Philosophy for Life
Welcome to the Philosophy for Life podcast, hosted by Darron Brown, where we explore the profound questions and timeless wisdom that shape our existence. Join us on a journey of self-discovery and intellectual exploration as we delve into the depths of philosophy, spirituality, ethics, and the human experience. Through thought-provoking discussions, engaging interviews, and insightful analysis, we seek to unravel the mysteries of life and uncover the underlying truths that guide us. Discover practical insights and philosophical perspectives that can enrich your daily life, challenge your perspectives, and inspire personal growth. Whether you're a curious seeker, a deep thinker, or simply someone passionate about understanding the complexities of our world, Philosophy for Life is your gateway to wisdom and enlightenment. Subscribe now and embark on a transformative quest to gain clarity, find purpose, and embrace the profound beauty of existence.
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Philosophy for Life
Overcoming Depression and Finding Purpose with Jeremy Grater
When a knee injury forced Jeremy Grater to rethink his life, he never imagined it would lead to a journey of self-improvement that would transform his relationships and mental health. Join us on "Philosophy for Life" as we sit down with Jeremy, the host of the "Fit and Mess" podcast, to discuss his path to overcoming depression and finding purpose. Jeremy's candid accounts of how therapy, meditation, and embracing new experiences helped him cultivate a more present and fulfilling life offer valuable insights for anyone facing similar struggles.
Jeremy's story is a beacon for those grappling with societal pressures and personal demons. From the challenges of navigating financial stability and unfulfilling jobs to the deep impact of family history, Jeremy sheds light on how these factors shape our life choices. He shares his own battles with familial alcoholism and mental health issues, explaining how understanding and empathy towards his family members have been vital in his healing process. You won't want to miss his reflections on the importance of self-awareness, forgiveness, and breaking away from destructive family patterns.
We wrap up this episode with stories that blend humor and wisdom, including Jeremy's funny anecdotes from his comedy podcast and a memorable family trip to Rome that highlighted the practical applications of stoic philosophy. Jeremy’s life philosophy emphasizes helping others suffer less and striving for incremental self-improvement. Tune in for a profound exploration of men's mental health, the quest for self-betterment, and the small yet significant actions that pave the way to a more meaningful life.
Hey, what's up guys? This is Deron Brown, your host of the podcast Philosophy for Life. I have a unique guest with me today. It's Jeremy Grader. The thing that makes him unique is that today we're going to focus on men's issues, mental health issues that men deal with. He also has a real cool podcast called Fit and Mess, so I thought that was a pretty cool title, but I want to. In this podcast, we're going to dive into a lot of issues that all men deal with on some level. So, Jeremy, can you give yourself a short introduction? Did I leave anything out?
Speaker 2:No, I think those are the high points. Yeah, I'm just a guy who's been working really hard for the last decade and a half or so to just be a little better every day than I was yesterday, and along the way I lost a bunch of weight, became a parent, tried to become a better husband and just do whatever I can every day to do a little better than I did the day before.
Speaker 1:So you said you've been working on yourself for like the last decade. What triggered you to actually start working on and changing your life, getting into self-improvement?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was actually the dumbest injury anyone's ever heard of. I literally got out of bed, stepped wrong when I stood up and my knee buckled and I went down and I tried to stand up but couldn't put any weight on it. And after a number of scans and doctor appointments and physical therapy appointments, it was finally a physical therapist who said you know, based on your family's history with knee problems and what you've got going on, you really need to get on a bike. If you don't get on a bike, you're going to end up replacing both of your knees. And I just thought well, that's crazy.
Speaker 2:You know, I haven't ridden a bike since I was a kid. Like why would I start doing that now? I'm in my 30s? And so I was complaining to my brother about it, as I normally did when I was upset about something, and he was the one that said dummy, all you got to do is get on a bike and start bike commuting. Just be the weird guy that rides his bike to work. And for whatever reason, the way he said it and the timing of it I just immediately owned that identity of the weird guy who rides his bike to work.
Speaker 2:And so it was in the process of that bike ride, that every day I was forced to focus on the moment, to be very present in that moment. Otherwise I was going to crash into a pothole or a car door or a post or something. And I just loved that. I loved that experience of just being so present. I wasn't focused on all my regrets, I wasn't worried about all my anxieties in the future, and so I started looking for ways to bring that into my daily life. I started looking for ways to bring that into my daily life and through a lot of therapy and meditation and learning about just others you know self-development practices I was able to really cultivate more of a life that was more about my existence in the presence and less worrying about being depressed and being anxious.
Speaker 1:Okay, and how old were you when you started this journey?
Speaker 2:journey. I must've been. Well, my, my now 13 year old daughter was a baby, so I must've been early thirties, like 33, 34, something like that.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you were already married at this time. Oh, yeah, yeah, for about 10 years Okay, so how has your self-improvement journey impacted your relationship?
Speaker 2:Well you'd have to ask my wife. I think it's gotten better. You know, I'm not relying on alcohol to mute my feelings anymore. I'm not making bad choices to wake up and regret. I'm not feeling guilty about not being the kind of person I want to be for her. If anything, she helps raise the bar for me to want to be better for her and to be a better dad. She helps raise the bar for me to want to be better for her and to be a better dad. So a lot of the things I was doing in the past was escaping from my feelings and that made me faster to be argumentative or deny better partner. I think it's enriched our relationship because I'm a better person and I think that by being a better person you raise the bar for the entire relationship.
Speaker 1:Well, you know the reason I ask that is because I've been on my own self-improvement journey and I do know that once you start working on yourself, unconsciously, like little parts of you start to change and then it starts to add up and you become a completely different version of yourself than you were, you know, a year or so from now, a year ago. With that change, your social group changes for better or for worse. Well, most of the time it's for better, but you do lose people that you love and care about. So I was wondering, like in your self-improvement journey, like what kind lose people that you love and care about? So I was wondering, like in your self-improvement journey, like what kind of changes did you see within your um, your social circle?
Speaker 2:I mean the it's. It's hard to really measure it, because a lot of things changed as a result, um, but I definitely was quick to move away from the friends that held me I don't like to say held me back, but kept me stuck right, like the drinking buddies that I would go out with and drown our sorrows and whine and complain, rather than going and doing something about my problems. I didn't hang out with them as much, but also this journey helped me become more confident and more willing to try different things. So I actually moved from the city I lived in to a place I'd never been to, to another country, and became very isolated, which was great because it allowed me to do a lot of this work.
Speaker 2:That is very isolating.
Speaker 2:It is very lonely work when you start and kind of intentionally right Like you have to get used to the voices in your head, you have to get comfortable with them, you have to get comfortable with yourself yourself, and actually we just did an episode about this that we're about to release that you know.
Speaker 2:I sort of recently had this realization that, like a lot of the loneliness that I deal with now is because I've been doing some of the most important work of my life alone, and I'm at a point now where I'm ready to invite people in and have them be a part of it so that it can be an even more rewarding. You know community building practice as well as you know personal development building practice. So it is. It's terribly lonely for a while, because everything you knew is no longer what you want to do and you have to really, you know, find your way through that maze of who are the people I need to be around that are going to push me to be better, because the other ones are going to keep you right where you were to begin with. What?
Speaker 1:kind of people are you looking to add to your group?
Speaker 2:I mean right now, uh, the ones I'm hanging out with are. There's a group that I get together with every Sunday morning we go sit in a in an icy river for about a half an hour to just, you know, have the cold plunge experience, um. So there's a lot of, you know, wellness enthusiasts that are doing that, and from there I met a guy that, uh, he's an avid trail runner and he asked if I ever tried trail running and I said I've never run in the woods for anything that wasn't chasing me. So he invited me to start trail running. So we started doing that. So I've been doing that for about a month. So I'm just looking for the person who's going to say hey, let's go do something active today. Hey, let's get out of the house, let's go live life instead of hiding inside from it.
Speaker 1:You said that. You said do something active. There's actually a reel that's trending with Joe Rogan. He's talking to some I don't know if it's a mental health guru or what but she has said on one of your podcasts that you've been on said you lost some weight. But I wonder, is there like outside of exercise, like what things do you do to stay active and to keep your mind like busy?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I'm a parent of two children, so I've got plenty to keep my mind busy. But yeah, I mean I would echo that concept that activity is one of the strongest antidotes, one of the strongest antidepressants that I've ever taken. I kind of hit a rock bottom last fall. I lost a job. That was you know. I kind of felt like it was the end of my career, like what am I going to do now? I'm going to have to start all over. And I turned to a coach who we had on our show previously, just reached out to him I was like man, I don't know what to do, I don't know where to turn. I just I'm lost. And and he said and you know he helped me, he came up with a plan and a lot of it was you've got time right, like go, move, go to the gym, start. You know, he laid out a.
Speaker 2:The more I started adding to it, and not to the point where, like I'm now, you know, addicted to the physical activity, but to the point where, if I don't do it every day, the voices start right, the darkness creeps back in. I get a little, a little run down. I start kind of beating myself a little up, a little bit, and so I I've now gone. I think that must've been October, november. So I'm like six months now without a serious depressive episode, which is like a marathon for me. It used to be every few weeks. I would need a couple of days to recover from something, and now I'm at a point where, like you know, I'm still afraid of it. I'm still afraid it's going to show up and I'm going to have to get through a long weekend of, you know, going through those feelings or whatever. But for the most part I feel strong enough every day that I'm like if it does show up, I feel, I feel like I'm ready for it.
Speaker 2:Um, and so you know what kinds of activities. Like I said, trail running, cold plunging is a big one. Uh, just started adding a sauna to my routine. I go to the gym two to three times a week. Um, play softball with my kids, you know, like again, I've got a 13 and an eight-year-old, so they keep me pretty active too. But yeah, the more I can be outside too, the better. That's just for me. That's how I like to be. I can't sit on a treadmill in the same room for half an hour and spin the wheels. So yeah, I'm just always looking for any reason to get outside. How long have you been dealing with depression? Well, I'm 47, so about 47 years.
Speaker 1:Well, the reason I ask, man, is because a lot of guys looking at you, you know, obviously we are all dealing with some of the same similar issues at some point in our life. But you know, you have a wife, you have a kid. There's a lot of guys on the Internet that are lonely. They can't get a date, you know, let alone a wife. And I'm just curious, like man, who, like? Who were you before you met your wife? Like, how was your? How were you? Were you more depressed? Were you happy? Like how, who were you at that point in your life?
Speaker 2:well, I mean, at that point I was a teenager. I was, you know, 17, 18, no direction in life, high school dropout, in and out of college selling coffee for a living. I was kind of at the beginning. Maybe the more important question is who I was before getting on this journey, because by that point I was already a parent. I was already married for 10 years, I was a homeowner. I was kind of at a point where I think a lot of guys that are probably listening to a show like this were where you've kind of done of, you've kind of done it right. You did the school thing, you got married, you got kids, you're supposed to be happy, the paycheck's okay, like everything's supposed to be lined up and you're supposed to be fine, but you're not. You're really empty and fulfilled and you're starting to wonder like what's the point of the rest of this? And I still got. You know it's a.
Speaker 2:It's a tough answer for everybody, but I know that it for me has come down to figuring out what is the purpose of this time, what, what am I here for? What do I want to do with this time? And it took years. I honestly it was just a few days ago. I think I finally, like, found the sentence that that articulates it, and it's just. I want to help people suffer less.
Speaker 2:That's it the whole point of my podcast. I'm not here to make money. I'm not trying to sell ads, I'm not trying to sell anything. I just want to put something out there so that the guy like me 10, 15 years ago that's going what do I do next? Where do I turn? I feel super alone, feels a little bit less alone, and here's some ideas that maybe they can try. So that's kind of a long-winded answer to your question. But but I think that's who I was. Just I was like 70 pound heavier, depressed, I wouldn't say alcoholic, but you know, alcohol dependent person who didn't know how to manage his feelings and didn't know how to live his life and had no direction.
Speaker 1:I'm curious, cause you said that you went to college, you got a job, you found a wife, got married, you had kids. That's pretty much the. It's a dream, right? That's what they say for men.
Speaker 1:That's how you know you're a good man. You know you did what society wanted you to do. You basically lived up to this archetype. A lot of young men, and not only young men women are also doing the same thing. No-transcript, necessarily anything wrong with the relationship, but they felt like they weren't um being themselves. What I'm wondering is for you, when you were um, I guess, fulfilling all these roles, um graduated from school doing all these different things, did you do those things because you felt like those are things you need to do, or did you feel like you know those are things that society pushed you into?
Speaker 2:I mean it's largely society, but I think it was also. You know, I came from a pretty lower middle class upbringing and there was an element of vine swinging that you sort of jump into right, like you get out of school, you get a job and you need a better one, so you go find the next one and the bills are piling up, so you got to go get the next one. So I feel like I was just kind of hanging on for a long time and so I don't know that I was necessarily like I didn't have my eye on the prize of like climbing some corporate ladder and getting somewhere. It was more like how do I get the next paycheck to cover the bills? So yeah, of course society plays a part in that and there's definitely an element of doing the thing that we're trained to do or the thing that we see other people doing and we want to keep up.
Speaker 2:And that's where that emptiness comes in. For a lot of people is that they don't know what they want, because they weren't taught how to figure out what they want or who they are, what their purpose is. They were taught how to become worker bees in the factory, to go get the job to be somebody who would want to marry them. And yeah, it just kind of corners you into a place where you don't really know how you got there. But there you are and it all feels hollow because the work is hollow, so the money's hollow, so everything you're buying with it feels hollow because you're not living for a greater purpose. That that really fuels you and is the reason you get out of bed every day other than to pay the bills you mentioned, um, we spoke about mental health issues, but they also mentioned alcoholism.
Speaker 1:Were these things that you saw with other family members growing up? Did you grow up in a household you saw, like, I guess, people who suffer suffer from depression or they coped drinking alcohol?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, I come from a long line of alcoholics that poured booze on their feelings and their problems, and yeah, so that was the lesson and this is something I'm kind of coming to terms with now too is the lesson. There was what to run from and I still ended up kind of on the same track and and could could very well have ended up in in a, you know, an alcoholic lifestyle. Uh, if I hadn't gotten curious one day and was like, how would I feel if I stopped for a while? And that lasted about seven years.
Speaker 2:So, um, yeah, so I, I I learned all the negative things that come from that and wanted to break that cycle and I did. And now you know there's other family traits that I see in my future that I'm now running from there, and so it's. You know, I've spent a lot of the first part of my life running away from becoming like one parent and now trying to run away from becoming like the other, for different reasons. Right, like I love my parents, but there's things about them that and and ways that they live their life that I want to make sure that I don't do and take, you know, take the the actions that put me in the place where I want to be, rather than where I don't want to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I get exactly what you're saying. Um, I come from a family not too many, but there were, uh, I had, a few family members that were alcoholics and basically seeing them, seeing how they, how alcohol affected them, how how they would abuse family members or shout out people out of fear and anger. You know, growing up seeing that it is going to do two things it's either going to make you not want to touch alcohol or it's going to make you're just going to copy alcohol, or it's just going to make you you're just going to copy it, which I have to have family members copy it as well. Yeah, you know. So I completely get that. No, growing up trying not to first off, when you're a kid, when you're a young man, you have an idea what you think is better. So, obviously, not being an alcoholic is is a good thing. But there were also family traits that I did not like, or just male masculine traits that I didn't like, that I thought were toxic. And then when I got older, I got to understand myself better.
Speaker 1:Um, pretty much doing this self-journey like you, reading books, doing things like that that I realized that it was easier for me to empathize with other men in my family that I kind of judged at some point in time, because I didn't understand how they felt, even though I may not have agreed with some of their decisions, but because I could resonate with how they were feeling on a deep level, it was easier for me to forgive them for certain things, like okay, like I came from a position of understanding than judging.
Speaker 2:Did you find that learning how to relate in those feelings was new? Did you grow up in a situation where feelings were taught and you were taught to be self-aware and know how to deal with those feelings?
Speaker 1:freely express myself. I grew up in a pretty rough area. My hometown was Murder Capital in the 90s, so at that time, boundaries was something that they taught kids a lot like standing up for yourself verbally, physically. Even the schools they would teach you like you have to learn how to stand up for yourself, like, for example. I'll give you an example of like something that happened when I was a kid.
Speaker 1:I had a teacher called Mr Owens. So one day a parent walks into our classroom, he's yelling, he's cussing, huge, huge dude. Right, he's just cussing at Mr Owens about something with his son, and we're about like nine at the time and then Mr Owens doesn't say anything to him. All he does is he asks the kids to stand up and he tells us to push our chairs, our tables. So we had like the chairs with the desk, which are desk to the wall, yeah, and then he was basically creating space for a violent situation to possibly happen. Wow, mr Owens, he, he, after the space, he puts his hands in his pocket, he looks at the father, the father looks at him, pissed off, and then he just walks away.
Speaker 1:So I grew up in an area where they they really encourage kids to stand up for their self to set those boundaries. And not only that. I also grew up in an area where today we see, when we talk about masculinity, um, a lot of guys they think masculine. A guy that's loud, who has muscles, who's flashy, that's masculine, right, I grew up in an environment where, because it was chaotic, that I saw different types of masculinity and I saw it expressed in multiple different ways. You know one thing that um back to your one thing that um back to your question, one thing that I cause um, the family member that was that was an alcoholic. You know, um, I did notice that when I was at his household that some of the family members were just really, I'm walking on eggshells, man. You know a lot of things, a lot of anxiety. You know, um, that guy was always in and out of prison. You know I'm trying my best not to expose him.
Speaker 2:He's always there, I know the feeling. I know the feeling.
Speaker 1:There was just a lot of anxiety in the household and when he was locked up people were happy and then when he got out they weren't happy. It was a home of fear. So for them there was a it was definitely. I saw how being in that environment it affected those kids, like socially and mentally, like they felt like they couldn't, they could never. That person was so tyrannical that it would not allow another person to really grow and blossom. So those people, they were like shells of themselves and I saw the impacts of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I experienced that like growing up, you know, with an alcoholic parent. Like it's. It's brutal, the, the fear, the instability, the, the walking home from school every day afraid of what I was going to find when I got there. It it messed me up and and it took a lot of years I mean literally in the last couple of years I was finally able to quiet the negative voices in my head that you know that constantly beat me up and told me how worthless I was and how stupid I was and I wasn't good enough for anybody. Like that, I did the work and that's done, that's gone. But I know where that came from. And it's funny.
Speaker 2:I was at my mom's house for Thanksgiving I think it was last year and I'm sitting there watching her prepare this grand meal for everybody four different lasagnas for every different dietary need and all these things, and the whole time she's downplaying all of them Like, oh, this one's been sitting out, it's going to be cold, this one's going to be watery, like I'm sorry, it's probably not going to be good. And I'm watching everybody going up for seconds and thirds and I'm like that's the voice in my head. That's always like, oh, just showing up's enough. Like you got set the bar nice and low. And nothing against my mom. She learned it from somewhere else, right, like she. I love my mom. She did, you know, she did the best she could. And then I don't fault her and I'm not trying to throw her under the bus, but it was just so wild to hear and see the embodiment of this voice that I carry around.
Speaker 2:That's like if I can just convince everybody that, like I did my best, then maybe they'll, you know, forgive a little bit if I'm not perfect, and it was just. I put these all these pieces together of her and the way she talks and the way that my dad talks and other grownups in my life that you know as I was growing up, the things that they said I embodied as that is me, even though they're saying it, I don't separate myself from them. So those words are as much about me as they are about them. And it taught me really quick about like the double extra careful about the way I talk around my kids, because whatever I'm saying about myself they're going to believe to be true about them. Because if it's true about dad, it must be true about me, so it's. It's crazy how much that stuff that just just being exposed to it, just being around it as a child, it can take decades to undo that stuff being around it as a child.
Speaker 1:It can take decades to undo that stuff. Yeah, yeah, it's you. Just you're taking me back, cause kids do pay attention to how you carry yourself and they'll start copying you. They'll start mimicking you as a walking around the house and, you know, using the same phrases that you say. But it it does. Growing up in those type of environments, they definitely do have a? Um a major impact on you. Um, I remember when I was about 18, you know um, I just said this person is my father too. I was trying, but when I was 18, my father, you and I are going to start a podcast.
Speaker 2:It's called daddy issues and we're just going to get my pops my pops.
Speaker 1:He, um, he asked my mom. He's like hey, why don't my son want to come and stay with me anymore? You know, because when I was 14 I was already grown. By the time I had enough sense, I had a little bit say of what I wanted to do and, um, he had just got out of prison. I was 14 and I just saw how miserable people were and I was just like you know what? I don't want to be around this. I'm cool. And so I never went over there again. I never stayed over his house. He would come to my games, he was supportive, but I did not want to be around him when he was drinking. He was around a family. So, anyways, he asked my mom when I was 18 why I don't want to stay with him, and she already knew. But she said you should speak to him. He gave me a call. I said are you ready? Do you want to really have this conversation? He said, yeah, I really want to know.
Speaker 1:Man and my dad's like three. I'm a big dude. I'm like 6'3". My dad's like three times. Well, twice as big as me, maybe three times, but huge dude, and he loves it. He's huge, he's tyrannical, he wants to scare people and he wants to make everybody. I don't know, I don't have that mentality, so it's hard for me to really resonate with it, but he wants to make people. If a person around him like glows and feels powerful, it makes him feel like his light is being dimmed.
Speaker 1:So, anyways, we had that conversation. I just told him look, man, I feel like I feel like people are happier when you are locked up. I feel like I'm becoming a man and you will prevent me from becoming the man that I could be and I don't like the way you talk to your family. And he, he went off, he went, he went off, I put the phone down and this is when John Madden on PS2 was real popular Put the phone down and I remember just putting the phone down next to me on my bed and I can hear it and I'm just playing the game and waiting for him to stop. Then, when I hear the phone, I hear it like stop mumbling, yeah, pick it up. He's like you hear me. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I heard you, and he's like all right, and he's left, but I didn't hear any of it. To be honest, yeah, yeah, but, um, his girlfriend told me, cause she was there. She said that, um, she's like, you know, your dad. He cried um after that phone call and I was like oh, you know. I was like oh, okay, my dad's way more emotional than I am, more emotional than my mom is, you know. But he, he has, because I've become a man and I worked.
Speaker 1:There's a book called Iron John. It's called Iron John, a book about men, and it talks about how men? Um. It talks about how men need to forgive their fathers but also they need to um embrace their masculinity. The guy who wrote this book, um, robert Bly. He wrote this book. He was one of the founders of, the one of the first male founders of the feminist movement, but male founders of the feminist movement. But he saw how the feminist movement was impacting men emotionally and in his book he he mentions that men after the Industrial Revolution, after that happened, we always talk about how women were always, are supposed to be in the household.
Speaker 1:But before the Industrial Revolution, men and women were in the household and you also had your uncles, your grandfathers, you had support from your family within your local environment. Everybody was pretty close to each other. But once the Industrial Revolution happened, men left the households, men left to go to cities, etc. So young boys grew up with their mothers, primarily, and then went to school and then they had female teachers. So over time, men got their sense of self or sense of validation or acceptance from women and it said that basically, men, even though you may have had a good father, a bad father, it's important for you to understand, connect with your masculine energy the pros and cons with it and then also to embrace that with other men that you, that that are your relatives, because they're all dealing with it to some degree.
Speaker 1:You know it's a pretty good book, like I thought. I read that book and I've been working on myself for um a number of years. It was easier. My eyes put like the lens had been, I had to replace one lens with another lens and I'm seeing my father from um not just through a child's eyes but through a man's eyes. Yeah, and that actually improved our relationship, you know that's awesome.
Speaker 2:it's Forgiveness is a really tough, tricky thing for a lot of people. I don't know that I'm at forgiveness yet I'm definitely at understanding in that, like I said, I come from a long line of alcoholic parents and so he saw what his father did before him. Who saw what his father did before him, who saw what his father did before him, and every one of them did a little better, better than the one before. You know, like my dad never hit me, but his dad beat the crap out of him. So you know he wore that like a badge of honor that he never beat us.
Speaker 1:And and I'm like cool. Yeah, I'm glad, thank you Thank you for leveling up a little bit, right, I?
Speaker 2:understand, and I look at his generation and what was required of him. He was not supposed to teach me how to deal with my feelings. That was not. That was not the common cultural thing to do. At that point I was just talking to my mom. I was like I don't think it was even your job. You guys were in this middle class 80s family. You had to get food on the table. We were the wild animals that just got home from school and played until it was dinnertime. We were, you know, the wild animals that just got home from school and played until it was dinner time. Like you were not really raising us as much as the neighborhood was and our just, uh, you know, latchkey kid experience was, so it was just different.
Speaker 2:Right where now there's so much emphasis on self-awareness, teaching about not only, uh, knowing what your feelings are, but how to articulate them and how to share them with your parents. I mean kids. I watch them and I'm stunned at their emotional intelligence. How they can articulate to me things about themselves that I can't articulate about myself and my my eight-year-old blows me away. How she'll just say.
Speaker 2:She'll just come up to me and say I'm sad and I'll say why and she'll tell me exactly why and like, literally it is sadness, it's not like the toy broke, like it's like she gets to the heart of, like this thing was special to me and now I don't have it and I'm like, wow, that's amazing and we've come so far. Um. So to your point, like I have, I have understanding, I have compassion for the experiences that that our parents had before us. Um, and so you know, I'm I'm trying to do a little bit better than I didn't beat you and you know, raise the bar a little higher for my kids so that they can wear their own badge of honor, I get what you're saying.
Speaker 1:You know, and it's funny, my dad, the reason, the thing that helped me, I want to say, helped me heal the relationship that I had with my father when I was. I had a serious conversation when I was like 22. Serious conversation when I was like 22. And the reason I decided to have this conversation? Because when I was a kid, he, he tried to, you know, he tried to discourage me, tried to tell me I wasn't going to amount to anything. But you know I didn't. I didn't live in the same household as my dad, but I lived, you know, I lived with people who would encourage me and that were, you know, trying to motivate me. So I would just that didn't really bother me, but I did tell myself when I was a kid that everything he was good at I was going to be great at and everything is bad at I was going to be good at. That's what I told myself. So that's why I'm good to stay focused.
Speaker 1:But when I was 22, my dad, he called me and he was just complaining about his dad, right, and I was just like listening to him and I was like hell. No, I was like I'm not, I'm not going to grow up and have a conversation with my son and then telling him, you know, about how shitty my dad was. You know, I knew that a part of just like I said, a part a part of the process not just being better than him at the things that he was bad at it. I knew that I had to forgive. I knew that for me to be better than my dad, this was something I had to get over. I had to forgive him for it. So I decided to have a serious conversation with him and I put it all out there and I just like, hey, you know, this is how I feel. Yada, yada, I said everything and he just apologized and he said man, you know what? I'm sorry, I just wasn't that good of a father. And then it kind of dawned on me that, um, he was the best father that he could be like. My dad is wired differently than me. Like his mom is off the hook. My grandmother that's no longer here, god bless she's. She was crazy man, you know, and he got, he got a little bit of her. Yeah, yeah, you know he's not like her, yeah, but it's just the truth, it's real.
Speaker 1:And, um, my father, um, his father. I only met him twice and I flew out to wichita because he was dying of cancer, right and um, he had got out of prison after about. He has spent 25 years of his life in prison and I went to see him and I well, before he got out, he wanted to talk to me and I didn't know what to say to him. So I just said, honestly, man, I heard all the bad things you did. I really don't have the patience to really be phony. I just don't have the patience to be phony man, you know so. Can you just let me know everything? This is what I told him. I just don't have the patience to be phony man, you know. So can you just let me know everything? This is what I heard. Can you let me know what's true or not?
Speaker 1:He admitted to everything you know and he was like you know, um, he just he was. It was funny because he was a good person growing up. He was really. When I went to his funeral because he died, he was people he grew up in a small town, so people that he grew up with in this small town, from his high school, a lot of people came to this funeral and he just lost himself.
Speaker 1:At some point in time. He left his little town in Oklahoma and came to California, got caught up in the fast life and he lost who he was and it was crazy, his last years he was nothing like the person that you know I had heard about. You know my dad. He still cries about his dad because he didn't have they didn't have a good relationship, but he wishes that they did and he always, when he brings him up, he cries and he talks about just like man. You know that person that you met in kansas, that was my. That's who my dad really was, man. That's who he really was Like.
Speaker 1:He was in deep thought. He was quiet, he was. I can tell he was like really thinking about his life, his decisions. He accepted the fact that he was don't know man. I think that I don't know. I just wanted to share that because I thought that for me healing with my dad, and then also I wanted to go see my grandfather before he died because I wanted to get something. I didn't want him to die without me having a conversation with him. Because I wanted to look in his, because I wanted to see, I wanted to look in his eyes. I wanted to see his face. I wanted to see what I can get from this interaction. You know, sometimes those moments that you share, you get something from it, whether you're aware of it in that moment or not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think what you got was to see the real man, and, like you said, we all get lost at some point in this journey.
Speaker 2:None of us sets out to be a terrible parent or a bad person in any way, but choices lead to other choices, and sometimes those choices are pretty desperate ones and you get stuck in this life.
Speaker 2:That's an extreme example. The situation you're talking about, about people being in prison that's one extreme. The other extreme is the person who is the super high, powered executive, whose life is completely empty because the choices they made made them a lot of money but put them in a in a different kind of trap, and it's, it's just this, this hamster wheel that we're on of just trying to keep up, trying to do whatever's right, try to try to just get by in this life that that just puts us in into some bad situation, sometimes much worse than others. Uh, you know, unfortunately it affects some groups of people much more disproportionately than others. Uh, and so I'm I'm sorry you went through that and I'm glad you had that experience, though, to be able to see, you know, the, the person underneath the story that he built for himself, uh, to give you a better, I guess, idea of really where you come from.
Speaker 1:It's just life. You know we have a crossroads and we walk down one road and it leads us to you know, wherever, whatever path that leads to. Yeah, but I'm curious and doing this, since you've been doing this, like what are the like the most common issues that you found that found that men who kind of followed the same steps that basically both of us have followed Go get the education we got, to make money, we have to be the provider, but they've done everything society has told them to do, but they're still not happy. What do they feel is missing?
Speaker 2:I think for a lot of them it comes down to purpose. That's kind of the big underlying current think. For a lot of them it comes down to purpose. That's kind of the big underlying current. I see a lot. It's just like what is the point of all of this? You can believe a lot of different things about that, but if there's not something driving you toward something more meaningful than a paycheck, then it can be a pretty hollow existence.
Speaker 2:I think a lack of curiosity about why you do the things you do is kind of what puts you into that trap. I see I talk about myself. I can talk about people all day long and talk about myself. You know I struggle with food issues and a lot of times I'll have feelings that I don't want to deal with and I'll go try to solve them in the pantry and you know, as long as I ask myself what the hell am I doing here? Am I, am I actually hungry or am I sad, frustrated, bored, annoyed, whatever? And that answer can help me, help lead me to a better choice.
Speaker 2:But a lot of times we aren't curious enough to get to that, the answer to that question and we'll just sort of on autopilot, keep doing the same things over and over again. I got bad feelings, let's pour some booze on them. I got bad feelings, let's eat something. You know I don't want to deal with people. I'm going to work from home and never go outside, like there's. There's all these choices that we make, but we're not curious about why are we making them and why are we repeating them and ending up with a bad result and then just complaining about it.
Speaker 2:Um, so I think I think those are some of the biggest issues is, you know that and, I think, a lack of appreciation for the hard work that we do do. I think that there are a lot of pressures that guys face that go unnoticed, that go unappreciated, that go unspoken of, because guys aren't typically doing it for the accolades. They're doing it because the job's got to get done and after a long enough period of time. You know the reward typically comes from the boss, right? The boss is like hey, attaboy, here's, here's a raise, here's a promotion. So guys lean into that because that's where they they're getting the reward.
Speaker 2:But if at home they're not hearing, hey, thanks for, or I appreciate you doing that for us, or you know, I see how hard you're working to be a better person, like when you don't hear that the, the and you rely on the external validation, then it's easy to become the work-obsessed person because that's where you're getting the external validation. So I think that's it right. It's purpose, it's curiosity, and where you get that validation from. Can you get it internally or do you need someone else to provide it for you? And whatever the answer is being able to adapt to it appropriately.
Speaker 1:Men are self-sacrificing yeah, you know, um, would you just stay there, reminding me of a conversation I had with a good friend of mine, uh, about a few few months ago, almost a year ago, and I was telling him that, um, I was seeing a woman and then I made her, she she had, she was upset with me and I was down, right, and so I had a conversation with him and then, literally the next day, things are way better. So I had, so I was conscious of how I was feeling when I was down, and then I realized the next day that I was feeling way better, she was happier, I was better, and I called my friend. I was like, hey, man, I need to speak to you. I want like, hey, man, I need to speak to you. I really need to get this out.
Speaker 1:I explained to him what had just happened. I said, man, it just dawned on me that you'll never be happy placing your happiness on other people, on your kids, your spouse, anything outside of you, because the world is going to rock you and people are going to rock you. You need to do whatever you need to do to make sure that you, that you're happy with who you are, because I've done that before I've done that, I felt like, oh, you know, I'm doing these things, so this person will see the things that I'm doing not necessarily relationship-based, it can be family. I'm doing these things and these people they will appreciate it. Because I'm thinking like, oh, they'll appreciate it, because I'm thinking like, oh, they'll appreciate it, they'll be grateful, et cetera.
Speaker 1:But it's not. It's not the case and it doesn't make those people bad people. It's just, you know, people are, people have their own agendas, their own problems are in their own heads and, um, and when you put yourself in that self-sacrificing position, it's like you're, it's like I don don't know, it's like what I could see it as, like a, um, a dead souls was a dark souls character like you, slowly, you have a life bar you slowly like, yeah, life, yeah, you know, because you're putting your, you're putting your life into other people's hands.
Speaker 2:Basically, yeah, well, I mean, look at, look at how we're, how we're raised like we. We go to school and we're graded on our performance and and we get the attaboy for doing a good job. And we're raised Like we. We go to school and we're graded on our performance and we get the attaboy for doing a good job and we're punished for doing a bad job. You, you get your allowance for doing your chores. Around that Like we.
Speaker 2:We I think a lot of us were taught growing up to seek the uh, the approval, the validation from someone else. Someone else has to to rubber stamp that you did a good job. And so when all of a sudden, you're on your own and there's nobody else to provide that you're not, in an automatic situation where you get rewarded, work is kind of all that's left, and if you work for somebody, that's where that goes, and I think, for men especially, that we do that. And so that's why I think you do see a lot of these corporate CEO kind of people that go on our shows, like ours, and say I did it all, I burned the candle at both ends and I had everything and I was miserable. And it's because they were constantly seeking someone else to say good job, and they never looked inside to say hey, good job with your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good point. Good point, man, what I was going to say. Have you ever suffered with not feeling good enough?
Speaker 2:Yeah, most of my life.
Speaker 1:I've dealt with that my own way. That's why I was curious.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, like I said that voice in my head that I was, I was actually able to to eradicate. I remember the last time I had it and I went to my hometown to visit and literally I had to work up until the minute. I had to be in the car and on the road. It was a three-hour drive home and I got to my mom's house and I was staying there and I think it was that night I went to brush my teeth and I opened up my bag to get my stuff out and I forgot my toothbrush. I was like God, you're such an idiot. How could you forget something so simple Like you're? Just, you're not a full grown adult. I started beating myself up for this simple thing that I forgot my toothbrush. But in the middle of the thought I caught it and went wait, no, you literally worked until the minute you had to be in the car. You were busy. You forgot you're a human being car. You were busy. You forgot you're a human being. Stop complaining. Open the drawer, there's probably a spare. And of course there was. That was the standard right. That was the soundtrack in my head of everything I did.
Speaker 2:I would do interviews like this and I would get off going like you completely bombed, that, you sucked, that was terrible. I would record podcasts and go that was garbage. Nobody's ever going to listen to that. And then I'd get you know a bunch of emails saying how awesome it was, like the, the, the, the bar I set for myself is, or was your garbage. You're not good enough, you're. You're barely lucky enough to take up space in the world, and so that's been the majority of the work these last couple of years is learning to take up space and and to be okay with the fact that I'm not going to be perfect. When I do take up that space. It's new for me. Um, and yeah, it's tough.
Speaker 2:I, I, we were just joking on the last show and on how much less I hate myself now than I used to. Uh, because of a lot of work, I, you know, I I think that fear of of when I was a kid and the experiences we talked about was something that just carried with me and and I just wanted to hide and stay under the radar and stay safe and never get out of my comfort zone. And you know, it was sort of at the beginning of this where I learned that getting uncomfortable is the way like when, when I face those challenges, those obstacles, and get over them, the reward is on the other side of them, and so, um yeah, the the not being good enough was was pretty much, you know, the soundtrack of my life what, um?
Speaker 1:where did you get the name? Man fit mess like. How did you come up with?
Speaker 2:that I was actually my, my co-host, uh, his, his, now ex-wife. We were developing the show and trying to come up with you know, because, because we're not, you know, credentialed, certified, you know therapists like, yeah, I don't like sorry to cut you off but. I hate.
Speaker 1:I hate that when I go to any youtube podcast. That's what I like about joe rogan's podcast. What I used to like about it, it was just two guys having a conversation. Now every podcast I see is like this phd, this psychoanalyst, and and they all rotate through the same podcast. I'm like, damn, like every dating coach now is not even a regular guy. It's like some. It's like some phd right research, 50 books, like it's not that difficult right, I know that's the thing, it's really not.
Speaker 2:Uh, oh, sorry, I lost my train of thought with that um the fit match you.
Speaker 1:You said that the title yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So so my buddy and I were trying to come up with this, the name of this show, where, you know, we were sort of on these journeys around the same time and kind of learning from each other and having conversations much like the one you and I are having. And and he was the one that was like hey, we I don't hear guys talking like this and I think it could be helpful for guys to hear this. And I thought he was nuts because we didn't have the credentials. But then as I sort of looked around, I was like you're right, I mean, our conversations are helping me. I couldn't help somebody else. So we were trying to figure out like what's the way to say we have some advice, but it's completely unqualified, so take it for what it's worth. And we pounced of terrible ideas off of each other and finally his wife walks by and she just goes why don't you?
Speaker 1:idiots just call it the fit mess and we're like, yeah, that's solid, let's do that. Well, it's a good title. Man, I was looking like, damn, that's pretty creative. Thank you, yeah, I'll let her know. On your show on your show, um, I'm curious like what, what guest like stands out to you? I'm sure you've had a lot of great shows, but I'm sure there's been a guest that told you a story that hits you so deep, that resonated with you like what guess was that? And like, yeah, I mean, there's like.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of analogies that have stuck with me. One was a guy named chris duffin uh, world champion weightlifter guy, and uh, I loved his analogy about um, how, how going through life is like a tree, like you have to build really strong roots to face the strongest. Like it's the strongest winds that build the strongest roots right Like the, the trees that are standing the tallest and the longest have been there and they face the winds, and so I really liked that analogy for life of just like you don't get those deep roots without that strong wind blowing against you, that one stands out. The probably my favorite was my favorite author is Ryan holiday. He writes about stoic philosophy. We were able to talk to him about one of his books that was mind-blowing.
Speaker 2:When we were early on, we were really into biohacking specifically as a genre, so we were talking a lot about that. We talked to Dave Asprey, kind of the godfather of biohacking, a couple of times, the guy that I mean there's two people probably that changed my life the most, and one was Tony Horton, the creator of the P90X workout. I remember interviewing him and I had just started doing his workout like the week before, because I knew I was going to be interviewing him and I hated going to the gym. I just every time I was there I was like, do I really want to look back on my life and all the hours I will have spent in this room doing this? This is awful. And so I went to him in a call like this, and I said I hate it, how do I change that? And he looked me in the eye through zoom and said dude, your purpose sucks, that's all it is. You just you don't have a good enough reason to go Like. As soon as you have a good enough reason, then that's, that's all going to change. And he was totally right.
Speaker 2:I mean, it took me, needed somebody to tell me it's not about the thing, it's about the reason you're doing the thing. And it was another one of those things where he said it the right way at the right time and it clicked. But I mean, honestly, it was a guy that most people probably haven't heard of was my own coach. I had him on the show and it was really the talk we had offline. But he's just a really smart guy and a really down-to-earth. Like you're saying, this isn't rocket science, it's consistency, it's showing up every day and doing the hard work. There's no magic pill, there's no secret formula, there's no thing that you're going to find in a book that's going to necessarily blow you away, unless it's the thing that you've probably read 30 times and you just needed to read it the right way at the right time for it to finally click and make sense for you. So, um, those are some of the folks that we've talked to that have had a pretty big, pretty big impact on me.
Speaker 1:You know, um, people have well, I've had a few like friends. They say like, oh, you're, you're stoic and I didn't know what the hell that was. To be honest, man, you know, and I so I'm'm just, I'm just really down to earth, I'm just chill. So, um, I invested time into um. Marcus aurelius actually bought his book. I have it right here. What is it called? I can't remember meditations. Yeah, I have it. I have. Meditation has like that crow or bird on the cover or something like that.
Speaker 1:Yes, but, um, yeah, I have the book meditations and he says some pretty, um, some of the quotes that he says like really really speaks to me or whatnot, and basically I'm curious, like why did you get into stoicism? Like what do you get from it?
Speaker 2:that stands out the most to me is, like you know, I can sit here and get mad if somebody dumps a bunch of trash on my front lawn or I can just go do something about it, right, like I, it's not my fault that it's there, but it's my responsibility, my responsibility to clean it up.
Speaker 2:So it's really just kind of owning my part in the world and what I control and how I respond to the things that happen to me. Um, this a bit of a tangent, but it's funny. We're talking about Marcus Aurelius. I was just in Rome with my daughters and my youngest daughter's eight, and again Ryan Holiday. He wrote three children's books and one of them is about Marcus Aurelius, and so we're going through the Vatican City Museum and we're seeing all these busts everywhere and finally, and the whole time again being the self-sacrificer, I want to find some Marcus Aurelius stuff. We're in Rome, I want to find some, but I'm like, ah, we'll just do what the family wants to do.
Speaker 2:My eight-year-old in the in the Vatican city museum says where's Marcus Aurelius stuff? I want to see Marcus Aurelius. And I was like my eight-year-old even put together that we're in the city where marcus really is you know, was king and like, did all these things, and so, uh, we did that and then we actually found the tower that was built in honor of his time as a general. So it's just cool to have really Ryan Holiday's work through Marcus Rilley's have an impact on me, but then to have my eight-year-old also sort of pick up those lessons and be interested in them was a really cool moment.
Speaker 1:Wait, so you said you guys were in Italy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then this was in Rome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was in the Vatican Museum. Yeah, okay, and this okay. And then this was in Rome. Yeah, it was in the Vatican, in the Vatican museum, yeah, Okay, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:That's real cool. I've been to Italy, but I'm only. I haven't been to Southern Italy, where all the history I was in Northern, just visiting a friend from college.
Speaker 2:Wasn't that exciting, that's beautiful. We were were in northern and southern italy, we skipped the middle, but, uh, beautiful, beautiful place is it the cathedral?
Speaker 1:I took a picture next to this like huge. He was like d. You have to take a picture next to this. Uh, like castle, a church. That's what it was. It was a church in milan. I can't, oh, um that church in milan.
Speaker 2:I don't know about milan, but in um in uh no, we did not go to that church do you know a church?
Speaker 1:there's like a famous huge church.
Speaker 2:I don't know the name I'm thinking, I'm thinking of the one in barcelona, okay, okay, uh, la sagrada familia, the big, uh gaudi designed church, but that's probably a different one than the one you're talking about, because we, we were in barcelona and italy.
Speaker 1:Sorry to sorry, to turn it into travel talk no, it's cool man, I don't mind, I just want to have it. I want these podcasts to be more like a conversation. Cool, cool people. I can ask some questions. They ask me questions. Yeah, one thing you said is accepting accepting things that you can't, that you cannot change. Yeah, you know? Um, I was just in colorado. I do, I compete in karate, so I was in colorado for a tournament, right, and my sensei is about he's in his 70s old dude, and we were sitting at the airport last night. We flew in. I literally got home at like 2 am last night, oh man, and we were at the airport and I was telling him a story of mine that I was at the hotel I was staying at and there was like a drink case, you know, like a freezer, where it has like all the um you know the smoothies, the soda water, etc.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I tried to open it to get a, um, a smoothie, and it it wouldn't open, it was like locked. And the woman was like hold on, wait, I got to get that for you. So she walked around to the back and got the smoothie and then she brought it to me and I started cracking up. Right, I had to ask, I was, do people really grab drinks out the freezer and then take off? And this was a nice hotel? And she said yes, people, people actually do that. And I just start cracking up, right, because I'll not just because of that, that situation.
Speaker 1:But then I've had people that I've gave, I've gave opportunities to that have screwed me over in some kind of way, bad mouth me, and and then when she told me that story, I mean when she told me that, you know, when she told that to me, um, I immediately was. What immediately came to my mind was like you know, human beings are so unique, like we, we forget that we're animals. You know, we have this idea that we're animals. You know, we have this idea that we're we're so above high, high almighty. You know, some of us super way more articulate than others, some of us, we know we try to put on a face and dress a certain way but at the end of the day, when we, when we have that impulse, some of us just respond differently.
Speaker 1:You know, and the people that steal these drinks aren't necessarily kids. Some of them are like professionals who can afford the drink what the hell.
Speaker 2:It reminds me of my movie theater days when I used to watch full-grown adults. They buy a ticket, go to one movie and then sneak into another, and we wouldn't do anything about it because it was like you're an adult, you know what you're doing. Me telling you this is not right is not going to change you as a person. What?
Speaker 1:is wrong with you. Yeah, I've done that.
Speaker 2:Oh, me too. Who hasn't?
Speaker 1:That's what you do, I can't say I've done it actually in my adult life. I have not done that recently. I can say but I definitely high school and before that I definitely did that all the time. Have your friend open up the back. But anyways, jeremy, we're close to the end and I usually ask people this question at the end of my show.
Speaker 2:What is their philosophy for life? What is my philosophy for life? I think I can wrap it up in what I said about just my purpose is that, you know, I just want to be here to. I want, I want my actions to help people suffer less. If I can do that, then then I feel like it's a win and it's a pretty rewarding life. And by doing so, I want to do it in a way that you know, acknowledges my responsibility for my actions and the impact they have on other people. And so, yeah, I mean just that and just try to be a little better. Like, whatever I did yesterday, I'm going to try and do a little better today, and whatever I do today, I want to do a little better tomorrow.
Speaker 2:There's lots of different ways to measure that and what that means to you, but you know, just setting that small goal is a lot easier than you know shooting for the moon and you know having a hard time getting the bicycle off the ground to fly without ET. So that's a really old reference. I can't believe I just made an ET reference. But yeah, that's it, man. It's just. Everything comes down to the small, consistent, little actions that you do every day, and if you're taking them in the right direction, then you're going to get there, have you?
Speaker 1:ever watched the podcast Diary of a CEO? No, okay, well, one thing that he does at the end of his podcast, he asks his guests to ask a question for the next guest. I had never done it before, but I think this would be pretty cool to try out A question for the next guest.
Speaker 2:And do I get to know who the next guest is? Or it's just a random? It's going to be a random guest.
Speaker 2:If you just ask the question, then this person can answer it oh man, I I shouldn't do this, but this is where my brain wants to go, and it's good I it could be horribly embarrassing or wildly entertaining. I used to do a comedy podcast and, uh, we had one one. We had two questions. I'm going to give you one of the two that we asked every single guest, and it was uh, have you ever pooped your pants? And, and if so, there needs to be a story, and so I'm going to give you that. You can use it, you cannot use it, I'm going to let you decide, but it usually ended in a pretty entertaining story. So there's a question for you okay, I'm gonna ask that question we'll see how it goes.
Speaker 2:Man, blame me. Blame me when they look at you sideways, and it completely derails the conversation.
Speaker 1:I look, man, I didn't want to ask this question.
Speaker 2:I had this idiot on my podcast that wanted to know.
Speaker 1:So I think I'm going to create a short, a YouTube short or something, with you asking the question and I'm answering it.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. Yeah, I'll take the blame man, I'll take the hit for that one All right, Jeremy.
Speaker 1:Thank you. This was a great conversation, you know, and hopefully we could do something like this again in the future.
Speaker 2:Sounds good, man, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for having me on. Have a good one, take care you too.
