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This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
1:14
All right, guys. I know I do this from time to time and you don't really even know what's going on,
1:18
so it's not like it's dramatic for you. There are times when I get an idea for a podcast
1:24
and I go ahead and record it. I get it out there. I take care of business and then I just scrap it
1:29
at the last minute. I usually will put that episode back. Maybe there's something that's more time
1:34
sensitive or more pertinent to what I'm wanting to put out there at the time, but this week was
1:39
completely different. As I'm looking at what I'm going to record, there were three different ideas
1:44
that I was going to talk about. One was kind of time sensitive. Two can have been talked about
1:48
really at any time, but would probably need to be talked about here within the next couple of weeks
1:52
or months or something like that. But for the first time ever, I had three ideas and I scrapped
1:57
all of them. I scrapped all of them at the last minute. It hit me like a ton of bricks,
2:02
just about an hour or two before recording this, what I should talk to you all about this week.
2:07
So obviously the title, aside from having a little bit of bad English in there, you got to reach out.
2:13
You don't really know what that's about, but the thing that just became readily apparent to me
2:18
is that there are more guys out there that are missing opportunities to really minister to the
2:24
other dudes in their lives and they're just not doing it. And for the most part, and what I'm seeing,
2:30
I don't think it's because they're being selfish with their time and choosing not to help these
2:38
people out. I honestly, like 100% honestly feel like most guys don't even recognize that there's
2:45
an opportunity. They don't even see it. And so I'm going to kind of weave this together. And guys,
2:52
I know with some of the episodes I have notes and I have kind of an outline, I got nothing.
2:55
Like I have the word flow in front of my head right now. And so basically, I'm just doing
3:00
this whole thing off the top. So a few weeks ago, or this would probably be a couple of months ago
3:04
now. And I'm not going to really use too many details because some of you guys that listen to
3:09
this office, you know, these people, and I don't want you to, you know, know anything that they
3:13
didn't want you to know. But let's just say there's a guy that I train with. So that's broad enough,
3:18
right? Because I train with ultimately like 100 different, different guys. So there's a guy that
3:23
I train with. And it's a guy that I've been around pretty consistently, almost weekly,
3:27
for several years now. And so a couple of months ago, I started to notice that this guy was
3:34
not doing well. And well, maybe not doing well. Maybe that's a little bit too, too heavy handed.
3:39
The guy just wasn't normal. He wasn't his normal self. And the first thing I notice is that he was
3:44
showing up late to practice and leaving really early to practice. Because you know, the thing is,
3:51
is sometimes, you know, guys, you know, got things going on, and maybe they're about five minutes
3:54
later, 10 minutes later, something like that. Or maybe they got to run, they got to go on a date
3:57
with their wife, or they got to meet up for an appointment somewhere, and then they got to leave
4:00
a little bit early. But he was showing up considerably later than he normally did,
4:05
and leaving considerably earlier than I normally did. And I didn't really think much about it. And
4:08
then I guess I'll come back to here in a second. But then one day, he did the kind of the same
4:13
thing. And even when he was there, it was like he just kind of was glazed over a little bit.
4:17
Like just some in his eye, and you know, he just wasn't really communicating the way that he normally
4:22
does. And I thought to myself, man, I should probably reach out to him, see what's going on,
4:27
see if everything's okay. I mean, worst case scenario, I talked to the guy and everything's
4:31
completely squared away. He was just tired, right? I mean, it's not like the guy's gonna be, well,
4:35
you're reaching out to me for bro. What's up with that? Like, I don't expect that type of reaction.
4:39
But do we 100% honest with you? It wasn't at the top of my mind, and I almost immediately
4:44
forgot about it. Until the next week, when I saw him, and he showed up late, was in the process of
4:50
leaving early, and I realized, you know, he still kind of had that glazed over looking at his eye.
4:54
So I'm like, all right, I got to reach out to him. And then I forgot again, it just wasn't that
4:59
pressing. I forgot about it, and didn't really remember it until that following week. So the
5:04
following week comes up again, the exact same carbon copy of the weeks before. But this time,
5:09
I'm not going to forget. I'm like, all right, this is ridiculous. I don't normally forget things
5:12
like that anyway. I forgot it twice. It's definitely not going to be a third time. So I reach out to
5:16
this guy. So practice is over. I don't see him in person because he left early. I just call him.
5:21
And I say, Hey, man, is everything okay? Like you've seen a little off. That's it. That's all I said.
5:28
There wasn't this long dramatic drawn out. Oh, man, I just I've noticed some things and I feel like,
5:34
you know, the Lord was telling me I should talk to you not and I'm not like downing anybody that
5:37
does stuff like that. So don't get it twisted. I'm not going full sacrilege mode here. But it wasn't
5:42
one of those emotive types of things. It wasn't one of those sessions or one of those times, right?
5:48
He was just like, bro, you seem like you're off is everything cool. And lo and behold, it wasn't.
5:53
Apparently, this guy's marriage is hanging on by a thread, maybe not even a thread. You know, his
6:02
wife is basically threatening to leave him threatening to, well, I'm just going to go moving with my
6:06
parents and just all these different things. And this guy is a very dutiful guy. He's a very passionate
6:11
guy. And he's one of those guys that's a fix it guy. He wants to fix it. Like if someone's broke
6:16
and he wants to fix it, like he doesn't want it to fester. He doesn't want it to grow. He just wants
6:20
it to be done with. And if he's the guy to take care of it, then he's going to be the guy to square
6:24
it away, right? But things weren't going well. And you know, there are some children involved and
6:30
it's just kind of like, you know, at that point, I'm not a counselor, I'm not a pastor, I'm not any
6:34
of those things. But at that point, it was just refreshing that he was just straight up being
6:40
honest with me from the very get go. And you never know, this guy could have been at the end of his
6:44
rope that he just he didn't really know where to turn. And then I called and then he's like, all right,
6:49
I'm just going to dump it all on you, which is completely acceptable. That's what you sign up for
6:53
whenever you're an actual friend with a guy, you know what I mean? But he just kind of talked
6:57
through his situation and talked through what was going on in the house. I was able to ask some
7:01
questions that that I was hoping were going to be helpful. And then I immediately went into action
7:06
mode and started asking about tangible things that I could do or that my family could do to assist
7:11
him to assist him in his journey that he was going through at that time. And one of the big things
7:15
that he told me that has stayed with me this whole time was, man, it's just good to know that there's
7:20
guys out there that have your back. And what he was referring to was the fact that I even called
7:26
to begin with the fact that I even reached out in the first place. And I was like, okay,
7:32
well, I wasn't really expecting that from this guy. But hey, you know, it is what it is. And
7:40
since then the things have that were kind of hindering their marriage have either, you know,
7:45
subsided or got ironed out or they or they fixed it or they did something like that.
7:49
But it was just something that I was like, okay, it's one of those times whenever you feel like
7:53
you should say something to somebody. It's like you can feel it in your gut or you feel like,
7:57
you know, God's even whispering in your ear to do something. And you just don't do it.
8:01
You could be missing out on an opportunity like that. So that was one thing that came up.
8:07
But then the other thing came up literally this afternoon, which is why I'm, you know,
8:10
doing this podcast, like I'm doing it now, not maybe in my normal life. There was a guy that I've
8:14
been working with and I got to be somewhat careful with his situation because it kind of bled over
8:19
into some things that I do with my profession as well. But this guy, they've got a family,
8:24
they've got a lot of kids. This is another guy that I trained with, another guy that I'm around
8:28
on a regular basis. And I contacted he and his spouse about the things that we were working on,
8:35
the things that we had been talking about over over several months or whatever.
8:38
And his wife texts me basically to tell me that, Oh, we're separated right now. We're not going to
8:44
be moving forward with anything. And there's no really need to talk anymore. I was like, okay,
8:49
well, don't really know exactly what to do there. But then not long after the husband calls me.
8:53
And, you know, it was a very, very candid conversation, like, you know, conversation where there was
9:00
maybe a lot of things said that I certainly wouldn't repeat on the air here. But it was
9:06
another thing where this guy was going through it. He was going through the wringer. They've got,
9:09
they've got a lot of kids. They've got a lot of issues within their relationship. And one of the
9:16
first things that he told me is, you know what, I'm just not the type of guy that's going to just,
9:22
you know, unload on somebody, unload all my problems on somebody. And this is after he got
9:27
through telling me all these crazy things he was dealing with, with his spouse, with himself,
9:31
with some of the things that had happened within the relationship, you know, with the
9:34
dynamic that was going on with the kids, the dynamic that was going on with his life and,
9:37
and things like that. And I just told him something that I hoped was going to be helpful to him.
9:42
And this is something that I want to tell to you guys as well. This is something that I said,
9:45
actually, at a recent speaking engagement that I did up in Tulsa. And it just kind of came,
9:51
came to me. And I just kind of put it out there. And I, I'm pretty sure this isn't something that
9:54
I made up. I'm pretty sure I've just kind of, you know, attached a bunch of things to a bunch of
9:59
other things and then just spit it out there. But basically, this is what I said, is no one likes
10:05
the guy that automatically tries to unload his responsibilities on somebody else. Okay. So imagine
10:12
you're on a construction crew. I think I think even Jordan Peterson went into this a little bit
10:16
in the 12 12 rules for lifebook. But you know, on a construction crew, or maybe you work out
10:20
in the field in some capacity. If as soon as you get the task, as soon as you get the team's task,
10:27
you try to start getting help from somebody else, you start to try and unload some of your
10:32
responsibility to somebody else. No one really likes that. I mean, guys, guys don't have a lot
10:37
of patience for that kind of nonsense, right? And so that's what some guys do. But that's not how
10:44
this guy's wired. But that's what he thinks he's doing if he reaches out to anybody and asks for help.
10:52
And so when I kind of told him, as I said, you're not that guy, you're not that guy that's just
10:58
trying to offload your problems onto somebody else. But there are times when you legitimately
11:04
have too much weight on your shoulders, like you have too much weighing you down, you got too
11:08
much going on to where you have to reach out to a brother and say, Hey, I need you to get up under
11:14
some of this weight and help me carry it. That doesn't mean, Hey, I need you to hitch up to my
11:20
wagon for the remainder of your life and help me fix every issue. That doesn't mean that, Hey,
11:24
you know, I didn't do everything I needed to do. And so now I need you to come in and take care of
11:29
my issue. That's not what I'm saying. And that's not what you would be saying. It's just like,
11:33
look, this is legitimately literally too much for me right now. I just can't do it. I cannot do it
11:40
anymore. I need help. And he was like, yeah, I feel like you're right. Now, I opened the door
11:46
for him to get some assistance. I gave him some resources of some people that I think can directly
11:54
help a situation. But to say that it's a highly, highly complicated situation would be the understatement
12:00
of the day for sure. But it was one of those things where this guy had not had a conversation
12:05
like this with anybody up to this point, like nobody. And so he's like, you know, staying with
12:12
some family members right now, I was trying to sort some things out and try to figure out what's
12:15
going to go on with their marriage and how it's all going to end. And he's just trying his best as
12:19
far as I can tell, he's trying his best. But the thing that became readily apparent is nobody had
12:24
talked to him. Now part of that's on him because he probably did his normal, you know, Oklahoma
12:30
tough guy thing like, Oh, nothing's wrong with me. I'm gonna fix it. I'm gonna take care of it. You
12:33
know, that kind of nonsense. But the onus isn't just on him. And I guess that's what I'm kind of
12:41
backing into. The reason why this became so apparent to me that this is something that I wanted to
12:46
share with you guys is because sometimes you got to just reach out. Like you got to reach out to
12:51
somebody. When you, you know, you've heard, you've heard people say something like, you know, if you
12:56
see something, say something, right, sometimes that's in, you know, the context of criminal justice or
13:02
terrorism or things like that. But that's really what we're talking about right here, guys,
13:05
is there are dudes in your life that are in pain, dudes that are just not doing well.
13:15
And they need somebody to say something because they're not going to do it. And if you're the
13:23
guy that needs that, this is my encouragement to you to go ahead and reach out to somebody
13:27
because it goes both ways. But most guys are too prideful to reach out. But sometimes you just have
13:32
to. You just have to do that. But kind of going back to the other side, there's so many hints that
13:40
things aren't going well in people's lives. Right? I mean, the people that you know really, and when I
13:45
say people, I'm saying guys, other guys in your life, the guys that you're around the most,
13:48
whether they're in your Sunday school or on your basketball team, or you know, you do fancy football
13:53
with them or whatever the thing is, guys that you're just around, guys that you see, guys at work,
13:57
you know, when things are off, people can hide it, but they can't hide it that well.
14:03
And just think about the last time you noticed that something was off with somebody. Did you reach
14:09
out to them? Did you say, Hey, man, I know might be a little bit weird. We don't know each other
14:15
that well, or Hey, man, we're like best friends. But man, you seem like you're a little bit off.
14:19
Is everything okay? And just to kind of see where it goes, because guys have done that before,
14:24
and it has ended with not everything's cool. I've legitimately just been tired. It's like,
14:28
Okay, fine. Other times it's been not a man, everything's cool. And then a day or two later,
14:33
the truth comes out. Hey, bro, I didn't really want to say anything earlier because I just wasn't
14:39
comfortable. But yeah, man, I've, you know, I've been looking at porn and my wife caught me and,
14:45
you know, things are good at the house right now. Or man, like, I'm just, I'm struggling with money
14:49
right now. I feel like we just keep making bad financial decisions. And I just don't know how
14:53
to get out from under it. Or man, I cheat on my wife or man, my wife cheated on me or, you know,
14:58
whatever the thing might be, they originally wanted to put out this false bravado of, no, I got it
15:03
all figured out. I'm the dude who's got everything squared away when, I mean, there's nothing else
15:09
going on. And to be honest with you guys, we see this a lot in church as well. There are
15:15
some churches and ministries that do a really fantastic job of making sure people are as honest
15:21
as possible. Like, and by that, I mean, they encourage an environment where people can, you know,
15:26
just be open, be really, really real about things that are going on. However, with the majority of
15:33
churches and ministries that I've been around, there seems to be this premium on at least pretending
15:38
like you got things pretty well squared away and figured out. And I don't want to, of course,
15:44
mention any churches by name, but there's some churches that I've been intimately involved with
15:48
or, or seen over my years, which is not a super long tenure with churches again, just becoming a
15:53
Christian when I was in high school. But these churches where there's almost more of an expectation
16:00
to pretend like everything's okay, as opposed to pretending like there's anything that's going
16:04
wrong. And I don't like that very much. I think of all the places that we should be the most open
16:12
about our, our sin and our decrepit human nature is in the church. But I feel like you can get a
16:18
lot more real with people outside the church than you can inside the church. I feel like
16:23
of all the places in this, you get this everywhere. Hey, man, how's it going? Oh, man, I'm doing great.
16:27
How are you when like their world's literally falling apart? Their marriage is like literally
16:32
one step away from ending like that type of stuff. And here's the reason why I'm kind of picking on
16:37
the church a little bit is if you don't have an environment that allows for that type of real
16:43
talk, that type of reality where you're seeing people where they're at, you're missing out on
16:47
so many opportunities to minister. Because there are marriages that could have been saved that
16:54
weren't saved because, you know, the couple just acted like everything was okay. You know,
16:59
they got in their minivan. They brought their kids to church. Everything was fine. And then
17:01
the next week they weren't there. And the next thing they weren't there. And the next week they
17:05
weren't there. And then someone finds out, Oh, they've deleted all their joint pictures on Facebook.
17:10
I wonder what's going on. Oh, she's changed her last name back to her maiden name. Oh, it looks
17:14
like their marriage is over. But at that point, you've had no opportunity to try to come in and
17:20
administer to them to help them save their marriage. And that's just kind of a specific
17:25
example. But there's tons of different examples. I mean, how many guys are doing things that are
17:29
detrimental to themselves to their health or to their minds or to their spirit, like any of those
17:35
types of things. But you would never know it because their button down shirt is always, you know,
17:40
neatly pressed when you see them at church. Their shirts fully tucked in. They look like they've
17:44
showered recently. Everything's good to go. Right. And guys, I have to be honest about myself too.
17:51
I try to be as real as possible, but I fall into this category as well. I mean, when things aren't
17:56
going well, sometimes I try to hide it. I try to not really talk about it. Like, you know what,
18:00
I haven't had a whole lot of time to figure this situation out myself. So I'm not going to burden
18:04
someone else with it until I get it figured out. And but but it's not the right mindset to have as
18:09
a Christian male. Because again, when we go to the caricature of manhood, the caricature being
18:16
like the four wheel drive chasing women, like I don't need any help pull up pull up by your boot
18:21
straps thing. There's elements of that, especially like the pulling yourself up by your bootstraps
18:25
that I definitely am an advocate of. But there's a lot of that that we take in and we take it into
18:29
the church and then we just basically build a barrier around ourselves and won't let anybody
18:33
in so that they can assist us. And that's the thing is there should be opportunities for us to
18:40
to really help people with really, really big problems. And that's kind of the whole crux of
18:45
what we're talking about today in terms of what you got to do in terms of you got to reach out.
18:49
Most guys have a deficiency of community in their lives. They're communally deficient
18:56
as in they don't have a community of guys. They don't have a group of guys that would even
19:03
notice that is even around them enough to notice that things aren't going well. Maybe you don't
19:09
live in in the same town as your family, right? And I don't have a whole lot of family around me.
19:14
I mean, most of my family is not close to where I live. So you don't have family members that
19:19
you're seeing regularly that can be like, Hey, man, college, is everything okay? Are things going
19:23
all right? But that's that's kind of the overarching point here is if you're not in community with a
19:31
bunch of other guys, you're missing out on opportunities to help them. And you're missing out on having
19:37
opportunities for them to help you. And that's what I want to encourage everybody listening to
19:42
this podcast. And if you're a lady, thank you so much for listening in on this podcast. I hope
19:46
you have men in your life that you can share this with. But to the guys that are listening,
19:50
even the young, the young men, which I'm especially grateful that y'all are listening to what we're
19:54
doing here. You have to build real male community. It's got to be purposeful. I mean,
20:04
just here recently, I was teaching in my Sunday school. And you know, my wife and I were the
20:08
youngest couple in the Sunday school were the only couple that comes consistently that doesn't
20:12
have kids and kind of that whole nature. And there's a bunch of different couples in there. I think
20:16
there's literally like two dozen couples or something like that, a lot of couples in the Sunday school.
20:21
And a lot of the guys in this group have talked a lot about how they want more
20:26
community that they they lack real robust male friendships and that they they're missing out on
20:34
what they used to get from their fraternity in college or from their high school basketball team
20:39
or from the time when they were in the military or from that job when they were working with like
20:42
five or six of their best friends and they got to see them all the time and go to lunch and
20:46
and do that kind of thing. But what's interesting about that, and this isn't just the dudes in my
20:51
Sunday school, this is dudes just in general, there are always opportunities to cultivate
20:56
those male bonds and relationships. But most dudes are too lazy even seek them out.
21:00
Like really? I mean, I just got through speaking at a group last Thursday and told
21:07
it like I told you called band of brothers and these guys get together. I think it's every
21:10
Thursday night for 12 weeks. I'm pretty sure it's 12 weeks and they have platoons and they have all
21:15
these different things that they they kind of break out and do discussion and they've got
21:18
materials that they got to go through during the week. But they know that Thursday is coming.
21:23
Like it's on the calendar. They're supposed to be there. And if they're not there,
21:29
someone's going to be calling or texting them, ask them, Hey, bro, where are you at? Or where
21:32
were you last Thursday type of a thing? And it's it's this real community that these guys are
21:37
building and they've been doing this for years and have had a ton of success with stuff like this.
21:42
But but the thing that I find really interesting about that is most of the time again, this ministry
21:48
is built kind of off the band of brothers book and and the mini series that was done on HBO and
21:52
all these different things. But the reason why guys like talking in a circle or there or when
21:59
guys like talking in a circle is after they've accomplished something after they've done something
22:04
incredible. So the band of brothers guys, obviously they're they're literally writing the pages of
22:10
history, whether they knew it or not, you know, fighting in World War two. But then after battle,
22:15
that's when they would get together and circle up and talk about the day, talk about nothing,
22:19
talk about chicks, talk about, you know, their gun jamming, talking about food, cigarettes,
22:24
whatever the thing was that they wanted to talk about. But it was so open because those guys were
22:30
shoulder to shoulder accomplishing something. Because because that's the thing is there's a
22:34
lot of men's ministries out there and I'm going to call them out. Their number one goal is to get
22:38
guys into small groups, which sounds like a good goal. It sounds like an admirable goal, but it's
22:45
not on its face. It's not by itself. Because guys don't do well in circles when they haven't
22:52
accomplished something outside of that circle. When they haven't done something shoulder to shoulder
22:58
already. So that's why if you've ever been in a men's ministry and they maybe put you in a small
23:03
group or maybe just like a regular church to Sunday school and they immediately put you in a small
23:06
group. It just felt funny. Have you noticed that? Maybe if you haven't noticed that, maybe ask
23:13
around, ask some guys, Hey, is this weird? Is this a little bit weird whenever they put us in a small
23:16
group? Did that feel natural? And just see what they say? Because a lot of guys have told me that's
23:22
exactly how they felt like, man, this is something about didn't feel right. Well, I can tell you,
23:27
it's because we're shoulder to shoulder animals. That's who we are. Like, and I don't mean animal in the,
23:33
in the, you know, the sense that we evolved from all these animals, blah, blah, blah, or any of
23:37
that nonsense. I'm just saying like, that's what's in us. That's what's in our psyche is to do things
23:41
shoulder to shoulder, whereas women tend to do the circle up and face each other thing much more
23:47
easily. It's much more natural for them. It's almost as if they were wired that way.
23:51
But for men, we do something shoulder to shoulder. We accomplish something, whether it's fixing a
23:57
transmission in a car, or painting a house, or framing a house, or just anything playing flag
24:04
football, going to war, like doing, like standing beside each other and praying in, in the hospital
24:10
room of one of the brothers wives who's sitting there in the bed. That was a story I heard last week.
24:14
But the thing that I encourage these guys is they were, they were kind of having some guys that
24:18
weren't, weren't really committed to the platoons, right? They were kind of there one week and not
24:23
there another week and kind of him and a Han and all this nonsense that I hate, that I can't stand.
24:27
But I said part of the thing is, is you guys have to earn the right to be in that platoon.
24:31
Because I think a lot of people were just taking it for granted. And all this is just the new group
24:36
of guys I was assigned to. So I guess I'll show up every Thursday or whenever it's convenient,
24:40
and we'll just see what we can make happen. But they need to earn it. And that's what I'm
24:46
going to encourage you guys to do as well. You need to seek out male community. You need to earn
24:51
the right to be able to sit in a circle and look people in the eye and tell them what's going on
24:55
with you and ask them questions about what's going on with them and suggesting things that
25:00
they should change and suggesting things that they should fix in their relationships and demanding
25:04
more of them and asking them to be better husbands and better fathers and better friends and better
25:08
businessmen and better community members, all of those things. But you got to accomplish something
25:13
with them first. And that's what I was trying to get, get through to some of my Sunday school
25:18
guys that, you know, they want to do these events, whether it's, you know, I'm just making stuff up,
25:22
but maybe it's like a laser tag day or like a golf day or a picnic day. I don't know, like,
25:26
I'm just making crap up, right? But we want to do these things that are just a few times a year.
25:31
And then if those things don't get pulled off or those things don't happen, then I guess we just
25:35
don't have community. No, it has to be consistent. And so I kind of had a gut check for my Sunday
25:41
school last Sunday. It was my last lesson that I was teaching in a five week lesson series.
25:45
And I was just like, look, a lot of you guys have said you want a community. I'm about to
25:49
give you an opportunity to have some community. Every Sunday night, for the last 10 years, there's
25:54
a guy in our class named Russ, he's done this thing that we just basically call Fight Club because
25:58
there was no better way to describe it. Where we come together, it's a group of guys, sometimes
26:02
it's five guys, sometimes it's 20 guys. But we have a book that we're going over at that time
26:07
that we're reading through. And we're sharing with the other guys in the room, like, you know,
26:12
what we thought about the reading section for that week, we're discussing it for, you know,
26:16
25 30 45 minutes, depending on the book, then we do some sort of exercise like some sort of a circuit
26:22
or some sort of like good 15 20 minute cardio workout. And then we train jujitsu.
26:26
The majority of the people in the room have no Matt time. These are not guys that were high
26:32
school or collegiate wrestlers. These are not dudes that compete in jujitsu. These are just guys
26:36
that want to come and move their bodies, right? But the great thing about it. And the only reason
26:42
why I noticed that my buddy was having problems is because when you show up on time, we sit in chat
26:47
and we talk with each other. And we know we kind of bust each other's balls and just kind of have
26:51
a good time. And then we talk about the book and then we work out and then we do jujitsu. But then
26:55
after we're done, we're wiping the sweat away or changing or something like that. There's more
27:00
discussion in happening then. And when my buddy started showing up late and leaving early,
27:07
it occurred to me, he's avoiding the conversation. That's when I noticed it. That's when I knew it
27:15
was off, but only because I was in community with him. And so allow this to be my encouragement
27:21
to all the listeners here to find real community. And if you can't find it, you start it. Because
27:29
I guarantee you there are dudes in your community that are looking for it. And they just need somebody
27:34
like you to step up. You don't have to be some sort of a wizard. You don't have to be some
27:39
savant when it comes to putting on an event. You don't have to have everything figured out. You
27:43
don't have to be the main leader guy or have an outgoing personality or or be a business person.
27:47
You don't need any of those skill sets. If you have them, it'd probably help. But at some point,
27:53
it just takes one guy raising his hand and saying, we're doing this. Anybody with me?
27:57
And at a certain point, you're going to have to recruit some dudes. Some dudes that you
28:02
know need it, whose wives are nagging them, or they're just lazy beta males, whatever the thing
28:07
might be. And you got to make sure they get out of the house and that they do consistent community
28:12
in that group weekly, like weekly at the least, right? You know, I have real community when you're
28:18
seeing some guys two or three times a year. That's not real community. That's what I every time
28:23
someone asks me for input on the men's ministry for their churches. They all do the exact same
28:28
things. They do one or two men's events per year, or maybe they do one little study for five or
28:34
six weeks at a time, and then they just move on. It's like, that's not how you program to dudes.
28:39
I mean, they'll come. They'll hang out. They might bring guys, but that's not community. Those are
28:44
events. Like, you don't go to the movie theater and think to yourself, I'm a part of the, you know,
28:50
the film community here in my city. Now you're just going to the movies. Even if you see some of
28:56
the same people, you're not in community with those people. They're not beholden to you. You're
29:00
not beholden to them. And so try to create those opportunities because, and again, I'm not saying
29:08
this like I'm some sort of a hero, but I was the only person that reached out to this guy
29:12
out of all the people in that room, but I guarantee you there would have been other dudes in that room
29:17
had it gone a little longer that they would have noticed as well. I just happened to be the first one
29:21
that did. So good on me, good on him for accepting him when I called him. And the other guy that
29:28
called me to talk about something completely unrelated to his marriage, it went right to that
29:32
because I happened to know things were on the rocks because his wife told me. But there was enough
29:38
relational equity there that we could have a deep discussion about his marriage. Why? Because
29:42
we're in community with one another. We've trained Jiu Jitsu together. We've bled on the same math.
29:48
We've sweat on the same mat. We've gotten the best of each other in different situations.
29:52
I knew what he was about. I knew what he was like. I knew how he was wired
29:57
because we were in community with one another. This is so freaking important.
30:04
So don't be one of those betas walking around looking at your shoe tops going, Oh man, I wish I
30:12
I just wish I had friends like I did in high school. Gosh darn it. I wish I had them.
30:17
Or man, you know, things were a whole lot more fun in college when I had when I lived at the
30:20
fraternity house or when I was on the basketball team or whenever I was playing tennis with my
30:24
friends every couple of days. You can go out and create those opportunities yourself. No, you can't
30:30
go back to your glory years in high school or college. Sorry. Can't go back to the military.
30:34
Can't go back to boot camp, police academy, whatever your situation might be. But you can
30:38
create community right where you're at exactly where you're at. Even if it's just three or four
30:44
guys getting together on a consistent basis, challenging each other to be better to cultivate
30:49
spiritual, mental and physical resilience. That's what we're here for guys at undaunted life. We
30:54
are going to continue to put stuff out there that's going to help you do those things. But don't do
30:58
them solo. Reach out, create a group of guys, have your band of brothers, do whatever you need to
31:04
do, call it whatever you want, but make sure you're in community. And sometimes you just got to reach
31:09
out. All right guys, I know around this time it's about whenever we start talking about the quick
31:13
resilience boost. Because as you guys know, by now, we are a men's ministry in our mission is
31:18
cultivating mainly resilience. And we do that by providing content that forges spiritual, mental
31:22
and physical toughness. And normally we pick a category, give you some different different
31:27
things that you can look at or, you know, videos or YouTube things or whatever articles or whatever.
31:31
But we're not going to do a quick resilience boost today. I literally just want y'all to
31:35
spend the time you would have would have spent doing the quick resilience boost stuff. So
31:39
whether either listening to it or going and looking at those resources, I want you to
31:43
spend some time thinking about the guys that are in your life. And kind of do a little bit of a
31:47
survey of what they've been acting like lately. If you feel like things are okay, does your gut
31:52
tell you that something might be going on in their household, something that you might be able to
31:55
help with? Just kind of run through that in your head. And after you're done with that, you know,
32:00
if you've identified some guys that you think you might need to reach out to, obviously, duh,
32:04
this is the name of the episode, reach out, sometimes you just got to reach out. But in addition to that,
32:09
just think of some guys and brainstorm some guys that you can get into community with.
32:12
You know, some of you and I would say most of you out here are not in regular Christian male
32:16
community. And again, if no one else around you is doing it, be the alpha step up and do it.
32:21
So I want to kind of leave a little bit here on the end just to make sure that y'all have some ideas
32:27
or have some times where you can come up with some ideas of some guys you should reach out to.
32:31
Guys, as always, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you would, please subscribe on
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iTunes, SoundCloud or Google Play and refer your friends to listen. If you share this on social
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Guys, if we deserve a five star review, please leave us one. And when you leave a five star review,
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leave us two or three sentences to let us know what you like about the content so we can keep
32:51
putting it out for you. I'm currently booking speaking engagements for the end of 2018 in the
32:56
beginning of 2019. So if you'd like me to come speak to your church, to your Sunday school,
33:00
to your men's event, just hit me up at info at Undaunted.Life. Again, that's info at Undaunted.Life.
33:06
Our website is www.Undaunted.Life. You can follow us on Instagram and Twitter @UndauntedLife or on
33:12
Facebook.com/UndauntedLife. Check out our free devotionals on the Uversion Bible app. Just search
33:18
Undaunted Life under plans. And as always, we want to thank the band August Burns Red for allowing
33:23
us to use their music library for our content. The intro outro track on this podcast is our song
33:28
King of Sorrow, which is off their latest record entitled Phantom Anthem. The links to all of this
33:33
are in the description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience,
33:39
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical toughness. Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.
34:03
(dramatic music)