Transcription
Welcome back to the Brave Co podcast, men. Hey, before we get started, I want to ask you one quick question. Do you have a really clear plan to build a strong, capable, powerful leader that God's called you to be?
If you don't, we have the course for you. It's our Brave Co. Foundations of Masculinity and our sexuality relationship course. These are free courses that we've created that you can literally go and sign up today. The best part of these is you get access to our community, right? So, you can go and if you want to run with other men who are crushing it in life, there's tons of guys there that you can jump into a course with or we even have conferences and events that we do all year long that you can check out.
But listen, I want you to to go back and think about this. If you don't have a clear plan, if you don't have other guys that you're running with, if you don't have a clear pathway to how do I grow myself as a man? How do I step into my calling? What is my code, my ethos? What does that mean? How do I set healthy boundaries? How do I show up for my wife? How do I do emotion-based communication that creates deep connection in in my family, in my marriage? Guys, we lay it out so simply for you. And honestly, I've seen so many men go through this and and get complete healing on the other side. So, we want to give that to you for free. You can go to braveco.org and sign up today.
Welcome back to the Brave Co podcast. Men, this week we are doing something new. I'm doing a live Q&A podcast where you can come on and hang out with me and answer ask any question that you want. And um I'm really excited for this new format. It's one of my favorite things to do and I really think that that uh yeah that's it's going to be something that I enjoy for a long time. And so um if you want to jump on our live podcast, you can uh just follow us on Instagram. I'll always post when I'm going to be on and the link to jump on there.
So thanks again guys for showing up. Um and ladies, ladies can jump on here, too. That's totally fine. Doesn't really matter to me. But um all right, I'm going to go to our first live listener. Don, thanks so much for coming on here, Don. Uh can you hear me? Okay.
>> Yes, I can.
>> Awesome, man. Hey, thank you again for jumping on here. Uh I appreciate it. How can I um how can I help you this week?
>> Well, I think my main question is um I'm struggling with connection, especially with other guys, and I just don't know how to how to go about that or what your thoughts are about connection.
>> Yeah, man. Uh, honestly, it's such a great question. Um, and one, I've been there before, struggling with connection. A lot of men struggle with how do I go deep? How do I connect? Um, what are you currently doing right now to build connection in your life, if you don't mind me asking?
>> Well, I mean, I'm part of a church community. Um, it's a small community and and I I I'm around other people and I connect. I just don't I just struggle with that um invitation or inviting people to connect in other ways or or I feel I don't have that that means I I I really fearful or I guess or I'm really just like hey invite people to do something but it's usually like fearful I'm going to get turned down or whatever.
>> Yeah man, that makes a lot of sense. Um do you have hobbies?
>> Yes, but time makes it difficult to do a lot of those.
>> Totally. What What What's your favorite hobbies?
>> Between music, little hunting.
>> I haven't fished in years. Um trying some golf, but haven't connected with that much lately either, but just because of busyness and I'm just really not good at it. So,
>> yeah, it's great, man. But
>> um a couple things that that I know helps a lot and for starters I think it's really normal to be nervous especially if um if you haven't had deep relationships in the past um or yeah if it sounds like the actual initiation of inviting people um opening up your home or inviting someone to come you know hang over the fear of rejection is the big problem. And again, I think that that's really common. Um, the story we tell ourselves is really important, isn't it? The story that you tell yourself about who you are. Um, I think is the biggest challenge that probably you're having, it sounds like. And uh, have you ever read my dad's book um, The Supernatural Ways of Royalty?
>> Actually, I have.
>> Yeah. Okay, cool. Um, what did you think about it? You could be honest. It it doesn't hurt my feelings either way.
>> Um, I'm sure I thought good about it. It's been a while since I read it. Probably a couple years. So, remembering all the details are probably I read a lot of books actually. So,
>> yeah.
>> What happens when you when you um what happens when you start to think about inviting someone over or building connection with somebody? What's a story you're telling yourself?
>> I guess I mean I don't have a I guess I leave my wife to do some of the inviting. It's just so it's the guy to guy kind of kind of time. I I I guess I tell myself I mean I everyone seems to like me so I don't think they're going to It's just like I think they're busy. I guess that's the main thing.
>> Yeah. I mean you're thinking something, right? Because if you're not initiating, you're not initiating because of a specific reason. Does that make sense?
>> Yeah. Exactly.
>> So, what do you think you're telling yourself when you're saying, "I'm I think they're busy."
>> That they don't really want to spend time with me, I suppose.
>> Yeah. Totally. Yeah. And if you if you went deeper into that, like, why don't you think they want to spend time with you?
>> probably I don't know it's not worth their time. I mean I know people I mean I have invited people and they've shown up and and enjoyed it. So I know that's not necessarily true but then the next time it's like okay they're busy. So yeah the challenge is what you consciously think and what you subconsciously think are two different things, aren't they? And what we consciously think is what you're consciously thinking is like I know that I have in the past and people have enjoyed it. Um what you're unconsciously battling with is if I reach out um people might not enjoy hanging out with me. They might not have the time. And that there's pain there's pain wrapped up into that. It's painful. We don't nobody wants to be rejected. And so it'd be really interesting if you started to confront that that unconscious voice in your head. And you could do it a ton of different ways. Um you could actually just confront it head on and go like, who's a guy in your world, in your church world or business world that you actually enjoy or you look up to or you admire seems like he has some of the same hobbies? And you can confront that fear head on like, uh, he might be too busy. He might not want to hang out with me. And I think you're going to have to go like, and that's okay. If he doesn't want to, if if he doesn't want to hang out with me, if if um if he doesn't have time for it, that's up to him. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to be a man that pursues connection. I'm going to be a man that that builds uh friends, that builds my life, that I'm going to be a blessing to people. And I think you have to start changing that internal voice to I'm a man that's a blessing. I'm a man that's a benefit to other men. I'm a man that's worthy of spending time. I'm a man that that um that other guys enjoy. Um that way you are are growing in some confidence and security so that as you're going down this path you kind of instead of just letting your subconscious mind do whatever it wants to do you're intentionally going now I am worthy of time I am worthy of connection um not every guy in the whole world's going to enjoy you and that's okay but if I'm you. I'm saying to myself, I'm going to I'm going to keep going down this path until I find my people, until I find my tribe. Um, what I think is helpful is a lot of a lot of my relationships, we rally around our hobbies. That's why I asked you what you do. And so, you know, I have a really close friend, one of my best friends, his name's Chris Lamb. He lives right down the road from me, literally like a minute. and we work out three, four days a week together. We also shoot our bows together and we hunt together. And but our friendship started rallying around our hobbies, not rallying around going deep together. And if I look at I have a a small group of 12 guys. Almost all of my relationships started and continued because we have first had something in common, raising kids or usually it's a hobby. And so I think I would carve out some I would carve out some time inside of your hobby and then invite guys to do that and build that bond around that and then grow by going deeper. Does that make sense?
>> Totally. So, I think addressing that subconscious voice in your head will really help. And then putting something on your calendar every single either every week or maybe do twice a month where you go, I'm going to invite guys to this and this. Could be an NFL football party, could be basketball party, could be a we do I do a lot of UFC fights, barbecues. You don't have to know somebody really good and you don't have to be the main form of entertainment there. You can just start by creating a cool place where guys want to hang out and then invite them to that and then go deeper as you get to know them individually. Hey, what's your, you know, what's your wife like? How many kids do you have? What do you do for a living? And start to go down that path and then really get to to know and enjoy one another. Um, built around that bond. So, try that and then let me know how that works.
>> Okay.
>> Awesome, man. Thank you so much for coming on here. Um,
>> thank you.
>> Yeah. Next up, we have Sadu Mocha from Florida. Bro, I hope I didn't just crush your your name. Um, are you on here?
>> Yeah, I'm here. Can you hear me?
>> Yeah, bro. Did I kill your name?
>> No, you haven't.
>> Awesome, bro. Thank you so much.
>> Su. Yeah. Thank you so much, man, for coming on.
>> Um, yeah. Do you have a question for me?
>> Yeah. Um, yeah, I actually did the foundations of masculinity uh last year with you.
>> Yeah, I remember that.
>> Yep. Uh so I think one question is uh I used to have a mentor like uh who's who was the pastor like the one of the pastor at my church and uh I think he passed away last year actually with cancer.
>> Wow. Uh um and I realized I had like some unresolved uh stuff with him like because I used to trust him a lot and we used to be like friends too. But I also noticed that it's been hard to actually connect with someone like in someone sim with a similar authority or place since then. Um, so I was going to ask like how do you actually reconcile with uh everything and then move forward?
>> Yeah. So you were being mentored by your pastor. He passed away from cancer.
>> Yeah.
>> And then now you're feeling like
>> Sorry. Uh what was that?
>> I said yes. Yeah.
>> And then now um you're having a hard time moving forward connecting to other leaders. Is that what you're saying?
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um I'm sorry for your loss for starters.
>> Mhm.
>> Thank you.
>> Yeah. Do you feel like you've um did you mourn that loss fairly well, do you think?
>> Um maybe not as much as I mean now that I think of it maybe not as much because I got busy with life and uh uh it didn't hit me until like maybe few months ago.
>> Yeah.
>> Uh yeah
>> yeah that makes sense. What happens when you try to connect with other leaders?
>> I think like part of it was also generous uh that I was basically carrying like uh because there was like some moments or like instances where I got hurt um from the direction or like are basically offended with some actions but I didn't really resolve them or talked about them uh
>> with your leader who passed away.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Okay, that makes sense.
>> Hoping that hop hoping that I would
>> like do that one day, but that never happened, I guess.
>> Yeah.
>> Um and then now like I think I couldn't trust uh anyone knew like or maybe the fear that something like that would happen.
>> Yeah.
>> Uh yeah.
>> Okay, great. Yeah, man. I I love your vulnerability and this type of stuff's so hard. Um and really common too, you know. Um, I think for starters, being able to mourn the loss of having a a mentor, maybe a spiritual father in your life, however you saw him.
>> And and for mourning, um, for starters, that that lessons, um, I believe it's eight and nine, um, lessons eight and nine take you through, uh, forgiveness and working through pain. And so maybe go back and and listen to those. But but also I think part of mourning is being able to tell the story a bunch of different ways and in a bunch of different times. It's being able to not just process one time that he's gone, but
>> you're you're being able to process through like, man, I've got this big challenge in my life
>> and I don't have my leader here to help me or,
>> you know, or even my leader passed away and I never got to reconcile this piece. So now I'm over here in a bunch of pain without being able to really get rid of it or or or find resolve for it. And for that I really do think that journaling is is key. I think you need to set aside an hour of your time and to sit down and to write the story. Write your story. Um, which I'll give you the beginning of your story. Uh, I had a a really cool mentor, spiritual father in my life,
>> and his name's whatever, you know, ex, I don't know. And, um, that relationship was beautiful and and strong and painful at the same time. Now, you're telling your story
>> and I think getting to the point where you talk about the beauty and the pain and then you can dive into the pain a bit more, right? So
>> the benefit of that is you need to be able to process what is the actual pain
>> so that you know what you need God to come in and help you solve.
>> Yeah.
>> Is anyone going to love me? Um what do I do with this re you know with this pain I have or resentment or anger and bitterness from you know him passing? But until you really tell that story, it's just it's playing inside of you unconsciously. You're living walking around with it, unaware that you're walking around with it. Does that make sense?
>> Yeah. Kind of like it's masked under there, but you're just feeling something else.
>> Yeah. Yeah. 100%. And it becomes this really painful place um that you're not aware that that I mean pain's the craziest thing because you can walk around and know that you're in pain but not know why. It's the craziest experience. And so journaling such a good way to really get to the bottom of what it is that you're feeling and then why you're feeling it. But then that connection to Father God where you're actually going, "Oh my gosh, I'm living in this unresolved pain. Um, it was the pain of not feeling wanted by him. Like, is somebody else going to not want me or whatever. I'm just giving a hypothetical, but that's where introducing God into this process with you is clutch. It really is key." And so I think if you do that, if you sharpen up a little bit on lessons 8 and nine and the foundations of masculinity, which by the way, for anyone listening, it's free. You can go to braveco.org and sign up today for free. It's not a gimmick at all. You can literally jump on to and sign up and and join our our um disciplehip course and and start to go through it. But lessons eight and nine are on forgiveness and processing pain. And you can get a ton of help from that. So, um,
>> yeah. Yeah, that that really helped me like being in the small group last year.
>> Yeah, I could watch for
>> Come on, man. I love that. Well, bro, it's been great running with you. Um, Su, thank you so much for coming on here.
>> Yeah, thank you.
>> All right, guys. So, we have a question from a guy named Alex who's not on here live, but he sent it in, so I want to answer it for him. Um I heard that our view of God is affected by my actual father or mother. I also hear often to just ask God. How do I reconcile those like um what we hear back? Okay, let me just explain and and answer this question um to the best of our ability. Um for starters, our view of God is absolutely affected by how your parents treat you. So it kind of goes like this. You experience your earthly father. Um, well, you experience father god by how you experience your earthly father. And you really connect to the holy spirit by how you connect to your mom. And you really connect to Jesus by how you connect to your brothers and sisters and friends. That's just it just is the way that it is. It's the way God designed it. And it it's actually a really incredible design if you think about it. Because if your earthly parents do a great job at building connection with you when you're young, then you naturally trust Father God, the Holy Spirit, Jesus, and it becomes this really beautiful um doorway to uh experiencing God and love and and care and concern. And so God's design is is genius. If you've had a bunch of pain in um from your earthly father, then when you try to connect to father god, whatever you experienced your earthly father as more than likely you're you're going to project that onto father god. It's just the way that it is. So what do you have to do? You have to come down and reconcile, right? you apply forgiveness and um for for your father's shortcomings. Work through the pain of those things to the best of your ability um which starts the process of healing how you see Father God. Okay. Now, the next step that I've led just tons and tons and tons of men through is if you can find out, let's say that your earthly father was never consistent. And so you're always afraid that father god or you always feel like father god isn't consistent then I would go through the process of forgiving your earthly father for not being consistent but then renouncing the lie that father god is like my earthly father that he's inconsistent that he doesn't show up for me that he's not on time that I'm on my own that I have to figure this all out on myself and I renounce that lie. Um, Father God, would you come close to me? Right? So, that's the process. Re, it's forgiveness and renunciation and then the request, right? Um, would you come close? And and and basically what you're doing is you're re you're tearing down your old lie, the old lies that are built up, the old thought process, and now you're starting to rebuild a new lens for how you see Father God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit. I've led so many people through this process of I feel like father God's always angry at me because my dad is always angry at me. Great. Let's work through the pain. Apply forgiveness to your earthly father and then let's go through the process of renunciation. I renounce the lie that father god is angry at me like my earthly father was. Um, I renounce the lie that father god's waiting for me to mess up. I announced the lie that Father God uh that there's nothing that I can do to be loved by Father God. Okay. What's the truth? The truth is that the kindness of God leads you to repentance. That before God formed you in your mother's womb, he knew you. That God loved the loved you so much that he sent his son to die for you. So those are some truths that you can grab on to and you be begin to rebuild the lens of how you see Father God. So hopefully that helps you guys. Um, that's a it's an incredible process to go through and just clean up uh how you see Father God and how your own experience in life to clean up your lenses so you don't have a bunch of trash on them. Okay, I think last one. Um, yeah, next one comes from Samuel. Samuel, you on here, man?
>> Yeah, bro. I got you. Thanks for coming on, man.
>> Yeah. How's it going, man?
>> It's going great. Loving uh Reading, California weather. We've had like San Diego summer here. It's been awesome.
>> Great. Yeah, the humidity out here has finally dropped down. So, it's it's balmy, but it's nice.
>> Are you in Florida?
>> Um, no. I'm in Providence, Rhode Island.
>> Oh, man. That's awesome. Yeah, bro. What's uh what's your question? How can I help you?
>> So, I've been I've been in this journey of like trying to define how I fit in the marketplace. And I feel like I've done jobs because I needed the money. So, you know, I'd go down the sales route.
>> Yep.
>> But I often there's a couple factors. I feel like I often would be frustrated with the role as in I feel like I'm not going or kind of I'm not getting to where I want to be.
>> Yeah. And so I feel frustrated and it can and or it can like really I can have the cycle of like leaving jobs or or or not feeling like it's the right place for me and move on. And so no unintentionally that would be kind of like I feel like a cycle of joblessness. Which I don't think is my function. Doesn't matter. You know what I mean? Like it doesn't to be able to provide reliably. And I feel like I've been on this journey of like God telling me like it's more about function over pay. even though pay is important, but like the function,
>> but I feel like I have a hard time defining myself because I don't want to nail myself down to a certain subset because I feel like I'm a lot more broader than that.
>> Um, but I also feel I also feel like that's probably tied to some emotional pain around my childhood.
>> Um, I was talking I was talking to my wife about this yesterday where I kind of had an encounter with the Lord where he like sat me down. He brought me back to this this um when I was probably like 8 to 13 in that in that range. And my dad sat me down and he had his own company. I was working for him and he's like, "You're always late. You're your work your work workmanship is sloppy and you're a really bad worker." And I just remember him sitting me down and it being like it felt like I had my guards up but I felt like you know there's no way an 8 to 13 year old as his father say something like that and it not harm you in some way or some like somehow some way right.
>> Yeah. And you know, as a dad myself, I'm like I would feel like it's insane to say that to an 8 to 13 year old in itself, you know,
>> but um I've noticed that I will almost like not I find it hard to figure out what my function is
>> because it's almost like I have this fear of not of not wanting to be tied down, I guess.
>> Um I know it's a pretty pretty like in-depth question, but
>> No, you're great, man. How did you tackle that?
>> Yeah. Um, for starters, I think that going in and forgiving your dad and is key, right? Um, your dad I think your dad was trying to your dad took the wrong tactic to motivate you. Does that make sense?
>> And as fathers, like sometimes we do that and it sucks. Um, it's it's a bummer. I've done that to my kids before, too. uh use use the wrong tactic to motivate them to to help them grow. So I think going in and obviously forgiving your dad would be really key. But then I I do you went through Brave Co, correct? Brave Course.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay, cool.
>> I feel like as I do Brave Co, like a lot more stuff has been coming up because I have the capacity tools now to tackle them. You know what I mean?
>> I love it. Well, in in phase one, we go over um I think lesson three is our ethos. Um do you remember doing your ethos?
>> Yes. What's your virtues, your values, your your um mission, your vision? Okay. So, part of why that's important and and I'm gonna I think I'm going to answer your question in two ways, but part of why that's important is at first I need to really figure out in life, every man has to figure out what's it mean to be uh Don Williams or Samuel Connley or Jason Valatin or right like what's it mean to be us? And what are my virtues? What are my values? What are what mission am I on? What's my vision? And it may be really really hard to to nail it perfectly like and that's going to change. But why it matters is I don't go and get a job first because I want to serve. I I want to know that I'm living in my purpose. Finding what you're called to do is a such a journey. It's like such a massive part and honestly it grows and it evolves and it and so I think I first work because part of being a man is producing more than you consume. And I want to be a contributor. I want to be a producer. I want to be a provider. And so my first concern for for working isn't what's this doing for me? My first concern is is this is this really benefiting my family? Is this providing what I want to be able to provide? Okay. So, I start there. Now, as I get security, as I build savings, as I accomplish that first goal, then I start to move my sights towards I don't want to just work, you know, making burgers or chopping wood or um cutting grass. Those are all things I've done before, you know, fighting fire. I don't want to just do that. I want to do something that that is more in line with my mission and my vision. And so, you know, the next question is, can I accomplish some of my mission and vision while splitting wood? Well, some of it I can. I remember being a firefighter and my goal in life is to restore broken men. That's that is my mission. That is the mission I'm on. So, I started to do that while I was firefighting. Who are the guys here that need my help? They need my input. Guys that I could pour into. And I just start to adapt, right? Like, I'm in this place. I I'm not it's not fully the job I'd want, but I can accomplish part of my mission and my vision inside of the job. I steward that really good. As I steward that, I grow. As I grow, I step more and more and more into jobs that pay me to do both my mission and vision, my, you know, that fall in line with my core values. And so, I got hired on as a school and ministry pastor. On and on and on. What Here's what I'm saying. I don't think anybody on the planet starts out in the job that they really want. The Bible says a man's gift makes a way for him and brings him before kings. It also says everything your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. If you partner those two things together, your gifts, your talents, with all of your might, what is the thing that's in front of you? Do that with all of your might. Do it really, really, really well. and be consistent at it as you're exploring. What is it that I was born on this planet to do? What is it that I really enjoy to do? What I have found is what most people thought they were really going to enjoy on this earth, they don't necessarily enjoy. But you really enjoy what you get really good at. You get you really enjoy what you get really good at. And so if you give yourself to something, uh, could be anything, could be sales, it could be, uh, being a chef, it could be marketing and advertising. We love to do things that we're good at. And so that's why I think you should photography, you should really take what you know that you can be successful at right now and grow that as much as you as much as you can and see what doors that opens up. And if you want to look into other areas, that's no problem. But to me, you have to first start at at where you're at today. Does that make sense, Samuel?
>> Yeah. No, it really hits home.
>> Yeah. I think
>> because I I think one one of my barriers Sorry for interrupting you, but you're great.
>> I think one of my barriers is
>> when I feel like I'm not moving. I don't like feeling like I'm going I feel like if I'm staying still, I feel like I'm going be I'm like falling behind. I guess I'm like trying to outrun this feeling of not being behind.
>> Yeah. You and 500 other million men on the planet. That's the lie, right? The lie that you carry is that you're behind, that you're not enough, that you're not growing fast enough, that you know that you're going to be left out. And you're not going to solve that by switching jobs. you're that that is a um that to me is answering the question, do I have what it takes? Is God really walking with me and guiding me? Um am I going to do I have an inheritance? Am I going to be promoted? Do I have a dad that cares for me? Does that make sense?
>> Absolutely. Yeah. Also, I will say doubling down in okay, so work your nineto-ive job and grow in an area of your life that you really care about a lot. So, you may not be growing in your 9 to5 and that's okay. Your nineto-ive job doesn't have to be everything to you. And I I think we mix that up. Like, it doesn't have to both be your purpose and your provision and your, you know, your fun time. It doesn't. Very few people have that. But I think your five to nine 9 to5 sorry can be your provision. And I think that you can have another area of your life that is a massive part of your purpose. I watched my dad do it for years, years and years and years and years and years. He did not want to be a businessman. He wanted to be in ministry but God called him to be a businessman. and he was successful and unsuccessful. He lost money. Uh it was very stressful. It was painful. And every Sunday we were the first family at church. He ran home groups for 20 years. He taught people uh the prophetic. Um he was in his Bible constant. Like does that make sense? So he spent so much time in outside of his 9to-5 because he felt like his purpose was outside of his 9 to5. Now the longer he grew and built and led his business, the more purpose he found in it. But he didn't start by finding a bunch of purpose in his business. He started by being obedient to God, by taking care of his family, and by starting a business because that's what God asked him to do. and then he uh eventually um found a lot of purpose in it. So I think that your fear of missing out you got to check like I just talked about. But you know get into a job that you can that you can grow in. Do it with all of your might. Build momentum in other areas of life that that your job's not feeding you and and work your way into more responsibility. Um God's way of rewarding us is when we do good with this little thing, we get more responsibility. It's a story of the talents. The more you do good with this, the last thing that he gave you, the more good things you get and the more responsibility you get. So try that out, Samuel. Hopefully that helps you. And uh yeah, I appreciate you coming on here, man.
>> Thank you.
>> Well, Brave come in, thank you so much for coming on this week. I hope you guys really enjoyed uh this new live format. Um yes, this is one of my favorite things to do. So again, if you want to join us live, um just check out our Instagram page. Uh follow us there at bravecode.mmin. Um or you can follow me at uh jvalatin. I will always go on and post when we're going to go live and you can join there. I'll give you the Zoom link. But uh otherwise, have an incredible week. Stay brave, man. Hey brave com men. Hopefully you love this week's episode. Listen, if you have not subscribed to our podcast, you are already behind. Go ahead and click right here to subscribe to our podcast. And if you have not watched last week's episode, you can click right here and watch last week's episode. And listen, if you want to upgrade your wardrobe, you can check out some of our new hats that we have in stock and all our other swag. Go to braveco.org and you can look at our store there. Have a great week. We'll see you next week.