The Gap Between Inspiration and Reality | Episode 444

The Gap Between Inspiration and Reality | Episode 444

What if being a role model is less about perfection and more about presence? We open up about the tension between public influence and private life, why you cannot control how others use your example, and how you can still choose to lead with clarity, boundaries, and care. The conversation moves from global reach to ground-level action, asking what responsibility looks like when strangers quietly treat you as a mentor.

The emotional core is family. I share how my dad—never chasing a spotlight—modeled leadership through small, steady acts: reading at church with a calming voice, taking late-night calls, and making one phone call that helped a man rebuild his life. These stories reveal how mentorship often arrives unannounced and is recognized only in hindsight. They also show why grief can become a teacher, sharpening what matters and pushing us to serve while we can.

We reflect on loss and urgency through a tribute to Brad Arnold of Three Doors Down, connecting the shock of late diagnoses with the will to keep moving. The song It’s Not My Time becomes a frame for resilience: acknowledging fear without surrendering to it, choosing action over apathy, and using whatever time we have to lift someone else. Along the way, we talk authenticity in mental health, the limits of accountability for public figures, and practical ways to be a steady presence for people who are struggling.

If you believe small kindness can change a life, this conversation is for you. Listen, share it with someone who needs a nudge of hope, and tell us who your unsung mentor is. Subscribe, leave a review to help others find the show, and pass the message forward—because your ordinary choices might be the lifeline someone is waiting for.

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Chapter Markers

0:00 Global Mission And Community Welcome

1:54 What It Means To Be A Role Model

5:27 Responsibility Without Perfection

9:30 Mentorship At Voices For Voices

11:35 Remembering My Dad’s Quiet Leadership

18:37 Service, Sacrifice, And Small Gestures

24:30 How Stories Sustain Purpose

27:40 Loss, Cancer, And Urgency To Help

30:40 It’s Not My Time Tribute

46:00 Kindness, Prayer, And Closing

#Inspiration #RealityCheck #Motivation #DreamsVsReality #PersonalGrowth #MindsetShift #OvercomingObstacles #LifeLessons #GoalSetting #CreativeJourney #SelfImprovement #VisionToReality #UnlockYourPotential #SuccessMindset #TransformYourLife #justiceforsurvivors #VoicesforVoices #VoicesforVoicesPodcast #JustinAlanHayes #JustinHayes #help3billion #TikTok #Instagram #truth #Jesusaire #VoiceForChange #HealingTogether #Episode444

Transcript

Global Mission And Community Welcome

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes 0:01

Hi everyone, it's Justin here, Voices for Voices. Thank you so much for joining us. You can give us a big thumbs up, like, follow, subscribe, share. We greatly appreciate that. If you can reach out to 25 contacts on your phone, letting them know about the Voices for Voices, TV show and podcasts. We're everywhere. You can watch on Rumble, YouTube channels, you can listen everywhere. And we are just grateful and thankful to have you with us on another episode of the show. We are going towards 300 countries, territories, provinces, and 3,000 cities across the world. We're already well over a thousand, well over a hundred for those respectively. And we have the big goal to uh reach and help at least three billion people. That's billion with a B. Uh three billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond. I know we can do it. We've gotten this far with your help, with your demand. You're watching, you're listening. Whether you're in the United States, whether you're not, doesn't matter. We're all connected, we're all human, and we're sending good vibes your way. We're praying for you every single day, every single night. Uh, you don't have to be a believer, but we're sending good vibes your way. We want everybody to uh succeed and have the best and the most success uh and be as prosperous, uh whatever that looks like to you. Uh just being here with us is uh means so much to us. Uh and it really leads into the topic of this particular show. Uh talking about role models. I remember back in back in the day for me, showing my age a little bit, uh American basketball, uh Charles Barclay, uh he's a very good, very good basketball player, uh, the National Basketball Association here in the United States. And he was infamously kind of quoted about basketball and being a role model to children and others. And he said, you know, I something along the lines of, you know, I'm I'm not a role model, I don't want to be uh it was some some type of controversial answer that that he gave to the press when when he was asked. And I thought we would cover that and just talk about what that means and what what the expectations and how how we're supposed to do that as role models. Uh doesn't so first off, role model does not mean first off, we know nobody's perfect, so we're just saying that up front. And so nobody's perfect, but people look up to certain people as mentors, as role models. Mentor, I would say, is a synonym, so a word that is the same as role model. So role model, mentor, somebody you or I look up to, others look up to, uh, for whatever to reach out for advice, the for conversation, uh, to ask questions, and and I think it's a really it's a loaded question about being a role model, being somebody that somebody else looks at, whether it's one person, whether it's a million people you know, looking looking up to uh to anyone. And it's really interesting when we think about this, because we're helping as a mentor and or role model, whatever, you know, you can we can use those those words interchangeably. It's really a heavy, heavy subject. It's not just as easy as, oh, I'm so successful and everybody wants to be like me, and uh, I'm gonna, I don't have time for people, you know, you know, don't don't look to me for your answers or answer your questions. And it's not that I guess for me, it's not that easy. And I think that's because with voices for voices, so much of what we do, so much of what we do is help people. And so I have a little bit of a different outlook than you know, Charles Barkley did at that time, and others saying, you know, don't look at me as a as a role model, you know, you know, just just let me live my life. And you know, I don't, you know, the the worst thing would be is a person looks to somebody as a role model, and that said person goes out and does something very, very uh very bad, let's just call it very bad. And they say, oh, so and so was my role model, and of course, you know, the role model wants to be like, I had nothing to do with that thing or things that this individual did. So I totally get that part. So if we kind of split that up off, of we can't as role models, as mentors, we can't we can't police the peer people that are looking up to us 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but we just can't do that. You know, we for me, I would hope if somebody's looking to me for as a role model or as a mentor, uh or anybody with associated with voices for voices, it's the good parts that we're helping people. Yeah, sometimes hard parts do come up, hard topics do come up, and we have to go on and we have to talk about them because we're human. And and so I would look at things the same way in that respect as Charles Barclay at that time. Obviously, we have the internet, so you can you can go look up all that to get some of that backstory and those specific quotes uh that that Charles Barclay had at the time. And and so I I partly agree with him because I I I don't want to be held, and I don't think a mentor or a role model should be held responsible unless that's what the role model's doing. If the role model's out breaking laws doing those types of things, and that's what a person's looking up to, that's one thing, but that's not me, that's not people I associate with, we're here to help, and that's why I'm so passionate about this episode, number 444. Triple fours. This is the role model mentor episode, and so the if we want to make the world a better place when we leave the world, that means that we have to work on ourselves and as much as humanly possible, try to we're trying to be the best version of ourselves that we can be. Because the more people we reach, the more countries, the more cities, the more everything that we we reach, some people are gonna look to us as a form of a role model or of a mentor, you know, looking you know for you know pop culture, uh commentary, and how that that aligns uh with uh mental health, and uh, you know, I'm gonna share about my mental health as I have. And so there's gonna be some dicey parts, but there's not gonna be the parts where it's like, oh, go out and do this bad thing. That's not gonna come from me. Yeah, it's not gonna come from anybody associated voices or voices for voices, and if it does, the person's gone. I don't have time for it, nobody has time for it. We have a short lifespan, and we just don't have time for that. So that's how we're handling that, if it ever arises to that level. And so as I've said on many occasions, uh, you know, looking into the camera of almost disbelief of how many people are reaching, how many people are watching, how many people are listening, it kind of goes in into that that role model, that that mentor, uh state of mind, or however individuals, you know, consume our our show, our content, our Instagram lives. We have you know, sometimes we'll have uh you know a shorter show, and so we'll just really condense it and we'll just we'll just film uh an Instagram live. And we're still continuing to do the shows as well. So uh they complement each other very well. Um and it just depends, depends what the topic is, depends on a lot of things. Uh the a lot of criteria, a lot of thought goes into one way or another, one thing or another, uh the best way to reach people. And if I think of a role model for me, uh number one is my dad. Unfortunately, he's no longer with us, he's with the Lord, he's in he's in heaven. Um it's it's truly, it's truly I say remarkable a lot because I mean it well with my dad, it's truly remarkable all the different things he did, not just for me, but for my family, my mom, my sister, everybody, just stopped in his tracks and drove out whatever he could do to help, especially at the time during the time that I was getting to my um getting to my my mental health crash in November of 2017, he was who called 911. I was in the car with I was in the his truck and we were on the way driving somewhere and I was blacking out and and so he he stopped, pulled over, called 911, the ambulance squad came and took me to the hospital, said I wasn't dying. It was a third third hospital visit in two weeks, and that was what stuck what what the start was to get me to get me to drop my ego as much as I can or as much as I could to get help that I needed and still need today. And I can't I can't even imagine like the thoughts going through his head. He's calling 911 about his son. That's what um and he I I just I just I can't fathom what it what what what that felt that must have felt like and there were so many times where he he'd come to he he'd come to help no matter what hour the day or night or morning There's just so many things that I take I I took for granted over the years just like in the earlier episode I I take for granted you know having right now two eyes that are able to work, my mouth, my ears, my nose, etc. I took for granted having him, my dad, just to call away or just to text away, no matter where it was. He'd stop literally what he whatever it was doing. And I I can't help but think that there were so many times there were things that were very important to him, or he was trying to just relax and watch again a ball game, or I and he and he he he'd come and help me. And so there's a lot of people that now that now that he's passing in heaven, they're coming coming more to my memory of all all these different events and circumstances that I was in, and you know, there's only one God and one Jesus uh that he came and bailed me out and so many different so many different times they say in the best of times and the worst of times, and a lot of times it was in the worst of times for me. But I look looked at him as as a hero and as a role model then, but I look at him more now as a role model. And he wasn't trying, he wasn't trying, he wasn't trying to beat anybody out for a race if somebody seen uh cheaper by the dozen one and cheaper by the dozen two. You know, you have the kind of two families trying to compete and and you know, outparent the other and all these all these things. My dad was never like that. There's there's things that I've picked up that which which comes to he would read at church. So he would he would be on the schedule and he would he would read when he was scheduled. This is in front of he he he did it when there was maybe 50 people in the in the church, and he did it when the church was just packed for you know an Easter, a a Christmas um service, Christmas Eve service, people just everywhere, every seat taken, people standing around, and um and then when my my dad's uncle who passed in World War II um was a good athlete in the area, and he was inducted into uh the county football hall of fame. And my dad got up in front of at least two or three hundred people and talked about his uncle. I don't know how much he knew about him at as he was growing up. But he was he was comfortable behind the microphone, and I think I'd like to think that I picked up regardless of what topic I'm I'm sharing, I'd like to think that I picked that up from him. He didn't he didn't mind it. He didn't do it, so people would come up to him and you know give them all kind of accolades. But what I will say is during the calling hours for my dad, there was um sorry, I'm getting a little bit emotional because what I'm about to say is something that when I say that I know we're helping people, and sometimes I we don't know who we're helping, and we might not find out, it might be somebody else in her family at a different time, and I hadn't seen this person for oh my gosh, so many years. And she came through the line and she said uh she always enjoyed when she would come to church, and my dad would be one of the readers, and that he had his voice was soothing, or it just she just really enjoyed it, and she wasn't saying it to make it into a big deal, she was so authentic and transparent, and I know my dad knows about that now being in heaven. I had no idea. I mean, I I was I'm I'm my dad's son, and I had no idea, and so to hear that story again, it didn't take long, it wasn't some long story, it was kind of a short story. Short conversation, but I was just like, oh my gosh. I mean, I was already crying and upset for obvious reasons, calling hours for my dad. But when this individual said that she enjoyed and really, really enjoyed how my dad's voice was, and whether it was calm, soothing, I forget the exact words, it was it's things like those that show, at least to me, and whether that whether that person said it or not, I would still feel the same way about my dad. He's my I mean, not just role model and all that, but my hero. Um after watching basically the last year, year and a half of his life, all the all the things he had to endure. Just incredible. Didn't have to do it, could have just stopped and said too much. But he was still doing as much as he could, the best he could, until the body was preparing for the inevitable. And then the second story I want to share, and I may have shared this on previous episodes, but it's that um it's this important for me to share. And this was also at calling hours for my dad. I think he had had a a child, or maybe not, um not not quite sure. But he was telling me the story about so where my dad worked, was it like the most glamorous place that people think, uh but he he was good at what he did. He every time there was a chance for overtime, he'd get called out called out at all odd hours of the night. He'd wake up from a sleep, get in his car or truck, and go help. That's what his job was. And this individual came through the line and said, you know, I owe your dad a lot, and I didn't really, excuse me, I really didn't know what he was getting at because I I may have met this individual once or twice before in my life at some kind of function, dad's retirement, celebration, um, and maybe some some other get together, and he said that he was at a low place in his life, he was down on his luck, he lost his job, things just weren't going good for him. I don't know if there was more to the story or not that he was sharing, but it's not for me to assume. But he just said he was down on his luck, out of a job, and almost like this was the last, seemed like it was like the last chance, I guess, is the way I took it, and he said I'm down to my luck, and I walked in to the place of employment where my dad was working. My dad must have came to the door, or he was the this individual was directed to my dad, and this person talked to my dad, and and what ended up happening was the person is down on their luck, down and out, and my dad could have just said, you know, let me have your resume, and we'll let you know, which is what would probably happen today, if they even would take a resume if you show up in person. I don't I don't know. But my dad said, hold on a second, hold on a minute, something to that, like, and said, uh, and so my dad called on like the headquarters, and somehow, somehow, there was a job that was available. And this individual got it. My dad, and my dad wouldn't have talked to him, my dad wouldn't have called, taken time out of his day. He could have again just easily just said, forget it. That happens too much in our society today, where we just dismiss people, and I'm sure I do. And yeah, I'm sorry to all the people if you know feel that way. But my dad, he didn't do that. He saw somebody in need, and he he tried. And at that time, that try, him trying, my dad trying, was enough to get this individual back on back on a a good track, decent track. And so when you hear stories like those, I can't help the but to think that a lot a lot of the a lot of the traits my dad had still has, I still consider him alive. Especially being more and more comfortable, more and more wanting to put content out, want more and more wanting to be just raw and authentic with shows instead of just being, you know, the glossover, you know, Photoshop show where everything is just so you know, so happy, and so like there's gonna be happy times, but there's a lot of times that aren't happy, and those are the times people wanna they want to hear. They want it's the people like that individual that was down and out when he showed up to where my dad worked. It's people like that that I know are helping. It's the people like the one the one lady that said about my dad speaking that he his about my dad's voice, and she looked forward to him reading when she would show up to church and see my dad up on the altar uh reading or getting ready to read. And so those are the things I look at for strength on top of God, on top of my family, my mom, everybody. Somebody out there needs to hear this, this show, and all the all the shows that we do. I don't do a show just for the heck of it. I know there's somebody out there that needed to hear a particular show, a particular topic, particular event to help get them on a better trajectory to to show and at least verbalize the best that I can, which isn't always the best. I just I try my best. That's that's all I can do. And I think it's that authenticity and transparency that people look to when they look to our show, is we're gonna talk about all kinds of topics all across the board. You don't have to watch or listen to those shows. There's no contract. It's you know, we we would love that. We loved every single person that listened to every single show, but we know that's not a reality. And so I just I just can't those two just those two stories. I can't help but think that there's people that I'm never gonna meet, I'm never gonna come in contact with. Somebody that's down and out, and they hear sort of like, man, who he's been through the ringer. Again, might not be exactly like you or another person, but there might be parts of them, the parts of the stories, parts of the experiences that that are. Some people, maybe my voice, maybe uh I I don't know. I just know that those two stories stand out. There were so many stories, so many people, president of the university I teach at, uh, came through, waited over an hour in line. I just flabbergasted. You know, here's somebody that probably you know gets the treatment, the positive treatment, and you know, goes to the front of the line if he's somewhere. And he waited patiently. He didn't have to do that. I wish my dean did. I wish my dean would actually have came through the line. He did it. The president of the university did. That's a stand-up person. And so, Dr. Collins, I know I told you at the time, but thank you so much for everything you've done for me, my family, teaching, being a supporter of Voices for Voices, and being there when my dad passed. Again, he could have there were people that said, Oh, the line's too long, and then they they cut the line, they come in. He could have done that easily. Like, I'm the president of university, I don't need to wait in this general line. I'm somebody, and he didn't do that. It was just so it's things like that, nice gestures showing that we're all human, we all have flaws, and so the stories that I heard gave me more saying more evidence, but more evidence of how great of a person than my dad is there's so many times when he could have just like for me, he could have just said, sorry, son, um I'll be there tomorrow, I'll meet you, so no and and so I I I did. I I overlooked, I took advantage of at times. I just like I wake up and having arms and legs and fingers and toes and and the like. He just did those things, and so when I look at a mentor and a role model, it's not somebody that has to be put in that category. Like, hi, you're a role model. There's none of that, you're just being a human being, and that's what I'm trying to be just to be a human being. Some of the things we do are, you know, higher profile, some aren't. But I'm just trying to be human and be somebody.

Speaker 1 38:48

To be somebody, to just be somebody.

Kindness, Prayer, And Closing

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes 39:01

I'm searching for something. All right, so what I'm gonna do, we had another episode and it was so well received. We're gonna do this, this thing like this. So as we know, or if we don't know, Brad Arnold from Three Doors Down passed away from stage four. Uh turbo cancer, found out, boom, stage four. It's like my dad. Did all his wellness checks, did everything, and boom, stage four. James Vanderbeet, most known for Dawson's Creek. I'm not sure what stage he found out that he had cancer. People, man, like like I mentioned before, Brad Arnold, man, he's 47, 47 years old. I get it. People get sick and pass on every single day. It shouldn't be happening, man. Like, should not be happening to people this young. And that's part of the drive for me to do as much as I can while I'm here, while I'm able to, because I don't know when or if I'm gonna be next at some point. I'm 44. Brad Arnold's three years older than I am. And so when Brad Arnold, the front man, three the words down, when he came out last May and told everybody through a video, very very simple, wasn't production, it was just him. Looked like sitting on the park bench. And he just went through said, hey, a couple weeks ago wasn't feeling good. I went, got checked out, I got stage four. It's not good news. And one of the songs they wrote and sung, sang all across the world. One of those songs. I took away from his video when he was sharing it. He said, you know, maybe he goes, I gotta think about now you know that song, It's Not My Time. And on an earlier show, I attempted to sing, more like I'm speaking the words because I'm not a trained singer or singer really at all. We did Away from the Sun. And so this one, to close out this show, we're gonna we're gonna give it our we're gonna give it our best. So this is for Brad Arnold, three doors down, any three doors down fans, his family, uh anybody that just is coming home, got some not good news, or knows somebody who has just come home or just found out didn't get very good news. And so it's not my time by three doors down. And this came out February nineteenth of two thousand and eight. So here, let's give it a let's give it a shot. I haven't heard this I haven't heard a song for Quite quite some time. Looking back at the beginning of this and how life was just you and me loving all of our friends, living life like an ocean, but the current only pulling me down. It's getting harder to breathe. It won't be too long and I'll be going under. Can you save me from this? Cause it's not my time. I'm not going. There's a fear in me. It's not showing. This could be the end of me and everything I know. Oh, but I won't go. I look ahead to all the plans that we made and the dreams that we had. I'm in a world that tries to take 'em away. Oh, but I'm taking them back. Cause all this time I've just been too blind to understand what should matter to me. My friend, this life we live, it's not what we have, it's what we believe in. It's not my time. I'm not going. There's a fear in me. It's not showing. This could be the end of me and everything I know, but it's not my time. I'm not going there's a will in me, and now I know that this could be the end of me and everything I know. Oh but I won't go. Whoa whoa oh I won't go. There might be more than you believe. There might be more than you believe. There might be more than you can see, but it's not my time. I'm not going there's a fear in me. It's not showing this could be the end of me and everything I know, but it's not my time. I'm not going there's a will in me and now it's going to show this could be the end of me and everything I know. Oh. So that's it's not my time. Three doors down. Brad Arnold. Rest in peace. Anyone who's lost anybody at any point in their lives. We're thinking of each and every one of you. We're sending prayers, we're sending good vibes your way, our way. And maybe we can just be a little bit kinder to our neighbor. So until next time, this is Justin Alan Hayes with Voices for Voices. Have a great day. Celebrate the voices in all of us and be a voice for not only ourselves, not only ourselves, but somebody else in need. We'll see you next time. Thank you.