Latest / The Christian Reeve Podcast / Brian Perry & Luke Grim | The Christian Reeve Podcast #224

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Brian Perry & Luke Grim | The Christian Reeve Podcast #224 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian Reef
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  Podcast. Today's guests are Brian Perry
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  and Luke Grimm of These 16 Things.
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  Welcome to the show guys. How you doing?
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  Doing great. Thanks for having us.
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  Dude, hello from across What do they say from across the pond?
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  That's right. That's right.
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  You guys have basically created this thing called 16 things and
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  you gave me a bit of a sort of blurb.
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  So prior to. Us filming and as I understand
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  it's kind of more about like you built a bunch of like
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  principles, values, etc. That people could potentially
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  live by. And the idea is you want to
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  educate younger generations on these things and well tell us
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  more about this like how are you trying to help people with this
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  I. Could start.
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  So the idea came from actually, I I listened to another podcast,
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  a whole other podcast that was talking about things to teach
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  your kids that schools aren't going to.
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  And as soon as I heard that, I told my wife, I said we have to
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  do something around this because I have seven kids.
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  I didn't at that time, but now I currently have seven kids.
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  Luke has even more. Luke has eight kids.
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  So we're out here crushing it on making more babies, and excuse
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  me, we. We've been friends here for a
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  couple years and I've seen that Luke also wants to teach his
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  kids these life skills and and we do too.
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  So as a very quick story or scenario, I can leave on a
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  Friday night. In fact we did last night, we
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  went out last night, my wife and I left, had to run around, do
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  run some errands and we can leave and my 14 year old can
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  take care of the house. She can get the kids dinner.
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  If that's what's needed, she can get them in bed if that's what's
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  needed. We weren't gone along last
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  night, but she can do some things to help take care of the
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  family, all the other kids except for we took the baby.
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  So when I heard this podcast, I thought again, I I want to do
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  something around this. I already teach my kids a lot of
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  these things. Of course, the the list is
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  pretty extensive. So it was a good reminder on
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  some of the other things I want to try to teach the kids and
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  started around for a while and finally, you know, eventually
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  started. Working on the website, coming
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  up with with our process of doing everything brought Luke in
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  here. He changed a few things, added
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  some some great things that we needed to add to that list and
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  then we just took off from there.
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  Both of us running with this and and the goal is just to teach
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  kids life skills, to make sure they're prepared to stand on
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  their own, whether that's in faith or finances or health.
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  When they leave the house. When they're ready to leave the
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  house, have them ready to to live on their own.
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  What do you think of the? Yeah.
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  So as a I I I'm retired military, I spent 20 years
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  active duty army which makes the not having a gun conversation
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  kind of funny actually. And and so I served around a lot
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  of young people that joined the military because they didn't
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  have not everybody, but I don't know probably 40% probably
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  didn't have an option. They didn't know what else to go
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  do. They finished school.
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  They never applied to college. They they if they did, they got
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  turned down. They had a GED, they never
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  finished with the diploma. They were just lost and looking
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  for direction. There was a lot of young people
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  serving like that and near the end of my 20 years I started to
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  think back. Where did that happen?
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  At what point did this 20 year old used to be a 15 year old and
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  was there parental guidance? I don't know.
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  Was the kid a rebel? I don't know.
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  Was the kid just trying to find himself?
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  I don't know. But I found a lot of these young
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  people were joining, looking for some guidance, looking for some
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  direction. So was I.
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  When I joined, I was 17 years old.
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  And so now that I'm a high school teacher, I teach 11th and
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  12th graders, I teach government and economics, and I run the
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  alternative education program for students that are not going
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  to graduate because they don't have enough classes past.
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  And a lot of these students are lost.
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  And when I talk to the parents, a lot of parents have thrown
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  their hands up. They don't know what to do with
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  their kid. They feel like their kid is too
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  far gone down this path, too far gone down this path.
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  Their kid is too heavily involved with this or with this.
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  And again, Christian don't want to go too controversial, but
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  it's usually culture and some like a tentacle or a spider web
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  that's pulled them in different directions.
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  And the parents. Would like to bring them back to
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  how they believe. Would like to bring them back
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  into their values, but they don't know how.
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  At some point the parent and the kid have disconnected.
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  So the parents, a lot of them are just waiting till the kid is
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  18 so they can leave high school and figure it out and So what
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  Brian and I are trying to do these 16 things that they're
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  overarching their broad topics, but we try to push out a couple
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  lessons a week to say look parents if you're interested in
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  this topic. Delete it if you're not.
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  But if you're interested in this topic, read it.
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  Sit down for 15 minutes, talk with your kid about this thing.
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  Then on Thursday, we'll send out another one directly related to
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  that. So let's take it a step further.
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  And what we would love It's for parents to be intentional with
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  their kids. If you want to talk about for
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  America, if you want to talk about how much you love Donald
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  Trump, go for it. If you want to talk about how
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  much you love Joe Biden, go for it.
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  That is not a direction. We have no place in a household
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  when it comes to those conversations.
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  But we do think if you can be intentional with your kid, your
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  kid will appreciate that. The kid will remember that.
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  And when your kid is out of high school, you, I think you're
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  gonna have a good relationship with that kid because you were
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  intentional with them and show them that you love them.
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  So I know that's a lot that I don't know what Brian said, but
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  we want to be intentional, Christian.
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  That's where we're going. Well, let's expand upon that.
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  What does it mean to be intentional with your kids?
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  It's just taking the time to to lead them as a as men and we're
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  Luke and I are Christians here and this is something I've been
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  rolling around in my head is what does it mean to to lead my
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  family. What are things I need to do in
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  order to do that. So let's just take one topic of
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  health Am I leading my family if my family just eats junk food
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  all the time? Am I leading them the right way?
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  I guess I could be leading them in the wrong way.
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  But am I leading them the right way if we just sit around and
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  you know we're having pizza every night or microwavable
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  dinners and and we're not eating healthy.
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  And by the time my kids are 304050, they're going to be
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  sitting in the hospital all the time.
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  We're going to the doctor every week to to get different
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  treatments. So and in my mind I think
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  everybody would excuse me. I think everybody would agree
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  that no, I'm not leading them the right way.
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  And that can go in every single topic that that we can talk
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  about. So for me it's being intentional
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  about teaching my kids again staying on this one health being
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  intentional about saying okay this is this is healthy food for
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  you. This is really bad food for you.
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  It's okay to sometimes eat that really bad food but let's let's
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  focus on on eating healthy food and but just taking that time to
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  actually talk to them and again that could be on any.
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  Number of topics. I just use health as an example,
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  but again one more time taking that time to intentionally talk
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  to your kids about these topics. You know, I remember a couple
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  times I was verbally destroyed in my past career right by by
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  army people that outranked me and they just want to just just
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  light me up. And I remember because those
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  were one-on-one conversations I also remember.
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  The one-on-one conversations where I was praised, I was
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  uplifted for doing something very well.
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  Those are the times I generally remember and both of them were
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  intentional. one-on-one conversations.
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  Now everyone's got a boss that goes to work unless you're an
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  entrepreneur. Brian actually owns his own
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  painting business. I don't, right?
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  I work for a school system. I would rather that I know my
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  principal hates me or loves me. Either one of those, I would
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  prefer either one of those than my principal is indifferent that
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  I go to work, my principal never talks to me, doesn't even
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  acknowledge me. So I want to think about those
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  households. We're come out now, parents and
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  kids. I think a kid wants to know
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  where their parent stands. I think a kid wants an
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  intentional conversation. With that parent to say, hey,
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  I'm matter, I'm matter so much. My dad is willing to sit me
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  down. My mom thinks I'm matter so
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  much, she's going to Take Me Out on a date, I don't know, to the
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  mall, to the bookstore for ice cream.
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  And at that location, we're going to spend 15 to 20 minutes
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  talking about whatever The thing is.
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  But kids matter. And I think sometimes parents,
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  we we try, we don't know how to engage in that.
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  You know, I remember when I first got into like my very,
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  very first paid job when I was 18 and.
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  I was just like so uncomfortable and tripping over myself at like
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  any single moment. Like everything I did was wrong.
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  It took many years. I think if it basically took
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  most of my 20s to kind of realize like that, that's not
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  the case. That's like an incorrect way to
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  think, right? And I'll extrapolate upon this
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  in a SEC, but like basically just this idea that like it's
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  just you're almost paralyzed by. Fear, essentially.
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  And that's why you need positive reinforcement to come in, be it
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  from a boss, from a parent. And I remember, like in that
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  first job, I remember the very first time a manager just turned
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  around to me and been like, hey, well done.
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  Then you worked really hard, like well done.
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  And like the way that made me feel because I was just so not
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  used to hearing that. Like, obviously I heard it like
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  from my parents, but like in a work saying as well, it's
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  particularly important. And I think the the problem with
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  the workplace a lot of the time is that like there's this
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  expectation. It's like, well, if you don't
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  hear anything, that means you're probably doing a good job.
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  Whereas if you're doing a bad job, they'll tell you.
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  And that's I think a tendency with human beings is we often
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  focus on the negatives. You'll always hear the
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  negatives, but you might not always hear the positives.
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  If you take like just another final example that this podcast
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  that I do, what we tend to focus on is, is key as well, like what
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  we're drawn to. So I have received a lot of
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  positive comments about this podcast and I'm very grateful
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  for all of them. But guess which comments I focus
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  on the most? There might be 20 comments that
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  are like this is great, Christian, well done, great
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  episode. And I look at all those and I'm
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  like, thank you so much and then there'll be that one comment.
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  It's like, this is trash. This is terrible.
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  Stop doing this show you're useless.
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  And that'll be the one that I think about for the next month.
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  So, Christian, that you know why I like this.
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  The last 45 seconds, you just gave me an idea about what I
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  want to write about in two weeks.
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  Literally that. That's the thing.
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  Everyone listen to this pause and consider if you got kids.
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  What if you could get your kid ready to leave the house when
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  they're 18 and they're ready to enter the workforce and deal
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  with what you just said? So we have teachers that when we
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  get evaluations on a scale of 1 to 4 fours, great, One is
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  horrible. You can get tons of threes and a
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  couple fours and maybe a two. And that is what the teachers
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  focus on. They get in their feelings, they
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  get emotional, They become train wrecks.
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  They think everyone hates them. It's like, stop, you got 49
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  fantastic remarks. You got one that's just a little
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  below average. And a lot of adults don't know
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  how to focus on and still work within that.
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  And we're wired to do that, I think.
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  But what if we could sit down with their kids and prepare them
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  for that? That is what we're trying to do.
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  There's another element I want to add to this as well.
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  It's important to understand this from a young age and be
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  taught this so that you can avoid manipulation.
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  There's often negative. Criticism in, say, the workplace
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  can be used. And I I get really angry looking
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  back now because I'm fully aware of this now.
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  But when I was that age, I didn't realize what they were
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  doing. They were intentionally saying
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  certain things that they knew would deliberately, I don't
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  know, bother me, caused me to be upset, and then would then mean
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  that I'd work harder to counteract that.
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  And then that's obviously that's what they wanted.
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  But they weren't treating me like a person.
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  They were just treating me like something they could push, I
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  don't know, just push around essentially.
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  And it's like, yeah, that's the thing you have to be taught
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  those kind of, I suppose, self respect.
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  I don't. And I know as a teacher you
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  might disagree with me here, but I got to say from my experience
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  at school and a lot of people I know in the UK.
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  They don't really tend to teach you those life qualities, you
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  know? Yes, they teach you how to read,
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  write and stuff like that, but they don't really teach you like
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  things like you know self respect and you know that stuff
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  that's going to prepare you for actually dealing with life.
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  You know, I think I think the only thing that I really learned
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  that was actually useful in life was critical thinking.
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  And even that I understand is not like a commonly taught thing
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  across. The UK.
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  Now I agree and Brian was going to chime in, but but first, to
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  your point of teachers not really teaching the stuff, I
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  agree completely. Depends which school.
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  I will say that doesn't largely depend on that, but.
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  I don't. I don't know.
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  I've been in a lot and you might have some teachers in some
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  schools that do it, but by and large, teachers were licensed.
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  So here we go. I'm licensed to teach
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  government. That's what I'm going to teach.
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  Is it my job to teach you about all these other things?
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  And if I do start to teach these other things, if I got 30 kids?
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  Maybe 20 kids are like, yeah I need this and the parents like,
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  yeah, but what about those ten that the parents disagree so but
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  that but that's kind of to Brian's point about starting
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  this in general is that is it even the role of schools to
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  teach us because if it if they did start teaching some of this
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  stuff, there's no way you're going to speak to every family's
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  values. There's no way that's so.
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  Important. Actually, I mean.
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  Tough, right? No, no, I agree.
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  I mean, because that was going to be my followup point was,
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  yeah, like, whose responsibility is it?
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  Is it the family or is it the school?
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  I'd argue probably that the family.
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  But then where does that leave, you know, people from broken
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  homes, people whose families, you know, they haven't got it
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  together? Well, maybe these are people
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  that shouldn't have ever become parents.
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  And it's like where where are those kids left in that
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  scenario? They need someone.
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  And I feel like bringing it back to you guys.
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  This is what. Something like this can can
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  really help, like kids like that, that maybe don't have
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  those people, those positive role models to draw from.
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  Because I know that like, as a young man growing up, like there
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  were certain people I drew inspiration from here and there.
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  But like, they were for a long time there in my 20s.
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  Like, I was just clueless. I was just like a even at like
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  25 or 26 clueless, like boy. And then some like really hard
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  stuff happened and it got through the other end and I was
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  like, oh, OK. Turns out I can deal with this
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  stuff then, but the point is it had to be learnt the hard way.
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  And I don't necessarily think that everyone has to learn the
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  hard way if you get on the same, yeah.
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  Brian. Yeah, I agree.
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  And I think a lot of people are in your situation where they get
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  out of, let's say college here in the USI, go to college or
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  Luke goes to the military. And let's say Luke had done his
• 15:53
  four years. And college did four years get
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  out and have no idea how to live in life.
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  I wasn't really maybe a few things about cooking, Let's say
• 16:04
  I was taught to cook a few things, very little.
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  And when I go out and get my first apartment right after
• 16:09
  college, living there, working two hours away from my family,
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  and that's it's a big learning curve to to get all that stuff
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  right, then I have my own income.
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  How do I start managing my money?
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  That's huge huge skill to learn to try to manage the money and
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  and it's all happening when again the first time I'm I'm out
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  of the house so there's nobody around to to really help unless
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  I'm calling my parents asking for help or something on some
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  things. But I can't just drive over
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  there 10 minutes and and figure something out.
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  So that's another point of this is for for the families that are
• 16:44
  together parents. Again, be intentional about
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  sitting your kids down to talk about these things if you're
• 16:50
  finding this as a young adult. Our lessons are typically
• 16:54
  written to a parent of teens. But I know for a fact we have a
• 16:58
  lot of teenagers on on our e-mail list as well who their
• 17:02
  parents that just go straight to them and and even though it's
• 17:05
  written to the parents, the teens can get a lot from it.
• 17:08
  And that goes for people in their 20s as well.
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  And I mean. We get things from these.
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  So when we write these lessons, it's typically something that's
• 17:16
  that's hitting us right then. And we're not at all saying,
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  hey, listen, my kids are just perfect, so why don't you guys
• 17:24
  listen to me and and I'm going to tell you how to do life, how
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  to raise kids. Far from it.
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  There are times my kids are, well, nobody's perfect.
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  One of our topics is how to deal with people.
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  And that's a constant struggle every single day for me, how to
• 17:43
  deal with anyone, with any relationship, my friends, my
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  wife, my kids. And nobody is going to have that
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  down perfect every time. And I make mistakes constantly,
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  but that doesn't mean I'm not trying to get better at that at
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  that topic. No, you're right.
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  I mean, I think, I think from what you're saying kind of
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  implies the fact that, yeah, that journey is never over.
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  You know, you can get into like. 20s, thirties, 40s, fifties, and
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  you'll still always be learning. And that's that's an important
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  life lesson to learn in of itself.
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  But in addition, like one thing I read a while ago is apparently
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  with with parents teaching their kids, kids tend to like mimic
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  behavior, right? So the lesson is more likely to
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  be learned from. Following your example as
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  opposed to you telling and and doing so, for example, we we
• 18:33
  spoke a bit earlier about like eating junk food and the problem
• 18:36
  with that was like okay. Let's say we have a family where
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  we're sitting at the dinner table and we're surrounded.
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  You know, we know that the cupboard has snacks and treats.
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  We know that freezer is full of like pizza or whatever and
• 18:50
  that's what has been set as the norm.
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  That's what's been normalized then.
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  Healthy options are not going to be the normal.
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  They're going to be less favorable because that's what
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  we've established in that household.
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  But of course, if you live by example of like lovely fresh
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  fruits and vegetables, you know, and like occasionally like okay,
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  every once in a while we have a treat.
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  But like, this is what's good for you.
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  This is what's the standard. This is what's normal.
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  That's that's key. What they see and what they
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  experience becomes the norm. And then when it comes to, I
• 19:25
  just want to add one final point to that.
• 19:27
  Another layer is that, like if you're trying to teach a a
• 19:31
  concept like discipline, for example, I don't think that
• 19:34
  there's any one conversation where you can sort of just go,
• 19:37
  this is what discipline is, but you can demonstrate it through
• 19:41
  your behavior. So for example, let's say you're
• 19:43
  a father and you have a son and you want to teach him about the
• 19:46
  concept of discipline. You could do it through, for
• 19:50
  example. Training together for say three
• 19:54
  to four weeks or going fishing together first say three to four
• 19:58
  weeks and you set like a routine and you stick to that routine.
• 20:01
  And then when your child is asking you, well, why do we do
• 20:04
  that? Why do we have to keep getting
• 20:05
  up at that time? Why do we have to do it like
• 20:07
  this, that. And the other, that's when you
• 20:09
  can begin to kind of explain, well, we need to do this because
• 20:13
  we need consistency. And this consistency is part of
• 20:16
  the concept of discipline. And the reason you need
• 20:19
  discipline is obviously that. This is like a way to live your
• 20:23
  life, to get like better results, and also it's just
• 20:27
  generally going to be better for you overall.
• 20:31
  And again, I'm finding myself, it's difficult to explain
• 20:34
  because I think with me and training over the past year,
• 20:39
  I've found that going to the gym has kind of taught me more life
• 20:45
  lessons than I probably have learned in anything else.
• 20:50
  I'm honestly. You know what I like about your
• 20:52
  word? Yeah.
• 20:53
  Go ahead, Brian. Sorry, I was going to say one.
• 20:56
  I guess taking one step back was we your your kids are watching.
• 21:00
  So whether you believe it or not, your kids are learning more
• 21:03
  by example than probably anything else.
• 21:06
  So if you are horrible and you know of our 16 things, if you're
• 21:10
  horrible and fifteen of those your kids are seeing that they
• 21:14
  are, it's just a fact and it's not the the saying of do as I
• 21:18
  say, not as I do. That doesn't work.
• 21:21
  You have to live by example for your kids, but I was going to
• 21:24
  get into the fitness. Luke can tell you about it more.
• 21:26
  But Luke, how many races did you do last year?
• 21:30
  2323 races and he'll tell you about a Spartan races.
• 21:35
  Got to get out there running an obstacle course and there's a
• 21:39
  lot of running, a lot of doing, obstacles.
• 21:42
  And I know his family was also involved and ours was to to an
• 21:46
  extent, but Luke got his kids out there.
• 21:49
  And you could talk about some of the lessons you may have learned
• 21:53
  from doing when those are your kids doing those lessons or
• 21:55
  doing those races. Yeah, Christian, I love your
• 22:00
  word discipline there. I think a lot of parents get the
• 22:03
  word discipline and they see it as a verb instead of a noun.
• 22:07
  You discipline your kid. It's something you do to your
• 22:10
  kid. And yeah, that that that
• 22:13
  happens. But in that backs off as your
• 22:16
  kids get older and older and older, it should last thing you
• 22:19
  want. One of the last things you want
• 22:21
  is your kid to be 18, leaving the house in the way that they
• 22:24
  remember you is as a disciplinarian that that kid is
• 22:27
  probably not going to seek your advice.
• 22:30
  When they're 21, they're probably not going to look for
• 22:32
  your input when they're dating. They're probably not going to
• 22:34
  come to you for stuff. Do they just remember you as a
• 22:36
  hard case, a disciplinarian? And again, this is coming from a
• 22:40
  retired Army guy, but discipline as a noun.
• 22:44
  I like your example of getting up with your son three or four
• 22:47
  weeks in a row and training. It's doing the thing even though
• 22:50
  when you don't want to do the thing because you know you need
• 22:53
  to do the thing. And usually there's no one else
• 22:56
  around watching and that develops true character.
• 23:01
  So I really like that. So I'm going to use that as
• 23:04
  something. With our these 16 things that
• 23:06
  parents Disqualify themselves on.
• 23:08
  You mentioned a cupboard full of snacks.
• 23:10
  You mentioned a freezer full of ice cream and pizza.
• 23:13
  And if that's your house, I need to come live at your house.
• 23:15
  That actually sounds pretty delicious.
• 23:16
  But. It's so protein, buddy.
• 23:20
  Yeah. So, so imagine as a parent.
• 23:22
  OK, so that's probably a better place, actually.
• 23:24
  So as a parent, let me talk to the overweight parents.
• 23:28
  Oh, that's judgmental. Just pause and listen.
• 23:31
  An overweight parent? And you receive an e-mail from
• 23:33
  us on a Monday and Thursday and we decide to write about a
• 23:36
  fitness lifestyle, not about soccer or cross country or it's
• 23:42
  a fitness lifestyle. It could be so many different
• 23:44
  things and fitness and eating. And you read this as a parent
• 23:47
  and you say, well, I'm overweight, I am disqualified.
• 23:52
  I can't talk to my kids about this.
• 23:54
  There's no way they will never take me seriously.
• 23:57
  So I'm just going to skip this entire week's lesson, wash it
• 24:01
  away, pretend it never happened. Money.
• 24:04
  I heard money come out talking about finances.
• 24:06
  Let me talk to the parents that are broke.
• 24:08
  They're in debt. They they owe college debt on
• 24:11
  their house, on their car. But mainly it's credit card
• 24:14
  debt. And they're like, we are so poor
• 24:17
  or we make so many bad decisions.
• 24:19
  I am disqualified. I can't talk to my kids about
• 24:22
  this lesson on financial literacy.
• 24:25
  I can't talk to my kids about saving.
• 24:27
  There's no way they're going to look at me as a hypocrite.
• 24:29
  OK, let me talk to these kind of parents.
• 24:31
  Listen. In your kids eyes, you are the
• 24:34
  most qualified person for every single topic.
• 24:38
  You are disqualifying yourself. I know because I've done it.
• 24:41
  I've told myself I can't do this thing because other people
• 24:45
  didn't disqualify me. I did.
• 24:47
  Well, I couldn't go to college. I'm too stupid.
• 24:49
  You would never let someone talk to someone else like that.
• 24:52
  But we do it to ourselves all the time.
• 24:55
  I can't because I can't. I I'm dumb.
• 24:57
  I'm fat. None of these things are true.
• 24:59
  We tell ourselves nasty things we would never tell other
• 25:02
  people. So instead of disqualifying
• 25:05
  ourselves, Christian, I like your perspective of doing it
• 25:08
  with. So let's use the fitness one as
• 25:10
  an example. If we were to write a lesson
• 25:12
  about fitness and food, Can you imagine how your kid would
• 25:17
  receive this? Hey son, sit at the table.
• 25:20
  Let's go through the team. That's a 5 minute read.
• 25:22
  Let's read it together. Okay.
• 25:24
  Son, I got to say, I got some changes to make and I'm willing
• 25:27
  to make them with you. So let's talk.
• 25:28
  Boom. I don't care where it goes from
• 25:30
  there. For the rest of your life, that
• 25:32
  rest of that kid's life, they're going to remember my dad, who's
• 25:35
  probably not fit and it's kind of overweight, said he's going
• 25:37
  to do it with me. That my friends, that's
• 25:41
  powerful. That inspires me to watch
• 25:42
  families go through that. So this is not Christian.
• 25:45
  This is not to judge a parent that's disqualified.
• 25:47
  It's the opposite. You can do this with your kid.
• 25:50
  So, Christian, I appreciate you giving me so much time on that.
• 25:53
  It says parents has qualified themselves, but yeah, go through
• 25:55
  it with them. You've touched on something very
• 25:58
  close to my heart when you spoke about this concept of
• 26:03
  disqualifying yourself. That brings up a lot of
• 26:07
  memories, thoughts, feelings for myself and what I've learned
• 26:10
  over the last couple of years. So I'll take you back somewhere
• 26:14
  in COVID. Just, you know, I came back from
• 26:18
  Europe, let myself go a little bit.
• 26:21
  I wasn't training anymore. You know, I made excuses, etc,
• 26:24
  right? I knew I'd eventually get back
• 26:25
  on it. I knew that.
• 26:26
  I knew that I had that kind of mental strength and stuff,
• 26:29
  right? But you know, time went on and
• 26:34
  on and on and on and you know, people said some some nasty
• 26:40
  things, sort of backhanded compliments, that kind of stuff.
• 26:45
  And somewhere last year, around the time of my birthday, I was
• 26:48
  like, right now's the time. And year later, I'm in great
• 26:53
  shape. But I remember how I used to
• 26:57
  look at myself in the mirror prior to the training and like
• 27:01
  how I would kind of just in general feel about myself.
• 27:09
  And to your point about this idea of disqualifying oneself,
• 27:12
  that is exactly how I thought about myself, disregarded like.
• 27:18
  Look at Look how terrible I look.
• 27:20
  Look at how ugly I am. Look, this is disgusting and I'd
• 27:24
  feel bad and like little things. My shoulders would be hunched.
• 27:28
  Now I walk down the street with my back straight.
• 27:32
  I'm proud. Look.
• 27:35
  Anyone who says that training and taking care of yourself is
• 27:38
  not a little bit about vanity is like there is a little bit of an
• 27:41
  element to it. But to be honest, it's like 10%
• 27:44
  of the equation. Because the other 90% is about
• 27:47
  learning to love yourself and appreciate who you are and
• 27:50
  realize that when you find yourself in a situation where
• 27:53
  you are disqualifying yourself as the example you gave, you
• 27:56
  know well that's not me. That doesn't apply.
• 27:59
  Well, it does because it's a lifestyle choice and everything
• 28:02
  is circumstance. I knew that I would lose that
• 28:05
  weight and I would get into a position where I liked how I
• 28:09
  look again. And you know what?
• 28:11
  I've got into the best shape of my life.
• 28:14
  And there's been other tests along the way.
• 28:16
  Like, for example, most recently I quit drinking for about six
• 28:19
  months. And there was reasons for that I
• 28:23
  don't really want to go into here, but I wondered about it
• 28:28
  when I first started. Like, can I do this?
• 28:31
  Is this something I can do, you know?
• 28:35
  And I did it. And then month by month, day by
• 28:37
  day gets easier and easier and easier.
• 28:40
  And you're like, wow. And like you also noticed like,
• 28:42
  wow, I feel like so good about myself right now.
• 28:44
  I feel in control. I feel like.
• 28:47
  And then I guess my point with all of this is that, like,
• 28:52
  wherever you're at in like your life right now, however you
• 28:55
  might feel about yourself, realize that it's all about
• 28:58
  circumstance and circumstances can change things.
• 29:02
  Sometimes take longer to change, sometimes they're more of a
• 29:05
  quick change, but they always can and will change.
• 29:09
  It fundamentally comes down to you not disqualifying yourself.
• 29:15
  It also comes down to, well, I agree 100% with what you're
• 29:18
  saying, but it also comes down to perspective.
• 29:22
  As well. And for, you know, seven kids, I
• 29:25
  when I tell people I have seven kids, most of the answers are,
• 29:29
  wow, I can't believe you do that.
• 29:31
  How can you? How can you have that many kids?
• 29:34
  I have two kids. I'm busy all the time.
• 29:36
  I'm stressed out. And again, so perspective.
• 29:39
  So one thing I learned several years ago was that let's say I
• 29:43
  had to take my kids to. To soccer practice.
• 29:46
  I'm running, running around, doing different things, whatever
• 29:48
  it is. So we'll say soccer practice.
• 29:50
  Well, I got to take my kids soccer practice.
• 29:51
  No, I get to take my kids to soccer practice.
• 29:54
  I live in an area which most people in our country and in
• 29:58
  years as well. And for all your European fans,
• 30:03
  followers, sorry, I'm saying soccer practice.
• 30:04
  I should be saying football, football.
• 30:07
  We're footballers here, right? So when we take them to football
• 30:11
  practice. Or I'm not saying I have to or I
• 30:15
  get, I'm saying I get to. Or my house is dirty sometimes
• 30:21
  and I can look at that and be like, Oh my gosh, why is my
• 30:24
  house always dirty? Or I can look at it and say my
• 30:29
  house is dirty because I have a a full House of kids.
• 30:33
  If it's not, it's not just our kids.
• 30:35
  One of loose kids is over for a couple days this week.
• 30:37
  Of course she doesn't make anything dirty.
• 30:39
  She usually cleans more than she makes dirty.
• 30:42
  But other kids over, and I can say my house always dirty.
• 30:46
  I'm tired of having all these kids over, all the extra kids
• 30:49
  over. I just want my kids.
• 30:50
  I want them to keep it clean. No, I I can say that.
• 30:53
  Or I could say our kids are just having a blast.
• 30:57
  They're not really purposely making it dirty.
• 31:00
  If it gets dirty for a couple days, they do go back and we we
• 31:03
  clean the whole thing. But I it gets dirty because I
• 31:07
  have a house full of of kids that I love and I'm surrounded
• 31:11
  by family and that makes it worth it.
• 31:14
  So and that can be for anything. I have to go to work.
• 31:16
  No, you get to go to work today. You get to have you, you get to
• 31:20
  go in, make some money and support your family.
• 31:22
  So it's all about perspective as well.
• 31:25
  I've got to ask. Yeah.
• 31:26
  Great points, by the way, Thank you so much for sharing both of
• 31:29
  you. I know my audience will crucify
• 31:32
  me if I don't say this, so. Eight kids, seven kids.
• 31:36
  How do you guys, like, even begin to manage that as far as,
• 31:40
  like, let's look at it from trying to give it equal time for
• 31:44
  each kid, equal focus for each kid.
• 31:46
  Like, how do you even approach something like that?
• 31:50
  Yeah, Yeah, I can. Yeah.
• 31:52
  So we actually have a system in our house, like on these 16
• 31:57
  things. It's intentional.
• 31:58
  Our houses have to be intentional.
• 31:59
  If not. Some kids going to fall through
• 32:02
  the crack and we don't want that to be their story.
• 32:04
  So yeah, so in our in our house we we got a list of chores and
• 32:08
  five sections and the oldest five they rotate every week.
• 32:11
  So because they're doing these hard work during the week and
• 32:14
  the older three are responsible for the younger three and they
• 32:16
  rotate. So the end of the week, you know
• 32:18
  they get their allowance money but you know we we take them out
• 32:21
  to a certain store, they love doing crafts.
• 32:24
  So take them out and they get to spend that money on crafts or we
• 32:26
  got to order something but they love that but in our budget.
• 32:31
  My wife and I, we have $25 set aside per kid to take them on an
• 32:34
  individual date. At some point during the month,
• 32:38
  either my wife or I will, we will take each kid out.
• 32:41
  So that's seven because the youngest one, he's not having
• 32:43
  two, so it doesn't mean a lot to him yet.
• 32:45
  We have seven daughters than this young and so I will date my
• 32:49
  daughters. I'll take them out to a
• 32:51
  bookstore, bookstore, and ice cream.
• 32:53
  One of them just the craft store.
• 32:55
  One of them just wants to go to the park.
• 32:57
  They all they all crave different things but.
• 33:01
  Dating our kids is important because it reminds them my
• 33:04
  father loves me so much or my mother that they will
• 33:07
  intentionally spend time with me.
• 33:08
  And in a large family. I want them to remember that
• 33:12
  when they're out of the house. I don't want, I don't want kid
• 33:15
  #5 to say, oh, I was in the middle and I was forgotten about
• 33:19
  what a horrible story. That's like trauma.
• 33:23
  I'm not trying to create that so Brian can speak different to his
• 33:26
  family, but for for us, we we have intentionally budgeted
• 33:29
  money. In perspective, we don't have to
• 33:31
  take them out of like how Brian said, perspective, we get to
• 33:35
  take them out for for a couple hours and a couple hours one
• 33:38
  time a month is nothing. We just got to put ourselves
• 33:41
  aside and do something with the kid.
• 33:45
  Christian, think about which I'm sure you understand this, but
• 33:48
  think about a fast food restaurant.
• 33:50
  And I assume they're the same over there, but over here it
• 33:54
  tends to be mostly teenage, so you go into this McDonald's.
• 33:59
  I don't go to that, but some people would go to McDonald's
• 34:02
  and they go in and they can order their meal and most of the
• 34:06
  time it's going to be right. But how does that, how do a
• 34:10
  bunch of teenagers serve that many people in that amount of
• 34:14
  time? It's because there's a system.
• 34:16
  There is a system of why they do exactly what they do, and
• 34:20
  typically they're doing the they're set up on one task at a
• 34:24
  time to take care of that, whether that's putting the
• 34:26
  burgers together, whatever it is.
• 34:27
  So what Luke's talking about is having the system we I can't
• 34:31
  just wake up every day and think, OK, today I'm going to
• 34:35
  without any other planning or thought beforehand.
• 34:38
  Okay. I'm going to exercise.
• 34:39
  I'm going to eat healthy. I'm going to make sure my wife
• 34:41
  knows that I love her. I'm going to make sure my kids
• 34:43
  know that I love them. I'm going to make sure my kids
• 34:45
  are organized, the house is clean.
• 34:47
  They get all their stuff done and it it's a good day.
• 34:51
  I can't do that without any planning or organizing
• 34:55
  beforehand. And I I get it.
• 34:57
  Sometimes we wake up on a Saturday and think, okay, we
• 34:59
  have no plans today. It's a it's a free for all.
• 35:02
  But in general I think you guys understand what it means.
• 35:05
  So. Having some sort of order of how
• 35:09
  to do things and setting that up beforehand so Luke's family has
• 35:12
  their system. It works awesome.
• 35:15
  We're probably a little less organized here, but we still
• 35:18
  have some organization. My wife.
• 35:19
  Will they have their chores? That's supposed to do?
• 35:22
  And then every Friday, my wife will take one of the kids out to
• 35:25
  out to lunch. That's their their mommy date
• 35:27
  for staying on top of their chores.
• 35:29
  And that's our system for that particular thing.
• 35:32
  We have other systems for other things, but but that's theirs.
• 35:34
  And other than that, for me, let's say because I don't have
• 35:37
  that set time every week to take a kid out, I just try to get
• 35:43
  some quality time. And so sometimes that means that
• 35:46
  the two oldest stay up until 10 or 11 with us watching TV.
• 35:51
  Because we've recognized that they need that time to just be
• 35:55
  with the kids, well, with the two and then us.
• 35:59
  So they don't, they don't. They need some time away from
• 36:02
  the five youngest kids running around causing chaos and it just
• 36:05
  needs to be parents and oldest kids.
• 36:07
  So whatever that system is for you guys or for anybody
• 36:10
  listening to this is again, have some sort of system, have some
• 36:14
  sort of organization on the process of how you do things.
• 36:18
  How do holidays work for you guys?
• 36:20
  That must be like, really regimented because you're like
• 36:24
  you're away from like home space, like controlled space,
• 36:27
  like so things can go wrong. Things can kind of, I suppose,
• 36:32
  mess with the plans. How do you guys approach that?
• 36:35
  We're pretty laid back and let's say nap times for example some
• 36:41
  families, which I I get. I've seen some studies that make
• 36:44
  it look really, really good to have exact you know set nap
• 36:48
  times and everything. But we are we're.
• 36:50
  We just wing it, we'll say. So if we're going to my parents
• 36:56
  for for Christmas Day and we're over there and it's middle, it's
• 37:00
  nap time for the couple youngest.
• 37:03
  Sometimes they get a nap, sometimes they don't.
• 37:04
  Sometimes they sleep in somebody's arms.
• 37:06
  Sometimes they get to go lay on somebody's bed where we're at
• 37:10
  and take a quick nap. That's fine.
• 37:12
  Same as staying out late. It doesn't happen very often,
• 37:16
  but there's times we're out past bedtime.
• 37:19
  And sometimes that means that the kids are sleeping on the
• 37:22
  couch while I'm playing cards. We we play a lot of cards with
• 37:25
  my parents and sometimes that does go till after bedtime and
• 37:29
  if the kids fall asleep on their couch and we have to carry them
• 37:32
  to the van, drive home, carry them back out that's fine with
• 37:35
  us. So it's.
• 37:37
  I'm going to say it could be chaotic, but it we try to have
• 37:41
  organized chaos. If you can understand what that
• 37:43
  means. But.
• 37:47
  Again, I could look back and think I I don't even want to go
• 37:50
  to my parents house for Christmas.
• 37:52
  I don't want to do all this. It's going to be a horrible day.
• 37:55
  Kids are going to be crying. They're going to be eating too
• 37:57
  much junk food so tempers are going to flare.
• 38:00
  Or I can look at that and say we get to spend Christmas with our
• 38:04
  family. Yeah, sure the kids are going to
• 38:06
  cry some, sure they're going to get grumpy, but it's going to be
• 38:09
  OK We're going to have a fun day.
• 38:12
  I I think most, I think most grandparents want to see their
• 38:15
  grandkids. I should hope so.
• 38:17
  Yeah, yeah, I believe that. But yeah, so.
• 38:19
  So check it out. I I, I think this is, this is
• 38:22
  going to be video too, right? Not just audio, I think, yeah.
• 38:25
  Yeah. So people see all three fingers
• 38:26
  up. So you got the grandkid, you got
• 38:28
  us the adult, you know, the mom and dad, then you got the
• 38:31
  grandparent. And I think that most of the
• 38:32
  times the grandparent and the adult, those relationships can
• 38:36
  be, I don't say busted and fractured, but they're just
• 38:40
  blah. They're playing.
• 38:42
  There's no real built up relationship.
• 38:43
  And so the adults like well. We're not going to take the
• 38:46
  kids, There are too many of them anyways.
• 38:48
  But the grandparents want to see their grandkids.
• 38:52
  They really do like I think grandparents will move closer to
• 38:56
  where their own kids are just so they can see their grandparents
• 38:59
  minded. And when we retired military, we
• 39:03
  we got my wife or family in one area, mine and the other
• 39:06
  probably about 16 hour difference.
• 39:07
  We intentionally came to where we are now.
• 39:10
  We didn't know anybody. We've never lived in the state
• 39:12
  in our life, in our lives, but we just knew it was in between
• 39:15
  grandparents. And we're kind of intentional
• 39:17
  about making those trips. And to Brian's point, it's a
• 39:20
  little chaotic, but that's part of their adventure.
• 39:22
  That's part of the story. You know that when they're out
• 39:24
  of the house and and they're they're getting married, that'll
• 39:26
  be part of their story. As a kid, we all got in the van.
• 39:29
  It was hot in the van, The A/C was horrible, It was so cramped.
• 39:32
  But man, we love taking those trips.
• 39:35
  That's how it ends. We love taking those trips.
• 39:38
  Something I picked up on as both of you were talking, which I
• 39:41
  find really interesting, is that a lot of the activities that you
• 39:44
  do are like, completely nothing to do with, like modern
• 39:48
  technology, right? So yeah, you might be watching
• 39:51
  TV here and there, right? But you'll be doing things like
• 39:53
  playing cards together, playing ball games together, doing
• 39:56
  things together. Now I've got no qualms with
• 39:58
  that. I think that's amazing.
• 40:00
  That's exactly like if I ever have kids, what I'll be trying
• 40:02
  to do, right? But we live in a different time.
• 40:07
  And, you know, you can't really get away from technology.
• 40:10
  You can restrict access to it. You can try to not let it take
• 40:15
  over. Easier said than done.
• 40:18
  Even myself, in my own life, I limit it as much as I can, but I
• 40:22
  still need it to do a lot of different things, like even just
• 40:24
  doing work, you know, you just have to be like near computers
• 40:29
  sometimes. Yeah, you just want to get away
• 40:31
  from it. Anyway, I wanted to kind of
• 40:34
  speak to that a little bit. Like, do you guys kind of.
• 40:37
  Purposefully keep that restricted in your homes or like
• 40:41
  where you go? Or is it something that you just
• 40:43
  kind of explained to your family like Okay?
• 40:46
  Listen, we just have to limit this.
• 40:48
  Like we just have to have like a healthy relationship with it.
• 40:51
  Talk us a little bit about that. Brian, didn't you write a lesson
• 40:56
  on this a few months back and you talked about that movie on
• 40:58
  Netflix? I did.
• 41:02
  Shoot, give me a second. What was that social dilemma?
• 41:05
  Social. Dilemma.
• 41:05
  Social dilemma, yes. And if, if I remember right in
• 41:09
  that it talked about studies that have been done about.
• 41:13
  I guess the if you want to say the mental health people or how
• 41:16
  unhappy people are now compared to before social media and
• 41:20
  especially teenagers and then if you want to narrow it down it's
• 41:24
  even I think more so teenage girls, teenage girls posting
• 41:27
  everything on TikTok or Instagram and needing to get
• 41:30
  those likes. So.
• 41:31
  So that is something. But as far as what we do, I'm
• 41:35
  going to say Christian, we do all of what you talk about and.
• 41:42
  And it's always, it's never set I guess it's it's always chaotic
• 41:48
  I get if if you want to say that which I know I just talked about
• 41:50
  being organized but there and I say always there are times it
• 41:54
  just is not managed very well. So and and I'll tell you how
• 41:59
  typically our boys are. My boys love their Nintendo
• 42:04
  Switch. Their they they love if we let
• 42:07
  them they would play video games all day long but we don't.
• 42:12
  Typically they're going to get, it's no more than an hour a day
• 42:15
  on that. And most time during the week,
• 42:17
  they don't get any of that time. So weekends they'll get an hour
• 42:20
  a day usually. But there are times we say just
• 42:24
  it, it doesn't matter. You know what, today's your day.
• 42:26
  If you want to play for four hours, do that.
• 42:28
  That's probably about the limit. We don't go any, any past that
• 42:31
  but our kids, my 14 year old daughter has, she has a phone.
• 42:38
  She has zero social media. She's rarely on her phone unless
• 42:42
  she's listening to a podcast or something, listen to some music,
• 42:47
  but again, no social media, so she's not making these stupid
• 42:50
  TikTok dances. My 13 year old son has what we
• 42:54
  call our our, the kids phone. And what that is, is when the
• 42:58
  kids go stay the night somewhere, whoever's going to
• 43:01
  stay the night gets to take that phone so that way they can have
• 43:03
  a way to be able to reach us. And there's been times he's
• 43:07
  abused that we find him upstairs texting a bunch.
• 43:10
  And but he also has no social media and they're they get some
• 43:14
  access to YouTube with us, with them understanding what they're
• 43:18
  allowed to watch and us monitoring that a little bit.
• 43:21
  But that's about it. So he typically now just leaves
• 43:25
  that phone downstairs. It's in our bedroom, it's it's
• 43:28
  laying on the counter in the kitchen and we can look at it
• 43:31
  anytime we want to make sure there's nothing going on that
• 43:34
  that shouldn't be so to make sure he's not looking up things
• 43:37
  that that teenage boy shouldn't be looking up.
• 43:39
  Or that he's just not sitting there, staring at the phone
• 43:43
  constantly. And we've all seen it.
• 43:45
  Luke and I talk about it all the time.
• 43:47
  You're out at a restaurant and you look over and the table next
• 43:52
  to us, there's two adults, three kids, and they're all sitting
• 43:56
  there on the front, exactly what Luke's doing right now.
• 43:58
  And the worst I saw a couple months ago was a dad with three
• 44:04
  kids. The dad rarely looked up from
• 44:07
  his phone. Two of the kids did the exact
• 44:09
  same thing, while the youngest kid who clearly just didn't have
• 44:12
  that phone, is sitting there quietly, not talking, just
• 44:15
  staring straight ahead. So now it's even worse.
• 44:18
  She doesn't have her phone to keep her occupied.
• 44:21
  She has to sit there being quiet with not one person in her
• 44:25
  family talking. And this lasted 1520 minutes
• 44:28
  while we're sitting there as our whole family, just sitting
• 44:31
  there, talking away, having fun, enjoying the meal and.
• 44:36
  So I know I'm. I'm rambling on and on about.
• 44:38
  This but I. Think.
• 44:39
  It's just one. It is.
• 44:41
  It is very important because people just don't understand
• 44:44
  what that's doing to their family.
• 44:46
  And then they wonder why their kids don't talk to them as as
• 44:49
  parents here, they wonder why their kids aren't talking to
• 44:51
  them when they don't. They don't make that that
• 44:54
  attempt to talk to them and they let them have their phone
• 44:56
  whenever they want. And I think it's wise.
• 44:58
  It's like a healthy mixture of both.
• 45:00
  I mean, I'm sure we can, we can all relate to this like when we
• 45:03
  were growing up. You're a kid, you're in the room
• 45:06
  for the adults. It's probably boring.
• 45:08
  Not always. Maybe there's some kids that are
• 45:10
  a little bit more switched on and maybe even engaged in the
• 45:12
  conversation. But generally speaking, from a
• 45:15
  kids perspective around adults, it's not always interesting.
• 45:18
  Sometimes it can be rather dull, however.
• 45:21
  That can obviously be mitigated by interaction.
• 45:24
  Things like doing activities together helps and often you
• 45:27
  know you feel more included, you feel more.
• 45:29
  Part of it that that I think is the key really is it's lesser
• 45:32
  that it's a boring situation, it's more that like.
• 45:35
  You just don't feel included. Like if you're just sitting
• 45:37
  there and all the adults are talking, doing what they're
• 45:39
  doing, then you're just sitting there and it's like you're not
• 45:42
  allowed to do what you want to do.
• 45:44
  Can feel sort of unfair. And you could maybe even start
• 45:48
  to sort of resent your parents for that.
• 45:49
  And we take your example of like parents going out, like if they
• 45:53
  say to their kids right, you can't be on your phones, but
• 45:55
  then I can. That's very unfair.
• 45:58
  But I think as well, like a lot of what you guys have kind of
• 46:02
  mentioned there is like laying ground rules and and kind of.
• 46:05
  Goes back to what we were saying before about normalized
• 46:07
  behavior. So that when I go out with my
• 46:10
  friends, I don't touch my phone. Like, I don't even think about
• 46:13
  the phone. I'm out with that person.
• 46:15
  But I see exactly what you see. I've all passed like restaurant
• 46:18
  windows and you see like, couple after couple after couple in
• 46:21
  like booths. And they're just on their phone.
• 46:23
  And you're like, why? What's the point?
• 46:24
  Why don't just stay at home? Like if you're just going to be
• 46:26
  on your phone? Like, I don't get that and maybe
• 46:29
  they don't see the problem, but over time you will.
• 46:33
  And as you mentioned there before. 1015 years from now,
• 46:37
  when your kids are growing up and you're not hearing from
• 46:39
  them, that's on you. That's your fault.
• 46:43
  You know, It all comes back to the old saying, isn't it what
• 46:46
  you what you put in is what you get out of that.
• 46:49
  Garbage in, garbage out. Christian, I like something you
• 46:51
  said earlier that I don't have kids, but if I did, okay.
• 46:56
  So. So that that's the question,
• 46:57
  right? What do we want, whether you
• 46:59
  have no kids? You got a three-year old or you
• 47:01
  got teenagers. So Brian and I and our oldest
• 47:04
  are are teenagers now. Ish 1413.
• 47:07
  Reach out to set a 1430 year old.
• 47:10
  What do we want our kid to be like when they're 20 when it
• 47:13
  comes to this very specific topic, Okay.
• 47:16
  Well, forget us and that's the thing, right?
• 47:18
  We're like, oh, I'm always on my phone, so I don't care.
• 47:20
  Yes, you do care. You absolutely care.
• 47:23
  You could be a raging alcoholic, but you care when your nine year
• 47:27
  old goes into the fridge and opens up a beer.
• 47:30
  You you don't care because what the law says.
• 47:33
  You care because you don't want your kid to do these things.
• 47:37
  You could be a raging alcoholic. You don't want your kids to
• 47:41
  become Alcoholics. And so even if you're addicted
• 47:45
  to your phone, we're coming back to disqualifying yourself.
• 47:48
  You are still qualified to talk about this.
• 47:51
  Can you imagine? Imagine sitting down at the
• 47:53
  table with your kid, right? Let's say this is a lesson like,
• 47:56
  hey kid, let's both take our phones face down, put them at
• 47:58
  the edge of the table. And let's see how many times we
• 48:01
  both look at our phones during this conversation and just tell
• 48:07
  them, look, I'm not here to put restrictions.
• 48:09
  That's not what this is about. I'm not here to limit screen
• 48:11
  time. That's not what this
• 48:12
  conversation's about. What I'm telling is I love you
• 48:14
  so much that I want you to have authentic relationships.
• 48:18
  And that comes from what you said, Christian, you're out with
• 48:20
  your friends. Those are authentic
• 48:22
  relationships. And dude, we are in it.
• 48:24
  We're in for some heartache when when our current crop of
• 48:26
  teenagers. Them out of high school, how are
• 48:29
  they going to date? What do they know about this?
• 48:32
  What do they know about sitting down in a room, making eye
• 48:35
  contact, reading body language, understanding how to date?
• 48:40
  I think we're in for a mess now, so if we could just fight,
• 48:43
  regain balance, we'd be okay. But I think we're our balance
• 48:47
  has shifted. There were a lot of teenagers
• 48:50
  and again, I work with them, a lot of teenagers.
• 48:52
  Electronics is all that they know.
• 48:55
  And they can be successful in business and with the job.
• 48:57
  But I'm talking about authentic relationships face to face.
• 49:00
  Go ahead. I will say this, I meet a lot of
• 49:02
  people in lots of different ages, like wherever I go and
• 49:05
  online etc. And a lot of it comes down to
• 49:08
  choice. Like the younger generations are
• 49:11
  also aware of this problem and I think the ones that are a bit
• 49:15
  more switched on about it being a problem are a lot less likely
• 49:19
  to just. Constantly be on their phone.
• 49:21
  You know, I I know people that have like just completely
• 49:23
  deleted social media entirely. I envy that.
• 49:26
  I wish I could do that or or just kind of like purposefully
• 49:32
  taking themselves out of that situation and putting themselves
• 49:35
  into you know the healthiest scenarios which is is real life
• 49:40
  like social media, the Internet. It's not real like it is and it
• 49:45
  isn't like the way people interact with each other.
• 49:48
  Is different from real life. Like you said, it's it's
• 49:52
  texting. Someone is never the same as
• 49:54
  being in the room with someone. Yeah, like I always tell people
• 49:57
  to call me because I can't stand, like how things get lost
• 50:00
  in text and lost in translation or just how frustrating it is
• 50:04
  1,000,000 miles a minute. It's, it's and it's not the same
• 50:07
  level of interaction. Yes, the Internet has brought us
• 50:10
  together and does amazing things like allowing us to be able to
• 50:13
  have this conversation from around the world.
• 50:15
  Fantastic. But at the same time.
• 50:18
  We still got it goes back to that old word, doesn't it
• 50:21
  discipline. We have to have discipline over
• 50:23
  this. And I think people are beginning
• 50:26
  to realize, I mean it's like it's like 20 or or so years
• 50:30
  maybe I I think you could probably say around 20 years of
• 50:33
  of like this form of the Internet, right, Because
• 50:37
  obviously the Internet's existed for a long time.
• 50:39
  But like as it exists right now with social media and
• 50:42
  everything, it's we're moving into like a new Phase I think
• 50:46
  where people are kind of. Coming out of it and realizing
• 50:49
  that, okay, there's a lot of benefits to this, but there's a
• 50:51
  lot of negatives to this as well and it is having a negative
• 50:54
  impact on relationships and to speak to things like, say going
• 50:59
  on things like TikTok and stuff. I recently took a real big step
• 51:03
  back from that and there were various reasons for that, but I
• 51:06
  must say I'm so much happier since not being on that because
• 51:11
  the short form content and the scrolling effect and everything
• 51:15
  is like something you get sucked into.
• 51:18
  There's been, there's been a lot of studies on this as far as
• 51:20
  like studying the brain and how it affects the brain and stuff.
• 51:23
  And the consensus seems to be that it kind of just destroys
• 51:27
  your ability to appreciate long form content or to have, you
• 51:32
  know, attention like long form attention.
• 51:35
  So there's a lot of kids now that are experiencing things
• 51:38
  like ADHD, which that's genetics, but like things like.
• 51:42
  Tiktok are not going to help with that.
• 51:44
  It's going to make it worse if. Any so yeah, so with a lot of
• 51:47
  the kids in my government classes I teach that struggle
• 51:51
  with writing an essay. Now I know everyone is not a
• 51:54
  good writer and I don't expect everyone to be a good writer,
• 51:57
  but every two weeks they have to turn in three page paper that is
• 52:00
  their only great. You don't.
• 52:02
  I don't give you these multiple choice quiz.
• 52:03
  It's just 3-3 pages. You have two weeks to do it.
• 52:06
  On on tons of topics and they struggle to turn in anything
• 52:10
  that's coherent. Not everybody but a lot of them
• 52:12
  do and and I would give some critique and like look I
• 52:15
  understand your thoughts we're good on the thoughts but we need
• 52:17
  to learn how to convey your thoughts And then I would start
• 52:20
  to ask them what do you read and majority of these students what
• 52:25
  they read is you know the Twitter their Facebook stuff
• 52:28
  that's on the phone and so OK when when is tell me the last
• 52:32
  book you finished you can't. I'm not mad about that, but
• 52:36
  there's a theme there that when somebody because you mentioned
• 52:39
  long form content, that's what made me think about this.
• 52:41
  Students talking about teenagers that can open up a book, I don't
• 52:44
  know, 300 page book. It's gone through an editing
• 52:47
  process, multiple edits, gone through the publishing.
• 52:50
  It's formatted right, the grammar's right, the spelling's
• 52:53
  right and it takes time to understand what someone's trying
• 52:55
  to say. It develops the mind different
• 52:58
  than what Twitter will give you and a lot of teens become used
• 53:02
  to LOL. WTF OMG the emojis conveying how
• 53:08
  they feel through a picture of someone that gives me the
• 53:10
  smiling or laughing emoji, but they're sitting on the couch
• 53:13
  like this, but they're pretending to laugh.
• 53:18
  And when I was a drill ser in the base of train, I'll try to
• 53:20
  make this a very short story as a drill Sergeant when a boot
• 53:23
  camp, when soldiers leave their stuff out, we get to go through
• 53:25
  and destroy it. Not mail, but we get to destroy
• 53:27
  everything. But someone left a notepad out.
• 53:30
  They were riding home. And this 23 year old think it's
• 53:33
  23, is writing home to his mother and it's open.
• 53:36
  It's not mail yet. And so as I read this, this
• 53:39
  gentleman is writing to his mother and in his handwritten
• 53:43
  letter 17 different times, he put WTF, LOL, OMG and he wrote
• 53:50
  the little smiley faces with the tongue hanging out.
• 53:53
  This is a grown man trying to be in the United States Army
• 53:56
  writing to his own mother. Those full of grammar, full of
• 53:59
  spelling errors, everything. And this was the most socially
• 54:02
  awkward person in our group. And I don't know what, I don't
• 54:05
  know what it all means. I don't know.
• 54:06
  But I will forever remember a grown person writing a
• 54:10
  handwritten letter with LOL written in, with OMG, written
• 54:14
  in. Like, how do we get here?
• 54:17
  That's not the norm. That's it.
• 54:18
  That's an outlier. But I always remember it
• 54:21
  Christian. I wish we could rebalance.
• 54:23
  I do. I think as well a big element to
• 54:28
  it is maybe it is what your parents teach you as far as like
• 54:33
  you know, things we covered earlier, discipline, where to
• 54:36
  spend your time, etcetera. But I think a lot of it is also
• 54:39
  maybe personality too. I mean I remember when I was a
• 54:42
  team, it was during the era of like video games on things like
• 54:47
  Xbox 360 and stuff online and that and that was.
• 54:50
  Becoming more and more prevalent, it was like, if you
• 54:52
  like the golden arrow of that, the first proper wave of it I
• 54:56
  would say, and I remember back then, like you know, you'd have
• 55:00
  acts, you could sit and play games all day if you wanted to.
• 55:02
  And believe me, plenty of teens did.
• 55:04
  But like I remember I play video games for like 2 hours or
• 55:08
  something, maximum 4. But like I remember thinking
• 55:12
  like this is too much. I just want to go outside and
• 55:14
  play or I want to go hang out with my friends, go to the skate
• 55:16
  park, go to London, whatever. I didn't want to sit around
• 55:20
  playing video games all day because I just felt like it was
• 55:23
  tiresome. It was I I I don't know, like
• 55:28
  you, you're just sitting in one position doing one thing.
• 55:32
  And, like, I had great times, don't get me wrong.
• 55:35
  But like, at the same time there was that kind of discipline,
• 55:38
  even at that age, you know? And I I think back now, it's
• 55:41
  crazy. I used to get myself up at like
• 55:43
  7 or 8:00 AM on a weekend, a teenager.
• 55:47
  Yeah, waking up at that time to go to the skate park in in
• 55:50
  London because it was a particularly really cool one
• 55:53
  that I used to go to and I'm thinking like okay.
• 55:55
  So that level of discipline was there.
• 55:57
  But maybe that was like a personality thing.
• 55:59
  Maybe that was it could have been influenced by a lot of
• 56:02
  things that what I'd seen at home, what I'd seen from various
• 56:06
  role models in my life. But point is like I think you
• 56:09
  have to look at maybe the personality of your kids and
• 56:13
  kind of try to. Adhere your parental style to
• 56:19
  that. I mean, you guys have a lot of
• 56:21
  kids. Sounds like you.
• 56:24
  Obviously all of those kids are going to be different,
• 56:26
  different, like, do you know what I mean?
• 56:27
  And you've got to adjust it accordingly.
• 56:29
  You can't apply the same approach to all of them.
• 56:33
  And often with schools, that's where the problem lies because
• 56:36
  it's like okay. Well, this might work for these
• 56:38
  kids, but that's not going to work for these kids.
• 56:40
  But you're still trying to give like a blanket kind of 1 size.
• 56:46
  Fits all kind of approach which is just not always going to
• 56:49
  work. So something Brian's done very
• 56:51
  well when he started this, so I definitely got to give Brian
• 56:54
  some kudos, is when we write these lessons, you make sure
• 56:57
  that we recognize what you're talking about.
• 57:00
  Different kids and all these houses, all everywhere.
• 57:04
  And so let's use social media as an example.
• 57:05
  Let's say we write a lesson about social media with your
• 57:08
  kids. Who are we to pretend to know
• 57:11
  what's best for your kids, even if we knew you were one kid very
• 57:15
  well. We don't know them like the
• 57:17
  parent does. And that's just one kid.
• 57:19
  Well, we have hundreds of families out here, so it would
• 57:22
  be very, I don't know what the right word is, very uppity, very
• 57:25
  high and mighty, very egotistical.
• 57:26
  I don't know what the right word is to pretend to know these
• 57:28
  things. So instead of coming at it from
• 57:30
  that approach, we'll go back to the question where you said,
• 57:33
  Christian, I don't have kids, but if I did, OK.
• 57:36
  So parents, if you could take a step back and say what do you
• 57:39
  want your kids values to be when they leave the house.
• 57:43
  We mentioned faith, so let's come to faith.
• 57:45
  Without being controversial, whatever somebody's faith is,
• 57:47
  whatever it happens to be when your kid leaves the house and
• 57:52
  then they go to university, they go to, they go to work.
• 57:54
  Brian mentioned McDonald's, They go to McDonald's and they go to
• 57:57
  college and a coworker or friend says Christian, why?
• 58:03
  Why are you a picket? You know, why are you a
• 58:06
  Christian? Why are you a Catholic?
• 58:07
  Why are you Mormon? Why are you Buddhist?
• 58:08
  Why are you? Why are you Muslim?
• 58:12
  And the last thing you want your kid to say is.
• 58:15
  I don't know. My parents just made me go.
• 58:19
  Because if we truly believe in our own faith, we would like our
• 58:23
  kids to have that faith. We would.
• 58:25
  We'd like to impart our own values, maybe not push, but we'd
• 58:27
  like them to have that. And So what we're trying to tell
• 58:30
  parents is look, imagine. Imagine that perfect scenario.
• 58:33
  Your kid is 20 years old. How do we get from there back to
• 58:37
  where we are? How do we, how do we, how do we
• 58:39
  get that? We got to sit down and be
• 58:41
  intentional. So if your family has screen
• 58:43
  time all day every day, we're not pretending you should limit
• 58:46
  that. We're just saying I have a
• 58:47
  conversation about what healthy looks like for you all and and I
• 58:52
  think parents want to do that. But.
• 58:54
  And Brian's used this example a lot that parents sometimes we
• 58:57
  just get tired. We come home from work and we're
• 59:00
  tired, man. We just want to we just want to
• 59:03
  kick our feet up and watch something dumb on Netflix all
• 59:05
  night. But then it's 9:00 o'clock at
• 59:07
  night. Our kids are gone.
• 59:08
  We we don't see them and and another day is gone.
• 59:11
  That we were not intentional. So 15 minutes once a week and
• 59:15
  that's nothing. We can do that at the table that
• 59:18
  that's all we are, man. We're we're trying to give
• 59:19
  people tools and encouragement. Empower you so you can spend 15
• 59:23
  minutes at the table with your kid on this topic.
• 59:25
  Because I know you want good for your kid.
• 59:27
  I know that you do. Let's just make the time for it.
• 59:31
  I think you could apply that to all relationships in life as
• 59:33
  well. Like when you really think about
• 59:35
  it, it's just taking the time to sit down and be like, hey,
• 59:38
  listen. Let's have a chat about this.
• 59:42
  Let's do this, Let's you know what I mean?
• 59:43
  It's and it's amazing how far that can go as well.
• 59:47
  When I think about the concept of empathy as an example, I used
• 59:52
  to have a very bad understanding of what that meant, you know,
• 59:56
  cuz I was like very pragmatic minded, still am, but I didn't
• 1:00:00
  understand like how powerful it could be to just sit down and be
• 1:00:03
  like, hey, I'm here or you know, talk to me, tell me what you
• 1:00:08
  need. Or do you want me to just sit
• 1:00:11
  and listen Cool, all right? And you just listen and you
• 1:00:12
  don't say anything, you know? Or my favorite is to go to
• 1:00:17
  someone and say, like, what is it you need now?
• 1:00:20
  Advice or an ear? That's good.
• 1:00:24
  I'm using that one. But it's like I think a lot of
• 1:00:28
  the time in in those specific situations, the person might
• 1:00:32
  feel who needs the the empathy probably feels powerless and so.
• 1:00:38
  If you come in there just like you need to do this, you need to
• 1:00:41
  do this, you need to do this, it kind of undermines that.
• 1:00:43
  Whereas if you come in with love and respect and you're just
• 1:00:45
  like, hey, I'm here, I understand you and you just
• 1:00:48
  offer them that level of respect and understanding and of course
• 1:00:52
  your sympathies, that's gonna go a lot further.
• 1:00:55
  And when that person feels better about things, they're
• 1:00:57
  gonna remember that. And going back to your point
• 1:01:00
  before your kids, they might not always remember what you said in
• 1:01:03
  a given context, but they'll remember those times that you
• 1:01:06
  sat down and spent with them. And they'll remember the fact
• 1:01:08
  they're like, damn, I've got all this many siblings and Dad was
• 1:01:13
  still able to sit and spend time with me.
• 1:01:17
  Yeah dude, that's it. Man you you should you should
• 1:01:20
  run a podcast or something man you got lots of stuff to say You
• 1:01:24
  you. I don't know Brian's looking
• 1:01:25
  chime in and just tell me to shut up Brian.
• 1:01:27
  But your your video game conversation I think back how
• 1:01:31
  you get up in the morning go to the skate park and versus video
• 1:01:33
  games. This is if somebody has balance.
• 1:01:36
  Right. Just just the way that you
• 1:01:38
  speak, you are totally in for having conversations,
• 1:01:40
  relationships and I I think that you are a prime example of what
• 1:01:44
  it means. To I don't know your age but to
• 1:01:47
  leave the house and just have a healthy life.
• 1:01:49
  You can interact. You can function to do you are
• 1:01:51
  you are highly successful with this stuff and we just want to
• 1:01:54
  empower parents. Well I I know.
• 1:01:56
  I know I got you. But what you're not is you're
• 1:01:59
  not inverted. Inverted.
• 1:02:02
  You don't talk introverted. You're not conceited.
• 1:02:04
  You're not egotistical. You're none of these things.
• 1:02:06
  You are ready to talk to people and turn the conversations with
• 1:02:09
  them. You're ready to inquire with
• 1:02:11
  people and get their thoughts on stuff.
• 1:02:12
  That is just a small example very small example of.
• 1:02:16
  We have to be intentional with their kids to show them how to
• 1:02:19
  do that when they're older. Brian mentioned finances.
• 1:02:22
  That's a hard skill managing finances.
• 1:02:24
  If we don't teach them how to do that now, your kid will be broke
• 1:02:29
  as a 20 year old if we don't. Brian mentioned dealing with
• 1:02:33
  others, interacting with others. If we don't teach them how to do
• 1:02:36
  this now, your kid will get fired from a job and for talking
• 1:02:40
  back to a boss and they don't understand what respect looks
• 1:02:42
  like, You know if we don't teach the things now.
• 1:02:45
  We've already gone through a lot of these issues.
• 1:02:47
  Let's just teach your kids so they don't have to go through
• 1:02:49
  some of these. We want them to learn, but I
• 1:02:52
  don't. I don't want my kids to get
• 1:02:53
  fired from jobs. They don't.
• 1:02:55
  They don't want to learn that one.
• 1:02:57
  You know that. Just some examples, man.
• 1:02:59
  This is what I meant earlier when I said learning the hard
• 1:03:02
  way versus learning like in general, because obviously the
• 1:03:05
  hard way is, you know, you don't show that level of respect or
• 1:03:10
  someone's going to make you understand what respect means or
• 1:03:13
  you know you. You.
• 1:03:16
  Yeah, you say the wrong thing to the boss.
• 1:03:17
  You get emotional. That's.
• 1:03:19
  I use this as an example. I've understood that in
• 1:03:21
  professional situations, be it work, be it dealing with a
• 1:03:26
  landlord, whatever, always maintain the same level of
• 1:03:30
  professionalism and don't allow yourself to be emotional,
• 1:03:33
  because if you do, you've lost your bargaining power.
• 1:03:37
  You've lost maybe respect, you've lost, you've lost your
• 1:03:41
  position in that, and people won't take you seriously
• 1:03:43
  anymore. Now, that's not to say that
• 1:03:45
  people shouldn't show emotions. You can get a little bit heated
• 1:03:48
  with the boss if they're treating you badly, if they're
• 1:03:50
  not showing you the respect you deserve.
• 1:03:52
  However, there is always a way to deal with do like show
• 1:03:58
  emotion but also be in control. You can't just like, let it out
• 1:04:02
  and just let your boss have it. Because I can tell you, you
• 1:04:06
  know, I have my temper on the check.
• 1:04:09
  I always have. But I, you know.
• 1:04:13
  Once or twice in my life, I've let it go.
• 1:04:15
  You know, I remember there was a situation a couple of years ago
• 1:04:18
  where I did and I was really ashamed about it.
• 1:04:21
  And I realized, and I was honest with myself and I looked at it
• 1:04:24
  like this was ego. This is what this was.
• 1:04:26
  I allowed this to kinda just go to a crazy level and then
• 1:04:32
  looking back on it like I had to be the ones to save that
• 1:04:36
  scenario and get it back to. We're talking again because, and
• 1:04:41
  that's another element I'll add to it as well, nothing will be
• 1:04:44
  achieved if you're shouting each other, I can tell you that.
• 1:04:46
  Much like it's you gotta be sitting down, sharing respect,
• 1:04:50
  having a conversation. That's when you solve these
• 1:04:52
  issues. And.
• 1:04:55
  What do we miss? Yeah.
• 1:04:57
  Well, I was just gonna add in that when we're talking about
• 1:05:01
  what we're doing, so lessons to your kids, it's OK to say, hey,
• 1:05:06
  I haven't always gotten this right.
• 1:05:08
  I've not always managed my money.
• 1:05:10
  I have lost my temper, managed my money well, I've lost my
• 1:05:13
  temper. I have made friends mad at me.
• 1:05:17
  You know it It's OK to apologize to our kids and say, listen, I
• 1:05:23
  may have been tired last night trying to put seven kids to bed.
• 1:05:26
  Not that our older ones need help get it going to bed, but
• 1:05:29
  try to put the the younger 4 to bed.
• 1:05:32
  I may have lost my temper and I apologize for that.
• 1:05:35
  But sometimes that when you mentioned chaos earlier when we
• 1:05:38
  were talking that can be chaos is bedtime sometimes but it it's
• 1:05:44
  okay to to say to the kids or if it's a relationship with your
• 1:05:48
  friends whatever. Listen I'm not perfect I never
• 1:05:52
  will be but let's go through this together.
• 1:05:56
  So I'm going to bring it back to that that finances because
• 1:05:58
  that's one topic we've been talking about so.
• 1:06:00
  Kids, I made these mistakes when I was your age or when I just
• 1:06:04
  got out on my own, I did this. How about we set this up, set up
• 1:06:08
  a system for you to go through this so you don't make those
• 1:06:11
  same mistakes. You're going to make mistakes
• 1:06:12
  and they're probably going to be other mistakes, and that's fine.
• 1:06:15
  Everybody has to go through that process of of learning again,
• 1:06:19
  whatever topic that is. But I've gone through these
• 1:06:24
  mistakes. This is what I would do.
• 1:06:26
  This is why I would do this. That's a big thing as well.
• 1:06:29
  Not saying just do this, say why we're doing certain things and
• 1:06:33
  and again tell you kids you make mistakes.
• 1:06:35
  So I don't if I'm going to go have have a surgery, if I need
• 1:06:40
  to go to the doctor have a surgery done.
• 1:06:44
  I don't want the doctor to be brand new to this and say
• 1:06:47
  listen, there's going to be mistakes.
• 1:06:49
  I'm going to make some mistakes. Maybe you won't make it back to
• 1:06:53
  the surgery. I would like him to have
• 1:06:55
  somebody else say, listen, these are mistakes that I made or
• 1:06:58
  these are mistakes I've heard about.
• 1:07:00
  Don't make these mistakes. So that is OK to have that talk.
• 1:07:04
  It's two different things, but it's OK to have that talk with
• 1:07:07
  the kids to hopefully lead them in the right direction.
• 1:07:11
  And again, we're not perfect on this.
• 1:07:13
  Neither one of us are we. As I said, we make mistakes all
• 1:07:17
  the time. So we're not saying when we put
• 1:07:19
  out a lesson to you got to do it this way or you're just an idiot
• 1:07:23
  parent. Not at all.
• 1:07:25
  Half the times we write a lesson, it's because we made
• 1:07:27
  that mistake. So hey, let's learn from what we
• 1:07:31
  did. I I know I've put out a lesson
• 1:07:33
  saying, listen guys, I just did this and I realized that it was
• 1:07:37
  dumb. So here's my lesson on don't do
• 1:07:40
  this, don't do what I did. If I ever find myself in that
• 1:07:44
  scenario, I'm going to make sure that the doctor says that I'm be
• 1:07:47
  like, can you get a second opinion?
• 1:07:51
  I'm not letting you touch me, Jesus.
• 1:07:54
  Mistakes will be made hold. Still, Oh my God, something you
• 1:08:02
  touched on there, which I want to expand upon a little bit
• 1:08:04
  more, is this concept of like, I I will get it wrong, you know, I
• 1:08:09
  will make mistakes. And like, often I feel like
• 1:08:11
  that's when kids really listen as well as when their parents
• 1:08:14
  start telling them about times when like, well, I did this, I
• 1:08:17
  did this, you know, because it's more relatable, isn't it?
• 1:08:19
  Like when you look at your parents as a young kid, it's
• 1:08:22
  like, they almost seem like a different species in a sense.
• 1:08:26
  It's, it's hard to imagine like, oh, at one point they were my
• 1:08:29
  age and they, you know, maybe they do understand what I'm
• 1:08:32
  going through or because it just feels so far apart.
• 1:08:34
  You feel so far apart sometimes, and you don't understand why
• 1:08:37
  adults. Say and do the things that they
• 1:08:39
  do. Maybe it seems unfair, maybe it
• 1:08:41
  seems unjust, etcetera, right. Even just like how teenagers are
• 1:08:45
  like chemically, like they're more impulsive, they're more
• 1:08:49
  emotional and because of chemistry, like you're, you
• 1:08:52
  know, you're still growing and growing, growing until, I
• 1:08:55
  believe, as far as like your mid 20s even.
• 1:08:58
  But crucially, and this is the thing I wanted to raise, there's
• 1:09:00
  this point where you suddenly realize, and it varies for
• 1:09:05
  everyone, but you suddenly realize.
• 1:09:07
  Your parents do not know everything, and your parents are
• 1:09:10
  people. And maybe your parents are even,
• 1:09:15
  like, winging it and they'd have no idea.
• 1:09:17
  Now, for instance, we spoke about structures and stuff.
• 1:09:20
  I'm willing to bet that you guys didn't sit down with your wives
• 1:09:22
  and go right. Well, we're going to plan it
• 1:09:24
  out. This is how it's going to be,
• 1:09:26
  right? It probably was like a okay.
• 1:09:29
  We'll figure it out as we go along.
• 1:09:31
  You know, maybe we'll take advice from parents.
• 1:09:35
  You know, read books, etcetera. You know you take information
• 1:09:38
  but you still figure out as you go along and you make mistakes
• 1:09:41
  as you go along and and but that's how that's how you
• 1:09:45
  function, right. But I think that's an important
• 1:09:48
  concept to understand. It's okay to make mistakes and
• 1:09:53
  that's how we grow and that's how we learn.
• 1:09:55
  And yeah, that your parents make mistakes too and that's that's
• 1:09:59
  just what life is because I think.
• 1:10:01
  As soon as it becomes like admonishing and punishment for
• 1:10:04
  making mistakes, that that's a crucial element.
• 1:10:07
  Like I had to delearn that that it's that it's okay to make
• 1:10:10
  mistakes because I remember, like school really just made me
• 1:10:15
  feel bad about a lot of things where this is concerned like I I
• 1:10:19
  bring this up. I brought this up in in my live
• 1:10:20
  streams before but this idea of like at school, they would say
• 1:10:24
  things to me like don't ask questions.
• 1:10:27
  You're asking too many questions.
• 1:10:29
  Why don't you understand? Yeah.
• 1:10:31
  This is at school. At school, I kid you not.
• 1:10:35
  So I stopped asking questions. And then other times it was
• 1:10:38
  like, you're talking too much, which I find this hilarious.
• 1:10:42
  You're talking too much. You need to learn to be quiet.
• 1:10:46
  And now everything I do in my life involves a lot of talking
• 1:10:50
  and a lot of asking. Questions.
• 1:10:53
  And So what does that teach you? Why it teaches you that not all
• 1:10:56
  the information that you receive is correct, teaches you that
• 1:11:00
  certain people you listen to, certain people not.
• 1:11:03
  But also I think it teaches you that any adult that's being fair
• 1:11:07
  and reasonable with you and showing you respect and showing
• 1:11:10
  you like it's okay to make mistakes, etcetera, they're
• 1:11:13
  going to be the ones that you listen to and mimic.
• 1:11:15
  And the ones that are harsher and almost unrelenting, you're
• 1:11:20
  going to, you're more likely to rebel to that.
• 1:11:23
  You know, you're more likely to act back to that.
• 1:11:26
  I'm willing to wager that you guys have less problems when it
• 1:11:28
  comes to discipline because there's that level of respect
• 1:11:31
  that you show your children. You talk to them, you let them
• 1:11:34
  make them understand, like, okay.
• 1:11:35
  Well, This is why we're doing this and This is why this is
• 1:11:37
  happening. You know, and the United States
• 1:11:40
  Army, there's actually a textbook definition of the word
• 1:11:44
  leadership. So if you go in front of a board
• 1:11:46
  or panel and you're getting asked questions, you want
• 1:11:48
  promotion, whatever, there's actually a question one of the
• 1:11:50
  people will ask you. Sergeant Reeve, what is, what is
• 1:11:54
  the Army definition of leadership?
• 1:11:56
  And the textbook answer is sorry, Major.
• 1:11:59
  Leadership is the process of influencing others to accomplish
• 1:12:02
  the mission by providing purpose, direction, motivation.
• 1:12:05
  Here's what I've always found lacking PDM, Purpose, direction,
• 1:12:08
  motivation. The word that's missing is the
• 1:12:11
  why, The reason we can tell you what's going to happen.
• 1:12:15
  That's the purpose. We can tell you how to do it,
• 1:12:17
  and I can motivate you, inspire you.
• 1:12:19
  But what's missing in that is here's the reason for it, and I
• 1:12:22
  get it. If there's war and there's
• 1:12:23
  combat, you need someone to go do something.
• 1:12:26
  You don't want that person to stop and ask why.
• 1:12:27
  You just have to do things. So you train them for that.
• 1:12:31
  But a 13 year old wants to know why and if and you asking
• 1:12:36
  questions in school, if there's a reason you're asking a
• 1:12:38
  question because you don't know something.
• 1:12:41
  And so if you can have that respect, like, you know, I
• 1:12:44
  actually in this house, we want you to know why we do things.
• 1:12:48
  You know, and this answer doesn't fly very well because I
• 1:12:51
  said so, because I'm dead. It's just maybe with a 5 year
• 1:12:55
  old. But you can't keep doing that
• 1:12:58
  and kids want to know why things happen.
• 1:13:00
  And the good news is if kids know why things happen, they
• 1:13:04
  learn how things operate. They're actually, they're
• 1:13:07
  actually better prepared for decision making.
• 1:13:10
  They're better prepared and and crazy circumstances at work or
• 1:13:14
  college or when they have kids. They know why things happen.
• 1:13:17
  I had one other interesting thing.
• 1:13:19
  You're talking about listening to people for rental advice.
• 1:13:22
  I have found that finances and parenting people want to get
• 1:13:27
  better in both, but they don't want to openly disclose how they
• 1:13:31
  do their own finances or how they parent.
• 1:13:35
  And if you were to get in someone's business and ask them
• 1:13:37
  this very simple question, don't answer the course, Christian.
• 1:13:39
  But Christian, how much money do you make?
• 1:13:41
  People don't want to answer that.
• 1:13:43
  Hey buddy, how much? What's your salary?
• 1:13:45
  How much you make? They might tell you per hour,
• 1:13:47
  but they don't want to disclose that.
• 1:13:50
  That you cannot have an honest conversation about finances
• 1:13:53
  which means no one can ever tell you if what you're doing can be
• 1:13:56
  improved upon. I can't say.
• 1:13:59
  Look, I think you're making mistakes here.
• 1:14:01
  Have you thought about maybe a small investment like this?
• 1:14:03
  You can do, do you can pay off your debt.
• 1:14:06
  People don't want to open up. And the other one's parenting.
• 1:14:09
  Nobody typically wants someone to come into their house and say
• 1:14:12
  look. What you did, that discipline
• 1:14:15
  was wrong. Here's the better way.
• 1:14:18
  People want to get better, but they don't want honesty with it.
• 1:14:21
  And so we're kind of hoping, Brian and I, that when we do
• 1:14:25
  these lessons that we're not coming down as high and mighty.
• 1:14:29
  We're not coming down telling people what to do.
• 1:14:31
  We're just presenting what we think is a good way.
• 1:14:35
  And when Brian writes his lessons, I sit down with my kids
• 1:14:39
  and we go over Brian's lessons. The kids come up.
• 1:14:42
  Dad, when are we going to go over Brian's lesson right now?
• 1:14:44
  Let's stop what we're doing. It's it's it's worth it.
• 1:14:47
  Us because nobody comes and tells me they're like, oh, Luke
• 1:14:50
  has eight kids. Who's going to tell him how to
• 1:14:52
  parent better? Tons of people.
• 1:14:54
  Good. I just need somebody to.
• 1:14:56
  So I I look forward to the Monday and Thursday newsletter
• 1:14:59
  that Brian pushed it out here in his weeks.
• 1:15:02
  I do. I look forward to.
• 1:15:03
  Him. So we do the same thing.
• 1:15:04
  We will sit down and go through the lessons.
• 1:15:07
  Whether I write or Luke writes it, we sit down.
• 1:15:10
  And go through the lessons with the kids.
• 1:15:13
  So you're putting out a weekly newsletter or biweekly, sorry.
• 1:15:17
  And are you also doing like lessons, lectures, like talk a
• 1:15:20
  little bit about the, the structure of this, how you're
• 1:15:22
  sort of giving this information out and helping young kids?
• 1:15:26
  I can do that. The the idea of this is, again,
• 1:15:30
  we send out a lesson Monday and Thursday mornings.
• 1:15:32
  Of course, that's our time here and they're both gonna be on the
• 1:15:37
  same topic. But two separate lessons.
• 1:15:41
  So Monday we'll go into whatever it is.
• 1:15:44
  Let's say I'm going to use a cooking one because I used that
• 1:15:46
  a couple weeks ago. So Monday we talked about the
• 1:15:49
  importance of eating a healthy diet and a a healthy snack or
• 1:15:57
  part of a meal is what we went over and.
• 1:16:01
  And then I think I put in all the ingredients to get.
• 1:16:03
  And then Thursday's lesson was actually cooking that that
• 1:16:06
  thing. So we talked about the health
• 1:16:08
  side of it. We talked about the process of
• 1:16:10
  actually making that, that dish. And so that'd be the two lessons
• 1:16:16
  going together. But the goal is we try to make
• 1:16:20
  it. I get that maybe cooking a meal
• 1:16:21
  is going to take longer, but the goal is that you parents take
• 1:16:25
  their kids, like we said, intentionally take your kids and
• 1:16:27
  sit down at maybe the dinner table.
• 1:16:31
  And have this talk about whatever that lesson is about
• 1:16:34
  that day and or that week. So but with that we want we
• 1:16:40
  obviously we've talked about doing this intentionally and we
• 1:16:43
  feel like the best time to do that is at like I said the
• 1:16:46
  dinner table our kids we all come together we're actually
• 1:16:50
  eating dinner at the at in our in our dining room or is
• 1:16:55
  actually a big big room so kitchen table we sit down we
• 1:16:59
  eat. And that's that's when we have
• 1:17:01
  everybody's ears. That's when we have everybody's
• 1:17:03
  attention. So that's when my family does
• 1:17:05
  it. Families can do it whenever they
• 1:17:07
  want differently. If they if they have another
• 1:17:09
  time, that works out better for them.
• 1:17:10
  But that's how we've designed it.
• 1:17:12
  Sit down at the dinner table as we're eating dinner.
• 1:17:14
  I typically eat faster than my kids anyway.
• 1:17:17
  They're talking and having fun playing.
• 1:17:19
  And right when I'm done eating or when my wife's done eating,
• 1:17:22
  we'll. Unfortunately, sometimes it is
• 1:17:25
  on the phone. But we'll pull out our phone,
• 1:17:26
  we'll read through, let us say, hey, let's talk through this and
• 1:17:28
  obviously we read through it, we put it down, we have an actual
• 1:17:31
  discussion with the kids and that takes me back to having a
• 1:17:35
  adult conversations with your kids.
• 1:17:37
  Kids appreciate that. They really do.
• 1:17:40
  We've had some some very awkward conversations, some very high
• 1:17:44
  level conversations with our kids and sometimes it comes down
• 1:17:47
  to finance. My kids know what I make.
• 1:17:49
  They know what we spend on our on the mortgage, they know.
• 1:17:53
  They know a lot about our our finances.
• 1:17:56
  And I think that's important for the kids to understand because
• 1:17:58
  they may be looking at at two different careers and one career
• 1:18:02
  makes $50,000 a year, one makes $100,000 a year.
• 1:18:05
  And they're going to say, you know, I I could go either way,
• 1:18:08
  but I think I'm going to go this career and say, well that's
• 1:18:13
  fine, understand that it's going to be you may struggle to pay
• 1:18:17
  your bills, let's say at that, not telling you to turn away
• 1:18:20
  from that. Just understand that there are
• 1:18:22
  two. Sides to this and and you do
• 1:18:26
  have that decision to make so and it's not just careers or
• 1:18:29
  income it's all of you know just high level decisions that kids
• 1:18:33
  are kids are happy I get think when they're pulled into some of
• 1:18:38
  those decision making. No, I I couldn't agree more.
• 1:18:42
  I mean, I will say it's a rocky road with that one because if
• 1:18:45
  you do find yourself maybe in a. Friction issue or you know
• 1:18:52
  you're at odds with your kid they might use that information
• 1:18:56
  against you. So it's it's a tricky one.
• 1:18:58
  However what you said there is crucial.
• 1:19:02
  It really is and and like we we touched on that a little bit at
• 1:19:05
  the beginning of the conversation but this idea of
• 1:19:06
  like being able to make better informed decisions later on like
• 1:19:11
  think about like. How much better it will be,
• 1:19:14
  let's say in the preparation for the college process and moving
• 1:19:18
  forward planning things out ahead of time.
• 1:19:20
  If you know how to manage your money and the value of money and
• 1:19:24
  what it means and like okay entry level, this is what this
• 1:19:28
  kind of job will look like out of college.
• 1:19:30
  Or if I don't go to college, this is what this, these careers
• 1:19:33
  can get me and this is what I'll be able to do with this,
• 1:19:35
  etcetera. And this is what this looks
• 1:19:37
  like. Monthly in terms of like getting
• 1:19:40
  an apartment, my food, bills, my taxes, insurance, etcetera,
• 1:19:43
  etcetera, etcetera. It's like fully understanding
• 1:19:46
  the value of money and what that equates to and what certain
• 1:19:51
  careers are going to give you as a result.
• 1:19:52
  Like I feel like it's almost like essential knowledge and it
• 1:19:56
  kind of blows my mind that it's not taught in the UK or in the
• 1:20:00
  States. I know there might be some
• 1:20:02
  examples here and there based. I can state it as fact that it's
• 1:20:06
  not something that's taught in schools.
• 1:20:08
  And that blows my mind because it's like so, so, so important,
• 1:20:13
  you know, even just getting like money for a second, just the
• 1:20:15
  value of things, the value of your time, you know, and like
• 1:20:20
  what that equates to, like right now we're we're in a situation
• 1:20:24
  where like I, I turned freelance, right?
• 1:20:27
  So with act as a freelance, we're freelancers and I started
• 1:20:32
  freelancing and marketing maybe like four or five years ago.
• 1:20:35
  And I had to like completely relearn how things work.
• 1:20:40
  So like I was so used to like the 40 hour week or you know
• 1:20:45
  rota base work via customer service or whatever.
• 1:20:47
  So I'd I'd done those different styles.
• 1:20:49
  I'd never thought about the concept of like I could maybe do
• 1:20:52
  like 3-4 hours work and this could equate to half a month's
• 1:20:56
  pay if if you know if I've negotiated a good enough
• 1:20:59
  contract or whatever and that can keep me going and then.
• 1:21:03
  What is it becoming back? It becomes about managing your
• 1:21:05
  money, managing ahead. But yeah, who teaches you that?
• 1:21:09
  I've had to figure that out myself.
• 1:21:11
  So I have good news. I've good news.
• 1:21:13
  One of our 16 things word for word Christian, is called.
• 1:21:17
  I'll make sure I don't mess it up.
• 1:21:19
  As you said, value. It is called the value of time.
• 1:21:23
  That is one of our 16 things. You mentioned video games.
• 1:21:27
  I came up playing video games too.
• 1:21:29
  I graduated high school in 1997, so when I was in South Korea.
• 1:21:33
  My first time there is a 19 year old, the PlayStation One was
• 1:21:35
  out, went there a second time in Korea, the PlayStation Two.
• 1:21:38
  So yeah, I remember and I think about right now today on a
• 1:21:43
  Saturday, how easy it is to waste an entire Saturday.
• 1:21:48
  Well, somebody else out there is getting a certificate, somebody
• 1:21:51
  else out there is studying for an exam.
• 1:21:53
  Somebody else out there spent time with their children,
• 1:21:56
  somebody else out there put in four hours of work to help feed
• 1:21:59
  their family. So all of those things are are
• 1:22:02
  the same time same 4 hours, but goodness, what we get from is
• 1:22:06
  vastly different and that's an example.
• 1:22:09
  How do we teach that to our kids.
• 1:22:10
  So Chris, I appreciate you giving us the opportunity to
• 1:22:13
  talk about this and and if there was any take away, if there was
• 1:22:16
  any huge take away for someone listening as a parent it is a
• 1:22:21
  you are uniquely qualified to talk to your children.
• 1:22:24
  You are you are uniquely called to lead your children to to to
• 1:22:28
  lead them to be adults and you are called to do that.
• 1:22:31
  Time you are qualified in. That other thing is your kids
• 1:22:33
  want to hear it. So if you can find 15 minutes to
• 1:22:37
  sit down and have those conversations, pick a topic.
• 1:22:40
  We just give you examples. That's all they are.
• 1:22:43
  But take 15 minutes. You're.
• 1:22:45
  I believe this because Brian's kids are a minor.
• 1:22:48
  Our kids are hungry for our time.
• 1:22:50
  They're hungry for those adult conversations.
• 1:22:53
  I believe that. Picking up the value of time.
• 1:22:56
  I wanna respect your time cuz we were close to two hours.
• 1:22:59
  I don't know how long we got but like it's been a while and
• 1:23:02
  there's some key questions I wanna ask you before we sort of
• 1:23:05
  finally wind things down. So final quick fire questions
• 1:23:10
  for you totally unrelated to what we've been speaking about
• 1:23:12
  today. Last month was actually Men's
• 1:23:17
  mental Health awareness month in the United States in.
• 1:23:22
  In England, it's tends to be in November.
• 1:23:24
  I actually found this out recently.
• 1:23:25
  That's the and this, this represents another issue, the
• 1:23:29
  fact that like, this isn't like immediately known.
• 1:23:32
  So we do the Movember thing. People grow up silly.
• 1:23:34
  Mustache is, but it's not specifically just for men's
• 1:23:38
  mental health. It's for like a range of
• 1:23:40
  different charities and it's it's an awesome, awesome charity
• 1:23:43
  that's in November. In the States, it's June.
• 1:23:46
  Obviously it's Pride month as well, but it's men's mental
• 1:23:50
  health month. I don't know.
• 1:23:51
  Why it couldn't just be a different month and then you've
• 1:23:53
  got like that focus there because obviously that prime
• 1:23:55
  month is an important holiday as well and that and that's, but it
• 1:24:01
  is, it's something very different, you know what I'm
• 1:24:03
  saying, Like and I feel like it men's mental health gets like
• 1:24:06
  overshadowed if you want to kind of make it serious for a second.
• 1:24:12
  But the statistics don't lie. There are a lot of suicides in
• 1:24:17
  in the States, in the UK, around the world.
• 1:24:20
  And I think this is an issue that's not often spoken about
• 1:24:23
  enough, and I've spoken on it on my channel a few times.
• 1:24:28
  I tried to speak about it when and where I can.
• 1:24:32
  I wanted to get your kind of advice to young men struggling
• 1:24:39
  with their mental health and who who might be in a difficult way.
• 1:24:44
  Like what advice could you give to them?
• 1:24:48
  I can take this to start and then Luke, you can chime in if
• 1:24:51
  you want to add more to it. But in my opinion, and I know
• 1:24:55
  Luke feels the same on this, but men need community.
• 1:24:58
  Everybody does need community, but men need community.
• 1:25:00
  And for us it's especially hard because we, you know, let's say
• 1:25:06
  we're going through something mentally, some sort of mental
• 1:25:08
  health issue. It's really easy for us to say,
• 1:25:11
  well, you know, I'm, I'm not going to hang out with my
• 1:25:13
  friends this weekend and and kind of take a step back and
• 1:25:17
  say. You know, again, I'm not going
• 1:25:19
  to hang out with my friends. I'm not going to, if you, if you
• 1:25:22
  go to some sort of religious things to church, I'm not going
• 1:25:25
  to go to church this week. I'm going to just take my time
• 1:25:28
  by myself and and become more and more isolated.
• 1:25:33
  And I think that's easiest men to do especially.
• 1:25:35
  So we're busy, you know, going to work raising the kids.
• 1:25:39
  Obviously if we're married, we have the spouse to help with
• 1:25:42
  that as well, but. Like I said, it's easy to just
• 1:25:47
  become more and more isolated and mid men need community.
• 1:25:51
  So that's my my thing join some sort of group.
• 1:25:56
  Get out with with other men. Sometimes we just need to go sit
• 1:26:01
  and and have dinner next Wednesday night.
• 1:26:03
  Luke and I will be doing a we're in a men's group as well through
• 1:26:07
  our church and we're going to be meeting with.
• 1:26:09
  Whoever shows up, we'll say 5-6 other guys and just hanging out.
• 1:26:13
  Sometimes we just hang out and talk because that's our time to
• 1:26:16
  to get away and and have our group.
• 1:26:18
  So that's my 2 senses guys get a community whether you find it
• 1:26:23
  online or not. It needs to eventually move to
• 1:26:26
  at least some of it in person, but that's my my biggest advice
• 1:26:33
  for that, for that topic I guess so.
• 1:26:36
  Thank you, Luke. Could you?
• 1:26:37
  Add to that as well as anything. I I would have said the same
• 1:26:41
  thing. I It's easy to get together with
• 1:26:44
  a bunch of guys, drink some beers, and you go home and you
• 1:26:47
  could say I met with the guys. Yeah, but all you did was hang
• 1:26:50
  out. Hanging out and having
• 1:26:52
  fellowship are two different things.
• 1:26:54
  Hanging out is superficial, You know, Having fellowship is this
• 1:27:01
  is tough because this borderline turns into a culture war.
• 1:27:04
  So I'll be careful here. Men in the last 10 years in
• 1:27:07
  movies and film and pop culture have been emasculated.
• 1:27:10
  We've been told that these things are toxic, these things
• 1:27:14
  that many men would say that we are inherently structured like
• 1:27:17
  this and women are inherently structured like this.
• 1:27:20
  Well, look at films, films. These kind of men are told that
• 1:27:23
  we're bad, we're toxic, and it becomes confusing to a lot of
• 1:27:27
  men. A lot of men think that if I act
• 1:27:30
  a certain way, it is now wrong. Now, whether the three of us
• 1:27:33
  agree or disagree on that topic. I can tell you that that's how a
• 1:27:36
  lot of teen boys feel. When I was getting out of the
• 1:27:40
  military, that's a lot of the men in the military felt I was
• 1:27:44
  like, I don't know, am I allowed to do this?
• 1:27:46
  I don't know. And so let me let me kind of
• 1:27:51
  narrow this in. I think that men should be able
• 1:27:53
  to get together with other men and be authentic and real and
• 1:27:59
  genuine. Maybe that's my broader point.
• 1:28:02
  I don't want to go culture wars that I think that men should be
• 1:28:04
  able to sit down and have real authentic conversations.
• 1:28:10
  And sometimes that means being vulnerable.
• 1:28:12
  That's that's what made me think about it.
• 1:28:13
  Being vulnerable is tough for a lot of men to actually open up
• 1:28:18
  and say this is my thing, and if we can be vulnerable to other
• 1:28:22
  guys, listen, when we get to get together for breakfast and lunch
• 1:28:26
  on a men's group, we don't laugh at anybody.
• 1:28:29
  With what The thing is they're going through and neither will
• 1:28:30
  your friends. They actually want to be in a
• 1:28:34
  community like that too. But it's tough, man.
• 1:28:37
  You know something interesting that you said that he said, like
• 1:28:39
  in the last 1015 years, what it means to be a man has been
• 1:28:43
  challenged a lot and in some cases has been demosculated.
• 1:28:47
  They demosculation and stuff like that.
• 1:28:49
  And like I both agree and disagree with this and I know
• 1:28:51
  you're hesitant on this issue and I think it is a tricky one
• 1:28:55
  for us to kind of traverse. But I will say this like.
• 1:28:59
  One thing I learned growing up is the what it means to be a man
• 1:29:06
  is something I think that you have to kind of like figure out
• 1:29:09
  for yourself and that there are like lots of different types of
• 1:29:12
  men. I don't think that there's
• 1:29:13
  anyone specific like this is it. This is how a man should be.
• 1:29:18
  Maybe historically there was. And I feel like, you know
• 1:29:23
  Hollywood and and culture has challenged that and.
• 1:29:26
  I think to some degree there's there has been a lot of good
• 1:29:28
  work there. There has been some toxic stuff
• 1:29:30
  that's been called out, pushed aside and been like this is not
• 1:29:33
  what it means to be a man. This is a negative trait.
• 1:29:36
  However, I do also think that it has put us in a position where
• 1:29:41
  it's like, well, what is, what does it mean to be a man?
• 1:29:43
  Like how do I, how do I like what are the values I should
• 1:29:47
  have? And it's like at the end of the
• 1:29:48
  day, I think what you said is is the key thing we got to focus in
• 1:29:53
  on. Is it's okay to be vulnerable
• 1:29:57
  and talk about these things and kind of move through them and
• 1:30:01
  and talk to your buddies about these things.
• 1:30:04
  It pays me. It pays me to say I just, I just
• 1:30:06
  add one more thing to this. Like when I want to reach out to
• 1:30:09
  people and open up to people, I open up to women.
• 1:30:12
  I don't open up to other dudes. And I I.
• 1:30:16
  Would like laughing because I get it.
• 1:30:17
  Yeah, laughing. Because I get it.
• 1:30:19
  I'd like to. And I'm not going to say that
• 1:30:21
  there's no other guys I've never like, opened up to in that my
• 1:30:24
  way. But I feel like depending on
• 1:30:26
  what your upbringing is and what you're used to, it's not always
• 1:30:30
  the easiest thing to do. And I feel like a lot of it is
• 1:30:33
  like when I think about hanging out with other dudes, it tends
• 1:30:36
  to be like, oh, we have a laugh. It's the boys.
• 1:30:38
  We do this, we do that. And there's there's some awesome
• 1:30:41
  stuff in that that you need. I mean, Brian, you spoke about
• 1:30:44
  community. Community is really, really
• 1:30:47
  important. I think you need that.
• 1:30:49
  But at the same time, I think we do need to be able to like open
• 1:30:53
  up to each other every once in a while and and be like, hey, you
• 1:30:55
  know what? Like things suck right now.
• 1:30:57
  Like, I don't know, this kind of sucks and just and just get it
• 1:31:02
  out. You know, you don't even
• 1:31:03
  necessarily have to like go for it, like talk in depth, but just
• 1:31:07
  being able to just say it and know that you're not going to be
• 1:31:10
  laughed at. Or whatever.
• 1:31:12
  That's something I like that has changed is that you don't get
• 1:31:15
  laughed at, you don't get told. And again, there are people that
• 1:31:20
  challenge that. For example, I never, if I'm
• 1:31:24
  working in a place and I'm going for a difficult time, I'm going
• 1:31:27
  to keep that to myself, cuz I know it'll be used against me.
• 1:31:30
  And I know there's expectations like you can't act this way, you
• 1:31:33
  can't act this way. And it's like.
• 1:31:35
  If you're going through something, it has nothing to do
• 1:31:37
  with being a man, being a woman. It's just as a human being, if
• 1:31:40
  you're going through something, it's very difficult to to focus.
• 1:31:43
  And you know, that old expression like, oh, put your
• 1:31:46
  problems aside, put leave them at the door.
• 1:31:48
  It's like easier said than done when, when it's something
• 1:31:51
  really, really heavy that's taken over your life, you know?
• 1:31:54
  And you know, Christian, if you go backwards from, you're at a
• 1:31:56
  funeral for a friend of yours that commits suicide.
• 1:31:59
  Yeah, go backwards. Go backwards in the timeline and
• 1:32:02
  everyone says, ah. I wish they would have said
• 1:32:05
  something. I wish they would have.
• 1:32:07
  OK, well, how about this question?
• 1:32:08
  Why didn't they? So if you, if you were to start
• 1:32:11
  going backwards, if if they're truly your friend, this is not
• 1:32:16
  putting guilt on somebody. But were you part of an
• 1:32:18
  environment where people could? Did you foster an environment
• 1:32:22
  where somebody would come to you?
• 1:32:24
  Were you busy hanging out with the boys, or did you sometimes
• 1:32:27
  have honest, deep, vulnerable conversations?
• 1:32:30
  You can still have a beer there. No one's saying you can't have a
• 1:32:32
  beer. But I'm saying were you part of
• 1:32:35
  the atmosphere where all you're doing is hanging out with the
• 1:32:37
  boys or were you as men willing to have tough conversations?
• 1:32:41
  Because if you go backwards? I hear that question a lot, man.
• 1:32:44
  Why didn't they tell us? Probably for a lot of reasons,
• 1:32:48
  probably because they didn't know who to go to or they didn't
• 1:32:50
  feel comfortable going to. So Brian and I, with our men's
• 1:32:52
  group, we are intentionally set that atmosphere up and we asked
• 1:32:57
  some tough questions. And we get some good
• 1:32:59
  conversations, but it's it's tough as a lot of men to open.
• 1:33:03
  I like how you said that. No, I think, I think that's the
• 1:33:06
  key, isn't it? I mean that kind of solves both
• 1:33:09
  those things. You provide a community and you
• 1:33:11
  also offer a space where it's like I get it like some guys are
• 1:33:15
  more open, some guys are less. So again, different types of
• 1:33:19
  men, You know, there's no right or wrong in that.
• 1:33:21
  But I will say that for any guys that are listening to this who
• 1:33:24
  maybe they feel like they can't talk about these things like
• 1:33:27
  please do. At the end of the day, you're
• 1:33:31
  not alone in this. Like, I give you an example.
• 1:33:34
  I was at the pub the other day and me and my friends were
• 1:33:38
  actually it was me and my friend.
• 1:33:40
  And we'd met some guys and they were just like playing darts.
• 1:33:43
  And it was a lot of fun, right? And I saw a guy on his own and
• 1:33:50
  he was like this big jacked dude.
• 1:33:53
  He's. Wearing sunglasses indoors.
• 1:33:55
  And he's all serious and everything, right?
• 1:33:57
  But I saw right through that I could see that, like, this guy's
• 1:34:00
  got something going on. And I just sat now.
• 1:34:03
  And I first was like, hey, dude, you're right.
• 1:34:04
  You're having a good time. And he's like, yeah, yeah, I'm
• 1:34:07
  good, you know, here and there. But, you know, I can tell
• 1:34:11
  something's off. Yeah, he's puts on a big persona
• 1:34:14
  and like, the strong exterior, but I see through it.
• 1:34:17
  And I said, hey, listen, if you want to join us, come join us,
• 1:34:20
  man. And he was like, yeah, I might
• 1:34:22
  do that. He doesn't join us. 20-30
• 1:34:26
  minutes later, I sit down next to him and I'm like, hey man,
• 1:34:29
  should I want to join us, want to hang out.
• 1:34:32
  And you know, we just talked for a little bit.
• 1:34:34
  And I guess my point with this is I made sure that like,
• 1:34:39
  whatever his night turns out like and whatever he chooses to
• 1:34:41
  do, he knows that he's included in that.
• 1:34:43
  And at any point he can just get up and come over and hang out
• 1:34:46
  and it's fine. And that, that's, that's the
• 1:34:50
  key, is like just looking out for each other.
• 1:34:53
  Just being like, hey, listen, you don't have to do this alone.
• 1:34:58
  Yep, Yep. People have value and they have
• 1:35:00
  worth. That's right.
• 1:35:02
  Okay, a couple of quick fire questions for you.
• 1:35:05
  My final questions, what's the best advice you've ever
• 1:35:09
  received? Wow.
• 1:35:18
  That's a good on the spot question, right?
• 1:35:20
  That is a good on the spot question boy I there's been so
• 1:35:25
  much good advice like I'm trying to narrow down Luke do you have
• 1:35:28
  something Luke cuz I. You know I.
• 1:35:31
  Don't have something off the top of my head.
• 1:35:32
  I I I think I do. It actually started It came from
• 1:35:36
  teaching, but I've used it forever.
• 1:35:39
  A principal was observing my class one day when I first
• 1:35:41
  started teaching, and during my evaluation on it, she said wait,
• 1:35:45
  so spell the word wait, WAIT. And she came across as, why am I
• 1:35:50
  talking? And her comment was you as a
• 1:35:54
  teacher did the majority of the talking.
• 1:35:56
  And I'm just used to teaching in the Army instruction.
• 1:35:58
  But I had 6th graders. I was a brand new teacher right
• 1:36:01
  out of the military. And why am I talking?
• 1:36:05
  And I like it. You could actually funnel that
• 1:36:07
  back to the the men's mental health is me just talking to a
• 1:36:11
  guy that's not going to solve something.
• 1:36:13
  The person going through the issue, they kind of need to be
• 1:36:15
  heard. So I have really told myself
• 1:36:19
  wait, wait, wait, wait, Whether it's leading a Bible study or
• 1:36:22
  I'm in the small group with Brian, I'm doing anything.
• 1:36:25
  I'm talking about wife. I don't know if that's the best
• 1:36:28
  advice, but that's really good advice that I've taken.
• 1:36:32
  Similar question but different approach.
• 1:36:36
  What's the biggest life lesson you've learned so far?
• 1:36:42
  Biggest life lesson? I'm not going to say this is the
• 1:36:50
  biggest life lesson, but a big life lesson is just
• 1:36:53
  understanding that we are all flawed.
• 1:36:59
  So I can. I'll just use my relationship
• 1:37:03
  with my wife for example this. Not that this happened, but if
• 1:37:07
  we do get an argument or something.
• 1:37:11
  And I don't agree with what she's doing.
• 1:37:12
  And this could be friends, this could be my kids, anyone
• 1:37:15
  understanding that. There is another side to the
• 1:37:19
  coin, their side of of an argument, a disagreement,
• 1:37:22
  whatever that is, and understanding that sometimes we
• 1:37:26
  make mistakes. I'm going to make them.
• 1:37:28
  She's going to make them. So we're flawed and and a little
• 1:37:34
  bit of grace can go a long way. Agreement.
• 1:37:39
  Grace, I like that. It's a beautiful word as well.
• 1:37:43
  Like, I know, I know it can have religious conversations, but I
• 1:37:46
  know it's also just like a it's it's like hand in hand with
• 1:37:49
  respect, isn't it? Doing things with like a level
• 1:37:52
  of care, I suppose. I mean, if I do something bad at
• 1:37:58
  that bad, something wrong at home or something wrong at work
• 1:38:01
  with my kids, I'm like, yo, I'm so sorry.
• 1:38:03
  Can y'all just forgive me? Give me a little bit of grace.
• 1:38:05
  We crave it, we want it, but I can be pretty slow.
• 1:38:10
  To give it so I like that, Brian.
• 1:38:14
  On a question for you guys, do you have any upcoming projects
• 1:38:16
  or final thoughts that you'd like to share with our
• 1:38:18
  listeners? Upcoming projects for the
• 1:38:22
  website we will be adding, hopefully soon.
• 1:38:25
  It's been a very long process. We're gonna be adding a lot
• 1:38:28
  more, a lot more content to help parents teach kids life skills.
• 1:38:36
  So I've been working putting a lot of time on.
• 1:38:39
  Some information that I'm putting together so that'll be
• 1:38:41
  rolling out soon. If anybody wants any
• 1:38:43
  information, just follow us on the website, go to
• 1:38:46
  thesesixteenthings.com, sign up for the e-mail list.
• 1:38:49
  All of that will eventually come out in in that process, I guess.
• 1:38:53
  So if you're receiving the lessons every week, you're going
• 1:38:57
  to hear about what we're working on next.
• 1:39:02
  Excellent. Well, listen gents, it's been an
• 1:39:04
  absolute pleasure having you both on.
• 1:39:06
  I've really, really enjoyed this conversation and I know I listen
• 1:39:09
  as well. So I just want to say a massive
• 1:39:10
  thank you for for your time and for all your lessons and
• 1:39:14
  everything in between and just also just for the work that
• 1:39:16
  you're doing. I I think that it's, it's really
• 1:39:19
  positive stuff and you know that if anything else is, is what the
• 1:39:24
  whole point of my show is about, is trying to like show you that,
• 1:39:27
  you know, maybe despite what's going on in the world.
• 1:39:32
  There are good people. There are good things going on.
• 1:39:34
  There is reasons to keep hope and to keep.
• 1:39:36
  Just keep trying. It'll be okay.
• 1:39:40
  Yep. Thank you SO.
• 1:39:41
  Much we appreciate the time. And.
• 1:39:44
  All the listeners of the Christian Reve Podcast, I hope
• 1:39:46
  you enjoyed this episode and thank you for listening.
• 1:39:49
  See you in the next one.