Episode 9: I Stopped Explaining Myself

For a long time, I felt like I had to explain myself.

Not because I didn’t know who I was —
 but because it didn’t fit cleanly into one thing.

Different parts of my life that don’t always make sense on paper.

And somewhere along the way, that started to feel like a problem.

Until it didn’t.

Nothing about me changed.

Just the idea that it all had to make sense to everyone else.

Ever forward.

If this hit, share it with someone who needs to hear it. 

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Presented by Madison’s Path
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever felt like you had to explain parts of yourself just so people would understand you? Welcome to the Man in Motion Podcast, episode nine, The Moment I Stopped Explaining Myself. I'm Bob. This is a show about what it means to be a man in today's world, navigating real life with strength, clarity, and purpose. We talk growth, responsibility, and the ongoing work of becoming while learning to stand comfortably in who we already are. It's not about hype, not about hacks or fixing yourself. It's about awareness, grounded thinking, and living with intention while you're already in motion. No excuses ever forward. So last episode I asked you guys for some feedback, some comments, some emails, and uh a few of you reached out, gave me some good stuff. One thing I did get a lot of though is who exactly am I? Um I've I've been kind of nebulous about myself, again, kind of kind of purposefully through all this. And it's not because I'm hiding, it's because I don't think I'm really intrinsic to the message. However, a couple of the questions I've been receiving have made it seem like I am. My intention today was to demystify some of that, open the door and the you know, pull the curtain back and let you see the wizard, as it were. But then I got to thinking about that. And I realized that there actually is something important I can use myself as an example for. You know, I'm I'm a heavy metal fan. I like hard rock and heavy metal, especially, you know, the older stuff. Um, I I am a child of the I was born in the 70s, raised in the 80s, and party through the 90s. I mean, all that kind of good stuff. But then there's another part of me here. There's another part that if you look at it, it just seems completely disjointed from everything else. I'm a Christ servant minister in the United Methodist Church. I love philosophy. Um huge fan of uh Michael Singer. Uh he's a yogi who has a podcast himself, was one of my inspirations actually for doing this podcast. Um I also enjoy the the physical forms of yoga, not just the philosophy, but but actually practicing yoga. I'm uh I'm a certified life coach. I specialize in helping people transition through hard things in life, whether it's grief or job change, divorce, um, all of things that I've experienced. You know, I help people with that. And now, as of today, I have this is my episode nine of my podcast. I'm a podcaster and I'm I'm reaching out to all of you to try to maybe help you along the same path that I'm traveling. You know, so you know, that starts painting a very different picture, and a lot of it seems very conflicting, you know, and then to top it all off, the the thing that anchors me the most in this world is I'm a father. You know, I've got four beautiful daughters that call me some form of dad. I'm a grandfather. You know, my little grandson, he loves spending time with his pop. And all of that really only begins to hit about half of what I really am. So, how do I reconcile all that? Christ Servant Minister in a United Methodist Church that loves heavy metal. Someone who spends their free time building people up and helping others, and at the same time trains physically and in with weapons and enjoys shooting. You know, and then kind of sitting in all the middle of that is is the maker, the guy that likes making things. It gets a little confusing sometimes, if you let it. I'm gonna walk you through my recent history because that's this this is what's pertinent to all this. Um prior to 2021, I was agnostic, didn't know if there was a god, hoped there was, but he had never shown himself to me. But I still lived a good life. I was happy. Uh and then in 2020, like so many of you, COVID hit. And in June of 2021, um myself, my father-in-law, and my oldest stepdaughter all got COVID uh very badly. And it was it was rough. It was very rough. I got better. My father-in-law got better. And my daughter didn't. Um July 12th of 2021, my daughter, her body couldn't take anymore. So we made that decision that no parent wants to make. And it broke us. Not gonna lie, it broke us. And through the intervening years between then and now, kind of spent a fair amount of time searching for meaning. And in the process, I found Christ and realized that there's no one out there helping anyone, and it's not that people don't want to help, it's that people are distracted. I I liken it to the prairie dog effect. You know, if you ever see those videos on Animal Planet or whatever channel, you find them that uh, you know, you get the whole herd of prairie dogs or whatever you call a group of prairie dogs, the whole group of them are out and they're foraging, and then there's one that pops his head up and he looks around, he makes that squeak. And they all stop and they they they look over and they they focus on whatever the one that's squeaked is looking at. That's that's people. That's that's people. We're all very distracted. We're living our lives, we're busy, we're trying to do the best we can, we're trying to have the best life we can. And it's not until something makes us take notice that we look and we look around and see what's actually going on around us. So in the process of healing, or trying to heal, or even trying to get functional, um, my wife and I realized that there's no one helping anyone. And again, not from a bad place, it's just everyone's busy. So she said words that forever changed us. And it was three words, but it's really become kind of our battle cry almost. She looked at me one day and she said better, not bitter. And I kind of looked at her. And at first I was like, how what how can you be saying this? But she was right. Like she was right, and it's kind of become our our battle cry, really. I found Christ, I became a certified life and transition coach. Ironically, both of them are her fault, which isn't a story for another time. Um, but yeah, and as I became this new person, because that's how it felt. It felt like I was becoming a whole new person. Because the old me was so shattered and broken, and and not just from the loss of my daughter. My the loss of my daughter was just the final blow, to be honest. It was 46 years of everything, of so much. A divorce, a bad, bad divorce, um, custody issues, um, dealing with my own mental illness, dealing with mental illness of my father, how broken a man he was, and and my family dynamic, and so many things. And slowly these pieces started coming together. Now, I I I had up been up until that point, I was the Marine, I was the car guy, the motorcycle, the woodworker, the firearms enthusiast, the strongman competitor. And then here comes this new version of me. Minister, philosopher, yoga student, life coach, dad. And so many of them seem to be so opposed. Just ridiculously so. I mean, how do you how do you reconcile being a man of Christ, but picking up a firearm and loving training with it? People expect you to be one thing clearly. And I wasn't. And who I felt like I was becoming didn't fit at all with who I had been. Was I broken? I mean I was. I mean that much was certain. Do I have to get rid of who I was? Which of these is the real me? Are any of them the real me? Am I ashamed of this? Am I ashamed of how disjointed and broken and can this coexist? And I struggled. Guys, I I tell you, I struggled. It was a while that I struggled with this. Um I uh I was scrolling through YouTube one day. I forgot what I was looking for, but I stumbled across a gentleman by the name of John Lavell in his channel, the Warrior Poets Society. And the video that I saw was just, it was firearms related. It was a firearms technique that he was talking about. And I liked what he said about the technique. It was a technical thing. Um, and I liked it. So I kind of uh subscribed to his channel, and a couple days later I was scrolling through and I saw another video by him in the Warrior Poet Society, but he was talking about philosophy. And for those of you who are familiar with the channel, I'm sure this comes as no surprise. But John himself is a pastor. Um, I've never had the pleasure of meeting or talking to him. Hope to someday. So, John, if you ever listen to this, I'm here. Uh but here's a man who's living the embodiment of what I am, and I'm struggling with it. And he is happy and comfortable in his skin. So I started going through more and more of his things and realized that there were several people like him. Um, and and to be clear, I don't agree with everything John says. I think John and I have different philosophies on some things. But listening to him talk, it eventually made me realize something. That the problem I was having with resolving who I was and who I was had become versus who I was and who I had been, it wasn't the combination that was the problem. The problem was the fact that I was thinking that I had to fit cleanly into one box or another. People, we rarely fit cleanly into any box. And we only make sense with all these disjointed combinations when you take a step back and you look at the whole picture. See, it's not about checking the box on you know, religious guy or maker guy or warrior guy. It's okay to check multiple boxes as long as it is you. We've become through our experiences in life. And no two people have had the same experiences, not even twins. Even twins don't have the exact same experience. So you don't have to fit cleanly into everyone else's boxes or everyone else's expectations. It's those external expectations when we start trying to imply them internally, is where it gets messy. What I realized is that other people's expectations of who I am and who I should be and the things I should like and what I should do don't matter. And my ideals. And if you agree with them, great. I'm happy. I love having people along for the ride with me. But if you don't, well, I'm sorry. But I am who I am, and I'm not going to change for anyone. You know, there's this great line in the Bible, and it's from the book of Exodus. Um, and God says to Moses, I am that I am. And I hit the point in my life where I could say something similar about myself. And I actually said it to someone. I said they were they were talking to me about it. And uh I kind of laughed and I said, I am that I am that I am. Not implying that I am God, but I am me. And I don't need to reconcile myself into something simpler for other people. So if you're listening to this and you're struggling, who you are is who you choose to be. And you don't need to fit cleanly into someone else's little box of check marks. Real people are messy, real people are disjointed, sometimes even seems contradictory from the outside. But if you take that step back and look at the whole instead of the pieces, you'll see that they're exactly where they need to be. And the hardest lesson is applying that to yourself. But I encourage you to. I really do. The hardest lesson through all of this that I've had to learn is to love myself. We're really good at the love thy neighbor portion of things. We're really bad at the as you love yourself portion of things. So, my brothers and sisters, that is it for today. Take what's useful, leave what's not. Stand comfortably in who you are and keep moving.