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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FULL TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:01:04:05 – 00:01:23:23
Speaker 3
If you’re a man that controls his own destiny, a man that is always in the pursuit of being better, you are in the right place. You are responsible. You are strong. You are a leader. You are a force for good. Gentlemen. This is the Alpha Corps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

080: NICE GUY SYNDROME with Steve Edwards

080: NICE GUY SYNDROME with Steve Edwards

080: NICE GUY SYNDROME with Steve Edwards

If you’re like most dudes, no one taught you how to be a man. Instead, you’ve probably been taught pretty much the opposite. So many personal influences in our lives: our parents, our peers, and society has conditioned us to be obedient rather than strong. We’ve been taught to be a good boy, follow the rules, not be rude and these ideas have been forcibly injected in our heads since we were able to speak. The problem is it doesn’t work and is hardly ever in our best interests. These messages manipulate us into being manageable and compliant, the standards of systems that are about control. Sometimes giving is not right. Sometimes sacrificing is wrong. Sometimes being nice damages us. Today we’re going to discuss the book No more Mr. Nice guy by Robert Glover.

 
Questions answered on this episode:
1. What’s wrong with being a nice guy?
2. What does it mean to be integrated?
3. What’s the making of a Nice Guy?
4. How do you please the person who matters the most?
5. How do you prioritize your needs?
 
What ways we can do to be integrated?
  • Be honest about your feelings, your interactions.
  • Quit being afraid of new experiences or what’s around you.
  • Learn to surrender what you can’t change.
  • Do what you want to do.
  • Learn how to get help.
  • Recognize that people are human.
  • Stop trying to be perfect.
  • Stop seeking approval.
  • Take care of your own needs with integrity.
  • Stop building such huge walls and let people in.
  • Don’t try to cover up or take attention away from your weaknesses. Don’t be afraid of your shortcomings.
  • Be aware or cognizant of your childhood events and some of the conditions or influences that led you to where you’re at today.
  • Set boundaries.
  • Be transparent about what you’re feeling about things.
  • Spend more time with men.
  • Recognize that women, they reject nice guys.
  • Learn to be more passionate, more assertive, more responsible.
  • Recognize that you don’t have to do everything right, or you’re allowed to be flawed.
  • Don’t let the fear of failure or the fear of success.
  • Go after the life you want, quit settling.
  • Make your own rules.
 
FULL TRANSCRIPT

Brad Singletary (00:00:00):
If you’re like most dudes, no one taught you how to be a man. Instead, you’ve probably been taught pretty much the opposite. So many personal influences in our lives. Our parents, our peers and society has conditioned us to be obedient rather than strong. We’ve been taught to be a good boy, follow the rules, not be rude. And these ideas have been forcibly injected in our heads. Since we were able to speak the problem is it doesn’t work and is hardly ever in our best interests. These messages manipulate us into being manageable and compliant. The standards of systems that are about control sometimes giving is not right. Sometimes sacrificing is wrong. Sometimes being nice damages us. Today we’re going to discuss the book No more Mr. Nice guy by Robert Glover.

Intro (00:01:06):
If you’re a man that controls his own destiny, a man that is always in the pursuit of being better. You are in the right place. You are responsible. You are strong, you are a leader. You are a force for good. Gentlemen, you are the Alpha, and this is the Alpha Quorum.

Brad Singletary (00:01:30):
Welcome back to the Alpha Quorum Show. Brad Singletary here. I’m really excited about this episode. This is episode number 80. I can’t believe that we’ve come this far. It’s been over three years now and it’s just exciting. The feedback that we get from all of you, thank you for what you’ve shared with us in the social media and the messages and emails and so forth that we’ve gotten. Our guest today has been an entrepreneur from his first business owning and operating a car stereo shop 20 years ago until today, right here in Las Vegas. Since then he’s owned a car dealership, a bar, a strip club, and currently owns a Jeep boat and jet ski rental company. A whole bunch of ATM machines as well as a marketing agency that works with tour and rental operators around the country. Steve Edwards is the dad of two boys, one in the air force and one who just recently enlisted in the Navy. Welcome, Steve. Appreciate you being here, brother.

Steve Edwards (00:02:24):
Hey, thank you so much for having me the episode 80. That’s pretty impressive. Yeah.

Brad Singletary (00:02:28):
Yeah. Well, I should mention here too, that you’re a podcaster yourself and you’ve done played with this a little bit and he’s teaching me how to get my mics and stuff dialed in a little bit better tonight. Appreciate that, man.

Steve Edwards (00:02:41):
This is fun. I love this stuff. This is great.

Brad Singletary (00:02:42):
Well, this topic seems to be something that you really are. How are you? How are you so familiar with this information? This is like your hobby horse of…

Steve Edwards (00:02:55):
This is my catalog. This is my book.

Brad Singletary (00:02:59):
So we want to talk about the book No More Mr. Nice guy by Robert Glover as I’ve worked with men. And as I’ve figured some of my own out, I’ve realized that far too many of us are just too soft. I did a little survey recently on a private Facebook group, by the way, if you’re listening to us and you’re not a member of the Facebook group, check it out. It’s called the Alpha Quorum. It’s a private group on Facebook. No one can see that you’re there. What you post, unless they’re in the group.

Steve Edwards (00:03:28):
And you’ve got to be a man which helps.

Brad Singletary (00:03:31):
Yes, everyone there is male. We verify that. I guess we’re only looking at pictures and names, but we think we have a pretty good idea.

Steve Edwards (00:03:37):
I said, man, loosely, I guess you need to be a male. Probably a couple of not men, but there’s some definitely, everybody’s a male.

Brad Singletary (00:03:47):
You know, it’s funny. We have, I think 1% of our audience in there, it shows up is female. And I think it’s because you have, there’s a couple of guys who share their their Facebook accounts with their wives and maybe that’s where that comes from. But

Steve Edwards (00:03:59):
I mean, that could be its own podcast on its own. What does it mean when you start sharing your Facebook account with your significant other?

Brad Singletary (00:04:06):
That’s being a little bit too nice. Maybe. Definitely. So No More Mr. Nice guy. What, what led me to this entire thing that I’m doing as I speak to men as I’m working with men in my practice is just noticing that men are either too hard or too soft, too nice or too difficult. And I read this book probably three or four years ago. It was it was recommended to me by Derek Johnson. We kind of started this whole thing together, Derek and I, and he showed me this book and told me that he himself was a nice guy and recovering nice guy. So Robert Glover is a therapist and he recognizes some of the patterns that he talks about in the book, recognize that in himself. And he describes a little bit about how that has harmed his harmed his relationships. And he’s teaching this to other men so that we can get ahold of ourselves and get our balls back basically.

Brad Singletary (00:05:03):
So we want to review a little bit about this content. We’re going to talk about just nice guy syndrome, what it is, how we become this nice guy, learning to please the person who matters most making your own needs a priority, reclaiming your personal power, your masculinity, and more about getting the love and the sex and the life that you want. Those are basically the chapters of his book. Start us off on a high level here. Steve, what, what is this about and what do you recognize in general? We’ll hit some specific bullet points later, but sure. You know, plenty of guys who behave this way, they’ve surrendered their masculinity itself to the system, to their spouse, to their parents or whomever. They’ve given that up to what do you notice?

Steve Edwards (00:05:51):
I even think that this isn’t even something that I need to kick down the road. You know, this is something that I can take full ownership of as I was as nice of a guy as you could possibly meet the nicest guy. And you know, when you start seeing some of the traits that represent being a nice guy, you know, at surface level, they sound like really admirable traits. Like you’re a nice guy. You’re willing to, you know, do things for others. You want to fix problems. You are a giver. You you know, you are seek, you seek the approval of others. When you say these at surface level, these sound like great, wonderful things that you would want out of a guy. Yeah.

Brad Singletary (00:06:33):
This is the dream husband you’re talking about.

Steve Edwards (00:06:35):
Absolutely. But what ends up happening is you end up with a guy with no backbone. You end up with a guy that can’t deliver on his promises because he is incapable of it because he’s living a lie. He’s not happy. Most of this is all self-deprecating behavior because they’re not serving themselves first. They’re not taking care of their own wants and needs. And yeah, they end up in a really tough spot.

Brad Singletary (00:07:03):
Yeah. They, everything they’re doing is really calculated to try to gain approval or avoid disapproval. So we’re always trying to do the right thing so that, you know, nothing is ever hard for anyone. We want to protect everyone. Else’s feelings, repress our own. Of course. Yes. That’s so unhealthy.

Steve Edwards (00:07:23):
I’m healthy because you know, I was like to take this back as if any of you guys have ever did it. And every, every guide knows this, that women love a bad boy. Right. Right. and we see it in media. We see it in everyday life and you never really understood the why. Why do they go after the bad boy? Well, because there’s an edge because they, they appear to be a man. They have this backbone, this, this spark about them that feels alive. And when you start looking at a lot of nice guy behaviors, you know, the, this idea of not being able to stand up on your own feet, it’s almost like codependent in its own way. Totally. But they’re not, they’re not fulfilling their own wants, needs and desires because they’re so busy worrying about everybody. Else’s

Brad Singletary (00:08:14):
And the hope, why, why is that? What is the hope in trying to please everyone? What are they trying to gain from that?

Steve Edwards (00:08:20):
So the term, and I mean, we’re kind of like without jumping too far ahead, but the term is it is a covert contract. Most of everything done as a nice guy is done with the idea that you will receive something in return. The easiest way or the, you know, the dumbest way to explain this in a guide type of mentality is, you know, the time you did the dishes or you did the laundry in order to have sex,

Brad Singletary (00:08:47):
Hey babe, I changed the light bulbs. You think we could have some alone time now, a hundred percent, but this covert. So that means we’re not really, this is, that would be even better. That’s what the bad boy move is like, Hey, I changed the light bulbs. I did the dishes now let’s get naked.

Steve Edwards (00:09:03):
Yeah. But that doesn’t even express that it’s not even said what it, what it’s done is it’s almost like, I think every old person under the sun has always said it, you know, what does assuming mean? It makes an out of you and me. Right. And, and it’s that, it’s a game. It’s mental gymnastics. It’s I’m going to do all these things, right. I’m going to, I’m going to vacuum and I’m going to dump a dishwasher and I’m gonna, you know, I’m going to take care of the kids. Like, and they expect that the sex would be reciprocated. Now this has done in a million other things. This is just the easiest one. And probably the biggest miss for guys is because, you know, as you being a therapist and talking to a lot of men, what do men complain about? Hey, I’m, I’m married and my wife doesn’t put out.

Brad Singletary (00:09:53):
We have a great relationship except we never touch each other.

Steve Edwards (00:09:56):
Yeah. Because I’m, she’s absolutely disgusted by me. Sounds awesome.

Brad Singletary (00:10:00):
Well, she’s probably not disgusted by your beer gut. She’s probably not disgusted by your morning breath. She’s probably disgusted that you’ve emasculated yourself and you’ve given your handed your balls away to someone or to her maybe. And you’re, you’re not making your own needs a priority. I probably used to say this kind of thing about you’re the center of my world. You’re everything to me in that kind of stuff. When I hear that now, or I see that anywhere, I just cringe and I go, oh, please do don’t. Don’t don’t, don’t, don’t be like that because that’s not going to work out very well. And women are not very interested actually in being the center of your world. If you’re the, if they are the center of your world, that means your world isn’t very freaking exciting. I’m going to lose respect for you, man. They just, they’re not going to have much interest in you. And it doesn’t matter how you look or how much money you have. If you’re overly focused on making your partner happy, none of you are going to be happy.

Steve Edwards (00:11:00):
And I think the, as we dig into it here a little bit more, it’s not necessarily the idea of doing a nice thing with, you know, something expected in return. It’s all the other actions that lead up to it. It’s, it’s basically all the steps that have turned you into a nice guy that have made you a disgusting human to your, to your wife, to your significant, other to the female gender, you know, to females in general, you know, in order to be a nice guy in order to protect everybody from everything, you have to be dishonest, you’ve gotta lie. You’ve got to, you know, you can’t be fully transparent because there’s things in life that if you’re totally honest about them, they’re going to hurt somebody’s feelings.

Brad Singletary (00:11:43):
You’re making me think of a, what was that movie? Old School Will Ferrell and they’re in, they go to therapy and they’re like, oh, we’re in the trust tree. We’re in the trust tree. You know, you can say anything, go ahead, open yourself up. And he’s like, oh, I’m imagining what kind of panties you’re wearing to the hot female therapist. And he gets in trouble. And he said, wait a minute. I thought this was, I thought we were in the trust tree. I thought this was safe.

Steve Edwards (00:12:04):
Nope. That’s a great example because guys, guys are so scared to be honest, but you know, because it sounds bad. Nobody wants to be labeled a predator, but guys are certainly more animalistic than women. They definitely think with their wrong head most of the time, and guys are very simple in the fact that like they would trade out a lot of things in order to have sex. I mean, if they could make those contracts, Hey, all dumped a dishwasher for sex. I will run 12 laps around the block for sex. And that’s where it all goes wrong because guys end up running with the wrong brain and they make decisions. And basically the rest of their life is basically decided by these horrible decisions.

Brad Singletary (00:12:54):
Yeah. They’ve got to hide the evidence of their weaknesses. They’ve got to hide their feelings. They’re, they’re loaded with secrets. They’re trying to like be, you’ve mentioned dishonesty. They’re like compartmentalizing, everything.

Steve Edwards (00:13:06):
Manipulation is a big one. You know, again, it’s like using a different term for the same type of thing. But if you’re lying, you’re probably manipulating situations. You’re telling half-truths I was a liar. That was my thing. I like to lie lying was my drug. It was like, you know, if I could just tell a little white lie to protect my own, to, you know, ease the situation. And you know, as everybody’s aware, your lie, catch up to you, your lies bite you in the. And that, that was my, that was my game.

Brad Singletary (00:13:38):
That never, ever, ever plays out well. And it actually causes the thing that we’re trying to avoid. So why do we lie? Why do we manipulate is because we don’t want to lose the other person. We’re just terrified of abandonment, which is a theme that runs throughout this book is we’re so afraid of being abandoned. We’re afraid that if we show any need or have any of our own wants, or we want to go fishing or go on a guys trip or do any of those things that we’re going to be seen as selfish and therefore abandoned. But then we lie in compartmentalize and we’re dishonest. And we have this like covert control, this covert contract stuff that we do. And we ended up losing respect anyway, they become disgusted by that anyway. And we would probably, you know what, man, I’ve heard women here in my office, let’s say, they’re dealing with an affair. The man’s had an affair. Yeah. In 100% of the time she doesn’t obsess about what the, you know, what the girl looked like or how good the sex was or what did he say to her? What she’s hurt by is the dishonesty. And he’s dishonest because he’s afraid of what would happen if she were to find out. So yeah, tons of manipulation and all this is really, there’s a lot passive aggression that goes along with this stuff.

Steve Edwards (00:14:53):
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, there’s a million different little pieces of this that I think every guy to some degree can look in the mirror and start unpacking some of these characteristics, some of these behaviors. I mean, I don’t know a single guy that I know that hasn’t made a covert contract about something or that, you know, is a hundred percent honest all the time. That’s totally transparent. Cause I mean, even now, even even saying that I’m, you know, a recovering nice guy, this idea of like complete transparency and total honesty is frightening as hell. Yeah. It is. I’m not saying that, you know, it isn’t the right direction and it it’s hard. But the, the other side of it is also very, very challenging. This idea of like lying your way out of situations, lying to, you know, controlling the situation.

Steve Edwards (00:15:48):
I’m, I’m, I’m a controlling guy. I’ve been the boss for a long time. Probably, you know, you take those Myers-Briggs tests. It comes back I’m, I’m a manager type. I am the boss type. So to remove controlling feelings and controlling situations and letting situation, you know, letting situations play out. I remember in a previous relationships, you know they, she would have had a disagreement at work or an argument at, with friends or something like that. All I wanted to do was fix it, or I wanted to take the edge off. I wanted to do anything to create less friction and just trying to remove all the friction from everything that, you know, I think every, what else have we always heard? Like, we don’t want you to solve the problem. We just want you to listen to us. Well, I think all the guys are fixers.

Brad Singletary (00:16:44):
It’s kind of in our nature a little bit.

Steve Edwards (00:16:45):
We’re built to fix it.

Brad Singletary (00:16:46):
One of the things he, one of the things he mentions in the book is that a lot of these nice guys are even attracted to people that they can try to fix protracted to the broken person. Codependency was a term that you used before. Maybe this is maybe this guy has made a multi-million dollar fortune right in this book. And he’s really just describing codependency. I don’t know, but it seems like a lot of those things are common things. Another negative about being a nice guys that we’re swinging back and forth for being nice and not nice. So these guys aren’t always necessarily, you know, nice. And the doormats, sometimes we, we, we let all that stuff build up and it turns into like explosive anger and those kinds of things you ever go to a domestic violence class and the room was full of nice guys.

Steve Edwards (00:17:32):
Yeah. I mean, that’s, you know, I had to had a Google it, but you know, it’s like a narcissistic style of behavior and, and it it’s because it’s so self-serving, and it’s really only built for the interest of the nice guy and not the party around it. It’s like this exchange of, of feeling like you’re going to continue to do these things in exchange. I want to feel a certain way. I want a certain reaction. I want a certain amount of touch or whatever it might be that you’re never left fulfilled. There’s never a fulfillment of like, wow, that worked out. I feel great about it. I should continue to do this. In fact, it’s the exact opposite where you’re constantly left disappointed and that disappointment builds up to resentment and resentment as you’re well aware, you know, in therapy is what ruins relationships guys are just begging for any amount of intimacy, any amount of affection from their significant other. And she’s pulling away even harder because all she’s seeing is the. She’s seeing the lying. She’s seeing the controlling manipulative guy that, yeah, maybe he dumped the dishwasher. Maybe he did this, but then he’s also yelling at me about, about not contributing about not helping about not being an equal member of the, of the family. And it’s like this weird tug of war with yourself, the only person you’re fighting with is yourself.

Brad Singletary (00:18:58):
Yeah. So there’s a lot of sexual problems with this guy. He’s usually extremely dissatisfied. There’s some often sexual dysfunction. So like erectile dysfunction, there’s like inability to orgasm. There’s all kinds of different things that go along with that. Maybe they’ve acted out sexually. Maybe they’re addicted. They have some sexual compulsion. There’s a lot of this is focused around sex. And he talks later in the book, he talks about one of the things that nice guys do is that they settle for bad sex. So they’re settling, always perpetually unhappy with that. Either not able to improve it, recognize their role in it, but you know, the bad boy, he’s not getting a lot of bad. He doesn’t have, he doesn’t have that. And it’s like, what is it about why is that?

Steve Edwards (00:19:49):
Well, because I think, again, not to dumb guys down to just three things, but you know, food, sleeping, sex, but you know, guys are hunters by nature and they definitely are seeking. They’re seeking that sexual relationship. Do they want more than that? Absolutely. A hundred percent. There’s certainly far more to guys than just food, sleeping, sex, but guys are certainly more driven to go get sex. And where I think the word falls apart is when you look at like porn of today, you know, porn on its own is like a next level thing where it’s not even like normal porn anymore. Like who even knew that everybody wanted to just have sex with her steps. I mean, who do that was like the hottest,

Brad Singletary (00:20:35):
Is that what they’re talking about now? I guess I don’t, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know

Steve Edwards (00:20:40):
No idea, never over what PornHub is like the top fifth or sixth visited the site on the internet. I had no idea. I don’t even know what goes on there. Yes. You know, so the perversion level of like what is even being presented, it’s not even normal consensual sex, like what you’re used to or what normal people, I guess, would be seeking. They’re being exposed to something that isn’t even realistic. So they’re going home or they’re bringing that vibe. If you want to call it to their significant other. And you know, they’re not living up to it. Like everything else in their life, they’re not living up to it. It’s basically a constant feeling of disappointment and the lacking, because you’re not having the sex you want, you don’t have the relationship you want, you know, you’re not getting sex enough or up to the standards that you would want. Your wife has constantly mad at you. It’s this constant letdown. And all it does is build up into a huge, huge fight. And that’s where most of these guys go wrong. And that’s where they end up with domestic violence. That’s where they end up in cheating. That’s where the whole thing starts by alert, spiraling out of control.

Brad Singletary (00:21:50):
Yeah. So like relationship problems, this stuff, you know, goes into careers and people are unfulfilled in their careers and not living up to their potential. But usually when a guy comes to see me here, they’re, they’re coming in talking about their relationship and yes, they may have depression or anxiety. They may have anger or whatever at their core of what I see an 80% of the men that I, that come here, they got nice guy syndrome going on. And by the way, you’ve kind of acknowledged that I got to say that to myself. If you go back to episode one of this show, I talk about that, that in my first marriage, I was a little bit controlling, a little bit pushy and a little bit demanding and so forth. And in my current marriage, I tried to correct that by being super accommodating and turned into the nice guy and that didn’t work either.

Brad Singletary (00:22:37):
So we’ve been going at this 10 or 11 years now, 11 years. And we finally figured some of this out, but it took me. And I guess if she’s listening to this show, maybe she’ll comment in the, in the social media, whether or not this is true, but I feel like I did. And I have a had to just take, get my balls back. Yeah. I want to skip the part about being integrated. I want to come back to that later, but the working paradigm of the nice guys is this, if I can hide my flaws and become what I think others want me to be, then I will be loved. Then I will get my needs met. Then I can have a problem free life. But even when, even though this is effective, they only see one option is to try harder. So we just keep trying. We just keep doing more and more nice things. I hear it all the time, man. I bought her a $12,000 ring for our 12th anniversary. I did all this stuff. I had all these things and made these special trips. And I did all this thing in my I’m just orbiting around her as the center of the universe. It never seems to pay off. I don’t understand it. Why is that?

Steve Edwards (00:23:47):
You know, you’ve got these guys coming into your office and at the point, a lot of the guys are coming into your office. I don’t want to be the cynical guy and say that it’s too late, but you’re definitely, you know, now you’re trying to really fix something that’s broken versus doing a lot of the maintenance work that is required to keep a relationship healthy. And they’re at this point because they’ve basically dropped the ball so far along the way. And you know, not that we, we can’t put any blame on, on women, but when a lot of like the problems that have, I’ve heard, I know you’ve heard that guys are dealing with the blame does come back to the guy because it is such nice guy behavior. So talking about like this idea of like exerting more, being more continuing to you’re going to keep pouring from an empty bucket, into her half full cup.

Steve Edwards (00:24:42):
Right? And you’re trying to fulfill the marriage in ways that are not what she’s asking. So it’s like you even brought up the example of like buy a new car, buy this pay. I can fully admit I’m the guy that always reverts to solve it with money. Well, that doesn’t solve most problems. I mean, it doesn’t solve most relationship problems. You know, your wife has an asking for you to buy her a new bag, to keep her happy. She is asking for you to participate in the relationship, participate in your kids’ lives. Be a good, be a good partner, be a good father, be present, show up. And unfortunately Louis Vuitton doesn’t sell any show up medicine. It’s always a very nice bag, but that doesn’t buy love.

Brad Singletary (00:25:31):
They need you to be a bad-ass that probably has nothing to do with them. You’re not going to wash dishes enough. You’re not going to do these household things enough. It’s not how many diapers you changed. You know, we still need to do those things, but we lose ourselves in the process. When I look at someone who’s divorcing, I ask and I’ve been there before. And so I know that feeling personally, I ask, well, how do you feel about yourself, your own individual kind of walk in life. How are you doing with your own journey? They always say, I’ve lost myself. I don’t even know who I am.

Steve Edwards (00:26:05):
So to touch on that because I got a little left of center of where I wanted to go on this. But you know, the biggest mistake I see is that guys have lost all touch with other guys. Guys don’t have hobbies. They don’t have real male friends. And they don’t. That’s the sort of stuff that keeps you at guy. I don’t want to, you’re not probably needing to go out grunting out in the woods and like burning pallets and stuff like that. And like just screaming from the mountain tops that I am man, but you need male testosterone around you. You need guy friends, you need to, you need have hobbies that are not including of her. You know, you need a life that does not fully encompass her in it. And that’s hard for a lot of guys to hear. You know, that’s hard for a lot of guys that have been in long marriages, 15, 20 years, they’ve lost connections with their wife or I’m sorry with their friends, their only friend is their wife. You know, they’re sitting around saying my best friend is my wife. My, you know, and that’s great. That sounds super sweet, but it’s also kind of scary because if your best friend is your wife, what happens when that don’t work?

Brad Singletary (00:27:18):
Yeah. It seems like the passion fades on, on those kinds of relationships. And that may be a great friendship. That’s good for you, bro. You got a good friend, but are you getting any bl*wjobs?

Steve Edwards (00:27:29):
It’s true. You know, I can already hear the pushback of like, well, don’t you want to be friends with your wife a hundred percent. You definitely want to be friends with your wife. And, but there was a different friendship. I don’t care how close to your wife you are. You have a different conversation with your guy, friends than you do with your wife. And I think that element of, you know, getting out and shooting guns or riding UTVs or going out, being out on the water, going hunting shooting pool, working on cars, any sort of thing that you can do where you get some male testosterone, you have like real male friends and quite honestly open up, start talking like guys are so terrified of like exposing themselves in any sort of weakness. And yet they’re at home just weak as hell, just soft as can be. But God forbid, they let another guy actually know that they’re hurting. That they’re struggling, that they’re going through anything because you know, the machismo is just pouring out of them except at home where it matters.

Brad Singletary (00:28:35):
I asked guys sometimes to draw like a pie chart, draw a circle and divide this pie into the things that you think about the things that you spend your time in time on your concerns in life. And when a guy shows me, you know, it’s, he’s got 70% of his pie chart is his woman. I can already tell. He’s not very happy. He’s not very fulfilled. And, and I just pulled this number out of thin air. But you know, one thing I say is like, what if she was 20% of your life? What if she was a 25% of your life? And maybe the biggest portion, maybe the biggest percentage of that pie of your time and your focus and your energy. But what if you throw some other things in there you need to have beyond the bowling team, you need to go on a golf league. You know, there’s gotta be some kind of connection to life outside of her and your home.

Steve Edwards (00:29:25):
Well, I also, you know, this is a metric that I’ve taken into account is that unless you actually have the five phone numbers to somebody you could call right now and ask them connect, come stay at your house. I need a friend. And maybe that’s even too big of an ask. Do you have five friends that you can call right now and go have a beer with, you know, or go talk to or go stand in their driveway and shoot the. Do you have five people you can do that with? And my guess is it’s like 97% say, no, it sits. They’re being real. It’s, it’s a no,

Brad Singletary (00:29:59):
It’s so wild. That we’re the biggest like consequence of being a nice guys, that you have terrible relationships with women, your romantic relationships are suffering, but the remedy, the cause and the remedy have nothing to do with that woman or that relationship or how you look. It has nothing to do with what’s within the relationship. So much of it has to do with what’s outside of it. There are some dynamics and some interactional things that cause problems. But let’s talk about the making of a nice guy for a minute. What, how do we, how did we become these weak dudes who are just so ultra nice and unhappy?

Steve Edwards (00:30:40):
Fifty, sixty years of being raised by women, your dad went to work. The, you know, the cleavers were the real thing. You know, dad went to work, mom stayed home. Mom raised you. Mom was your first girlfriend. Mom was your first love. Mom was everything. And you know, for a lot of guys is still everything I grew up. I was a mama’s boy. I’m not afraid to admit it. That’s the problem because there hasn’t been, you know, that idea of like being raised by men, going out with men, having that sort of like male testosterone around you, you’ve just, you’ve spent so much time around and being guided by women that you’ve lost a lot of that male edge. You’ve you’ve seen what your mom needs to be happy. You’ve seen like what the male energy looks like, or I’m sorry. The female energy looks like so strongly that it feels like you’re constantly like, man, I should fix this.

Steve Edwards (00:31:37):
I should be a nice guy. I should help out mom more. It’s like all these things that it becomes super unattractive to females. And some of this does go away when you’re dating. You know, when you’re dating, when you’re out hunting for the next girlfriend, there is that edge. You have to be witty. You’ve got to put, put yourself out there. You’ve got to, you know, you’ve got to lead with some testosterone and some masculinity because you’re a tiger and a group of other tigers. If you don’t, if you don’t attack somebody else’s gonna attack. If you don’t have some sort of push in you and that all goes out the window, the second that these guys become in a relationship that they, they find misses, right? They say, I love you immediately. They’re attached it’s codependent. And they’re just pouring themselves into this other person, which feels like the right thing to do, except they’re also pouring all the things that they need into this and not getting it in return.

Brad Singletary (00:32:36):
You mentioned being raised by women. Think about school teachers. So you’re home, mostly with mom, dad’s working late. He’s gone. Now another great example. One of the things that mentioned in the book is that most of these guys were, they either had absent fathers, avoidant, fathers, addicted, fathers, philandering fathers, angry fathers. And so part of it too, is that I want to be anything except like what my dad was. And then mom is trying to program us to like, don’t be that, be a nice boy. She needs you to be kind of her surrogate husband almost. That’s a whole another dynamic. That’s a whole another show. We’ll have to do at some point. But so we’re getting programmed by the schools. We’re getting programmed by in our own homes. Society just kind of wants to water down masculinity. I saw some stuff recently talking about the toxic masculinity idea and that the problem is not masculinity. The problem is the absence of masculinity. Jordan Peterson talks about, if you, if you think a strong man is dangerous, wait till you see what a weak man can do.

Brad Singletary (00:33:38):
If you can’t see that in our society right now, you know, the woke culture, the woke mob cancel culture. The second somebody doesn’t like something they’re, you know, they’re canceling everything and that’s, that’s its own separate topic. But if you don’t think that a correlates, not everybody’s a champion, not everybody can be a winner. Somebody is going to have to lose. Somebody’s going to have to learn a lesson. And I think it’s so prevalent today. I seen that pie chart, you know, where it goes around that circle of like weak man, strong man, you know, like I forget the four quadrants, but how it goes around. And yeah, I think, I feel like we’re in such a weird spot that like, it’s going to be very, very hard for somebody to break the culture of it. But I think at some you can recognize, recognize in your own house with your kids.

Steve Edwards (00:34:28):
I think it’s you, it’s something you can recognize as a man of like tendencies that you’re doing. And I I’ve recommended to everybody to read the book. The book is amazing. The book I feel like is a game changer. And the second, once you start reading it, you’re like, oh my God, I do that. I do that. Look at this. I do that. These are all like things that you can start seeing in yourself that you’re doing that have a huge difference in your overall happiness and wellbeing. And to the idea of like these teachers, these moms, all of this, you know, you can’t blame your mom for raising you the way she, you did. But at a certain point, the accountability of like why your relationships aren’t working. You do have to be able to look at a mirror and say, Hey, these are probably some of the negative traits that I’m presenting in this relationship. And if I can find out how to be a better version of myself, maybe I ended up with a better relationship.

Brad Singletary (00:35:24):
So I want to ask about something personal here. Tell me some of your worst, nice guy. Give me some stories.

Steve Edwards (00:35:33):
Oh man. I just, I was such a nice guy and I mean, I’m sure of my two ex-wives. They would love to chime in and pour into this bucket. But you know, I was, I was manipulative. That was definitely a good one. I was gaslighting king. I could Gaslight the out of a situation, you know, because, cause you don’t want to look in the mirror. You don’t want to take any ownership of it. So it was like, that’s why it’s on you. It’s not me. This is your feelings like this. And you know, I was, I, I think I wrote the chapter on the covert contract. I was the guy of like, oh, let me dump the dishwasher. Let me help with laundry. Oh, I’m going to vacuum. I’m going to do all this that you never asked me to do anyways. But I really expect some sex out of this at the end.

Steve Edwards (00:36:19):
And yes, I never got any sex. It was like, it was like, that was, it’s so dumb looking back on it because it all makes sense. It all makes sense. And now hindsight looking back, you know, this could have all been solved, you know, not happy to say it, but I have two divorces under my belt and the second one hit me pretty hard. The second one was rough. And when I’m looking at them now, I mean, I was as mad as I wanted to be at them. I, I have to take a lot of ownership. I was a pretty weak man. I was definitely not the best version of myself. I had every nice guy tendency that you could write and you know, and already led to resentment. It led to argument after argument about not having sex in our relationship, it led to fights about like, you know, doing stuff together or why isn’t this good enough? Why isn’t that good enough? And it makes for a miserable life

Brad Singletary (00:37:19):
For me, some of those things for sure, but to add to that, my own problems with this in relationships, I was kind of the simp, you know, I was like, I was writing poetry. I literally was just trying to be like, Mr, let me, let me do that for you. Let me do everything for you. Totally. The covert contract, like, man, let me just show you what a stud I am. And, and even, you know, I took pride in my, in my vulnerability. I could talk about my feelings. You know, I’m a sensitive guy and let me show you my sensitivity. Let me be this. Ah, it’s just disgust me now to think about it. And, and I, part of that was just it’s who I am. And I needed to kind of toughen up and get a backbone like you talked about, but also just not trying to show off. I mean, I remember one time I wrote this really long Facebook posts on my wife’s page just to like how wonderful and beautiful she is and all this stuff, bro. She deleted it. I’ve never done that again, man. I’ll I’ll, I’ll, I’ll be the guy who I would get her like I’ll buy a $7 card for Valentine’s day and put love you. He like, I can’t, I won’t even say, I love you. I’ll be saying love you, you know, not hard to draw the heart to heart and that’s it sign my name, you know, I’ll put B instead of Brad.

Steve Edwards (00:38:41):
So my biggest runaway with us, I didn’t actually discover this until I was going through the second divorce. So how mine actually sprung on me was like, it was, you know, we grew apart and I was really not playing the right cards. I was playing the game entirely wrong. And you know, when, when she was ready to call it and she wanted a separation and that’s where it started, all of a sudden I went into my F you know, fight or flight. And I did exactly that. I was like writing, like the longest, most heartfelt texts you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Like literally just total samp, total, oh my that’s disgusting. It’s like gross. I mean, I look back and I’m like, and that was some real pathetic behavior. And you know, all she wanted was space. She was like, Hey, I just need some time could not give her time.

Steve Edwards (00:39:36):
Time was like the most impossible thing. And if you anybody’s like Google, you start, they, they have a thing like 30 days of no contact. We’ll think about that for a second 30 days. Not talking to your significant other when she doesn’t like you and you’re trying to make up with her. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever tried in my life. But to that, I mean, there’s a lesson to be learned about that. I mean, the lesson is in the time it’s in this idea of like being so insecure in your own skin, that you’re not deserving of love, that you’re not deserving of happiness in your relationship. A lot of this book passes all the blame down to guys, and I’m a strong believer. Like I want to own my. I want to own it all the way through, you know, it’s way too hard to kick the can down the street to somebody else.

Steve Edwards (00:40:27):
But there is an element. It’s two people in a relationship. And if you were strong in your own background or in your own backbone, and you saw how this played out and you were being a man, you would have never dealt with any of the anyways. You know, if she isn’t providing, if she isn’t pulling her into the, you know, end of the deal, you’re being a man you’re helping, you’re contributing. You’re being this good dude without being a nice guy. You’re not going to be in a relationship that fulfills you like that. You know, not every relationship is meant to last forever. Maybe you’re with the wrong person, but if you’re good with you, that don’t matter. And that I think is the hardest thing for people to wrap their head around.

Brad Singletary (00:41:10):
Yeah. So our value, we see our value, our like human value, our value as a man is all wrapped up in how we’re being treated and like sex is that’s the ultimate evidence of being accepted. And when we don’t get that and we don’t get the time or attention or whatever we used to, we get into this like existential panic. You don’t want to talk to me. You don’t want to touch me. You don’t to spend time with me. I am nothing. Well, that is going to just escalate. That’s going to just devolve even more and more and more you’re spiraling down. And this going to end in total heartbreak. That’s what, that’s what happened to me for sure.

Steve Edwards (00:41:48):
No, and I mean, it’s easy to say it from standing, you know, sitting outside of it now and having gone through it. When I was going through it, I was a puddle of goo. I was, you know, I, I was soft as hell. I, there was nothing about me that was man. I felt like I was, you know, being a simp. And that was like the awakening that I needed to do some real self work. Cause I didn’t have, I didn’t have five people in my phone. I could have called to spend the night at their house or to go grab a beer with, I had me and my own depression and my own, my own negative beliefs about myself, not believing that I was good enough. And that’s where it starts and ends is like, you have to believe that you’re worthy of the love and affection that you need to be happy in a relationship. And the hard part, the talking out of both sides of my mouth on this is that you might be in this relationship with somebody that is not fulfilling your needs. And at a certain point, you have to be able to draw a line in the sand and say, I’m not getting what I need out of this relationship and be okay with the outcome because you know, you’re not happy. And that’s hard to say,

Brad Singletary (00:42:59):
I want to talk about this list of habits of highly ineffective men. Number one, looking for the approval of others, trying to conceal our apparent blemishes, you know, our mess up our mistakes, putting other’s needs in front of our own sacrificing our own power. I like this one too. This is what you’re talking about. This associating ourselves from different guys and our own manly energy. We’re totally disconnected. You’re let me say this loud and clear for you guys. Your most unhappy moments in your life have come or will come when you are the most disconnected from other men. Nope. That’s crazy. You’re most unfulfilled, unhappy times in your life will or have come when you are most disconnected from other men. So we make connections with women that aren’t fulfilling. We’re creating the circumstances. Co-Creating the circumstances for bad sex failing to live up to our own potential. So if we’re going to fix this stuff, we got to look at Glover talks about being integrated, being an integrated man. So what does it mean to be integrated?

Steve Edwards (00:44:16):
And integrated man, as somebody who is comfortable in their own skin? One of the biggest mistakes or one of the hugest problems with this nice guy is this belief that they’re not good enough. And this w this need for acceptance by everybody. You know, a lot of people say, I don’t care what other people think, but we all know that that’s a lie and that’s actually became even worse as time’s gone on where our entire culture and civilization is ran by, you know, fake Instagram and, you know, seeing everybody’s life. That seems amazing. Everybody’s beyond happy, but actually everybody’s really sad and depressed and going through a lot. And you know, they’re dealing with things and they have mental health issues. And at a certain point, you have to just believe that you’re okay, that you’re okay as you are. And your people will love you regardless. And that’s hard for people to say,

Brad Singletary (00:45:14):
Yeah, we’ve got to make our own needs important. We need to find people who can meet our needs when you’re integrated, you can live in some, with some confidence.

Steve Edwards (00:45:27):
And I think this all, I think this is the big takeaway for all of this is like, you have to just figure out how to be good with you. Like this idea of masculinity and like, you know, I don’t think you need to be this super machismo Dick. That’s what a lot of people hear is like No More Mr. Nice guy is that they have to turn this around and they’ve got to be this non-caring Dick we’re. In fact, actually, you know, somebody who is an integrated, truly good guy that gets what he’s doing. That’s a good man is caring. He’s probably way more caring, but he also recognize the difference between caring and care taking your job is not to solve everybody’s problems. But that doesn’t mean you don’t care. I have struggled with empathy for a very long portion of my life, of not being a very empathetic person.

Steve Edwards (00:46:23):
And I thought it just actually meant that I didn’t care, but where I got confused in this are where my mistake was made is that I felt empathy was also me having to solve the problem. I always had to have a solution to a problem versus just understanding that there was a problem. Sometimes you just gotta listen, you gotta just be able to hear that, okay, this is what’s wrong. This is what I don’t like. This is what makes me unhappy. Or this is what is making somebody unhappy and be okay in just, Hey, I hear what you’re saying. I hear what your problem is and leave it at that. You’re not in business to solve everybody’s problems.

Brad Singletary (00:47:05):
Yeah. We got to just deal with things in a straightforward way, learn to experience and express our feelings. We need to just find harmony with the, the delicate things of life. And another thing he talks about is that you build significant relationships with men. I always say the womanizer needs men, not women

Steve Edwards (00:47:27):
Or womanizer does need. And you know, the other thing is just being transparent about your wants and needs. He, covert contract will be the death of like, it will be the death of many marriages. And it has up to this point. And you know, because we’ve touched on the sex portion of it, this has to be a clear and present thing of what you’re in need of in this relationship. Maybe you’re not going to go and just say, Hey, I need more sex. I need more intimacy in my relationship and immediately get it. It’s not as if you’re going to go walk to her and be like, Hey, I definitely need more sex. And she’s like, you know what? You’re right. Let’s go, you know, you’re, this is a work in progress. And you’re going to have to work these steps to get to a spot of her trusting that your not going to be this passive aggressive guy, that your going to be the best version of yourself that you’re going to show up, that you’re going to listen. And in return, the end goal is that she will be able to be the best feminine version of herself, which is in return, is going to reflect on a better sex life, a better partner and a better relationship.

Brad Singletary (00:48:39):
Yeah. We got to face our fears. We need to become trustworthy and genuine. We’ve got to set limits. I think an integrated man is able to say, no, that’s something that I’ve struggled with. You talked about empathy, something I’ve struggled with is going along to get along, giving to get. He talks about that a lot in the book, you give something to get something back in return. So when you move come integrated, we’re not afraid. We’re not even afraid of losing the relationship. Think of the things that we do, the bonehead things that we do to try to save a relationship. We’re trying to force someone to let us stay at the party that no one wants us at. And I think if we can get to the point where like, it would be inconvenient, but I’m not, as I’m not scared to be alone,

Steve Edwards (00:49:31):
You know, it’s a, it is that fear of abandonment. It is that major fear of abandonment and whoa, what if nobody ever loves me again, somebody is going to love you again. You know, when you’re the best version of yourself when you’re showing up, when you’re caring, when you’re, when you’re that guy that was outdating, your you’re putting off, it’s a different energy. You care different. You know, you, you see that you’re, you’re in this. What happens when guys start going through breakups or in the gym, they’re working on themselves, they’re eating better. They’re doing basically everything that their spouse asked them to do in the relationship, just after the relationship

Brad Singletary (00:50:12):
That would’ve made everybody a lot happier. If they were just taking care of themselves, he talks a lot about that. And if we want to turn this around, he specifically talks about building muscle and like working out and becoming physical.

Steve Edwards (00:50:26):
Yeah. You know I, I saw it earlier and I, and I love this term as this I, and I’m going to read it. A lot of people say, I love hard instead of saying I’m codependent, lack boundaries, and become borderline obsessed with a person I’m interested in because of my anxious attachment style and fear of abandonment. But yeah, I love hard. Does sound better. I heard that. And I’m like, man, I, I feel that I get it because everybody gets in these relationships and you get in a relationship. And at first it’s like the greatest feeling ever you’re. So in love, you’re ugly. It’s oh my God, I can’t even imagine my life without them. And then like the real life sets in. And like, you have the same problems everybody else does. And relationships are hard when you’re not having sex with each other.

Steve Edwards (00:51:16):
You know, you with work with friends, with relationships, take a lot of work. And then when you add kids in the mix, you had a relationship, you had money. It’s a, it’s an uphill battle. The entire way we all have wants, needs, desires, that sort of thing. But we’re so afraid of just expressing our feelings, expressing how we feel, you know, what we need out of this relationship to be successful. You know, we’re terrified, terrified of the, what if it doesn’t work. And because what if, if it doesn’t work means you’re a failure. It means you’re not worthy of love. It means you’re not, you know, all these things you tell yourself, it means you’re never going to be with somebody else again. So instead you just pour the nice guy on like, it’s, you know, the thickest you’ve ever seen. It just thick country gravy.

Steve Edwards (00:52:07):
And you end up in a situation where you’ve got everything that you didn’t want. You’re not loved. You’re unhappy. You’re not getting, you know, you don’t have the sex. You want it. You don’t have the relationship you want and your partner checked out. And now you’re sitting in front of Brad and you’re wondering like, how does, how the hell did I get here? And how do I get out of this? And the unfortunate part is a lot of times, once you’ve gotten in front of Brad, it’s too late, too little, too late, myself included. Once you’re in front of Brad is too little too late. You can choose to solve it. Today is an overnight fix handle. No, there’s no overnight fix behind this. You’re not going to read this book and go home. And all of a sudden be this well adjusted mail. But if you don’t take some action, if you don’t find a reason to go out with the guys, if you don’t have any guy friends, you got to start somewhere. You’ve got to start. You gotta take that turtle step forward to take some action, to get to a better place, because otherwise it all unravels. And then, then you’re sitting on a podcast three years later talking about being a well adjusted male or so, whatever the hell that means some adjustments in the mail, the integrated mail. I’m sure if you have somebody there’s no well-integrated anything about this, but on, at work in progress,

Brad Singletary (00:53:27):
I think that’s important. We, he talks about you would need to please the person who matters the most. And that sounds a little selfish, but if we’re talking about coming out of nice guy syndrome, we gotta, we got to shift the balance a little bit more that way, because by trying to please everyone, nice guys end up pleasing, no one, including themselves. We see sex as the ultimate form of acceptance. And when our woman gets angry or upset, we think we, we start to panic like, oh, I got to do something quick, quick, quick, quick, how do I fix this? I need a lie. I need to manipulate. I’m going to offer some ideas. Here’s let me appease you in some way. And if we can just learn this, be okay with that little wave, that little emotional wave and just not feel like we’ve got to prevent her from feeling angry or upset. Because when we do that, when we’re rushing to some quick action, some urgency it’s based on, like you said, the fear of abandonment is based on, I am nothing without you. And that’s just. That’s going to lead you to pain.

Steve Edwards (00:54:30):
I always, every time, every single time that is going to lead you to pain. And it’s just not the case. I mean, are you the best version of yourself right now? No. Am I absolutely not. I’m sitting here and I’ve been losing the same 50 pounds for the last 15 years. It’s hard work. It’s hard work. And I think a lot of it all starts in the head. I think it’s the, you know, the embarrassment of mental health. I think it’s the guys being like, oh, well, how am I going to go talk to somebody about my feelings and of all the things you should do of all the places you should put money. Maybe you need to go see a therapist. Maybe you need to go talk to your friends. Maybe you actually have to have an open dialogue about what’s going on in your life. And this is where I think a lot of the mistake has made

Brad Singletary (00:55:19):
When we’re in the nice guy syndrome. We kind of feel like we’ve got to hide any of our shortcomings. Think about hair loss and stuff like that. And now we’re both sitting here now, both sitting here, bald guys who proud and true.

Steve Edwards (00:55:32):
You asked me if I was five foot taller and 50 pounds lighter me and me and the rock, same cap. Same.

Brad Singletary (00:55:41):
So yeah, any mistakes where we think about, you know, we don’t, we don’t wanna, we don’t want anyone to know that we farm. We don’t want to have any perfect imperfection of any kind. And so to be okay with that, stop lying, stop putting up walls. You know, people are not drawn to our perfection. Something that I’ve learned as a therapist is in the textbooks. You know, they say not to self-disclose, don’t tell your own stories to your clients. And I’ve really kind of always been a little patch Adams like with that stuff, I just do whatever works. And for me, what seems to work is in small little doses, I tell people about my into jail, but in a psych hospital, been suicidal, took psych meds, been divorced, got ex-communicated from Metro. I tell all those things. And everybody’s like, dude, I like that about you.

Brad Singletary (00:56:29):
I’m glad that you shared that. And I think the same is true of women. We think we’ve got to be perfect to win their acceptance. That’s probably not very good. I hear some women say sometimes he’s actually the perfect husband. Well, why did you cheat on him? Why are you leaving him? Why are you, why is this so perfect? He’s so perfect. And that’s a lot of pressure and it’s a lot to live up to. And I feel like there’s some inauthentic thing about that. So we don’t have to be perfect. What we have to do is get our needs met and do that with some integrity.

Steve Edwards (00:57:00):
This’ll be Billy put out, I’m sure, but it’s that putting the on the pedestal, it’s raising this belief that women are perfect, that women are without flaw and that your, just this piece of meat that she accepted into her life and you bring her no value. I mean, I think that’s where a lot of this self doubt and this disbelief in yourself that you’re deserving of love. I don’t know. Like I think that this is a lot of this has to start inside. This has to start in your own head. This is your own self-worth. And if you have something about you that you don’t like change it, make the change, do the work. If you’re like, oh my God, I’m such a fat obese sack, a shoes. Well, maybe you go to the gym maybe instead of sitting around. And like, if you don’t believe in yourself, maybe you take these changes. I have a mantra that I live by and I think it’s the greatest piece of advice. You either go after the life you want, or you settle for the life, you get hands down, full stop. The only thing you change everything about yourself. You want to be a billionaire, great. Do the work you want to be, you know, you want abs, you want to be ripped. You want the best life possible. Do the work. And if you don’t do the work, then you have to accept what you got.

Brad Singletary (00:58:20):
Yeah. Sometimes when we’re trying to be appear low maintenance. So like, if I, if I don’t have any needs, if I don’t have any way to grow, if I don’t have any imperfection, no one’s gonna abandon me. I want to dig into that covert contracts again, real quick. So basically that is to say, I will do blank so that you can do blank for me. I will do whatever. I’ll do this thing for you so that you can do this thing for me. But both of you act like no one is aware of the contract.

Steve Edwards (00:58:50):
You know, again, we can’t speak for women. We don’t have any women’s setting hair or anything like that, but it’s every guy does it. I mean, you know, they’re probably doing it and they don’t even know they’re doing it. But the, the most popular is always regarding around sex. You know, they on running joke for as long as everybody’s been alive is like the second you get in a marriage, you know, there goes a sax, right? Well, these guys that are in these relationships, he’s sexless, unhappy relationship. You know, that sex didn’t go away overnight and it didn’t go for a way, for any reason, something happened, something stopped, pushed her away where she stopped having sex with you. And maybe it was your lying. Maybe it was you not paying attention. You know, that phone that you’re sitting in there in your hand or the video game controller in front of you maybe you got to put it down, put a little pay, little attention and you know, I’ve had to drink my own.

Steve Edwards (00:59:41):
Kool-Aid on that. I’m the, I’m the worst. Like I worked all the time. I always was on my phone. I’d be sitting and watching TV and on my phone and just like not paying attention. So when she stopped having sex with you at a certain point, you have pull up in the mirror what happened? And it’s two to the covert contract side. It’s this artificial like made up. If you do this, I’m going to give you this. And for guys that’s sex, like I said, it’s the chores. It’s the date night. It’s the, any, any little gesture that should be commonplace in the relationship. Oh, I went and got your wheel changed in your car. Oh, I did this. And it’s like, you laugh at that. I was like, oh, I went and got your oil change. We should probably have sex without

Brad Singletary (01:00:25):
You mentioned, you mentioned the date night. I heard a guy in, one of my men’s groups recently was talking about how he took his wife out to this fancy dinner. They were all dressed up. They bought a bunch of expensive wine and all these things. And he, his whole thing was like, oh boy, when we get home, it’s going down. And it didn’t go down because she’s half buzzed. It’s midnight 30. You know, she’s been up with the kids since five in the morning and she’s tired. And she wanted to get down the next morning when they woke up. And he was all sorts of butt-hurt because I spent $600 on you on this date. And I didn’t even get any so needs are normal. We’ve got to accept that our needs are normal, but we need to talk about those indirect ways.

Steve Edwards (01:01:10):
I’m I’m done that. I’ve done. I’ve like, that could have been me. I I’m I’m that guy that you just told a story about there. I mean, I I’ve, I’ve done it when I planned a big night and we went out to a show and a fancy dinner and we were staying at the Cosmo and it was, I mean, rolled out the red carpet. And then when we got back to the hotel, she’s like, I’m tired. I’m not feeling this. And like a little bit, I’m just like, what are you going to have sex? You they’re going to have sex. I, you know, and those ruined, and then you’re having guilt sex, which is gotta be worse. It’s almost as bad as no.

Brad Singletary (01:01:45):
Oh, it’s worse. Cause it’s building resentment and they they’re just turned off, checked out. There’s nothing intimate at all about that. Earlier, we talked about the difference between caring and caretaking and there was a cool action step in the book. Here’s one of the things that he suggests, he says, stop giving completely for a week, stop doing any care-taking completely for a week. Don’t do anything that you normally do for a week and notice how you feel and how people react

Steve Edwards (01:02:12):
When you say that out loud. And like, guys are going to hear this. Like, you know how absurd that sounds right.

Brad Singletary (01:02:18):
It sounds absurd. He says, but there’s a followup to it. But he says, all right, notice how you feel and how people react when you give nothing. And then he said, after that, then caretake more than you normally do. So go all aboard, all overboard, caretaking, checking in, making sure they have everything, give them everything they ever wanted and then notice how you feel and how people react. And I think I want to try this. So

Steve Edwards (01:02:41):
Without imploding a relationship, do all of this without imploding your relationship.

Brad Singletary (01:02:47):
I think the idea is it’s really trying to get us out of the habit of the covert contract. And just to sometimes I’m sitting around like, okay, you had a shower. I had a shower I’m guess guests. This means maybe we can do this now. You know? And, and I noticed that most of those times disappointed, but when I got to do and it’s like, oh babe, no, I got, I got something going on. I got it. I gotta go. I gotta meet up with Steve over the office to record a podcast. Like that’s when it’s like, I’m being pulled back in to like, whoa, before you leave. And there’s some crazy goes down in two and a half minutes in the closet, you know what I’m saying?

Steve Edwards (01:03:26):
And how does it like, I mean, isn’t that the way you’ve dreamed about it being isn’t that the like fun that needs to be injected into it. I know a lot of guys, if they even had to go to the idea of like scheduling it, because now when you’re an adult and you got kids in the house, you got all this, let’s be real. That sex is going to go away. It’s not going to be like, when you’re freshly dating, no kids and no adult responsibilities or no, like, like, yeah, that’s amazing. And then it all goes away and guys are like, Hey, what happened? Do what happened when we were 22 and things were amazing. And we had unadulterated I don’t know if you want to call it like young kids, sex, college kids sex. I don’t think that that’s I think

Brad Singletary (01:04:09):
That that’s in the car, like that kind of stuff,

Steve Edwards (01:04:12):
Car sex. Now I just, now that practical dad, adult side of me is like, why would we do that? Like, why don’t we like, you know, we have a fully functioning bed, right? Like, God, what if I get a leg cramp? God, I, I even, we should delete that portion out. Cause we ain’t going to be terrible. Nobody wants to hear about like, why Steve doesn’t want to have car sex too old for this.

Brad Singletary (01:04:38):
My favorite lines in the, in the, in the, I was gonna say the movie, they should probably make a movie about this. But in the, in the book is helpless. Whiny, wimpy, and needy men are not attractive. Not at all. He says, put yourself first. It shows confidence. And that is what attractive you’ll feel anxious and guilty at first. But if you can just put yourself first, do what you want to do and do nothing that you don’t want to do. Now, some guys are going to hear this and go to say, oh, well, when I go to church, they tell me I need to serve and love and sacrifice. Well, yeah, if you’re an ego driven person, who’s only selfish and completely, some, sometimes people need to forget themselves and kind of, there’s two ideas. One guy says the king eats first and the other guy says the king eats last. And which one is it? And I think it’s both depending on which you’ve been typically in the past, if you’re a nice guy, I think the king eats first.

Steve Edwards (01:05:34):
Well, and this isn’t a game of absolutes, right? Like this is not something I think that you can just go full, stop on it tomorrow. And you’re going to just have a happy life. In fact, I think you’re going to end up with a more off life than you have. Now. I think that this is something you have to recognize inside of yourself. A big takeaway for me would be the recognizing of the covert contract. I think that that’s the most easy place for a guy to start recognizing the little things that you’re trading off with the expectation of something in return. Start there, stop doing it, stop expecting anything. And maybe then you’re going to stop volunteering to do some of these tasks that I’m not saying don’t help around the house. Cause I feel like that’s like an implosion waiting to happen too. But I think you’ve got to approach us with a different energy, a different mindset and quit trying to horse trade stuff with

Brad Singletary (01:06:31):
Horse trade. I like that. I like that idea.

Steve Edwards (01:06:33):
Yeah. I, you know, it’s like this, this just, it’s a trade. It’s a trade and guys are w and it would be one thing that even if you said it, like, Hey, I’m going to do all these chores. And in return, I would like to have sex. And she says, yes, sir, do you accept this deal? These terms? And she said, yes, that’d be great, but it’s always happening without being said. And then it’s just leading to disappointment. So I think you got to take baby steps, read the book, read the book again and probably read it two or three, four more times. Cause I’m, I’m a like 10 times deep because it’s a huge mindset thing. This is a mindset change.

Brad Singletary (01:07:11):
Yeah. I think you’ve made a good point about this. This can’t happen overnight. Generally. This is just a general idea about the timeframe for change. I think it takes a month for every year that you’ve been dysfunctional. So w our average listener is about a 40 year old man. And if he’s been doing this since he was a child, you know, since he was a boy, he has been, he’s been a nice, nice guy since he was a boy, because he was trained to be that way. So he’s been doing it for 30 years. Been a nice guy. It may take you 30 months of therapy. Men’s groups talking with dudes about this, really getting control of yourself, getting your balls back. It might take you a month for every, yeah. So think of you’re on a three-year plan to get your balls back and we can help you with that stuff if you reach out to us. But yeah, it’s not going to happen overnight, and don’t go do some sudden crazy things, but in reclaiming your personal power, he talks about considering and accepting your gifts. You got to find some things to be proud of. You got to look in the mirror and see something that you like and be able to acknowledge that with yourself and the people you’re around and project a reality that we,

Speaker 3 (01:08:24):
I, I love this. I love this point. Like this, I think is a, I lead with a lot of self-confidence where it comes from. I’m not totally sure. Maybe it’s all a lie, but I have it. Okay. A lot of the guys I talked to, there’s such this belief, this self belief that they’re not deserving of better. And if you don’t believe you deserve better than what you have, how do you ever get it? How do you, how do you demand that? How do you demand more from others? If you don’t even think you deserve it? And of all the things of all the topics that one hurts me the most, because there’s a lot of guys that are in unhappy relationships and you know, maybe it isn’t a woman may, you know, but they’re, but they’re not taking any action. And all they’re going to do is they’re going to keep going down the same path, because it is the path of least resistance, because it’s easier to be unhappy in a relationship with your wife and you know, your kids than it is to break up, get divorced, you know, have shared custody, lose half your money, or lose your money and, you know, start all over and still be this weak man, because you don’t deserve, you don’t think you deserve better.

Steve Edwards (01:09:40):
In fact, now your self-worth has even less guys really have to do this. Some of the self works, you know, look in the mirror. What do you deserve? Why do you deserve it? What are you doing to be the best possible version of yourself? The way at the exercise? The self appearance is a big portion of it. The idea of like, when you start dating somebody, all of a sudden you become attractive to other females. We’ve all heard that. And when you’re single, all of a sudden, you’re basically chopped liver and nobody wants you. Well, it’s because you pull off that like thirsty vibe when you’re single, you’re needy, you want, you know, you’re wanting of love of others and it comes off as weakness versus masculinity and confidence and self-belief, and when you’re in a relationship and you feel like you’re in a S you know, those first three, six months of a relationship, when you feel like man, I’m on top of the world, I’m in this great relationship. I’ve got this girl by my side, you know, that’s that kind of like, that’s that toxic max masculinity. That’s the stuff that pours out of you that feels like you’re conquering the world. And then you let life kick you in the nuts a little bit. And all of a sudden you become this weak version of yourself again.

Brad Singletary (01:10:52):
Wow. So interesting. So true. We kind of project a reality that we want to see happening on to things. And even if it’s not real. So one of the interesting concepts in the book that, that shocked me a little was it talked about, we are trying to be monogamous to our mothers. And the way I read that was we kind of maybe unconsciously sabotage things so that we can really stay true to our first girlfriend. And that’s a very fruity and in nature, but I think it’s true to some degree. So let me go ruin every relationship so that I can get back to my mom or to this in the archetypical sense. This is the ideal love or whatever. I let me ruin this so that I can be comforted and be, you know, go back to this idealistic thing, whether your mom is alive or not. I want to go back to this ideal of unconditional love. I have a client who complains that his wife, you know, says, oh, we need to have unconditional love. And he tells me, and I believe it. The only unconditional love that exists is from God and from your mom and dad and, and no spouse, you know, because we’ve seen it. We’ve been through these situations where we love you when this is going well, when you start doing that now, I don’t love you anymore. It’s not, can’t be on a conditional only for your children.

Steve Edwards (01:12:08):
Unconditional love is such a weird concept too, of like, I mean, would you expect your parents to still love you if you were Jeffrey Dahmer or, you know, if you’re some crazy serial killer. And I know I don’t feel like I’m deep enough to wrap my head around this whole idea of like being faithful to your mom. I think it comes to this idea that you’re you do, you know, your parents are vital to your mom was in the picture for so long. And a lot of guys are mama’s boys. I was a mama’s boy. I am a mama’s boy. I see my mom a lot. And it’s, you know, you always hear the female saying like, you know, the mom is just too up in our business. You know, they, you can’t stand up to your mom because it’s your mom. You can’t say no to your mom. There’s no ability to push back. And, and over time that that almost feels like it’s how guys end up in relationships too, where they just can’t, they can’t be truthful. They can’t follow through, but you know, this idea of being faithful to your mom, I don’t know. I’m sure there’s a truth to it. I just it’s deeper than me, buddy.

Brad Singletary (01:13:15):
So he’s part of it is he saying that, you know, we are dependent on the approval of women. And so mom is just kind of the archetype of pure love and the, and the love that never goes away and that kind of thing. And so we’re, we become dependent on women. And if we’re talking about trying to take back our power and take back our masculinity, one of the things it talks about in there is we have this belief that we’re different from other men. I’m not the abusive, angry guy. I’m the sensitive, caring, caretaking person. And, and that actually disconnects us from other men, which is part of the problem. I love his definition of masculinity. He says, masculinity is basically what, whatever helps us in survival. So it’s our strength. It’s our ability to strategize. It’s our ability to fight. It’s our ability to protect and those types of things. But since say like the sixties, you know, we’ve kind of distanced ourselves from aggression. And so, but we still noticed that women are attracted to jerks.

Steve Edwards (01:14:16):
It’s like you better off. If everybody just needs to go buy themselves a Fonzie jacket and have a little bit of that. Yeah. I mean, but there is that element girls are attracted because that cause that jerk also spews confidence, whether it’s fake or not. Because I think that there’s a real level of fake confidence that goes with it. But that’s, I think where the attraction comes from is they’re looking for a leader. They’re looking for a guy who can take charge and have a strong backbone and it isn’t going to, or isn’t going to roll over. I think that’s where it comes from is that women are attracted to a bad boy or to this bad guy, because it’s everything they’ve been told that like, they shouldn’t find the nice guy, get the banker, go to go marry the guy. That’s going to raise the kids. Right. And go to work and come home and love you. And it’s like, but everybody’s so unfulfilled by that. Everybody’s so unfulfilled because nobody’s really talking about what they want. Even the woman in this, the woman isn’t saying, this is what I want, need to be happy. She’s just going with the flow too. Because if you don’t talk about it, it’s not really an issue.

Brad Singletary (01:15:27):
Yeah. Most women don’t want a man that who’s trying to please them. They want a man with balls.

Steve Edwards (01:15:32):
Oh yeah. A hundred percent. They want, each woman that could mean different things. That doesn’t mean you actually have to go out and like fight bowls or like jump, jump dirt bikes, or do any of these things, but you’ve gotta be comfortable in your own skin. And that’s hard. I think it’s hard for, you know, for guys to be like, this is who I am. This is the man. I want to be, I like golf. I like cars or dirt bikes or whatever it is. And just having a passion, like, what are you passionate about outside of your wife, outside of your kids? And that’s where I think a lot of guys lose all their happiness. You know, they give it away because it’s like, now I’m an adult. I don’t have any hobbies because I am a dad because I am married. It’s like, well, what were you interested in? You know, you used to maybe ride a skateboard or you used to like play baseball. Maybe you need to be on the softball team. Maybe you need to go play softball once a week. Or, you know, I’m not advocating for you to go on drinking with the boys, but you know that Saturdays are for the boys. Maybe you need a Saturday. Maybe you need, yeah. You’ve got to really find a way to like talk with the guy.

Brad Singletary (01:16:45):
Yeah. So true man. I was so I played college football and the idea of locker room talk and your mama jokes and all that kind of stuff. I was the guy who was offended by all that stuff. And I didn’t even, I never had any comebacks. Literally it took me into well into my adulthood to realize that that’s one of the ways that men bond with each other. And I used to get so offended. My grandfather would always call me like knucklehead, not head, you know, all these things. And I remember crying to my mom. He says, these mean things to me, you know, why does he say that to me? And it took me. I was probably in my twenties before I realized that’s just how guys do and I’ve yeah. That’s ball busting is real. So a Glover talks about, we need to do these four things to reclaim our masculinity, connect with other men, get strong, literally get in the gym, get strong workout, be physically active, have healthy male mentors and connections.

Brad Singletary (01:17:39):
And then look at, look at your relationship with your dad. And that’s something that you might consider doing with the professional, but we’re afraid to upset women because then it means she won’t have sex with us, but he makes a good point that that’s not true with our male friends. We’re not trying to get it on with our homeys. And so we can be real and we can not worry about upsetting them. We can not worry about drama with dudes. You’re less likely to have drama with male friends. And so that’s one of the reasons he says we need to have.

Steve Edwards (01:18:07):
So I know there’s going to be a lot of guys that are thinking like, well, how do I go get guy friends? Well now with the internet, you know, my best friend lives in Florida. Like I talked to him, I talked to him far too often for two males, but he lives in Florida and we talk every day about some, about anything, everything, and anything in between. But nowadays with the internet and Facebook and these different portals, you can find somebody who’s interested in what you’re into. Oh, you’re a weird European stamp collector. Great that guy’s on the internet somewhere. You’re not stuck with this idea that you have to find a friend in your backyard like you used to. But I do think that there is an element of like, you got to get out of the house. You need to find your tribe.

Steve Edwards (01:18:50):
Find those people that you can relate with that are going to check you on your and hold you accountable to your goals. A lot of guys just, they’re not transparent. Transparency being so key to all of this is they’re so afraid to be vulnerable to other men that it’s like when they’re around other men, it’s like a chest beating contest. Like we’re a bunch of gorillas. Have you ever played softball or have you ever hung? So you go to like softball and or whatever you go to hang out with the guys. None of those guys are ever having bad days. None of them are going through divorce. None of their wives are cheating on them or anything like that. Why? Because male, ego is way too high for anybody to ever be vulnerable. You need to find those three to five guys. And maybe it starts with one. Maybe it starts with two, but you need to find people that you can be real open and honest with.

Brad Singletary (01:19:43):
Yeah. Tell him when you’re messing up, tell on yourself, tell him about the problem you haven’t asked for some input. Listen to them.

Steve Edwards (01:19:50):
Find a men’s group. Men’s group is a huge thing. There’s men’s group you can go into and you can be yourself because these are not your friends. They are like-minded individuals, peers that are there to hear your problems and as well as address their problems. And I think that’s a huge step. I think that is such a miss where guys are missing out on is seek some therapy. So you can men’s group be real, like open up and be real about what’s going on in your life.

Brad Singletary (01:20:20):
We want to wrap this up guys. Thank you for being with us, but we’re just going to hit a few points from No More Mr. Nice guy by Robert Glover. Some things that he talks about, that what ways we can do to be integrated and to get our strength back, get our mojo back, get our balls back and have more respect in our relationships. Whether professionally or romantically, let’s just hit a few things here. First of all, I think is have some integrity. Be honest in what you’re saying. Be honest about your feelings, your interactions. Tell the truth.

Steve Edwards (01:20:53):
Yeah, that’s a, I think that’s a great one. Another one is quit being afraid of new experiences or what’s what’s around you. What the world has stopped.

Brad Singletary (01:21:02):
Yeah. Don’t be avoidant of new experiences. I love that. Learn to surrender what you can’t change. That’s one of the big things in alcoholics anonymous, the serenity prayer except the things that you cannot change.

Steve Edwards (01:21:18):
I mean, this next one is an interesting one, because again, it’ll, it’ll trigger some people, but do what you want to do quick, constantly trying to always please other people, make sure you’re taking care of yourself for

Brad Singletary (01:21:31):
Learn how to get help. Ask about help for your feelings. If you’re feeling uncomfortable or guilty about something. Talk about that stuff.

Steve Edwards (01:21:40):
Recognize that that people are human, that people are going to make mistakes, that people are flawed in nature.

Brad Singletary (01:21:46):
Stop trying to be perfect.

Steve Edwards (01:21:48):
Stop seeking approval. And like you don’t need the approval and the external validation from everybody.

Brad Singletary (01:21:54):
Yeah. You got to approve of yourself. Treat yourself to the things that you deserve. Take care of your own needs with integrity.

Steve Edwards (01:22:01):
Stop building such huge walls and let people in.

Brad Singletary (01:22:05):
Don’t try to cover up or take attention away from your weaknesses. Don’t be afraid of your shortcomings.

Steve Edwards (01:22:13):
Be aware or cognizant of your childhood events and some of the conditions or influences that led you to where you’re at today.

Brad Singletary (01:22:21):
Set boundaries. No who to let in who to leave out. Don’t allow yourself to be disrespected or taking advantage of.

Steve Edwards (01:22:29):
There’s a big one on the list, but be clear or start expressing your feelings. Be transparent about what you’re feeling about things.

Brad Singletary (01:22:37):
Spend more time with men. And we’ve talked about that quite a bit. You’ve got to develop your masculine energy,

Steve Edwards (01:22:42):
Recognize that women, they reject nice guys. They see that as weak, recognize that

Brad Singletary (01:22:49):
Learn to be more passionate, more assertive, more responsible, take care of business.

Steve Edwards (01:22:55):
I recognize that you don’t have to do everything right, or you’re allowed to be flawed

Brad Singletary (01:23:01):
And don’t let the fear of failure or the fear of success. Some guys, I think fears success don’t let that keep you away from the things that you want and deserve.

Steve Edwards (01:23:11):
The last I think is don’t settle for mediocrity. Go after the life you want, quit settling. You’re not a Pilgrim.

Brad Singletary (01:23:18):
Make your own rules. There’s a lot of rules out there right now. If they make sense. And if you can jive with that, go for it. But also don’t be afraid to be independent. Don’t be afraid to be, non-compliant do your thing. Get your balls back, guys. We really appreciate you being with us tonight. This is such an important topic. Men must be stronger. And that may, I mean, take a look at your upbringing. That might mean take a look at how you interact covert contracts. We’ve got to turn these things around and what I’ve noticed with myself and with men that I’ve worked with over the last 23 years, when we stand up and allow ourselves to be counted and allow our voice to be heard and be real and genuine and authentic about where we’re at, what our needs are. And we do the things that keep us alive in our spirit. Things just turn out so much better for us. Appreciate you being with us. Steve-O thank you

Steve Edwards (01:24:11):
So much for having me. I hope I come back. I got a lot to talk about.

Brad Singletary (01:24:14):
Yeah, dude, this is good. I feel like we got a good vibe. We get a little slow here, man. I appreciate you being here and we’re definitely happy back, brother. Take care. Thank you. You guys know no excuses, alpha up.

Speaker (01:24:29):
Gentlemen, you are the Alpha and this is the Alpha Quorum.

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

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

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

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

Brad Singletary, Clint Albright, and guests Jim and Jay continue a 6-episode series on our review of the book “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover” by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, who describe the difference between ‘boy psychology’ and ‘man psychology’ and give a very effective model of healthy manhood by helping guys rediscover the archetypes of mature masculinity. In this episode, we discuss the MAGICIAN.

Topics:

  • Magicians are masters of technology and are the ritual elders
  • They have special knowledge that is passed down
  • Initiation is important symbolism
  • They continue to share magic by giving it to worthy apprentices
  • They put themselves in sacred space and understand things both seen and unseen.
FULL TRANSCRIPT

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

Intro (00:58):
If you’re a man that controls his own destiny, a man that is always in the pursuit of being better. You are in the right place. You are responsible, you are strong, you are a leader. You are a force for good. Gentlemen, you are the Alpha, and this is the Alpha Quorum.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clint (41:53):
Advertising.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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She’s a Moving Target: Get in the Game

She’s a Moving Target: Get in the Game

Men expect our women to be easy to deal with. We expect the target to sit still and let us shoot it. That’s not how it works; if it was that easy, we wouldn’t even have any drive for it at all. ⁣

Some men like to hunt, investing all kinds of time and energy and resources chasing down a moving target. We sit in silence, patiently waiting for the elusive animal, using all kinds of bait and camouflage and tools and weaponry. Some men like to fish and spend insane amounts of time trying to capture a creature we cannot even see beneath the water with expensive lures and all manner of techniques. And it’s so much fun. We see it as an adventure.⁣

Some men like sports where there is an opponent running around who needs to be chased. Quarterbacks try to throw a prolate spheroid to a guy literally running 40 yards in 4.2 seconds. We swing sticks just slightly fatter than a broom at balls moving 90 mph. We become entranced in pursuit of the fastball, the curve-ball, the change-up.

In hockey we are fascinated with strapping metal blades to our feet and running on ice to chase a 3” rubber biscuit with a curved stick all while evading the defender who’s trying to knock our teeth out. And it is fun. It is a game. It is something to invest in. It is something that thrills us. Imagine your favorite player whining that the competitor is playing hard to get. Lame. Never happens. ⁣

So why do we have that attitude towards our women? We want them to lay there with their legs open and be quiet. We want them to be easy to figure out and simple for us to understand. Boring. The feminine moves and flows with sometimes chaotic rhythm and retreat. The true masculine is a disciplined pursuer. He is in competition with himself to figure it out and make the right move at the right time. ⁣

Get in the game, bro. Change your attitude about your relationship. Yes, the target is moving, and you may feel like you are never quite sure how to be. See this as a game against a respected rival. Stay focused, stay disciplined and conquer. You’re not trying to win. You’re not trying to conquer her, you’re trying to conquer your impatience. Conquer your s e l f.

🔺 Alpha Up