Why Men Stay Silent in Grief (Even When They’re Falling Apart Inside)

Why Men Stay Silent in Grief (Even When They’re Falling Apart Inside)

Grief does not always look like tears.
 For a lot of men, it looks like silence.

In this episode of Overcome with Travis White, I sit down with Weston Brandon to talk about the kind of grief most people never see. The kind that gets buried under responsibility, pressure, and the expectation to stay strong.

After losing his wife just two weeks after their son was born, Weston shares what it was really like to carry that pain while trying to keep going. We talk about what happens when you push grief down, how it starts to show up in other ways, and why so many men feel like they have to deal with it on their own.

This is an honest conversation about loss, mental health, and what it actually takes to rebuild your life when everything changes.

What We Discussed:

•  Why men often suppress grief instead of expressing it 
•  The hidden ways grief shows up such as anger, isolation, and numbness 
•  Feeling alone even when people are around you 
•  How responsibility can force men to ignore their pain 
•  The impact of losing a spouse and becoming a single parent overnight 
•  Why having a space to talk is critical for men 
•  How unresolved wounds resurface during grief 
•  Rebuilding life after loss and finding purpose again 

Learn More About Weston Brandon:

Weston Brandon is a speaker, author, and songwriter who helps individuals build resilience, find purpose, and take control of their lives through his DRIVE framework. After losing his wife just weeks after the birth of their son, Weston rebuilt his life from the ground up and now uses that experience to help others navigate grief, identity, and personal growth.

He is also actively involved in men’s mental health through the I Love You Bro Project, helping create safe spaces where men can open up and support one another.

Learn more about Weston and his work:
https://westonbrandon.com

Visit Blog:

https://overcomepod.com

Shop Merch:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/OvercomeMentalHealth

Follow Overcome - a Mental Health Podcast

• Instagram: @overcomepod
• Youtube:  @overcomepod

Listen to us

• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts

Want to have a real conversation about your mental health? Fill out this form!

Transcript

0:01

Hello, welcome to Overcome with Travis White, a place for you to share your mental health stories. Tonight I'm speaking with Weston Brandon. Weston is a speaker, author, and songwriter who equips people to guarantee their success through his drive framework. After losing his first wife just two weeks after their son was born, Weston rebuilt his life from the ground up, overcoming grief, single fatherhood, and a complete career. reinvention. Weston, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, man. Yeah, pleasure is all mine. I'm excited to be able to speak with you and I think we're going to have a great conversation and be able to help some people out here. So without wasting any time on my end, I'm just going to turn the microphone over to you. Cool. Yeah. I, when I saw your, you know, we, we matched their own pod match to connect on this podcast. I looked into the podcast a little bit. What you talked about. I don't know why I didn't connect that you were in Utah when I did a little bit of digging around. like, I'm in you. Like it turns out we're like 40 minutes from each other, know? And, but, but yeah, I think, uh, mental health, especially for, for men is not talked about enough, you know, and, I, one of the things that I do now to, to volunteer, to try to give back towards the mental health space and suicide prevention and those kinds of things is a, have you heard of the I love you bro project? Yes, are you, you're part of that? No way. I have wanted to... I have been wanting to go to one of those for the longest time. Like, I might have to... one to you would be in Lehigh there at Cora Wellness is Right in Thanksgiving Point, point of the mountain there. I'll just take a trip and drive to Twila though. Yeah, mean, technically the tool it group is happening right now. I, I bounced on tonight's meeting to do this interview right now. They're, they're, they're having it right now. well, thank you for making my podcast a priority. I appreciate it. But yeah, Lehigh is on Wednesday. So go to that one. And the guy that founded it, Joe Tuyana, he runs the Lehigh Group. So you'd meet him and the Lehigh Group is awesome. It's one of the bigger ones. But yeah, that's what I do is to kind of volunteer to just give space for men to just talk about, you know, what's going on, the things that are heavy and share wins. Because I think as men, we... We talk to our families, we talk to our spouses, which obviously we should, you those are great things. But men also, I think need a little bit of a tribe of other men where they can talk about the same things, but the other men who are, who have the same responsibilities as them are going to get it from that type of perspective. And that I think that's needed, you know, to, to, to be in a space where you can say the things that you would never say to your wife. or things that you might not ever say with your children in the room, you know, just, just in the way that you talk about those things with other men is different. So that's why we do that. And I wanted to throw that out there. So if there's anybody in Utah that feels like they're just lonely, you know, there's any guys out there that are having a rough go and feeling like I don't, I don't have anybody to talk about this with. And I really don't, I can't afford therapy. Can't do those kinds of things. Like I love you bro project. That's what that's for. That's, that's why we do what we do. So I wanted to give that plug right at the start. that's really cool because I think it's important to have that space. Like you said, we can talk to our wives or whatever, but like you do talk to, like I talk to my friend like sometimes way different than I'm going to talk to my wife. And not that she doesn't know everything about me. It's just a little bit different. No, exactly. still tell her the same things, but, and I would say the same thing about women. Like, like they can talk to their husband, but it's going to be a different experience than talking to their sister or, or talking to some other woman that they're really good friends with or something like that. There's just a different connection there because probably the mentality or the biology, you know, they understand the hormones that they're dealing with and we understand the ones that we're dealing with, know? So it's a unique situation. I got into that because for years after, I mean, you mentioned right at the start of the show that I lost my wife when I was 23 and she had just given birth to my son a couple of weeks previous to that. And he was born super early at like 26 weeks, right? And I was actually living in Dallas at the time I'd moved down there for work. And so I was away from family, away from pretty much everybody. My in-laws were down there for a little bit, for all intents and purposes, was I felt very alone down there and ended up coming back to Utah and moving back in with my family. I'm now remarried, have a couple more kids. Actually, this background here for when I do my podcast, that's a picture of my first wife right there, Lauren, and her organ donor badge and a little figurine that somebody bought us. Then our mission plaques, you know mentioned the church, my mission plaques right there. This painting was my first wife's favorite painting of Jesus. we were broke kids and didn't we couldn't afford a painting. So when I got a little bit of life insurance, it wasn't a lot. It was like a year's worth of a salary. That was the first thing that I got was that painting and put that up there. And then my wife, I married to now her mission plaque is over here and pictures you can't see is out of frame a little over there. But this the story is visually told kind of right here. And this credenza is full of photo albums of her when she played college softball. And then there's photo albums of the kids. And it was just the whole family is represented right there. And Like life is good now. Like you look at that story, like it feels good to look at that, at least for me. You know, obviously I'm connected to that, but it wasn't like that for a while. You know, for a while it was very, I hated God. I was so upset with God and I never wavered in my faith or my belief, but I, I did not want him to have any involvement in my life for a little while because I kind of felt like his involvement screwed everything up, you know, and there's all these things going on in my head and I had to go to therapy for quite a while. I was very lucky when I moved back to Utah that a good family friend of ours that was in our same church ward or same church congregation, he runs and owns New Beginnings Counseling Group. And at the time he was just starting his own practices. It's blown up since then, but He did, he just had me over to his house and we did therapy in a little office he had in his garage. You know, we had sessions there once a week for a while. I learned a lot about myself through that process that I now bring to the groups when I lead a group with the I love you bro project, you know, some of those things that I learned about myself was that a lot of the pain, well, I can't say a lot of the pain, but a lot of the the really bad thinking patterns that happened through my grief weren't because of the grief necessarily. They were just amplified by the grief and the grief kind of more broke me open to the point that the old wounds that I had in there already were now kind of brought to the surface, you know, and they were, they were a much bigger issue now in my head than they were before as they were, they were kind of buried before older, older wounds from childhood or as a teenager, you know, those kinds of things. had to work through a lot of that and figure out, well, who am I even? How are all these things affecting me? And how long were you like in Texas alone compared to like the time that you came back to and like have people around you? As you said that first part. Yeah, I was just imagine that could be. I was going to say that's good because that'd be tough to be alone in that situation. Yeah, it was, I mean, it was longer than I would like to just because my son was born at 26 weeks. So he's in the NICU and I had to wait for him to be able to get out of the NICU so that I could do something. And I, I didn't even decide to move back actually until after I got him home and had him full time at home. I had, well, I mean, we already talked about church, so I'm going to bring that up. I had been working on getting my temple recommend back for a little while and had finally just gotten it back and I went to the temple there in Dallas for the first time. I hadn't been in the temple probably two years. And just because I let work get in the way and all this other stuff, I just didn't make it a priority, you know? And finally I was like, I got to do this again. And I went to the temple and was praying there. I remember going in there. I had always gotten direction when I go there with looking for direction, right? And I go to the temple looking for assistance because I feel closer to God there. And this was the first time that I went there that I didn't feel like I got anything. I didn't feel like I gained any additional clarity. I didn't really feel anything. And so then I was kind of praying again. I'm like, well, thanks for nothing, you big jerk. And like, what's going on? And then the thought occurred to me. says, why don't you ask your wife what you should do? I was like, can I do that? Like, what? I haven't even considered that. So I was like, I don't even know how to do that. So I more just kind of still sitting there on that couch praying. And I just asked, was like, well, babe, what should I do? And immediately I felt this warmth and kind of felt her presence a little bit. And the words hit my mind, go home. And that was when I was like, all right, I guess I'll, I guess I'm moving back to Utah. Cause my, was, I was so attached to the life that I had in Texas with. my wife and then where we had kind of planted our roots, where we wanted our kids to go to school. Like I didn't want to leave that because I was so attached to her and it kind of felt like leaving her behind in a way, you know. And so initially in the very first few weeks of my grief, I was like, I ain't ever leaving this house. I'm going to be a hermit right here, you know. And I was totally fine with that until I got my son home and reality started to come back that I was like, I'm gonna have to go back to work. I don't have anybody to watch my kid if I were like, what do I do? And that's when I eventually got home. So total, she passed in April and I moved back late June, early July. Okay, so that's not like extremely long, with your son being born 26 weeks, I can imagine he had a little bit of a hospital stay. Yeah, Miraculously, he didn't have any defects or anything that was really wrong with him. In fact, he didn't even need to be intubated, have that breathing tube down his throat, which was a miracle in and of itself being that early. And he just had the CPAP on his nose to give him some pressure to breathe. And we just had to wait for him to hold his own body temperature, hold his own oxygen saturation, and eat as much food as he's supposed to at his size, you know, and hold it down. So once he checked all those boxes, then I took him home. It took him two and a half months from the time he was born to get to that point, but he did. I brought him home and then we moved back to Utah. That's crazy though, that's like really to me that's the hand of God working right there. The fact that he didn't need a breathing tube or anything, that he was like everything was functioning on its own, just needed the CPAP. That really is like... was, she was on bed rest in the hospital. Cause the reason that she even had him that early was she was diagnosed with an incompetent cervix, which is actually a medical term. didn't, the first time I heard that, was like, that's seriously the name. what, that sounds judgmental, you know? And, but basically what that is, is she dilated without going into labor. So the door opens and baby can fall out of there. So they put her on bed rest. They're like, we don't want the baby entering the birth canal right now. He's supposed to stay in the womb. That's where he's supposed to be. And so they put her on bed rest and say, you can't get up at all until the baby comes. Cause she was just barely too far along to do a sir clause, which where they stitch the cervix closed. And so they couldn't do that. But then you can't get up or the baby's going to fall through there. Cause you're dilated to like a seven or whatever she was right at that point. So they gave her some steroids through an IV every day for that week that were specifically made to get his lungs developing faster. So obviously those worked and he didn't need to be intubated. So that was a miracle for sure. And this may be the most personal question I ask, but if it's something you don't want to answer, we can move on. I have no problem with it. What was it that took her away? How did she actually pass? Was there a cause for it? Now it was a pulmonary embolism that she developed just from the physical trauma of the C-section that happened because he ended up coming out breach about a week later. He was coming out. So they did an emergency C-section. So pregnancy, C-section, bed rest for that long, like all these factors that kind of just all come together. Yeah. She ended up getting a blood clot in her deep leg veins and ended up getting sucked up to her heart, pumped out to her lungs and got stuck in her lungs. And then She passed away at home, because she was discharged a day or two later after the delivery. then for, oops, excuse me, my camera went out. Get that back on. So for about two weeks, we just went up to the hospital after I was done working, because I was working from home, because I was closer to the hospital from home than I was at the office. And then she just started having episodes where she kind of felt short of breath, and she thought she was having some anxiety issues, which given the context, I didn't question, you know? And yeah, and then eventually one morning she thought she'd have another panic attack and just asked me to help her to calm down. And obviously she never caught her breath and she collapsed in my arms there and passed away. And I ended up doing a CPR on her for a while there at home until EMTs showed up and they took over for me and rushed her to the hospital. And then that whole rest of that day was praying and begging for miracles and not getting the miracles I wanted. And then I ended up letting her go about two o'clock in the morning, you know, like 18 hours later. So. That's tough, that's tough to hear. It was a rough experience. Um, but I can talk about it now because I've worked through a lot of that, you know, and I can, I I'm at a point now where I can, I can think about even, even the horrific scene that I witnessed when she collapsed and I was doing CPR and all those things. Like I can go back to that and I can, I can think about that and I can replay that in my mind without having a panic attack without. having like some PTSD callbacks like I initially did when it was still really fresh. Cause I was able to work with Jason in therapy. We kind of separated the memory from the emotion so that I learned how to control when I allowed that emotion to come in and when I didn't. And the way that we did that was he had me retell what happened as if I was watching it in third person, kind of like I was a drone floating over my own head. And I was just giving like a police report almost of like everything in the environment exactly how it went down. you know, just giving the play by play of how everything happened, specifically not including any emotions with it. And then he would have me go and instead of saying anything that happened, he would specifically have me focus only on the emotions of what I'm feeling and only describe the emotions, not what's happening. I learned to like separate those in my mind. And then through doing that and practicing that, was able to get to the point where I can, I have a little bit better control over those things now, know, years down the Yeah, and it's, that takes a lot of work though to be able to do that type of stuff and to actually talk about a past trauma. Like it's not easy to do. So like I applaud you for being able to work through and separate that because it's, don't think everyone can do that. Yeah. for, sometimes I think I might've even went a little bit, I don't want to say too far with it, but I also warn people against burying the emotion entirely because then you're just like numb to it. it then becomes very hard to feel the emotion. And that's actually something that I have to work on. because I go on podcasts, because I go and speak, because I share the story a lot more than I used to, I don't bring in the super heavy emotion and end up, you know, bawling my eyes out. And I tell the story a lot more without that level of emotion. And I sometimes I have to purposely go back in my own time and think about it and purposely bring that emotion back so I can maintain the emotional and spiritual connection to the story so I can still tell it. authentically, you know, because there does come a time when I've told it on a podcast four or five, six times in a row. And I can feel them like I'm disconnected from this now. I'm kind of almost disassociated. Yeah, there's too much separation here. I need to take a break telling the story on podcasts because it's getting too saturated, I guess, with the story. I need to take some time and go up in the trees and think about it and purposely. I don't know if I want to say like I need to go purposely hurt, you know, but like I need to go reconnect with with with my emotions again, you know, so I'm not just a robot about it. And that's I I haven't figured out a balance for that. I I don't I kind of swing swing both ways, you know. I would say I wouldn't think there would be much of a balance for that, to be honest. I think it'd be so much, like you said, swinging back and forth. There's not quite the middle ground, it seems like. and I usually err on the side of less emotion because when I'm trying to talk about it with somebody, I'm trying to have a realistic conversation about how I can help them, you know? And usually they're the ones getting emotional about something when they hear the story. I'm like, if we're both bawling our eyes out, I don't know how much that's helping us. Right? I don't know. Like I said, I'm not saying I know how to do that perfectly. I'm not even giving advice there. That's just been my experience. So I want to kind of go to men's mental health here. So with your experience with grief, what are the most common ways you would say that grief silently sabotages men's mental health? Well... Grief gets buried because we have so many overwhelming responsibilities. I guess I can't say overwhelming in general because we all have the responsibility to be providers and protectors for our families. That's our role. That's our masculine responsibility. But when you're in grief, all of those other responsibilities become overwhelming because you feel like you've kind of been cut off at the knees and that the grief is taking so much of your energy to just even be present with that you don't have much energy to healthily deal with the other stress in life. So it just makes everything else so much harder to, so much harder to actually give space for, I guess. I don't know the right way to say that, but when, I found for me, I experienced this and other people in grief, sometimes the little things will just push you little bit over to the edge where you feel like you're starting to lose control of the emotions, you start to spiral a little bit and you have to remove yourself a little bit and kind of gather yourself a little bit. So even just a conversation at the dinner table on Thanksgiving or something that a particular topic's brought up and it might not even be related to your grief at all. You know, am I not even being talking about the person you lost, but it brings up something else that's causing a little bit of anxiety or stress on you and your ability to handle stress has already been sapped because the grief has been so heavy that day. Then that little thing you're like, I'm out, dude, I can't. And you're like, if I'm not going to start crying in front of everybody, if I'm not going to get pissed and start punching walls in front of everybody, I need to leave, you know, And that at least that's been my experience. so all of the other stuff just gets harder to deal with because you don't have as much capacity to deal with those stuff because the grief is taking up so much of that capacity. Yeah, yeah, can imagine. I try to think of my own experiences. I haven't experienced grief in the sort that you have, but it's all just rough. Life's rough in general. Yeah, mean, men's mental health in general, I am very happy that lately the past probably two or three years, the pendulum has started to come back that people have been paying more attention to men's mental health and acknowledging that it's a conversation that needs to be had, you know, whereas I think for years and years, it was focused way more on women and men just weren't talked about and. men were expected to sacrifice everything for the well-being of women, which not saying that we shouldn't sacrifice for the well-being of women, but not to our own detriment. You know what I mean? Like we still have to be equal partners in our relationships. And I think for a while, just as a culture, we swung too far one way. And now it's coming back to a little bit more of an equilibrium that I think is healthy. Like because of people like Joe that do the I Love You Boar project and so many more podcasts like your own, you know, that's it's It's becoming more normal to have those conversations. I don't think we're there yet, but we're getting closer. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I've had a lot of more people on my podcast lately that are opening up and saying, you know, mentioning specifically mentioning men's mental health and how it is on the rise. it's exactly what we need in this day and age because we have, I feel like we have this whole new generation of, you know, the young adults that are going through a lot of garbage right now they don't know how to deal with it. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned young adults because that's where I personally feel called to focus on, to put effort into helping that demographic, I guess. And that's why I go around speaking to high schools. And I've been to Lincoln Memorial University talking to veterinary science students of all people. I'm not a vet, but they paid me to go out there, you know, because anxiety was... was very prevalent with those particular students. They were getting ready to go out into a very high stress and also high performance career of being veterinarians that making good money, but also having a lot of weight on them to run a practice or to take over practice. So there's business skills they had it like all this other stuff was like, just like a lot of anxiety on them kind of felt like they're standing on the edge of a cliff and they were going to get pushed off the edge of it, whether they liked it or not, once they graduated, you know, and so That's why they brought me out of there, out there, because that's what I talk about is what do you do when life has you on the edge of a cliff and you don't have a choice but to either fall off the edge of it or jump off the edge of it? Like you cannot go back. And that's also why it resonates. Like I do a graduation speech at a high school because a lot of those kids getting ready for college, like they've been writing kind of a conveyor belt up to the edge of this cliff and that conveyor belt isn't slowing down. They're gonna. either fall off the edge of it or they can jump far. know, that's usually what my theme when I do a graduation speech is jump far. like, you're going off the edge anyways. You might as well jump as far as you can go. You know, and I have other things that I talk about in that as well. But the young adults in particular, I was doing some studies. There have been some national research studies. The past four or five years, there was one in particular done by Harvard that talked about how having a clear sense of purpose directly correlates to not only the mental health, but the performance of students in college. And like, think of that and I personally think, well, no duh, you know, but then I go to so many schools and there's so many students that don't have a sense of purpose because they've just been going through. I guess the motions of school. And I look back at myself when I was a senior in high school and like, you know, honestly, I wasn't a whole lot different. Like I knew we were talking about the latter day same perspective. I knew I was going on a mission. That's the only thing that I had in my head. Like I didn't know what I was doing after that. So for me, it was more like coming home from my mission. And now it's like, well, I think I'm supposed to get married, right? So I guess that's the next thing I focus on or I'm supposed to go to college. don't really know what for. I ended up going for sales because I figured if I could sell Jesus, I could sell whatever you're selling. And that led into my sales career. And, I just kind of, kind of figured it out and winged it. But everybody in these, at these schools is, I can't say everybody, but a lot of the students, the behavior issues that are coming, the aimlessness and the lack of purpose and lack of vision really is so much worse than it used to be. In fact, I mentioned some of the other studies, I think, I might be thinking the wrong one, but there was one done by Gallup that I was reading about the effectiveness of hiring speakers to come to schools to do assemblies and how it used to be super effective 10 years ago and they would see huge shifts. And now it's nowhere near as effective. They still do it they still see, they still see impact for, you know, maybe a week after the assembly, they still have kids come out of the assembly like, oh my gosh, that changed my life or whatever. But then they don't see the needle moving on behavioral issues like the Easter. They don't see the needle moving on attendance or engagement in the classroom after an assembly for nearly as long. And I got thinking about that and doing some more asking around when I would go to speak to a school, I'd ask the counselors, I'm like, what do you think is this and this and this? And the best thing that I can boil it down to that I found some additional evidence on was the pandemic that we went through and the lockdowns that we went through. think of the stories that we weren't told with direct words, but the things that kids were, the stories that kids learned were now true about the world. Like, hey, your future, even your day-to-day life, guess what? You don't have a say in that anymore. You know, you don't have control over anything and you can be all for the COVID lockdowns or you can be absolutely against them. you know, whichever side of that aisle of morals that you fell on doesn't matter because no matter what you do on either side of those, you're still locked down. And when that lockdown comes up is not up to you and it's completely outside of your control. And then the virtual learning that you do now you're all isolated and you don't have the human connection with people anymore. So you increase that anxiety, you teach kids that they no longer have control over their own future, and then you separate them from their peers and their mentors and make them work in these little silos at home where all they can do is just scroll on social media all day and guess what they see on social media during all that time? Everybody arguing about how bad the world is right now. So then you get all of these paradigms of belief that the students now believe that I don't have control over anything and it's not really worth it to even try because the government's just gonna handle it all or whatever the, however they interpret what was going on, right? And then you all of a sudden, hey, we're all gonna go back to school and expect it to be back to normal. And you wonder why we have so many mental health issues in school. That these kids no longer believe that they can actually accomplish what they wanna accomplish. Yeah, and that that take on I think makes complete sense because you're you're taking away their livelihood like you changed everything about it and it's like some of these kids like I think of the high schoolers back then they completely missed out on some of their high school days because we had a shutdown and all this other stuff going on. Yeah. can't remember, there was a term for the COVID graduates, the people that never got to walk, never had the graduation ceremony, you know, because it's outside of their control. They never got that. They got their diploma sent to them in the mail and with a letter that said, good job, you know. So everybody else that has pictures and memories of walking down the aisle and going out to dinner with family after and the pictures with everybody and the whole thing with your cap and gowns and throwing your cap up in the air because you accomplished something like, They didn't get any of that. It was almost a message of like, hey, you are less important than whatever else is going on. know, like what you want no longer matters. And so that teaches a belief pattern in those kids. And then they go to college and they get into a career. And you wonder why when they get any kind of opposition or something looks like it might not work out all super great, their brain like reverts back to the, crap, like. I need to protect myself in whatever way I did during that time. And usually people just dissociated with video games or social media or whatever. Yeah, I think I think also also like what you mentioned social media could play a huge role into that because what do do when you're on social media, especially kids, you're comparing yourself to others. Mm-hmm. And the only things that you see are the things that drive a lot of engagement, which is the extremes of both ends, right? You don't see any where the 90 % of the middle ground where everybody's actually at in life. You see the people that are either absolutely killing it or faking that they're actually killing it and making themselves look really, good, which makes you feel like, my gosh, like I suck because they're doing, you know, that comparison thing that you talked about, or you see the extremes of the other end. people are just angry and fighting all the time, which I think that's probably more common because people get such an, they get an adrenaline rush over fighting online, you know? I mean, you go, I don't know if you looked at my Instagram before we had this interview or not, but if you do, there's one particular reel I made that's almost 400,000 views now. And it's all it is is a carousel saying like, hey, this is Lauren, my wife, she passed away when she gave birth to my son. This is our story. And it just quickly goes through like a little timeline of how my life went. Like I was married here. We went on a honeymoon, moved here, had the baby. She passed away. I moved back to Utah. I met another woman who's really awesome. We got remarried to have more kids. Now life is great. You know, and that's what it is. You read the comment section on that. Oh my gosh. It is, it's a cesspool of some very angry people that don't like that. I moved forward with my life and that I dishonored my, my. first wife Lauren, like they don't see this. I don't see this whole memorial that I have for her back here, you know? And then there's good people too. There's good comments and I get DMs from people like, my gosh, that was so inspiring. You know, this was great. I sent this to my friend who's dealing with. like you forgot her. It's in order to... Yes. Exactly. People are insane to me. I look through Instagram comments and stuff sometimes. I have to stop myself too much because I follow lot of some of political stuff that's going on. And I look through those comments and I'm like... People just like my question is, guess I should say this. My question is, is if I met you in real life, that person in real life, would they say that to my face? I want to say 90 % of the time, not yet. Yeah. There are still some people who would and every once while you kind of get a feeling of that person in the comment section, you're like, that might end up in a fist fight if that happened in real life. But there are those people for sure. But then you think of these kids and they're scrolling through the same stuff, but they haven't had near the life experience to give them the, I guess the lens. with which to look at that through that, especially if they were still in their development years in school during the COVID lockdowns, and that was their only form of communication, right? The rest of us that went through a normal school life or a normal upbringing, you know, years previous, our main method of communication was in person, you know? And then cell phones kind of came around, I'm... I'm at the tail end of the millennial group. So I was in high school when cell phones really became, smartphones started becoming a thing, you know? So I kind of had the best of both worlds. I still came, I was born with everybody that we passed notes. And then all of sudden that just went up in smoke because we had smartphones, you know? And now we just text each other and stuff. It's kind of the best of both worlds where we thrive, we lived on human connection. We always wanted to hang out with our friends. And now all the kids want to do is play. online video games with each other. want to connect that way. You know, these kind of things. We lose this interpersonal connection and wonder why our mental health suffers. I think we're pretty close then because I don't think I had smartphones until college. But my six year old daughter is always like, you know, it's like I feel like kids now live in this like instant gratification zone that we didn't get when we were kids. Like we had to go outside and play. We didn't have all the cool technologies that we have today to watch a movie right off the bat. Watching a movie was more of a, almost a luxury. I don't want to say luxury, but it was like, I feel like it was, what's the word I want to use? Yes, yes. like, was like more of a thing. It's like, okay, well we need to make sure we pick the movie that we really want to watch. Because now my six year old, yeah, the whole family's watching because the TV's, yes, exactly. But my texture was like, well, I want to change movies now. It's like, you have no idea. You have no idea. Yep, on different device. So, want, whatever, want it, yeah. And they don't understand any different. Yeah, it's not even their fault. That's just how that happened. I think our, I can't even blame the parents of, I think we're also coming a little bit back from that because those of us that were in school when those things became a thing, we saw those that were children at that time, their parents had never experienced this type of technology and didn't know how it would affect them, didn't know how to regulate it. So it was kind of just. you know, free ran all the time. I'm seven year olds with iPhones. And now we're, I, at least I see from my perspective that it parents our age saw how bad that was and we've made the same mistakes. And so how bad it was for us when we first got like addicted to it, know, and I were like, Ooh, okay. We need to like pull the reins on this. And so now we see more, more parents are like, okay, you're not getting a phone, a smartphone until you're 16 and, or some other, know, putting more more rules on that I think is a little bit more normal. Like the gab phones, I see the billboards with the gab phones all over. Like smart stuff for kids, that wasn't a thing when they first came out, it was just a fricking free for all. You just throw everybody to the sharks and let them figure it out. So another thing that you, I think I mentioned it at the very first, you speak about is the drive framework. I'd love for you to give more detail on that and how it was born. Yeah, so that's actually a decent segue into there talking about the young adults and the students because the dry framework was born when I decided that I had value to share in this type of manner, right? I had a particular experience. I never wanted to do speaking. I didn't want to do coaching. I didn't want to do any of that because the career that I transitioned into in the trades, I was making enough money and I was comfortable and I had a goal in my head of how much money I wanted to reach to where I was like, okay, my wife no longer has to work and that's like my life's goal. So my wife doesn't have to have a job. I provide all of our needs and if she wants to go make money doing hobbies like photography or whatever to pay for vacations or something, then she can do that. But that was my big goal. And once I hit that, I was like, okay, I can finally breathe and kind of just. I'm content with this being my life the rest of my life. You know, I'd finally hit that point and that was a really good feeling for a minute and for about two months. And then kind of out of nowhere, I had this, it was a very spiritual experience for me where it was, you need to share this. You need to, you need to get this out. And when I had that particular experience and it was a little bit over the course of a couple of weeks total that that real experience was. But when it finally hit me like a semi truck, that's absolutely what I needed to do. I decided to dive right in. I'm like, all right, how do I even do that? So I grew up in a little town called Rush Valley. There's a guy out there. His name is Chad Hymas. If you've heard of him, he's a Hall of Fame speaker and he's a quadriplegic in a wheelchair. And he, he had a giant bale of hay fall on his neck and break his neck. Oh, I think I was four or five years old when it happened out there and it like I said, paralyzed him. And now years down the line, he travels the whole world speaking, doing safety conferences for big companies and stuff. And so he's the only guy that I knew that did any kind of speaking. So when I had this kind of thing that I felt like I needed to do, I decided I'm going to go talk to him, family friend of ours, and just ask him what the heck do I even do with this feeling, how to even do that. And he got me connected with some people that could help. And I ended up going to kind of a little mastermind group that helped people kind of figure out their messaging. If they were thinking about speaking and it was in that group that I decided I was like, I need to figure out a way to package what I'm passionate about talking about and what I'm, what I feel like I really need to share. And I need to figure out a way to package it in a way that's easy to communicate so that I could even teach it to somebody else. And then they could go use the same thing. So it's, I guess scalable in a way would be a word to put it. So it's like, all right, how do I. How do I even do that? And all the information was coming from life experience before everything happened. I grew up on a cattle ranch, like I said, out in Rush Valley, this little farming town. So there were lessons from that life. And then there were lessons from when I served a mission for a couple of years. And there were lessons from obviously my terrible grief journey. And then the overhauling my whole life after that and getting into this more blue collar career versus a sales career. Where it really started to stick was In both my sales career, looking back, had experiences in there training new hires, training young adults that were trying to figure out a new career. And then the same thing happened in the blue collar field of fixing commercial kitchen equipment. We would hire some new guys and I was really good at connecting with them and training them. They learned really well when they were with me. So I kind of became the impromptu trainer for anybody that was new. They just sent them with me and I take them on jobs and train them over the next eight, nine, 12 months. During that training time, I kept having similar experiences where these guys were having trouble assimilating the knowledge that I was trying to impart on them from a technical perspective. Like we're having to talk about thermodynamics and electricity and magnetism and stuff for the job to be able to troubleshoot equipment. but they were having a hard time remembering a lot of what I'm teaching them. So then I became obsessed with how do I help these guys remember what the heck I'm talking about? Because I felt like I learned it pretty quick. And as I started getting to know these guys better, I started to recognize that they were wearing masks in a proverbial sense. They were putting on some type of facade when they were with me or when they were at work that wasn't actually authentic to who they really were. And some guys were worse at it than others. Um, and so I started asking them questions, trying to figure out who they actually really are and what they actually really want out of life. And once I was able to help these guys kind of remove the mask and actually get authentic with me and actually have a real human connection with them, then all of a sudden what I was teaching was, was working. Then they were remembering it because it was actually making it through the mask. It was actually getting to the person underneath the mask, right? And so as I was trying to figure out how do I teach that, those are the experiences that I was drawing the messaging from. The framework itself, Drive, came when I sat down, was like, how do I figure out how to teach the process of how to overhaul your life that I went through, actually a couple of times. And I finally came up with Drive in this sense. And the D is Discover. And discover could be a 12-sided dice. That could be discover lots of different things. But the most important things are what are the wounds that you have that are telling you lies about yourself that are then making you put on those masks? All right, so like what has happened in your life to teach you a false story about yourself? That's the most important thing to discover about yourself. So it's really discover what lies you're telling them, telling yourself, and then also why are you telling yourself those lies? If you can figure that out, I need to remember to wake up, my camera has a stupid sleep timer on it. But if you can figure out what those lies are, well, now we can go resolve those lies, right? We can resolve some of the things that we need to fix, and that's the R. And then also the of the flip side of the coin for resolve is just developing a stronger resolve to continue going. The way that we do that is we invest in ourself. And that's the I. How can I invest more heavily in myself to increase my own value, to increase my own mental health and just become an overall better person? The way that we figure out where to put those investments and how to invest ourself is we visualize what it is that we want. And we use that as the lens to make those decisions. So the V is visualize. And when I teach the visualization process, some people call it manifesting or affirmations or something like that. different terms that people use for it, but it's thinking in an extreme amount of detail exactly what life you want to live. What is the reality that you want to be in? And you think like, if you close your eyes, like put yourself physically there, but also emotionally there and write down like, if I visualize this was my future, I would write down what the chair feels like that I'm sitting in. would write down what the room smells like. What does it feel like in here? What else is around me? What does it look like? What color are the lights? color are the blinds? You know, I try to get really detailed about where I am. And then I would get just as much detailed about how I feel being there inside. what's the piece that I feel and why? Like, am I happy? Why? Like, how does this feel to be here? And then that visualization is the most powerful part because it then sets the direction for all of the investments that I make in myself. And then the E, The E the framework is elevate. And this is really the catalyst to making whatever your version of success is, whatever it is you want, your vision, how to make that happen as fast as possible is elevate. And not only elevate yourself, like elevate your thoughts and elevate your environment and all these other things, but do things so make your vision your version of success so that your success is elevating the people that you care about. It's elevating. your family, it's elevating your friends, it's elevating your community, it's just making everybody else's life better. In fact, the best way to do that is more of a synergistic relationship. If you can find somebody that has similar goals to you, that wants to accomplish very similar things, well, guess what? Now you're a team and you're going to try your best to elevate each other so you can, you know, progress faster. And as we do that, we just start to attract to ourselves the people, the opportunities, the raw material, whatever else is needed to create the reality of what our vision is. to actually happen in real life. And when I can, I like to take a spiritual lens on this and dive into a little bit of scripture, which I think is appropriate given some of the things we've already talked about. And since we're in Utah, if you have some LDS listeners, they'll recognize James 1.5. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, right? That's a pretty popular scripture in our culture. But If James is saying like if you lack wisdom and you're looking for something in particular, let him ask of God to give it to all men, there will be no bread, it's none, and it shall be given him. So just ask. But then the next verse, verse six, is kind of the caveat to that. It's like you have to do it in this way for it to work. He says, ask in faith, nothing wavering. That nothing wavering part is key. And if that is a condition, upon getting the answer that we look for, how do we make sure that we don't waiver? Well, the best story that I can tell to illustrate that would be Peter walking on water. Whose idea was it for Peter to walk on water in the first place? Yeah, no, I can't even remember stories now, because I'm baffled by everything that you just said. The drive method is just awesome. It's like, it's... come back to it. When Peter walked on water, it was Peter's idea. If go back and read that story, because Jesus has just got done having this teaching and healing people for a while, and then they got appointments on the other side of the sea, basically. They're like, we got to get over there now. And Jesus is like, I need to recharge my batteries. I'm a little wiped out here. I'm going to go up to the mountain to pray. And y'all get in the boat and start heading over there. I'll meet you there. It's kind what he said. And so they get going across the sea and then the storm comes up, right? It's a boisterous sea, lots of waves and the apostles are, they're freaking out. They're like, we might drown. This is kind of nuts. And I don't know why every time they get in a boat on the sea, the storm comes up and it's like, there's four different stories of them in a boat in a storm. But this particular one, Jesus is coming across the water. He's walking on water and they think he's a spirit at first. they, and John even freaks out. He's like, oh my gosh, it's a spirit. We're going to die. And Jesus calls out to him and he says, be of good cheer at his eyes. He's like, calm down, be happy, it's me, you're all right. And then Peter, he says, if it's you, I wanna walk on water. He's like, let me come onto the upon the water. So it's Peter's idea. So Jesus stops, he's like, you have all the power to do that. Like, I don't even need to help you, go ahead, sure, do it. So Peter's like, well, Jesus said I can do it, and well, I believe I can do it. So he actually steps out of the boat. That's how we don't waver. We actually step out of the boat. Because if you're in the boat asking, need to walk on water here, but then you never step out of the boat. You're not taking that risk, yeah. You're getting stuck, yeah. right? You're not exercising faith. So then he steps out of the boat and he starts walking on water until what? He starts to fear. It says that he looked around at the storm and he saw the rough waters and he began to fear, in so much that he began to sink. So the reason that he walked on water was because he actually believed he could and he didn't waver. And the only way can prove that you don't waver is you actually act, you actually do it. So his faith made him walk on the water and Jesus is just like watching it happen, you know? And then he starts walking to Jesus, he takes his eyes off the Lord, looks at something else and he began to fear. That's the caveat that I always point out is like people say, well, it's because he wasn't looking at Jesus. I'm like, no, that's not what the scripture says. Says the reason he didn't fear was because he was looking at Jesus. The reason he sank was because he feared, because he started to doubt. So he began to sink. And then he called out, Lord, save me. Lord grabs his hand, he lifts him up, and then Jesus kind of gives him a burner. He's like, ye of little faith. Like, oof. You know, and so when we first read that story, I think sometimes we think, dude, if walking on water is little faith, then what the heck is my faith? You know, like. Go, mine sucks. But the more that I read that story and prayed about it, I think that Jesus was more saying, not your faith was little. Your faith in this moment because you're sinking is little compared to the faith that you just showed. Right. So to bring this all back to the drive framework, all I'm doing when I go to a school or I go to a corporation or I go to some nurses association meeting or something, when I'm teaching them drive, All I'm teaching them is how to do what James says, how to actually act in faith and not waiver. That's all I'm doing. But I'm giving them a completely different, you know, way to think about it. So I'm going in there. I'm like the Bible is in my back pocket. Basically, I'm teaching scriptural principles here, but I'm doing it in a different lens that it's accepted in a secular world. Right. And because of my background in the trades, I had to study, like I mentioned, thermodynamics and electricity and all this. I bring in lot of analogies of ways to think about these things and how the world works and use that to tie it in. And I talk about becoming magnetic to attract to us the things that we want to do. And how do we become magnetic? Well, a magnetic field is only generated when a charged particle is in motion. On the molecular level, it's when an electron is actually moving, an electric—excuse me, then a magnetic field is actually generated. But if no charged particle is in motion, no magnetic field is generated. Now, why that's the case, we don't know. We have no clue why, but we've studied enough that we understand that that's how it works and we understand how magnetic fields interact with each other. We can harness that power to turn the lights on. That's why we can have this conversation because we know how magnets work, basically. You know, when we really boil it down, that's why. And so if we understand that that's how the universe works to attract and repel things, because remember being magnetic, like, A magnet doesn't just attract things, it pushes them away too. And I think people are the same way when we actually have a vision for what we want and we actually move in that direction. Even if it's not specifically in that direction, like we don't know exactly where we're going to end up. We don't know sometimes exactly what it is that's really calling to us, but we have a general idea. As long as we are charged with that vision, we're charged with that. idea and that faith right and we actually move in that direction well then guess what we begin to attract the things that are actually in harmony with that and we repel the things that are not we become magnetic and that's how i talk about it in a secular frame but all i'm doing is saying like this is how you exercise faith guys this is how we live by faith So the funny thing is that you brought up faith. I've actually been working with an acronym using the word faith because so, so here's my take on it. It's so, let's see. Long story short back, when I got engaged, I started having seizures really bad and went through some mental health things. I was engaged for a long time. 10 years, about 10 years to be exact. And just cause I, I, I couldn't, I couldn't hold down a job and I was so emotionally unstable and I didn't realize it for a while. the seizures basically went away. had migraines for years, had some smaller seizures, maybe like once or twice a year. This last year they came back full force. I got a different diagnosis and my mental health just went completely downhill. So every time that this happens, my faith kind of waivers. it's, it's, I basically what you said, I start questioning God. I've not completely fallen off the bandwagon because obviously I work for the church. um, so I've brought my way back, but for the, this last year, I've been toying with the, this faith, method because this is how I got got through what I got was able to, you know, overcome what I was able to use to overcome what I was going through. Uh, so F is for foundation. What are you going to build your foundation on? Like when you're in those dark moments, like when you're going through a crisis or a hardship, like, you know, for, for me, it's God, like for, for somebody else, it might be something else. Like doesn't, you know, I'm trying to disregard religion here to a point, but Cause you have to have something. Yeah. Yeah. It could be a team. It could be your business. Like whatever it is. a is for attitude. Do you have the right attitude to go through life? Like I can't remember where I got in life with a bad attitude because it just made me dig myself deeper in a rut. I is for integrity. Are you being honest with yourself? Are you being honest with others? T is for trust. You need to trust in yourself and have that community of others to trust in. Because I think without trusting in yourself, you tend to make poor choices. And once you find that trust within yourself, you can turn your whole life around. And H is for humility. Are you being humble? showing that side of yourself. Like, don't... Don't think that you're better than anybody because to me, nobody is better. We're all equal. I think that's key what you just said there, the equal thing, because I think too many people, when they talk about humility, they think that they are intentionally putting themselves below other people. I don't think that's true humility. Yeah, I think humility is acknowledging that you are equal in also the positive ways, right? That I am absolutely capable and it's... It's possible to do that without having pride. And I think pride is that I am better than God. I don't need God. I don't, you know, these other things that I have to lean on is I think the pride is when you take upon yourself way too much credit. But not with the humility, you're not casting away your trust and your capability. I think that that's why I really like the trust part too, because you can't really trust yourself if you're saying that you're not as good as somebody else and calling it humility, right? That's just self-sabotage. That's terrible way to look at it. So I like that a lot. In fact, just today, I was thinking while you were talking about that, the faith acronym that you were just talking about was, I bet you, I would make, can I make an assumption about you real quick? Is that okay? I would bet that you struggle fairly often with actually living that acronym. I actually do. And it's a work in progress. And I can say that I've made more progress in the last year. And it's because, and I think I struggle with that. I completely have struggled with faith for my entire life. It's like, I'm trying to think of how to say this. It's like every time something huge happens in my life or there's a challenge, it's like I... I blame, you know, there's times where I blame myself, I'll blame God, it's like, no. But then in the end, always like, it's because I didn't have the faith I needed to get through this. Yeah, I've had a lot of repetition, yeah. Yep. So that's, I was thinking the same thing because just this morning I was having a... I was having a rough morning. I'll just put it that way. I had to get up super, super early for work. I left my house about five, 5.30 AM this morning to go work on a grill in Arctic Circle up in Roy and had to do a big job up there. And last night I had gone and met, mentioned Chad Hymas before. uh He's one of my mentors and I have gone so far as to hire him as my coach. I've paid him thousands of dollars to be like my mentor in this speaking stuff to really help me with it. And it's been awesome, but I had been hitting a wall of like, I'm just like beat my head against a brick wall here. I'm not making the kind of progress that I had been making. I'm just feeling stuck, you know? And so I drove out to his lodge out there and I met with him and I told him, was like, Hey, I have, I've basically decided that I am going to do this full time within a certain amount of time. I've put a timeframe on that and I've talked to my boss about that. And so I need to, I need to replace that income. Right? If I'm gonna be able to do this full time, that it's something that I feel so called to do that I feel is like my purpose in life. And I was like, I think I have some paradigms going on in my head, some belief systems that are holding me back with that. And he's like, well, I think I have an idea of probably what some of those are, but let's start with what's the number that we gotta reach. So I'm like, what's the vision, right? How much money do you need to make? And we're gonna work backwards from there. How much money do you need to support your family if you're gonna transition to this full time? I told him, was like, I need to make a hundred grand in year to be, to replace everything that I have and be able to afford my house and like not be super stressed out, right? Anything less than that. I'm like getting tight and like, so like that's the number he's like, okay, we're gonna, so your goal you're here. What you're gonna do now is you're gonna work to where you're making 10 grand a month. So slightly overshooting that, but that's what you're gonna break that down to your month. So how many proposals for speaking do you have to send out in order to land a gig? And if your gig is X amount, you know, we just work the number system. Like what do we got to do every day to hit that? How many proposals do we have to send out? So come up with my number and I was like, you need to send out a minimum of two proposals a day. So your goal is going to be four. So you can hit four if you're doing a Monday through Friday thing. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to get up an hour early every day and I'm going to just work on kind of some outbound prospect and trying to connect with people and see if there's some opportunities I can dig up. And that's what I'm going to do. So I come home from that. I'm like, all right, basically I am now, I had been having my mother, who's actually my business partner, handle some of my outbound stuff, and I'd just been working on the creation side of things for a lot. And I was like, all right, I need to take over doing some outbound stuff. I did that for a career for multiple years in my sales job, you know? But then this morning, as I'm thinking, I had to get up, so I didn't do it this morning, but I had to leave early, but I was thinking about that. I'm like, hey, I'm gonna get doing that, but it was stressing me out. and I could not figure out why. I was getting like extremely anxious to the point that I was having some thoughts starting to swirl like self-harm kind of thoughts and I had to stop myself. I'm like, what is happening right now? And I had to kind of go through my own little framework that I had to discover, okay, what are the lies I'm telling myself right now? And what are the wounds that are supporting those lies? So I had the whole drive up there to think what's the story I'm telling myself in my head right now? And I think I still need to do some more work on this, but the best that I could figure during my commute was that I had been working my freaking butt off in my sales job before work, putting in so much time and so much effort, just grinding, and I had finally got to a point where I was finally making about the right amount of money that I wanted to make, and then my wife passed away, and my whole world just blew up. And I tried to get back into sales for like nine months after that. And I just couldn't do it. I couldn't handle it. My mental health was crap. I just falling apart. I could barely even pick up the phone and I handle and rejection was a lot harder at that point for some reason, have the resilience that I used to have. And so I gave up on that career and I transitioned into trades and I never really resolved that part of me. So now I'm, stepping back into it and having to do the same thing again, but selling myself essentially is what I'm having to do. And my most recent memory of months and months of trying to do that was absolute hell. And that's the most recent emotional memory that my body has to doing that. like, learned through the therapy that I went through, I've learned through experience that my body remembers my grief and the trauma that I've been through and it responds in physiological ways. And I learned that as I was... starting to get back, okay, I'm going to start doing some of this sales stuff. I'm going start doing some of this outbound cold outreach and trying to drum up conversations. Well, all of sudden that very traumatic time of my life is my body's like, I'm starting to hyperventilate and freak out. so now, coming back to talk about this, I'm seeing you talk about the faith thing. like, if he's anything like me, it's not because he's perfect at that, it's because he's had to do it over and over and over. yeah, it's repetition, man. Like it's, it's, yeah. of tell you the same experience I had today. But yeah, so I have to work my own framework over and over that I teach other people, which also kind of gives you a little bit of imposter syndrome a little bit, doesn't it? Like how can I go teach somebody else this when I'm the one that struggles with it? dealing with it, yeah. And I'm to the point now where I want to teach it more. Like I want to put myself more out there. And I'm struggling knowing how to do it. Like it's like, I don't know. I don't know where life's calling me right now, but... dude getting out into speaking and just really putting myself out there more and just trying to really level up, guess, in that kind of way, doing something drastically bigger, drastically different and making the jump to that has been. I cannot say it was hard as when I lost my wife, like the mental work that had to do there. That is still tip of the spear, but this is not far behind it of the amount of effort that I'm having to put in mentally. The break, I talked about paradigms, the mental boxes that we put ourselves in of who we think we even are and who we think we're, what we think we're capable of and what we believe about this world and how it works. what we believe about God that we've been talking about, like these are these are our paradigms. And if you're going to step into something bigger, you're to step into something different. Well, you're stepping out of the boat. You're leaving that paradigm. And that is the hardest thing that I have ever done in my life is break those paradigms. I've done it a couple of times, so I know I can do it. And that's why I came up with a framework like this is how you break a paradigm and do something completely different. But It's so frustrating that it doesn't make it any easier every time I go to do it. boy. of still on the conversation of, God, I have one question for you for that is, so for listeners struggling with belief after tragedy or trauma, where can they begin rebuilding trust in life again? Like how can they find that belief again? Well, you could go a couple different ways with this, but you specifically mentioned the God thing. If you have listeners that have at least a Christian belief framework to their life, right? They don't have to be LDS or not. I'll just tell you from my experience, the greatest piece of advice that I ever got, I wish I remember who told it to me. But it was from way earlier in life than my grief. And I just remembered it when I was going through my grief was that the worst thing you could do when you're struggling with your faith in God or you're struggling with being angry with God or any of that thing is to stop talking to Even if you absolutely hate his guts or you hate the idea of him or you know, you're like, cause when you're super angry with him, I think people convince themselves that he doesn't exist their whole life. They believed in him, but they, they choose to rather than work on why they're angry, it's easier to just say, you know what? He doesn't actually exist. So I don't have to address that relationship. I don't have to put in the work to work on that relationship because it's easier to just cut it off and I'm just gonna pretend it doesn't exist, right? So I will take credit for myself. Again, we talked about the humility thing, right? I'm not putting myself above anybody, but I am taking credit where I put in some work. I never stopped talking to him. However, for a long time, the only thing I could do was yell at and I specifically told him multiple times in prayers like, don't want you to do anything for me, which was probably dumb of me to say, but I was basically like telling him like, I want you to leave me the frick alone. I'm just telling you how I feel and if you are who you say you are, then you can help me with these feelings and so I'm giving you my feelings and you can do whatever you want with them good night and then I'd leave it at that. And that was kind of the routine for a little while and I was an angry, bitter person, but because I was still having those conversations, I was at least opening myself to having experiences with God. Eventually, I started having more experiences with God. And then when I was able to get to the point where I had finally had enough and allowed him back in to whatever degree I would allow him, he would take that opportunity and I would feel it. And then that would remind me, I'm like, I really freaking hate his plan, but he knows what he's doing because I feel it. You know, I feel the progress is being made. I feel something here. I have no idea what it looks like, but because I can feel the progress, I at least trust in that. And that's the only thing that I had to go on for a while was that I just felt intrinsically somehow that he was still there with me in the pit and he was kind of climbing out of it with me. He wasn't above me pulling me out. It was more like he was walking with me and letting me kind of take steps and figure it out. but just helping me to be able to take those steps. You know what mean? So I don't think my life has had a specific path. Like don't think it was necessarily authored exactly how my life would go. I think because of some scriptures I read in the Bible, like Jeremiah 1.5 for example, before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee. That one was a big one for me more recently of like, I believe because of scriptures like that, that I... had a relationship with God before I came here and because of that, I knew how this life would go, at least in a generality. I knew that it was gonna suck in a lot of ways. And I might have even known some specific details about some of the really big pivot points that I would experience, like losing my wife. I personally believe because of some personal experience that I've had, that I agreed to at least that experience. Now, the things that have happened since then, I think, you know, You can do what you will with those and you kind of co-author your life with God as you go through it, but that's the best answer I can give you for that is you can't stop talking to him, even if all you can do is yell at Dude, I think there's so many similarities with the way that we think. It's like I've had similar experiences to where I was still trying to pray and still speaking to God, but saying, you know what? I don't know why I'm talking to you. I don't feel anything right now. I just don't know what else to do. Yeah. I always go back to, I'll bring in a scripture really quick if that's okay. Matthew 17 20, and Jesus said unto them, because of your unbelief, verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as grain of a mustard seed, Ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place and it shall remove and nothing shall be impossible unto you. That's one of my favorite ones is because it taught me that if I have just that little bit of faith, I can move forward in life and get through anything. Like it's, doesn't take much. Yeah, in the business world or in the professional personal development world, you hear a term sometimes used called a quantum leap. Someone makes a quantum leap in life and business. It's making such a radically big different change in their life that brings exponential results. And usually they're talking about in a financial sense, right? Like making a ton more money. But that can also apply to plenty of other things. And that's exactly like The process of how to do a quantum leap in life is laid out in the scriptures. That's exactly what he's talking about. You don't have to have some massive faith because all faith is is acting when you have no proof that it's going to work. Like there's no other reason than the feeling in your soul that you should do this. That's why like if you go to make a quantum leap in life, everybody's going to think you are absolutely nuts. Cause they're like, why would you ever think that that's gonna work? Like, I can't explain it to you. I've thought about it and I just feel it in my soul. And I just feel like this pull to go do this. And then you step out of the boat. You have faith as granted of a little mustard seed, but you can tell that mountain to move because it's the actual movement of the faith. It's the actual action that makes the miracles happen. Like think of the woman with the issue of the blood, right? Jesus Christ. uh that? Whose idea was it for her to be healed in that manner? Well, I personally would think it would be... What am I thinking? Would it be herself? Yeah, because she's the one who... She's the one who had the faith to go and do it. Yeah. what did Jesus say after she touched him? Who touched me? He stopped the whole throng of people because the the story is they were actually going to Jairus's house to raise his daughter they were on their way to go do that and There are all these people are like Jesus is gonna raise this person from the dead or something or heal her and so there's a whole bunch of people following like throngs of people all over the place bumping into each other and then this woman Says if I can just touch the hem of his garment, then I will be healed She brought she came up with that on her own now You could argue probably the spirit had some influence with that or some other things, you know, but from her perspective, it was her idea. And she goes and she does it. And then Jesus says, thy faith has made the whole right. Think of one of my other favorite stories is the centurion, the Roman centurion who had his son healed from across town. Remember that one? He goes to Jesus and he says, my son is sick and I know that you can heal him. And Jesus is like, Good, take me to him. And the centurion says, I am not worthy to have you enter my house. I am a sinner, all these other things. You cannot come to my house. I know that if you just say the word, by the time I get home, he'll be healed. And Jesus kind of steps back. He's like, dude, and he turns to his disciples. like, this man, not even a Jew, has greater faith than anyone that I have met in this entire city. And then he turns around back to him says, It is done even as you have said, go. And Centurion goes home and his son's healed when he gets there. So that's another one. Like whose idea was it for the miracle to happen the way that it happened? Jesus even suggested a different way. And the dude's like, nah, I'd rather it happen like this. And Jesus is like, done. Cool. Awesome. So that's why, like, I talk about the dry frame. I talk about all these things about creating success the way that you want it to look. That's how you co-create miracles with God. You get a vision for how you want it to happen. You're gonna have a feeling that I should go this particular direction, but the how you're gonna get there is completely up to you. And a lot of times when we're looking for miracles, we're asking God like, please fix this or please do something. And the only real missing piece is we just haven't told God how we would like it to be done and then go act like it's gonna happen that way. Think of Moses when he split the Red Sea. If you go back and read that story, God never tells him, go split the Red Sea. Not once those words come. All it does is he says, hey, obviously you need to go gather the Israelites, right? You need to leave. So he goes and does that. He never tells him where they're going to go. He just says, I have a place prepared for you. That's all he says. Right? So how many times do we pray and we get kind of a peace like, it's going to work out. I have a place prepared for you. But you're like, okay, cool. How are we going to get there? Crickets. You know? my problem. It's like, my wife will tell me this all the time, she's like, you just need to believe. And it's like, if things don't go a certain way within a certain timeframe, and I don't see it, that's when I just start losing myself. Well, I mean, think of because the Israelites had the same thing. Since we're talking about Moses, when they said, that way, that basically all the Lord said was go that way. And he went before him and they followed him. Well, that way is a dead end, bro. That was the Red Sea. And if the Egyptians have decided they're going to come kill all of you, going straight to the largest body of water in the region is a bad idea. Right. That's a death sentence. You're just going to get trapped there. But they go there anyway, because that's where the Lord says to go. Then they get there, and the Lord doesn't even tell them what's going to happen. All the Israelites start murmuring, they're like, great, Moses, you've led us to our death. What are we going to do? And Moses is like, that's a really good question. I don't even know. And so the Lord drops a pillar of fire, blocks off the Egyptians so that now they're stuck between this wall of fire and the Red Sea with the Egyptians on this side and drowning to death on this side. And he doesn't tell them anything. He just stops it and lets them sit there and think about it. And then Moses goes out to the water and prays. And the only thing the Lord says was, with this staff, you will do my wonders. So then Moses was like, I have an idea. You know, splits the Red Sea. And I totally believe that if the vision in his head was instead that we're going to lift the earth from under the sea and make a land bridge, and we're going to walk across on dry ground on top of the water, like, why not? Why would that not work? That would work just fine. I think that's totally how it would happen. But no, Moses is like, you know what, we're going to split the sea in half. We're going to walk through on the bottom. Cool. Accomplishes the same purpose. I don't think it matters to the Lord how it's done as long as you get there How you get there is up to you and you just tell him this is what I'm gonna do and unless you tell me something different I'm just going and I found when I pray that way and I come up with a plan on my own I studied out of my own mind and I take it to him. I'm like, hey is This right because this is what I'm gonna do and if I don't get any feedback from you I'm just gonna assume that's permission to move forward and I'm just gonna go until you tell me otherwise And then when I behave that way, I get, I get course corrected often, right? And, usually the course correction isn't a know this is wrong. It's Hey, this might actually be a little bit better if you did it this way, if you made this little pivot, right? And then I just get these little pivot course corrections and every once in while I get a hard stop. Like, no, that's a bad idea. Maybe you should think of something else, but that's more rare, right? Usually it's if I'm studying out of my mind and I'm kind of going with my feelings, I come up with a decent idea. God just has a slightly better version of that same idea. There is one thing or maybe two that we have not touched. we're sitting about an hour and 20ish minutes, but which I've, let's do it, let's do it. So one thing that was mentioned in the, what I introduced to you was music. And I just want to know like how songwriting has, you know, played a role in your healing. In my healing that's an interesting way to think about it because I haven't even thought about it that way but one of the songs definitely was Because one of the songs that I wrote tells a story of how I how I made some progress in my relationship with God even just this past year Is about in May. So I've got a story for everything if you can't uh I was up. I was up at a men's retreat and by an organization called Warrior Heart, which I highly recommend you check that out. Do you know who Kurt Frankham is? Kurt Frankham runs a podcast called Leading Saints. It's uh a church leadership. remember I've heard of a podcast called Leading Saints. I didn't recognize the name. that his name's Kurt Frankham. Yeah, and Kurt Frankham's on the board for Warrior Heart along with some other friends of mine. And they do this Christian men's retreat based off of a book called Wild at Heart, which is a Christian book written by a guy named John Eldridge. And some of the things that I talked about in the book that I wrote, that's another thing we haven't even talked about was my book. uh But yeah, there's a whole other thing about that. We can do three episodes, man. But when I was up there, I went up to this men's retreat based off of a recommendation of a friend. And he said, hey, I think you'll get some clarity about what you should do with your speaking career. And we were like, what you want to do if you go up to this? And just separate from all the distractions and go spend some time in the mountains, just you and God in the journal. That's basically what this retreat is. it's very mental health, but also spiritual health relationship with God based, kind of both hand in hand. And all the guys that are giving sessions up there for the whole, I guess, what is the word I'm looking for? The whole group of guys that are up there, the whole audience up there, there's like 150, 200 of us up there. All the guys giving sessions, most of them are clinical therapists that work with different providers somewhere here in Utah, but all coming from a Christian background. Because we're in Utah, a good number of them are LDS folk and then a good number of them aren't. there's this one particular session that this guy gave about fatherlessness and how us as men all have a fatherlessness wound that we need to address. Even if we had the most amazing fathers on the planet Earth, they still fall short of God. And whatever that gap is, the gap that we have to forgive our father on Earth, our dad here for falling short of. And so they're kind of talking about that particular principle. And it made sense to me logically, but I did not relate with it in my heart because I realized that my fatherlessness wound that I had was actually with God. And that I felt like my dad was a better dad than God was. And I never realized that. This whole time that I had been trying to, that I'd been writing my book, that I'd been trying to build a speaking career and get my name out there and pushing really hard on that, there had been an overwhelming, or an overarching, excuse me, not overwhelming. overarching frustration with God about the whole process in general. Because as I mentioned before, I had reached a point in my career where I had finally kind of made my goals and was kind of comfortable. And I'm like, I'm good with my life being this way. And then I have this experience out of nowhere that tells me, nope, I'm going to take a hard right turn and start doing this. I was very frustrated that I had finally got my life to a point where I was comfortable. Again, it took me six years to get there again. But the moment I do, God says, nope. yoink and pulls that away and says you're go do this and there was a Just are you freaking kidding me? Like can you just leave me alone and let me be happy? You know, and I didn't realize that was going on in my head so much until I got up there and they talked about this fatherlessness when I had this like Epiphany I'm like, my gosh I have some issues with you still that we need to talk about so then after the sessions nobody's allowed to talk for like an hour You just go out by the campfires, you go out in the trees, it's just you and your journal and God and the only people that can talk is there's some people with a neon armband that are part of the prayer team and if you need somebody to pray with you go grab one of them. But other than that, it's pretty much silent. And so I go out during this this kind of vow of silence, they call it and I start talking to God basically saying like, you know what, I just realized that I view you as an abusive father. You have kicked the living crap out of me and I never I don't feel like I did anything to deserve the crap that you've put me through. And I just kind of all these feelings and thoughts had been buried so deep in me that I hadn't even really realized they were there. Just all started pouring out. And I finally got all of that out and kind of gave gave God a chance to get a word in there. And it felt so good to get all that out. It was heavy, but it was like I was crying, you know, a ball of my eyes out. And then the spirit hit me like a freight train and the words. you asked me for this hit my mind. Not in the sense of like, shut up, you deserve this kind of a thing. It was more like a that that scripture I mentioned, Jeremiah one five, they actually use that in the presentation before I formally the belly. knew these. So that scripture was already kind of bounced around in my head. And so from that kind of perspective that you asked me for this was where I was like, my gosh, I knew that this was going to happen. That was that experience that I had. And I was like, geez, my good. This is This isn't God punishing me and turning me into a tool that I don't even want to be and being some kind of drill sergeant. Just like this is how it's going to go, whether you like it or not, you know, this is him in his mercy, allowing me to experience the things that I needed to experience so that I could become the person that I told him I wanted to be. Which is probably hard for him to watch, but he's got to let me go through it because that's what I wanted. I wanted to become whatever whatever I am later, and this is what the opportunities that I had to have so that I could build myself into that with his help. And so then, you know, I kind of have this, this just changed my whole perspective on the freaking universe. You know, like this is another big paradigm shift that I just had in this moment. And they ring this big bell say, Hey, the next session is about to start. So I don't realize I've been out there for 45 minutes, Balmais already. And I start walking back to the, the barn where they have the session. And I'm kind of done. I'm just kind of trying to gather myself again and take a breath. And then the spirit hits me again. And the words was, it's time to write your song. And I was like, hold the front door. What? I had been having some feelings that I needed to incorporate music with my speaking in some way, because singing has been a big part of my life as a kid and stuff. I did show choir in high school. And I did mostly like singing in church kind of things, but I still really enjoyed it. But as I had been writing my book, I kept getting these little, you know, little feelings that I needed to allow music to be a part of that. That always scared me. And I was like, meh, later. You know, we'll talk, we'll think about that later. But it finally came down. It's like, it's time to write your song. like, okay, you said to be willing to sing. You never said anything about writing music. What is this writing music crap? And I didn't know anybody that wrote music. I had no idea where to go with that. So then I go into the next session with now my thoughts are, How the freak am I going to start writing music going on in my head as I go into the next session? The guy that gets up on the stage as like this kind of little intermission, he's got a guitar. He goes, hey guys, my name's Steve. So and so asked me to write a song for this retreat. Here it is. And he sings this song. And I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. That's the guy I need to talk to. Obviously it was like, boom, like here it is, you know, just set right in front of me. And he was the guy that taught me kind of the thought process to go through for writing music. And I've got four songs now written and kind of halfway produced. I did them in studio. They don't sound as good as what you'd hear on the radio, but they're close. You know, and I sing them as part of the keynotes. And then I eventually wrote one song called, You Asked Me For This. And that was the fourth song that I wrote, which is me retelling that story that I just told you. And that song, when I wrote that, I wasn't planning on that. I was driving to work one day. I was actually driving out to I was coming from Tula, I was going to Walmart in Pleasant Grove to work on a piece of equipment out there. And I was coming through like Eagle Mountain area and I was having lyrics going through my head and I couldn't stop them. Like what the heck? I was using chat GPT with the voice and I was like telling it what to write and it came so fast. And then I used an AI program called Suno to put some music to it. And I had the whole rough demo done in about an hour and it was out. And I was like, this is my favorite. far this is nuts. And all the other the other three songs I wrote took me a couple of weeks to really come up with and to get dialed in to where I was like halfway satisfied with it. That one I was like, there's nothing I would change about this in an hour. So then over the next couple of hours, I was working like, why did that come so fast? That was crazy. And then I got a very strong prompting that a particular family member of mine had just had a stillborn baby had just lost a had lost a child. And I felt very strongly I needed to send that person this song. You asked me for this. So when I got that prompting, I was like, hold the foot on the brakes here. You want me to go tell this person that just lost a child that they asked for that? Are you are you crazy? No, sorry. No, I'm not doing that. I'm going to veto that one. But it wouldn't leave me. So for an hour, it was just eating me up inside. And so I finally called this particular family member. And I told him you can hate my guts if you want. I'm sorry but I wrote this song. came today. I don't really know why. It's not even about you and your situation. It's about mine. But apparently you need to hear it. So I'm sending you the audio file. Punch me in the face later if you want. But here it is. And just kind of left it at that and then waited the whole rest of the day. I was like biting my fingernails and stuff and they finally sent me a text that nightly and a big long paragraph and I'm expecting to get chewed out. But it was like. That's exactly what I needed to hear. were the thoughts I was already having. I'm printing these lyrics out, putting them in a memorial box with the baby, you all this kind of stuff. that's how it's been. That's been the experience with the music. now when I go speak, I bring that music with. And depending on what the situation is, I'll sing that one. It's a key part of what I do now. It's so cool. You have so many different aspects that we could, I feel like you could take pieces of everything, like you said, and have three to four different episodes here. I know, like, obviously I could talk a lot, right? So. the last thing here, let's, I want to hear about your book. I know this is a lot of topics that we've covered tonight. No, you're good, you're good, I'm enjoying this. Yeah, so the book is called The Overhaul, Fixing Your Mindset and Driving Success. if I had any type of a marketing mind, I would have a copy of like Sitting Behind Me or something, but I don't. I've given them all away. I need to order some more. But you can get it on Amazon. That's the title, The Overhaul, Fixing Your Mindset, Driving Success. the book was the very first thing that I did when I decided like I have to do this sharing my story thing. have to do this speaking thing, whatever that even means, you know, I was like, well, I don't even know how to communicate what I'm so passionate about coaching these guys at work and the other people that I work with. So I'm just going to write a book. And that's, that's what kind of forced me to really nail down my material and nail down how, how I teach it, you know, and some of the stories that I use and the analogies that I use. So, I wrote it more, honestly, I wrote it more for me than I wrote it for anybody else. It was, was my way of how do I, how do I teach this to myself so that somebody else could actually understand it, you know? And so the, the book uses it's, it's, it's really broken down into three sections and I named those three sections ignition, the shift and launch ignition is some of what I need people to understand about how this world works, like some science stuff. they understand. how I'm teaching it in the middle part of the book where I call it the shift. And the shift is like, we're gonna change the way that you think about everything. And now that you understand kind of where I'm coming from, from a science and also a faith based background, now I'm gonna teach you how to change the way that you think. Now that we're going over the drive framework is really the meat right in the middle. That's the shift. Once I get done with the drive framework and I've taught that in multiple chapters, then I go into launch and like, okay, well now here's what you do with it and go, right? And I leave people like, ready, set, just run. If you understand this is how the world works and this is how, in my opinion, faith works and what the scriptures tell us, and this is the framework of what I teach on how to actually apply that, now here's some guidelines to actually applying it. That's basically, that's the book. It's really cool. You have so many things going on that it's awesome. I love what you're doing with the framework that you're teaching. I love what you're doing with I love you bro. Thank you for sharing everything. like get too involved in too many things and I don't have any time. You know, like one of the other things I'm working on now is, I, because I feel so passionate about, um, like mentoring young adults and stuff as putting together a virtual mastermind mentoring community for young adults that are trying to figure out what the heck to do with their careers. You know, and how do we, how do we, how do we jump off this cliff and make sure that we don't die on the way down, you know, and So I just barely, I just got a email today from the guy that's that's handling the backend of my systems and doing some of my web building. says, Hey, I just finished the landing page for your new mentor and community offer. So now I get to go tweak a couple of things and actually start mentioning that to people. Nice. That's really cool. Kind of like a kind of coaching type stuff, coaching, mentoring. Is it following that line? to be cheap. Because I knew, was like, dude, college kids are broke. They're not going to go pay thousands of dollars to have a one-on-one coach unless maybe mommy pays for it. But the way that that came out was I was doing a couple of jobs over in Utah County, Canada, Super Chicks. And I asked them, says, hey, if the restaurant across the street offered you $1 more an hour, would you go? They're like, yeah, I'd be gone. I'm like, OK. Just a thought. If you were interviewing between these two places and this one place offered you $11 an hour, but then the place you're at now offers you $10 an hour, but they say once a month, we're going to have our corporate leaders come to the store and just for an hour, you can pick their brains and ask them whatever questions you want about how they got to where they are in life. Which one would you choose? They're like, Ooh, actually, okay. And that's in that scenario, I would choose the dollar less an hour and have that. I'm like, ah, okay. That tells me something, you know? And then I asked the same questions to some other restaurants that I was fixing stuff in. asking those kids if they would do the same thing. And 95 % of them said that, they would do that. I'm like, if I put that together and it was 50 bucks a month, would you do it? And like 70 % of them said yes. So I was like, all right, I guess that's good marketing research for me. So I'm just gonna put that together. So now when I go to a job, I'm just gonna have the same conversation then just be like, hey, here's this, come do it. I'm just gonna have the people that have mentored me have other people. you know, just come do maybe like a podcast style, like interview and where people can hop on and just type questions in the chat that they answer, you know, whatever, like, Hey, 50 bucks a month. And we'll just have these people that make millions of dollars just show up and you can pick their brains. You know, like I would have paid for that. I I'm kind of jealous that I'm like creating something that I never had. That would have been awesome. that guidance and people who've already been there. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the next cool little side project that I'm. Yeah, have, you're pretty busy. I have a lot. That was one of the things when I went out and talked to Chad about my mentoring and figured it out, is he's like, you gotta put out a couple of fires. You need to focus on like the things to get those going first and then go do some other stuff. wife was like, I usually record, last year I was recording twice a week and I work full time during the day. My wife's like, well, this coming year I only want you to do it once a week because twice a week is getting a little rough with the kids and stuff. We have three young kids. And so now it's like, ah, yep, so do we. So do we. How far is your wife along now? Word due in May. My wife will be due in, I think we're August. So we're just a little bit behind you. She's, she's in the throes of the sickness of the first trimester. Oh, good. Good for you. We're, we're awaiting that day. Yeah. of luck to you. So one last question here, and I just love to get like a kind of just a general feel for this because everybody's answer is pretty different. It's just a easy question. I guess I should say more of a generalized question. What do you feel is the biggest stigma when it comes to mental health? biggest stigma. Well, there's a few out there, so let me chew on this for a second. Mm-hmm. Well, I'll tell you from my experience with the I love you bro project and talking to men just about every week about it, that one of the biggest stigmas is probably one of the classic masculine stigmas around mental health is that if you need that help, that it's a weakness in some way, right? That admitting to somebody that you're broken to one degree or another is somehow admitting that you're less valuable, which is not true, right? That you're something wrong with you from a value proposition standpoint, I guess, you know, where you say, there's something wrong with me. I'm like, dude, there's crap wrong with me. Yeah, there's gonna be some stuff wrong with you. you know, we're not in heaven yet. So yes, there's gonna be some stuff wrong with you. But just the way that it's thought about. by men in general, is still, we still have a lot of work to do in that regard to where we can convince men that admitting that they have some mental health things that they need to work on is not synonymous with admitting that you're less valuable, that you don't offer as much to your family, that you don't offer as much to those that love you and to your community and to your friends and that. telling your family that you're going to a men's support group is somehow like only people that have issues and are like pedophiles or like doing some terrible stuff go to support groups. You know, like there's still a stigma around the type of people that go to support groups that is not true. You know, they think that you're gonna, you're going to a loony bin or something, you know, and you're gonna come out like, if you're gonna go hang out with crazy people, then how are you gonna come out of that? People are gonna convince you that you need drugs or something like that, you know. Awesome. I think, I think that's it that admitting you have mental health struggles as normal and talking to people about it should not be weird. Yeah, that's one of the biggest things I struggled with is actually admitting that I had a problem because I was so afraid of what everybody would think about me. So, but now it's like I've learned I don't care. I don't care what you think about me because I'm going to do what I want to do regardless if you prove or not. I think it's also interesting and you'll you I have a feeling you'll probably agree with me on this is that a lot of men say that they don't care what people think about them. But you can tell you can tell that they're full of When you know like you look them in the eye you're like when when me or you I get the feeling like when I look at you and you say that I don't care like I don't feel a disconnect there. But when a lot of other men say like I don't care what you think about me like. I don't believe you. can't put a pin on exactly how you said it that makes me not believe you, but there's something in the way that that's communicated that is inauthentic. And I have a whole theory on why we can pick up some stuff on that, which is gonna require another hour long episode. when you finally own your own stuff and you say like, yeah, I have some issues with mental health that I have to work on and I am owning that and I am proud that I am I put my value in my willingness to put in the work rather than the way that I look to other people. Right. And I can, I know that I have more value because I'm willing, I am humbling myself in the way that I'm putting myself on even playing with everybody, realizing that it doesn't matter what other people think about me that has no bearing on how well I'm able to provide for my family. And that has no bearing on how well I'm able to do my job or this, that or the other, right? It's literally just a self image thing. And when I can figure out that I can control myself image, then all of a sudden the world just opens up. Like I can do anything. And it's when people have made that connection and they have to make that connection all the time. Because like I said, sometimes we wait for when we come back, but when somebody can actually stand on their own two feet and authentically say, I don't care what you think about me, you feel that. And it's not in like this. I think a big piece of it is that it's not said with bravado. Right? I think too many men put on, put on this kind of macho mask when they say that don't care what you think about me. And it said with like a, like, I don't care what you think about me. Like, yeah, I can look at you and just very peacefully say like, what you think about me has no bearing on my self worth. Right? And it's, it's, it's for me, it's like, been a way big work in progress. And I think this podcast has actually helped me do it because I had to learn how to be vulnerable. Like what I'm telling people and things I'm saying. And I was for the longest time and I, I've been afraid of like, if I say this certain thing or tell a specific story, I'm going to hurt somebody's feelings. But more and more like I talk to people and have guests on and whatever I'm doing. Like actually, I really don't care because it's like, if I say something and I hurt your feelings, that's not my intention. And it's most likely on you. what? Yep. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Exactly. And that's on you. Exactly, and that's how I've had to start viewing it. But that's a whole conversation on it, a different day that we could. Yep. All right. So, we've, well, let me start with this question. Where can people find you? WestonBrandon.com pretty easy. I'm most active on Facebook out of all of the social medias I have. Instagram has gotten bigger since I've had a couple of reels kind of blow up. But also for not great reasons, there's a lot of angry people that really hate that I remarried, you know? So I get a lot more views now, but the number of followers hasn't increased to match the more views because people. A lot of the people are not happy, but then I get lots of good stuff too. So I still post actively on those, but for the most engagement, having conversations, I usually do that on Facebook and Instagram the most. I'm on TikTok as well, but yeah, that's where you'd find me. Last thing here is we covered a lot of topics. I think more than I probably usually cover, but I'm the type I want to... I want to like make sure I get everything in there for some reason. It's just who I am, I guess. But is there anything that we did not discuss that you would like to bring up? I don't think so. I think at some point, each of my little branches of what I do has been mentioned, you know, the biggest thing that my biggest priority that I am working on right now is speaking in more schools. The drive framework has turned into what's called the drive success system, which since we were talking about breaking paradigms and we talked about, you know, those issues with our youth and our young adults and those those beliefs that they have about themselves, I've created that system to intentionally break those belief systems. uh The problem with those belief systems though is that they were instilled through a lot of repetition, right? Interpreting the story a certain way multiple times over a long period of time. And it takes repetition to rewrite the story about yourself. So just doing an assembly, just doing one speech doesn't cut it. That doesn't happen in that way. That can inspire you and make you think differently for a short amount of time, but then the deeper ingrained beliefs come right back. So I've got a student journaling system as part of that that the students do every week for the entire school year. This came actually out of working with some school counselors and a superintendent up in Idaho of a really rural school district that hired me to go help students become proud of where they're from is what they originally asked me to do. And I'm like, okay, there's something else going on underneath that. why are you asking me that specific of a question? Like, why are you concerned that they're not proud of where they're coming from? They're like, well, because these issues and these issues and these issues, and I'm like, it sounds like this is probably going on. Like I had a pretty good idea. I was like, how about I ask the students some questions and see if I can come up with some deeper answers? And I found the answers I was expecting and presented them to the school. And I presented them with a plan on how we can rewrite those beliefs and actually accomplish lasting change. That's where the journals came from. And now it's the drive success system that I pitch to schools. It's pretty cool. That's the thing that I'm most proud of right now that I'm really trying to push. if I was going say anything, that would be what I'd mention. That's really cool. Well, Weston, it's been a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for taking the time away from your night to be on my show. Yeah, thanks for having me, Went longer, I think, than either of us planned, but it went by fast. You may have fun. that's how I usually roll when I'm in good conversations. So, um, thank you. if we're, if I'm hanging out in Saratoga Springs and I'm bored and I need somebody to eat dinner with, maybe I'll, I'll shoot you an email or something. do it. You should do it. Invites there. So thank you to everyone who's listening tonight. Please, if you, if this resonates with you at all, please uh subscribe and share. Thanks again. Until next time.