Latest / Caught on the Mike... / "We lived through it, now what?? "- Solo Episode

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"We lived through it, now what?? "- Solo Episode · Caught on the Mike...

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey friends, I cuts a lot.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Listener discretion is advised.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hello friends, and happy Wednesday, June 16th, 2021.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you are having a tremendous start to the summertime.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is 7.21 here in Lincoln, Nebraska, 722 in the evening, I should say, and it is still 100 degrees outside.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I shit you not.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now I have this particular rule of thumb that if you bitch about how cold it is in the dead of winter, you cannot complain about how hot it gets during the summertime, and vice versa.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, me personally, my favorite season is early to mid-fall.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I love pumpkin patches, I love haunted houses, I love decorating for Halloween.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I love throwing on jazz records, and I mean records on vinyl, and just enjoying an evening with the windows open, candles lit, the smell of fire pits through the air in the neighborhood.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's my favorite time of year.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: So here we are, episode 25 of this podcast.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: In some regards, I thought by this point in time I would be a lot further along, and then there's another part of me that's just shocked about how far along I actually am.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: The joy of it is all the people that I've got to connect with over this time since launching the first episode on September 27th, 2020.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Going back to a lot of those early episodes and actually just listening through the whole body of episodes, there is a connective tissue, whether it's very obvious or not, and that's kind of the mental health side of things.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now I am never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever going to proclaim that I'm any sort of self-help guru, life coach, or anything along those lines.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think most of those people that proclaim themselves that are charlatans.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's bullshit.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: That does not take away the fact that I genuinely am looking to help myself through putting content out there that could be useful or helpful to other people.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: I hope it does.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think if you're having genuine and sincere mental health issues, you need to go see a licensed, board-certified therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Go see a professional in that field.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Don't rely on books, don't rely on listening to podcasts, and I will tell you this: I should heed my own advice.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're all human, we're all works in progress, we all have things that we need to address, we all have skeletons in the closet.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care how perfect a person portrays themselves to be on social media, even they have something that they need to address or something that they need to fix.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And even the word fix, that's a really laborious term.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I should really say something that they need to confront.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Something that they need to address.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Address, that's the best word to use for that.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, moving on.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: So this episode in particular was supposed to be episode 26.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: It somehow ended up being episode 25, which I could give you an anecdote about that here in a couple of minutes.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I have very intentionally placed a certain order of episodes out there because I wanted to address something that maybe we've all put on the back burner over the course of the last year, but while it's on the back burner, it's kind of boiled over and moved to the forefront of our minds, especially people within my age group, maybe a little bit younger, and definitely in the age group above mine, and that issue is mortality.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, in the interest of being transparent, I'm going to just grab the bull by horns and say that I have had anxiety about the topic of death my entire life.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And for reasons I will not say on this podcast, I have learned that it's also genetic.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: I just recently read a quote that said that death was the worm at the core of the rotten apple that is some mental health disorders.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: As I stated and as I proclaimed just a few moments ago, I am not a mental health professional.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I am not stating that as a professional fact or a professional opinion.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's just something that I read that I thought was very intriguing.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thinking back to my own personal sense of anxiety, it's true.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's true for me at least.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Every single one of my stressors that I try and confront seem to have this crossroads where life and death meets in the middle and gives me an opportunity or allows me an opportunity to rate how severe the situation is.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I've kind of adapted actually recently is asking myself, is the house on fire?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, something is brought to my attention, something that's a stressor, or if I'm having trouble sleeping, I have to ask myself, is the house on fire?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: If the house is not on fire, then I have to move my mind to a different place.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a lot harder, especially if you're already dealing with high anxiety and anxiety disorder, or something along those lines.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot harder to get your mind to stop racing in that moment and focus on something else.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: I've taken a lot recently to deep breathing, um, making sure the temperature in the room is right, making sure I'm cool, um, listening to sounds that are comforting.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, for me, it's like rain sounds, meditative music, or you know, a lot of time lo-fi hip-hop, just like lo-fi hip-hop beats.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: It just enhances my calm.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a demolition man reference if you don't know that movie, but it enhances my calm and it allows me to kind of put my mind in a different space.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Where I lose the battle and I have to force myself to immediately distract myself by playing on the phone or doing something different, putting a movie on, is when I think about the topic of mortality, knowing the fact that the only inevitable conclusion to life is death.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people confront this issue with their sense of spirituality, whether that takes form in religion or meditative practices, or simply just making peace with whatever their belief system is.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is where mine gets a little bit complicated.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't like to talk a lot about religion, I don't like to talk a lot about politics because I do think they are very unique to the individuals that possess them, and I've said that before on the podcast, and I've said it on some of my social media posts and what have you.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I struggle, and it's not in a disrespectful way.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think the place that I've landed on most recently is that science can explain the how, your spirituality explains the why.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of things going on in society right now that really turn people into extremes.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: They're either really extremely bold in their religious practices, or they are, we all turn to warm food, atheists.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a fair middle ground for those of us that kind of teeter.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because I teeter, I admit it.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: I teeter all the time.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: I have struggles with faith, I have struggles with my belief system, and I think that's okay because I don't think I'm alone in that fact at all.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And about the topic of church and religion and spirituality, heard a very good message actually at church about a month ago.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we were at a confirmation with the family, and um the pastor gave a message, actually, it was the youth minister gave a message where his overall point was people don't ever quit their church or their spirituality, they quit the people that fraudulently represent it, and there's a lot of frauds out there, and politics have completely destroyed the platform and the essence of morality that surrounds religion, so it's made more cynics out of people, or at least that's my thought process.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think certain political parties and certain people in political power have weaponized the church and interpretation of the scripture as a way to push their political platform forward.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that is where I'm going to leave the topic of religion.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm right in the middle, I am in gray area.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Some days I'm a believer, other days, I don't know.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm okay with that.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to the topic of mortality and death anxiety, it doesn't help.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: We are all getting much older, and it seems like it's happening at a breakneck speed, really fast rate, like we are on the NASCAR racetrack, and we are getting faster and faster every time we make another lap around the sun, and it sucks, man.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: It sucks.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: My interpretation of lifespan is I sincerely thought that when I got to this point in life that a lot of my memories would be lapsing.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: But there are even days when I was a 16, 17-year-old that I remember like yesterday.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like there are conversations that I just have photographic memory of.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's really easy for me to mentally regress to younger years just because it just seems like it was not that long ago, but it was a long time ago, and I really wonder if I'm alone in that thought process.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're listening to this after you listen to this episode, drop me a direct message on Instagram, on Facebook, on any of the social media platforms.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Let's chat about this because I really do want to talk about it.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: But, anyways, going back to topic, I really think that 2020 and living through a pandemic, something that most none of us have ever lived through before, had really highlighted the value of life, mortality, and the things that are important in life.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think moreover, if you were a parent, you watched your kids go through this too, and there were moments that were heartbreaking.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you were smart and you followed the science and you just took the political bullshit out of it, um, and you just kind of played by the rules.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't make you sheep, by the way.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you just kind of played by the rules, I there were moments where our kids weren't socializing and you could kind of see the seeds of depression taking root in your children.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's hard, man.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's a hard thing to confront because you're not only confronting your own mortality, but they're confronting theirs at the same time.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: There were things that they were afraid of, there was, you know, social cues that they were missing out on, uh, school events, life-changing events.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Some schools didn't even have graduations.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's a big deal.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you can be mad at your political figures about it, you can be mad at um the lawmakers, you can be mad at the scientists, but the fact of the matter is, is it happened.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we lived through it, and most of us are alive through it.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, peace be with all the people that didn't make it out on the other side of it well, and you know, my thoughts are with all of the people that are still dealing with it, but all of this highlighted our sense of mortality, it also highlighted our sense of value in life.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: For me, I really question whether or not I would have followed this endeavor of starting a podcast had the pandemic not happened.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you listen to any of the past episodes and I'm talking with my guest, at some point in the episode 2020 and the pandemic comes up.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I've maybe been less than five episodes where it didn't come up, but it comes up because it impacted everybody.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think how we come out of it at this point, or where we're coming out of it, is where we're gonna find strength to ensure that we don't deal with this the same way again.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Was it handled perfectly?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Was it handled poorly?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: We simply do not know.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing in our lifetime to compare it to, and here we are in June of 2021.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: This thing really started fire in March of 2020.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're listening to this, you've lived through it, and you should count your blessings and send out your thoughts and condolences to those that maybe weren't so lucky, and to the families of those that weren't so lucky, because they too had to confront the topic of mortality firsthand.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Mike on the last episode of the podcast, he talked a lot about his hardcore humanism and you know, fulfilling a purpose-driven life.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, in the past year, I would challenge you to ask yourself if you have found an additional sense of purpose that maybe wasn't there before.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, for me, I have.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a lot of it is internal.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, obviously, this podcast, this platform, the social media, the motivational quotes and stuff that I try and post out every single day just to keep you engaged and keep you playing along, you know, that's purpose for me.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: But what's a new purpose for you?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is it self-improvement?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is it to be a better parent?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is it to be more aware of things like our health?
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh is it to be more aware of politics?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is it to be more aware of your spirituality?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because in some way, shape, or form, I would say, fact or not, it's just my strong personal opinion, confronting mortality in some form is at the root of this.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Confronting mortality has driven you to have a more purpose-driven life.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're the same person right now that you were in February 2020, I fucking applaud you.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Or I feel sorry for you.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know which.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Change does not come from comfort zones.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Strength does not come from comfort zones.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you just have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that may mean confronting the topic of mortality and death head on by living your best life.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: I sound like fucking Oprah now.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, changing topics before I wrap this up.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um I tell you what, I've been working on trying to put together some new episodes for you guys, some new exciting guests.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: I have spent the probably the better part of the last six weeks networking with people, um, starting conversations, and I apologize if I haven't followed up with all of you that have reached out that want to be on the show.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I want to work you in.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a little bit of OCD or something, but I'm really picky about the sequence of episodes and sequence of appearances.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: That way you get the most out of being on my show, and I get the most out of having you on my show.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just being as truthful as I can be.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: That all said, I have been really trying to reel in some exciting big name guests for the show, and I have had some outstanding communication with people I have admired for years.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, it has been constant rope a dope phone tag and email tag, and just a few episodes that I was really excited to make happen just haven't come to fruition yet.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm always looking for new ideas.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've got some ideas, drop me a message through social media and uh maybe we can make something happen.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to be on the show or you know somebody that would be a good fit for the show, send me a message.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: I am not gonna lie, I am not gonna just have any hack on just to have somebody on the show.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds really dickish.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the intention.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think if you've made it this far in this episode, you're invested.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've made it this far in my sequence of episodes, you're invested.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you understand, you get it, you know that my philosophy is and will always be quality over quantity.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna just book somebody to have a filler episode, it's not gonna happen.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: I would rather sit at my little desk behind my microphone by myself, like I'm doing right now, and put something out there just so you have something entertaining to listen to.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if you haven't yet, give me a follow on all social media platforms.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: That is Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, look for me at caught on the mic, C-A-U-G-H-T, O-N-T-H-E-M-I-K-E.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Look for me, give me a follow, and if you don't mind, give me a share, share my content, share my episodes.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: I am really trying to build this thing up and I cannot do it without you.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate all of your support.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for playing along on this episode.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: This has been Caught on the Mic with Michael Clark.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: I am Michael Clark.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, thank you.