Jason Wilson on Masculinity, Healing & Wounds Men Don’t Talk About | NXT Chapter With T.D. Jakes

You do get depressed sometimes or you do like confidence or you do have fears. And I tell brothers all the time you must remember. Louis Lane fell in love with Clark Kent and I superman. You're right. Welcome to next chapter. I'm excited to have you here today. I'm excited about my guests. You may have heard of him or seen him recognize his face. Jason Wilson is an amazing individual. He's been honored in so many places. He's a motivational speaker. He's an author. He's a trailblazer. He's almost everything you want name. He's done some of it. He's a CEO of several organizations that are bringing life to men in the inner city, changing the way they interact with the sons and the wives. And I think all the men are going to listen in and women you can ease drop to. There's going to be some things we talked about today that may help you in your situation dealing with your father's your sons or your husbands. I've got your book at home. OK. I follow you on Instagram. I know that you have been used in a lot of unique places and unique areas. And so we've got a lot to talk about today. So I hope you're going to give us some of the time. How are you doing today? I'm doing well. Feeling fulfilled and just a lot of the process about life and you know, pouring into me into what men need and to make sure I'm real sensitive to that need and that because I've gone a little further than I don't leave the brothers behind and always keep my, oh, I'm going for always remember to look back and grab brothers to help them to get where I am. Chapter number one, navigating fame. You've been doing these training sessions for quite a while. What made you start recording this? It all started the first viral video came the student Bruce. His father is a good friend of mine. So the only reason I recorded it was for them to have just the memory of his son passing his initiation test. And I just said, let me share this on YouTube. This was really powerful because he broke down crying because he couldn't break the board that was in front of him with his non dominant hand. And I coached him through his emotions. He started crying. I dropped to one knee and identified that we cries men, coaching through his fear failure and he ended up breaking the board. And I titled it breaking through emotional barriers and it went viral and ever since then, what was normal in the cable for Donald? God was like, I need for others to see what's going on there so they can have it in their own lives. Were you surprised that it went viral? Very because it was it was a normal thing. You know, we I you know, I started crying. We have a similar, I guess, pain and love with our mothers both had dementia. And so the first time my students cried saw me cry was when my wife came into the gym when we were training and let me know she just had a stroke. For me, I was the instructor where I was strong and focused. So they never saw that side of me. But in that moment, I not only liberated myself, but I liberated my students and their fathers. And so after that, the grades started improving their behavior at home because they were finally able to be human and release the stressful moments that you released from our bodies when we cry. And now they had an opportunity to truly express what was going on inside. And as a result, Bishop, we had several evaluations and one and I love is that over 78% of our students improved their grade point average in one year, one car marking without tutoring. And I was a direct result of just young boys being able to express what they've been told as young, I mean, boys to not do, which is don't cry. Right. So we all grew up hearing that. I'm amazed because you had the opportunity. I'm sitting beside a celebrity. Man, I walked through your hallway. I'm like, wow, I got one feature. I'm looking at others. I mean, just, I mean, I mean, some of your messages have really helped me along the journey as I share with you. And so I'm home, but in the time I hear I try to keep a little space to open on the walls to let them know I'm not dead yet. In case something else good happens in my life, speaking to something good happening in your life, President Obama presented you with an award. What was that like and what did you learn from? Well, into a service award. It was a group of men who were active in their communities. We were at and watched in DC and it was for I forgot how many hours we had of serving the community. So it was a great honor to receive that award. What was interesting is we were walking into the White House. That was a day they had to act of government. So we didn't get a chance to meet President Obama because of security reason, detail. So we had to convene, we convene in another place, but still it was just an amazing time to be acknowledged not only by his administration, but also the brothers and the part of the movement that we were part of. So all of a sudden coming from a background that didn't look like you end up in the White House, you find yourself, your takes are going viral. You're becoming a household name. The president gives you this award. How do you see yourself differently now than you did in the past? That's a good question. Why does it really get question? I think I still see myself as the shepherd boy. I'm referring to David. And I say that because I believe that he wants me to see myself as one of his kings. And so I'm still working on that transition because I still love serving and tending God sheep his flock, but I have to understand that, you know, David still was able to do that as he transitioned them. And so although I still see myself that way, which is why I stop for every man who stops me, I never move past, you know, any man is open enough and willing enough to say, man, your work really helped me. But I also see I need to make a transition into another place so that I can help more man. And so I see there's a plus end. I won't say negative, but just I need to evolve again. That's been a challenge for me. You know, it takes, I preach your message one time. I didn't know I was me. Because the truth of the matter is you can see everybody in the room except for yourself. And so some of the most gifted people in whatever area they may be gifted in are often the last ones to know it. I find people who applaud themselves too soon generally don't last long because they don't have the humility of having that blind spot. They're blind spot is both a pro and a calm because on one hand it creates humility, but on the other hand, it causes you not to prepare the way you need to prepare for how the rest of the world sees you. So you have presented yourself to the faces world. And in fact, they're the show this is us took your some of your material and aired it. I heard it was without your permission. Anyway, is that true? Yes. When we worked on agreement, you know, they acknowledged it. Yeah, they acknowledged it publicly after the fact. And again, and God had told me then I'd be transparent. I didn't want the cave to really expand. And when that had aired, I went in my garage and I saw it all. I couldn't believe my eyes. And I went to the garage and I sat in the chair and I started crying. And he told me very clear. Most high he was like, if you don't show it, someone else will. I gave it to you, not for you. And in Detroit, I gave it to you for all of my people across the world. And so that was an eye opening for me that what he has given me is not mine. And I'm just a vessel to make it happen. And so that was a double edge sword moment. But I learned to just surrender and move through insecurities, yeah, self doubt and fears for his glory. So how did you negotiate the contract after they'd already aired the material? Was that difficult? Were you compensated? Yeah, our nonprofit was it wasn't. If we would have had the video copyright there, they'd have been a different story. And so, but it was something, you know, for to help the work that we do with the young man. But no, it wasn't like what people would think it was, but it was something. And they publicly apologized for what had happened, you know, but it hurt. A lot, you know, to see something that God had trusted you with. Father's son, initiation ceremony for it to be shown. And you had no idea. So that that really hurt and hurt more importantly, Bishop, it hurt my, my students. And that's what bothered me the most to see them like, whoa, wait a minute. This is something that we did. And they felt exploited by. Yeah. And what was amazing to see the response on social media, like immediately when it aired, people flooded the Facebook page of the show and said, no, this isn't right. This is the cable of a dual and mandatory. And so it got resolved fairly quick. And it was a good lesson learned on our side. Is it you got the opportunity to work with Lawrence Fishbridge? Yes, sir. Talks about that. You know, when I, I've always loved the movie The Matrix. That's one of my top three movies in history. And so he had saw the viral video and someone at another agency. I think it was paradigm at the time. I said, you need to see this. You know, we're working on a documentary or a docu series. So when Lauren saw, he was immediately captivated because he has a passion with restoring a writer passage, not only in the black community, but in all communities so that we'll stop having so many grown men still stuck in their basements. And I never figured out first call. And he was, when I heard this was something, wow, this is more fierce. You know what I mean? And so I'm listening. And so he's, you know, eloquently speaking. He's like a gentleman like you know, a very definition of that. Yeah. So when he finished speaking the introduction, I said, you know what? I said, man, I'm going to let you know I'm your biggest fan. So we just spoke. It broke the ice. And I just said, man, I wrote a curriculum off of so many scenes in the matrix to help my boys navigate through their emotions. And he was like a father on the screen like training me because I always longed for that. For so many years growing up. And so for Laurence to finally meet this guy that helped me create a lot. He didn't have, he had no idea. But the role he played as Morpheus, I became that guy and so many of my boys, lives and often say everyone wants a neo, but few there to be Morpheus. Where did you feel kind of starstruck or had there been other people that? You know what's interesting, Bishop is when you meet people like within the first five minutes, you're like, oh man, this is such and such. But when you start talking to him, you realize like, wow, there are people. My brothers just a human being. Yeah. So Laurence was considered like a brother. Ironically, his name is Larry. And so I didn't know that the time that was my brother who had got murdered young. Yeah. And so Laurence, I looked at him after our initial meeting. I never looked at him like an actor or any of that. I always call him to celebrate him when he gets a role or a new movie come out. But he was just my brother. And we had a similar, you know, his mother, you know, mental health as well as same as mine. So we had a common bond right there. And for him, the way he take care of his mother is just, it's amazing to see. Oh, so a lot of people don't realize that people that they see on television are real people. They think we are correct. Tures of the role we play or the messages we speak or the way we're saying or they, they don't know that. And I read that who was a friend of mine, she liked to cook and she cooked pig feet and stuff like this. She never let her celebrity status go to her head to the point that she lost sight of her roots and who she was. Do you have trouble sometimes balancing who you are inside versus how you are perceived outside? Never. I look at my baker cows sometimes. So he just none of that really mean anything. You know, I, and I guess the, the main thing Bishop is people who approached me, don't come to me like they're star struck. It's like, thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for the sacrifice. So it's very easy to stay grounded when you have a strong man with his family come over to you and tears saying, thank you. So there's no pride there because I know what happened with you didn't come through me. Right. So and I've been broken in so many ways. It's like, it's not me. And so now if I was a hip hop producer, which I used to be and had platinum records and all of that, that's different. But I'm just a servant and I know who sent me here. And when I see men and they hugging me and the families, I just, I just, I think God for just choosing to use me. And so I don't, I don't have that, that issue with that, I guess that type of balance, making sure I stay humble. But life ended up itself. Like you said, people with CSON TV or, you know, social media think it's easy. But man, we get hit a lot, you know, especially if you're attacking the enemy. So I know it keeps me humble, you know. And so I'm, I'm thankful for the adversity. Like Davis said before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. So that affliction keeps me humble and it keeps me grounded. And so I don't have an issue with that because I'm humble and I'm, by his grace, I know it's his grace every day that I make it. Chapter number two, hard life. You have had a very interesting life and an extremely rough childhood. Tell me a little bit about some of those rugged places as a boy growing up that helped shape you into the man that you are today. Well, one, one, I would go back to before I was even born when my grandfather was lynched in 19, believe 35 and four pairs, Florida. He was beaten by the police there and then lynched just for wanting to be treated as a human being. After that had happened, my mother and her family were ostracized by the, ostracized by the black community because everyone was in fear that they would come to them. And they wanted to make sure that there never be another estus right who was my grandfather. So they racially terrorized my family and that trauma passed down through my generation and I saw it. So that was my first time seeing, you know, such deep sadness and sorrow and depression. And like I said, my brother was murdered when I was three years old at a former to the year, you know, doing my former to be years, something stopped. So my mother loved me and was very affectionate. But when he got taken away, my neighbor said that she was like an adip depression, I'm not for the community rallying around her. My mother probably wouldn't have made it. And so that lack of affirmation and attention that I needed from my mother, through my formative years affected me and made me into a loner and that prohibited me from truly like expressing how, how I feel as a man even today. But growing up, you know, my brothers being slapped with the flat sides of butcher knives by their fathers, I saw the effects of that through their fears, their depression. And I said, you know what? I don't want to, I don't want this to be my story. Like, yeah, we're going to experience trauma, but it doesn't have to be my experience in life. And so I fought really hard to do the introspective work needed to heal. And I'm still going through the journey. And then growing up and my father who, I wouldn't say he's a rolling stone, but I had a brother that had no idea I had. Okay. They kept us apart for a reason. I heard that my mother didn't want to bring him in, you know, because she was concerned how would affect the family. But he and I finally met and unfortunately his life was taken when he was 27. And he was in drugs, millionaire. So that was another brother I lost. So I, I thought my life would be one of losses. So your grandfather was murdered? Your brother was murdered. Your father was murdered. No, no, my father's son. Look father. So he had a key. So I had another brother. So they would say he's my half brother. Okay. He was murdered. He was murdered. Yes. How, when you look at that situation, you talk about the way your mother changed and how you felt about it, created a mother wound for like a better word in your heart and in your life. Did you go through therapy? Are you going through therapy? How I say working for you? I think I'm always going through therapy, honestly. It's a funeral. But yeah, I, you know, I honestly, you know, I started therapy in 2015 when I realized I had a lot of unresolved anger and I was in jeopardy of losing my marriage. And so we did a deep dive and it changed a lot for it for the good. But my mother wound, I didn't realize I had it until recently because I didn't understand why it had such difficulty being affectionate to my wife. Beyond, you know, being intimate. And my psychotherapist helped me trace back all the years when if I got injured, I had to go get the bandaid myself and do these other things because my mother, her brain was wired to love me because my mother, anyone who knows my mother and I'm my relationship, she loved me. But she was guarded justifiably so because she had just, she had lost a son. And so she's like, I'm a, I'm a love you, but I'm scared to really trust you. I'm not trust you, but trust, I mean, even say God at the time with her heart, like, because I don't want to be her, her to hurt again. And so because of that, I really didn't get her affection and love like I longly desired until she developed dementia until she was able to finally forget what happened to her and her family because she now live in the moment. And Bishop, honestly, it's hard for me to remember anything outside of the last seven years of me caring for her with dementia because that's something I longed for as a, as a boy and even as a man to, to really finally, I mean, I'm 42 years old. I was sit with my mother and lay my head on a shoulder because of the weight that I carry and what I do. No words were spoken, but just for her to hug me was something I really desired. And I learned from the truth that as long as we hold onto it and we don't cast it to God, it's not impossible, but it makes it that much more different to live in the moment. You, you, you've got quite a bit time back there because a lot of men have angered toward their mothers to unresolved issues that they will not express to their mother, but they enact the rage on the wife. And so mother wounds turn into domestic violence or rage in the house. Do you think that the catalyst of your rage and the trouble in your marriage was a way of venting some of the things you couldn't express as a boy about your mother? Absolutely. And also, I don't leave my father as well, you know, we grew up in the same city but wasn't really actively in my life and very harsh because the way he was raised, you know, they was parented, disciplined was the way, but discipline only kept us from getting in trouble in front of you. But we just figured out another way to continue to do what we wanted to do. But most definitely, Bishop, I remember being in the kitchen and my wife was just conveying that she want to spend more time with me and I, because I expressed, men, I wish I had more time to spend with my son. And she simply said, you know, I wish you had that same desire to spend with me. I heard from my wounds that this is something else I'm not doing right, here we go again. And I started yelling and I hit the refrigerator and put a dent in the refrigerator. And that's the first time. And the last time I saw my wife's spirit decrease in front of me. And I vowed from that day forward that my wife would never feel like that in my presence around a man that she should be able to be transparent with and feel safe with. And in that moment, I realized that, whoa, I have a lot of unresolved anger as you were just saying. And that's when I left it all on the field. I said, I would never make her ever feel that way ever again. But more importantly, I didn't ever want to express that anger or anyone like that. And so I did the work to resolve it. And thankfully, my father and my mother wound are healed. Are there still like moments? So moments? Yeah. I mean, they exist, you know, like, man, dad, like, finances, I wish you would have taught me more, but then I don't judge them because he didn't know. He was just taught to work, not invest. And so when I teach young boys, you know, you got to learn how to forgive your parents as well. Everyone has a cause and effect. And once I realized that, and that's how I'm able to work with boys with such patience, there's a reason for the way this young man acts. You know, forgiveness is important. It does a lot to settle and resolve some of the conflict we have inside, but it doesn't feel the whole and the void from the things you didn't get. It just stops you from bleeding out about it. So you forgave him, but it still does not leave. Fix the deficit that you have in your life, wishing you had had somebody in front of you to kind of guide you and instruct you a little bit more. Do you find as you get older that boy wound, that childhood wound, that issue that you had to process prematurely, nobody three years old should have to process that kind of stuff. Three to ten years old. You had a lot of people to die, a lot of trauma to come into your life. Now you're at an age where it's almost impossible to get that void field because now they see you as a man, but you go home and lay down with that boy. How do you process, how did you work on him? When I see you working on these other boys, in some way, are you working on that boy and you with them? Excellent. I mean, you hit it right on the head, often say inside of every grown man as a broken boy. And so I, yeah, they helped me heal. You know, they think I teach them, but I'm learning from them as well. The boy you see crying from a lack of confidence, I go back and heal a little Jason in that moment. I tell him exactly what I wish that I had heard. And so in that moment, he not only heals, but I find more healing as well. Chapter number three, releasing the lion. So you've done everything from produce hip hop to martial arts to some of everything. I mean, you're theologically astute. Yeah, thank you. Our articulate, well versed. Do a lot of research on original languages. And it comes through when you speak and you seem to be quite knowledgeable about some of everything, their earthquakes, everything else. I mean, you got everything we've stuff in there. In a short period of time, in a short period of time. How much of that is education and how much of it is desperation to feel that whole? That's really good. But I would say more so, desperation and then revelation. Something divinely that came, the guy gave me to create, to solve a problem. So yeah, I studied, but yeah, so much was divinely given. And then you can't forget the experience piece as well. You can find someone who studies books, but if they haven't applied any of what they learned to real life and tested it, does it really work? I test everything that I study. My experiences, I want to make sure that these principles align up across generations. And so, most definitely came from a desperation to give misguided, in my community, black boys what I long to have as a young boy myself. And that was a man that they could trust, having allegiance to someone who would challenge them, but won't condemn them. And so that process is, took me about 18 years to develop the cable with them to what it is today, but most definitely came from, I wouldn't say desperation is good because we were in dire need, definitely like in the early 2000s. But I would say a deep desire to help these boys navigate through the pressures of this world without succumbing to their emotions. I had to got an interview, man, one dime. And right in the middle of the interview, he said, you seem not to know that you're to these jokes. I got that same feeling sitting here with you. You seem like you don't really know the magnitude of who you have to come. I want to hand that reach this humility, but I wonder on the other hand, if some of that, for me it worked out to be detrimental in a way, because not to think who I was, made me not protect who I was. Okay, because I was so engrossed with the pain of my past that I didn't guard the power of my present. Okay, so it's hard for me to sit here and see that so definitive and not express it to you and not take this opportunity to say, it might be good to kind of do a little research into who you are now and not just reflect on who you were then, but also understanding how you must guard who you are now. Because in other words, in other words, if you don't, you end up getting abused all over again because you're preoccupied with taking care of that boy and to the detriment of taking care of the brand that you're building, the person you're becoming, the way the world sees you. And I know you see all of you, but we only see the finished product of you. And if you're not careful, you're the same thing that happened with this as us to start something in every area of your life because you don't know that it's cold. You think it's just pain. And I wonder sometimes if you ever had anybody tell you that what you have been given is cold. First, I thank you for sharing that. That's a real deal. Because the struggle I have with truly embracing the lion, like it feels like I'm in a cage, but the door is open. And God is like, I need that lion to come out. And there's so many others, like stories I could share that shape that lion will make him stand a cage longer than he should. But you're absolutely right. Not only knowing who I am, but who I am really. He tells me some days, God, to say, you're not acting like my son. It reminds me of seeing from coming into America when a father came, you're living like this, what are you doing? And so I appreciate you sharing that because that's my next evolution is embracing who he created me to be in its fullness and not fearing being powerful. Do you know what I mean? This should be like, I never, I want to use power to free people, but a lion, you can't free people if you're in your own cage. Yeah. And so I know I feel the power. I feel is anointing. And it's similar to like with David when he ran into his cave, even though we know he was running from Saul. But remember, he was, he was going to be the second king ever. And the first one failed horribly. So just the pressure behind that alone and then to know like, I'm entrusted with something. And you have, I have to have that lion fully released. Yeah, because the odd thing about it is on stage, dealing with other people's pain, you're very powerful, very strong, very absolute, very definite, very short. Of yourself, very confident, you don't shrink back from the mic, no hold back from the individual, you're, you're bold. And to use that term out for mail, you have that kind of aggressive nature. But when it comes to talking about yourself, you shrink. Can I, I'll be honest with you, my desire is the opposite of what I do. You know, remember Paul said he wavered between two opinions. When I go home with the Lord, I stay here with the people and he chose to stay with the people. God, that's, that's my wavering. Like whenever I have to do something for him, lion free runs. Is anyone speaks against him or or hurting someone, the bullying or a widow in need or a homeless person, lion comes out free. Strong. Myself is like, I'm serving you and when you're ready, I'm coming home. And that's just the honest, to your true fits. When I wake up and I pray to seek after his heart. And I imagine him looking at this world today. I don't see a joyous God. I see a grieving one because of the state of this world. And my heart is connected to that. And I see the pain, the heart, you're looking in the kids' eyes, they're crying and me and the conferences, their eyes and they're finally free and they're crying and hugging and holding so much pain. I can't, I've never denounced my call, but it's heavy and you know exactly what I'm talking about. Yes, I know exactly. Yeah, it is very important. It becomes very important to us to lead a purpose driven life and to help other people to respond to their pain in part because in some ways saving them is saving us. We relate to them, we understand them, but on the other hand, I later learned that some of that living for others needs is a hidden form of low self-esteem. Yes, sir. It's like everybody's worth saving, but you. And I kind of want you to think about that. I hadn't planned to say this is not of my courage. I need it. You know, I do it so much for others that aren't planned in piecats. So I appreciate you sharing this. Yeah, it seems like everybody's more important than you. And so the planning and the attention and the focus and the depth that you give away, you also need and maybe didn't get as a child and somehow have trouble receiving as a man. And I'm wondering how much your life would change if you would give to you what you give to us. Yeah, I received that. I mean, right now, you know, your message when you said, you're not tired, you got to empty cup. So you're empty. And for so long, because I'm a soldier, you know, I'm not concerned about anything but what he wants me to do. But he told me recently, especially through a mentor, I need you to give that same attention to yourself. Exactly. And so, and I know it. And I'm after, you know, this, I'm stopping to the end of the year, the focus on me. And so I thank you for sharing this, because it's confirmation and not to get back here, you know, where it's like one of my therapists told me you have nothing to prove. And he was a saying in a way like I'm all that, but like, can you just, similar, but you said, look at what you've done. Why are you still doing it this way? When God is moving you here. And that's why I'm taking a hard stop. Yeah, because the whole name of the podcast is an extractor. And we keep having next chapters. And when we embark on our next chapter, sometimes our previous chapter makes it difficult for us to turn the page and fully embrace the next chapter, because the next chapter is new. And the next chapter is uncertain. And the next chapter can be frightening. And the next chapter doesn't necessarily fit the narrative of the previous chapter. And for all of those reasons, we find it more comfortable to stay within our comfort zone. The God is not interested in us being comfortable. He's interested in us being challenged. And if we stay where we're comfortable, we do it to the detriment of growing into who we could be. And we still have a chance to be. If we can embrace their idea, that in fact, I'm worth it. You have no problem with the God. He's worth it. You have no problem with the young boys and the boy on his father's back. You see it good. But I expected to talk to that guy when I sat down and started talking to you. I was throwing him back a little bit because I don't see that guy when it comes to you. You're hanging out with Lawrence Fishburn. You're doing all these amazing things. You're doing this documentary. You've been to the White House. You've received all the awards. You talk about it like you're talking about French fries. Yes. The only thing that you talk about was Zeal and Passion always has something to do with your way for your kids or somebody you helped. And I'm wondering about you. I'm wondering if there's anybody in your life who ever asks you, how are you? That's rare. My wife of course. And my brother Ron would check. But it's very rare. And I have a few men around. But I ask that question more than I hear it. And also I own that too as I was shared with men. If you look like Superman, they don't think you can do superhero stuff. The only problem with being looking like Superman or I find this as being a big man. Nobody picks up a guy with a 6 foot 2. You don't get the passion that a 4 foot 8 guy would get. You don't get the concern. Your body image, your body language, the way that you carry yourself, it almost counteracts what you really need. That's true. I often say who told you the toe truck? Yeah, exactly. Who told you toe truck? That's a great way to describe it. And I think you have to be intentional about finding people in your life who are self-assured enough to toe you. The therapy gives us part of it. It gives us language for our pain. It helps us to sort through the rubbish of our memories and put them in order and index and foul and categories and so forth and so on. But if we stop with naming it and we don't move on into turning the page to living the life that all of that affords us to live because all of those painful, horrific things that we just talked about were down payments on a better future. So you paid the price. You haven't gone to gold school. So you paid for the layaway, but you never came to pick up the content. So for you turning the page in my view means embracing your now and your next and planning out dreaming about what that should be and considering it's so worthy. Not just because you love to do it for other people, not just because you care about other people, which is wonderful, not just because you love God, which is wonderful. But also think you have to love you. Yeah. Chapter number four, growing old. You know, I recently had MRI of my lower back. I've two herniated this, T10 and 11, but I always feared getting MRI of my lower back from all the martial arts training the falls and the throws. Kind of something was wrong. That's why I'm appreciate you sharing this because I recently came to conclusion, you know, my moment on the mats is done almost because my body can't take it. And so that's a form of self love or self-maintenance as well. The saying time is up here. It doesn't mean my time is up here, but like you were saying, this chapter is over. And that's very difficult. For many men, especially like when you lived, if the chapter was maybe 80 pages in the book as a hundred pages that you know, if 80 pages was one chapter, you feel. And now you've got to close all of this to transition. That was difficult for me to hear from my doctor, but at the same time, loving myself enough to say, I was faithful. And I trust you that where I'm going will be better. You know, and that's where I'm at now. It's, I say self love is hard for me and it just say, but self-maintenance, we kind of gather because we used to maintain it. But self love is really important because we are fearful and wonderfully made. And in his eyes, we're extremely valuable. And you're right, we can allow the trauma, the experiences to define our worth. When those are just experiences, and they were meant to shape you, not become your story per se. Like this, like people would say the cable of a devil means your life story. And I was like, I'm not dead yet. I can't you say that. I could do something in three years that you would say, wow, that's his life story. So, yeah, even, even with, by the way, we have a whole lot in common. I had a laminate to be between L4 and L5. So I went to the side of the car. I had all the pains of that. I went through the surgery, the slow recovery. I had to preach in a chair. I couldn't stand up. And I wasn't sure that I would ever be the same again. I had some problems with my vocal chords, lost my whole upper range. I wasn't sure I would be able to talk again. And anytime something threatens the, the things that we think that we are good at. If we're not careful, we decide we're no good. Because we only think we're good as long as we are doing rather than being. Okay, my wife will, I'll be away from home or on the road to travel somewhere. And she said, I miss you, baby, I can't wait for you to get home. And I rush home thinking it's going to be one thing. And you know, and as you just read the book, you know, over the corner. And it got on my nerves. I thought she just wants me to be here. And one day I asked myself, what's wrong with that? Yes, sir. Performance is not greater than presence. So if you're, if you're back never will do what it used to do, that doesn't make you any less a man. And I think in the part, in the process of aging, we have to redefine what living is and find the beauty of the season that you're in, rather than glorifying the spring and hating autumn. Because the leaves all fall for everybody. They fall for everybody. But there's nobody helping us to bridge the gap between then and now. And there's something in the now that is just as spectacular as everything in the past was if you would take time to see it. One time, while I was meditating, it came to me that your definition of happy is too small. They stayed with me for months. Your definition of happy is too small. So if you define yourself as happy through martial arts and serving people and speaking and doing things like that, and that's, that's it. You close up the possibilities of all the other things that might be in the next chapter waiting on you. And you don't fully maximize the chapter that you're in because you're still grieving over the chapter that you passed. And for me, I sense a certain grief that once again, whether it's because of the death of your brother or whether it's because of the back going out, but once again, you're not getting what you need as a person. And nobody else can give you that. Yes. You have to give yourself that. That was great lesson for me. One, you have to give yourself that. And two, you have to be willing to discover other forms of greatness and pleasure that fit the season you're in. Yes, the leaves of all fallen off the tree. There are no nests and there are any birds in the fall. And the weather has changed and you need a sweater. But wow, that's kind of nice too. That's good. That's kind of nice too. So as we age, we have to get to the point that we embrace the grace. It's why we're my grace. You were years too. I heard this grace. And I'm not going to pain it. I'm going to wear this grave because every strand of it says something about something. I went through to get there. But I have to brush it. I have to love it. I have to like it. I have to take care of it. And that's just symbolic of how you have to take care of who you are now, rather than grieve. I can't do martial arts anymore. I'm living to serve other people. It's a subtle way of saying my only purpose is them. And not me. That's really good. As you're speaking, I'm thinking so much even when I got the diagnosis. I call my assistant Chris who leaves the cave now. I cried and I told him I said, you got it. And I needed this to get out your way. It's like Moses and Joshua Moses were still living. They say he was a man full of vigor. Could you imagine if he was still living in Hava, Israel probably would have stayed on the other side with Moses. And so the succession plan you're speaking of, what's next that needs to be established. And I believe that's just where I'm at now. What's next? And I pour so much into Chris, he has it. And I'm like, son, I told him I say mistakes are great teachers. That's how I built this entire building through mistakes. And then to your point about just focusing on me, it brought back the memory of me losing my best friend Darryl to a heart attack. That was my weightlifting partner. When I wanted to get big, I went to the gym. I said, well, this is what I want to look like. I'm working I would do. 15 years no arguing, sweeping up dust on the job with us. Passes out, dropped in. I lost the love for working out because I saw like, man, I mean, I would just be like 250, strong, rep 315 on a bench. This is all vain. My friend could lift the 200 pound dumbbells and press. I mean, like, what is it for? But God is like, no, no, no, how was the tragedy? But you don't live your life there, Jason. Right. And so I'm working my way back there as well. You know, you're right. When you start, when you start collecting these losses like badges of honor. Right. That's when it becomes a problem. And the other thing too is when we grew up with absentee father and daddy issues, we didn't have older age modeled for us correctly. So sometimes we get older but we don't really know how to do it. And we yearn to be who we were because we knew how to do that. And there were several things that we did well that we were very proud of. And those things have been taken away from us with age. And nobody has modeled for us. You don't know how to father you. And they're still an abandonment there that you fill up with serving other people. And what I am saying to you is, there's a whole big beautiful world on the other side of growing older. Yes. There's, I mean, it's a magnificent world that you'll miss having an inner temper tantrum about not being as young as you were. You'll miss being proud of your brain because you're not able to lift your body weight anymore. You'll miss being amazing moments and anybody would just go crazy about you trivialize them. So you are much more articulate about what went wrong than you are about what went right. Which says to me, you don't drink from the waters of what went right like you drink from the waters of what went wrong. And I think you have to be intentional about that. I had to be intentional about it. I'll be transparent. I had to be intentional about finding the joy of being 68 versus 28. I had to be intentional about how I talk to myself about me when nobody's around. Okay. Myself talked. Yes. I found out that I was feeding myself poison and wondering where I couldn't breathe. And anytime you talk to yourself in a way, that almost be littles where you are because you long for where you've been and you're grieving, grieving, grieving, you know, you're like this full of grief. Your best friend died, your brother died, you had all these losses in your life. Your mother was absent, your father was gone. You've had a lot. You've got a master's degree in losing stuff. And so you have given yourself to everybody else because you've not had a moment in your life that you talked much about where you were on the receiving end and you were important and you were you would the star of the moment and you were celebrated. And when you do have those moments, you don't receive them well, you skip over them always. You know, just large fish running was just I was just hit the right house. You know, you almost running away from from the joy of reflection on what you have accomplished. Does it resonate with you? Does it resonate? I think you were talking to my wife, boy, I got it here. Yes it resonates. That's why I like the way I do because I know it. And you're right about the pain, but the other side is the joy. And I was just with my therapist and he says, you know, what thinkless hobby do you have? And I started naming it used to be my garage. It used to be this garage, turned into the cave of a devil. Music turned into Christian hip hop ministry. The get-tie I wanted to be able to play in the praise and worship and I said, wait a minute. Everything that I do turns into a mission. Yeah. And that's that's a problem. Yeah, it's a problem. Like why am I doing that? Like I can perform for God almost because you're right. That father won't a lot of us look at God the same way. You know, right. He's not he's not nowhere near like earthly fathers period. Right. And so no, you yeah, yes it resonates. I mean when my wife watched this she's going to say thank you. Because you know, we're here for my wives and I'm very open with her. She, you know, I have no fear of telling her even when I'm nervous or anything. We have that type of relationship. But I know deep inside God is like there's so much more if you just take another step. And that's why I tell men who beat themselves up about not being this perfect man. I'm like brother, there is no master loved one. As you said, I got to learn how to be a old a man and hopefully one day a grandfather and accepting it and embracing just the change. And so I really appreciate you for sharing this because when I say this is something he's been telling me this entire year. Like I love you. You're good enough. Yeah. Got you. Right. And to celebrate like another one of my books passed over 100,000 sales. And you know, in the book industry, yeah, there was books like 400 copies. Yeah, right. I made, I had the plaques made and took it to the frame shop for them to frame up so I can put it on my wall to say this is something I was able to accomplish. Right. And so I'm, I'm, although I'm in that direction walking, I appreciate you because now it's, it's inspired me to run. Right. And so I thank you for that. Yeah, because if you bring the fullness of your brain from the times I've heard you speak and to the presence of who you are now, it's going to be absolutely amazing. And you bring the fullness of your brain to us. You just don't bring it to you. You just don't bring it to you. And, and you don't seem to feel like you deserve it. And so you keep finding other people to give the love to. And you travel across the country to give yourself to them, but sit at home and won't give yourself to you. And, and, and I understand the symptoms because I've been through it. Okay, I've been through it. I've been through taking care of my mother. We have a whole lot of me in common. You know, my mother had Alzheimer's. I, I brush home and feed her and set them feeder. And I'm very proud that I got to do that. Yes. Because I got to show her that if the shoe were on the other foot, I would do for her what she did for me. And to come around full circle and have the privilege of proving to her that I would do every little dirty thing that she did. Wash me, baby. He said me up. Clean me up. You know, that, that I'm not too good to do any of that. Because she gave me that and I got to give it back to her. Yes. That, that, that, that, that creek, that finished the circle. That, that, that did something for me that, that I was proud of. And that wasn't, but, but it also, my greatest lessons were, were taught by people who were dying. I was raised by dying father. My father had kidney failure. And I could ride a, I could run a kidney machine and couldn't ride a bicycle. So I, I know about taking care of people. I took care of him till he died. My mother died and my arms lived in my house. So much filled my house. That after she died, I moved because I could still see her all over the house. I did everything I could. So I understand what you've seen because Alzheimer's takes him away in pieces. You lose him in layers like pulling back a onion till they, they can't remember anything except for childhood or fragments of moments. And, and it is, it is the slowest agonizing death imaginable. And you can't stop it. So, uh, when they start sundowning in the evening and they get agitated, yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. I just remember that. Yeah. Sundowning. And, uh, and they start getting agitated in and how you, you have to say, did you see that bird over there? And you draw their mind completely away from it. They start looking at the bird and you, you have to be, you have to do all of that. But when you get them in the bed and you go back to your bed, you say, that's all this left of my mom. So you had repetition of losing and being strong enough to persevere and be there for everybody else. But you never got to spoil you. And so in the second half of your life, I'm suggesting one that getting to spoil you will help you and nobody can do it for you, but you. Yes. And it will tear up your marriage, expecting to get from your wife, what you should have got from your mother, what you should have got from your father, what you should have got from your friend, what you should have got from everybody. That's too much to put on one person. They can't do it. Yeah. It's unfair. It's unfair. So you have to do the hard work of finding out what would make me happy. And doing it and then doing it, making the time to do it, scheduling it, even what it means saying, notice somebody who needs you, it validates the fact that that you matter. Yes. Does that make sense? Make a lot of sense. So I think when you when you start thinking about next chapter, I would love to look at the canvas of your life and show you how much you're missing. Like I whispered in your ear downstairs, how much you're missing of your life, how much you're not dignifying with the importance and the relevance that you should have. Because you don't see the beauty of the stage you're at now. You went viral. You you got major networks picking up your material, doing your stuff. People seeking out your help on every level, one to do documentaries and all of that. And I don't think you let that soak in because you never had it before. Now you get to let that soak in. I have nothing to say. I'm receiving it. It's yeah, it seemed like you and Nicole was my wife got on the phone with me. In my children, you know, I'm excited, you know, like, man, if I when I get to that point, I get in the process, don't not losing myself in the process of helping others. Right. And they could see, wow, okay, thank you for helping me break free from emotional incarceration. But I also want some of that joy too. Right. Chapter number five, forgiving our fathers. You know the crate, aren't you? Yes. Yes. I was on the show and he asked me, you know, what do you have? What was what is your sign, you know, that you see that you're evolving. And I tell my wife this too, when I can freely dance with you, that's that's when I know I've really embraced the fullness of everything that every, you know, the good, the bad, and accepting it so much that I'm liberated in the way where it doesn't even matter if I miss a step or whatever. Yeah. I'm in this moment and embracing every aspect of it. I was listening to that some music one day in the shower. And I found myself dancing in the shower. And I don't think I've ever done that before. And I thought, this is what happy feels like. Not this is what service feels like. Yes. Not this is what a mission feels like. Not this is what a message feels like. Not this is what, wanting to be happy with just you. Yes. I get that feeling, Bishop in the mornings, getting a vegan muffin, some tea or some coffee. And you have that window where it's just serene and it's like no one's calling me. No, nothing to do. And I can just teal here for a moment. I'm thankful I get to experience that every day, but to your point, there's so many more moments of that if I just embrace the blessings in the moment. Right. Yeah. To have the courage to dream again. Sometimes when you lost a lot of things, you don't birth anything else because you figure you might lose I said, yeah. And it's the same thing your mother went through. Yes. We relive our parents trauma. So you neglect your baby because you don't want to throw your heart at it because it might die. Even my dad, to some extent, his heart aching pain, it took for him to be bedridden with Parkinson's disease for me to hear that he loved me. But I heard it. What was that like when you heard? Man, so he was called to be a pastor and he ran from his school. He told, God, you got the wrong guy. Yeah. And so I brought that to the dinner room. And so in that moment, the Holy Spirit said, tell your father, thank you for being the dad I needed. I'm like, what are you talking about? You know, I needed a different dad. But what he was saying, no, he was what you needed to get you to where you are. So I told him that and prayed, we prayed together. And as I was walking out, I heard heavy breathing. I'm like, I turned around. He was crying. That's the first time I've ever seen my father was no joke. Like serious man. Like no one ever tested my dad. He was weeping. I walk over to him. My wife is tears. I say, what's going on dad? He was like, I love you son. So to hear that at 37 years old, it frees so much. Like you're saying, you know, I had to actually publicly apologize to him because, you know, we are be so hard on our fathers. And I said, that, you know, you did the best you could for me. Yeah. And in those moments, you know, like you said, if you keep looking at the bad, you missed the good that a person, the right. And I went on a retreat one day to work on this father room. I remember the words the times he was. Yeah, he wasn't there a lot. But when he did apologize, he didn't know how to say how we do today. Right. It was through a game with $10 son. He loved me. But he verbalized it when I was 37. Yeah. And just to understand it, when I finally knew his cause and effect, I was going to forget more and more. And so I know as men, once we can move, pass the pass. Right. I guess a time travel will stay there. I mean, just trying to, trauma will stay there. We keep it there. Right. It only can come to the present if we allow it to time travel. Right. Right. And that's the hardest thing. Cause like you're saying, if I see something else as good coming, I was hurt by this song. I'm not really going to be rejoiced for in this moment. That whole emotion in that moment could have sparked some other ideas to even make it become a reality. So I thank you for following the Holy Spirit for speaking cause everything you said confirmed what he's been telling me and you had no idea. No. So I thank you for that. You know, and so often I was on Brother Cam Newton show recently. And I flew it out on there only for him. And I promoting my book or anything. I just, or it's where I need you to go talk to him. And you're right. It's like, I'm, I willingly give, but what about even to myself? And so I thank you again because I'm finally in a different seat. And I appreciate you from breaking the script. Right. And pointing to me, you know, as we wanted so many others. Yeah. I understand that. I do that for a living. I understand the side effects being a, uh, uh, paramedic. Yes. You know, and you're always waiting for the next alarm to go. And you love what you do and you get fulfillment and joy out of it. But the years go by. Yes. And, and all of a sudden you realize that you needed service too. And, and that's why I think people who are listening at this podcast right now, there are some that are listening at this discharge because they don't have anybody to talk to like this. Who can, you can talk about deep things. You know, we talk a man talk all the time about superficial drinks. She's, she's cute. She's fine. Then my team just wanted to Super Bowl. You know, we, we talk about stuff that really don't matter. But when it comes to issues of the heart, uh, I found out what lays on your heart ends up in your heart. So it took a massive heart attack for me to realize that all that that manifested my heart started out on my heart. So getting people to the place where they can get off their chest, the weight, that accompanies the responsibility that you have. Yes. May prevent them from bursting a blood vessel or, or producing some sort of malfunction that, that breaks them down a little bit, you know, violence or anything. Right. Yes. The rage. Yeah. Yeah. You know, pick your poison. The alcoholism, drug porn. You're going to find something way to medicate the whole because the forgiveness is there, but the whole is still there. You know, there, there's a whole in the man's heart where there is no father. And we try to fill it with a whole lot of things. And if we forgive him, we forgave him, but that doesn't give us what we would have gotten ahead. We had them. And we spent our lives giving to other people what we secretly wanted. But that still doesn't feel the whole in us. You know, it was good with just saying that whole, even on, I know from the scriptures that his desires for none of us to be fathomists. He says, I'm a father to the father and I recall taking home a student one day and he was upset because his father wasn't in his life. And I looked at him and I said, do you think I would be in this car with you in the afternoon, sunny day? I could be with my fiance if I had my father in my home. And he looked at me and he says, no, I say what was meant for evil, God, we're used for good. And so that whole, I believe, you know, that it's meant to keep us, well, for me, I'm broken toward those who don't have their fathers and those who are in need. But to your point of what you're sharing is you still, you want to be that servant. But in denying yourself, you don't have to neglect yourself. And that's the principle in what you're teaching. Exactly. Yes. Chapter number six, fear of being seen. Do you think that's the reason that a lot of young men have decided not to get married or not to get married soon? What do you think is the root cause of the intimidation of women going to school more, making more money? Or is it, is it more about just enjoying their own lives and being themselves? What do you think that is? From the men that I've talked to about this very subject, is their fear of being seen for who they really are? See when you know, you know, everything. Oh, you do get depressed sometimes. Oh, you do lack confidence. So you do have fears. And I tell brothers all the time, you must remember, Lois Lane fell in love with Clark Kent and I superman. You're right. Right. And so when brothers recognize that, like me and Nicole, I had no money. She made more than me. Right. But we got it together together. I didn't allow what I didn't have to stop me from getting who I had in front of me. Right. And so I tell brothers like, you know, they're supposed to classic, um, Mr. Wilson, you get my ducks in the row. Right. Right. And I joke, so when do you ever see ducks in the row? You know, they start laughing. I'm like, yes, you want to be prepared. Yes, you want to have your financial order. If you can't, she's called a help for a reason. And well, maybe that's what it took for me because now I truly value who my wife is in my life. Right. That I can be transparent. And she, and what makes it even more powerful, Bishop is when she see you move through the fear. Yeah. When you can say, yeah, babe, I'm a little nervous here. Or I'm scared this might not go well. But you still walk through it. Right. That's a testimony. I seen you walk through that. But if she never sees it, then you get mad like they don't care. Yeah. You look like you're not affected by anything. Right. And so I believe that's the main reason that men hesitate with marriage. And then you got the fear of divorce. Yeah. That's really big is when you're taking your money. Right. But if you got the right woman and you know it, right. There's still this hesitancy because when she still loves it, when she knows who I really am. That's good. Yeah. That's good. I think we had that about a lot of relationships. Yes, sir. Yeah. Would you love me if you really knew who I was? And I think that's the deepest kind of loneliness. Loneliness has nothing to do without many people around you. Yes, sir. Loneliness is all about the death to which you allow somebody to see inside of you. Entomacy. Entomacy. Entomacy. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, you do. Yeah. Yeah, because there's there's something disarming and vulnerable about somebody saying into you, especially when you're a leader, a teacher, a profound and and and and there's no fun when the rabbit got the gun. You know, and all of a sudden you have to be transparent and say, you know, this story helped me so much. I went to my doctor. I had the flu. And he was right now the prescription for me to get something some medication from the flu. And while he was doing it, I noticed his nose was running. And I thought, you have a profession, but that didn't stop you from being vulnerable to the same infections that I have. You know how to treat me. But you also still can have the same problems that I do. And I think our country, our world has problems with the fact that we are but men. You have a doctor who's struggling with his weight. Yeah. And it's trying to tell you not to do it. Yeah. That's that's why I love being transparent with me and could see that because it it frees them from this facade that so many were like, we're all works in progress. Right. Right. Right. I may be a little further than you and a little further. I mean, behind the next man in front of me, but when me and could really see like, wow, just to hear what you struggle with. Right. I'm human. Right. I'm a human being. And I fought to embrace that. And I won't go back into that box where I have to pretend everything's okay when it's not right. Yeah. It's not healthy. It's not no repression of emotion. It's very dangerous. I believe it increases your chances of cancer by 30 percent emotional suppression. You know, so it's like, now I'm okay. I'm express myself in a controlled manner. Of course, I don't want to be dogmatic with my wife. Mm-hmm. Becoming a good verbal process. Even with parenting, I told a father recently, you're already strong. Right. Your presence is disciplined. Right. The reason they're still not falling in line because they missed the love. I think we need our wives. And we need the intimacy that they give to us, but also think we need male friends. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. That sometimes we're too heavy to drop all that well. Sometimes. Yeah. My wife told me because she wanted that access, but then she was one day she was like, okay, look, I don't need to know everything. Right. And I call it the Huddled Principle just like a football. Right. With Tom Brady and the Super Bowl against the thing with Super Bowl 50 against the Atlanta Falcons. At halftime, there, there's no team ever come back from a deficit that great. Right. Could you imagine if he came to the Huddled and like, look, I got some rings, y'all got some rings. We're not going to win. You know, let's just play this out and get out of here. That would have changed the entire vibe of that team. Friend of mine, Trey Flowers, who played on that team said that was the opposite. He came to the Huddled. If he felt down, you didn't feel it. You didn't know it. Same thing when we come home. Read the room. Where's my wife at right now? What can you take right now? Right. And so I've learned to be considerate with that because he would be sharing a problem and you'll create another one. Right. So that's what your friends is for. Like my brother Ron, who's here is like, I can call him when it's heavy. He can call me like, I don't ever want to just about me. You're right. Always leave room open for my brother because he needs a ear as well. See, to me, we just had a meal and you brought a dish and I brought a dish and we shared a meal together because if you're always the one cooking and you don't get to eat, that gets to be mundane. So I get to eat from the plate of your wisdom. You get to eat from the plate of my wisdom and we both walk away wiser than we were before we sat down. The reason I'm doing this podcast is to expose people. There are some things that preaching doesn't give you. Even the listener because we are so wrapped up in telling about Ezekiel and Jeremiah and all the Daniel and all these people that we sometimes we hide behind them and it's a camouflage not to talk about you and you can't get down to practical things like budgeting and financing and that your value is more than who makes the most money that I didn't get married to being a contest with my wife. I wanted to compliment my wife. I wanted her to compliment me not to contest me. I have enough that at work. I don't want to come home and run a foot race in a brown paper bag with you over money as if that is the only value. If a woman who stays at home and raises the kids is valuable, then a man can make less money than a woman and take care of the car and go to the mechanic and cut the grass and do things and add value to her life too. But it's about what we value and we live in a capitalist society where our values often place so strongly on how much we make. Yes. I tell me in all the time when the coal made more than me, I deposit Ezek with no issue. Right. No problem. Thank you. She still needed what money couldn't buy that was provided. We have to understand that's our role. I think one of the things that women can help us with is to help us see what we bring to them that they wouldn't have if we were not there. Because if we end up telling the person at the funeral, I miss Charlie checking the doors at night before we went to bed. I miss how he took out the trash. I miss how he handled problems. We need to hear that living because sometimes it is not obvious to us, especially as we age. What do we bring to the table because we are trained to perform? Not to be present. And that's why a lot of men speaking to men in their mid 60s and older, who grandfather's in the cave, that transition is hard because of your entire existence is based on performance. When you can't perform the more you feel like I need it. Yeah, that's major. I'm just thankful that I started that journey sooner. Chapter number seven, pain is universal. Came up in Detroit and round gangs and violence and all of that. And you know exactly how to talk to black men no matter whether they're in a CO suite or no matter whether they're on a basketball court, you can handle it. If you were in a room full of white men, could you do the same thing? Absolutely. I've done the same. Okay. Yeah. And that's I was at an event in Sioux Falls. So with no brothers out there hardly. Yeah, no. And as I was speaking, I never forgot it. Most I was like looking to this audience. Almost every white brother there was leaning forward. I used to think the issues that I dealt with was just black issues. And all that is something that are uniquely us. What we're struggling with as men is universal. Right. You know, and so, you know, I have, oh, you know, I've I've counseled many of different backgrounds. And it's the same. It's not it's the same. It's the same pain. It's the same. Insecurities the same. It's the same. Mr. Eating Montrose. Right. No pain. Again, I heard that he heard. Yeah. You know, and so about, you know, seeing past that. I was culture is important. Culture is important. It's very important. Understand culture and background. But the principles of why we are affected are the same. I think there's often a lot of pressure applied to non-black men to not show feelings. I am. Because it's a cultural predisposition. I remember I had an opportunity to work with a multicultural group for the cave of a Dunlum at my son's school. And I never forget this one kid. He said that we have emotional check-in where you can express your emotions at the beginning of training. He says, well, this is new for me, Mr. Wilson, because I'm told I shouldn't have any problems because where we stay in a type of car as we have it. Right. My the investments I have and mom is happy. Because he's a white kid. It's like it should be okay. So I call it an expectation place that they can't fail. So a friend of mine who was a banker, I trained in Ike Bujutsu, where he told me, he says, Jason, this is why you'll see a banker get fired, highly qualified to get another job, but goes home and kills himself or even kills himself in this family. Because they feel that they can't fail, can't express it. And where do you go now? How did you fail the condemnation of shame? You had everything set up for you, Johnny. How did you blow this? And so when you give these men, I've done it. Would have opportunity to talk. Break down. I had a gentleman from a, it wasn't pulling. It was a popular wrestling contract. It escaped me. Now, I'm in the gym, Bishop. And he comes over to me, eyes blush out red. Big guy. I'm like, what is this about? He grabs both from my arms. He says, I just watched you in Joe Rogan episode. Yes. And he did like this. And he says, thank you. And the emotions was coming out, different background, saying, paint. I learned about watching veterans. When you're in the fox hole together, we're wearing the same uniform, the color fades away. There is an affinity that develops in crisis, whether you're in a rehab center or a a youth detention center, there is an affinity. But even in a corporate space, if we ever get past what other people think, we would find that there's more to unite us than there is to divide us. Yes. And that even though we express things different culturally, they have the same core, same pain, same problem, same understanding. I say that for all my listeners, that may not share a gang situation, but they may not even have an absent father. They may have a distracted father. Okay. He was there, but he wasn't there. Yeah. Absolutely. They may have had a mother who ran the 4-H club and the girls got cookies, but didn't really bring that home to them in the way that they needed. What I'm saying is pain is not prejudice. And that is universal. And so the opportunity to minister across the board is very, very important. No matter what you're background is where you came from, it is my hope that you can get the strep to turn the page, to go into your next chapter because next can be so frightening. I close with this. Unknown miracle system is quite interesting. Whether you got $10 or a million dollars, a million dollars is just a collection of dimes because 10 is as high as you can go. And once you get to 10, if you have to go back to one again on the next level to hit 11. And then you get to 20. You got to go back to one again. So we keep having to enter into worlds where we are recycling ourselves and we are and the atmosphere is foreign and the rules are not clear. And we don't know whether we're going to be accepted or not. And by the time we get used to it, we climb up the ladder and we get really good at that. Then life throws us in another room where we enter into the room of uncertainty again. And I think when you say give us this day our daily bread, it is because we continually find ourselves recycling newness and beginning and newness is frightening and it's uncomfortable and it's scary. And yet it's exhilarating. And if you get used to it, if you learn how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, it's almost addictive to have that feeling because your innovation and your creativity is at its peak when you are uncertain. Yes. When you're uncertain. That's when we really get creative. When you're uncertain. That's when we really stay up reading late at night. When you're uncertain, that's when you put the most thought into what am I going to wear when you're uncertain. That's when you really start thinking of creative ways to reach your goal. Some people respond to that by staying at night because it's safe when they when they could be 31 if they were willing to be a child again. And when Jesus talks about you can't enter into the kingdom of saving you become a child. I think that's a spinoff of the same idea that that adventurous child again and midlife is a chance to be a child again at the next stage of life. So you control whether the abuse continues or stops because now as you grow older, you're new at this. And you can create the reality that's necessary that gives you the grace and the permission to not always be good at this, to stumble and fall and get up and walk again, to be tutored, to be mentored. And the same person who mentors you about body weight may not be the same person who mentors you about finances. May not be the same person that mentors you about business. So be to be open enough to be nurtured in the areas of your deficiency, require that you are willing to be one again. That's good. Yeah, that's good. Chapter number eight, parenting. Did you see a difference in cross gender parenting? How did you raise your son differently from how you were raised and were you different with your son than you were with your daughter? Yeah, absolutely. Even to this day, I still see the ramifications of having a heavy hand as a father. And I'm not talking about physical abuse. I'm saying the mentality is tough love and disciplinarian, you know, sometimes being almost like tyrannic around the house if the room wasn't clean. I like that everything is disrespect instead of a reflection of what could have been going on inside of my daughter. And I remember one day, I was writing my first book, Cryland Command. And I recalled a moment in time where my father was absent. And I broke down crying at the desk and I ran the cashmower daughter because she was going to school. I dropped to my knees in front of her. And I said, I'm so sorry for being the type of dad I was, but that's going to change. And she tried to make me feel better saying, now you're just trying to be protective. I said, no, that was that's not how God will parent you. And I had to not only in that moment, reconcile, but it's been a journey because a lot of what she went through, my son has a way better father than I was to her. And so I learned through that experience, especially when you talk, especially don't spare the ride and all these other things. After a child is eight years old, if you haven't reared them up, percent. You lost this, you got to start, you know, at this point you need to be able to communicate with them like human beings. You shouldn't have to result to discipline and other things like that. Yes, this forms a discipline that's needed throughout the journey. But with my son, I'm more patient. I apologize more. Whenever I'm wrong, I say, son, I'm sorry for that dad misread that or I was wrong. I didn't do that with my daughter. I still had the anger from not having my father around and the insecurities. And I brought all that into my marriage. And instead of I didn't know how to get it. It was our therapy wasn't a thing back then. But that's one of my major regrets is not parenting her with more love. I chose I was disciplined dad. And I regret that. But with my son, I'm patient. Yes, he has the discipline piece as well. But I always understand that he has a cause and effect if he's silent, I give him a space. And several times if he's in his room alone, I ask him, can I come in? You know, is it okay? He said, yeah, cool. I just lay on the floor and maybe do some work. Because I know he's doing his own thing. And as you were saying, it's more important to be present than perfect. And so that's what I learned from parenting and fathers. We need to convey the heart not the anger as much. Why are you angry? It hurt me because I trusted you that you would do this at home. Because you keep not doing this. Why? But that takes for us to do some more work so that we can undo what's preventing us from being patient. One of the strong suits of your ministry is that you show men how to do the work to be whole and how to relate to their children. And part of it is being able to apologize. And I learned that in my own life, from raising my own children, it changed the trajectory of how I verbalize instead of using sound language, like, you know, our fathers did that use sound language. Come on, let's get some ice cream. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you would never get I'm sorry. You know, by getting ice cream, come on, I'm good. But you would never get I'm sorry, I don't know. Chapter number nine, Wife's miscarriages. I have a daughter that is unable to have children. And I thought that was sad. And I prayed for her. But it took my wife to make me understand what that does to a woman. To not be able to have a child. You you've had a wife who's had five miscarriages. How well did you handle it? And what would you do differently? Well, I didn't handle it. I was programmed to be strong, show no emotions. You know, you tell yourself, well, it's really not a baby because the baby is a born, you know, things like that. And I remember our last daughter, Olivia, when she miscarried her. And the doctor came in and told her after the ultrasound, Olivia's heart wasn't beating. And the cold just squeezed my hand and just screamed because I was the fifth child. And I'm just stoically there just holding her hand like this. But I was hurting. Yeah. And but culture, even if it's your own child, crying you weak. But we accept an athlete when he wins a championship trophy and he's weeping over the trophy. And a man can't cry over his child or a man, his bride, a woman he's been desiring the Mary is walking down the aisle. And if he gets emotional, like my best man told me, Gabriel, I'm putting you out here. He said, you cry, I'm gonna hit you on your back, you know. And that's what he told me. And so I didn't cry. So, but um, but yeah, I, um, I wasn't there. And then I, I maybe I've got many years later, but many years later, one of our pastors bought us a plant. And I subconsciously made that plant Olivia. And my wife had moved it one day. And so I'm come home cleaning up and I'm like, you know, where's, where's this plant? I was frantic. I mean, she thought the plant away. I went all over the house. I called her, say, have you seen the plant? She's like, what plant? I said, the plant that we got from past the age. She was like, well, yes, in the back, I was going to move him. Like, please don't test the plant. Grab the plant, repot it the plant. As I'm repotting it the plant, I start crying. I'm like, okay, what's going on here? And then that moment guy said you never grieved her loss. And so here it is, thinking that being a man in that moment was just to stay historically strong. Was the opposite of what that moment needed. Yes, totally. I told her a father who his child was recently born and his son has been a nick you for two months. And he asked me, after hearing me, talk, he said, so you telling me, I should let her see how I feel. I'm like, yeah, brother, she may think she's alone. I said, yeah, share your heart with her. I start watering. He says, that's what I'm going to do when I go home. Because the colonel high star, she said she needed me. She needed to know, it would have been good to know that I was hurting. I don't think I was hurting. I couldn't hurt as much as she was. But she didn't feel it. Yeah. And I was, I was absent in that moment. But now, you know, if my heart is hurting, I let him know. I think it's therapeutic for the man to release his grief and his pain. But I also think it strengthens your marriage when you share grief. Yes. If I was ever a joy with them, do rejoice with those. We've one of the most astounding things to me. And scripture is when Jesus comes into Mary and Martha and Lazarus is dead. And he knows he's going to raise him from the dead. Yes, sir. And yet he sits in weeks with them. So much they say he must have loved them. Yeah. That's quite an ear. That's that's that's fellowship to to to mourn with those that that mourn strengthens your union. I remember my mother passed away and her baby brother, who she was crazy about, cried the most. And it made me love him the most because our fraternity was our common love for my mother. Something about him feeling what I felt drew us closer and we were closer till he died. And I think a lot of men miss great moments, not because we're evil or wicked, but because we don't understand the magnitude of that woman carrying a person in her body. Yes, sir. A person whose chromosomes won't ever fully come out of her body. And yet the expectation of the baby is met with the disappointment of the grave. And you know, I believe and the cold would never say this, but the hospital had offered to pay for the funeral because Olivia was think five and a half months, you know, before when on the cold was pregnant. And I'm like, well, we don't need a funeral, you know, she wasn't born. And the cold was it because she said, well, I felt the same way. And I told her recently, I'm like, nah, if I was the man that moment needed and I'm crying with you and I'm embracing this sadness, this grief, I don't see us turning that away. And so I can't change that now, but we definitely make sure we're open with each other when we're grieving and hurting. And it was sensitive to each other. And like you say, it does draw you closer. Yeah. I remember when, and I'm not to your point, I'm not bragging on the trauma or bringing it up, but my friend in the high school got shot in the head. He lived, thankfully. And one of the martial art teachers in our city who I always wanted to train under for a while, Kalindi, IE was there. And I was just grieving openly because this was my close friend in high school. Because he saw that love, he says, you can work with me and I want him charging. Because he saw, like you're saying, the grief, the love and something he hadn't seen, especially in the early 90s, where we're trying to be hard and tough, you know, for me to break that grip that guard and for him to see it. And so you had the power of grieving together openly. I do agree with you. It draws us closer. It does. It does. It's something special and communal and intimate about it, even though we express pain differently and we deal with death differently. And we can't always weigh the depth of a person's love by their reaction to their loss. Some people want to be alone. Some people want everybody around them. Since I tell my friends, you might be schizophrenic. Or I manage you want them around the next minute. You want everybody, get out, just get out the house, you know, because grief is such a roller coaster ride. But understanding that even though we, from times to time, express things differently, that we have that moment of coming together and say, you know, we lost a child. We lost a child. And I realized I didn't carry the child like he did. But she was in my heart and in my mind. And it kind of bonds you together in a very special way. Thank you for sharing. Yes. Shaptown number 10. Celebrity quotes. 50 cents were quoted out in here. But 50 cents was quoted as saying, depression is luxury. Where I came from, we were not allowed to be depressed. You have to do what you have to do. What do you think of that? I understand it. It was how I was raised to, and I don't know the context of that quote. But just judging from what I hear is, you know, man up and keep pushing through. Stay strong. You know, what was the mantra? What doesn't kill you, you can only make you strong. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and so I understand that. But I wonder how old 50 was when he said that versus now because we know ungrieved losses. Yeah. affects us negatively as we get older. It's going to come out. What were you? It's going to come out. And depression is not a weakness. It's just, you know, it's a part of life. It happens at times. It can be biological as well as aqua. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Definitely. But in cases when it's circumstantial, you know, I guess that's how he was saying I got to keep going. I'm here. If I lose my job, the girl, whatever, I got to keep going. I understand that. But for you not to take an opportunity to grieve those losses or those opportunities, it's going to come out. One of the hard things about being famous is every word you say is dry. Yeah. Everything is evaluated and shaken. A regular person can say something and it's not scrutinized. But if you say it, all of a sudden they pick it apart and just dissect it and tear it up. I remember one time I met 50 when he was with G unit at a radio show in Detroit. And my program director was nervous. I wasn't giving him a Christian hip-hop CD because I'd been praying for him. And my program director was like, yo, you know, be careful when you go, when nothing happens to radio station, like, come on. You know, I walked over to him and said, I made this for you. And we actually a picture of him praying. He had had taken. You know, he said, he looked around like this what I'm talking about. Thank you. Yeah. You never know. Yeah. You never know. And so, yeah, in that cool, I just on the outside looking in the who he is, and you tough, and you got to make it, he's just saying, you know, feel it, but don't succumb to it. You know, and but sometimes, especially as men of God, it's a coming to that weakness as we were talking about allows the power of Christ to be perfected through us. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. So, Tiana Taylor made a statement just because I'm strong doesn't mean that I don't need to be confident. She is. You know, I'm strong like woman. And that's what I plotted all the time. But she kind of said, that doesn't mean that I don't need to have support to have love, to have comfort. How do you, are we miss reading the strength of our women? Man, I don't think we're miss reading it. I believe some of us misuse it. We're getting to the place now when I'm concerned because women are becoming stories. Right. And I believe once we lose a woman's endearing love and empathy, we're in some deep trouble. Right. And so, it's similar with us, man. It's like, the at this moment, we got to be strong, but it doesn't mean that we're not hurting, it doesn't mean that we're not sad or have concern. And so, when you, a lot of women are just fighting to be recognized or, again, not being taken advantage of and if a man is not, doesn't have an emotional repertoire. He doesn't even know how to express things, even just for the things that she does and bring to their marriage at home. Yeah. And so, a lot of that comes from not feeling valued, I believe. It is for me the same fear that I have for you. I have a love-hate relationship with it. Me too. Because whatever it becomes, we help create it. And I think our women have had to be strong and we helped create that strength by our absence or by our abuse or by the pain they went through early in life, put them in a position that they find it difficult to be vulnerable, to feel safe enough, to be vulnerable. You know, I think we have to own that we create it, whatever, hey, I've become, and we sometimes created whatever that woman comes, even if it wasn't you, it might have been the man before you or the father before you, you might be reaping something that you didn't sow, living in a house that you didn't build, but you still got to continue with it and understand that we contributed to that isolation that seems to be so pervasive in our communities and in our relationships today. You know, that makes me think of how many single mothers I help in the cave of Adelaum. And I remember one mother said, we helped her be mom. And what she meant by that was she had to become part of that because he wasn't around the haircuts and the football and tackling and then disciplinarian and she missed the nurturing piece. And so she had to lose that because as a boy, it becomes a teenager, you know, he needs to make sure he has that order. And so she was saying thank you for allowing me to be mom and she grew in the game. We had like our sisters desire to be in our place like that and it's not necessarily always a case. In some cases, you see that. But from the mothers I work with, it's it's both of us. And we have to definitely do a better job at communicating the hurt. You know, we're both wounded, we're both hurting and until we both acknowledge that and express that in healthy way, we'll keep hurting each other. That's right. Absolutely. LeBron made an interesting statement about being alone. He said, I don't want to be alone. He went on to explain that he was an only child. I have to crawl if I scratch whatever I have to do to make my marriage work. I don't want to be alone. Do you think that only people who are raised only child have a more desperate need for connection and their relationships? Where is that unity to LeBron? I believe so because I was, even though I had brothers because they died and have one living brother, Sinclair, who was in Texas. But when he went to college, I was alone. So I felt like, you know, the only child. And absolutely, I was one of the main things with me making sure I didn't get divorced. I didn't want to take the path my father took because for the first time, I have a family. You know, it was just me and my mom. And so I get what he's saying. They're like, you know, and it's even deeper than being lonely. It's just living life without the person right beside you to help you build everything together. And so I definitely understand what it means by that, you know, like the government do whatever I can to fight for this marriage. And hence why I tell me, you know, if you're an argument with your wife and don't always go to, we can get divorced and like eliminate that. And I had to fight that as well. So yeah, I definitely value my marriage. I can't see living life without Nicole. I told her because she would say, you know, if I leave before you, you know, it's okay. You can't. I said, no, I have to you. There'll be no more. I'm okay. I'm 55. I'm straight. Give me a ranch with some animal. Not by the dude that's all over. But yeah, no, I, um, yeah, to be able to go home and have a woman that I can just love you and just want to be next to you. Like I see you and Mrs. Jake's, you know, and I saw it up close on your show you had and it's authentic. Yeah. And you know, not to have to worry about a see-out stepping out and all that old foolishness. We've been at it for the past three years. I told my mom, but yeah, if you got to worry about that, you know, that's really bad. Yeah, you know, I understand what he means. You've been listening to Jason Wilson, you should, you, you owe it to yourself to get his new book, The Man, The Moment, The Man's. Man, when I, when I read that title, I was jealous. Oh, really? Yeah, that title is slamming. Thank you, sir. The man, The Moment, The Man's. You know, it means a lot coming from you, right? Oh, listen, major. You know, it made you by the book whether you knew who you were and not. It is The Man, The Moment, The Man's. Especially in the moment we're in right now. I thought it was a really, really smart title. Thank you. Thank you. I have enjoyed this conversation. I appreciate you. Thank you. It's been so enjoyable. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed us and I hope you got something out of it that sticks with you and stays with you and enriches your life. I certainly did. We had a great time. I hope this will be your next chapter. Hey, everybody. I want to take this time to thank you for watching the next chapter podcast. 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