Since the COVID, there’s a lot of people who dropped out and weren’t able to do that kind of thing. So there’s a, a club that I go to. And usually, and after I get off this call, I’ll go to night, but at eight 30, there’s a meeting that I chair that I’m in charge of. And I’ve been doing that for the last really since the beginning of February. Because if I wasn’t there, then maybe somebody wouldn’t be there and somebody wouldn’t get in a meeting and then somebody would go out and drink and who knows? That might be the last time they do that because it’s they could end up dying or killing somebody or doing something else. So I have to focus on those good parts and give myself credit for that and not beat myself up for the fact that you know, what, I had a couple of Cokes today. And eventually I’ll beat myself up for the Cokes, but right now I’m just not, I’m not at that point.

Jared Brown (01:07:27):
Yeah. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll give you credit there, Mike, where credit’s due because you know, sometimes half the problem is you’ve got to own the problem before you can address it. And you know, for, for me, it was exactly that I had to own it before I could, you know, address it off and you’ll sit there and go, Oh yes, one or two, that’s not going to hurt. Or, you know, you sneak your donuts in, on your way home from work because you know, you’re hungry and you can’t wait till you get home. And, you know, it’s just, it’s just a small things. And I think once, once you own it, and once you find the support and, and look, you know, for, for me, the support has been, obviously this group’s been fantastic and, and watching everybody progress and follow through with it, I think was outstanding, but you know that to have family and, you know, my, my wife support me. She’ll often tell me that I don’t need stuff anymore as well. And, you know, that’s, that’s kind of, I guess, where it’s at for me is, you know, once you’ve own the problem, then, then you can deal with it.

Brad Singletary (01:08:29):
That’s great. Anybody else on, on that question or we’ll go to, what, how should we adjust this adjust this challenge in the future.

Jared Brown (01:08:43):
Look, I don’t think there’s too much to adjust Brad. I think, you know, as long as there’s, I guess, portions to it where you can extend yourself, stretch yourself that’s, that’s where you, that’s where the growth comes from.

Brad Singletary (01:08:59):
Anything we should take completely out of there. One of the things we’ll share on social media. And I think that was a little bit confusing for some the, and part of that was, that was another part of accountability. It’s a way to get an easy point, but it was also about Hey, I’m doing this thing. I know Michael did that a few times. Like, Hey, I’m in a challenge. I’m doing I’m journaling, I’m working out, you know, I’m drinking water, I’m trying to, you know, meditate, pray whatever the things that he was doing. And, and, and it was an, and I would notice his friends kind of give him a little bit of a props on there, on Facebook about good job man, way to go. And, and honestly, part of that was hoping to kind of promote the Alpha Quorum stuff too, but anything we should take off if I look at this, if I look at some of the statistics, which I’ll post later in the show notes and stuff here

Jared Brown (01:09:50):
Look, if, if, if you, if you like Brown, I’ll be honest. I never, I never once, you know, obviously take the social media box because I, I’m never one to talk about myself. I I really struggle in that area. And by posting things on Facebook, I, I, I rarely do it. I, you know, it’s just, I guess, an Avenue for me to, to keep in touch with, with what’s going on outside of where I live.

Paul Charette (01:10:18):
Yeah. And for me, that ended up being the one piece that ended up having a little bit of a negative twinge for me. I was posting consistently in our group and I was, I was sharing it with the guys in the Alpha Quorum and I felt good about that. And I felt like everybody was really supportive and whatnot. And that was one of the reasons that I joined the group. And then based on a conversation that you and I had Brad about maybe sharing it outside of the group and on my Facebook page and what it was something that I didn’t feel like I really wanted to do. I didn’t really want to promote or self-promote kind of like, like Jared said, I’m not one to kind of put myself out there like that, but I felt like this, this group that we’re in is sort of like a brotherhood and we’re all sort of on this struggle together.

Paul Charette (01:11:01):
So I felt good about sharing it with you guys, but then put it on my page. It felt a little bit, I don’t know, it felt a little awkward or disingenuous. So about halfway through the challenge, I stopped giving myself that point because I stopped sharing that stuff. So it wasn’t anything wrong. It was just how it made me feel. And I didn’t feel comfortable doing that. And maybe that was maybe I wasn’t maybe getting the intent of it. And so that may be my loss, but that was just something that, that just didn’t sit right with me. And I felt better about sharing it just with the group. So once that was kind of presented, I was like, Oh, okay, I’m not going to do that.

Brad Singletary (01:11:36):
Okay. That’s good feedback. And I remember that conversation and, um, yeah, I think to talk about there’s also, we had the discord app. I don’t know some of you were on there, but to talk about, to talk about your progress with other guys, I think that is valuable and that is valid and this whole thing, man, I’m just I’m just I’m just white trash with a master’s degree. I’m just trying to figure out how this stuff works. I’ve never done a podcast, never done a men’s group ever done any of this stuff. And so if I’ve been clumsy with that, I apologize with any, with anything I’m trying to figure out the right way to the right way to do all this stuff. So that’s good feedback. That’s why I’m asking for it.

Jared Brown (01:12:16):
I don’t think it’s so much feedback Brad. It’s just, you know, I guess what, what one person is comfortable with, you know, you, you yourself might be comfortable in doing that on myself and not personally comfortable. So therefore I won’t do it. You know, it was, it was nothing, there was no offense taken by that at all. It just, you know, there was nothing personal in it. It was just something I personally chose not to do.

Jeremy (01:12:41):
Yeah. That’s such a subjective thing. I actually have, the statistics pulled up 107 yeses on shared progress on social media, 510 nos. So clearly most participants weren’t doing that, but the irony is if this challenge wasn’t being shared on social media, I wouldn’t have been part of it. And that’s how I found it. Right. So it definitely has value.

Michael (01:13:11):
And, and I actually took no a lot. I on the, on the Alpha Quorum and I talked to Brad about this and he finds it interesting. I say this. But to me, I see I was raised by a single mom and I have worked perspective of what it means to be a man in that, you know, I don’t do dirt bikes and I, I appreciate people who do scares the hell out of me. I know how to bake a pie. I know how to sew on a button. That’s what my mom taught me how to do. But those things that in my, my perspective I, I sometimes I’ll make comments or I I forced myself to, to make stuff put stuff on Alpha Quorum, but I know that my friends know me as a, as a drama geek as you know a guy who doesn’t have a lot of calluses on my hands.

Michael (01:14:18):
And so my friends know me that, and so know me by that. So on my personal count, but I, you know, it, I also had a problem with it. I but then I just had to, as an actor, you’re constantly judged and yeah, I can put myself out there on the stage and show people things, but what you’re showing people, they tend to buy what you, what you show when you’re on the stage. And so that’s what Facebook is. It’s, it’s a stage. And so but I also knew that with my friends and like the people that I don’t really know on the Alpha Quorum Facebook page, my friends would say, Hey, Michael, that’s cool. Cause they know I don’t do those things typically. And but I also, I had a hard time and I, I spoke with Brad about this a few times.

Michael (01:15:17):
I didn’t want it to be a contest. That was my concern about it, about the challenge. It would become a contest. And so but then, you know, like, like Brad said early in the show, you know I did my, my Nudie pics and but I, you know, I worked hard for that and I still haven’t gotten to where I want to be, but I’m a lot farther and I, I appreciate that. And you know, but yeah, I agree with the, with making posts and stuff, but I, Brad talked to me about becoming vulnerable and I think that that’s part of it is making yourself vulnerable you know, being naked to the world physically metaphorically virtually all those other idiots out there. And so when, when Brad said to him, you know, that this is showing that you can be vulnerable. That’s one of the reasons why, why I did well. I think others did too, is, you know, you got to suck, suck it up, especially somebody who’s already thinking, okay, I’m not a manly man. And whatever, whatever that means it was uncomfortable, but it was, it was a good thing for me, for Michael. It was a good thing for me to do.

Brad Singletary (01:16:49):
It’s good feedback, man.

Mike in Vegas (01:16:53):
The only tape to me is that my is around muscle idiots for the discord is all they, my business. So I typically don’t mix business my personal life. Right. Not too. Because sometimes I say things in my personal life that aren’t going to do well for my business. So as a result of just studying or did give myself credit for any of those I didn’t even think about discord. I mean, I probably was on there at least, you know, probably 15, 20 times, I guess, like myself fine, but I didn’t really think about it that way, how we can more Facebook, Instagram all the other different media things that I could promote my business and myself through my bit, my with, through them.

Brad Singletary (01:17:44):
Yeah. There may be a couple of tweaks, you know, and I’ll be open to any suggestions that you have any of you listeners or any of you competitors here, you winners, you alphas listen to about 25 people. I think signed up for this challenge. The first, our first winner here, Jared Brown from Brisbane, Australia, second place Michael from right here in Las Vegas, third place Mike in Vegas. And then I’d have to look, I can’t remember which was next. I think Jeremy was next. And then Paul, I can’t remember the numbers. Exactly. And I, I can’t because I’m recording this zoom call. I can’t go to my other screen to see, see what those were, but top five dudes right here, we’re talking about reporting pretty much every single day or catching it up the next day. I know Michael was I could tell he was really invested in this because he, I had to delete, he, there was 60 days, I got about a hundred scores from which means he kind of wanted to go back and tweak it and change it.

Brad Singletary (01:18:41):
And it was like, maybe he initially admitted when he was wrong or didn’t didn’t complaint. And then maybe later in the day he complained. And so he went to change it. And so I did, we had to go back and do a little cleanup there, but just appreciate your effort in this, just by doing it, you become a better man. You become better for your family, your community and whatever it is that you’re doing. You’re a stronger dude because of this. You’re also building something. This is the first video hope. Hopefully this is gonna, maybe this’ll be on YouTube because this is the first time we’ve really ever done a video podcast out of, I don’t know, 70 episodes or wherever we are. Over two years time, first, one video, first one with an international guest. First time, this is a competition, by the way, I’ve got these hats.

Brad Singletary (01:19:28):
Some of you, you gave me your sizes and I got your addresses and everything. I’m going to send these to you. I got something a little bit special there for you. Jared, Michael and Mike has been in the top three in addition to the hat. So anyway I appreciate your involvement for being engaged for trying to live this and your personal life. Hope to be friends with all of you and learn more from you, appreciate what you’ve done for this whole thing. And hope you guys have a great holiday season and a good new year. And I’m guessing this is not the end of our conversation, and we’re going to continue to to be friends and help each other level up. So thank you for being here. You guys have a great night.

Guests (01:20:08):
Thank you Brad. Thanks, Brad. Thank you, Brad. See you later. Thanks guys. Thanks boys. Appreciate it. I appreciate the challenge.

Mike (01:20:19):
Excellent. Have a steak and kidney pie for me, okay, Jared?

Jared Brown (01:20:24):
Steak and kidney? No way. Steak and mushrooms.

Mike in Vegas (01:20:27):
Yeah. There’s a New Zealand for a few years. So I miss my steak and kidney pies.

Jared Brown (01:20:34):
Kidneys that for the animals I’m afraid. That’s for the dog food.

Michael (01:20:47):
All right. Nice to meet you, fellas. You too.

Speaker (01:20:51):
Gentlemen you are the alpha and this is the Alpha Quorum.