Living from the Inside Out with Joshua Laycock

Ever wondered how a successful career and a loving family might still leave you feeling unfulfilled? Our guest, Joshua Laycock, opens up about his personal journey of navigating emotional numbness despite having what many would consider an ideal life. From his work in commercial insurance to his involvement with the Uncivilized Nation men's group, Joshua shares how he discovered the importance of mindset shifts and personal growth. Listen as Joshua discusses his own battles and triumphs, emphasizing that recognizing and addressing one’s unique challenges is essential, regardless of their perceived severity.

In our conversation, Joshua reveals the transformative power of embracing new practices like meditation and energy work, and the significance of supportive men's groups. You’ll hear about his journey from forming meaningful male friendships to becoming a coach, and the impact of being present and vulnerable in both fatherhood and marriage. We explore how courageous communication and responsible risk-taking have helped Joshua unlock his inner potential and foster genuine personal growth. His experiences are a testament to the necessity of confronting reality and being open to new ideas for personal development.

Lastly, Joshua delves into the profound strength that comes from intentional parenting and a strong marriage. He shares personal anecdotes about overcoming relationship challenges, highlighting the importance of open communication with loved ones and addressing personal demons for the sake of future generations. Joshua's reflections on aggression disguised as withdrawal, the power of men's groups, and the journey to self-realization through Stoic philosophy will leave you inspired and eager to apply these insights to your own life. Don’t miss this compelling episode filled with heartfelt stories and practical wisdom.

Transcript

Alex Lange 0:02

Hey, good morning. If you're in the state of Texas, like I am, I have finally put the keys down and I'm going to be in one place for multiple weeks. This morning I'm in my car, getting the opportunity to talk with Joshua Laycock. A little bit about Joshua. I actually met him, like I met many men that I interviewed through the Uncivilized Nation. It's a men's group that's based out of Colorado but it's virtual and there's men all over the world.

Alex Lange 0:35

I recently spent four days in the Colorado mountains with Joshua and about 20 other men and we got to take time and heal together and about 20 other men and we got to take time and heal together and I remember having a deep conversation, one that I had with many men, but this one stuck out to me a lot. On the mountain side, about 5.00 AM, josh and I woke up and we were just, we were just talking about life and his story intrigued me. And it intrigued me because a lot of men feel like, oh, there has to be a traumatic experience, like there's some type of traumatic experience that there's a catalyst into your journey. But there's many men Joshua was one of them and we'll talk into his story here in a minute that they they feel like everything's just perfect, but there's still something missing, and so I love this story. I had to get him on. I I finally did. I rescheduled Joshua, I apologize for that, but thank you for coming on and taking some time with me today no, absolutely my pleasure.

Joshua Laycock 1:40

It's been a long time coming. We were going to do it in Colorado, but I think just the the vibe and the cadence of those days just didn't lend itself to getting it done. So I'm glad we're we're able to do it on the other side, now that we've reintegrated ourselves back into the real world and and all the, all the wonderful baggage that that entails absolutely it.

Alex Lange 1:59

You know, like you said, if the work we were doing it, it just took us to a different place and I think that we both realized on the last day like holy shit, uh, we missed it. But that's okay, we'll get, we'll get to it.

Joshua Laycock 2:13

Yeah, it would have just been like an hour of me just sitting there quietly thinking, which is rare for me to be quiet. So, yeah, I think the vibe wasn't necessarily conducive. It was really an introspective. It was a powerful, powerful weekend and I don't think we'll go too deep into that here, we can later but definitely an experience that I think every man on the planet should experience and, as you said, it doesn't matter what your past, where you're from, whatever your sort of socioeconomic status is or whatever. It's something that I think every man should experience and certainly it also allows guys like you and I to connect who, quite frankly, probably wouldn't have otherwise connected had it not been for these men's groups and these opportunities to come together.

Alex Lange 2:58

Absolutely so. Josh or Joshua, I keep switching back and forth. What do you go by?

Joshua Laycock 3:04

I tend to go by Joshua, but don't worry if you, if you call me Josh, what I usually get is a lot of Josh was so, so I'm pretty easy.

Alex Lange 3:13

I'm pretty easy either way. All right, I'm going to do my best. I'm going to have a counter, a ticker of Joshua versus Josh's. All right, joshua, tell me a little bit about yourself, your background.

Joshua Laycock 3:23

There's so many things you've done and I, like, my mind was blown when you told me yeah, I mean, I can, I can start, you know as as far back as we want, but I think my life has probably been quite varied, mostly due to lack of focus, but that's OK so. So right now I'm 41, be 42 in a few months. I live in Canada and, for those of you who might know where that is and want to zoom in, I live just outside of a town called Kingston, which is a couple hours east of Toronto. So in Ontario, sort of central eastern Canada, it's beautiful space. Um, I've lived all over canada, um, most of my life. So that's, uh, that's where I live. I have two kids, uh, a son, who's, and they just had birthdays, so they're eight, and my daughter is five. Um, and in a few days I'm coming up on my 10th wedding anniversary with my absolutely incredible wife, kate. Uh, we have a dog, kind of the textbook, like married boy, girl, house dog, you know, the usual sort of nuclear family, and yeah.

Joshua Laycock 4:34

So my day job is I work for a massive insurance company here in Canada and I'm a product specialist. That's what I've been doing most of my professional careers, working in the commercial insurance space, but really the stuff that we're here to talk about is my work with myself and then, which naturally evolved into working with other men, particularly, and, yeah, so I have a men's coaching practice called lifestyle evolution. Um, I'm the head coach, uh, which is probably a bit of a fancy title, but essentially I just help oversee and work with a lot of the uncivilized coaches Um, so those are men's coaches that you can get access to through um, joining the uncivilized nation. I also run, or co-run, an online group called the complete dad with one of my good buddies who's a South African who lives in Germany, got to love the internet, so we run that as well. And just for giggles Cause, if that's not enough, I'm also going back and doing my master's of psychology and then all the other stuff coaching my son's baseball, and I'm going to be getting back into jujitsu and just keep moving.

Joshua Laycock 5:50

So there's a lot on my plate, but really all of it now is in service of my master vision, which we can talk about. That's a big part of my practice, but my version of what visions are and how they serve us and everything that I do is just trying to move in closer to that, that point of my vision of what kind of a man do I want to be? What kind of a life do I want to live? And it's been a really wild journey from, you know, just a completely asleep drone to now moving into a pretty funky and fun part of my life where I'm now starting to be aware of all the cool things going on and just exploring and playing really.

Alex Lange 6:34

You know it was interesting. You know, obviously I mentioned before we got on here, this podcast is a platform for me to help men turn their pain into power, and you made a good point that not all men experience pain in the way that we think it. At a surface level, right, like the pain point may not always be painful, right and traumatic. And so for you you mentioned that like you had everything and I'll let you go in deep into that, but there was still something missing. Tell me about that, the point in your life where you were like there's something more. I need to get it, and I need to, and I need to, I need to just change what I'm doing.

The Journey to Inner Fulfillment

Joshua Laycock 7:17

Yeah, and you're right, so it doesn't. We don't always have to have a massively tragic backstory. There are a lot of men that do and, and that's helpful. If, if you know, you hear those stories, if that's what you're facing, that's incredible. But sometimes that can be a little off-putting to people who haven't had that and they're kind of. One of the things that I'm really mindful of is I speak to a lot of men who are like, yeah, but I don't, I don't need or maybe I'm not even worthy of a coach or a therapist or doing this work, because my life's not that bad. I'm, I'm, I'm good and the challenges is like, you know, we all have our own struggles, we all have our own challenges, and what I don't want to see men do is like minimize what they're working through because maybe, relative to someone else, it's not as dangerous or traumatic, but it's still your thing, right, it's still your challenge and it's still something that's holding you back from thriving and living the life that you want. So, yeah, for me like it's a pretty idyllic story. You know, I have incredible parents. They split up when I was a baby, but I always talk like my dad and my mom, who are still friends are the textbook on how to have a divorce with a young child and not completely screw the kid up. I mean, the jury's still out, but they did an incredible job and, despite going through a very painful part of their life, I never bore the brunt of that and they both remarried and so I ended up actually having like four incredible parents who were so loving and close and we're all friends with each other and it was a really cool thing.

Joshua Laycock 8:50

I grew up in an upper middle class family. I never wanted for anything. Financially. We were doing quite well, sort of like the equivalent of your Ivy League school into finance and I graduated near the top of my class and had an excellent job in insurance and finance before I even graduated and I had my whole world planned out, you know, and I knew what financial milestones I wanted to hit and I hit them all on or ahead of schedule At the time where we're sort of coming up to, and at the time where we're sort of coming up to, I had moved to Vancouver on our west coast and I was living in North Vancouver in a rainforest.

Joshua Laycock 9:39

Literally across the street was a river and a dam and I'd wake up to like bald eagles and bears cruising through my neighborhood. It was like just stunning, just stunning. And you know, I was married to the woman who is the love of my life and is a part of me that I just can't even begin to articulate. I even had my old junker Toyota 4Runner that I'd always wanted and I loved it, and I had a young son who was healthy, had the dog, had everything, and I was just numb, I was just.

Joshua Laycock 10:06

I found myself going through the motions, I found myself really getting distracted by things that you know, a good man shouldn't be distracted by. And that's what I was telling myself. And you know, it was like I've done everything. I ticked all the boxes, I've done all the things that I should do that society says I should be doing. Why am I not happy? And I thought, like a lot of people, well, I'll test a new job. So I took a very I was approached and I accepted a very challenging job that I thought was going to test my skills and everything just went crashing down from there. It was a disaster from day one. When was this? What time? Yeah, we're talking like 10 years ago, so roughly so, probably 13, 14, 15 ish.

Alex Lange 10:59

Okay, I just wanted to get a timeframe on when we're talking.

Joshua Laycock 11:02

So 10 years ago, yeah, so call it roughly 10 years ago and what I got into is I I've always had a really creative imagination. I grew up an only child. I have siblings from my dad's second marriage, but I was raised an only child. So I have that sort of only child creativity, imagination, cause you got to entertain yourself kind of thing. And while that's great it helps me write stories and be fun and articulate it can also turn on you.

Joshua Laycock 11:32

And what I found is I was getting into quite dangerous cycles of rumination. I was getting really upset with myself. I was having conflict with other people. I found myself you know, when you get into those situations where you have a conflict, and then for two weeks later, like, oh, I should have said this and I should have said that, and next time I see him I'm going to do this, and it just. I was out of control and thankfully I wasn't. Actually it wasn't manifesting in dangerous behaviors, but it was really getting uncomfortable, like to the point where I didn't know that I wanted to be in the office because I wasn't sure that I could keep my temper with, you know, our CEO, and whatever was going on. This is not the company I work for now. It's a completely unrelated company. So I was just, I was really uncomfortable and I've talked about this before is there was a day where I was driving into work and I was anticipating conflict and I was so into this rumination, into this conflict kind of fantasy I guess where I went in and I just ripped this guy a new one and I kind of George Costanza, quit and walked out and you know.

Joshua Laycock 12:42

But then I remember thinking, like my body was physically reacting to this and I wanted to do that, but I was like, well, I have a kid and I have, you know, rent that I have to pay and I have expenses and you can't do that. And this is not okay because I didn't trust myself enough to not do something epically stupid, because I was so not in control of my emotions and my thoughts. So I think I might even have gone home, worked from home that day, and I remember at night, cause I wasn't sleeping, cause I was just thinking, all the time, thinking, thinking. I remember Googling like how do you shut your brain off or how do you whatever, like something along the lines of what the hell's going on between my ears and a book popped up that you know resonated with me, so I've ordered it and devoured it and that book led to an online men group, which led to podcasts, which led to me joining other men's groups, and then that was the start of my journey.

Joshua Laycock 13:39

But I remember reading this book, the Unbeatable Mind, by Mark Devine, who is a really cool cat, former Navy SEAL, crossfit yoga guy. He's still crushing doing his thing. But that book, the Unbeatable Mind, and then his other books, the Way of the SEAL and stuff it was the first time that I ever was aware of my mind as something, that the process was within my control. I talked before my mind had always been either a massive asset or a massive liability. You go to school, you need to learn things. I can shove stuff into there, no problem, and I can use that, but when it would turn against me, I had no awareness of what was actually happening.

Joshua Laycock 14:28

So that book got me into things like mindfulness, mindset work. What I didn't realize at the time was actually some sort of quasi therapeutic tactics, cbt tactics to intercede and redirect negative thought patterns and stuff like that and that. So that was the beginning and that was probably about 10 years ago when I got into this space and now it's become my obsession and like I'm happy as hell right now. You know we all have our things that we continue to work on. But you know, my, my world on paper hasn't changed much in those 10 years by design, in terms of acquiring assets, getting promotions. That's just not been my pursuit. I realized that I'd been chasing all the wrong things and fell into that milestone goal setting trap that, when it's part of a larger system, can be very helpful, but when that's your thing, when the whole purpose is to hit these milestones or to achieve these very tangible goals, man, we realize really quickly when you get there that that's not all it's cracked up to be.

Alex Lange 15:38

Yeah, so you, you mentioned you know you talked about being numb at the beginning. Like you, you had everything, but there was this numb at the beginning. Like you, you had everything, but there was this numbness to you. Can you talk to me? Tell me more about that and then tell me, as you tell me more about that, talk to me about the following, uh, weeks, months, years. I know you, you, the job, you mentioned the job, but the process of your change, so you've been in this for 10 years. Tell me the things that you've changed over the process of your change. So you've been in this for 10 years.

Joshua Laycock 16:09

Tell me the things that you've changed over the course of the last 10 years. Yeah, so I mean, our minds recognize change, right, like cold and hot are relative only to where you're coming from, loud and quiet, those sorts of things. So it's easy for me to look back and be able to put labels on what I was feeling, but I wasn't labeling them, I didn't have the capacity to recognize them at the time, right Like when we go to the dentist and we get a freezing, we know our face is numb, because we know what it feels like when it's not numb. But I didn't really know any better because I just sort of grew into this being this adult that I didn't recognize. So I wasn't.

Joshua Laycock 16:52

One morning was like boy I'm feeling numb because you don't Right, and it's almost like people who are in a depression. You don't really necessarily realize you're in a depression until someone can help you recognize, maybe, where you're at and give you a bit of context and perspective. So what I knew for me was intuitively in my gut was like if this doesn't get better, I may not be married for very long, I'm certainly not going to be a very good father, and that to me was just utterly unacceptable and it became quite matter of fact, you know and this is coming from a place where, at the time, my marriage was good, or at least I thought it was. You know, I thought I was a pretty good dad. So actually, as you start to learn these things and start to become aware of what's going on, I was actually really quite scared because it's waking up to some new reality. It's waking up to all the things that you might actually have control over but you've just been ignoring and then realizing how many things you've been obsessing about over which you have no control. Right, we get this backwards. So for, like a lot of people, the beginning of my journey was quite scary. You realize that I had done a lot of this to myself and again, I'm not coming from a position of trauma or where something happened to me, so I'm talking about my mindset, my inability to see beyond sort of material things. It's kind of embarrassing or scary, or maybe even anger inducing when you realize, in a way, you're choosing to live that way. You're choosing to live that life and our lives and our perception, I really believe, are just a fiction. It's how we choose to see it right.

Joshua Laycock 18:47

You ask one guy go chop this giant pile of wood, he's going to grumble and groan and hate it and tell you all the reasons why it sucks. And you've got other guys who are like I get to chop wood, sweet, let's go. It's the exact same task. It's just how our brains perceive it. So, to answer your question, at first it was super scary. It was really daunting.

Joshua Laycock 19:09

You know, I went through moments of like man, am I like irreparable? Like, have I? Have I gone beyond a point where I can't come back? You know, have I just torpedoed myself? And you do the oh look how much time I've wasted all those sorts of things.

Joshua Laycock 19:23

You throw your own little pity parties and then you kind of you either decide that you're going to either go back to being numb, which I don't think ever really works, or you decide I'm going to step into this. And it started to allow me to realize things on a on a much broader scale. Like I realized that slowly I'd been gaining weight and all of a sudden it's like Holy shit, I'm 50 pounds overweight, where'd that come from? Or like, boy, I'm married but I've really been taking this relationship for granted. Hmm, that's interesting, you know. Or you know, people always joke there's no manual to being a father. Actually there's interesting. You know, or you know, people always joke there's no manual to being a father. Actually, there's tons of them, right, there's a ton of resources on how to be a better man, how to be more present, how to learn how to communicate with children, how to deal with high energy children. You know even some of the stuff that we talked about around connection and different types of psychology. So there are, you just have to go find them and you have to be open to them, and I think that's something that's.

Joshua Laycock 20:35

I love Dewey Freeman's conversations on the difference between control and I always saw myself as a powerful person. I was smart, I was making good money Da da, da, da, da da da. But what I really Freeman talks about, to be powerful, you have to be able to influence, but also be influenced. I was a super arrogant SOB who had no real justification for the level of cockiness and confidence that I was bringing to the world. It was a mask for deep-seated insecurity, so I wasn't prepared to be influenced. I was imposing myself on the world.

Joshua Laycock 21:17

So what I was doing was I was trying to exert control, and I'm a massive follower and fan of the Stoic philosophy, capital S Stoicism, which, at its core, is about recognizing the things that you can control and recognizing the things that you can't control. Right, the things that you can't control will fill a warehouse. The things that you can control are quite small and you should spend your energy there. And what I was trying to do was I was trying to control my world, but it was all the stuff that really we have no control over. So that process of coming to was very uncomfortable and in fact, in the short run, I actually rebelled and I dove deeper into the things that were numbing me and distracting me and it just eventually you just have to realize you sit little wins and little wins and you start chipping away at it.

Joshua Laycock 22:12

And I think one of the most powerful things for me, which is very textbook, masculinity based or driven, was when not only the work that I was doing was starting to have a benefit on me, but I was able to see that I was influencing other men.

Joshua Laycock 22:31

That was actually when the real power of what we were doing came to light. For me, it's been studied a fair bit in that, because one of the challenges how do we get men into things like therapy and to start paying attention to the mental health and there's a few sort of tick the box requirements which increases the odds of men being successful in therapeutic and mental health practices, but one of them is the ability to give back Right, man, we like to fix shit, even if we don't know how we like to fix stuff. The light bulb moment for me was when other people were seeing the changes in me but also recognizing that what I was bringing to the table was having an influence on them and I was able to see the growth that they were doing. That this whole idea of men's work and personal growth really was was actually being a creative and adding value to my life.

Alex Lange 23:21

Yeah, I wanted to ask you a question because you had said that you, you had dove back for a short period of time on things that were numbing you still. Can you tell me what those things were? And then, also, as you shine light on that, as you shine light on the realization of, like, oh shit, I I temporarily jumped back to this, these things that were holding me back, how, what, what was changing in your life as you were doing this process? Yeah, yeah.

Joshua Laycock 23:49

So at first it felt like nothing was changing, um, and that was the frustrating thing. So for me, my distractions weren't super sinister. Yeah, I, I would use porn every now and then, um, but it wasn't, truly, it wasn't. I mean, you could argue no amount is a good amount, but it wasn't something that was really distracting to me. Honestly, honestly, most of my my distractions were although it was early days, on social were, you know, instagram and and Facebook feeds of the material things I wanted.

Joshua Laycock 24:24

I was always convinced that I was going to be very wealthy. I'm not. I do well, I'm comfortable, but I'm not wealthy. But I was always convinced that I was going to be wealthy and and more you know. Frustratingly, looking back now, is I just I assumed I was entitled to it. I'm a smart guy, I mean, I'm entitled to that.

Joshua Laycock 24:44

So my distractions were fantasies around the jobs I was going to have, the money I was going to make, how I was going to spend it, the cars I was going to have the money I was going to make, how I was going to spend it, the cars I was going to drive, the places we were going to go see. So a lot of my retreating into that world was like refusing to confront the world as it is. And I was just living in this, this fantasy of what my life could look like, and sometimes that's just watching a ton of movies, sometimes it's just going on long walks but not actually paying attention to the walks. I'm just fantasizing about the money and the things, and so a lot of it was just a mental distraction. I'm fortunate drugs and alcohol weren't really in my past. I mean, I'll have a drink, but it's not ever been a challenge for me. So for a lot of it was just really head in the sand kind of stuff.

Joshua Laycock 25:35

It's like you know the difference between buying a book and reading a book and then even reading a book and doing what the book says. I was at the buying a book phase and I might even read it but I wasn't doing anything with it because doing something about it was scary. It meant confronting these things. It meant making changes. So that was the beginning of it and that's where I was kind of hiding from it. It's like buying all the vegetables and having the healthy food in your house and then still ordering pizza that next night. That's kind of like what I was doing. What was changing.

Joshua Laycock 26:08

I think the biggest thing for me at the center of all of this was my relationship with my wife. We right now we're in this phenomenally incredible place. We have a remarkable relationship and we've always been good good, whatever that means in air quotes. But I did realize that I was really taking it for granted, and so it started off with just having the courage to share things with my wife, like hey, I'm reading this book, I know it's a little weird, what do you think? It was just being a little open, starting little conversations, being more mindful of how other people were, and the biggest pivot was starting to look at life from other people's perspective. So those little changes started to open me up, to start actually living in the world.

Joshua Laycock 27:06

And then that turned into like and it's funny, like right now I have my back goes out. It has been for quite a while, probably 20 years now. It usually does it a couple times a year. When it would go out, it used to really derail me. I'd get miserable, I'd get upset, I'd probably get mean to people, I'd eat a bunch of junk food and I'd just hide and just sort of wallow in my own self-pity. Now it's like shit, okay, inconvenient. What do I got to do? What maybe did I do wrong to bring this one on this time? Let's rock and roll through it.

Joshua Laycock 27:40

It was actually just the way I was confronting things.

Joshua Laycock 27:42

It was my ability to take this job that I had been in, and I'd only been there a few months and I said this is not working for me, I'm not doing this, I'm out. And I actually went back, kind of hat in hand. Thankfully, I left on good terms to my old company and said look, that didn't work. You guys said if it didn't, I can come back. How does that look? And they welcomed me back, which was super cool.

Joshua Laycock 28:00

So it was starting to have little micro moments of courage, little micro moments of vulnerability, micro moments of slightly smarter decisions, a little bit more fitness, a little less junk food, a little bit more fitness, a little less junk food, a little bit more reading, a little less Netflix. This wasn't like a today I'm captain, do it yourself. And everything changed overnight. So it took time, and I think, though, although I am the kind of guy who likes to dive in on things and often get hurt or get overwhelmed by it, I think where the success, why the success stuck was because I did just kind of chip away at it.

Alex Lange 28:42

Yeah, and you highlighted a few things I was going to ask about, like what did you do specifically? But you talked about reading more, watching Netflix less. So, those people, people that are curious on, like how do I make that shift Josh just specifically said it in his last question Can you highlight that? Maybe possibly for for people like what, what did you do specifically? Cause, as men, right, we're like tell me what I need to do and I'll do it, right, so what, what was it that you did?

Finding Brotherhood

Joshua Laycock 29:11

Well, and a lot of guys are like tell me what I need to do and I'll make note of it. Most guys if they actually did. Like everyone knows how to be ripped, everyone knows how to get money, everyone knows how to everything. It's how many people actually do it? So one thing I didn't touch on, but like it starts with the books, it starts with just being open to these new ideas. With the books, it starts with just being open to these new ideas. Like I can't even tell you how many people will talk to me and when I mentioned things like meditation, energy, you know, mindset they're, they're oh, that's just woo, woo, shit. I don't need that stuff. Like you're closed and you know I often talk about armors.

Joshua Laycock 29:51

I'm not a big fan of the term vulnerability. I get what it means. It's, it's true. I tend to use the word armor and a lot of these guys we have our armor on and what we need to do is we need to find places where it's safe to take it off and put it back on again. So a lot of these guys who are closed, like that, they have their armor, keeps everyone out and keeps all the crap in. So the first thing is to open up a little bit and acknowledge that you don't have to be completely screwed up. You don't have to be completely broken to want to grow and learn. So you have to be open.

Joshua Laycock 30:23

But I would say the single biggest leap that I took was joining a men's group. I again my brothers and my sister hate it when I say this, but growing up as an only child in my environment, I got really comfortable with being by myself and it's odd. Like in school I was popular, like I was a captain of the football team, I was smart, I you know. Like I wasn't an outsider, but I never had a lot of friends. I never felt I needed a lot of friends. So one of the biggest things that I realized is that as I started to read and learn and go online and read blogs, I was like who do I talk to this about? I got to talk to someone about like this and you can only say so much to your wife there's stuff that just men need to talk to men about.

Joshua Laycock 31:09

So the biggest step for me and this is not a plug, I run a group that we were affiliated with a group. There's other groups out there, but it was those painful moments hovering over the men's group join now button, trying to do the mental math of like, is this worth it? Literally sitting back and being like what kind of loser has to pay to have online friends? You know, that's what I was thinking, and so so the single biggest thing was finding your tribe, finding your group, that that resonates with you, and whether that's in personal development or dungeons and dragons, or going skiing or going for a hike or whatever the hell that looks like, finding people around you that are moving in the same direction. Provided that direction is helpful, um and healthy, then I think that was that's probably the single biggest jump that I made. Um, and there's no risk to it, yeah there was.

Alex Lange 32:07

There was two things that came out that I wanted to just hit on, and you know what you, you, you explained it in a great way that I never thought about. So I'm just gonna say a lot of men were traditional beings, right. So, like, that traditional mindset is like oh, it's always worked, like, let's just keep it flowing. Like you had said, that openness, that curiosity is where the most like the growth came Right. I had put a post on Instagram that said traditionalism is the ultimate killer to growth, and I had a lot of men DM me and say, well, it always works, like, and they were attacking my thought process and I said look, my, my message is about being able to be curious and seeing what else is out there. So I just want to say thank you for bringing light to that.

Alex Lange 32:50

And then also, the big piece is the fabric of who we are as men change, when we are healing in community with other men. And when I say heal, that doesn't mean I have that emotional release. It could be you have the emotional release and I get to experience that, and some things come up for me that heal itself. Things come up for me that heal itself, and that's one big thing that I I saw in the initiation a couple weeks ago with the 20 men is so many people were having these emotional releases and it was all coming up in me, oh yeah, and I'm like, sitting here, this is a fucking sign like this is this. Is it like these are the things that are coming up and they're healing? And, like you said, in that group we had conversations with each other that we probably didn't have with any other person outside before.

Joshua Laycock 33:42

No, and I do believe it's all about wanting and finding community, and one of the challenges is right, is so? Gabor Mate talks about this pushull, and I love this in the context of my children, but it works in life as well is this push-pull between being myself and being accepted within a group. And look, there's certain things that if you put this out here into the universe, broadly speaking, well, there's going to be some people in the community that are going to pull away from you, and I think a lot of times we hide what we're feeling or what we're thinking or what we're desiring, because either we will be, you know, outcast from our immediate group or there's a fear of being an outcast. So one of the things is we all, as men, typically look at our issues and think I'm the only one who's dealing with this Like I must, because we're all out there fronting right. We're all out there, chest puffed out, shoulders back, looking tough, acting cool. How are you? I'm fine bro. I'm fine bro, yeah, I'm good, good.

Joshua Laycock 34:43

And meanwhile everyone's going like am I the only one who's not fine? Am I the only one who's working through some stuff? And I remember the first time being on a men's call where I truly don't remember if it was me or someone else. But this moment of like sometimes I worry about this and the guy's like oh yeah, me too, you too, oh yeah, and then the shoulders go down and everyone goes wait a minute, you guys aren't running away in horror. Oh, we all feel that way. Sometimes you get scared that know your wife's gonna see some other guy and think that he's so much better oh yeah, I worry about that too is like no shit, okay. Or you know, do you think that the whole world, you know, like, as we started to share and you start to realize that we're not alone, then the community starts to come together. And now we're starting to come together because of the things that are similar, as opposed to looking for people to try to decide how do I get you out of my tribe? Where are you different? Because we need this small little tribe.

Joshua Laycock 35:46

So, yeah, that was the piece for me, and I see it now through the men's work that we do in the group work that we do now is like everyone comes into these situations with whatever reason, thinking that we are this special, unique flower and our problems. We're the only ones who are facing our unique brand of problems and while that doesn't mean that they aren't deeply intimate to you, chances are good. You're feeling what most of the other guys are feeling on some level, and that's why I'm able to relate to some of the men who have had these super deep traumas, and vice versa, because we're coming together in community and we're coming together with compassion and listening and an eye of towards healing, and that's the piece. So it's essential to come together as a group, because that's, I think, all we really want is to connect and to recognize that I can be me and be welcome into a community yeah, you mentioned uh about the power of a men's group.

Men's Work and Fatherhood Integration

Alex Lange 36:42

Tell me how that's played a role in your journey. Uh, in the you mentioned being in one uh other men's group and then also the man uncivilized. Tell me how that's played a a factor into your journey yeah, I mean.

Joshua Laycock 36:55

So for me personally it was really cool because it was the first time that I had like really good, healthy male friends. Um, I, I always seem to connect better with women. Um, I like I said I was on sports teams and stuff but I never really connected. I think I was just too guarded. You know, aside from my own personal work and just being around some phenomenal men and just learning some incredible things, it was also an opportunity for me to be given a chance to be a leader within these kind of groups and it came about quite unexpectedly.

Joshua Laycock 37:30

I'd be on these calls Naturally I talk a lot, so I was moving into leadership positions and helping to facilitate some of these things and I would jump on calls with guys all the time and we would have deep conversations. And you know, I've had guys call me and say, hey, like I'm still married because of you I'm. I've had people who have come out of the closet a lot because of conversations that they've had with me. Just, they felt safe talking to me about that, which is great. I've had people say like, look I'm, I'm thinking dark, suicidal thoughts. What do we do? And we get them in touch with people who can help them.

Joshua Laycock 38:04

So what happened to me, though, the kind of interesting moment for me was when my calendar was just full up and a couple of guys were like hey, I'd love to sit down and have a call with you. It was like I'm kind of jammed up, like I just I don't, I don't have time right now, and it was like well, you're a coach, can I pay you? It's like I'm not a coach, I'm just a guy. It's like no, no, I'm going to pay you. I was the first time that I thought this is a thing I can do, is this? Maybe I'm actually okay at this? And then it kind of just amped up that like I was talking about our ability to give back level, and that was just huge for me, so that I mean directly benefiting me.

Joshua Laycock 38:47

Getting into men's work has actually moved me on to this next phase of my life, which is coaching men and now going back to school to do my master's in psychology and really help understand how this stuff works. And then this you know, the initiation that we did. That was my first time experiencing something that intense, seeing the breath work. So I'm looking into doing becoming a breath work facilitator and trying to be part of the group that facilitates these types of men's events. So that's a very direct benefit. But honestly it cut both ways. But being in part of a group one reminded me of how few real men and masculine friendships that I had that were healthy. But it was also my first real taste of that and until you can really know what that feels like, it's hard to describe in words what that means to me.

Alex Lange 39:46

Yeah, let me shift here for a second, because something you said just like it hit me. With regards to a fatherhood, I'm working on a project that hopefully comes to fruition in the next couple months called the integrated father and and we can get on. We can get in more depth offline sometime, but it kind of goes in with your complete dad podcast and, as you were having the you know the perfect life on paper, but you had that, that feeling that there was something missing. How has that helped your relationship with your children? How has that made you the better father, the more present father, the more aware father? We've talked about your relationship with your wife. We've talked about your relationship with other men. We've talked about your relationship with other men. How has that helped you with your being a father?

Fatherhood, Reflection, and Men's Work

Joshua Laycock 40:40

I don't know. Um, hopefully I'm not too horrible of a father, I think. I think you know what it's allowed me to do is just be hyper aware of the importance of being a father. I mean, that sounds like a small thing, but again, not being numb to the reality that raising these little humans and setting them up for success is critical. So you know, it's helped me with things like my comfort with sharing some of my challenges and my struggles, in other words, not trying to be the super stoic dad in front of them. All the time my kids have seen me cry, I've apologized. We talk about my weaknesses, we talk about my strengths. We have strong conversations and I invite them into my world of men's work strong conversations and I invite them into my world of men's work. I want them to see that I'm putting the effort in to being better for myself and for them. So in that capacity it's been essential.

Joshua Laycock 41:45

I say I don't know because I started the journey right as I became a father for the first time. So it wasn't something like I had five or six years of being a father and then I discovered this process and was like, oh, I'm going to do all of this differently. So I've been fortunate enough that I started these journeys as being a father and doing the work roughly at the same time, but you know, I think that's probably the biggest piece has been around my communication with my kids and, look, I've got a temper. I still fly off the handle and wish that I didn't and I'm not perfect by any stretch, so that, I would say, has been the biggest thing. It's about being present and intentional, and if you have listened to the completely dead podcast, you'll know we talk about that all the time as being intentional and being present. Being intentional, being present just pay the fuck attention to what you're doing, be smart about it, have a deliberateness to what you do, find a cadence and, again, that complete willingness to take your armor off in front of your children. And you know and this is not my, my model this is a Ryan Mickler that I used to work with quite closely and I is a really good dude. He always talked about his mission was to teach his sons how to be the best man they could possibly be and to show his daughters his daughter what type of a man or what, what, what to look for in a man, how to model being a good man and I take that to heart with my children. I'm teaching my son to be as good a man as he possibly can be and I want my daughter to be able to look to me and to her brother as role models so that when she moves into that world and if she decides she wants to date a man, then she knows what to look for. And that's really at its core.

Joshua Laycock 43:36

Um, but one of the the sayings or I'm sure one person is ultimately credited for it at the time but whatever demons, whatever shadows, whatever wounds we don't address as fathers, we simply pass them on to our children. And I can say this I would never hit my kids, I would never do things to hurt them, I would never abuse them. But to me, not addressing these things with the knowledge that I'm just going to pass them on to them, that's abuse, that's assault, that's neglect. And look, they're going to have their own issues that they're going to deal with. We all do.

Joshua Laycock 44:17

My parents did an incredible job and I had my own issues. But that's the biggest thing for me as a parent seeing how important those stakes are, because most of the stuff that we deal with or that we see other men deal with are echoes from past generations that were never addressed. So there's cycle breaking, there's evolution, there's all the sort of thing that has to happen and that's how I would say the biggest impact, um that it's had on me as a parent, recognizing that whatever I don't fix, whatever I don't sort out now I'm just deferring that to my children and I'm.

Alex Lange 44:52

That's unacceptable to me absolutely that's powerful right there. And what you said, and and going back to and I know I'm flip-flopping here, but okay, having that going, having that being said, and going back into men's work, and how is this journey, you know, like so? So we talked about the power of men's group in your journey now being in more alignment with coaching and mentoring, guiding other men. How has that helped you? How has that helped you in your, in your process? Where is that taking you and where do you sit at now?

Strengthening Marriage Through Courageous Communication

Alex Lange 45:31

in my life or in my coaching practice well in your life and in your coaching practice.

Joshua Laycock 45:36

So my absolute biggest strength in my world is my relationship with my wife. I know that I can rely on myself. I know that whatever I need to get done, I can get done. Could I survive on my own? Yes, but my relationship with my wife, which is very, very strong and is the byproduct of a lot of work and a lot of tough times, that is our core. That's the foundation on which my entire world is based, and my wife and I we're not fighters. We don't yell, it's not our thing. We're pretty calm, energy Usually.

Joshua Laycock 46:20

There was a moment in our world and again it was all in my head, but I was at a men's function and someone was talking about relationships and he said something really powerful to me or to the group, which was relationships rarely end on a single major event, an infidelity or something. They're usually hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny little issues that get ignored and you're inching your way towards the cliff and then, all of a sudden, it's that one little thing I remember I was. I was looking back, actually, um, reminiscing on, I did a hundred, a hundred videos in a hundred days on my YouTube channel and someone at my work asked me about it and I just was watching a couple of videos to see how I progressed, and one of them that I watched was actually a narrative about a couple at Ikea that were having a throwdown over some bowls, and the point was like it's never about the bowl, it's never about the thing, it's about the years of neglect. Like it's never about the bowl, it's never about the thing, it's about the years of neglect. And so, as I'm sitting in this conference surrounded by these powerful, I just started to cry and my buddy who was presenting he finished his presentation came right over me. He's like what's going on? And it hit me so profoundly that I had been taking this incredible relationship with my wife for granted that we were having some challenging times. It wasn't a her and I thing, but situationally there were some challenging times where, for the briefest of moments, I couldn't say a hundred percent that my wife was going to be there.

Joshua Laycock 47:49

When I came back from this conference Now, in reality, because we talked about it, that wasn't even remotely on the table, but I couldn't say for certain because I just taken it for granted. And I'm talking about I'm someone who I dated a lot of women. I I was at a point where I was convinced I wasn't meant to be with anybody because I'd gone on all these incredible dates with these incredible women. I felt nothing and after my first date with my wife, I was like I'm done. It was scary. At the time I was like, nope, this is who I. The reason I didn't feel anything for these women is because I hadn't yet connected with her. So my connection with her is unbelievably powerful. So, anyway, the biggest thing was this moment where I realized I was taking it for granted and from there we started talking. We went to couples therapy just to talk through some of these situations that were facing our family, that we were working through together. We started to have conversations. It was.

Joshua Laycock 48:50

There was a moment, actually, where Traver from the uncivilized nation and I were talking and he talked about and I said this before, I can't remember if it I was listening to a podcast or if it was just one of the conversations that he and I were having where he talked about. You know, when you, when you retract, when you pull back in a relationship, that is abuse, that is aggression, aggression. And that's what I did. Right, I was the kind of person that, if I'd get upset, no-transcript parallel that, that that line in my head. So what I would do is, instead of potentially saying something dumb which would set off this series of catastrophic collapses, I would just withdraw, I'd walk away, I'd go for a walk, I just not talk. And then you look at my wife who that to her, was very aggressive. So we talked and I said I feel like maybe I'm doing this. She's like holy shit, yeah, you are Cause when you do this. This is what I think. And so for me, in my mind, I was trying to say I'm trying to spare our relationship from my anger and from my frustration. And she's saying well, you're in to me. It's like this relationship isn't worth your energy, it isn't worth your time. You walking away, is you walking away from me? And that couldn't be further from the truth. So that was our first holy shit.

Joshua Laycock 50:28

We have to communicate. We have to tell each other what we're feeling, whether we're feeling happy or scared or anything in between. We have to tell each other what we're feeling. We have to open up. And that moment I remember exactly where we were sitting and when we were talking about this. That led to things like commitments, like. I know this sounds silly, but we need to commit that this marriage will work. We need to commit that we will be together forever. We need to commit to my vision of you and I, at 95, sitting on the park bench holding hands watching our kids and grandkids play.

Joshua Laycock 51:05

We have to make this commitment and we have to recognize that it's going to take work, that it's going to be uncomfortable, but that everything that we do, however uncomfortable, has to be in furtherance of that vision. And we have ground rules around things. Like you know, now, if we're maybe having a tough day and maybe I'm saying, everything I seem to say is pissing her off, is everything okay? And sometimes it's yeah, you're pissing me off. Or sometimes it's like no, I'm stressed about this thing, sorry, I'm like cool, let's hug it out, let's make contact, let's remind ourselves that this is good. We do it with the same with our kids now, like if I'm just nattering at my children, she'll come, she'll put her hand on my back and she'll be like honey, why don't I take this over? Why don't you go I don't know watch the baseball or take a few minutes? I got this, and vice versa. So we communicate courageously and I really believe that, thankfully, our values are in line and who we are as human beings. I mean, we don't see eye to eye on things like politics and all of the public popular issues of the day, but because we've committed to very courageous communication, we are fucking unstoppable and everything else comes from that.

Joshua Laycock 52:22

I always talk about trying to live from the inside out. That's it. I get my shit fixed myself. That allows me to have the confidence to have these conversations with my wife. We are now a concept I use all the time. Is us right? You have to define your us, my wife and I, we us, we're good. That allows us to parent on a unified front. That allows us to tackle financial issues or whatever that might be challenging, together as a unit, because our home front is secure. And, if I would have to say, the single most powerful outcome of all the work that I've done has been solidifying this relationship with my wife.

Alex Lange 53:01

Hell yeah, and you know, like that brings a lot of joy to me because a lot of that resonated with me and my wife. I want to ask you one last question before we wrap it up here is if you could give yourself one piece of advice, looking 10 years back like so, joshua now to Joshua, then giving yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

Embracing Discomfort and Risk

Joshua Laycock 53:24

I don't know, 10 years ago, I mean, I got some financial tips and stock tips. I might hand the hand down. But you know, maybe it's a cop-out answer. But I would say cause I do, I do think I've had to walk a journey for a answer. But I would say cause I do, I do think I've had to walk a journey for a reason. But I would say maybe it's a two-part answer. If I can have a bit of latitude, I would say embrace discomfort and embrace risk. I guess maybe they're the sort of the two sides of the same coin.

Joshua Laycock 53:53

I'm still a very risk averse human being. It's part of my nature. I work for an insurance company and that's my job. It's part of who I am. The last major headwind that I have to tackle as a man and as a human being come on the backside of discomfort and risk.

Joshua Laycock 54:24

I remember the first time I finished a Spartan race as a big kind of heavy guy who was always hurting physically, finishing my first Spartan sprint was the most powerful moment I remember. If you've ever run them, usually the last obstacle is like a little crest right. You climb yourself up and then you come down. I remember sitting at the top of that pyramid thing and choking back tears, being like holy shit, you did this. It took me like four hours to finish a sprint because I was in pain and I was doing burpees on every station.

Joshua Laycock 54:53

But I guess my message to me, or to anyone listening, would be to learn how to embrace discomfort and take on risk in a in a responsible way. You know, we we talked a little bit about that as like it's great the whole, burn your boats and dive all in, and that's not necessarily feasible for everybody. Maybe maybe your partner and your family does have that level of risk tolerance that they're all good for, but that's not everybody. Maybe your partner and your family does have that level of risk tolerance that they're all good for, but that's not everybody. But one of the terms that I really love I think it was Andy Frisilla who coined this term he talks about aggressive patience.

Alex Lange 55:29

Yeah.

Joshua Laycock 55:30

And aggressive patience is a phenomenal term because I can be, in micro things, incredibly impatient, but on the macro, I'm super patient. I don't know where my world is going to take me. I don't know what I'm going to be doing professionally in 10 years, but I know that I can be patient as I discover that journey. But in the micro, I'm super impatient. I'm doing thousands of little things to always be moving myself forward in furtherance of something bigger. So if, if, if I could have learned a little earlier on to get more comfortable being uncomfortable and to accept a little bit more risk into my world earlier on, I would probably be further ahead than what I am now. But with that being said, I'm in a pretty freaking sweet place.

Alex Lange 56:17

Nice, give me a 90, 90 second elevator pitch in regards to if this resonated with the listeners out there. If they they're filling a pool to you, how can they find you, how can they get ahold of you, what platforms, et cetera.

Joshua Laycock 56:34

Sure, and I appreciate that I'm not a big pitch guy. I mean you can find me on instagram, uh, joshualacock, and then from there you can see the work that we're doing with the complete dad, with, uh, the uncivilized nation, with my own coaching practice and and this is a bit of an unpopular sentiment um, to all the, the guys that we know who are coaches, is nobody needs a coach, you just don't. I have coaches, but I didn't always have a coach. Part of where a coach can really come in is one to help you see things from a slightly different perspective, just to kind of open your eyes a little bit. But also we can create a bit of velocity, help you kind of maybe make up for some lost time. But the truth is, I don't know. I think everyone at some point goes through these phases of like who am I and what have I been doing all this time? I think the biggest thing is, if you feel like you're alone in that journey, reach out to someone. If you want to reach out to me, if you want to reach out to anybody, reach out to someone. If you want to reach out to me, if you want to reach out to anybody, just reach out to someone. You want to join my group, you want to join Chaver's group, you want to just join a group and connect.

Unlocking Inner Potential

Joshua Laycock 57:49

For me, I've got my own style. I'm taking on very few clients right now. I've got a couple spots. It's not a huge thing that I'm focusing on because I've got a nice little suite of clients, but I'm. I would say the biggest thing is if you're just tired of being asleep, tired of being numb and just something doesn't feel right. I'm more interested in just having conversations, coaching clients. That comes down the road, but I'm always open for a conversation and just try to help people see life from a slightly different perspective, because it doesn't matter where you come from or what you're facing. Things can be improved and almost all of your tools are already available within you. Sometimes you just have to let someone point you in the direction of where to find it. But that's the coolest thing about this whole process is it's all already inside of you. You just need someone to wake you up to it absolutely, joshua.

Alex Lange 58:45

I truly appreciate your time today. Uh, really, really love your story and how you um articulated it today and, uh, as I mentioned, uh, thank you and I look forward to the next time my absolute pleasure mate thank you.