Not Every Weight Is Yours to Carry

What if the weight you're carrying was never yours to begin with?

In one of the most personal episodes of UNLOADED, Michael opens up about a difficult leadership decision that consumed him for days. Faced with competing responsibilities, loyalty, accountability, and the desire to do the right thing, he wrestles with a question many of us eventually face:

When does helping others become carrying burdens that were never ours to carry?

Without focusing on the details of the situation itself, Michael and Shannon explore the emotional toll of leadership, the responsibility we feel toward the people we care about, and the quiet realization that compassion doesn't always mean taking someone else's weight onto our own shoulders.

Sometimes the strongest thing we can do isn't fixing the problem—it's recognizing where our responsibility ends.

In this episode:

•  The emotional weight of difficult leadership decisions 
•  Why accountability matters—even when it's painful 
•  Processing decisions before reacting emotionally 
•  Journaling as a tool for clarity 
•  The hidden cost of trying to carry everyone else's burdens 
•  Learning the difference between listening and rescuing 
•  Choosing what weight is truly yours to carry 

Growth doesn't always come from finding the perfect answer. Sometimes it comes from realizing that not every burden belongs to you.

The weight we carry. The truth we speak.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'd like to welcome everyone back to our podcast unloaded. This is Michael Seahorn. It's Shannon Morrow. And we are glad to be back, hopefully. Here we are. Mostly. Mostly. It's a lot. Lots gone on since our uh well, we did some we did some early uh recordings because Shannon had a pretty good little trip to do. So um I I guess when everybody hears this, let's see. The fourth will pass when this hits the the air. Father's Day's past. So a lot's been going on over the last, I think, three weeks, yeah. Here we are. Summertime, all the activities. Yep. Pending the 4th of July weekend coming up this weekend. Yeah. And like you said, not by the time they're listening to this. Yeah, it'll be after. Yeah. I think this will drop on, I can't remember. It'll drop in a couple of weeks, but it'll be different.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Right now, our listeners are like fucking shit. Stop it.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Just confusing everybody. Just confusing everybody.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

I mean, I shouldn't cuss here either.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

I uh one of these days we go live and then then uh it'll be real time stuff, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Regardless of when you're listening to this or what day it is for us, here we are.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Here we are. Back at back at this theme, yeah. It's um I'm kind of in a a little bit of a I'm not sure what the word is, but I'm I'm I'm I'm a little unsettled right now. I could tell. I I know you can. I know you can. It's been a um it's been a very challenging three weeks since our uh our last time that you and I were sitting together. A lot of stuff's going on, and you know, I've it it's it's peculiar that we we do this uh this show and the reasoning behind the show, man, but it doesn't make it any easier day to day. You know, because we are just human beings like everybody else. No, it's life, man. Here we are. It's just it's just life, man. But anyway, so if I sound a little off today, I apologize. I hope that I'll get squared away here and once we once we hit the some groove, you know.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Yeah, and beyond trying to hit the groove, you know, it's okay to be off, right? I mean, that's part of life. That's part I think the main purpose of this podcast, you know. Life gets heavy. We we do bear that weight, and to be able to speak to it in real time, you know, to the truth we speak, you know, like, hey man, what's going on? What's been happening these last three weeks?

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Yeah, you know, I've um I I can't I can't exactly discuss the actual problem because if I do that, it'll involve everybody and everybody will know who I'm talking about. So um because I've thought about a lot of the last few days I've thought a lot about leading up to today, knowing that we were gonna sit down and um do our podcast today. But without sharing too much details, I can tell you that um I I think the biggest lessons for me personally in this uh self-help journey, they've always come when the decisions that you have to make, man, are just fucking difficult. There's there's no there's no easy yes, there's no easy no, there's no easy in the middle, man. You just know that whichever decision you make, they're both gonna come with very difficult I don't want to say consequences, but definitely they come with their own emotion, they come with their own um difficulties when you make those decisions. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Yeah, I'm I think consequences, I mean, just remove any of the bias of that word, like yeah, everything we you know decide upon will have just this natural set of uh consequences, circumstances.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Yeah, you know, and I think the one thing that made it probably a little bit more difficult this for this uh scenario is that when you know, like I mean, when you unequivocally know that somebody's just outright lying, but yet they'll continue to point the finger at everybody else, they'll take zero accountability. And in that uh action that they have taken, uh it affects a person that didn't deserve it, but at the end of the day, that person suffers more than the person line.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

That's hard to see. That yeah, that doesn't sit well with you.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

You know what I mean? And and I don't being in a senior leadership role comes with so many, so many different decisions that you have to come to. And if you come to them in an emotional state, like I've talked about on some of our previous podcasts, generally doesn't work out well for me, right? Because when you have that emotional response, generally it's very difficult sometimes to control what you're saying, or because you are emotionally charged. So sometimes you're speaking uh, you know, maybe a little louder than normal, maybe you're saying things that you generally wouldn't say. So I I've always tried to take that one half step back, man, take that one breath to try to keep calm as possible, you know what I mean. And in this case, I actually was very calm. Um, this incident lasted for um it started at the end of one day, and then it picked up that morning and then ran through the until the evening time. And during those um times, you know, you're you're on that emotional roller coaster, man. That's life. I don't care how centered you are, I don't care if you're a monk or whatever it is that you do in life, like we're all gonna get on that roller coaster at some point, man. I think for me personally, like you were just saying, is it just doesn't sit well with me when somebody I'm maybe gonna go there. It doesn't sit well with me when uh when somebody just can't own their own shit. Even when they know I know you're lying, but you still choose the path of not taking that accountability.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Man. Oh, that's frustrating, especially when it affects others.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

You know, and so that evening, um so after the afternoon when it when the when the issue started, it was late afternoon on, I think it was like a a Tuesday. Or or it was late on Monday, and then it went into um Tuesday morning and then Tuesday evening. So and two so Tuesday evening after I had the final conversation uh with someone you know, I it was right in the middle of dinner, so I try to, you know, collect my thoughts and my feelings and then go out and you know finish my dinner with you know with the with the wife and daughter. But after that, man, I'm not gonna lie to you, man. Like I I probably sat in my office chair, man, and just I just sat there, dude. Probably for a good I don't know, 30, 45 minutes. Struggling internally on deciding, like, you know, do I tell this person the outcome of the scenario? Or do I allow someone else to tell that person what the what the outcome is going to be, right? And being in that senior leadership role, man, it's it's a it's a difficult choice, right? And I really was struggling with that personally. I just didn't know, like, ah man, I really want to be the one to, you know, I feel like it's my responsibility to tell this person. But then when I'm thinking about the personal relationship that's involved, I'm like, no, I can't. I can't, because I think you know, that's what I generally do. You I mean you know me, and I'm I'm sure the listeners know me by now after all these podcasts we've done, is I'm not afraid to do the hard thing. I'm not, it sucks. Sometimes I don't want to fucking do the hard thing, dude, but I do it anyway. You know, but in this case, I really was just like I can't be the one this time, like it has to come from this other leader, right? So that was um that was Tuesday night. Journaled quite a lot once I got some collective thoughts together, you know. I was like, man, I gotta put some shit on paper, man, get this, get this written out, so then I could maybe look at it from a different perspective. That because that's kind of how I process. Yeah. You know that. So I I came, I I I was okay Tuesday evening when I closed my journal with okay, I'm not gonna be the one to tell the person.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

You made the decision.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

I did. So I went to uh went to bed and uh luckily because of that you know, sitting with it for a while and and processing it, I was able to sleep okay. I wasn't too restless. So Wednesday morning I wake up and um I was like now I'm back in the struggle again. I'm like, man, it's I I was weighing out both roads.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Back even though you had as you just indicated, kind of mostly seemed to have made a decision the night before. You a couple really hard days, you you know, okay, deal with it as you do, process it out, you know, journaling, sitting there just thinking thinking it through, and then okay, I I've I've made my decision. I'm I'm it's not on me. I can't do this this time. It has to come from that other person. Okay, whew. You feel pretty good about your decision, go to bed, sleep okay, and then wait, what the next morning you're right back in trying to like think about that same decision that you thought you'd already made.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Yeah, and and that that thought came after my normal morning routine, which you know includes a lot of meditation. But I think it was the stuff that I'm currently reading in my morning um time, it it brought that decision back up. And it and it through the reading, it made me look at it from a different perspective.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Yeah, so that makes sense. So the decision you thought you had made, all of a sudden you're reevaluating now. You're like, oh wait, did I choose correctly? Oh, am I gonna make actually the other decision instead? So you're still fucking I'm sorry, effing in it, man. Like, yeah, yeah. Day three now, just kind of spinning in your head, pretty yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

That's yeah, it was tough, but like I said, leading into this, you know, um sometimes you just you have to you have to do the hard thing. So when I looked at both of these paths, um, between me telling the individual or this other person um being the one, it became very clear to me that as hard as it was going to be for me to tell this person and explain it to them, I think it would have been ten times worse coming from the other path. Ah, okay. Yeah, you eventually saw that. And sitting with that, I think where I struggled the most was will this individual understand the consequences better or worse, depending on who it came from. Because I know how it's gonna come from this other path, and it wouldn't be healthy, and I and I just felt like at the at that moment of time, like I felt like the individual already was learning a lesson. So why just beat the living tar out of them? So you changed your mind. So I changed, I changed my mind, man. Yeah. And I chose to be the one, you know, and it's just difficult sometimes, man.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Yeah, I can see you've you've been struggling with this, man. I it's hard not being able to freely talk about the real of the circumstances, you know. I know our listeners are asking for that more, like, hey, you know, like concrete, like it's it's so good. And like it, we you and I we have that tendency to wander up into the abstract and for for good reason at times, you know, but um bringing it back more real just to your experience, like for days now, like really mulling over this, really trying to just do the right thing. You care so much, and so you're kind of torturing yourself just back and forth, and just really trying to figure it out how to how to proceed. And uh yeah, you changed your mind. You you you chose otherwise. It sounds like you approached you know, had that conversation, and then but yeah, here and right now it's still very alive for you. It's still I can see it in your eyes. I can, you know, it's uh it really has affected you and it's still lingering for you. And um what what is that, you know, beyond the difficulty of the decision and the back and forth and working it through and stuff, you know, it's I mean if we were even to like, man, right now, you know, um what's what what's that feeling? What's what's what's that in your voice, in your eyes, is that what's that emotion sitting underneath after having gone through all this?

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Yeah, it's a good question, for sure. You know, the the one thing I wrote Wednesday morning in the journal, and this was something that just I wrote a lot. I I have some I have a lot of journals, you know this, man. And um I literally wrote in my journal because I was thinking about our podcast, thinking about the purpose behind this podcast, what we do, what we say, you know, is it helping? Is it not helping? You know, just just normal thoughts about our podcast altogether. And then I wrote these words that like man, just like punch you square in the face, dude. It was crazy. It's like maybe this isn't the weight that you should be carrying. And I gotta be honest, I I really put some thought into the our podcast and all of our episodes, and I'm thinking to myself, I don't think Shann and I have ever talked about maybe sometimes certain weight isn't for us to carry, man. But we choose to carry it anyway. That is what has been sticking with me for the rest of the week that led after my decision. Was is this the weight that I should be carrying, or should I start learning and practicing a little bit more, man, that I can't carry everybody's weight. Ha!

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Wait, you're trying to carry other people's weight? Yeah, weird. It's not weird. Oh man, oh man. There's you you said it, man, just a minute ago. You know, you you care so much, we care so much, we want to show up, we want to be helpful, we want to generally, yeah, just kind of working to make the world a better place a little bit, you know, as we've said, and just okay, and sometimes uh that can be misdirected. Sometimes that we often get ourselves in more trouble by trying to be too helpful. We often create more problems by trying to fix things. We often, you know, it's we have a tendency to try to do too much, to put forth too much effort and like, oh, I gotta do, I gotta blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, you know. We just we we approach, we kind of just that's our you know, general stance or approach in life is just okay, okay, okay, trying to carry so much or trying to help so many, and like whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, and that's taking away from others their opportunity, their ability to carry their own GD weight, right? To like help themselves out a little bit. It some things are not ours, not our responsibility, not our problem to solve. And you know, whoa, what a shift to hey, not mine. I good luck, right? It sounds callous, it's not our style, but you know, hey, sometimes again less is more, just hey, not mine. That's good luck with that.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Yeah, no, I a lot of truth to that, you know, and I um, you know, as as fathers, husbands for sure, um, even a son or you know, whatever the relationship may be, I think just naturally we take on a lot of weight, right? You take as a protector and a provider, um and I know it's not talked a lot about, maybe it is, maybe it's not, I don't know, but I think some people in the man world, you know, as protectors and providers, man, we we do our absolute best to try to do everything all the time for everyone, and that comes out of detriment.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Yeah, I don't try to do everything for everyone all the time.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Yeah, but I I think a lot of it's built in, you know. And what I mean by doing everything all the time is like I'm not gonna speak for other people, so I'll just speak for myself. When I know something needs to get done, I just get it done. When I know that, you know, my family, whether it's my wife or daughter, or kids, you know, if there are things that need to be taken care of, I take care of them. And I don't do them without a lot of thought, you just do it. Right? It's like, you know, I I don't know the scenario to use currently, but I think just as you grow in a relationship as a father and a husband, you know, I've been at this for almost 20 uh 28, 28 years now. You know, my children are grown and they're um trying to become their own little families and life, so things are changing rapidly, you know, and I just think is as a father, you try to be that protector. But again, without thinking about it consciously, uh when you're trying to protect everybody, especially in your family core, you know, that's a lot of weight, but I don't think about it in that context a lot. So I think in this case, when it starts to come up, I think it it's just really in the forefront of your brain. You know what I'm saying? And then you start really looking at things, you're like, well, you know, I've got you know this many children, I've got, you know, a wife, and you know, my mom, you know, passed last year, and I'm trying to be a you know, an executive and a leader and a business owner, and you know, we're doing a podcast, and I think it comes very crystal clear very quick, like, hey man, like you really need to start slowing up a little bit and stop carrying some things you shouldn't be carrying. So that that's just my perspective.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

That yeah, when it gets to the forefront, because like you described, a lot of the time we it's not even a thought. We we just it's just a pure like instinct, just uh reaction, you know. Someone one of our kids needs help, needs you know, something, you know, of course we're just automatic. We're we just show up and we will help them out. That's our job as dad. And it's just it's great, it's what we do. And when what we do, you know, is uh in those roles starts to um exceed our capacity, you know, that's when it starts to actually entering our conscious experience. Like, oh wait, I I'm I don't know. You know, it it starts to become more difficult. You know, you start to see it or look at it at least. And uh yeah, but that's it that doesn't Really happen until we start getting maxed out.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Yeah. It's uh it's a it's an interesting thing, you know, because I've obviously over the last three weeks I've had a lot of time to think about it and just really look at things from a different angle, from a different view, you know, and it's difficult sometimes, man, because for me personally it's compounded because of the roles that I currently have, right? And dealing with this even though it has been difficult, you always gotta start thinking to yourself, like, okay, man, like what's the lesson, man? I know there's a lesson in here. And it it's like you're you're trying to get through that mucky, murky water, you know what I mean? And it you're like, I know that the water's gonna be a little bit clearer downrange. I just just keep swimming, bruh, right? Just keep going forward. And at some point, once you kind of get some of the muck out of the way, then you start to, for me personally, then I start to see, okay, there is a lesson here. And for me personally, this is what that lesson is. And for me, in this scenario, it is legitimately and we've talked about this in the past, it it's okay to be a listener, man. People need people to listen more now than ever, in my opinion. Uh, but listening is okay, it doesn't mean you gotta pick up that weight and carry it for them. You know what I mean? So going through the last three weeks, I just really am starting to really look at choosing the weight a little bit more carefully, man. Instead of by default.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Uh that yeah, that's a good descriptor, default. It so often it just feels default. That's just what we do, that's who we are, even again, not even conscious of it, just automatic, and just okay, you know, and um until times like these and to ooh, start seeing like wait, I oh, um we have a choice. We can actually be a little more selective, be a little more discerning of huh. Yeah, I can see your struggle, and I'm going to allow that to be your struggle. I'm I'm not gonna just automatically now, oh okay, I guess let me struggle along with you with this and help you out with this. And um and we care, we want to help, and when we can, when it's appropriate, of course we we we can't not. Um but this is a big one for you, man, to be I can see like re-evaluating the whole concept of hang on, I can choose what to carry, and I can also choose when I don't want to pick something up.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Yeah, and it's not easy. I mean, those those those decisions are not easy, and I don't take those light at all because you know I think again it just kind of goes back to who I am as a human being and the things I've done over the last you know 11 years and the roles that I currently have, all of them are demanding in and of themselves. Now, I can choose to stop doing some of those roles if I chose to. That is completely within my ability. But each and every one of those right now is important to me. Yeah, so I just really need to refocus and reset myself and just remind myself like, hey man, I can't save everybody. I can't. That's that's not within my ability as much as I would like some kind of a superhero power. That's not that's not the world we live in. That's not that's not a real human being thing. So I just have to refocus on our purpose, and our purpose is this sharing with people that hey man, we hear you. We're all going through the struggle at some point, and I I've never met a single person that's got it all figured out, you know. It's quite it's quite the opposite. I think the more we figure out, then the more we learn, and the more we learn, the more we figure out, and it kind of just you know, you kind of flip-flop back in those two little areas, if you will. But you know, for now, this is just where I'm at.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

Quite the place you're at, man. Isn't it remarkable how as you just described, the further in we get, you know, the years of work and learning and just personal growth, and you know, sometimes we we almost feel more broken, more, you know, just splayed open, vulnerable, like God, you know, we're seeing things more, feeling things more, things are affecting us in ways they didn't before. It was so quote unquote easy when we were just dumbasses, when we're just tough guys, when we could just macho everything out, you know, and just be these other individuals who we're talking about today. You just don't don't see it, don't look at it, just just and man, when things really start to change, when you really start to wait, what like uh start to I don't know, there's what's the best word, just um become more aware of ourselves, of others, of the the dynamic the relationships, the situations, and just there's a there's a lot more going on than we were previously aware of, and it it it's more to take in. It's it it's sometimes feels more burdensome, more responsibility to whoa, what do I do? God dang, what do I do? You know, and it it feels heavier even, you know, which is so ironic. Like, wait, hang on, I've been really working toward trying to like just become a better person, be more grounded, be more present. Just I I I want to be a overall, you know, better individual. And so why does it feel like I'm struggling now more than ever? You know, that's the weird paradox.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

Yeah, it is. Uh but the bad news is we don't have to pick this conversation up because um our time is running very close to running out. So uh, you know, it's a difficult spot to leave off, but you know, we'll probably pick this up maybe in our next recording.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

Yeah, we're we're not going anywhere. We're gonna hit pause, I'm gonna go eat an apple, we're gonna come right back and hit record.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

So we're gonna we'll end this this quick episode here. Um and um like always, man, if you are out there and uh you need some one to listen to or you got some things that you need to talk about, uh you can hit up the number uh 988 and it's free. So, you know, use that at your at your whenever you need it. And then like always, uh go out into your local area, look into the mental health world, look into the counselors out there in your local area. And if you need somebody, man, for an hour, give them a shout, try it out. Don't be afraid to try more than one until you find your fit, because I think that's the most important thing, man. But for this episode is Mike Seahorn, Shannon Mora, and we'll catch you on the next episode.