Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Kyle, what an absolute joy to have you on our show today. I am so grateful for you to join.
Before we ask the hard questions, I want to start with something. I have three kids, and I know this has brought me to my limits very often, almost on a day or weekly basis. You have six kids.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: You know, that wasn't on purpose, by the way. That was kind of accidental, and I won't say accidental.
We did plan for each child, but we had our first three sons.
And after our third son, my wife said, I think we should try one more time for a girl. Now, what you should know about my wife was she was very feminine. She was like a Southern belle. She grew up in Dallas, Texas, and so she was the epitome of what you would think of, you know, when you thought of a Southern belle. She. She loved to cook. She was.
She sewed. She made her own wedding dress, if you can imagine that, from top to bottom. So there were a lot of things that she was very good at in her feminine realm that she. She really wanted the opportunity to pass down to our kids. And so after our third son, we decided to have one more kid. We had another boy, and so we had. Now we have four sons. And at that point, she said, that's it. Maybe I'm just supposed to be the mom of boys.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Hold my beer. Wait for this.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And as often happens, six years later, she came to me with tears in her eyes, and she said, you know, I know the boys. The youngest is six.
I know they're hard, they're crazy, they're feral. Our boys were animals. She said, but I think I want to try one more time for a girl. And, you know, when your wife comes to you with tears in her eyes and she makes those kinds of requests, you. You typically pretty quickly comply. And so it wasn't long after that, she was pregnant again.
We ended up going over and looking, and we had twins for our fifth and sixth kids, and luckily, one was a girl. So I have five sons and one daughter. And I'm so grateful for that little girl. She changed our family because, you know, watching my wife be able to pass down her feminine traits and the way she beautified the world through that has been really was really cool to watch her working with my daughter.
And just. I can remember time after time, I'd come. I've come downstairs, and they would be in the kitchen, and my wife would be doing something, chatting up my little daughter. And she was so little at the time, she was on a stool, standing up next to My wife and they were baking or, you know, whatever it is, and just the little, the chit chat that they had was the most wonderful, beautiful thing I can remember hearing. I remember one time my daughter was so small, it worried me that she would be in the kitchen with the fire on and all these things. And I said, I said, are you, I said, are you sure? What if she can't do this properly at this age?
And my wife said back to me, what if she can?
And that was enough for me. Right? So that's really the only reason we have six. Because I would imagine if we had maybe two boys and one girl or a girl and a boy, we probably would have only had two or three. It's not like we planned on having a big family, but it was required in our situation. So.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: I just feel goosebumps. I mean, that's the. It's clear to me that your wife was deeply.
I don't know what's the. How would you say this? Like she had deep wisdom and in so few words just to convey such a beautiful concept that, you know, if you don't try, where will you ever, you know, that is just so deeply beautiful. I just, I feel it, I feel it all over.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: My, My wife was. You know, I like to think of my wife beautified everything she touched. And I think that she so badly wanted to. I don't think she saw that herself as much as she just exuded that. And I think she just, she so badly wanted to have a daughter so that she could share those specific skills. My wife was. I mean, I can recall on her 25th anniversary, we were going out to dinner and we had this big Toyota Sequoia truck.
And we're driving through this neighborhood and she sees something on the side of the road. Now remember, we're all dressed up, we're going out to a dinner for our 25th wedding anniversary. And she says, turn around. I think I just saw something. So I turned around and went back through this neighborhood and there was an old beat up Victorian couch on the side of the road. And you know, they have cushions and it was wet and it was just horrible.
It was one of the most horrible things I've ever seen on the side of the road. And she said, you know what? I think I could do something with that. Throw it in the, throw it in the back of the truck.
And I said, you know what? It's our anniversary. I'm not throwing it in the back of the truck. And she said, throw it in the back of the Truck.
And so, you know, I untucked my shirt and, you know, rolled up my sleeves, and it was. It was wet, and it was stained, and it was horrible. And we ended up not going out to dinner that night. We ended up bringing that couch back, putting it on our back deck. And for the next six months, my kids tore it apart. They just stripped all the cushions off and got it to its frame. And she created this beautiful Victorian outdoor couch that sits on our back porch to this day.
And it's just. It's kind of the.
When I talk about my wife, it seems like everything she saw, she saw the beauty and things that most people didn't see the beauty in. And she would rescue, you know, furniture or. She was known to make suits. She made me a suit one time. She made ties for all my sons one time for their wedding, for them. And so she was just always trying to beautify everything she touched. And so, you know, part of what I think my sons have tried to do and I've tried to do is continue down that path and be creative.
How can we be her very best, you know, her most beautiful creation? Right. Because we're her. Her spouse and her sons. And I've watched my sons kind of accept that role and really try to run with that.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: That is so inspiring. I mean, this is more than just a thing. This is almost a life philosophy that I think we should all aspire to humbly and with incredible vulnerability. I ask you to share something difficult. This is an incredibly difficult month for you.
Would you be so kind to share with the audience what happened, I believe, three years ago in October, and how that changed the life of your whole family?
[00:07:03] Speaker B: So, as most families do, we went through a phase where things were very difficult in our family. You know, even in the greatest marriages and the greatest families in the world, you're going to have trials and situations that test you, right? And my wife and I, with four sons that were rabid. I mean, she had all kinds of crazy names for them.
They challenged us. And, you know, we were pushed to the limits where, you know, my wife and I, we didn't know if our relationship or our family would continue because of the stress that can come as a normal part of marriage and of life. Right? But we had committed together that we were going to. We were going to figure it out. And we created a map to become what we call the top 1% happy family and create what we call the top 1% happy marriage.
And as our kids got older, My oldest is 30, and my twins now are 16 years old.
So we had gotten to a point where things had settled down. My kids had gotten older, a couple had moved out, gotten married, and we were in a phase of life where we were just loving on each other. I mean, you know, you're so tied up in the raising of kids and the finances early on in your. In your marriage that it can become so stressful, it can just tear you apart. And so getting through that and then getting to a point where we had created a family where we loved each other so much. We had great sons. Even though they were feral as kids, they had turned into great young men, and they were doing wonderful things. And we were just watching this. And my wife and I had created, you know, we had created what we call the top 1% happy marriage, and we had a top 1% happy family. Nothing was more fun than getting all of our kids together to do anything. You know, it could be go to the park, it could be doing something fun together, it could be doing work together. It didn't really matter.
And as you mentioned, In October of 2021, my wife got really sick, and she was rushed to the hospital. And 10 days later, she passed away.
And this was sudden and unexpected and pretty.
As you can imagine, the turmoil and the upheaval that can happen can be overwhelming. And I realized that pretty quickly and actually did a lot of study. You know, as soon as she. As she passed away, I realized this can destroy families.
And I didn't.
I really didn't want that to be us.
And I read account of. Account after account of it just tearing apart, you know, kids and their dad and daughters falling apart, you know, without their mom. And so I thought, I can't let this happen. We've worked too long and too hard to create a happy family. And so I basically went to work and mapped out a plan for continued happiness and success. And I. And I set each of my kids down independently and just kind of mapped out and said, your mom and I were smart enough to create this plan, and here's what we created. What you're living is what we created. And I don't want to leave our future to chance, so I want to. I sat down with each of them and we talked through, you know, some of the pain and the tragedy and what we were probably going to experience in the next year or so. Just naturally. I mean, I used to think, I've heard the term pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice.
And I don't believe that anymore because I've had to go through Some suffering that I really didn't have a choice. And my kids, you know, imagine losing your mom at, at 13, you know, that's my youngest or that age. And so, you know, one of the, we did a lot of things together, but one of the things we did as a family is kind of map out a plan and say, you know, we realize we're going to go through suffering and we're going to have these regrets and we're going to go through all these different phases.
Let's pre think how we want to try to go through those and not just survive. Because my wife wouldn't want us to just survive. She would want us to thrive. She would want us to continue spreading the love that she gave us and created in us. And so, you know, that was a really big part was to, was to kind of stop for just a second. And I remember my wife and I had experienced this before when there was a time when our youngest kids were so wild and so crazy that the stress they were creating was over the top. And you know, anybody that's got small children knows this feeling, right? You start to think, is there, is this all there is? We're just slaves to these dang kids, right? And I remember one night we were working hard, we wanted a good family, we wanted to raise, you know, productive good kids. And one night we got them all settled down and we were reading Alice in Wonderland. You're familiar with the book, I'm sure. And there's a point where Alice comes to a crossroads and she comes across this cat and she says, which way should I go? And he says, it depends on where you want to end up. And she said, well, I don't really care where I end up. And he says, well then it doesn't matter which way you go. Just keep going. You'll end up somewhere, right? And I remember my wife and I, when we first read that, we thought, you know what, we're working hard, but we don't have a long term goal for our family. And it made us sit down and kind of map out. And so after this tragedy, I sat down with the kids and I said, listen, I've done this before. There's a reason we're at where we're at as far as our family goes. Your mom's going to want us to continue that. Let's do like the Cat in the Hat. Let's not work hard and leave our family happiness to chance. Let's map out a plan and a goal and sure, we're going to have sure we're going to fail more than we succeed, right? But at least if we have that end point we can look at, then we're not just going to be working towards who knows what the result will be, right? And so a big part of what we did was just sit down and said, we're going to manage our minds. You know, when we start to have regrets or pain or suffering, we're going to realize what that is and we're going to try to refocus on the beauty and the good and the happiness. And again, I don't want to limit or minimize the fact that they're suffering. That is part of human nature and that is something we have to feel.
But as a family, we decided it's something we can decide.
We can feel that it's a place we need to visit for our own health, our mental health, but we don't want to live there, right? So there are times when we can visit that place and when we do, we want to rally around each other and tell our family members, hey, listen, there's a certain day coming up. Dad's going to be a mess.
Would you call me at 5:00? Would you check on me? Would you? You know, I mean, I know I'm gonna. I know there's going to be pain. I know I'm going to suffer, but don't leave me alone. You know, make sure you check in on me. Make sure. And if you hear me in a bad state, realize it's not going to be forever. It's going to be something I have to face. You know, we have to face these storms. The question is, how do we, you know, get through to the other side without it let us over, without the storm becoming who we are, without it becoming our nature to be in that storm constantly. And we see that all around us, Ari. We see people who tend to be stuck in these storms and they, they never, they never seem to escape and their lives just aren't. Their lives are not as happy as they can be because they, they're fighting this battle that they can't seem to escape.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: This concept. For me, I think everybody has a different interpretation of pain and suffering. But for me, the difference between pain and suffering has been exactly this point that you're making that we have control in regards to what is our next step, what is the plan, what is the things that we can control and the things that we can't control. You know, going back to, you know, the AA plan around recovery. So there is a fundamental truth here about taking Control over your life, but also feeling the pain and suffering, because inevitably, it is the road to. I don't know if you could ever say recovery, because pain like this never leaves you, but, you know, taking the next step on that journey.
You decided to write a book. That's not a common decision. Share with us, first of all, the name of the book, so we can get that out there. So I highly recommend that everybody goes and gets your book. But then I really want to know, why did you decide to make your personal journey pop?
[00:15:56] Speaker B: So the name of the book is Facing My Biggest Fear.
And it tracks 180 days after my wife passed away. And it really is kind of my.
One of the things that I. That I realized pretty quickly is if I let my mind race, it's going to run me straight to hell pretty quick. Pretty quick, right? I mean, this is. This is the love of my life. We've been married 30 years. We had six kids together. We had a top 1% happy marriage. This was my best friend, right? This is. She was my everything. And funny enough, a few years back, I remember my brother and I were in a conversation, and he said to me, just in simple conversation, he said, what's your biggest fear, Kyle? And I said, losing Shelly. And without even thinking, I spit that out. That was my biggest fear, right? And so when she passed away, I remember thinking, whoa, this is my biggest fear, right?
If I can get through this, I mean, the world is my oyster. I mean, I don't know how else to look at. I'm a pretty positive guy. And so I'm. And it's. Sometimes it's annoying to some people. It's. It's. You know, I'm an eternal optimist, and it's a communicable disease, right? So people, if you're around me enough, you're like, geez Louise, is he always like this? And the answer is, yeah, kind of, I am, right? And I find that it's because it keeps me happy, right? Optimism, keeps me moving in the right direction, keeps me focused on the good things. But when this happened, you know, like you said, how can this be turn into anything good, right? And I remember right after I used to believe, you know, there's a book called the Law of Success by Napoleon Hill. You're probably familiar with it. And there's one part where he talks about, for every trial or tragedy or discouragement we have, I'm paraphrasing, for every trial or tragedy or discouragement we face is the seed of equivalent or greater value Right. And I remember growing up thinking, that's true. Well, when my wife passed away, I thought, that's not true anymore. There can be no equivalent or greater value to this tragedy in my life. And it really bothered me, right? But what I realized is that if I, each night as I sat down, I would put my laptop, I would sit in bed. And by the way, that's the worst part, right? I'd spent 30 years next to my wife, chatting every night about the kids, about our lives, about our love for each other. We prayed together in this bed, right? I mean, there's so many things, and I knew that would be the toughest part. So I just sat down with my laptop and I would write stories about her or about us or about how I was feeling. But I always made a mental note that said, no matter what story I tell or feeling I share, I want to write down. Before I stop writing, I'm going to write down how I'm going to escape this or move forward in happiness and joy. And what it did was it let me get those, that pain out or those feelings out. And then say, but you know what?
I'm going to continue down this path with my kids. We're going to make our lives a testament to her.
We're gonna. And allowed me to really, each night to go through the pain, but also feel good enough to lay my head down and say, you know what? I got this, right? Because I kind of have to. I still got these six kids. I can't just.
I can't just fall apart, right? I remember a friend of mine, he told me about his brother in law had lost his wife. And he said when they lost their mother, they lost both parents because he completely fell apart. And I thought, I can't do that, right? I don't have that choice.
So I have to make a plan here to manage this in a way that allows me to be the man I need to be for my kids. But also I've got to feel it. I've got to live this life. I've got to let the suffering be part of who I am. But I can't let it spiral me into something that I, that I don't want to become. And so really what this is is me writing down almost every night for 180 days, six months, and telling stories about Shelly, about how we met, about our experiences we had together, about, you know, growing up and how she grew up and how we had worked together. And some of it is just me saying, I can't do this anymore. I don't know.
Sometimes it was dreams I would have about her.
And so a lot of this book is just my. It's basically a diary of the happiness and the pain, you know, of the joy and of the misery.
And it's all just in this. In this compilation of things that I. That came to my mind, that I felt compelled to write about. I don't think there's any rhyme or reason to it as much. As much as is it. When I've. When people have read it, they've said they just connected because it kind of goes up and down like. Which is kind of how our lives are built. That's kind of how our lives work. And so that's the reason I wrote it. I didn't ever plan on publishing it until one of my sons was asking me some questions about something, and I told him what I'd been doing. And he said, holy crap, you have that?
He said, how many pages is. I said, I don't know. And he says, will you. Will you check? And I found out it was almost 200 pages of just every night for almost six months of just me writing those things. So that's really what the book is. I'm not sure it's designed to get people through the six phases of tragedy or loss or whatever the case may be. It's just more me just pouring out my heart in writing.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: You know, there's a. There's a program that I would participate in called raila, and we had this session inside the program famously known as you are not Alone.
And the kids. These are kids, really, that were teaching them about leadership. And it's a Rotary. Rotary program. If you've heard about them, they tell these horrific stories and sexual abuse and all kinds of terrible things. And at the end, there's always somebody else in the audience who's been something.
Multiple people, something similar. And at the end, everybody says, you are not alone. And I would like to, from the deepest part of my heart, say thank you for sharing your story, because the. It is such an empowering thing. I'm so touched by your story, I can barely speak. It's such an empowering thing to let people know that they are not alone and that there is a shared humanity to all of us. So I'm absolutely certain whether these stories ultimately come to you or do not, that your story will bring strength to many people who need it and possibly be the difference that they needed in order to cross that threshold and find the strength in their heart to be there for the people around Them. So I have no doubt in my mind that what you did is incredibly brave and incredibly appreciated.
[00:23:43] Speaker B: Well, thank you, Ari. I think it's interesting because it's helped me. I've gone back, right? And here's what's interesting, Ari. About. About a year and a half after she passed away, I was going back and reading some of this stuff. You know, there are moments where I'm just.
I'm heartbroken, you know, just overwhelmingly heartbroken.
And one of the ways I manage that is to read about those experiences. And here's something really interesting is a year and a half or so after this happened, I found myself in that position. I was reading and as I was reading, I came across that same quote. I had written that quote down from Napoleon Hill.
And you know, the first time I read it, it upset me right after she passed away.
Well, when I read it again, I read it differently this time. Aryan. I read, for every challenge or trial or tragedy we face is the seed of equivalent or greater value. And that word seed jumped out at me, right? And I thought, wait a minute, this can be true again. Because it's not saying that I'm going to receive something as beautiful as what I lost. It's saying my job is to nurture. A seed is not a full blown flower. A seed is something that needs to be nurtured. And so I asked myself, how do I nurture the seed of equivalent or greater value? I don't ever expect to see that bloom, but I can nurture that seed, right? What can I do personally that allows me to nurture that seed so that I can see goodness? Somehow some kind of goodness can come out into this world from this tragedy that we faced as a family. And it really, it buoyed me up in that moment because it made me realize this just isn't. You know, there's others that go through trial and through tragedy and they maybe, you know, need the help. Maybe they can find something and maybe we can be a source of help or hope.
Because you're right, you know, you can't ever really, you know, time does heal all wounds. And I've heard people say it doesn't heal all wounds. And there's some truth in that because you always feel it, right? But you're always going to have the scar, right? But it doesn't mean you're still bleeding, right? And I think for us, being able to look back and attempt to continue to spread the beauty that she created in our world helps us to create a nice scar on that wound. So that we're not still bleeding out into the world. Right. We've come to a point where we're okay sharing the story because we know there's other people that are currently bleeding, and if we can help them patch up a little bit that open wound, that maybe they can start to heal up a little bit and start moving forward with. You know, you're never going to be the same, the scars never going away, and you still know the pain and the struggle, but it doesn't mean you can't. You haven't healed to a point where you can share, you know, your struggles with others and, like you said, connect. There's a.
One of the things I never did, Ari, is I never joined a grief group because they made me sad and I didn't want to be sad. Now, maybe that was selfish of me and maybe my job was to be there to make them happier.
And maybe I missed the mark there. And now that. That just came to my mind, Ari, I just realized maybe I was supposed to be there to help them get happier instead of letting them make me sad. And I missed the mark on that. Maybe I'm going to go join a grief group now just to make other people happier, and maybe that's something I could do. Right? But I think the idea that we are alone in our own is just. It's not true. There's so many others out there that have experienced something, maybe not exactly the same, but they've still gone through trials and tragedies that are horrific and horrible and painful. And by talking about it and saying, you know what, we can survive and we can thrive and we can move forward, it really allows us to not just repair our own pain and stop our own bleeding, but the idea that somebody says you can never heal from a wound, it makes me feel like they're still bleeding. And it hurts my heart to think that they'll bleed forever because that's not a great way to live. To stay in that same open wound bleeding state is just too harsh to imagine because I've been there. I know. I know how that feels.
[00:28:27] Speaker A: It's an incredibly brave and difficult decision when you are at that point. Yes, you can choose darkness and victimism and pain and believe that you have no control over your future and you can choose light. And I think that that choice is incredibly difficult and requires incredibly large amounts of power and energy and resilience and grit. So it's not an easy thing. And I do believe that a. The act of service is. Can definitely push somebody across that line. When they need it. I have been in some very dark places in my life. You know, everyone has their own version of their pain. It's not comparable to anybody else's, but, you know, when there was a shooting in the STEM school at my kids school, two of my kids were there.
My, my wife, like myself, is ex military. She, she can deal with really tough shit. Her first day on, on the job, you know, soldier blew his brains out, but at that stage she was catatonic and, and, and I kind of somehow pulled my shit together and you know, it's a story within itself. I was able to befriend a fireman and based on our shared service, I was able to figure out within a short amount of time, even though he shouldn't have told me that. You know, actually my kids were in a different building, so they were safe. That was, I don't think that there was any time in my life that. And I've had shit explode around me. And being on places that the day before or the day after blew up, I was never ever as afraid as I was at that moment.
And you know, it was just a small thing that somebody said that completely turned my day around and was able in that darkness to, you know, bring me joy and help me see the light.
And we never know what are the things that we do that will have a fundamental life changing impact on somebody. You have no idea. In most cases you will never know because they don't necessarily come back and say, oh, you changed my life, you know, 10 years later.
So, you know, I, you know, news media, if it bleeds, it leads, right? Negativity bias. We're so attracted to the things that are negative and it's what gets us likes on Facebook and all that crap. But at the end of the day, the good things, we just can't measure them for many reasons, but that doesn't mean that they don't have value. So I salute you and I salute what you're doing and I'm truly, truly grateful.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: I gotta tell you something. When you mentioned the kids sharing their stories and how just horrible things, right? It reminded me of.
I can't remember if I read it or saw it on YouTube or where it happened, but I remember hearing about this producer who was part of the Marvel Hero series movies, right?
And he said something I'll never forget and it was just a really powerful thing for me to hear in that moment. And he said, you know, the hero and the villain in these movies both have the same backstory.
He says the villain had some pain and struggle as a kid, or, you know, he was hurt by the world. And so the villain grows up and says, the world hurt me. I'm gonna hurt the world back. Right? You've heard this, haven't you? But the hero has the same backstory, right? The hero has been damaged and has been put through hell and faces pain, and the hero says, the world hurt me. I'm not going to let it hurt anybody else, right? And I thought to myself, how, you know, some of the greatest people I know have gone through some of the most traumatic, difficult things, and they have taken it and turned it into beauty, right? And they've. They've let it design a world where they become the heroes of their own story, right? And they become heroes to other people that look to them. And you mentioned the most powerful thing we can do is how can we serve, right, when we're caught up in our own pain, it can be a way for us to spiral, you know? But when we're in our own pain, we have to realize that we're not the only ones. Who else out there can I connect with? Can I chat with? Can I talk to?
Can I brighten their day, right? And when we do that, we find it changes us and it changes them. You know, one of the things. I'm one of my. And I'm a big planner, and occasionally, very rarely, but occasionally, I come home to a completely empty house. My kids are all of the age where they're out and about doing things. And that's when it's hardest for me, because for years, I would always come home to my wife. She was there, right? I come home, there's no kids to talk to. I'm sitting there on my. In my chair, and I'm thinking. It's. It can strike me, it's like a.
It's like a sword in the heart sometimes, right? And I know that. I know that. I know what happens to me. And so I've made this plan where if I come home and I'm the only one here, I'll pull out my cell phone and I start going through friends and I start calling them, and I say, hey, how you doing? It's good to talk. And I'll go to the next one and the next one, and if they don't interest, say, hey, I just want to let you leave a message, let you know I'm thinking about you. You know, I've been thinking about you. I care about you. Call me sometime. I would love to chat. And by the time and There have been times where my kids have come home, I'm still on the phone, and I'm talking to people, and they're brightening my life, and I'm calling them, right? I'm calling them.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: What a joy to receive a message even saying that somebody else is thinking about me. I mean, not only are you, you know, you're. You're doing your own thing, but you're bringing joy through. It's just such a delightful thing to hear.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: It's so. And it's so easy, right? But I know I'm not going to sit back and wait for the world to beat the crap out of me, because it's doing that anyway. I got to have a plan to fight back. You know, if you're in the military, you know, I did some boxing over the years, and you don't go in there with your hands down and just throw wild punches. You protect yourself. You set up. You set up and you practice defensive moves so that you don't get tagged upside your head, right? And I'm like, if I need to set up defensive moves when I know I'm vulnerable, right, Because I've got. I've got to be strong. I'm the only one left for my kids at this point. You know, I can't fall apart right now. Here's the cool part. They know I'm not. They know I'm going to have moments, and they. And I tell them, and they're. They're okay, let me know when so I can be helpful, right? And so what it does, ultimately is, is you don't. Is setting, is by isolating, you know, or turning inwards, you really. You really do. Can do yourself some real damage, right? But if you turn outwards and you focus on others, and maybe it's just calling a friend you haven't talked to in a long time and say, hey, listen, I came home to an empty house. Will you chat with me for half an hour? Will you chat with me for five minutes? You know, I had one person say, I'm the first person you called.
And I said, yeah, you're the A's. You're Aaron, right? A, A, R, O, N. And he's like, oh, I love that I'm first. I'm first. And I said, listen, here's what I do. Can you have a moment to chat? And he said, heck, yeah. And we had a great time. And by the time we were done, he said, kyle, I can't tell you how much you brightened my day. And I said, you have no Idea, Aaron, that you are my. You saved me in that moment. Right. And it's just the act of looking outward when we're feeling the pain inward can be so powerful for us, you know, and it allows us to engage other people in creating connections that are just so strong. Right. I mean, I've got people checking on me I barely know. Right. And I'm like, why would you check on me? Well, because you said this to me a couple weeks ago. Ah. I reached out and connected with you. I said something. Right. You never really know what's going on. But. But people want to help. They want to be helpful. They want to love on you. Yes. And all you got to do is reach out and love on them a little bit, and they're going to reciprocate.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Yeah. I think it's more that people are.
Are afraid to be vulnerable than it is that they don't understand the value of the interaction. It's just hard. It's difficult. But if they take that first step, the delights that you find are really more than you could imagine.
I have an incredibly selfish question, okay. As am I a parent to three kids? And as many of our listeners are executives with kids?
This top 1% marriage and happiness, that just struck a chord with me. I know I am messing up with my kids and learning with them every day. Just this morning, my son, you know, I don't know if we recorded this or it was before we started talking. My son had a meltdown around socks or my other son, he.
He's telling me the story in the car that, oh, you know, he knocked the bottle over by mistake of some other kid. And it's like, well, okay, you know, if it was by mistake and, you know, say sorry and make sure they're okay and, you know, help out and, you know, if it was on purpose, you know, we'll have a different discussion, and there's different lessons to be learned here. Okay? Okay. Okay. So five minutes later, he's like, daddy, it wasn't okay. So now. And I'm like, okay, I'm not sure I was prepared for this conversation. So, you know, you have to step into that. But. And as I said, this is an incredibly selfish question.
What did you put on that plan? How did you communicate that plan? What did you learn through your process on how to, you know, basically turn your values into realities?
[00:38:53] Speaker B: So I'll share with you. First of all, if you go to KyleJetzel.com and go to Free Stuff, you can see our map we created, and it's There. And you can have it for free. You just have to download it. The cool part about it is we were smart enough to say, what do we want and what do we not want? Right? Because I think you have to have two sides to this. One is you have to have something to work towards pleasure.
And. But I think because my wife has always been motivated by pleasure, I'm motivated by not having pain. Right. I'm running from pain, she's running to pleasure. And so we kind of on our map, did both sides. What happens if we don't do this? What are our kids going to turn out to be? How will they treat us? Will they even like us when they're adults? Well, we have these family get togethers where nobody really likes each other, but you just do it because you're supposed to. We didn't want that. Right. So we kind of, you know, and that was a big part of it. But what came of that ultimately was, was my wife and I worked together on challenges and we created something we called a cost formula.
And it's the cost in cost stands for what is the challenge? That's the C.
What is the long term objective is the O.
Then we have an S, which is what is the strategy we're going to use? And then a T or what are the tactics? Right. And I'll give you a good example. Your son says, dad, here's the challenge. Your son's tipping over bottles, right.
How do you manage that? Right. Well, if your son is tipping over bottles, there's a couple things that could be happening if we look at the challenge. One is he might just want attention. He might be a playful kid that got over exuberant, you know, or he might just tip over bottles to see what happens. Mike, one of my sons would do crap just to see what the results were. Right? And he did some crazy crap, you know?
[00:40:46] Speaker A: Right.
[00:40:46] Speaker B: So what is the challenge? What is the objective? I want to teach my son, you know, it's okay to test waters in safe situations. Right. I want him to learn. I don't want to break his spirit. Yeah. Maybe he's a bottle tipper and that leads him to be Elon Musk. Because he's tipping over bottles, seeing what happens, and he realizes, holy crap, if I tip over the right bottles in the right order, I can go to the freaking moon. Right? I don't want to. I don't want to break that spirit. Right. But I do want him to learn how to tip the right bottles in the right order.
So the long term objective Is to teach him how to discipline himself and how to learn lessons in that moment. Right. So what is the strategy going to be called? I'm not going to name the strategy until I create tactics.
Right. So the tactics are. Is get the whole truth. That's the first tactic.
Because our kids will lie to us. I've had one of my sons got in a fight at school. He came home and told me this great story about how he was, you know, fighting a bully and taking up for another kid. I go to the school, and that wasn't the truth.
Right. He was pestering some kids, and he deserved to be. He deserved to get beat up in this situation. Right. He deserved everything, you know, so. But one of the things that my wife and I got really good at doing is taking a beat. Whenever you hear, whenever you're faced with a challenge is you stop right in the heat of the moment. A lot of us make decisions in the height of emotion, and that's the worst time to make decisions. You know, maybe your kid is driving you nuts at the end of the day and you're tired and you scream at him. Right? Because it works.
[00:42:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:27] Speaker B: Right. We do things because they work.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:42:29] Speaker B: Well, we got really good at taking a beat and asking ourselves. We even came up with, I don't know if you can see that, but it says W A I T on it. And that that stands for what am I thinking?
Right? And we would say, when things got really crazy or when the world was going to explode, we would stop and we would say, what am I thinking? Right. And we would catch ourselves in negative thoughts, anger, in frustration and discouragement. And we would ask ourselves, how is what I'm thinking productive? Is it helpful? And how can I do this in a spirit of love?
Right. Those three questions will change the way you see every situation.
Right. Is me being afraid is that helpful? No. Is it productive? No. How can I face this challenge in a spirit of love? Right? So your son says, I tipped over the bottle, dad. You know, immediately you want to say, what the crap are you doing? Are you nuts? You know, you're not supposed. That's the first thing you want to do. Is that helpful? Is it productive? How can you do that in a spirit of love? Because he does need to have discipline. Right. And they need to learn it from us.
So to start asking questions and say, how can I talk to my son in this heightened moment, in a spirit of love, you know? And what it does is it changes the way we talk to each other. Yes. The way we Talk to our kids the next time your wife upsets you. You know, think. Wait, what am I thinking?
[00:43:54] Speaker A: Ten minutes into the future.
[00:43:56] Speaker B: There you go. That's right. What am I thinking? Is this helpful? My thoughts? You know, she's. She driving me crazy. That's not helpful. She's driving me nuts. That's not productive. How can I do this in a spirit of love? And then you start thinking, you know, I do love her. How can I express how I'm feeling to her in a loving way?
And it changes you. Here's the cool part. Here's the cool part.
[00:44:19] Speaker A: I'm sorry to interrupt. I found out that the things that make me the most mad that my wife does are the exact same things that I love for the most for.
[00:44:29] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: Isn't that crazy?
[00:44:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
And if you think about that, when your wife is driving you crazy and you go to her and you say. And you thoughtfully think, how do I express in love? How do I pour out love on her as I discuss these things that are aggravating or discouraged, whatever they are. Right? And you talk to her differently. You talk to her quieter, more love. And you know what happens? She feels it and she listens. And by the way, I learned this from my wife because she would do it. I grew up in a rough neighborhood where violence and the threat of violence was worked. Right. That was my default. And when I met her, she was so dynamically different from me. And over the years, she just loved on me so much. And she would say, kyle, what's going on? I'd be. I would be furious.
She would say, what's going on? And she would say it so lovingly. It would take my. It would. It would shock me into. Oh, wait, I can't. I can't yell at her. I can't express. I need to talk to her like she's my angel, because she is right. And it would calm me and it would. It would settle me. And I realized over the years, as she taught me this, we started doing this with our kids, and it changed the dynamics of our relationships with our kids. Now, it doesn't mean they still don't do that crap, because they do. Because they're kids, right? That's what they're supposed to do. Yep. My wife used to say, kids are like velociraptors. Right?
And if you're from. You remember the movie Jurassic Park? So they have them in this cage, and there's electrified fences around it. And what are they doing? Every 30 seconds, they're testing the fences to See, to make sure the electricity is on, right? Systematically testing all the time, every day. So they shut off the electricity for 30 seconds and what happens? They escape and they kill everything and they take over the island, right? Kids are like velociraptors in that they're constantly testing, they're trying things out, they're seeing what works and kids do what works, right? If your kids are nagging you all the time, you know why? Because it works.
[00:46:37] Speaker A: You taught them that it works.
[00:46:39] Speaker B: So what do we do? As parents, we lovingly, we, in a loving way, teach them. That's not going to get you what you want. What will get you what you want is this, right? And so you know that kids are. They're always going to do it. That's who they are. That's how they're designed. They're supposed to do that. That teaches them how to work in the world, right? We do what works in the world and when it stops working, we adjust. The problem is, in our homes, if we let the wrong things work, they take it out into the real world and then it gets them in real trouble, right? And so for us, a lot of it is just managing our minds. What am I thinking? It's so big. Because what it does is, it is. You'll wake up in the morning and you'll start having negative thoughts and you say, wait a minute, what am I thinking? Well, they're negative thoughts. I know where this is going to lead me.
What thoughts can I replace with? And then you start focusing on those things and what ends up happening is you get better results, right? And so the map was the first step and it led us to creating our cost formula.
We had a son that would melt down and just tear the house up physically.
That was a challenge, right? Our long term objective was we came up with that. We came up with a strategy name, we came up with Tactics. And every time he would start doing it, my wife and I were on the same page. We knew the tactics. And always the first tactic is do it in a spirit of love, right? Don't scream, don't yell, talk to them lovingly and then follow these steps. And what happens is the kids start to see consistency with mom and dad, right? They can't use mom against dad or dad against mom because they're experts at that too, by the way. And it's not because they're bad, Ari. It's because they're kids. That's what they do. And they'll use each other against their mom and dad, right? They're slick. They're, they're creative, just like velociraptors. They're smart, they're creative, they adjust on the fly. They got all day to figure out how to manipulate situations, not because they're bad, but because they're kids. Right? So when mom and dad get together and say, here's the problem we're having with this son or this daughter, here's the challenge. How are we going to manage this moving forward? And we have a series of tactics we can follow.
We do the same thing every time and the kid gets the same results. And they think, oh, there's consistency now I see, and I can adjust and try something else. And then mom and dad will make another cost formula. What's the challenge? What's the objective? What's. And it's so funny. I have a three ring binder that's full of cost formulas. Everything from kids screaming in church to kids that don't want to go to church, to kids that would fight with each son. I had sibling rivalry, really like you wouldn't believe. I mean, my sons fought like they were military. I mean, they had, you know, and so we had to address these things and we, and we had tactics that were very consistent. And as we applied these, as we applied these strategies, the kids adjusted. Right. Even velociraptors are useful if you, if you put the right guidelines around them. Right. Because again, we don't want to break their spirit.
We just want to aim them in the right direction and protect them from really damaging, harmful things. But they don't know that. They just think we're trying to tell them what to do, when in reality we're just trying to guide them. But you know, you have to have a map and you have to think through these things and be conscious, thoughtful about how you manage these things. And this really was helpful for us. And it created, like I said, having an overall map. The really cool thing about it, I think, is, Ari, my wife and I grew up in different situations. We had different ideas on what would work. But once we wrote out our map, we became submissive to the map and not submissive to each other.
Right. I wasn't asking her to submit to my ideas and she wasn't asking me to submit to hers. We would discuss what we think would get us the best results and then watch because the goal was the ideal, not my thoughts or her thoughts. And what that did was it created, it created closeness between the two of us. She didn't have to submit to me. I didn't have to submit to her. We had a, we had a goal and we became submissive to the plan. And together that just encourages connection between you and your spouse. And it makes for, you know, my kids used to accuse us of being against them together. Right.
Because we were united. And I remember one time I told my kids, my wife didn't like this.
I said, you know, what if we're on a boat and it's going down and I can save mom or all six of you, y'all are going to die because I'm saving mom right now. And she said, don't say that. You're going to think they're going to think they don't love you. You don't love them. And I. And what ended up happening was they loved how much I loved her.
They, they watched, they knew.
One of the most powerful things I think my kids ever saw was how much I loved that woman and how much she loved me. And it gave them some sort of comfort and stability.
Right? And that's what kids really need. They need, they need stability. They need that.
[00:51:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:51:43] Speaker B: The guidelines that we can create, all too often we're just kind of random in how we do it. And so this helped us.
[00:51:49] Speaker A: Kyle, I want to ask you one last question.
What would you advise 20 year old Kyle?
[00:52:02] Speaker B: I would, you know what? I don't know that I would advise him because I don't. Do you take advice when you're 20 years old?
[00:52:08] Speaker A: Nope.
[00:52:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't. I didn't either. I was pretty hard headed. I would probably, if I could go back and talk to Kyle for a few minutes, I would say, it's going to be hard, man, but it's worth it.
You know, every painful lesson I learned, I needed to learn. You know, every joy I experienced, I needed to experience. You know, I've asked myself before if I could go back and I knew I was only going to have my wife for 30 years, would it change anything?
Right? And I'm so grateful that I can say I don't think it would. I mean, I loved on my wife. I mean, I loved all my wife. She knew it, you know, and knowing that, I'll share with you one last story because this will give you an example of that. I remember one night, my wife and I, we prayed together and we hopped up in bed and we were talking about the kids and her eyes welled up with tears and she said, you know what, Kyle? You really love me, don't you?
And I said, what?
We've been married 20 years. We got six kids. What the crapper? And then I immediately stopped talking.
I stopped talking, and I said, you have no idea how much I love you.
And I left it at that. And for the next couple days, I started to think about.
She didn't really know.
There were some questions until that moment, right? And in that moment, she realized it took 20 years for my wife to understand my deep devotion. But she did, right? And I don't think she could have had we not been through the tragedies and the trials and the. And the pain and the fights and the arguments and the. You know, all those things create that relationship.
And so I would go back and tell Kyle, man, you're killing it. Go get them, right? You're not gonna. You're not gonna be financially where you want to be. You're not gonna be this. But you're gonna have the most important thing, which is a family that loves each other. You're gonna have some stuff very few people can say, right? So go get them, man. Make every mistake.
Experience every joy and love every minute of it, you know? And I think that's probably what I would tell myself. And frankly, I think that's what I've tried to do, and so I'm really grateful for that art.
[00:54:42] Speaker A: Kyle, thank you so much. I am grateful for you, and I wish we did this in person so I could stand up, come over and give you a hug. I deeply appreciate you as a person, and I'm going to get your. I haven't read your book yet. Going to get your book. And I feel like I have so much to learn and to put into practice, and I'm deeply grateful to the wisdom that you're sharing through your hard tribulations. Thank you so much, Cal, for joining us today on the show.
[00:55:11] Speaker B: Ari, it's been great.
[00:55:13] Speaker A: Thank you so much.
