Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple of Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and I'm excited for today, one to have a guest on. If you're listening to this, definitely go check out the YouTube at some point. I've got a guest wearing a hat. Taller brim than mine. I'm a fan of the wider brim.
He's got the tall brim on, but we are matching not intentionally. It is just a lifestyle he lives and that I live. And we're going to bring that lifestyle to you today. What can we take from, you know, the Western part of America and their culture and from horses and horsemanship? And how can we apply that to parenting and teenagers to cultivate life lessons and to help them navigate this chaotic world that.
Every day gets more chaotic, but every day the Lord is rising up a standard against the enemy as they come in like a flood. Every day we have people guesting on podcasts, putting out content, and running programs to help educate and inform, whether it's mental health advice, physical fitness, finances.
There are a lot of people helping, and today we have one such man, Shane Jacob. Would you please go ahead and introduce yourself for us? Amen to your introduction there, brother. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate your show and your message and the opportunity to be here and talk to you and your your listeners and watchers today.
Yeah, for sure. So I kind of hinted there at your, you know, your podcaster, your life coach, and. A Western man, obviously, and you put all those together to help not just teenagers, but parents as well. I know the focus is heavily on teenagers, but it's important for us as parents to also be growing and learning as we help others do the same, especially our children.
And so I've kind of hinted at horsemanship and all of that. Can you tell us specifically about your business and your life? In fact, you are a man who has overcame many hardships and I'd love for you to go into that as well. Yeah, right on. Yeah, you bet. So, so anyway, here's the deal with me or part of it.
Anyway you know, as a young man, and when I talk, when I meet, when I say young man in the lives of teen, even into my early in my early twenties a lot of us go through what I'm going to describe, but I think in varying degrees and we all do different with it. Okay. It's just a piece that we have to go through, but what I, what was happening to me during those years Is I had voices in my head that said, Hey, Shane, something's wrong with you, man.
You're not, you're different. Those other people are better. You're like deficient in something, in some way, something you're less than in some way. You're, you're not measuring up. You're not as good as, and this is a constant. Message, you know, going through my head and really I look back on it and a lot of times we take the beliefs that we have about ourselves based on two things.
Number one is what things happen to us. In other words, what people do to us. A lot of us, which does not include me, have experienced abuse and serious traumas. Right. And when, when that happens to us, we have to, we look at that and we say, well, what does that mean about me? Okay. Then the other thing that we determine our beliefs about ourself is, is what we, we judge the things that we do a lot of times.
And then therefore we say, so if we do something, we're like, man, I shouldn't have done that. I'm an idiot. And therefore I'm my belief about myself. So I'm an idiot. As a young man, okay, I didn't have any trauma to kind of blame this on or I don't know where it came from. I just had these kind of voices in my head and these thoughts.
They seem pretty strong. I was really shy. I was trying to fit in. I did pretty good in sports. I did. I was a decent student. But yet all the time I have this nagging, you know, and it's it's It's making me kind of withdraw and not really be all I can be. But I constantly go through my days thinking that everybody in the rest of the world is better than me for whatever reason.
Okay. Somewhere along in my I don't know, teens, mid teens, I, I don't know, maybe 16 years old or something ish. When I found a solution, and it was at the bottom of my first alcohol experiment, okay? And what I found was, hey, I just turned, I just automatically became okay. Those thoughts were gone, inhibitions gone.
And, you know, in part, and I'm not going to say it completely, but in part, and probably mostly as a result of what I just described like right there, I, I began a 20 year drinking career. Where I was a hundred percent or I drank to excess for over well, over two decades on a daily basis. And I felt better every single time I drank or I wouldn't have kept doing it.
And I mean, I drank to excess. I mean like hard, you know, can't get my words out slurring. I mean, drinking, when I say to excess, I don't mean like four or five beers. You know what I'm saying? I mean, I drank a lot on a daily basis. As a result of that Okay. As a result of my drinking, I permanently damaged and destroyed lives, including my own, but more importantly, all of these other people.
Right. I can't fix that. Okay. I'd never be able to go back and, and repair the harm and the loss and the damage that I caused other people. I didn't, I was kind of oblivious to it all. I thought everything was kind of okay. You know, that includes I was locked up in jail for a while, multiple times. Right.
And, you know, I diminished my ability to earn, my ability to learn, the relationships with the people I loved, I was slowly destroying and disintegrating to nothing until I had a divorce after a 17 year of marriage, my relationship with my kids kind of faded away to nothing. And all this time I really didn't, I was just, you know, kept on getting my little fix every day.
And what was happening, another piece of this dynamic that was happening over this progression and over this period of time was, is as I was drinking, I was, I was I was fueling these thoughts of inadequacy, right? I mean, you get drunk, you get in trouble, you go to jail, and how do you think you feel about yourself if you're not paying attention when you're sitting in jail?
You know, you're fueling these. Thoughts that you're less than that you're inadequate that something's wrong with you that you're deficient And so it's a terrible cycle a terrible loop and it took me a long time to get out of that I mean a long damn time When I finally broke free and I like to say with the help of horses and God when I finally broke out of that cycle Okay.
And after a while, I had the time to get my kind of brain back together. And you know what I did? I looked back, Mr. Whiskey, and I said, Shane, you know, I wish I would have known then what I know now. And that is one reason that sparked this idea that, you know, I really have a message for teens because, you know, hopefully you don't have to do as much destruction and pain as my life.
But if even if you're having a little, you know, I might be able to help with that. Amen. And, you know, you said something that really resonated with me, which is. When we have trauma or abuse or hardships or whatever it may be in life, we instantly think, well, the common denominator there is me. Because you're saying this happened to me, this happened to me, whether it was because of me or to me or for me, that word me is repeating over and over again.
And you say, all right, then I must be the common denominator. It must, it must be me. You think it's important to realize that there's so many things that happen in this world that. happen around us or to us, but have nothing to do with us. You know, that stuff just happens. And it might not be because of, you know, there's something wrong with us or some kind of negative trait with us.
And so I think that's a great point to bring up there. What you said is very relatable. There's a lot of people who just drink to suppress their emotions to, to hide from who they are. There are people who are a different person when they drink. They go from anxious, introvert, can't talk to anyone to life of the party but.
That's just a, you know, temporary fix. It's not changing who you are, right? And if you're not working on who you actually are, then you're never going to be able to be that person when you need to be, especially if you don't have access to whatever crutches you've been using, whether it's alcohol or drugs or something else.
And now, Mr. Jacob, what I want to ask you is, There was something in your bio that really stood out to me. It was one of the first things in a bio in a while that's caught me off guard, which you said, loving yourself is not a good idea. Now, I've had a lot of guests come on and talk about how important that is.
First, I have to ask you, what does that mean to you? Is there a difference for you between self love and loving yourself? And if so, what does that mean for us? Well, that's a great question. I appreciate you asking it. And and this is something that I'm very serious about, and this is to the core of my message, because one thing.
You know, you mentioned, you mentioned alcohol and drugs and whatever, but there's so many things that we do to buffer or to escape feelings. And those feelings are caused by thoughts in our minds. And the, the biggest, I believe, impact on our thoughts are our beliefs about ourselves. You know, One of my mentors is Brooke Castillo, the owner of the Life Coach School.
She's been a life coach for over 20 years. She's literally coached thousands and thousands of people. And she says over in a 20 year career of coaching thousands of people that everything that she coaches on comes down to one thing, and that is breathing. For people's personal worthiness. I had on a guest on my podcast, Cheryl Green, and she made a statement.
She said that she believes that this is a big statement. She said that she believes that every negative human behavior at the root can come can be traced to its root to be an effect of the way a person believes about themselves. Now, I tried to prove that not true, and I haven't done it yet. So let's just, what if that is true?
Okay, I'm going to say that again. Every negative human behavior has to do with what you think about you. Everything that you do that you don't like or you consider negative has to do with what you think about you. Okay, but it's even bigger than that. And, and I'll answer your question. When I talk about beliefs about ourself or faith in ourselves, I'm talking about self confidence, self esteem, our self image, our relationship with ourself, our beliefs about ourself, all wrapped into this one thing that is what we believe that we are, how we believe about ourselves, okay?
That, those set, that set of beliefs. Okay. And by the way, I didn't know this because I thought that that's just, you know, the way we are. We think the way we are and that's the way they are. But guess what? We, I mean, here's a question. What if you could believe anything you wanted to about yourself? What if you could believe anything you want to do about yourself?
Because the deal is, is there are actually steps there are actually things, processes, just steps that we can take and do on a daily basis that we can change those beliefs that we actually can believe whatever we want about ourselves. And the reason that the base. Your question is, is why don't I think it's a good idea?
My answer is, is it's not just a good idea. It's not just going to help you have a better life. It's not going to help you just, just help you make more money and be more successful and be happier. It's not, it's much more than that. I believe it's not just a good idea. I believe it's our duty and our responsibility as human beings to commit it.
To this to improve the beliefs about ourselves over our lifetimes. And here's why, because it has the most impact on the relationships that we have with the people that we care deeply about. And in addition to that, it's going to influence our ability to make our contribution to this world for the short time that we're here and the thing with.
And so that's why I say it's not a good idea. It is imperative. Is what I say. Okay. And let me just say one thing. Another thing about that. And that is a lot of us look at, you know, like self confidence. If I were to say, Hey, Mr. Whiskey, how do you, or anybody, anybody listened to this? If I were to say, you know, well, do you have self confidence?
Most of them like, yeah, I got, I feel pretty confident. I'm pretty okay. And I have pretty good self esteem and this and that. And we kind of look at it as As something that we just like acquire back a while back, you know, or when I was, you know, oh, yeah, I got that one done a long time ago. You know, I'm confident.
Can't you tell? And and by the way, just to prove that this is true. My thought about this, this is something that you just get and have. I can prove it by saying, hey, look what they're doing. You see that? That's what lack of confidence. See how they're trying to bring all the attention to themselves? That, see that?
That's not me. That's them. That's a lack of confidence. But here's the real deal about this, okay? It's a lifelong progression. It goes like this. We're going through life. Things are going pretty good. All of a sudden, either I'm going to do something, okay? Or somebody's going to do something to me. And here's my progression of how I feel about me.
It's going to go like this, it's going to take a little dive, okay, and I'm going to have to say, well, what does that mean about me, right? Does, does what you did to me have, what you said about me, what am I going to take that to mean? What am I going to do with that? And what am I going to do with the things that I've done?
And let me just tell you something. Okay, I've done some stuff now. Okay. I mean, I've done some stuff that we're not going to talk about today. But the thing of it is, is everybody's done some stuff, okay? And so we all get to deal with shame. And what shame is, I think we all know what shame is. Shame isn't, I feel bad for what I've done.
Shame is, is I'm bad for what I've done. You know, I liked it. If any of you ever seen the peanut butter falcon, which is a real cool movie. I really laughed about that movie. It's real cool movie. And the guy in the movie is like, am I a good guy or a bad guy? And really at the root. I mean, we're asking ourselves that all the time.
Now, this isn't necessarily conscious. This could be some conscious going on in the back of our minds. Right, but we're determining on what we do and what people do to us, what happens. And so if we are not intentional and if we don't have this commitment to, to maintain good beliefs about ourselves and really to love ourselves and forgive ourselves, and all the steps that it takes to really embrace us, then we're not gonna, we, it's, we do not have the capacity to be able to give to the people that we love and make our contribution to the world.
And that's what I mean by that. Yeah, and I agree with, you know, you talk about how do we feel about ourselves and one of the issues I think now more than ever is that there are so many outside sources telling us how we should feel about ourselves You know, whether it's society, the government, or the big one being social media.
You have all these feeds You know, all these posts, all these videos, and all these people telling you how you should feel about yourself and how you should feel. So I think it's important to help cultivate independent thinking and self evaluation. And what I was thinking when you were saying all of that, I mean, really for me, As a believer and as a preacher, I was just thinking about how much, you know, confidence in self love you can get from reading the Bible, you know, from not placing your value in society, but getting your value from God, who is eternal, who is always the same today, yesterday, and tomorrow.
Society is always changing. Our, you know, what is good or bad society, what is trending is always changing. And so then, if you're valuing yourself or putting your confidence In something that is temporary then it's not, it's not going to stay forever. And like we said, people feel like they acquire confidence.
That's definitely true. I feel like, you know, a lot of people are like, yeah, I wasn't confident as a kid or a teenager or as an adult until I had this much financial success. So I finally felt like I was dressing good enough for this or that. So I think it's very true. And what I want to move into here with the conversation is.
What role has your culture and, you know, horsemanship played into expressing these lessons? Because we can say all this stuff, but people might not be receptive to it. And so, there are so many different ways to communicate, and you talk about using horsemanship as a medium to communicate the message in a way that might be more receptive to people.
So how does that look and play out in your life? Yeah, that's a great question. I appreciate that. I I have to make a comment on your comment. And that is, you know, we, we looked at other places because people are kind of telling us what to think about ourselves to comment there. You know, unless we're intentional, we can just take on these beliefs, you know, instead of, instead of being the one that, that choose to be the one that chooses, that's what personal responsibility is.
And sometimes they don't, they don't feel too good, you know, and until you actually realize that this is a thing that requires intention, it requires thoughts, it requires action, and that. And that really, it influences everything. It's, it's so important to, so that we can have the ability to give, then, you know, that when you have the awareness, it's the beginning place to go on like that, because we just don't want to be like floating along through life.
And somebody says this about it, and we kind of take it on and And so these things that we hear, we, we need to know that we get to choose what to do with them is, I guess, is my comment on that. Let's come back to the horses. Like you said, I'll you know, you mentioned is being a believer. And 1 thing I'll talk about is, is forgiveness.
So, know, I, I, when we have shame. Okay. We let's just let's just let's go through a little bit of what that is. So I did something. Okay. I did something that I am ashamed of. So I believe because I did this thing, I'm deficient in some way that I'm less valuable in some way. And also, as a believer, I believe that and I've come to know and believe that because God loves us perfectly, and he believes that we're invaluable.
We are these all I am absolutely. Perfectly priceless and invaluable as an imperfect soul. And so are you and so is every other soul that will come and has been on the face of this earth. If, if I believe that, and if I believe God believes that I might ought to consider believing it about myself, regardless of what I've done, right?
So, Actually forgiving ourselves, you know, we, we don't fully have the capacity to forgive others fully unless we fully know how to forgive ourselves. So part of that is this is easy to say, but it's more harder to really take into our heart and really completely understand. And that is, is that what I have done doesn't define who I am.
I have to separate who, what I did, it. With who I am and my value, because I did this thing doesn't mean that I'm less than it means that I'm an imperfect soul and I'm I am not going to be. I'm going to do stuff. It's going to be wrong. It's going to be embarrassing. It's going to hurt people. Sometimes I can't go back and fix it.
Sometimes I can't make it. Well, you know, between God and I, all I can do is all I can do. Okay. And that has to be enough. And the thing of it is, is it is enough. Because we are enough and I believe that we're enough in God's eyes. And so we should begin to believe that about ourselves and have us be, you know, enough in our own eyes so that we know how to process and handle and have shame resilience so that when we do those things and immediately we feel shame, we don't have to go through it and get past it so that we don't dwell on that.
You know, I, I lived in so much shame for so long for the stuff I did. I just, I was like dripping in shame and. And you know what? Shame makes us hide, and it makes us lie, and it's just a, it's a terrible bishop cycle, and it kept me at the bottom of the bottle, and you know what? Today, I really don't care, Mr.
Wise. I don't care what you think. I mean, I appreciate what you think, and it's not, I don't care what you think about me if you have something negative to say. It doesn't, I don't care. I don't, I don't care. It makes nothing to me. Okay? And, and I love you the same anyway. Because I don't have to live in that.
You know, I was doing that as a, as a choice of what I was doing and we all do. Right. And so let me just say, here's the deal with horses. Okay. Horses, the man and with, with, with a human being, a man and a horse, it's a relationship just like it is with a human being and a human being. Okay. So the man horse relationship, and here's the deal as human beings, we make mistakes.
Okay, we do things at times with horses and we look back either. Either we did them because of we acted out on a reaction. We got our emotions involved. We shouldn't have done something. We were unfair. Maybe we just did something with we communicated to a horse or we disciplined a horse in a way that we thought was right.
And just out of ignorance, we didn't know, right? We didn't know there was a better way. And so we do things that are imperfect. They're not perfect. Okay. In this relationship with horses. And so here's the deal. Here is the key. This is a big deal about horses. Horses forgive you a hundred percent, man. They let it go.
Now. If you're being unfair on a consistent basis, they're not going to just immediately forget it. Okay, they're going to protect themselves and have a boundary, and they're going to have a reaction if you're consistently important, if you're, you know, unfair to them. If this isn't working out and you're You know, at too heavy to too much, too much discipline and it's unfair and what by unfair.
I mean, you are adding pressure to them in some way or some form of discipline and they don't understand why. Okay. That's what I consider to be unfair with the horse because he's not, you can see he doesn't understand it. So, when you're unfair with the horse. If you continue to be unfair, he's going to continue to try to get away and get away from you and get away from that behavior.
But the thing of it is, is once you come back and you change your behavior, it only, it takes a very short period of time and it's just gone. Okay. It's like a lot of times with people, with ourselves and with others, we hold on to this stuff, you know, and you know, the Bible says, forgive, you know, 70 times seven.
And if you have done this and you forgive your thin eye, and it says, I don't know what verse it is, but it says, I will remember them no more, your sins no more. And horses do that. It's incredible to watch. And it, I mean, you know, You can, I feel it, okay, because I've done things that I, I'm like, man, that, that wasn't right.
And so I go back and I try to fix how I'm handling a situation with the horse in training or whatever. And I watch how fast, when they know that the same thing's not going to happen, and I've changed it to a better, easier way that they understand. What, what they were upset about because here in the middle of that, I mean, it's a bad deal.
There's a lot of, they're trying to get away. They're, they're either trying to run away or they're trying to fight or, and it, and it's kind of a scary that you can feel the, the, all this emotion going on. You change it and you go to them and just a couple of times or just a very short period of time and they forget it like forever.
Okay? And so my thing is, is how can I be like that to the people you know that come to me? And just like, and let it go. Cause I think we're supposed to do that. And they, they sure set a good example for that. Yeah. And I think the, the key part there too, is almost repentance. You're speaking of when you try to fix it, right.
You do it, right. All right. You recognize that what you were doing wasn't working on was wrong and now you're going to try it a different way. So I think that's an important part to remember too, is acknowledging what we did wrong and then trying again. And so. Mr. Jake, I've got to ask you, I know you said there's a lot of screw ups you've made in your life through the drinking and all the hardship.
I mean, how has that played out now in terms of your marriage and your relationship with your children? Have you been able to rebuild that or have you just acknowledged what happened and moved on with the mindset of being better in the future? How has that turned out in your life? Yeah, I appreciate you asking that.
You know, I'm, I'm happily married. I've been very happily married. And I've reestablished and reconnected with my relationships with my kids. I I have a horse feed business and a horse boarding business here in Las Vegas, Nevada. And you know, I operate the horsemanship journey that helps parents and teens navigate that, you know, the, The teenage years and the transition to adulthood and help them learn how to manage their minds and believe about themselves to be able to help.
And, you know, when things have changed a lot, you know, it's nice when you're not going to jail and waking up all half the day gone drunk and living in an alcoholic case and worried about getting DUI all the time. And every, you know, and really, you know, The worst part of all of it was, was what I was the shame I surrounding and the harm that I actually caused to and just really destruction that I caused so many other people, you know, just like this devastating and the way that For other people and for the way that I feel about myself and I've really tried to let that go and I, it's, it's pretty much gone, you know, now I'm on a mission to to that, that if you're, if in some way, okay.
If you are a younger person or a teen, or if you're a parent looking back with a teen or a younger person, a minor, or even younger children or whatever some of the lessons that I've learned and through our coaching programs, you know, we, we do, we change lives and it's pretty, it's super exciting to see.
So my life is definitely turned around as a, as a result of the principles that we teach. Yeah, and so we'll have all the links in the description below for your programs And can you tell us just a little bit more about them kind of you know What the teens or parents will be going through as they're working with you and really who should definitely look into that.
Yeah, appreciate that Everything that we do starts at the horsemanshipjourney. com So yeah, we have it's Most of our coaching programs are one-on-one coaching for teens, and one-on-one coaching for parents where you get your own personal coach. And a lot of times that's me. And and you know, we learn how to manage our minds, you know, all the noise that's going on in here and what it means.
And, and, and we use four principles that can be seen in, in forces to when we learn how to, to make decisions. You know, for what we decide for what's going on inside of our minds and the 4 principles we use our faith in God faith in ourselves, personal responsibility and communication and we look at how horses demonstrate these principles and and then we try to apply them in our own lives.
Which is, you know, it's a process as we as we go along and learn, learn how to learn how to manage our minds. The thing of it is, is, you know, a lot of times all of this negative emotion that we feel, Mr. Whiskey, a lot of this negative emotion that we feel, we just think that, We got to get rid of it, man.
And it doesn't feel good. And what have I got to do to solve this problem? And I found a quick and easy fix and there's a thousand quick and easy fixes. You know, it could be overeating and drug, all the different kinds of drugs. We can barrier ourselves in media and bury ourselves in any kind of screen.
We can, we can shop, we can spend money. I mean, there's, there's. We can go to video games. There's so many escapes that we can do because we feel bad. And you know, I think one of the another one of the big keys is, is just like, when you realize that it's okay to feel bad and it's going to be that way, and that as you're growing up as a young person, that It's just kind of going to be that way, but you're going to be okay through it.
And you don't have to escape it. You can actually feel it and go through it. Just that right there sometimes can be a big awareness that can change people's lives. Yeah, and so, one last question before we sign off here, because I'm sure I've got some skeptical listeners, especially the non believers, who just heard you say, One of the four core principles from horsemanship and horses is faith in God, and they're thinking to themselves, Well, what does a horse know about God?
Can you explain that principle in a bit more detail for those listeners? Yeah, I will. So, yeah, so just just for clarity, you know, we, we the horsemanship journey or myself does not promote, you know, any one religion or faith tradition but we do promote a belief in some, in a power higher, greater than ourselves.
Okay. And that is because that belief has proven in research to have helped people live more happier and more successful lives. And I'm not saying that horses are going to prove to you and testify that there's a God. Okay. They're not. But here's what I can tell you, when you are in the presence in the proximity of this, these creatures and their magnificence and their beauty.
You can, you can not help, but feel that there must be. That this must be a creation of something greater than yourself, and you can feel that until you experience that. And when you do, you will know, and probably everybody listening to this has felt something similar to that, whether it was around horses or not.
But it's that's what I'm talking about. So, you know, so we, we exercise when I say faith in God, we talk about meditation and just that belief in a power greater than ourselves. Yeah. I completely agree with you maybe if it's not horses, I know one of the podcasts I listened to, it was actually an episode of Refuge Freedom Stories with Johnny T, it was a doctor in training when he cut open a human being for the first time, a body that had been donated to science, and he saw just the absolute intricate workings of a human biologically, that was that moment that he had, and I'm not telling people, everyone go out there and cut up a body, but Whether it's horses or something in nature.
I mean, nature in general is just so amazing. You go out there and you look at some of these animals and plants, and it's just so beautiful, like you said, it's magnificent and it's complicated more complicated than we could ever hope to understand. So I completely agree with you there. But Mr. Jacob, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show and for what you do, especially working with the teenagers.
That's definitely a heavy focus on the show, which is helping young adults. And you talk about your program helping with lowering the risk of teen pregnancy, addiction, and suicide. And those are all rampant nowadays. So I really appreciate you focusing in on that. And thank you for coming on the show.
Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate you.
