Living With It Every Day

Understanding the weight is one thing.

Living with it… every day… is something else.

In this episode, Michael shares a real look into his week — the pressure, the frustration, and the moments where everything felt heavier than usual.

No filters. No polished version.

Just the reality of what it looks like to carry the weight while still showing up for work, family, and life.

Because growth isn’t a straight line.

And some weeks hit harder than others.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome back, everyone, to uh our podcast Unloaded. I'm Michael Seahorn with I'm Shannon Moro. And it is an absolute honor to be on episode eleven.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

A little crazy, but here we are. What's crazy about episode eleven?

SPEAKER_01 0:18

I you know, I'm an analytics guy, you know, and I try not to get caught up in the analytics sometimes, but sometimes it's hard. Now that we created a podcast, I I get like monthly newsletters from this uh platform that we are on, right? And it's got a lot of good hints and advice for podcasters on content creation. And and uh I think the last one I got is like congratulations, you guys have ten episodes, and you're above eighty percent of all podcasters, usually cut out by I guess by episode ten.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

So or episode four, I think you you you said previously, yeah, yeah. Um yeah, so when you say it's crazy that we've beat the analytics in a way, um uh what do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_01 1:10

I don't mean beat it. I I guess you know, when we started out, you know, uh any journey you start out, it's it's undetermined. The road is blank, it's a blank canvas, it's a blank path per se, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Uh I mean you're looking at the direction like, hey, I want to climb to the top of that mountain. Well, that mountain is that direction, and I can kind of see the top, and I think I might want to start on the east side, you know. I mean, there's a little bit of knowledge as we embark upon journeys. And then we know what life does. It punches you punches you in the face a couple times. Oh shit, where'd the trail go?

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Lose the trail, weather hits, can't get past this obstacle, gotta make a detour, you know, go around.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

So roll an ankle, oh no.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Yeah, hopefully you can get down on your own and not be embarrassed with a helicopter ride. But I I just think for us, you know, we it with any journey, uh you and I I think would be safe to say is we don't put a whole lot of expectation in the end per se. Since it is organic, we're just going through our journey as it relates to the podcast, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:23

It's very present in this moment. Yes. Yeah, the the future is not as clearly defined, and yet we intentionally we choose to focus our attention on right now, this episode, what we're saying, what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Yeah, and it's not like you know, when we started out, I said, Hey Shannon, we're gonna try to get 25 episodes done right out of the gate. Like we never even had those conversations.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

And it seems like you're even a little uh pleasantly surprised that we've made episode 11 here.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

I am, I am. Uh this is a this is something that's been on my heart for years. Yeah. We talked about it in some of our previous episodes. So um each time we can sit down and do another episode, I'm I'm just as excited as I was day one. Yeah, there it is. It's exciting. Well, as we move into uh some of our uh new upcoming episodes, uh for any new listener out there, um the first ten episodes, because it includes our trailer, so nine core, if you will, episodes, um really laid a good foundation for our podcast, unloaded what it meant, what's behind the name. Uh, there's a special hour episode in there where we talk about how Shannon and I met. So it was a great start to lay a good foundation for the listeners out there on what we do.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Yes, and now that foundation is laid. We are entering what Michael has termed as a new arc. We we have completed our first arc, the the beginning, and uh now it's much more wide open. We don't have as much of a um clearly defined game plan. We have agreed to, hey, let's even more so drop in, let this get to even a little more gritty, a little more organic, and see what comes out.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

And it's a it's a great start uh this week because I think well, just to be completely transparent, though this this was a very difficult uh week for myself uh and it's like when you forge a nice knife or a shiny new sword, you know, it it goes into the forge in the fire, you take it out, you bang on it, you shape it, back into the fire, and then you shape it some more and you bang on it some more. And if you've ever watched the process of these craftsmen, uh when it comes to blade work, it's a phenomenal craft to watch. People take a square rectangle piece of steel and turn it into this, you know, beautiful, you know, knife. But it it doesn't get to be beautiful until it goes through this reforging process, probably oh, I don't know, dozen times, twenty times. I guess it just depends, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

It depends how strong you want the blade. And with your metaphor and the blade, you know, okay, you're gonna be heated to red hot and banged on with a big hammer, and then heated and banged on and heated and banged on, and you finally, you know, mostly feel like ah, I've taken shape. I I have form. Look at me, I'm this beautiful knife, right? And then in the water cooled down, hardened and all that. And you're like, ah, I've arrived, right? No, no, no, no, now we get to sharpen you. Now comes the grinding stone, right? And it's never like, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

And I I think that that I look at that, and I think you know, a lot of that applies to the way I I look at my personal life and my personal journey is I get these moments where I I feel like, man, it's it's been a couple good weeks. And I don't like saying it out loud sometimes because I'm like, you know, cross your fingers, knock on some wood, don't jinx myself, right? But as life will have it, challenges are gonna continue to come, right? And as I look at our podcast on loaded, I I I feel like we're going into this new um arc, if you will, of of living this daily, right? Because that's what we're talking about. The real of it. The real not not the not the philosophical, not the philosophy, but the real everyday stuff.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Yeah, that's where we're going. We we spent our first arc, the previous nine or ten episodes, a little bit higher view, a little bit more philosophical or kind of abstract, like hey, this is what we're doing, this is what we're about, this is kind of our methods and stuff, but now like oh, okay, it's gonna get more real, more concrete.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Yeah. So since our last recording uh of last week, uh this this week, so the end of last week, um got a little bumpy for me, and and then it continued into this week and it got bumpier and um I I don't want to go into details because obviously there's some things that I'm just not willing to talk about here here on the podcast, but in generalities when I deal with uh situations that have a direct impact on me, both uh mentally and spiritually, because that's what we're talking about and physically too, because we know that the mental and the spiritual world when you're going through uh difficult times, y it will have an effect on you physically, whether it's you're just bone dog tired, you aren't sleeping well, or man, I really tried to get a good workout in, I just it wasn't there, so I I you know I left, I just cut my workout short, right? So we do know that those things occur when we're going through something that's sh definitely having an impact on us mentally and spiritually, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Flare up of physical pain, you know, we store so much tension in our bodies, and how that tension manifests physically, yeah, uh that's real. Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

So this week in particular, um going through these difficult circumstances that I was challenged with, I feel like I had a couple of wins in there, but also I had some losses in there. And for our listeners out there, when I when I say wins and losses for me personally, and and Shannon will know what I'm talking about, is uh I really put a lot of energy into trying to stay in a neutral state, especially in my role, and especially uh with the things that I deal with, because it allows me to think things through clearly without having an emotional spike or burst or outburst, if you will, too, right? So when I say wins and losses for me personally, I just mean that I I felt like a couple of them I handled well and a couple of them I didn't handle as well as I think I could have in the moment, but gotta have grace for ourselves because we are emotional human beings, right? So um it's just living with it daily is what we're getting ready to talk about over the next X amount of episodes, and I can tell you, man, that this week, man, I was getting forged.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Kind of kicked your ass. Yeah, I see this. Definitely kicked my ass. Definitely kicked your ass, yeah. And if I may f um fill the listeners in a little bit, um for many years, Mike and I had our regular therapy sessions every other week, and about every two weeks, Mike would come in, sit down, and it would be full-on just hour of therapy for Mike. And um, since starting this podcast, now that has moved into that time slot um considerably. And instead of Mike getting his regular hour of therapy every other week, now it's hustling in here, getting all the mics set up, getting the computer set up, doing the sound checks, and producing a podcast instead. But deep down, Mike's and look at I'm telling him about his psychic and subcontractors, right? It's all right. You know, like I I can see that he could benefit from, he could use just a brah, let some of that out to like just talk about all the shit he's been going through the past couple weeks, these experiences he's referencing, but he's containing it in here because he's in front of a mic. This is not a therapy session, and so it's kind of a different new experience for both of us, especially for Michael, who like ah, I and me too, actually, as his therapist. I'm wondering. I'm wanting to hear the stories, like, hey, tell me what happened, man. Let's let's process this. And he's kind of wanting to process it, but instead we're both kind of just like hanging back because we're in front of Mike's like, oh wait, but this is a podcast, not a therapy session. So thank you, listeners, for just understanding kind of where we're at with this and having patience for us as we are creating how this is going to be real time.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Yeah, and I and thank you for that. I I honor that, Shannon. And it and I think this just really shows our listeners like this this is the real deal. This isn't scripted in any way, shape, or form. Shannon has no idea what what I'm gonna talk about when I sit behind my mic. I don't know what he's gonna say when he sits behind his mic, but I don't want anybody to ever feel that we're two dudes sitting behind a mic and we've got it all figured out. Uh, we have said that for probably the better part of half of the episodes we've already recorded. We're just two real people, we're two real human beings trying to figure out this crazy thing that we call life, just like everyone else, right? So by me telling our listeners that are listening right now, like it's been a rough week. Um, I just want people to understand, like, you and I still have rough weeks too. Oh, yeah, right? We still need to unload. Yeah, we're still carrying our weight and we're doing the best we can do with the tools that we've learned over the last X amount of you know, time, whatever that X is.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

But with the hope that doing this podcast is in a lot of ways simply modeling. You know, this is here we are, this is how we're working through our stuff, this is what we've learned along the way, we're offering it now. If it can be of use to anybody else, great, you know, but it's it's just kind of us tr forging our way down the trail that others have forged, you know. We're just in line, uh, you know, there's plenty uh in front of us, plenty behind us, all around us, there's many ways up the mountain.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Uh yeah, no, there is. And you know, just just to be again transparent for our listeners, it's you know, when when I go through a difficult situation or I'm having a doubt, or maybe I'm not clear on my path, I I handle them, I handle those situations very differently depending on how I feel inside.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Oh yeah, man. Our mood is paramount to how we can handle external situations.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Right. So I'll give you uh I'll give people this is real life example. So situation happened Wednesday at the end of the day, I went home. I went home in the in my truck, quiet. No music, no podcast, just me. Because I know intuitively for me to be able to start my process to work through whatever it is, quiet time is paramount for me. Um so and I know that's not for everybody, but for me, that's what I do. And I also want to make sure that on my way back to my sanctuary, my home, my property, I know that I have my family there, right? And I know that I am the temperature, I set the temperature, and uh and we'll get into that another day, another time. But that's the analogy I've used over the years with my wife and my kids is if I set the temperature, I'm the thermostat. So if I come in the door all hot, fired up, and you know, just well, what's that gonna do? Raise the temperature of the house, of my wife, of my children, of my dogs, everybody, right? So as I'm on my way home, I'm I'm lowering my temperature to a point where I can just take some nice deep breaths, get back in the present moment of time, try not to make the situation bigger in my head than it actually is, right? So when I get home, I can come into the door at least at a level where I feel comfortable, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

That's a lot of intentionality around how you come in the door, how you present with your family in your home.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Right. And and and again, and listeners, I want you to know this has been an 11-year journey for me. So I just I gotta keep throwing that out there because I want people to grasp a hold of that that work. But as soon as I walk in the door, generally this is what happens. I walk in the door, boom, two dogs are on me. My big dog, my little dog, they're all over me. They want that love and attention, right? And then I the greetings to my wife, and yeah, by then my daughter's either home or working out or whatever she's doing. But as soon as I walk in the door, even though I have brought my temperature down, just like Shannon said today, as soon as my wife sees me, she knows. She knows. And Wednesday, I was still pretty I had a lot of turmoil going on inside, just trying to process the day. So I opted that day to just get upstairs, change, and then headphones to the shop. My dinner will be ready in about an hour. I'll let you know when it's ready. 10-4. Out to the shop, tried to do some work. Uh fortunately, a couple phone calls came in and I had to talk to a few people. One of them was my brother. Um through chatting with my brother and uh unloading some of the weight with him, brought the temperature down some more. So, what I'm trying to do in my process is bring the temperature down and keep bringing it down so I can get to a point internally where I could sit objectively at some point, whether it's in the evening or even tomorrow in the meditation time, bring the temperature down to a point where I can just say, okay, I'm good.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Wow. Right? So, what's the difference of what you just described, like regulating, bringing yourself to okay, I'm good, versus bottling it up? Uh, I'm really upset about what happened at work today, I'm in a lot of inner turmoil, I don't want my family or to censor bring that home with me. So I'm going to try to quote bring that down, but it in try attempting to do that, you know, we've how do we what's the distinction? How do we how can we manage it and regulate it in healthy ways versus just packing it away and then a day or two later it it comes out very unexpectedly in ways that we might regret?

SPEAKER_01 18:38

Yeah, so it's a good question. And I think that goes back to the analogy of what we talk about stuff in your safe, right? If you put if I keep pushing things into the safe like I used to do back in the day, I know intuitively that the safe fills up. When I push it out, it leaks out. You push it in, it leaks out, you push it in, it leaks out, right? And we know through the other podcasts on our other episodes, those spikes or those leaks, if you will, is where you get that drastic emotional response, right? For me to answer Shannon's question, if I take something that I'm internally trying to deal with now, in the present time, present moment, and I try to quote unquote stuff that in the safe, lock it away, I'll deal with it later. Generally, what I find now is because of the practices that we've been doing together for 11 years, that's going to be okay for the evening. It'll allow me to get through the evening at a pretty normal everyday mode, if you will. I'll get to bed, I'll sleep probably okay, but as soon as I wake up the next morning, there it is. Because of the disciplined routine that I've had for such a long time, it's the universe or God or whatever you will, it's the friendly reminder in the morning when I get my first cup of Joe and I want to go sit in some meditative time, it's there. It's like, hey, hey, hello, hey, do you you didn't forget about me? That was only like 12 hours ago, right? So through my practices over the last 11 years, um by morning time, it comes back and I know internally, I feel it in my heart, I feel it in my gut that hey, we need to sit in this and we need to kind of now focused energy, if you will, focus on what the issue was yesterday. And and Shannon has seen this in real time with me. I I talk myself through the situation, and then I look at okay, during this situation, I had an emotional response. Why? Well, the person could have said ABC, and when they said ABC, I took it personal, or maybe it hit a button of mine, regardless if the person knows it's a button or not, but it was just a personal thing with me, right? So as I'm going through the situation in my mind, with my eyes closed, with intent and within it with energy, I'm looking at how I felt when it was the most uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Great. You go right, you like you said, focused on that moment when you really got triggered when it hit that pinpoint. Like and what you just described, this is uh part of your more than a decade of your your practice is what within me um created that distress? I mean, because there's that external situation, and then yet, whoo man, I got pissed. Okay, that's mine. That's my emotion. I'm gonna take responsibility for that. Man, why did that piss me off so bad? Like, ah, what's my old trigger around that? Oh, oh, oh, and what you just described, that self-evaluation, the self-awareness of like, instead of what most of us do most of the time, that a whole like, uh, point the finger, blame the source, whatever it was that triggered us, well, it's their fault, whatever. And yet, no, through your maturity and work and growth to slow it down enough and just put a little space and then turn inward, and like, why the hell did that get me so bad? That's you know, I think what you were describing.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Yeah. And just just so the listeners know how I go through things. That I so I had an issue on Wednesday. I I felt in my heart that it was still a little bit unresolved. Hindsight 2020, Thursday, I had to deal with it again. Another conversation about whatever it was. Okay, great, I think we're good, and then boom, third final conversation again this morning. So in a three-day span, it was three issues all revolve around the same thing. We just we just had to talk about three different times, right? So that's what I meant when it came in today, and I was like, man, it's been a week, bro. It's been a week, right? So in today, just just so listeners understand, so going back to when I said on Wednesday or Thursday morning when I have to sit with it and I evaluate myself, why was I being triggered? What was I not seeing, what was I not understanding? I have to give myself a lot of grace because I am a human being like the rest of us, eight billion people on the planet. We're all human beings, we all have emotions. But when I look at what triggers me, when I say trigger, I don't know if that's a good word, bad word, I don't know what kind of it is what it is, but I just want to know why I felt discomfort and why I was feeling that I had to either defend myself, justify myself, or something, right? Because that's generally what I see in myself is that's when I feel the most emotion. Like I'm I'm making a stand this is why I'm taking the stand, which is okay, fair. But I need to understand that in here because I don't want something to take me so far one way, maybe so far the other way, where I then become so unbalanced that I can't see my own responsibility. Because that's what I'm trying to do in this lifetime is recognize how my body responds, how does it react to certain things? Because if I can't recognize it, I can't work on it. If I can't work on it, then I sit in the cyclic existence of suffering the same thing over and over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

And and we'll sit there a while. That's cycles are normal, and we it's then when we recognize them and oh I've been doing this a little bit, okay, I'm getting tired of this, okay. We can see a little more clearly, okay, how can I adjust something and keep changing things a bit?

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Yeah, and it again, after today, I now understand a lot clearer on the other side what they were feeling and what their intention was. But it took us three days to get there.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Yeah, and that's pretty good in just three days to gain understanding like you did, that's key, man. Understanding. We understand our stance generally. Um but to uh allow for others uh seemingly sometimes opposing stance and what's that old saying, just because we understand something doesn't mean we have to agree with it.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Absolutely. Uh that's a very good point. And so what what will happen now for me is um after today, it'll give me a good chance to over the next couple of days for sure, is to sit with the entire process and just work my way through the process. My intent behind that is to have a full understanding uh of what that felt like in the different days and then put it all together in a big shiny picture, if you will, so that I can store that and then I'll write about it because uh yeah, we talked about I like to journal and I'll write about it. And those big nuggets, man, if you will, those big moments for me is that's where this growth is, man. I don't listen, I'm gonna be honest, I don't like doing this, dude. Like I don't I don't I don't wake up going, man, I hope I get a challenge today. I've never said that. Ever. I've never woke up going, I'm ready. Give me what you got. I will never say that because well, you look out for you know what you what do they say? Uh be careful what you wish for. Yeah. But I do understand as a human being that this is life. Life is challenging, and life's not easy, and you're going to get punched around and you're going to get bumped around. And that's that's what this is about.

SPEAKER_00 27:38

You know? It is, mostly, especially this cop podcast, you know, just dealing with the challenges, you know, getting bumped around. Um, and I just star, you know, me, just give it to me. Zooming way out. Because when you say life is never easy, it's you know, we're getting punched around and um sometimes maybe it it can be fairly relaxing if we want it to be, if we allow it to be, if we just okay, yeah, it how would it be to sit still, to simply enjoy the evening, to uh uh slow down enough, and I know I'm probably making a few listeners uncomf uncomfortable right now, even how slow I'm talking, and um that's kind of the point because uh narrative therapy, you know, yeah, the stories we tell ourselves, we we are creating our reality. And so when we are slugging through life, saying, fuck, life is so challenging, life is so hard, life is such an ass kicker, we have to just uh take it, yeah, blah blah blah. And that's almost our paradigm we create about life. It's just this gnarly, difficult thing to be endured. Uh yeah, sometimes it can be for sure. Let's not take away that we never know what's coming down the pipe at us, we never know what tomorrow brings, and we get that phone call, or we get that news, or that unexpected event happens, and like, oh shit, it's real, and it gets gnarly. And so, yes, life will continue in various ways to throw things at us, and at the same time, you know, um there's other moments in life, there's other days or even weeks that actually this was kind of chill. This this was okay. There nothing too crazy, not too much drama. And am I creating a little bit of drama? Am I looking for the next problem? Can I just let things be and maybe be a non-issue, or do I have to keep making everything a fire? If I'm so good at putting out fires, am I looking for fires and setting fires?

SPEAKER_01 30:14

Very good. I mean it's well said, and Shannon is correct, you know. Um every human being, all eight billion of us, or whatever the number is these days, uh everybody's gonna have their own life, man. And everybody lives it in their own way, shape, and form. And you know, I uh because of my choices and my journey and the path that I've chosen, um, this is part of my life. This is part of my journey, and I have a lot of good days. I mean, Shannon will tell you. I I have a lot of good days, and I I have uh, you know, we joke about it often in in in our session where Shannon's like, eh, it's been a pretty good couple weeks for you, right? And I honor those and I love those, but you know, difficult times will shape you.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

It's it's hard for you to hear me uh say that today. I apologize, Mike, because I know the F and a week you've had, man. These last three days have been an ass kicker, even culminating in this morning. I mean, just a few hours ago, you were in the thick of it, man. Just it was hot for you, and just here you are just a few hours later now trying to do the podcast. And so apologies for yeah, you're getting your ass kicked right now, and it's kind of trite of meaning. Oh, sometimes oh, we can just chill, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:33

Not at all, and that that's why we work well together, is because Shannon does give me the opposite of the coin, like I said episodes ago, is I wouldn't want it any other way. And um, you know, and it's also good to hear, you know, to it's a good reminder when you are in the thick of it and you are getting hammered on a little bit. It's good to r have somebody like Shannon remind you, hey man, it's not always like this, you know, so it's a good friendly reminder, man. But I do appreciate your apology, not not needed, but I accept it and I honor that, man. Yeah. Well, it's been an amazing time. Unfortunately, our our time has come to an end here uh with episode 11. Um for everybody out there, I I wish everybody the best. Uh enjoy your Easter weekend. Let's not forget that. Uh, it is Easter weekend, right? Not anymore.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

Nah, by the time this podcast drops.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

We'll be after that. So you I hope you had a good Easter weekend uh, and however you celebrate that. Um we wish you all the very best. Um, this is Mike Seahorn, Shannon Moro, and we wish you all the very best.