PepTalk
Everybody needs a cheerleader...somebody in their corner hyping them up to perform their best. That's me. Everybody also needs a Coach...somebody in their corner giving them tips to tap into all of their potential so that they can make the most of their life! That's also me! This podcast is where those two elements converge and I speak to you about ways to work hard, pray harder, believe better, and live life to the fullest in every single way on every single day! It's time to level up, elevate, and slay the day! Have you had your pep talk yet?
PepTalk
SHAPED Manhood Pt 1 with Ralph Bessard
🎙️ 🚀 Dive into this powerful dialogue with our special guest Ralph Bessard, where we navigate through the realms of self-discovery, authentic leadership, and the depths of masculinity. Ralph discusses his transformative path culminating in the creation of his book 'Shape to Lead', and explains his process in the vein of challenging men and manhood. Amidst laughter and reflection, they unravel the essence of manhood amid societal pressures, the power of mentorship, and the impact of introspection. This episode is a beacon for those seeking to understand their true identity and live purposefully. This conversation was too powerful to be contained within one episode, so listen in and prepare for the conclusion next week!
Tune in for inspiration, realizations, and that all-important pep talk!
To learn more about Ralph Bessard or to order his book, go to his website!
ralphbessard.com
Email: Thepeppodcast@gmail.com
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Twitter: peptalkpodcast
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On this episode of the pep talk podcast. We are digging deep as we close out this series on choosing intentional manhood. You don't want to miss it. But first I have a question for you. Have you had your dose of pep today? No, don't worry, I've got you. Now let's dig into it.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the pep talk podcast, the podcast that cheers you on and coaches you up. I'm your host, coach J, a life coaching DFW, and I'm just glad to be here with you today. Like I said in the opening, we are closing out our mini series on choosing intentional manhood and today I have an absolute gift for you. This series is for men and for those who love them, so there's something here for everybody, and I want you to stay tuned. This is going to be an incredible conversation that I have with our guest for today, mr Ralph Besard. We're going to meet him as soon as we get back and it's going to be an amazing conversation, just absolutely incredible. So stay tuned, don't go anywhere. We will be right back with my conversation with Ralph Besard. Stay tuned.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to this episode of the pep talk podcast. This is your boy, coach J, and I'm so happy that y'all are hanging out with us as we close out this series on choosing intentional manhood. I've gotten great feedback from various places, from various sources, and so that makes me particularly excited about this episode, because I believe that the guest that we have here, someone that I've just met but I already consider to be a brother, my best friend, the guy that I aspire to be like in the future minus the hair, because genetics don't work like that, but pep squad I want to introduce to you Mr Ralph Besard, the man, the myth, the legend, a leadership guru, an entrepreneur, a coach, a speaker. I really don't know what he doesn't do, but he is, he's gifted and we are blessed to have him here on the pep talk podcast. Ralph, welcome to the podcast man.
Speaker 2:Hey, coach J Justin, thank you so much, man, for allowing me to be here today. It is my honor and privilege to be with you and ready to talk to the pep squad. So I am just so blessed with meeting you and again, I sit with great expectation and just a wonderful amazement about what we're going to be able to talk about today. In the short time that you and I have known each other, arc discussions or conversations Heck, even our just little emails have been powerful and amazing. So I'm excited for what's about to occur and hopefully we will be able to share a little bit with some people that helps make their walk a little lighter and brighter. So again, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. So why don't you introduce yourself? I know I gave just like a really, really broad overview of what you do, but why don't you tell us, man, who are you introduce yourself?
Speaker 2:Well, again, ralph Besard, and just a little bit about myself. I have been an entrepreneur now for over 30 years. My wife and I started a company called Conker Credit Management Incorporated. We do help people with basically the typical of credit restoration. We do consultation and coaching. We've worked with a lot of high net worth individuals I will not name drop with some of them or household names. I got involved in ministry probably about 25 years ago a little over, and I'm an ordained pastor pastor a small church in Southern California here and have recently, over the last decade now, moved into discipleship training and leadership development. You know most of my life I've kind of been thrust in those positions, albeit most of the time during that time reluctantly, not really seeing that I was equipped for it or in a place that I'm like trying to figure out.
Speaker 2:How did I hoodwink and bamboozle people to get into this place? But you know, god definitely had something else for me, and so with that, over this last year, I really settled down in my spirit and understood that there was something that I needed to leave with the world, and I think it was probably. You know, understanding that I'm looking at, you know, I have two older boys, jordan and Justin. One is third, jordan is 29, justin 27. And then my wife and I had our little how do you say? Our little love child. At the end there he's Julian, who is 12 years old and so just kind of seeing them go into the next stages with their life and they're making you know their connections with their girlfriends and fiance's, I realized that, wait a second, there's something else that I need to be able to share, that I wanted to be able to leave with them.
Speaker 2:So, you know, you get into that place where you know your mortality starts to kind of kick in. Even though I'm young and virile and in shape, I realized that you know what, there's something you can do to leave a profound message, and that is how I moved into that place to then extend myself to be an author, and I was able to write shape to lead, discover your unique leadership style, empower your team and create massive impact. And that's what that was. The hope is that I wanted to help a bunch of people anybody that I can get beyond some of the debilitating thoughts, limiting beliefs that they may have themselves, and realize that they have a significant value here in life and that if you walk on this planet, you're probably leading somewhere. Someone is taking their clues from you. And so I wanted to take some of all of that mystery out of it and realize that when we begin to seek the sound of the genuine voice that's within us, we can tap into a supernatural power that comes from God. That's our DNA. And so I realized that I wanted to be able to create a book that was, again, not so highbrow, that was conversational, that was relatable, that was transparent and, hopefully, let people know that, hey, I really see them, and I wanted them to be able then to begin initially, maybe, just to use my voice and my eyes so that they can begin to see themselves and then begin to embrace what I've come to learn, which is that we all play a part in making a difference, that we should be the difference that we wanna see, and so that's what Shape to Lead is all about Really not necessarily telling people what to do, but trying to remind them of who they are, and so that's a little bit about. I feel like the calling of my life is to just kind of come in and be like, hey, I'm here to love with deep resolve.
Speaker 2:And I want to make sure that you understand that you are significant. You are not here by chance, you're not here by happenstance. You are not a mistake. You are here for a time and season such as this and let's live the mission, this assignment, and walk with purpose.
Speaker 1:So I love that. I love every single thing that you said there, especially when you kind of talked about your life mission to really be able to speak into the lives of others and say one you are leading somebody.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, I mean, it was Shakespeare. I reference this all the time. It was Shakespeare that said all of life is a stage.
Speaker 2:Mm amen.
Speaker 1:Whether you know it or not, there is always somebody in the peanut gallery somewhere who's watching what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So you know, they're watching how well you handle your adversity. They're watching how well you handle the mountaintop portions of life. Do you allow it to change you or are you using it to pull other people up? And then also the second thing you mentioned that's something that I deeply identify with is the power of encouraging others, like just having a word, just to say I don't care about the circumstances around which you got here, you're here, like the fact that you're here is not an accident. So now let's talk about the reason why, and let's dig into, as you said, those unique aspects of you and then how you can use them to impact. I told you we have five kids. We have two boys and three girls, and God bless you.
Speaker 2:That's amazing and awesome.
Speaker 1:So you talked about your love child. That's 12 years old now. My wife and I have 19, we have 15, we have 10, 8, and we have a six-year-old. The six-year-old that was a love child, where we thought we were done. And then all of a sudden got to love the love child man.
Speaker 2:Got to love the love child. It's so funny. I still remember when she called to tell me here I am. My middle boy was on his way to being a sophomore in high school and I'm like woo, we got three more years to go to college, he'll be in college, we're good. And she calls me on the freeway and says we're pregnant and I'm like wait, what? How did that happen? And she says Ralph, you know how that happened.
Speaker 1:No, that's facts, man. And so, yeah, for all of those reasons, man, I'm excited to really dig into and I really want to use your book as a reference for this. Number one is a way to plug your book, but number two because I think that what you talk about in the book, this whole shape method it ties perfectly into this mini series that I've been doing on choosing intentional manhood, and including myself in that bunch, I would say that men we have like our name out in these streets is not where it should be.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so my charge has been men. We have to do better. And so I've talked about the importance of being self-aware, I've talked about the importance of having male friendships, because research shows that there are fewer male enriching male friendships now than there has been at any other time in history in recorded history, and so we've been talking about these things. But I kind of want to talk today about what it looks like for a man to lead authentically and genuinely, because we don't come into this world, let's face it, we don't come into this world knowing how to lead. I remember when my son was, when my oldest daughter was born, I was like OK, cool, I've always related, I think, more to girls than I have to boys, just because I was the artistic kid in school. But when my son was born, I was horribly afraid. Horribly afraid because I didn't even feel like a man. So how was I going to raise a man?
Speaker 2:Wow, wow. You know I want, first and foremost, I just want to say thank you for sharing that, because I think that you know, when you alluded to the fact that you know how difficult it is for men to make friendships or relationships, you know something about women they're, they innately have the ability almost to do that. They create sisterhoods and they can do it later in life. You know. To piggyback on that thought just for a moment, you know we think about, we make those relationships as men or, I should say at the time, as boys fairly easily, whether it's elementary, junior high. And I think if you go back and kind of look over the history of your life, you'll find out some of the boys that you still talk to and run with, who really know you in a very deep and transparent way, are probably your boys from high school and, you know, before high school. I know I know that's initially a little bit with me. Now I've had some friends that you know. Because we had kids that were going to school together and because of the community we found ourselves in, we started to develop some relationships and I'm pretty cool with them, but it's those guys that knew me, whether it was in junior high, high school that really really know me right. And so what ends up happening? A lot of times, if you're lucky enough to keep that long-lasting relationship, maybe you're able to go back to that place and tell them some of your fears, some of your doubts, some of your struggles. But very similar, very similar to you.
Speaker 2:You know, I have three boys, but I remember when the oldest one was born, my wife and I I was 21 when I met my wife Wasn't necessarily looking to get into this place that I thought we were going to be together for the rest of our life. I knew I loved her, but again, I grew up. My mother and father were divorced when I was very young, and so I didn't have a whole lot of, you know, deep understanding of that marriage relationship because, believe it or not, all my friends were raised by single mothers. Their parents were. So here it was. I'm now with my wife and we're trying to make her. She's 20 at the time and then, a couple of years later, I'm turning 24, we find out we're pregnant. Now I'm going to tell you very much, like you, I loved how you said that you were so worried about bringing a male into the world and how you didn't feel like one.
Speaker 2:I had the very same feeling. I was like I could barely balance a checkbook. And now I'm responsible for teaching this little boy or this baby on how to become a man. And I realized and here goes the part because I was a pretty precocious young man. I was pretty astute. Most of the time I was probably because I was self-aware a little, very critical of myself. So I was aware of what I knew, but I was also really aware of what I didn't know.
Speaker 2:And so I played it safe. I leaned to the things that were my strengths and I learned how to perform. I learned how to kind of keep people off of me and I could talk big, I could bark big, and so I learned how to perform. But I was not going to stretch, I was not going to go over to that area and let anybody know what I didn't know. So you want to know something crazy? And I don't know that. My mother even knows this. I'm sure she does, but I think my wife was. She was probably. She was probably five months pregnant before I told my mother that we were pregnant.
Speaker 2:Wow, I was so freaked out. I didn't tell anybody. I was spooked man. I was going to work, I was showing up places and I was spooked. I was like I don't know how this is going to go down. I was spooked.
Speaker 2:My wife was so proud and even though she you know my mother at the time was living in Texas, we were in California. So you know her, my mother and her had a relationship, but I was really guarded about how I wanted to tell my mother and I know that probably hurt my wife for a very long time. You know those first couple of months because I didn't want to tell anybody. And she was like, what's your problem? And it was just because I was having a hard time saying like hey, do I know what it takes to be a dad and be a father Because?
Speaker 2:Again, a little bit about myself. I grew up in Oakland, california, and although I have a great relationship with my father, he was a couple hundred miles away. He was in Central California at the time, so I saw him on holidays and I could call him. I always had access. My mother and father had a wonderful working relationship and I can honestly tell you I did not miss a beat in my childhood. I had a wonderful childhood other than having your father there to teach you how to be a man every day. I didn't miss anything like that. I wasn't aware that I was until I got to that place and I realized I was making up manhood the whole time.
Speaker 1:Okay, so first off, big ups to your parents for cultivating that relationship for your sake, because it's hard, it's really hard.
Speaker 1:But so I was adopted and my adoptive parents are my grandparents. So I was adopted into the family. I really didn't get to know my biological dad until I was around 21, 22. Because my wife told me I'm not going to marry you until you know where you come from. Okay, yeah, that's why we marry up man.
Speaker 1:And so my grandfather. He was a worker man. He was from that generation where you show your love by working. So he worked two jobs. He was a teacher, a driver's ed instructor and he also did old school newspaper routes. So he would get up at, you know, he'd go, come in, go to bed at like five o'clock, wake up at one o'clock, two o'clock in the morning, go throw his route, come home and go to work. That was his thing. Now he showed up for me in high school. He was a band boot, he was a choir booster, parent and all that stuff. But as far as us having those conversations like when I would get in trouble, then I'd get the very stern talking to. But as far as here's what it takes to be a man.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And like you said, like you said, I performed my way into a pseudo image of what I thought manhood was, and I've been thinking about that a lot over these last few weeks, especially over the series man, when you said that you performed like you weren't gonna let anybody know, that you didn't know what you were doing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Like listen in Oakland. You're so funny. I was talking to another friend of mine and we were kind of having this conversation. You know, my first inclination of manhood. You know, again, I'm gonna date myself here and obviously it was a little before my time but I got to see those reruns and I just thought he was magic. I saw John Shaft when I saw that.
Speaker 1:Afro hey, I saw that.
Speaker 2:Afro, the turtleneck and the leather coat man, you couldn't tell me nothing else, right? It was like Shaft, was it? Like? That's what it is to be a man. Now you gotta understand.
Speaker 2:Now here I am coming of age in Oakland, california. Now I lived in an area where, you know, my mother sent me to school, sent me to the best schools, so you know I was always around diversity. But in Oakland, you know, near Berkeley and in San Francisco, very liberal area. But here's the thing I learned also how to perform in different scenarios. Sometimes I was traveling through the hood, so you see certain things and then you find yourself in suburbia and you have to perform in that area. And so here's what I've learned a lot of times, you know, you pick up certain things in the street how to be tough and walk with this presence, right, how to kind of talk to the ladies and then begin to define your masculinity through how many girls you date or whatever it may be. And so I got good at that. I got good at being able I remember me and my friends actually be like man. There's not really any place I can't go. It's like you know I ended up in, you know, in suburbia and it's like I know.
Speaker 2:I was raised by educators. My mother was, you know, president of colleges. My father was a teacher, grandparents were teachers, so I can speak with the best of them. So I know how to do this education thing. But then guess what? I played in the hood. I played football and basketball in the hood, so it was like I had cousins who were in the hood.
Speaker 1:So guess what.
Speaker 2:I knew how to handle myself there as well. And so now you kind of feel like, wait, ooh. I can always have this kind of purview where I felt like I had a mountain view over the valley. And so it's like, ooh, who do I need to be in this moment to get what I want? And so that is where the performance came in, and so I never really worried about my time, about understanding or developing in those weak areas to get to a place called discovery where true growth occurs. I just tried to perform, to try to get over.
Speaker 2:I remember even telling my little brother like, hey, man, sometimes it's just about faking it to make it. Just keep them off. You like hustle, hustle, and it catches up to you. And so when my baby Jordan my youngest, my oldest was coming into the world, I realized how unprepared I was to play this next role. I was like, ooh, I'm not gonna be able to fake this. And my wife felt it as well, because she was like we're good, like what's going on with you, like why are you so afraid of this next section of life? Now, again, she grew up in a single parent family and her family was not as tight as mine was, so she needed some level of connection for me. But because I'm running around like an imposter, I performed even in that relationship and struggled sometimes with intimacy with her and she became very aware of it when she was having that child.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. We have a lot of intersecting points, because I remember my there was a. I forget what happened, but I remember my wife looked at me and she said, the man that I saw when we were dating, the confident, have it all together guy, where is what happened to him? Like the guy that I'm seeing now, is so unsure and almost fragile. And I mean, my wife is really, really wise, she's really astute, she can, she's very discerning, so she can see to the heart of things in a really really, you know, really easy way. And that was one of those moments for me that really showed me, yo, your performance like it's not gonna take you any further than it's taking you right now. You're gonna have to. You're gonna have to, you know, take the mask off and you're gonna have to work your way into finally becoming who you are supposed to be.
Speaker 2:Ooh, talk about it. Yes, I think you know, one of the things that became that was a big moment for me was that, you know again, when we start kind of having that very moment that you just discussed, I mean we become really aware that wait, something's missing, there's something here that I need. There's that old saying that you know when the student's ready, the teacher comes. And for me, I got to that place as my child was coming into the world and I became definitely aware of I could not fake it to make it here at this moment I started trying to put some things together, but again I reverted to only what I knew. I tried to do some things in my own strength and I was crashing and burning, just crashing and burning.
Speaker 2:I was arguing with the wife a little too much. I know that she's a very strong woman, had way more wisdom than me at the time, and she was you know, she's a fighter and so she was like no, we're gonna make this. She got involved with church. Now here's the funny thing about it. My wife and I, we have a mixed marriage. My wife grew up in the Jewish faith and became a believer, and what was funny was that she started going to church. Now I had been to church, I had grew up and went to the Christian schools and things, but I can honestly tell you I did not have a working relationship with Christ. So what ended up happening is that she started going to church and started asking me to come with her.
Speaker 2:You know I was heavily involved in watching my football and doing certain things, but at the time I knew I was trying to make it work with her. Well, the moment you open yourself up, god can do some great and amazing things. And he brought a mentor in my life and it was the exact mentor who I needed in that moment and he was. I just remember he was a big, tall, strong man who loved his wife, had peace in this house. I remember the first time I went to visit his house. It was clean, but, more importantly, it was something about the air. You just kind of went and you were like, wow, this wait, there's no chaos in this house.
Speaker 1:You can tell the difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the way his wife and his daughters were operating with him and the way he had this spot on tenderness and love with them, I was like, wait a second, this is possible. Well, he met me exactly where I was and he hit me with that. He was just Ralph. He says I want you to stop kicking yourself, because if you had known better, you could have done better. And that sat with me. And before he even introduced Jesus to me on a deeper level, he just loved me where I was at. He didn't bring up the Bible, although he was talking about biblical principles. He didn't tell me what to do. All he kept speaking to was reminding me of who I was created to be, and so he invited me. Finally, after several weeks, maybe even close to three months, of just kind of working with me and mentoring me and loving me, he invited me to Bible study, and that was when I gave my life to the Lord.
Speaker 2:I remember not being a person that was really a hugger, always trying to do things on my own, but on that particular day it was as if he was reading my life from scripture and I was almost like how come nobody ever told me this? And albeit they were. There had been people who had been giving me certain seeds, but again, I was unwilling. Going back to what I've written in the book, I was unwilling or unable at the time to embrace my unique shape Because I just wasn't aware of it. And through his help, I realized that I had a unique shape, that I had been shaped for a time in a season such as this, and him loving me the way that he did and helping me to find my mission, my assignment and my purpose oh my goodness, things really changed for me in that moment, and so I'm so grateful to this day, pastor Maxie James that's just a plug for him. He was just an amazing mentor who had a wonderful way of taking the word of God, making it practical so that we could apply it in our life. And that's where I've kind of tried to grow from, and I operate now with the understanding that the first and foremost, what you have to help people to do is get them to consider a new perspective.
Speaker 2:I think that so much of what we do sometimes is that we argue and fight or we try to manipulate people into a certain place, and it's not about manipulating, it's about persuading them, and the first way to do that is just getting them to consider saying, hey, if it was done this way, is it a possibility that it could be done another way? And when you leave that open, what happens now? You allow people to find it in their kind of unique walk. That then will allow them to align with what you're talking about, or the truth of the situation. You're giving them a new set of facts. And when we get people to align with their significance, their unique brilliance, you position them to the rise for impact and I love acronyms, you'll find out about me. I call it the car. It's the vehicle that you say Consider, align and rise to find your unique shape, and that's what I try to do, man.
Speaker 1:Got another book cooking? Yeah, I got.
Speaker 2:All right, you know what, Now that I've gone through this process, I'm walking in my unique shape. I'm not going to stop. I was trying to write, not necessarily this book at first, but I had been trying to write a book for the better part of the last 10 or 15 years. I got involved in ministry over 20. But I had been trying to write a book, stopping and starting. But when things line up and you hear the unctioning of the spirit working through you, some of the white noise, the things that convolute your thought process or how you're dealing with things, they get muted and you're able to hear now with the level of clarity that really promotes the vision that you want to walk in, and that's what happened for me.
Speaker 2:It started again. My wonderful wife, with all her wisdom, my mother, her and my mother came together Last year. They bought me this incredible gift to work with another mentor who helped me to just kind of develop my thoughts, and that's how the book got started a year ago. I wrote this book within a year and published it within the same year, simply because I got out of my own way, even though I had been helping people for the better part of 25 years. We can spend so much time pouring out. We don't make room for people to pour into it.
Speaker 2:And you've got to make room for that. You've got to set yourself up, and this is why I'm such a proponent of coaching. Again, if you're going to choose intentional manhood, well guess what? You've got to be open to allow a man to coach you into being intentional in finding your manhood and realizing that some of the things that you picked up you may have to lay down and be open to new perspectives. So that gift that they gave me in working with that coach, she came along and again she helped me get rid of all that white noise and kind of get a little more focused. And we got it done. And again it just kind of reminded me of the very call of my life, which is to help unlock people's brilliance, help them get out of their way and define their unique purpose in what God created them to be.
Speaker 1:I think that's an incredible thing and a great gift that your wife would invest in you in that way. I think for so many men I think a lot of the times the thing that we are missing is that invest in self peace. Like you know, we look at athletes and you know, living in Texas, you know we're surrounded by superstar athletes.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:You know Dak Prescott, cd Lam, you know Luca Dantich, kyrie Irving and the thing that they've had to do. They've invested millions, upon millions, upon millions of dollars into themselves.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Their support system, have invested money in them before they were even able to invest money in themselves, and I think, I really believe, that every man wants to step into authentic manhood. They want to be intentional about, you know, living out this thing called being a man. God doesn't create any bumps. I don't think that there is a single man alive right now who said when I grow up, I want to be a bum. You know, I want to have broken relationships. I want to have, you know, broken children. No, no, no man grows up with that mentality.
Speaker 2:Absolutely not.
Speaker 1:But I also think that I think it's hard, and I think it's hard. It's hard for women to. But you know, being a woman is hard, but also we don't talk about it enough man, being a man, it's hard.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:It is, and there are different kinds of hard, but it's hard nonetheless. And I think that a lot of times, by the time that we really realize that I don't know what manhood really is, the hard stuff is really hitting. And then it's hard for us to even break out and to ask for help. Like it's easy to say, yo, ralph, how about that? You know, I don't know who your team is, but you know how about that, that football game. But I can't, I can't. It's hard for me to call somebody up and say, ralph, dude, I'm struggling with porn right now. Or you know, ralph, ralph, I just, man, I got caught up. You know, I got caught up with this woman and I don't know how to do. Like, ralph, I'm failing my kids. Ralph, how about this one, ralph, I'm failing myself.
Speaker 2:Come on, listen. Oh my goodness, those are such amazing points because that is where the rubber meets the road. This is how so many men cannot. They miss the opportunity to gain traction because we're unable, we feel unable, to talk about those things that truly matter. What do we do? We distract ourselves by talking about the things that, most of the time, really don't mean a whole heck of a lot. Right, we're giving part about being a part of this world and again, I am not trying to compare a man to a woman or in the sense of you know the unique, the perspective can be different. But as a man, the thing that becomes really aware it's, you know, that old thing that we kind of tell the little boys. We're pulled aside and told not to cry on some level. Right, you suck it up, you know what I'm saying? And they teach girls how to tap in, to become emotionally intelligent, emotionally aware. Now, some of those things have been misconstrued or kind of convoluted as of recently, over the last maybe 20 to 30 years, but the fact is is that they try to teach men how to suck it up, right, and they'll call it like a warrior method or something. But really what they do is they kind of cut, you know, a man right below his knees, because you know there's a reason why God gave us tear ducts, there's a reason why God gave us a heart, there's a reason why we need to be able to tap into some level of sensitivity so we can experience empathy and sympathy and actually walk with some level of humility, rather than false humility. Right, but what ends up happening? Because of what we pick up and then the story we begin to write, we continue, perpetuate, a cycle that continues to move us down the road that moves us from being truly, as you were talking about a moment ago, about being self aware, right of who we really are. And I think that the one question that life asks and this goes to men and women, the one thing that life is going to continue to ask us, right, is who are you really? Yes, who are, which comes in many different shapes and sizes. It comes in the forms of many different questions, but at the core, it's who are you really? How will you express yourself?
Speaker 2:I'm reminded of a line in John, one that still to this day gives me goosebumps. It's when John the Baptist was, you know, baptizing and Jesus was just about to come on the scene and the Roman guards were questioning John about who he was going to say that he was. And it says in this passage here it says he did not fail in his confession but confessed freely. And why? That stands out to me? Because if you read that whole chapter you find out very quickly.
Speaker 2:He starts with his confession about saying who he's not. He speaks to the part like hey, I'm not this Messiah, I'm not a prophet. He speaks to the part about where he might, where some people might seem it as a form of weakness. He speaks in this way this is what I'm not, and he says. But then it says he goes and he says I'm the one, I'm the one calling in the wind make the path straight for the Lord. He in professes who he is.
Speaker 2:And this is how we fail in our confession when we are uncomfortable in that place between what we call to be our virtues and what we call to be our weaknesses, when we are not fully aware of who we are and embrace who we are, because the truth is we don't have another person to take ourselves to Right. This is who we are when. So when we're not in this place of being able to accept all that I am and all that I'm not. We will make up who we are and that's what we profess, and then that's where things become problematic for us.
Speaker 2:And so, when I realized that so much of my time was spent, I thought I'm not going to get into the world of what I thought I was professing, something that I wanted the world to see, but in actuality I was hiding, right, I was just trying to keep people from finding out what I was ashamed of.
Speaker 2:But when I realized my quirkiness, the, the, the unique way that I thought some of those things that are weaknesses, that that guess what, they will propel me further when I acknowledge them and say, hey, this is what I'm not, but yet and still, this is what I was able to do, this is what I think, but in spite of what I think, this is what I was able to, to accomplish, right, right, when you speak like that, now you're fully showing up, in a manner that's transparent, that now guess what. You're speaking to the, the, the, the shame and the and the and the weakness in another person, and you're shining a light and say, hey, yes, what you're more than enough to. I think that that is a one of the more profound gifts that we can give to someone. When we fully embrace who we are, when we embrace our unique shape and that's what I really hope to help people get beyond in their life and in their leadership in one cause somebody's waiting for you to get who you really are.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's right I say it often. Somebody is waiting on you to arrive.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And this whole idea that life asks you who are you really?
Speaker 1:That question will never stop coming to you over the course of your life, because at one point it is asking you to establish who you want to be. At another point it's going to ask you again to see if you're lining up with who you want to be. And then, at another season because we aren't supposed to stay the same that question is going to come to see how were you changing, how were you transforming at this time of life, cause I mean, yo, I'm, I'm 43 now. I forget that often. I'm 43 now and I should not be the same person at 43 that I was at 23 or 33. Now, now my 43 may not look like what your 43 look like.
Speaker 1:My 33 may not look like what your 33 look like, and I think, because men, so many men, are wired for the competition portion of it, I think we get in trouble. I think we get in trouble yeah One when we are comparing ourselves, our current self, to somebody else's highlight or whatever, or we're comparing ourselves to the wrong people, like there's so many young men who are comparing their lives to, you know, to Drake and to Kanye, and to, you know, kendrick Lamar.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or we're comparing ourselves to, you know, the top athletes and all this stuff and while on, on some level, if you identify with what they do, that's one thing.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:But your life will never play out the way that somebody else's life plays out, because your life is for you.
Speaker 2:Amen.
Speaker 1:And so if, if go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 2:No, no, please go ahead. Finish, I want to that next point. Go ahead.
Speaker 1:I just I think that if, if we're really going to lead, if we're really going to lead, if we're going to become as you said, we have to be able to answer that question who are you really? Because when you know who you are, it helps you to discover why you will put here in the first place.
Speaker 2:Now yeah.
Speaker 1:And when you know the why, then the why becomes the vehicle for everything else. All of a sudden, the why begins to the, the how begins to make sense, then, then the, the avenues for impact really begins to like I'm. I'm going to tell you the reason why I started this podcast is because I had gone through a phase when we moved from. We moved from Missouri to Texas about four, four and a half years ago. I was on staff at a church. I was a teaching pastor, we were children's pastors, I was speaking a lot, all this stuff. Okay, when we move, when we moved to Texas, I had this expectation that because I felt like I was gifted, that people were going to see that and people were going to latch onto that, then I could become, you know, a speaker, then I could become a coach, then I would jump on the staff at somebody's church because I saw it in me. So I assumed everybody saw it in me, right?
Speaker 2:Okay, okay.
Speaker 1:I'm tracking with you. Move to Texas, bro. I didn't step into a pulpit until early of 2023. Yeah, and so that was a lot of time for me wondering am I really even who I is? Everything that I thought about myself is that a lie? Like you know, god, like what is really happening, am I? Maybe I'm not, because I'd gotten to a point, dude, right, I said, well, maybe I'm. Just I'm never supposed to preach again.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'm never supposed to speak or anything, I'm just supposed to. Maybe my job is just to be a husband and a father, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 2:Nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1:However. However, I could not get away from the three hallmarks of my life, which are I love to motivate people, I love to inspire and I love to encourage. So I got to a point where I said, okay, if I'm not going to be able to do this from a pulpit, I'll do it on social media.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:COVID. You know, covid came around and started making videos and then all of a sudden back I think in 2023, I got this idea. I started doing a series of podcasts called uh, your daily pep with coach Jay.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:All of a sudden, I found it. Amen, I found it, and you know, in launching this podcast now, it allows me to do what's in my heart.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Because when? Because, man, when life asks me who are you really?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I had to lay down everything that I thought that I wanted to be, everything that I thought that I was meant to be, and I had to really stop and say okay, who am I really in this moment? I'm a person who loves people, I'm a person who wants people to live their best life. And whether, if that means I get rich off of this, hallelujah yes. But if it means that I don't get rich off of this and my podcast only gets five listeners, can I be okay with that? And my answer was yes, I can be okay with that.
Speaker 1:Then I knew that I was doing the right thing and, even though I've been doing this podcast for almost a year and a half, I did an episode last week where I talked about how I thought about quitting because I had allowed myself to be fooled by looking at numbers numbers, you know, having grown the way that I wanted them to. Maybe nobody wants to know, maybe nobody's listening, but I had a moment where life said who are you really? And I came back and I said I am that person who, if I'm just sent here to reach one person, if that one person is listening to this podcast, I have to be faithful to my charge to that one person.
Speaker 2:Okay, justin, oh my goodness, I got goosebumps while you were talking. I listen. I'm a firm believer that God does not do anything by just like coincidence. I think that when people come into your life, that definitely it can be for a reason, for a season or for a lifetime, you and I finding each other or being introduced and coming together. The way that we did was not by mistake. We are more kindred spirits than you could ever imagine.
Speaker 1:And we're back with this episode of the pep talk podcast. Wow, all I can say as well. And I had to make the decision to split this interview into two parts because we talked for an hour and 40 minutes y'all. An hour and 40 minutes. And just what you got now in this first episode, y'all. It gets so much better in episode two that's going to drop next Monday. So I'm telling you you don't want to miss it, you want to be here for it. And also, you know, drop us a line, let us know what you think at the pet podcast at gmailcom. Hit Ralph up at RalphBassardcom.
Speaker 1:Y'all, y'all this episode. If you think it would make crazy, next week's episode, next week's episode, is just going to be downright nuts. I want you to share this with your husbands, shared with your brothers, with your cousins, with your sons. If you're a man, if you're someone who loves men, then this episode is for you. Let us know what you got out of it. Hit me up at ad underscore. Jb speaks on Instagram. We want to hear from you. Drop us a five star review and rating wherever you listen to podcast and if you're catching this on YouTube, hit that subscribe button. Let us know what you think, but we'll see you next week for episode 35 of the pep talk podcast, part two of this amazing interview with myself and Ralph Bassard. But you know how we ended, y'all are you?