Regardless of gender, we are all meant for connection. Is there something keeping you from building relationships? Whether it be pride, unrealistic expectations or even stereotypes – you were meant to connect.


Transcription of the Podcast


Don: I know, I’m just saying this for me, I’m always too prideful to let anybody not know that I wasn’t Mr. Popular and everything was going smooth when my whole world was crumbling down around me. I couldn’t connect with my kids for lots and lots of years. [inaudible 00:00:16] rebuilding something that I destroyed 13 years ago. It takes time, but it’s not something I was ever willing to share with anybody until I started on my Journey Venture last summer.

Don: (music).

Don: Hi, Jeff.

Jeff: Good afternoon, Don.

Don: [crosstalk 00:00:43] so I understand we’re going to talk about relationships today.

Jeff: Relationships, yes.

Don: Awesome.

Jeff: It is.

Don: Those could be, between you and I, what do we want to go with, probably work, family?

Jeff: Yeah, it all fits in, right? It all fits in, yeah.

Don: How relationships maybe struggle-

Jeff: How they struggle, and especially with guys, right?

Don: Because we like to talk about football, NASCAR.

Jeff: Packers, oh the Packers. Yeah.

Don: We don’t have [inaudible 00:01:13].

Jeff: Dale Earnhardt, he just … Is Dale Earnhardt even racing anymore? I don’t even know. That’s probably back from the ’80s. Anyway, so yeah, before we started today, off air we were talking a little bit, it seems like gals can open up a little bit more, talk a little bit more about things that matter. But, what were you saying? Something like, “Guys could meet each other three years later-“

Don: Oh yeah, I know, right. You just bump into a buddy you haven’t seen. I had a trucking buddy just call me a month ago, true story. I hadn’t heard from Jimmy forever, and he called, “Hey, buddy, what are you doing?” I’m like, “Man,” we haven’t seen each other in 10 years, but after we said, “Hey and what’s going on? I’m still trucking.” I’m like, “I’m home, not working.” So we’re all caught up, but women, on the other hand, you’re worried about people’s hair, another child, a lot of dialogue there. Guys, we’re in maybe 90 seconds, we’re caught up. See you in five years, we’re good.

Jeff: Exactly.

Don: With that being said, what we were talking about earlier, of course, I know for me, we don’t get into that relationship thing as much as women do. I mean, I think there’s science out there that verifies women’s brains and men’s brains work completely different, and thank God they do.

Jeff: Right, right. Yeah, what’s that book? Men Are Mars, Women Are From Venus or something like that.

Don: Mars, yeah, Mars and Venus. We’re just from two different kinds of [crosstalk 00:02:45].

Jeff: And we could learn something from women in this thing, because here, us guys, we go through life and it’s … Especially like this American dream thing, we’re living the American dream.

Don: What is that?

Jeff: Yeah, what is that? But, man, we’re all about that and we’re going to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and when the going gets tough, man, we’re going to man up more. We’re going to man up and we’re just going to-

Don: Well, here again, don’t you think, Jeff, possibly that’s just the way we’ve been trained and brought up as our parents? You and I are basically the same age, 60ish. We’re just taught that men do this and women do that. I mean, this sounds cliché and old-fashioned, but it’s not that way anymore. All these women are working, they’ve got jobs, there’s some stay-at-home dads. But, when you mentioned to me, just before we started recording today, about relationships, it just made me think back to all the things that I missed out in life by letting money and jobs take over my life, that it very much did for so many years. From a young man to age 57, when I was forced to quit working because of my health and back and stuff like that. But, I didn’t realize until that point in my life, my gosh, if you were to say, “How was life for you, Don, with your family and kids?” To be real about it, it was all lost. I mean, I’ve had wives walk out of my life because, “He worked too much,” was the rumor that I heard. It’s not a joke.

Jeff: Well, that’s interesting that you say that.

Don: That’s what I was told.

Jeff: Yeah, and you didn’t say, “wife”, you said, “wives” so it’s more than one. So here’s the other thing I think, and this is … I don’t want to pick too much on guys here, because women … I think it all applies. But, isn’t it amazing sometimes as just human beings, how we’ll go a direction and we go, “Hmm, what could I have learned from that?” But, we keep going that same direction and it’s like … Which is what Journey … As people listen to this on the Journey site, or however they’re listening to it, if they’re Journey, that’s what we want to do is help people. If you’re heading south, that’s okay, right? We all head south at some point. But, lets re-calibrate and maybe we can’t turn true north, maybe we never get true north. Nobody’s perfect, right? But, at least lets re-calibrate and at least point more towards north.

Don: Well, we just got to find direction. Let’s pick that one apart [inaudible 00:05:29] would say. We’re going to unpack that.

Jeff: Unpack it.

Don: Direction. I was headed in a lot of directions in life. I’m a multi-tasker, if things we’re going on, I did farming at a young age, and all kinds of other sideline businesses, just again, thinking that I was being that good guy, that man that’s providing for the family. When I look back now, and even then, but couldn’t change directions, because in my 30s, so focused on … had a very good job at a management position, and it was a seven day week in the ag businesses. I didn’t realize all this stuff until just this last few years, “Wow, you sure missed out on a lot of stuff.” But, as a guy, here again, we just think that that’s what we’re designed to do. Boy, I’d hate to see … and that’s why we’re doing this today, I think, if I understand you right, is to let you guys out there know that there’s a whole lot more to life than working and money and the things that you have. Because, as Jeff mentioned the word journey, and that’s what we’re doing here, is the journey that I’ve been on for the last 14 months is the coolest journey I’ve ever been on, because it allows me to have time to pay attention to what’s going on in my life, which I always did in the working world, but I didn’t pay attention, obviously, to my relationships, because they all crumbled.

Don: Even with my children, those dissolved and still are just being rebuilt as we record this today. We’re still working on it. Things are going good, but I’m telling you, it’s been 13 years since the major break up with all three of my children, and we’re just repairing that now. I guess, my message to the guys is, slow down, take a look at your family, your wife, your kids. I mean, anything can be worked out, and Journey really helps us do that when we find another guy to mentor with and sit down and talk about stuff, because, let’s face it, Jeff, you don’t want to … You and I haven’t seen each other for six months, you don’t want to share your personal problems with me because you’re a guy. You don’t want me to see you sweating and struggling, do you, because that’s shameful.

Jeff: Yeah, let me … Let me run off on that a little bit. The way I was raised is, yeah, you just don’t divulge any of that stuff.

Don: Never let them see you sweat.

Jeff: Yeah, never let them … Exactly, never let them see you sweat. Now, that caused me a lot of internal angst and a lot of sweating over the years, some high anxiety times. I still … It’s hilarious, actually, that I’m involved in anything about coaching, because my kids will tell you that … Terry, my wife, has been the coach of the family. Here’s my idea of coaching, it’s like, “There’s the thing that needs to be done. Go do it. Don’t hurt yourself. Let me know if you need any help, but just go get it done.”

Don: Right.

Jeff: I’ve been really good over the years at keeping people at a distance. Yeah, before we started this podcast, Don and I, we had lunch, we talked for about half an hour, and that’s something that I just haven’t done a whole lot in my life. I don’t have 25 good friends in my life, so I look at this and I go, “Hmm, am I weird? Am I unique?” No, I mean, that’s kind of the common thing, right? I mean, we’ve got tons of maybe friends on Facebook, but how many real friends do we have that we can call up and just say, “Hey, this thing just happened in my life, this just sucks, and I just need somebody to talk about this thing.” Especially guys, right? I mean, we just don’t do that.

Don: Well, that’s why I think we just kind of spitball the idea of doing a little brief podcast on relationships, and you’re sharing now that you don’t have a lot of friends. I did not know that. This is why I think it’s important to say at this point, we didn’t even know that we were going to do this, but this is now meant so other men out there can hear that, “Here’s some guy that just admitted that he didn’t have a lot of friends when it comes to male friends.” I think all of us fit that mold of, here again, the man thing. I don’t want to beat this into the ground, but I know, I’m just saying this for me. I’m always too prideful to let anybody not know that I wasn’t Mr. Popular and everything was going smooth when my whole world was crumbling down around me. I couldn’t connect with my kids for lots and lots of years, as I said earlier, we’re just rebuilding something that I destroyed 13 years ago.

Don: It takes time, but it’s not something I was ever willing to share with anybody until I started on my Journey Venture last summer. So now I’ve been able to open up more about that and that’s why I think we’re laying this down and recording it, to let … We’ve done a lot of recordings. We’ve got women, Sarah, Terry, [inaudible 00:10:55] and stuff, but we really haven’t just heard a guy podcast, so we just kind of threw this together last minute, over a sandwich. We said, “Let’s just talk about some guy stuff.” So ladies, we love you, but you’re just not going to be here today.

Jeff: We need to wrap it up because I think it’s a good start, I think there’ll be some other good conversations along this line. But, the point being, “Hey, if you’re out there, you’re hearing this, and you’re sort of prompted, you’re sort of sensing, “You know what? I’m just tired of pulling myself up from my bootstraps. I’m tired of, well …” Well, Don’s got this term.

Don: I got the phrase. I mean, it’s so easy. Life is tough, right? I’m sure you want to get it right, don’t you, Jeff? You want more friends and good life, right?

Jeff: Yeah.

Don: Well, we at Journey want to help. We want to do that, and you and I will help the people. I’m going to start coaching next week, this coming Sunday I’ll start coaching for the first time, coming along side a 16-year-old boy.

Jeff: Yeah.

Don: Well, there’s a weird twist. A 61-year-old man coaching a 16-year-old boy, how much times have changed. But, based on my life, and the lack of good things and the relationships that were destroyed, I am just completely blessed that I’m going to get to work with a teenage young man that I’ve met and guide him in the direction where he doesn’t travel that path of no relationships like I did.

Jeff: Well, and that’s the other thing too. Let’s face it, and I’m not a counselor. I kid people, “My counselor wife, Terry, she swims in the deep end of the pool, I swim in the shallow end.” But, I do know that there’s a lot of people out there, 15, 16-year-olds, and their emotional maturity sometimes gets kind of stuck in that 15 or 16-year-old mindset. So there’s people out there listening today that are, yeah, 60, 70, 25, 30, whatever it is, you got to … It’s really important to look at yourself in the mirror and say, “How much deeper have I grown since I was a teenager, and would it be better if I grew emotionally in my emotional health, my physical health, and my spiritual health, and how do I do that?” Well, that’s where there’s some people around the table, there’s a great process, there’s a seven session coaching process. It has been really, really developed well by some really smarter people than I, over the last five plus years.

Don: It’s a great book.

Jeff: Yeah, 10 revisions on this little guide. It’s what? Probably 80 pages maybe?

Don: Yeah.

Jeff: Seven sessions. But, 10 revisions, coaching dozens of people, and it’s really good stuff. So I guess the call to action here is, first of all, thanks for listening, hopefully some people, some guys made it through the whole-

Don: Yeah, I hope so.

Jeff: [crosstalk 00:14:07], it’s like, “I don’t want to hear this. I just want to continue to be in my little bubble.” For those of you that are still listening that really want to find out more, just take a step, reach out to us, it’s journeycoaching.org. There’s a phone number there, there’s ways to connect with us. It’s just, again, by connecting, you’re not making a commitment for a lifetime, you’re not making a commitment even for seven sessions. You’re just taking a step to just find out more and how it applies to your situation, and again, how we can help and come along side and-

Don: Just take a look.

Jeff: We all grow together.

Don: What I’ll close by saying is just take a really hard look at a journey that I jumped on not even a year ago, that I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and it might become my trademark, “I hope this journey never stops.”

Jeff: Yeah, amen. All right.

Don: Thanks, Jeff.

Jeff: Thanks, Don.

Speaker 3: Thank you for listening. Tune in next time and make sure you like and subscribe. Visit us at journeycoaching.org, and check us out on Facebook and Instagram. Start your own journey at journeycoaching.org.Speaker 3: (music).