Faith & Fatherhood: Lessons From A Transformed Life (Part 2)

In this powerful continuation of our series, CJ and I dive deep into an authentic, transparent conversation about hyper-masculinity, emotional suppression, and the struggle to live authentically as men—especially within African American and alpha male cultures.

Key Discussion Points:

How societal pressures and cultural conditioning teach men to suppress emotions, reinforcing harmful narratives like "big boys don't cry" and "man up."

The toxic influence of hyper-masculinity movements online, glorifying superficial success and emotional detachment.

Real-life stories about bullying, assumptions, and how fear shapes interactions, even within safe spaces like church communities.

Key Takeaways:

• Self-awareness is your greatest asset if you desire to improve your life
• It’s essential to question and evolve beyond inherited mindsets to break generational cycles.
• Small, authentic gestures—like reaching out to others sincerely—can create powerful, lasting impacts.
• Change begins internally: cultivating honesty with oneself and seeking help (including professional therapy) is strength, not weakness.

Listen now and join us as we uncover the power behind rejecting harmful stereotypes and embracing our true selves. 

Your next breakthrough might just be one honest conversation away.

Share your feedback, we'd love to hear from you!

Let's grow together!

Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:01)
All right, we are back. This is part two, continuing our conversation with CJ. And if you heard part one, you know that we ended on sort of a funny note, but just how God does and how God pieces everything together and just really causes everything to flow perfectly. And so CJ ended off, we asked the question, if there was a baby and this baby could only know three things, what would those three things be?

CJ's answer was love, ⁓ good, and evil. And I may mention that this actually was a perfect segue into something else that I wanted to ask him, specifically based on his demographics, my demographics, really our demographics. But it was just really fascinating how he didn't know these questions in advance, but how that flowed right into it, just in an amazing way. And so the next question that I wanted to ask you, was...

taking our demographics, right? Taking the demographics of the African American male and really that kind of being more specific, but ⁓ let's just kind of put it in the framework or the context of the alpha male culture. And the hyper, hyper, freaking hyper, my God, I'm about to flip a table over hyper.

masculinity movements that's all over the internet and just, my God, dude, I'm just wow. So take that concept, take that context, put that on your mind and how this relates to your three intangibles, right? ⁓ Most times as men, we either grow up literally in a home

where it's taught, alpha male, ⁓ the massaging and stuff, misusing, abusing women, looking down on other folks for whatever reasons, or we are, like for me, because I was raised by women, I wasn't taught it in the home, but that alpha male masculinity stuff came at me in the form of bullying, where...

Because I didn't do the things they did at that time, I was an easy target to be bullied. Because I wasn't a bully, number one. Or because I wasn't always involved in trying to make somebody feel bad about something. Or because I wasn't trying to get at somebody. So my point is, is that it'll either come through your home or your community, the people that you're around, or it'll come at you directly through...

some sort of adversity, but at some point, people that look like us will experience it in some form or fashion. Even at the least, we'll just be around groups of people that exhibit those traits or those personalities. ⁓ So going back to the emotions, a lot of times we're taught, which I think is pretty devastating, honestly, ⁓ we're taught to either suppress our emotions,

or ignore them like they don't exist. The classic big boys don't cry, which is probably the world's most famous one. ⁓ Man up, right? ⁓ And the list goes on and on and on. I don't know some of the other cliche ones, but the energy that's given from a man to another man is do it on your own. Do it, whether it's self-made or whatever it is, all of the weight is on you.

all of the responsibility is on you. All the pressure is on you. If you don't do it, it ain't gonna get done. Then we started coming out with beast mode, balls to the walls, hustle, grind, go get it, get yours. All of these fancy cliches that are just picked up in our culture. it basically tells a man that if he's dealing with some sort of emotion or something internal,

that's hindering him from moving forward or doing something that he knows he should probably be doing. ⁓ Go ahead and suppress that, neglect that, reject that so that you can continue to keep up with the rest of us lions, with the rest of us who are out here getting it. ⁓ And obviously it comes in like different ways. So kind of with that framework, man, the question that I wanted to ask you is,

What are your thoughts when, and maybe you've never seen it, I was hoping that you may have seen it or have something to like draw from. What comes to mind for you, what comes up for you? And they just like freestyle flow with it. ⁓ Even when you see men in positions where you can see them want to be themselves, but they're in ⁓ a circle.

that says don't be yourself, because if you do, we're not gonna accept that. If you show some emotion or if you actually are being who you really are, then the rest of us ain't gonna really vibe with that. And that shows up in different ways, but whether it's somebody getting bullied, somebody being outed, somebody being clowned on, being picked on, whatever the situation is.

Speaker 1 (05:34)
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (05:55)
What comes up for you when you see a man wanting to be himself or say a certain thing, do a certain thing, be a certain way, but then you're witnessing them not be themselves, not say what they really want to say, not do what they would normally do if them people weren't around.

What comes to heart, what comes to mind? Just speak on that however you feel like speaking.

Speaker 1 (06:24)
Yeah.

I think you're right in a way as far as it being glorified, especially right now. ⁓ Men have ⁓ seen these things on all types of social media, of these strong men, shirt off, I got these routines and stuff like that. And you see them with all the girls and all this fashion and whatever. They got all these followers.

stuff like that, that's what's pretty much glorified right now. And it's hard for men, just in general, to see that and not wanna say, I need to keep up. I need to do more. ⁓ And you're trying to find the, how can I get more money? How can I wake up and...

get up in the gym and do this and do that. And so you're trying to keep up with the Joneses. it's only so much you can do with the time that you have and the situation that you put yourself in. ⁓ But for the issues that we have as far as like keeping these emotions inside. ⁓

I've had a tough time with that myself. even for me to be going to church, could see another black man there. ⁓

And, you know, I would assume that he's from Pasadena. I would assume that he's probably gang banged. I would assume that, you know, he's probably his family's probably with this hood or that hood, whatever the case may be. you know, so I'm timid as far as like approaching him and a man of God who goes to this church regularly. How does that?

portray this church, how does this portray me as a man? That I'm so insecure about what this man or where he comes from that instead of showing him the love of God, instead of showing him, know, my emotions are out.

Hey brother, how you doing? What's your name? Hey, nice to meet you, man. How long you been coming here for? You know, something like that. Just holding a conversation, a simple conversation with the person.

you know, travel a long way and can open up his mind. Yeah, exactly. know, but here I am stuck in this mindset because of what I've seen and what I've been through and the emotions of me being taught to keep it inside and me thinking and assuming things that has made an ass out of me.

So, you know, I think it's real tough to have men change those thoughts, those feelings, ⁓ because they're so used to it. And you gotta wanna change that though. That's, I think that's the main thing. You gotta wanna change. If you don't care, if you just wanna be the same way and...

make people feel uncomfortable, that's what's gonna happen. ⁓ I used to think it was intimidating for people to think that I was a gang member. And when they saw that, they didn't wanna deal with me. So here I am being mad because they don't wanna deal with me when I put myself in that position in the first place.

It's a growing thing that men just have to get out of. It's the mindset that they have to want to change, that they have to want to not be like that. ⁓ It's controlling. It controls your life in every faction. Especially as black man, because most people are...

Speaker 2 (10:40)
Yeah, it is.

Speaker 1 (10:52)
or intimidated by black men. ⁓ I mean, they could deny it.

the assumptions come out in their heads, the looks.

the watching of what you're doing, it still exists. It still exists. that's never gonna change, but for us as men, as black men, as colored men, let's just say colored men, that's what's expected of us, and I think we just have to be able to...

to bog down in our minds and in our emotions and be different. Because this is a new age, a new time, a new way of thinking. We have to evolve our way of thinking now. Just like as the world's changing, we have to evolve with it. Why are we getting worse?

Speaker 2 (11:55)
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:55)
That doesn't

make sense. And then again, once again, we get worse, our children get worse. So then you have this new age of kids saying that I don't want any kids.

This world is effed up. I don't want any kids in here. I don't want them to have to deal with what I went through with my dad or with my friends or with my other brothers. They see it now and they're like, don't want no kids to have to deal with this.

So one of my good friends was saying that, but I had ⁓ brought attention to it and said that slaves were the same way. They didn't want kids because of what are the situations that they were in. Right, right. That makes sense. But then there were slaves that said, no, my kids are going to change this world.

How are you supposed to expect this world to change without having another mindset, without having another person there to help change this world?

So it's gotta start somewhere.

Speaker 2 (13:17)
Man, that's a powerful perspective. ⁓

Speaker 1 (13:21)
So it's just, you know, that's what it is, perspective. Our perspective in a lot of these things as colored men is very small. We're not opening up to this world of possibilities, to these thoughts that others have. Whether it be colored people who wrote books.

or white folks that's wrote books. I read them all. Now I read them all. And I hate reading. I hate it. But it's something that I need to do. If I want to get better, I have to do some things that I don't like to do. And we have to get out of this situation of us being like, ⁓ if I don't like it, I'm not going to do it. ⁓

Speaker 2 (14:03)
Do man. Yes.

Speaker 1 (14:15)
You're going to waste your time playing video games. You're going to waste your time doing nothing, sitting on the couch watching Netflix all day. You're just going to spend your time doing nothing, absolutely nothing. Your days go by so fast. It's 2025 now. It's June. July.

Speaker 2 (14:35)
Yeah, for real. Like what? What's happening, man? There's a reason we keep sensing that. Super fast.

Speaker 1 (14:40)
It's going faster.

That is unbelievable. man.

Speaker 2 (14:45)
We

didn't used to say that. Yeah. We didn't used to say that. We're saying that a lot now.

Speaker 1 (14:50)
Man, it's over, the day is over like that. Like that. And it's like, what did I do with my day? ⁓

Speaker 2 (15:04)
Well, actually segues me again into my third question. ⁓ But I'm gonna hold off the third question for the third episode. But let me ask you a closing question on this one,

Do you believe that you've started to express yourself more personally? From, let's say, as far back as you can remember, being completely entrenched in, I'm gonna put up this badass image, rough neck, from the hood, you were steeped in that world to today.

Do you believe that you've made improvement from that to now in terms of your ability to be authentic with your emotions and kind of where you are in a given moment?

Speaker 1 (16:00)
⁓ at times. Okay. Not all the time. I still catch myself doing it. I still catch myself, you know, cussing. I still catch myself, you know, trying to show this image of this big black man. Okay.

⁓ in certain situations, know, in front of my kids. ⁓ You know, when someone's cutting me off. Something just as simple as that. And I don't even realize they're sitting right there. But I'm too pissed off. So now I gotta roll down my window.

So I have those struggles, I still have them, because ⁓ it's a habit. These are habits that we have that we try, I'm trying personally, at least I'm trying. I'm trying to get rid of. And that's a whole struggle in itself. ⁓ But I think that's what I've been praying to God about is,

Remind me, remind me of what you said. Remind me of the person that I need to be in order for me to change these habits. that's the direction I'm going in right now, is to ask God daily, hey, help me with this. Help me change this mindset, help me change these habits.

Because I don't want the next man to be having those same situations in a different outcome can happen. They could run into the wrong person. maybe that was your time to help an hour ago. Yesterday, if you would have just talked to the brother.

you know, something simple as that, ⁓ that could have changed that man's mindset. So I think those little things, it's just, they can travel far. you know, those little asks with God to say, you know, help me out with this. ⁓ It's a good way to be able to change.

So I still got a long way to go though. Not gonna lie.

Speaker 2 (18:44)
No, no, that's okay, man. That's okay. There was no right answer. But it's the idea of the self-awareness. I think I just recently put it on my little TikTok profile because I ran across it. I was doing some research on something and I ran across the quote, ⁓ a person's greatest asset is ⁓ self-awareness. ⁓

And it really stuck with me because I'm all about awareness. My whole coaching progression is you start with awareness. Awareness of really what you're dealing with. And then you grow from there, right? So starting with that awareness, man. So, and just that prayer. Yeah, starting with the honesty of... Because even if you don't identify it as therapy,

Speaker 1 (19:18)
that from me.

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:36)
or you don't identify it as counseling, which is a whole other episode that I want to get into because it's this whole stigma right now, I guess, in the black community. We're the lowest when it comes to therapy. We're the lowest when it comes to seeking ⁓ basically advice in the professional space. We'll go to the barbershop. We'll hang with the homies on the corner. ⁓ We'll say something to our best friend.

Speaker 1 (19:54)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:05)
But when it comes to licensed professionals who actually are there and equipped to equip you with the information that you need to be healed, we're the lowest when it comes to seeking that kind of help. Because there's a whole stigma around that. okay, yep. So we'll go ahead and pause here again, and then we'll pick up with question number three on episode three.