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Saying it outloud!
Saying it outloud!
Car Chronicles EP7: When Purpose Goes Missing, Everything Else Feels Empty
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A text from a friend cracked the surface: “I don’t truly know myself or what I want out of life.” From there, we dive straight into the ache so many people hide—how a great job, a steady relationship, and consistent workouts can still leave you empty if you’re moving without purpose. On the way to the gym, past lane closures and life detours, we talk about why strength without values collapses when pressure hits, and how to build a core that doesn’t.
I share how the gym once saved me during a brutal season, and why relying on it as your only coping tool is just another dependency in disguise. The goal isn’t to live at the mercy of any single habit; it’s to anchor your life in principles, priorities, and honest self-study so you can choose your next step even when plans blow up. We break down simple tools—journaling prompts, small affirmations with real science behind them, and a “top three priorities” framework—that help you move from reaction to intention. If you’ve ever asked, “Why do I keep repeating this cycle?” this conversation lays out the map and the exits.
We also get real about relationships and trauma. Unprocessed pain doesn’t stay quiet; it leaks into every decision. People who do their inner work respond instead of react, set boundaries, and communicate clearly. That’s what purpose does—it steadies your hand when life shakes the table. Whether you’re struggling with identity, stuck in a dead-end routine, or chasing money that never fills the void, this one gives you practical steps to find direction, rebuild trust in yourself, and bring the light back to your eyes.
If the message hits, subscribe, share this episode with someone who needs it, and leave a quick review—it helps more people find their next step.
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Yes, sir. You know what that means. Back on the road again. On the way to the church that I've been working at. It's actually one of my favorite assignments. It's a bunch of homeschool kids that get together every Thursday at their church. And it's just refreshed to see kids in their natural environment. They don't have their facing screens. Nobody's freaking being on their phone. And they get to have recess. They go outside, they climb trees, they play tag, they run around, they have acorn wars. And it's just like that's how it should be, man. That's how we that's what we that's what we that's what I used to do back in the day when I had my brothers, man. We just play outside. And even when we had the opportunity to come inside to play, because believe me, we had every game system, man. Nintendo 64, Super Nintendo, Sega, GameCube, PlayStation 2, 3, bro, we had it all. And we still chose to go outside and play or play in the house. So man, just seeing that, it's like, wow. It's gotta be nice, man. Just letting kids be kids. So I really enjoy being there to witness that because that's something I truly believe in. And it's just letting kids be kids. And the parents nowadays need to take some responsibility for their actions and getting their kids hooked on screens because they're the ones that allow it. And it really has done a lot of irreparable damage to the children of today's age. And it just sucks to see that because I know when I was a kid, expressing my creativity, coming up with these stupid games that we used to play, or just letting our imagination run wild, and having brothers that would just go along with it and just living in your own fantasy world, which is something that kids don't get to experience nowadays. So they don't want you they don't need brain like that anymore. Anyways, enough rambling about that. Today's episode is gonna be an interesting one. Only in the state of Texas will you have lane closures at 6 40 in the morning. Like, I need you guys to figure out when you want to work on these highways and when you don't. Because this is annoying. Anyways, back to this episode. I'd be like, I'll be leaving early for work, being responsible, and then boom, lane closure. It's like, okay, well, I couldn't predict that, so it's like, how much earlier do I need to leave? Holy crap. Anyways, back to this episode. So a friend of mine hit me up yesterday. And this friend is also a client of mine. And he sent me a message that I wasn't expecting to receive from him. Because I always saw him as someone who has their head on their shoulders, and you know, he has a good job. He's going to the gym, he has a girlfriend. You know, it would just seem from the outside, looking in, that his life was good. He had no issues. But I know, and he did talk to me before about it, so I was I wasn't expecting the message because you know most men hold in their pain and they let it fester and it consumes them, and then they spiral, and that's when they start doing, or getting addicted to things, or you know, start acting out in bad behavior. So when he sent me the message, I was actually kind of relieved that he saw me as a person that he could talk to about it, and that I was approachable enough for him to open up to me. And, you know, he would he's basically told me the same thing that most men go through nowadays. And that's just he was lost. He was frustrated and angry that he didn't know who he was and he didn't know where he wanted to be. Actually, let me pull up what he said. I'll give y'all the exact I'll give y'all guys the exact quote of what he said. That way you could take it from him. Hold on a second. This is what he said. He said, angry because I don't feel like I truly know myself or what I want out of life, and frustrated because I don't know how to process the feelings or how to express it. No, that's his exact quote. Now, what does that sound like? Does that not sound like what I've been talking about for the last year? I'll be trying to tell y'all. I'll be trying to tell y'all that this is a real thing and that you are experiencing it. You know, regardless of how much you want to suppress it or say that you aren't, doesn't mean that you aren't. Like, I could tell myself that I'm not strong, I'm weak. But in reality, physically, I am strong. Mentally, I am strong. Physically, I am not weak. Mentally, I am not weak. But I can tell myself that doesn't mean doesn't mean I am. But what happens is if you tell yourself enough, you start to believe it, and then you start to act upon it. You stop doing the things that you used to do, you stop going to the gym, you stop, you stop keeping your word. Now you're starting to become weaker mentally and physically, and eventually you become weak. So that's how that happens. But on the onset, you're not. So when I sit here and tell you guys that men are going through this, women too, just on a different level. Okay, we all process our emotions differently. Like I said, men like to store it up, it festers, consumes them, they spiral, then they act out. Women express their emotions far more than men do, so they don't really fester like that. Women are more grudge and scornful type. So when he sent me this message, I was like, wow. It was just, it's like I've been here. Like I've this is this is literally the exact reason why my fitness coaching went from strictly fitness, nutrition, and functional medicine to incorporate spirituality slash mindset. Because working out is useless if you aren't spiritually sound. End of story. What is the point of being strong and healthy if you have no values, no principles, if you are a piece of crap human being? What good is that? That does nothing for no one. And if you have no guidance, if you have no priorities in life, you're basically just working out to work out to live a long life for no reason. Like to me, that doesn't make any sense. Like, I want to have a purpose in life. I want to leave an impact when I'm gone, regardless of how big or how small it is. I want the people that I've come in contact with to remember me for how I treated them, how I made them feel, if I helped them. That's what I want to do. I want to impact as many people as I can and bring them the same light and happiness and joy and fulfillment that I found through fitness. Because I know it's cliche to say, but the gym actually did save me. Because when my wife cheated on me, my my ex-wife cheated on me in Afghanistan, bro, I have friends like that that I could talk to, or I didn't feel like I could talk to. There was one friend. And she was the one that helped me get through it, but it was her and the fact that I had the gym to look forward to, getting up to, going, and working out. And it helped me keep my sanity because I was I was so hell-bent on trying to process how it happened. And what sucked even more is that I knew why it happened. Like, I'm not even trying to tune my own horn here, but my intuition is it's scary, accurate, and it's almost like a future sight. And so I was predicting my downfall the moment I got on that C-130, or was it a C-17? Or C5. I don't know. One of those freaking military aircraft to fly to Afghanistan, I had already predicted what was gonna happen. So when I was when I received the text message from my wife one day, when she was like, oh yeah, I met a new friend. I was like, here, here we go. And there it was just TikTok. Hey, shoot, maybe I manifested that mug. Who knows? But regardless, regardless, I say that because the gym gave me a reason, gave me purpose, gave me fulfillment in that time where I was finding myself. And then once I started to find myself, I no longer relied upon the gym to be the only reason to get up. That's a lot of people mess up. Okay. A lot of these people rely so heavily on the gym for their mental health that if they miss a day in the gym, they break mentally. That is just as bad as what you're running from. So you just like in therapy, you're supposed to graduate and no longer need it. That is the point. You go for a while, you get the help you're looking for, you you do the deep search, a deep dive into you and who you are, or whatever your issue that you're trying to figure out is, and then you no longer need therapy. Just like the gym, you go to the gym initially because it's gonna help you mentally, or it's gonna help you deal with whatever you're running from at the time, but then you deal with that problem, so you no longer have to rely upon the gym to help your mental. Does that make sense? So that's why I say all that. Okay, so the gym saved me. I worked on myself, no longer needed the gym. And now his situation is unique because he messaged me what he messaged me, and I was actually able to give lived experience advice of what I went through and how I overcame what he's going through. Because I went through the exact same thing. Like I said in one of the other episodes, I don't know if I posted it or not. There was a time, well, I did post on Instagram, there was a time when I was 18 and I was questioning. I was like, would anybody even show up to my funeral? What if I just disappeared right now? Would anybody even care? That was a dark time in my life because I didn't feel like sorry, my wife called me, so I had to finish up the podcast now after work. But like I was saying, it was a dark time in my life because I just felt empty, purposeless. I didn't know what the freak I wanted to do, who I wanted to be, where I was going. I had no goals, no ambition, no nothing, dude. I was just working a dead-end 9 to 5 at Academy Sports and Outdoors, bloating through the ether of what we call life. I had nothing going for me. I was freaking a little freaking nerd, no muscle, uh, busted in the face, freaking messy hair, and I was just a freaking a nobody. And all that just started weighing heavy on me, and I'm like, dude, like, what the freak is even the point? Because I didn't want to go to college, I didn't want to deal with that. I didn't know I didn't want to deal with school anymore. So thank God and bless his soul, rest in peace to my grandfather. But if it wasn't for him convincing me to join the military, bro, I don't, I honestly have no idea where I would be or if I would even still be alive. I wouldn't be the same person I am today had I not joined the military. So it's just it's crazy to think about that you don't know who you are, even though you are you. Like we spend so much time as ourselves on a daily basis, we've never actually taken the time to get to know ourselves. And dude, if you've listened to the last couple Car Chronicles, I've spoken ad nauseum about find yourself. And I cannot underscore the importance of it, so I won't get into that here, but just know that is the underline of how you get to where you want to be in life is to know who you are. And so I messaged him back basically some simple steps and questions that I asked myself to get to where I am today. And hopefully that helps him get started. I got a check-in call with him, and so I'll see how that's going and figure out you know what his plans are. And it it really does, it really does suck because you know, you look at, like I said at the beginning of the episode, you look at his life, you know, he's making about 90,000 a year before bonuses and overtime. He got a good job. Like I said, he has a girlfriend, and he's hitting the gym focusing on his health. And so you're looking at that and you're like, man, this dude's killing it in life. But here's the thing, though. When you don't know your role, your passion in life, it doesn't matter how much money you make, it doesn't matter how many materialistic objects you have, it doesn't matter your relationship, it doesn't nothing, bro, nothing else matters because it doesn't fill the void. To a man, having zero purpose in life is a death sentence, it will drain the life from your body, not knowing what you should be doing in life. That's why people say when you're working a job, you know, it sucks. But when you're doing something you love, it doesn't matter because you love doing it. So if you find the job, the role, or whatever it is that you are supposed to be fulfilling in life, nothing else matters, bro. You just love it. And like I said earlier, my passion is bringing the light back to people's eyes. I don't think you guys understand the power of watching somebody go from hopeless to confident and turning their entire life around through fitness and in taking control of their life. Just the text messages that you get and how they say, Man, I could have never done this if I hadn't had help, or I never thought I could make it this far, or thank you for sticking by me when I was down on myself. I don't think you understand like just how much power. Power you give back to people when you help them change their life through fitness. It's just transformation in itself, creation is I mean, there's no greater thing than, like I say, bringing life into the world. That's like I mean, like, how do you even one up that? Well, you get close by helping people who are brought into this world, who are lost, create a new life for themselves. It's just another form of creation. And it hence the reason why I love baking so much, because you just get to create new things, and then you give it to somebody, and you just watch their face just light up if they if they enjoy. And it's that that feeling is what passion is when you're so passionate about something that you want to share it with people, and then you feel empty inside if you have all this passion and nobody to share it with, and then you feel even emptier when you don't know what you're supposed to be doing in this world and you have nobody to share it with what you're doing, you just feel just cut off and just surrounded by darkness because you don't know what you're supposed to do or where you want to go in life, and that's because we get back to the root here, is because you don't know who you are. And my client, he he's very talented when it comes to the things that he does. He's a great photographer, you know, he's an entrepreneur, he has many talents. And I told him, I was like, what you need to do is figure out what you want to do. Because a lot of people think they know what they want to do, and they think, oh, I just want to make money. I'm I'm telling you right now, that is a death sentence that might be good initially to get you to hold you over, but you're not going to be able to sustain life on, oh, I just want to get that bag. I I promise you, okay? This is a promise. So that's why I was telling him. But to get back to what I was talking about, the creation, it's man, there there's there's no greater feeling than having a purpose in life. Because no matter what happens to me or what happens in my reality, what happens to anybody around me, what happens to my wife, no matter what, I know how I'm going to react because I have my purpose, I have my principles, I have my values, I have my morals, I have my beliefs, I know what I will do. Because when things get rough, it's those things that you fall back on that give you the guidance and direction. So it doesn't matter what happens, I know what direction I need to go. I know what I need to do. I want to stand by what I believe in. And that gives you peace because you don't have to always worry or stress about oh, what would I do, or what am I gonna do now, or what comes next. Because you always have a direction to go in. You're going to go in a direction that is gonna help you obtain your three priorities. Once you have your three priorities, everything else is built around those. So you never have to worry about what to do next. Oh, well, I lost my job. What am I gonna do now? Okay, well, let's look at your top three priorities. I if your top top three priorities is taking care of your family, that's and that's number one, then you already know what you're gonna do. You're gonna freaking start putting out resumes, start looking at what you're good at, and you're gonna start looking for another job. There's no, there's no like, oh well, I guess I'll just, you know, search uh in a couple months or when I whenever I get over this. Somebody died. But you're just gonna hop back on, you're gonna get back out there, you're gonna pick yourself up, and you're gonna find another job because your number one priority is taking care of your family, and you can't do that if you have no job. So that's uh that's how it works, man. You just you always have an answer for whatever issue you're looking for, and then if you learn the crucial skill of self-analyzation, then you're always going to be able to self-reflect on what has happened. And that's gonna help you recover and bounce back faster from any incident that happens because now you're gonna be actually looking for the lessons learned and the things that go wrong. Failure is a natural part of life. The issue is people don't learn from their failure. And when you don't learn from your failure, you repeat the same cycle. And when you repeat the same cycle, your life seems far more chaotic than it really is. Wow, these guys are zooming in and out of the traffic, the cops. Hopefully, they don't cost traffic. I'm trying to get to the gym right now. 31 minutes to go 13 miles. So that's how my day's going. But yeah. So this is why I keep continuously harping. This is what he is going through is real. What I've been talking about is real. Not knowing who you are is an issue. Okay, is a very big issue that most men are going through. I I would even go out to say that most people are going through. Because if you just take the time to ask yourself, when was the last time you took the time to get to know who you were? You probably couldn't even give me an answer to that. Because you don't. You just don't do it. Nobody does it. People people think that meditation and journaling and all this hoo-hoo, woo-woo, hippie stuff isn't doesn't work. And that's the issue. It's those problems, it's those people that think that it's not an issue, that don't do it, and then the next thing you know, oh well. Anyways, that don't do it, and they're the ones that continuously repeat the same cycle over and over and over again. I could I could sit here and tell you the same things over and over again. You're working a dead end nine to five. Why? Well, I don't know. You tell me. Well, what do you want to do in life? Oh, you don't know? Well, that seems like a problem that you should probably get a handle on. How do you do that? Well, you get to know yourself. You get to know what you're good at, you get to know what you don't like, you get to know what you don't want to do. You get to know what people have told you you should do, but you aren't really good at it, but you just did it to get validation from them and to be liked by people. See, these are things that you gotta get down to the nitty-gritty, bro. Same with your relationship. Okay, why are you in this relationship? Is it because you actually like them? Do you love them? Are they a rebound? Do they just seem better than the last person? Are they really better than the last person? Have you had any issues in this relationship? Is your communication well in this relationship? Like, there's so many things that you can just dive into, bro, and you can go down a rabbit hole of your own life and you can get to the bottom of it, and then you'll have all your answers. But people do not do it because I believe that they don't think they need to because they live their lives. That's who they are, and people go around telling everybody that, oh, people should accept you for who you are, bro. Shut the freak up with that bullcrap, bro. Ain't nowhere where it's written where I need to accept somebody who is broken, full of traumas, doesn't take care of themselves, and then brings in all of that energy, that chaotic energy into the relationship. Why should why the hell should I accept you? Why the hell should I take on all your baggage? Especially if I'm a person who's working on myself, why should I accept a person who doesn't work on themselves? Like, what the freak kind of trade is that, bro? See, and I know this is gonna sound cruel, but there's a reason why I don't want to adopt an animal. Because I don't know what that animal has been through, what trauma they have been through, what they have dealt with, and that unknown is not good for me. That unknown messes with me. Because then I get mad at the the animal that's just lashing out at me because I'm doing something that traumatizes it in the last relationship, but I don't know that, and then we just have issues. I'm not saying this is something that's happened, I'm just doing a hypothetical here, but that's the same thing with people when you get into a relationship with somebody, it's just like adopting an animal from the shelter, you don't know what you're getting. Some of those shelter dogs are amazing, some of them not so much. Some people you get amazing, some people not so much, but at the end of the day, the person or the dog can only maintain their semblance of amazing for a certain amount of time, and eventually that trauma, everything that they're going through is going to come out. It is inevitable. You are going to do something, excuse me, that triggers them because they haven't worked on themselves. It's like trying to walk through a landmine field. Eventually, you're gonna step on one of those mother freakers, and the issue is gonna be far more exacerbated because they haven't worked on themselves than what it could be if they worked on themselves. Somebody who has worked on themselves isn't gonna make an issue out of their traumas. Somebody who hasn't is gonna be reactive. Somebody who has is gonna be active. I'm like, yeah, I went through this. I just bring it to your attention, just so you're aware. And boom, problem solved. Somebody who's reactive is going to attack because they are defending themselves because they're still dealing with that pain. You understand what I'm saying? This is why I know I said I wasn't gonna get into it, and I just want to know about it. But this is why it's important to get to know who you are, okay? And so that's some of the stuff that I told him. I was like, you have you have to heal your trauma, you have to figure out why you have certain vices, and you have to get rid of these bad habits, you have to start rewiring your brain. And people want to joke around and say and make fun of affirmations. Affirmations are good. And you can look up at the science on the, I can't remember the exact science off the top of my head, but saying positive things starts to rewire your brain to where your brain thinks more positively about you. And the mindset is everything. So with a positive mindset, you're gonna feel more confident in doing things than you would if you had a negative mindset. Which is why affirmations are important. Now, I'm not saying that you have to write them all down and say them out loud every every morning, but do what works for you. Some people do that, some people don't. Whatever works for you. The whole point is to get yourself in the habit of being, giving yourself grace, talking to yourself in a positive manner, not putting yourself down, working on discipline actions for yourself, so you can make sure that you are doing everything in your power to have a positive experience, just to help boost your chances of you succeeding in life. So, yeah, I thought that was a important episode to talk about today, just because of how I received it and how I was talking to him about it, and how a lot of people, I don't know, for some reason think that this is not a real occurrence, that people aren't, I guess, dealing with this. And just let people know that there are there are ways to get better. That you aren't the only person that's suffering. We're all suffering. But it's not okay to continue to suffer when there are ways out. You just have to be willing to accept that fact that life that you've lived up until this point hasn't been the life that you should be living. And once you are okay with that, then you can begin to change, and then you can start to create a new life for yourself. So, yeah, with that, we're gonna end the episode right there. So, if you like this episode, don't forget to like, comment, share, and leave that five star review. And until next time, see you!