Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple O' Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and I'm wearing my hoodie today because it is a cold spell here. I don't know about where my guest is. I'll ask him in a few minutes here, but wow, it went from 70 and sunny to suddenly like thirties, twenties, and I was freezing kind of look more of a bandit vibe, but I liked the hoodie.
I had to take the strings away. Customers is great, but the strings were like this thick. They blocked the whole thing. So. But yeah, I'm here with a man who was an MVP by birth from the womb, maybe well before he was even conceived. It was planned by God, by his parents, that he would be an MVP, Mr. Mike Van Pelt.
And no coincidence that he was named that because he is an author, a podcaster, entrepreneur, a speaker, all kinds of things. And we're going to get into that. So Mike, first off, is it called by you? Well, Mr. Whiskey, thank you for having me on the show. You know, when you reached out to me, I'm like, the guy's got Mr.
Whiskey. How the heck do I not go on this guy's show? I am just outside it. Yeah, I'm just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. And, uh, I just walked my dog. I just put a vest on my, my watch says it's, uh, 53 degrees right now, but spring is right around the corner here in the South. It is about that, by the way, I do not like cold temperatures.
Anyway, I grew up in the Midwest. And, uh, do not like winter . Yeah. I don't know why we're remote. We're neighbors. Actually, I'm, I'm in Savannah, Georgia. So, so, you know that the cold spell I'm talking about is hitting you the same way? Probably. Yeah. It's, it's, uh, the weather in the last few weeks been bipolar.
Yeah. It's, uh, it's weird. Yeah, I'd rather be where you are, uh, because it's, it's close, you know, you don't because let me tell you, let me tell you, Mike, everyone here, the tourists and local life got spring fever, cabin fever. I'm telling you, it was like 40 or 50 out, but they saw the sunlight could not drive downtown at all.
I mean, I don't want to talk about driving when if you're by Atlanta, I mean, I've seen, I've seen Atlanta. I know it's a. Four or five hour commute from one side of the town to the other. Pretty big difference between Savannah and Atlanta as it relates to, uh, driving. But, you know, I concur, I, you know, I, Tourism is very important in the state of Georgia.
And, you know, if anybody gets, they're listening to this to get an opportunity. Get out. Get out. He doesn't want me to be invited. They pay the bills, right? But I, I hate tourism. And I hate I don't know how it is in Atlanta, but I hate that I have to pay for parking. I, first off, I refuse to pay for parking.
I walk. All right, I will park for free all the way across the other side of town and walk. I'm not, and I get it, the tourists are paying, whatever, but look, I'm a taxpayer. You're going to have me pay the taxes and the parking fees? Come on now. Come on now. Well, you know, everybody's got to go see what's going on in downtown Savannah.
That's just the way it is. Not much, not much. Too many, too many people. I'll tell you what it is. It's um, a bunch of blonde women in pink or dresses or white dresses all yelling. That's, that's mostly what the downtown crowd is. Bachelorette party every single day. I mean, every time I go out. And I don't go out too much anymore, but I used to be downtown every night, and I, four or five bachelorette parties, they're wearing wigs and masks, I don't even know what that's about, I, looks goofy, you got the, we, they call them the um, the woo girls, the, the, bachelorette parties who get drunk on the, the bicycle, where you're, you know, you're all on the bar.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like a bicycle bar downtown. And every time they pass someone, they're just like, so we call them the, I'd say it was just do that over and over. I, uh, I've been married to my wife now for, for 27 years and, uh, most of the big 30. Yeah. And so it doesn't, uh, I, and my wife and I both are kind of this way.
You know, we're like, man, none of the, they didn't, this was not a thing when we got married in the way that it is now. Like you would, you know, like she went to a party at my parents house or, you know, on both sides of the family, they had a little shower and all that. And that was it. Parents house. That was it.
That was it. It was just a little shower. Now, it's like a thing. Like, we gotta have party buses, strippers, everything. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. I, you know, so, you know, uh, I, I don't get it. I'm kinda glad it was a nice quiet affair for me, to be honest with you. Yeah, I remember, uh, I was in the bar one time, and, and one of the ladies came up to me, and they gave me like a, a scratch off ticket almost thing, and they're like, scratch it if, if, uh, If you win, we buy you a drink.
Uh, if you win, you buy the, the bride a drink. I was like, well, she, she getting married, have her mans buy her a drink. I'm not here to buy her a drink. There you go. There you go. Got any of the single friends, but yeah, it's funny. I used to tell every time he went out, I used to tell all the ladies, I was like, well, my buddy over there, he drives a Tesla and he bought self driving for 15 grand and you should go talk to him.
And they would go be like, take us for a ride in your Tesla and buy us drinks. I'd be like, get off of me. But yeah, but Mike, we're here to talk about. A couple things. So, you know, you're, you're a life coach specifically for, for men and men's mental health, which is a, you know, it's interesting. So I did a four part special, like six hours total, uh, president's day special where I sat down with two buddies of mine and one gets a little slay.
He presented a question to me kind of out of nowhere. Um, I was talking, I was sharing a story where my grandfather used to cry Every time, uh, when our school would put on, um, like a concert, we would always sing one of the, uh, Armed Forces songs for each branch. Sure. Sure. He had been in the Air Force in Vietnam, and he would cry every time he heard it.
And we got into a discussion about masculinity and crying, and Little Slay asked me, he said, Mr. Whiskey, how do you define masculinity? And, you know, and then we had conversations about crying and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So Mike As a men's coach, and you know, my answer was we live in a world where the topics and subjects around men, what men are supposed to be, and men's mental health are fluctuating a lot right now.
I think there's a huge divide between old ideals, new ideals, and you know, and I said it's out of balance, you know, there needs to be a balance, but Mike, before we begin, I want to ask you, How do you define masculinity? What it is to be a man and, you know, the shifts that you've observed and working with men, what works best, you know, wow, geez, how long you got?
Uh, so, you know, masculinity, uh, I talk about the heart. A lot. So what I commonly say is I help guys get out of their head and into their heart. Now, most of us is men were not raised to think about our heart where we were. And this is not a knock on anybody or parents or anything, you know, it's kind of a whole kind of generational mindset.
Yeah, that's just happened over time. You know, guys were fix it people. Right. So somebody says they have a problem. Our default is to say, well, I would do this, or I would do that. Or you need to do it this way. And we try to fix things without asking questions. And that's where we get into trouble. And so, you know, where, uh, I think masculinity is about being in touch with your heart.
Now, I believe that starts. By having a relationship with Christ. Now here's, here's the thing, full disclosure. And I, I write about this. I talk about this all the time. I grew up going to church, church was not an option. I mean, we're going, right. And so, you know, what you get a lot of times when you go to church is.
You know the the Or at least what I got out of it was the preachers in the pulpit i'm down here He's saying just ask for forgiveness and i'm like, okay good. All I gotta do is ask for forgiveness and um in order to graduate from uh My catechism course all I have to do is memorize bible verses and we're good here, you know, and okay Yeah, we're good that like reading without understanding.
Is that what you're getting into? Right, right You And so ultimately what happened to me was I don't I'm a firm believer in God. I have been all my whole life, but there was no intimacy factor there. There was no intimacy factor there. And there really wasn't an intimacy with Christ until I got involved in men's groups.
And it will really happen to me at a retreat. Now I've never been to a, I never been to a men's retreat and happened in the spring of 2019. I went to a men's retreat. And was surrounded by like 300 dudes, right and We're all there on the same mission essentially we want freedom and we want a life of more and we want our heart back Now I I didn't fully understand that at the time I can say it now, but I didn't understand it And on a Saturday morning, they played a song by, uh, they played three worship songs.
And the, the leader said, we're going to, I want you to hear these songs as if Jesus Christ is singing them to you. And I'm like, okay, all right, what do you got? What do you got? And so the first song was a Josh Groban song called you were loved. And it was in that moment, I almost hit the floor. Um, and you know, I, I heard God say to me, I want an intimate relationship.
With you you're my beloved son, and I I want to be a part of your life, you know It's beautiful and I it was really in that moment where the whole I I men's life coaching thing began to formulate in my mind And where I began to explore more, what does this intimacy with, with Christ look like? And it looks a lot like being very authentic, very real, very vulnerable.
And so when you talk about prying, you know, I think that that is a part of that intimacy with God. I mean, I remember when I first got involved in some of these men's groups, I would, I would look at the leader and I'd be like, In particular, a guy that helped mentor myself and my partner who helped me start the podcast, uh, originally, and I'd be like, man, there it is crying again because he was hearing these stories, right?
And I think what happens is that closeness with God. I mean, we cry because we're happy. We cry because that intimacy with Christ feels so good. It's not out of sorrow so much in the time. It's just being in touch with your emotions. You know, masculinity is love. It can be used for good, but it's when men.
Bury what they're feeling deep in their soul and don't let anybody in And and don't talk about their wounds or their traumas most of which in many cases happen when they were young children Yeah, I mean that's that's where these things uh kind of percolate and so You know, we will bury this stuff in hopes We never have to deal with it.
And what happens is you grow up, you get married and you get in relationship. And the most intimate relationship you will have outside of Christ is your, is your spouse. But if you're not intimate with them, and I don't mean having sex, that's always a part of it, right? But I mean, if you're not intimate with them, in terms of being real, being authentic, being honest, if you're trying to bury everything, your relationships, Are are not going to be very good and it won't just be your wife It'll fall, you know, your children will fall in line and you won't have great relationships with your children.
How do I know this? It's not even speculation. Look at the divorce statistics. We have relationship Problems in this country. They're they're bad. And so what what happens is People take the easy way out and they go. Well, this isn't working out Let's get a divorce and then they get married again. Now.
Here's what's crazy second divorces fail faster than Your first one and third is even worse makes sense. What's happening there? Well, what's over? Yeah, what's happening is you haven't done the work And typically it sounds something like man. My first wife. She was a real b Man, she was off and you know, and now you've been married two or three times, but it's always the wife's fault Irony even though there is a common denominator there Right.
So so, you know what ultimately needs to happen is You You know, you need to take a look in the mirror and see what's going on in your own life. And so, you know, there, there are a lot of ways to describe masculinity and being being a man. But I really feel like, as I've talked about this a lot, it's really about being in touch with you.
If you don't love you, you can't love anybody else. It just doesn't work And so that masculinity starts with you doing work on the inside So that you can be good on the outside And just be real and authentic, you know um when I first got into Men's stuff, of course, a lot of it started by reading John Eldredge and looking at John Eldredge's stuff and John would talk about wearing a mask and posing and there's a stupid saying that's out there that I grew up with, which is fake it till you make it.
Yeah, yeah. All these things are the great setup for, oh, you can pose and you can get by and not be real. And I know because I did that for a percentage of my life. You know, and, uh, you will live a very lonely life by not I'm not being, uh, by not being real. So, you know, those are just a few things that I think about when I think about masculinity and, and, and the whole idea of toxic masculinity is a whole other crazy right after discussion that, that people in Hollywood think they know something about when they're really the, the, you know, the cause, you know, that there's always going to be bad people.
Yeah, in whatever there's going to be bad men. They'll be bad. They'll be, you know, a small percentage of bad teachers, all percentage of bad. I mentioned a balance. Yeah, because there's, there's, it's a spectrum, you know, there's going to be toxic masculinity where is too much. But I also think there's a lot of pushes for men to be too feminine for men to just be women, which is different than, you know, You know, being and acting like a woman isn't not being toxically male.
It's just totally out of whack, you know, and I think it's bad. So if you're a man and you're a man, if you're a woman, you're a woman, period, bottom line. That's how he's created you. There is no other way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, can you be a bad dude? Yeah, if you're running around hitting your wife, you're a bad dude.
That is toxic. No doubt about it. Get your stuff together. If you're doing that, you know, um, get your anger under control. But, um, yeah, I, I don't want to go to, you know, like, here's how I see the spectrum, you know, like. I don't think it's feminine for, I think it's too feminine for a man, you know, to get fake nails.
He's got like, you know, like excess accessory nails like a woman would have, but I don't think it's too feminine for a man to enjoy gardening or to write poetry or do stuff like that, which some people consider societally, most people consider more feminine, you know, like. Artwork and gardening, you know stuff like that.
I think that's something that socially people will take on. Yeah People will take a stereotype and they'll stretch it as far as they can whatever whatever the way that they want, I mean is Is yeah, I love you said gardening is gardening feminine. Well, I gotta say I have a potato farm in my house. So uh adamant.
Well adam Adam, first person to walk the earth, um, was tasked with doing one thing, taking care of a garden. Um, you know, and, and so, you know, Eve was created so that Am, uh, uh, Adam would have a companion and they were tasked with one thing. Uh, other than procreating the earth, they were tasked with taking care of the garden.
That's beautiful. I've never heard a word like that man's first mission was to be a gardener. That's beautiful Well now I grew up in central iowa. So farming is uh, uh part of my dna man, you know, so uh Yeah, but I think it's like if you're growing crops, you're you're fine But I don't think it's wrong for a man to want to have you know house plants around the house, you know, to have flowers.
In fact, one of the most powerful men I ever served with in the military. I mean, he's jacked. I mean, his arms are crazy. He grew, he used to compete competitively in sunflower competitions. And, and I mean, he grew, they were almost 20 feet tall. He had these massive sunflowers in Kansas. I mean, beautiful, but yeah.
And, you know, one of the things you said, Uh, that really, you know, how I would define masculinity as well, and, and this is what Little Slay has said, he said, um, as a giver, I think men are a giver, like you said, you called it a fix it man, um, but I call it, you know, a protector and a provider, you know, they all go into that same thing, right?
The reason men want a fix thing is because we're the protectors, you know, we've always been the leaders of the household or the community, and Yeah. And you know, it's our job to look after our wife and our children. I'm not saying women can't be independent, but at the end of the day, even independent women.
When they're in a marriage, the man is, is taking care of most of the stuff, you know, and, and he should be there for her to fall back on. And so I think that's part of the issue, though. You're talking about men loving themselves and fixing themselves first. And I feel like a lot of men don't take the time to do that because they can't.
You know, they are, they have this drive to take care of everyone else's problems, to be a leader and protect and provide and do this and that and that and that for everyone. And so they're always pushing off themselves, they're like, I'll be fine, I can take care of myself later, and then there never is a later, you know, and even like you said, getting married after getting divorced and getting married after getting divorced again, you just not taking that time to take care of yourself or process what happened because you're like, well, I want to get married and I want to have a family.
I want to provide, I want to protect, I want to, you know, create a family. And I think that's a big issue of why a lot of men are broken, or like you're saying that people are getting, you should never get married more than once, let alone three or four times. Anytime I hear more than two marriages, it's like, that's insane, like slow down, like, you know, I can't imagine, I don't even want to do taxes as a single man, let alone doing taxes like this and all the paperwork.
You know, so there's stuff that happens, right? I mean, we're people. Sometimes there's personalities. There's things that don't work out. I understand that. But yeah, when it's been done two or three times, you know, unless it's a result of a death, right? There's something going on there. And I reevaluate.
Right. And so I'm a I'm a big believer in learning and educating yourself. And the word I really love to use is just being curious, you know, being curious, uh, if you're curious, Uh, as a man, you may explore things that you've never explored before, including yourself. Uh, it being curious, uh, is something that to me was a learned trait.
So in my collaborative book, if you're watching this on video, you can see behind me, the, um, the, uh, collaborative book I did cracking the rich code. I had an opportunity to write a chapter in that book. And the chapter I chose to write was Uh a question that i'm exploring more and more all the time the power of asking for help Because what I found was that in in my life at a very young age, uh, I started wearing eyeglasses, uh at the age of seven and at the time That was a unusual Uh, to do that.
And, you know, so it wasn't the fact that people were calling me four eyes or trying to bully me. That was just kind of part of the situation. But what happened was I was I was introverted for one. And then the other thing that I noticed was that people would observe me wearing glasses and they go, well, you must be pretty smart.
Now, if people come to you and they say you're smart, that means you can't ask questions, because if you do, you're not going to be perceived in the way that, or at least this was my thinking, right? Yeah, no, I agree. But, but, so what happened was, I began a life of not asking questions. Asking for help, not asking questions.
If I didn't know the answer, I would raise my hand. And so in some areas of my life, I got behind. Now, not asking for help is actually a very important Masculine trade to carry around and I'm not saying it's a good one, by the way, you know, I mean, it used to be before we all had GPS on our phones. The only way to get around, you know, a young guy like you wouldn't even know this.
Uh, we used to actually carry maps. That's what, by the way, that's right. That's our glove box was for Mr. Whiskey. I don't know. But, but, you know, and so what, what would happen is you go on a trip or whatever, and you'd be like, well, I'm lost. I don't know where I am. And your wife would go pull over, you know, go to the gas station and ask somebody and the last thing a guy's going to do is go going into that gas station and asking for help.
Right? We're going to figure this out, you know? Yeah. You know, that's not a, right. That's not necessarily a good way to live and you know So I talk a lot about that. There's power in asking for help And not only is our power and asking for help that when you make up your mind to do that it comes from a very curious place and that's a good place to be in because You know despite what's smartphones social media and all this stuff I have news for you.
You may be one of these people that has a large following on Facebook, but they're not your friends. They're your followers. There may be a small percentage of them that are friends and family, but a huge piece of them, or I don't even know half the people on my social media. They're followers. Okay, real relationships are done belly to belly, face to face, eyeball to eyeball.
And the only way you can make those relationships is to take your damn face out of your phone and talk to people. Mike, I got something. Yeah, so, are you familiar at all with Dax? He's a rapper and he made this song called To Be A Man. I mean, it's beautiful. But he made another song, Searching for a Reason, and one of the quotes, I love this lyric, he said, Forget about all of the followers, you know, talking about social media followers, he said, Forget about all the followers, Jesus only had 12 disciples.
And to me, that was such a beautiful quote. I was like, yeah, Jesus has hundreds of thousands of followers, right? But at the core, at the core, you know, it was that group that really followed him and spread everything. And That quote hit me so powerfully. Now I'm, I'm not a big social media guy. I have like, you know, a teenage girl would look at my numbers and laugh.
She'd be like, Oh, you're like my dad. And you know, he has 10 followers, 50 followers. Yeah. It's kind of like a balance too. They're like, well, if you don't have, if you don't have at least a hundred followers, you, you know, that's a red flag, but if you have more than 500 or something, it's a red flag, but yeah, I mean, there, there are people out there who have, I mean, that's what matters to them, the followers.
And to me, you know, so if I post something on Instagram, which I rarely do to me, it's not a question of how many likes I get. I'm seeing who's liking my content, you know, and, and, and the people I have are people I care about, you know, I don't need validation from strangers. I want to stay in touch with people.
Uh, but yeah, I think I'm on, I'm on social media because that's where the wounded are. That's where the hurting, and I'm trying to connect with those people. Yeah, otherwise, I wouldn't use it. Oh, yeah, I use it for work, but it's like social. I'm very anti social media because I think there's a lot of bad consequences from it.
There's also a lot of good of social media. Social media is a tool like anything else and any tool is how you use it. And unfortunately, young children are kind of almost programmed to to use it for for for bad, you know, they are making themselves self conscious that they are. You know, you were talking about being bullied for having glasses.
There's people being cyber bullied for everything. I mean, I was talking about this the other day, you post something. I mean, there are pictures of women who are beautiful, beautiful men who are very handsome and you go through the comment section and there is just such awful hate over the smallest things, nitpicky things, things that don't matter.
Um, but one of the things that you said that really resonated with me, uh, because, you know, I've always been perceived as pretty smart too, is. I was also embarrassed to ask questions because it would be like, you don't know that, you know, and that no one ever, I think men and women, like no one ever wants to hear, you don't know that, you don't, but you're, you know, you're so, you don't know that you're supposed to know that.
And I think that is something that is still very relevant and definitely with glasses. Yeah. It was especially, I've noticed, I mean, glasses have just always been associated with. Nerds and stuff and it's funny because people with glasses actually read less as children than people without glasses because they couldn't see You know, yeah, which is funny to your point irony, it always put me in the reading program because I was Slow to get out of the gates at the beginning of the school year and because I didn't like to read I love sports.
And so like my mom would take us down to the library when we were young kids and she'd say pick up a book and I'd get I'd be over in the sports section. Right? And I'd be like, and I was just looking for pictures. You know, I just want to read pictures. Um, but, uh, yeah. Yeah. So what are you going to do?
It's funny. This actually reminds me of. Russell Roberts, you know, Captain Russ Roberts. He was on my show. He was an airline pilot, and I read his book, Unlearn and Fly, Navigating the Turbulence and Bliss of Growing Up in the Sky. And, uh, that's with this subtitle, you know, just called Unlearn and Fly, but I love saying the full thing.
He, um, his, his father was like, no, you can't get glasses. That's not manly basically. And so he was failing all his classes. He couldn't see the board. He couldn't take notes. He couldn't read. And finally his mom like put, put her foot down one of the few times in his whole life where she did. And she was like, look, he needs glasses.
Um, and then it was, you know, the whole consequence was he wanted to be an airline pilot. And he lived in a time where if you had glasses, you were not allowed. And luckily they lowered their standards. Just like everything in the world is lowering their standards. Yeah. Yeah. It's just funny. He said that.
Yeah His father was like glasses on my kid. No, and his kid couldn't read It's like and and and you know, probably that's the era he grew up in and you know So there when I wrote my chapter on the power of asking for help, I I said well I think there are four reason primary reasons Why guys don't ask for help one is you know, the fear of rejection, right?
So if we ask for help somebody will reject us what i've Come to realize is that there might be that outlier that rejects you but most people Actually are very willing to help and would love that to to help in fact I encourage men to get around sage guys, you know guys that are older that they want to uh, Pass on that that information and the other Fear that I talk about Like guys don't ask us this feeling of uncertainty.
Like if we take a risk, it has an uncertain result. Well, what's going to happen? Who cares? You know, I mean, if you don't ask for help, you just fall behind. And then I talk about this a little bit differently, but like this, this fear, fear of, of authenticity. Like, well, if I'm real, how, how are people going to approach that?
And the reality is. You know, you people want somebody who's real and authentic and real and authentic, right? Comes from asking for help. And finally, I, I talk about this feel like, well, we don't ask for help because of this, this idea of, of, um, of being unworthy, um, you know, like, you know, and, and we worthy to ask for help.
You know, you're unworthy if you're comparing yourself to others and, and, and, and trying to be like every guy on your street. Um, you know, just cause somebody's got six cars sitting in their driveway and a boat doesn't mean that they have this funky door to life. They have secrets too, by the way. And, um, so I, I just, I encourage asking for help.
And I commonly say to people, if you're around people. Who don't appreciate you asking for help. You may want to reevaluate who you're around Yeah, and and you know what my little plug for people who you know want to ask for help without asking for help What I love about the men I spend time with very soft as men We're supposed to help each other and hold each other accountable And the way we ask for help is, you know, sometimes, let's say you're embarrassed about your situation or, you know, because of those ideals that you just stated because, you know, you're supposed to know it already or you feel unworthy.
Uh, well, because I'm part of a religious community, and so, I encourage this to non believers and atheists too, is I always ask my buddies, because we're all religious, Well, would you please pray for me? I'm going through something or, or, or that's the way we reach out to help. And then sometimes they'll be like, well, Hey, I'm going through something too.
Could you pray for me? Or we'll elaborate upon it. And I think that's a beautiful way to, and. And going back, uh, I just wanted to mention, you were talking about men crying and religion and that, and I don't remember his name, but the Slayer, when he was on the President's Day special with me, he mentioned a saint who every time he prayed, he would just wept over the love God had for us and stuff, and I shared with my guests, you know, uh, from Dax's To Be a Man song, he did a mega remix with like 10 other artists, and one of the guys said, That Jesus is the only man who's ever made perfection lifelike.
He's the, he's the perfect man. The only man who's ever been perfect. And Jesus cried. And, and so he was expressing that we can too. Jesus is an example of what men are supposed to be like. And, you know, Jesus wept, and I shared a story where Jesus wept over people who passed away, who he already knew he was going to bring back.
But he, the re, so, people were like, why did Jesus cry if he was going to bring him back? To show us, to show men, that it is not masculine to, some men think it's masculine to not cry at a funeral. We have to be an example of, we're going to get through this, we're tough, but. I think when someone close to you passes away, you know, it is masculine to cry and express that emotion.
I mean, what is worse than losing someone important to you? You know, and if you, and I think it's unhealthy. You're teaching your kids and the community around you like, hey, it's not okay to grieve. It is. It's not okay to grieve forever. It's not okay to not move on but there is a cycle yet to go through.
Yeah Go ahead. Mike our emotions Have power both negative and positive, you know, um, what's interesting is I don't know if you made this connection But I saw i'm just going to talk about this for a little bit. So true man life coaching and the true man podcast, which I do the the name true man is Came out of my men's small group when we really formalize it and decided that we wanted to name ourselves something.
And we were really searching what do we want to call ourselves? And quite honestly, we felt like, you know, another group named men of steel was probably, you know, not, not, not so great. And I was really coming through scripture and, you know, just reading about Jesus Christ walk on earth as a true man. And, you know, we started talking about it and realized that.
Jesus was the ultimate role model, right? I mean, we're never going to get to where Jesus was as man, but you should shoot for that. That should be your aiming point is to follow him in scripture. He lays out how to live. And who's you are your identity is not tied to your job what you do your the amount of money you make your boat your whatever it is your identity is who's you are in and that is.
That is jesus christ. He lays this out. And so We were like wow This is pretty powerful and because i'm not some business genius I'm, like well i'm gonna name my business true man life coaching and true and you know Because I feel like that's the ultimate goal to help guys get to and so right, you know I'm, just the tour guide and that is what I sometimes refer to myself in other words My job as a life coach, as um, uh, somebody really in anything, not just even a life coach, is to listen and ask powerful questions.
Yeah. Because I'm a big believer that we all have the answers. To whatever we're after inside of us, sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees. And we just need somebody to walk alongside us and just kind of talk through things or mentor us or hold our feet to the fire or whatever the case may be, you know, and, um, you know, I have a client right now and he's basically like, dude, I just want you to the biggest thing I want you to do.
Is is it's just call me on my bullcrap and each other accountable. Yeah. Yeah, and so This is why i'm a huge proponent Of men's small group and guys getting together on a weekly basis At the very least, you know, you know every other week, but right I mean you have a group of guys eight nine ten guys that you can get around And really be intimate with and i'm talking about.
Yeah, your conversations may start with You know, whatever's going on. I mean, you know, you're in the south So all my friday morning men's group conversations start with sec football and then and then we go for the you know Then we go deeper, but you have to be with a group of guys that is is diligent about talking about things that matter not just scripture, but You know Wives kids jobs and I mean going deep on this stuff Weak The beautiful thing about men is we're built to be in community.
Now, some people will go, well, that's not very masculine. It is. It's actually very masculine. And I think one of the big things that we can do is have a group of men that we can be exposed to and around that are real and authentic and vulnerable with each other. And that way we can learn because I'm not great at everything.
In fact, As a coach I drink my own kool aid. I have a faith coach. I've had a podcast coach. I've had a golf coach I mean I could go on and on and on Right. I've I don't even know how many coaches i've had in my lifetime And the reason for that is I don't know everything and I can't do everything on my own.
And sometimes I need somebody to keep me accountable. And so I'm a big proponent of having those types of people in your life. I just think it's really, really important. It's it's, this world is a difficult place and it's not getting any easier. And there are so many choices, you know, you're, you're a young guy and I say to my kids all the time, I got two kids in college, you know, I'll commonly say to him, man, I am so sorry.
I am so sorry for the world you're growing up in. Yeah, you know, um, there's so many choices, there's the technology behind things. Um, our, our smartphone's great. You know, I could pick up my smartphone right now and look up and go, oh man, thank God my daughter's on campus. I had a funny feeling like, you know, right.
You know, uh, you know, and I could see where she is, you know? Um, some of that's. What's not cool. And we talked about this a little bit, you know, the social media stuff, the fake hokey stuff that's going on out there. Yeah. Um, you know, and people, people buy into this, they buy into it. And I really don't know why.
Um, you know, my newsflash for most people is. I know people aren't going to believe this, but not everybody's a multimillionaire. Not everybody has a jet sitting in their driveway. Not everybody drives a Lamborghini. Um, in, in fact, it's, it's, it's. 3 percent or less of the population that even has that kind of money, you know, that's what your feed is full of, you know, right?
And so you go out to social media and and you have and what's bad as as an adult now I know a lot of adults who still fall for that crap our kids do not Have the ability to discern a lot of this stuff In fact, I was just with a guy a pastor and he was telling me this story and this one just blew my mind so Spoiler alert for some of you because I may tell you something that you don't know So he was walking down the hall of a church He'd just given a talk and there were some kids standing in the hallway And the kids are standing there debating on who the best boxer In the world is, and these kids all were in 100 percent agreement that Rocky Balboa was the greatest boxer who ever lived.
Okay, the newsflash here is Rocky was a movie, not real. Rocky Balboa is not the greatest boxer that ever lived. Because he wasn't real and this pastor tried to tell these kids this and they would not believe him Because they googled it And so to me That's what's scary Right. My mom recently said to me, um, she went to the doctor and she said, I was Googling something and that made it worse.
I'm like, duh, why would you go do that? I mean, you think God Google is the medical dictionary. Of course, you know, um, Google, all the bad stuff comes to the top. Why? Because what the media and all these companies have found out is that fear sells. Yeah, if you are scared, if you're scared of the diagnosis, what are you gonna keep doing?
You're gonna keep this treatment. That treatment is on there too. You're gonna keep searching big pharma, searching until you find something that works. And so they keep, they know what keeps you online. If you're scared, you're gonna find until you find the antidote. You're gonna keep searching on google and the longer they can keep you at there the more information they can gain about you And so you got to be careful about who you're giving power to in this world and that starts with proper discernment You got to be able to think You know and self discipline Because you I mean the feed is gonna feed you what they think you want, right?
because because you know, I they've put you know women cosplaying in barely any clothing as anime girls and You All you gotta do is like one and then they put another one. I get them all the time. I get them I get them all the time and here's what here's what you just get something else though because here's the thing i've also started liking you know, I like scripture verses and the more of those I like the more those populate and other stuff goes away and social media is really a result of what you're choosing To have fed to you, you know, I mean you you are in control and you're always going to get that Here's the other side and all that but yeah, yeah, go ahead.
Here's this is really important guys So I want you to pay attention to this Now as a men's life coach, there is nothing that I put out there that is related to scantily clad women coming to my social media site. Nothing, absolutely nothing. Now, oh, and by the way, if you're a woman and you're listening to this, you should be listening to this.
Because what woman doesn't want their man to be the best man and father and husband they can be so please Forward my podcast or this podcast On to the man in your life so they can get a reality check You know, but I get Women coming to my social media all the time and here's how I think of that That is the evil one trying to take Me Out it's a test every time one of those Nasty women and I don't they may not even be real.
There may be bots. I don't even know all the bots Yeah, yeah AI stuff that's going on nowadays but you know that I treat that no differently than how I treat my life because C. S. Lewis has a quote, and I screw it up every time. I should have it just right here in front of me, you know, like, basically, getting up every day is like starting all over again.
In other words, your relationship with Christ is like starting over every day, and as the man of the house, The devil knows if he can take you out, he can take down your family. And so it's up to you to have the discipline to know, you know, who's really out there chasing your heart because I, God wants your heart, but the devil's working really hard to take you out because he knows what he gets.
It's not just you. If he takes you out, it's not just you. If you make a bad decision. And decide to, you know, uh, whatever bad decision you can think of on a given day that you can make, um, the devil knows he can take you out and half of your battle, at least what I found half my battle is, is to know that the evil one is part of the equation that he wants to take me out and I know that every day is a battle.
And I got to armor up, you know, and it's that way it starts over every now what we're fighting against wicked principalities. Absolutely. Absolutely. Unfortunately, you know, we live in such a rich and by rich meaning money world. You know, now we've, you know, we've, um, we fall victim to our own world of riches.
You know, we think we got to compete with the neighbor. I mean, how big's your house? How many cars do you have? What, you know, you have a pool. Do you have, you know, And big is your cowboy hat? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, you know, I, it's, it can be a challenge for a man because so many men think they have to compete.
And when you have to compete in that way, you're going to, you're going to make bad choices. You're going to make bad choices. And, and again, I would circle that back to, you need to be with men that can, can, can help you and keep you in check. And, and you need to, you need to get right with your Lord and Savior, because it's just that That important.
Yeah. No, I, I agree. I think, uh, and, and I always say this for, for all men, whether you're a believer or not, the Bible is a good book full of wisdom stories, you know, whether you believe it or not, it is still packed with so much knowledge and, uh, I mean, you should believe it's real. I mean, I'm just going to put out there.
It is real. I mean, it's proven a thousand times over, but even if you're, you're, you're doubtful or skeptical, it's still a great guide. Yeah. You know, whether you believe in God or not, it's a, it's, it's, it's a guidebook on, on how to live. On what you should worry about, so 100 percent you know, one of the greatest self help books ever written by a lot of people, um, they would say, think and grow rich is one of the greatest self help books ever written.
Well, dive into that book a little deeper and peel back that onion. There's a lot that comes out of there. That first came from the Bible. So, um, you know, and, and any self help book that's been written after the Bible was referenced, uh, you know, a hundred thousand times over. I mean, yeah, people, even non believers quote it and believers quote it.
Everyone quotes it. There's, there's a lot of sayings that, you know, How about money is the root of all evil, or evil starts with a desire for money, I mean. Money is good. Money is good. It's the love of money that, you know, falling in love with money is what gets you in trouble. You can use money to do so many wonderful things in this world.
There's a lot of materialistic people in this world. Oh man. But we exist spiritually, primarily. First and foremost, we exist spiritually. Hundred percent, yeah. And one of the stories, I love this, I saw this little comic when I was growing up. It was this man was told by an angel, they're like, you're gonna die.
You know, soon, get all your stuff together. You can bring one suitcase with you into heaven with whatever you want in it. So he sells his mansion and his yacht and he sells everything and has it turned into gold bricks. He liquidates all his assets into gold bricks and he brings it to heaven and angel greets him.
And he's like, I just got to check your luggage. And he goes, huh, that's weird. And the guy's like, what? You know, he's very proud. He's like, this is, you know, the, this is the summation of all the riches and all my work on the earth. They said, uh, we just think it's weird that you brought paving stones to heaven.
And he looks in the street is just made out of gold bricks. And, you know, it's just. I always liked the message there, you know, it, because that money has no meaning in heaven, has no meaning in heaven, it has meaning in here and you should use it wisely here. And like I said, a lot of people want to make bad financial decisions to impress people, you know, to post a picture on Instagram or to bring their friends over and be like, look at this, look at this, but that's not what matters.
What matters is having food for your, your family and for yourself, you know, to be taken care of. But Yeah, so how do you take care? How do you take care of the people that, um, you know, there are people out there that, um, you know, they don't have the education or maybe their mental health is not where it needs to be.
And they need, you know, and they don't have the means to go do anything. How do we take care of those people? How do we take care of the people that have fallen on hard times? You know, I was recently at the Atlanta food bank. Which by the way is the second largest food bank in the entire country. It's incredible.
It's 335, 000 square feet of food. And what they do is they work with church pantries and a lot of this gets sent off to the smaller church pantries. And, but you know, when you go into a facility that is that big wall, To wall food, and you just stand there and think, Hey, it's almost hard to fathom that there are that many people that need help now.
Yeah. You know, so what could you do for good? You know, when you have. And, um, that's to me, you know, why am I doing what I'm doing? Because I want to impact the hearts of men. I want to see men. I want to see what happened to me when I was at a low point was men rallied around me and, you know, I was able.
Through the help of them through the help of my relationship with christ and through my own desire to Be successful, you know, I was able to to I always say make a comeback uh have that redemption have that second chance and One of the reasons why I do what I do Is to be there to help men have a place to go to where they can get that second chance They can they can take the time to Figure out what their purpose is in life and begin to move towards their legacy because we all have a legacy Yeah, the question is how do you want to be remembered?
Yeah Yeah, I mean you have three options good bad or not remembered at all Yeah, and and I think I I love i've always loved this quote from Julius caesar the the version written by william shakespeare where he said The evil man does live after him. The good is often turded with the bones. You know, I think that's such a powerful saying.
It's a reminder of be careful of how much evil and how much good you do because evil is always remembered more than good. And so you really want to be balanced that out. And same thing with relationships, you know, if you're dating someone You can compliment them a hundred times, but if you insult them once, that's what they're going to be focusing on.
That's what they're going to think about, you know, and I talked about this the other day and just having a positive mindset versus a negative mindset and talking about how negativity and negative self talk is like a, uh, we talked about how it's like a record on repeat and it gets worse and worse each time.
Because it's, it's, negativity is going downhill. It's got that momentum. Positivity, trying to build yourself up, there's so much resistance from the negativity of the world and all that. And so, when you're making choices, you really need to think about what would the lasting impact be? You know, is the good enough to overcome the evil?
And you gotta think, you can do a couple good things, uh, but it doesn't necessarily erase your sin. It doesn't erase your sin. You know, it doesn't take away. The bad and trying to balance it out later on in life. Sometimes you can't. Sometimes what you did is just too awful, not in terms of God and his forgiveness and love, but in terms of how people think about you.
Well, there's this saying out there that we've all heard, right? You are what you eat. So if you put good food and eat, put good food in your body. For the most part, you put good food in your body, you know, you're, you're going to have good things happen to you. If you sit there and eat bad stuff all, all, all day long, you can have an obesity issue.
Well, the same thing applies to your mind. If you put good things in your mind. You're gonna reap the rewards if you put bad things into your mind and in the example And you know, we've talked about this on the true man podcast several times Addiction is a big thing. Um, just overall for people but in the men's community, you know um, you know, we have to talk about things like the addiction to to pornography because it's it's so Substantial but if you're putting that into your mind You know, are you being in light?
Probably not, you know, and you know, there's a lot of other negative things that come that way. So whatever you're feeding your mind is, you know, going to be an end result of how you turn out the people that you're around, if they're not, you know, if they're takers and they're, they're takers and they, they, you know, they're taking from your life.
Well, I, you know, that's not going to help you. And so you need to get a, you know, get more around givers. And so, um, this is something that I talk about quite a bit, uh, as well is, is making sure you're around givers and not takers in life because takers will take and givers will give and the givers, you know, if you give more in your life.
You will reap more and that's biblical in nature to, uh, so, you know, it's, it's important to feed your mind. Well, feed your body well, you know, eat right, exercise, read your Bible, right? All those things, man. That's an important, that's an important way to live your life. It's also how you will lead well.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, you heard it here. You are what you eat. And my name is Mr. Whiskey. No correlation there, but you know, so yeah, there's nothing wrong with an occasional whiskey or bourbon, nothing at all. Yeah. Yeah. Not today. I still haven't eaten breakfast yet. So I, I'm running on empty, but yeah, Mike, that all being said, as we wrap things up here, is there any big takeaways you want to leave us with, you know, ladies and gentlemen, links in the description below for the true man podcast.
And I'm going to after talking to Mike off mic. Mike Offline, you know, we're going to talk about getting those links for all his books, both the collaborations in his books and all that, but a ton of resources for both men and women, as we said, uh, you know, holding your partner accountable as a woman is a good thing to do, but don't send this to him and be like, see, this is what you need.
This don't don't start a fight. Be supportive. Uh, I just want to put that out there because I already know there's a bunch of women who are going to take this and be like, see, you're the issue. Mr. Whiskey said you're the issue. Don't, hey, don't put this on me. Don't put this on me. Put it on Mike. Put it on Mike.
Yeah, but Mike, anything you'd like to leave us with? You know, I, I just think that, you know, on occasion, people will ask me what I do and I'll say, well, I'm a men's life coach and, you know, I get these snickers sometimes and the, and all these things, you know, I am honored and I did a lot of research around this, uh, worked with.
Somebody in the area of calling to understand really dive into what is calling mean in life because it doesn't mean what everybody thinks it does a lot of times and I don't take what I do lately because. Men's lives are on the line when I'm talking with them. And if their lives on the line, that means our family's life is on the line.
So what I do is very serious work. Now it's not necessarily mental health work. If there's, if it's, if there's a mental health issue, we're going to get you the help that you need from a medical trained professional, but coach from a coaching standpoint, I take what I do very, very seriously because families are involved.
You know, it's, um, it's, I feel that God has entrusted me with the true man brand to do the podcast and to do the coaching and that he has given me the knowledge, skills and abilities to do what I do and, uh, I do it because I want to see. Men be the best leaders for their families that they can and sometimes that just means Hanging out with a guy it doesn't have to be for an entire lifetime It could just be for for weeks or a few months until you find and develop your purpose but I wanted to say that because I think what I want men to know and what I want their significant others to know is that it's okay.
It's very masculine to have somebody sometimes to walk alongside you in life and just help you figure out what's going on. Right. You know, that's an honorable thing to do. And so I just wanted to encourage people that, you know, maybe listening or going, Oh, it's another life coach. You know, not every life coach is built the same.
I'll just hear to tell you right now. And that is one reason why I always offer people I wish more people would take me up on it. Quite honestly, I, you know, a free consultation. If you want to find out what coaching is all about, reach out to me. I'm everywhere. Do you want me to give me your, some of this stuff or you give it a later?
Oh yeah, no, you can. If I want email, it's going to be in the description below, but. Feel free to list it as well. So everyone can, you know, you can, my calendar's on my website, my phone number is on my website, but you can send me an email at Mike at true man, life coaching. com. If you just go out to my website at true man, life, coaching.
com. I'm a pretty open book, which should say a lot about what it is that I do, but, but, um, yeah, you know, I, I, I just want to be that guiding light for guys so that they can improve their life and be the best man that they can be. So I would just leave it with that. Yeah, and you know Mike I want to thank you for your level of detail and attention that care for not only these men But their families in that through empowering them they can then it's a trickle down effect you know from him to helping out other men to helping out his family and Community, so thank you so much Mike for coming on the show and what you do for us.
Thanks for having me on man I had a good time
