Divorce Recovery for Men: Heal, Rebuild, and Thrive 🌟 DPTSP #150 || Justin Thompson and David

[00:00:00] Today's guest is Justin Thompson, a dynamic author, brand builder, and host based in Horthworth, Texas, whose work thrives at the intersection of theology, intentional living, and cultural commentary. With a reputation for taking profound ideas and distilling them into practical, everyday wisdom, Just J, as he calls himself, invites us to rethink how we approach life, faith, and purpose.

[00:00:25] His book, Eternity in Real Time, A Common Sense Approach to Christianity, challenges the notion that eternity is something distant and makes the case that the present moment is sacred ground. Free religious jargon, but rich in meaning. As the founder of Good Woods, I'm going to go ahead and put that out too, a handcrafted walnut wood smoking accessory brand, Just J embodies the philosophy, how you do anything is how you do everything.

[00:00:52] Weaving intentionality and craftsmanship into both life and business. Today, he's bringing his unique perspective on masculinity, spirituality, and living a purpose-driven life to help our audience of men over 40 to rebuild, rediscover, and thrive after divorce. If you're ready to go deep, Just J is the guest for you. Just J, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Tell a little bit about yourself and I've got some questions for you.

[00:01:18] All right. No, thanks for having me. First and foremost, this is the honor to be here. I can check it out from my bucket list. Now, I've been on the Don't Pick the Scab podcast. I'm knocking things out this year. This is my year.

[00:01:28] My name is Justin. I'm officially known by Just J or Mr. Good Woods because I created the Good Woods brand. I'm out of Fort Worth, originally from Jackson, Mississippi. I'm an author. I'm a former church elder. I'm a certified sex therapy practitioner. Not a therapist. I want to get a career, but the sex therapy practitioner I am.

[00:01:49] But most of all, I think, and I've been an advocate for lots of things. But most of all, I think I'm a man who has watched the life that he built come apart twice and rebuilt it anyway. I think that's really who I am. That's really where I want to speak from tonight.

[00:02:09] Okay. So your book, Eternity in Real Time, argues that eternity is already happening. How can this perspective help men recovering from divorce live more fully in the present?

[00:02:23] So I grew up in church, but I think this part of church is pretty much germane to all. And that is this idea that it'll be greater later, right? That, yeah, suck it up, buttercup. It's tough now. It'll be greater later. Just get by. Get by in this moment for the forever that's coming.

[00:02:46] What I have found through research and honesty through life experience is my best approach to life is to live like I'm already in the eternity that I want. Just show up for that existence, right? So eternity in real time is really about being, again, very intentional.

[00:03:09] Because honestly, if we look, if I imagined myself, if I thought of myself, not imagine, but if I realize that I am spiritual being having a human experience, I am an eternal energy with consciousness and awareness that is moving through time, right? Because I'm not even willing to move me through time. I'm just particularly focused on time right now.

[00:03:35] If I look at it that way and I look at myself as my real self, my inner self as the player of the game and not the character in the game, then I move the pieces a lot differently. Then what used to move my piece doesn't move my piece by instinct anymore because now I'm in control. I've stepped back a little or better yet. I've stepped up a little.

[00:03:59] So eternity in real time is really about learning how to shift our perspective of the moment to realize that the moment is as big as we make it. And that every moment is meant to make us grow. And that by growing and building and deepening our consciousness, everything that we face will transcend it. But it almost starts to peak. So is it almost like you don't wait for the building blocks to build themselves?

[00:04:28] You start building now. Yes. You don't. For our society, probably the global culture right now has absorbed and accepted the doctrine of proving. You got to prove you're a man. You got to prove you're a earner. You got to prove you're a good father. You got to prove you're a good son. You got to prove you're good at whatever your job is or great in sports and athletic or in shape or smart or whatever.

[00:04:57] And everybody is at this position where they're being asked to prove something. And what I realized was, again, when you take yourself out of the position of the game piece and you become the player, you realize you have nothing to prove except to yourself. So then proving becomes more about improving. Right.

[00:05:18] So it's less about meeting this deadline for other people's perception in terms of my healing, in terms of my growth, in terms of anything. And it's more about just making sure that every day I just build. Even if it's just 1% more. If I'm intentional about improving, I don't have to worry about proving. Because what I present will speak for itself. And even if it doesn't, here's the catch. Even if it doesn't, and even if it's misunderstood, it doesn't matter.

[00:05:48] Because you know what you've built. Because you built it intentionally and you built it to improve yourself. That takes so much weight off. That takes so much weight off. So as long as you're going forward. As long as you're going forward and you're holding your being in stillness. Going forward in time, but holding your being in stillness. In other words, so I read this book called The Oddities of Time.

[00:06:15] And I think it's my first time reading it styled in this way. But I don't think it's an original idea. But here's the idea. There is only the present. There is no past. There is no future. There is only the present. And the present extends beyond the horizon in either direction. Our past is a construct. Our past is simply the way we separate versions of our present.

[00:06:48] Because if I, you're a podcaster. You've been a podcaster for years. What, almost 10 years now, right? So one could say he was a podcaster in the past. But that's the arbitrary line they're drawing. To be true that you are yet and still a podcaster. In probable fact, you are probably always a podcaster even before you started podcasting. Right?

[00:07:14] So when we're looking at defining ourselves, a lot of times we define ourselves in these very short temporal frames. Who are we today? Who are we this year? Who are we the last 10 months? The last whatever. But when we realize that the future never comes, because it always shows up as the present. And the past is just the present that we try to separate ourselves from, which is fine. Everybody's able to draw distinctions and change their story or fit the page wherever they want you. There's no problem.

[00:07:43] But once you understand that, you realize that really it's only present. That's all we have. That's all that we're in. And so if I can master myself in the present, everything else that you said just keeps moving. It just keeps going. But it's about, there's a stillness to it. There's a knowing where you are. I'm going to get this last anecdote. I don't know if it's a good one or not, but it's what came to my mind. I don't like getting these shots. I don't like it. I get them. I take them. I don't like them.

[00:08:13] I don't know who does. Got to be somebody out there. Who's, oh, shit. I don't know. He's got to be somebody. But here's how I dealt with the shot. One day I went in and I said, you know what? I am not this body. Not Jay. And I named this person Jay. But the being that I am is not this body. So is this person about to stick this needle into this body? The body's going to feel pain. But I'm not hurt.

[00:08:42] The part of me that's me, that exists, that is that energy. Because energy can't be created or destroyed, right? It only changes form. That's right. So the part of me that is conscious energy is not being hurt by this. It's not. But it is if I can't separate the two. See what I'm saying? It goes back to separating ourselves, you being the game character on the screen and the person holding the control.

[00:09:11] Got you. So I'm going to tell all my patients next time I see them, you need to separate the pain from the body. See what happens. Yeah. Realize. You're serving up for them. They might not appreciate it. You might have to ease them here. Finish your up. Yes. Push back. Trust me. Those men struggling with their faith after the divorce, what do you recommend they start rebuilding that relationship with God or spirituality? How can they rebuild that?

[00:09:38] I think the first thing that we have to deal with and having been there is disappointment. And because of disappointment if we don't deal with it. And because we think that when we get married, we're like, hey, this is God's blessing on my life. And we envision all these years to come and stories and activities and growing old and all of these things that we envision that had we not envisioned them, had we not thought that were possible, we wouldn't have gotten married. Right? So we feel like God gave us something.

[00:10:07] And then we get divorced. And we're like, somebody lied. Something somewhere, something is off. Either I misunderstood, which means now I got a problem with my relationship with God. Or God let me think this was good and it's not, which means now I got a problem with my relationship with God. Right? That anger that comes from disappointment can drive us to all sorts of places.

[00:10:30] I think the first thing a man has to do after a divorce is accept that he is still traveling through this world with God's speed. I call it light speed. God is light. I call it light speed. He's still traveling at light speed. He cannot afford to drop. The tendency is to drop out into despair. And I get it. It's natural.

[00:10:53] In rebuilding, which is what surviving a divorce requires, in rebuilding, what must first be rebuilt is our sense of self. And a lot of us draw our sense of self from our sense of faith because that's our purpose. That's our place in the universe. Right? So I think the first thing I would recommend to these people is this. Understand that God did not do you dirty. Okay? No, it feels like it. And understand that you didn't necessarily miss God.

[00:11:23] Just understand. It's really just the fact that we only learn from adversity. Our muscles only get stronger from resistance. So some stuff is going to have to happen. And this moment that you're in is necessary to birth you to this other person. Because you can't be who you were before the marriage. I could not be who I was before my marriage, after my divorce. I couldn't. And I couldn't be who I was in the marriage after the divorce. Right?

[00:11:51] I couldn't at the time because in the marriage I had been performing. Because I was trying to perform being a good husband. I was trying to perform being a good stepfather. I was trying to perform all these things. And then when we get a divorce, men think, does that mean that my performance was bad? I underperformed. I'm this. I'm that. I blamed myself at the time. And I was right to blame myself, if I'm going to be honest. I'm not saying the listeners should blame themselves.

[00:12:19] But I was right to blame myself because I had just been performing. I had been focused on proving. And I had not been focused on improving. And if I had been focused on improving, then when that marriage ended, I could have taken everything that I built in myself because I knew it needed to be there. And I could have moved forward with it. But everything that I created, trying to keep this marriage together, trying to keep this home together, all that stuff feels like it's shedding.

[00:12:47] And I think it all comes from the difference between improving versus improving. So can you relate that to a question like how does intentional living differ from simply being productive? What is this distinction so important for men over 40? Yeah, we got a saying in education that we got a couple of things, actually a lot of things. One of them is activity is not achievement. Right.

[00:13:14] When men are grieving the loss of their marriage, the loss of a future that they really had invested in. Right. And their resources and time and their love. Right. When they're grieving that, there is the part missing and there is an emptiness. And there's a desire to fill it with activity, fill it with another girl, fill it with a car, fill it with a new job, fill it with a house. There's an immense instinct to fill the void.

[00:13:44] Right. And my counseling to people with that is you if you don't fill the void with yourself, you're just creating an opportunity for another void. So when we're talking about building intentionally versus just keeping busy, if I'm doing what everybody else wants me to do, that will keep me busy. Right. And we can find purpose in that, man. We can find, you know, we'd like to be needed.

[00:14:12] I've often said women want to be wanted, men want to be needed. And it's just us. So, of course, there's purpose in that. Who you're building for and what you're building and why. Who you're building for and why you're building is more important than what you're building. So there is that desire to get out there and just start making stuff. I got to tell you.

[00:14:38] After my divorce, I was like, I'm going to show her I'm suffering and live my best life. The best revenge is success. So who likes me? You know, who likes me? They're off my shoulders. But even that was misguided. Because unless I was building something that I really wanted for me, then I was still stuck in that same story that had already ended. And I'm still pouring into a relationship that's not there.

[00:15:04] So I do think there's a real difference between intentional living and intentional building and just being active. We all want to build something. We all want to contribute to the world. We all want to leave our mark in some way. But what I'm really trying to shift the focus toward is if we build internally first, it will show us what to build externally. Right? If we start dealing with our need, and I think you're a great example. You came through a similar situation of divorce.

[00:15:34] You went through groups and the therapy. You were like, oh, you know what? I can do this. I can help people through this. And you started helping people. And so from that hurt, from that tragedy, you built intentionally. And I believe, you can tell me if I'm wrong, but I believe what you found was that by building intentionally, the gains are interning. Some gains are external. Yeah, you can make some money. You can get some clout. You can do whatever.

[00:16:03] But there's nothing that replaces the wholeness you feel when you're building something from the inside out. When you're building something that you said, you know what? I recognize the world needs this because I need this at some point. And you start building that, then it becomes a labor of love. Then you're not just keeping busy. Now you're building with intention. And that makes all the difference to me. I think it makes a difference to them too. Yeah.

[00:16:26] The one thing I didn't tell you when you were doing the pre-interview, that when I was a facilitator, every time I facilitated, I learned something. Every single time. And it was like, aha. Yes. Yes. So giving back and learning sometimes happens at the same time. How can the concept of masculinity be redefined for men who feel broken or lost after a divorce? It's funny. I was talking to a friend of mine today.

[00:16:56] Somehow the poem, If, by Reward Kipling came up. I'm not going to recite it, but I pledged to fraternity when I was in college and then made us learn it. But it's a great poem. And at the end of the poem, he says, if you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run, yours is the earth and all that's in it. And what's more, you'll be a man, my son. The poem has four stanzas.

[00:17:23] But it talks about the idea of people doubting you, the idea of people lying on you, people misunderstanding you, people kicking over your sandcastle, you throwing your everything into something. Maybe it's a relationship, a marriage, a job or something and losing it all and having to starve can scratch. I think for men, I would say we're told our masculinity is supposed to be performative.

[00:17:50] We're told that we have to perform it so people can see it. Right? Somebody looks at my girl like, what you looking at? Somebody step in my shoe, I'm ripping the ball from here. I don't take no disrespect. And we have all these things that we do externally to project our masculinity. Right? But honestly, I think the essence of masculinity is building with direction and purpose.

[00:18:19] And this is a very simple analogy to this. And so forgive me, guys, if I'm going just too basic on this. But if you look at the symbol for a female, it's a circle with a little cross underneath. Right? And there's all this energy, but it's not going anywhere. It's in the cycle. It just goes back and forth in the same pattern. That's why we have the same conversations with women all the time. We're like, did we just talk about this last week? I thought we already put this in bed. And she's like, I still feel some kind of way. And it just, it goes, right?

[00:18:47] But with men, the sign for man is that same circle, that same energy source, that same core. But it has an arrow. It has direction. After a divorce, the reclamation of your manhood is not performative. The reclamation of your manhood is going back to building the man. You, the man. What do you need? What was the need that led for, I'm going to tell you what I asked myself. Right?

[00:19:17] Because I mentioned this earlier before we started recording. Before my marriage, I remember telling someone I was having problems with my wife, and she was not treating me the way I wanted to be treated or love me like I wanted to be loved in this neck. And they said, basically what they said was, the problem was my stroke. Right? They were like, man, if you were laying it right. You know what I'm saying? Now, and that minimizes and trivializes all the other things that go into the breakdown of a relationship.

[00:19:47] While sex can be important, I don't think, I don't think that's what killed this particular relationship for me. I said all that to say, in that my masculinity, or at least the ego side of my masculinity, is challenged when someone says that. You know what I mean? It's, oh, I guess I don't have a magic stick. And everybody else who's still married, y'all want, I must be whatever.

[00:20:09] And so I would encourage me and everyone to not try to paint over what's going on. Don't try to gloss over it. Don't try to push past it. That grief that you're feeling from the loss of the relationship, that grief means something. And it doesn't mean that we're soft. It doesn't mean that we're weak. It doesn't mean that she got over on us. It doesn't mean that we can't go on.

[00:20:37] It doesn't mean that we, it doesn't necessarily even mean, although it could mean that we loved more than they loved. What the grief means is that we actually did love. It means you really did try. It means you were really in it. You were really committed. And that's not something to be ashamed of. That's something to be proud of because what happens after you show up is the other person's problem.

[00:21:05] But showing up, that's our problem. And again, I'm still saying not performatively, but showing up intentionally with who we are creating ourselves to be. Every moment, our decisions, our responses. And that means looking at what's not there and looking at what's hurting and not turning a blind eye to it, not glossing over it and saying, why? Why is this such a big part of me? What is it that I need? What was I needing that made me go to this person who didn't seem to have my best interest in our heart? If that's the case, right?

[00:21:34] So we want to brush past grief. It's uncomfortable. It's messy. We don't want to talk to our guy's friends about it. They think it's a pity party. They're like, man, you're struggling with that girl. That girl's kidding. And so there aren't often a lot of places where men can actually share and process their grief and mine it. M-I-N-E. Mine it. Because there's something valuable in it. Right?

[00:22:00] All emotions, and I'll say this, all emotions are energy emotion. They're few. There are no bad emotions. I know people are like, what about hate? What about anger? What about that? There are no bad emotions because they are fuel. Because they tell us that something about what's going on, something about the system that we're in, doesn't fit the systems that we built on the inside.

[00:22:29] Now, we can take that fuel and we can burn the whole thing down. We can burn ourselves down, our jobs down, our families down. We can. It's gasoline. You can put it in the car, pour it out and light a match. Right? It's going to do what it does. It's up for us to understand the properties and the nature of it and then put it where it's most useful in our lives. I say, yes, grief has purpose. Let's switch gears. Let's talk about co-parenting. That's one of my favorite topics.

[00:22:58] My co-parenting, my kids are grown now, 30s. But back when they were teenagers and middle school, my co-parenting situation was horrible. And for me to get through that, I had to change my mindset that I love my kids more than I hated my ex. Okay. What? It felt simple, man. But it got me through. It's deep.

[00:23:22] What are some of the ways, other than that, what are some of the ways my men out there can switch that and try to be a better co-parent even though it's tough out there? It's funny. First, I'm going to say, I don't know that this, I'm going to give the answer and I'm going to go ahead and go on a record now saying I definitely know I don't have all of them. But I can tell you what I've experienced and I can tell you what I've seen. In my current home, I share this home with my wife. I've shared it.

[00:23:51] At one point, there's my wife and all of the children from our first marriage, three children and some grandkids. My two kids from my first marriage, my wife's past, and my wife's sixth husband. Let us sit. Let us sit. Let us sit for a sec. And he'll be here. And they've been divorced for, ooh, at least 12 years, probably. At least 12 years they've been divorced.

[00:24:21] He lived here when I first moved to town and he left and he came back. I think he might have left or came back again. Anyway, he's here now. And I said all that to say, we are all parenting in this house. And what I found with parenting in a blended family, particularly when there are other parents around, like I could see there wasn't a father. Right. When their father is there. And in my case, he's very present.

[00:24:47] I think I have an extreme case of the father being present in the kid blobs of the ex-husband slash father being present. And what I've found is it's a village. It's a village and you're there to impart something that only you can impart. And so back to this performing thing, because it's a big thing. I see it everywhere. There is a part of my ego that can say, I want you to call me. I've seen it happen. I've seen guys and I want you to call me dead.

[00:25:16] I want you to answer to me. And I took a different approach. I just showed up as me. And I gave them fatherly advice when they asked. I gave them assistance when they needed it. And so I showed up in a way that wasn't to say I'm your dad. It was to say, these are the qualities that I bring as a person. These are the things I'm offering to you because I care.

[00:25:42] Now, what I found is people will love you for the relationship, not for the title. Right. In co-parenting, there's so much to co-parenting. Right. Because even in this scenario, my wife and I have very different parenting stuff. Very different parenting stuff. She never got spanking as a kid. She didn't believe in spankers. Right. I don't. Open every Monday for my entire sixth grade year. So I do believe in spankers at a certain point in time.

[00:26:10] Not to believe that they sundown or after a while when it's pointless, but we have some very differences, very big differences in parenting. But more than discipline, what shapes a child more than discipline is the bond you create. Right. It is the meeting of the needs. It's the love that you show by just kind of seeing them. And honestly, there's a reason why you have more than one parent if you're lucky. Everybody's going to see something different.

[00:26:41] And that perspective that you have, even if your wife doesn't see it, even if your cousins and your mama and nobody else sees it, that perspective that you have is valuable. And you can impart something to that child that nobody else would have been able to impart. So I guess what I'm saying is co-parenting is all about getting in where you fit in and getting in where you fit in isn't a fight for turf. It's not a fight for what goes along with your title. Getting in where you're fitting in, where you're fitting in is saying, here's what I bring as a person to my relationships.

[00:27:12] Here's what I'm bringing in my relationship to you. And that's more than anything will create the bonds. I've had the kids tell me, the step kids tell me, I love you. But I didn't have to pump them for it. Give me bonus dad t-shirts or Father's Day gifts. If and when anybody remembers Father's Day. So it's possible. And it's possible by not trying to worst yourself in the spot, but just trying to project just you.

[00:27:41] What you have is value. Just project you. So you talk about craft everything, rush nothing. How can this mindset help men build their lives intentionally? So I was always in the search for love. I have been a hopeless romantic, I think, since I was like six years old. I remember this girl at my church. I got her a flower. She'll tell her she wanted to get my girlfriend. The flower died. I thought it was a sign.

[00:28:11] I used to think, even as a kid, I was like, what if my soulmate is somewhere across the world? I passed him one day on the street. I'm supposed to speak and I don't. And that's right. And so while that's probably an extreme case that just happened in my own life, my own psyche, I think we all start out envisioning what we want to build. Envisioning the end that we want to see. And I think we start grabbing pieces that look like it, right? And we start snatching things into our world and into our life.

[00:28:40] We're like, oh, this will have a smack of that. That's going to look like that. This would work there. And we spend so much time accumulating the things that we don't develop the ability to hold it all together. A different analogy would be in math, addition and multiplication are cumulative. Three times four is the same as four times three. Three plus seven is the same as four plus. Three plus seven is the same as seven plus three.

[00:29:07] But subtraction, there's a very particular order to it, right? Correct. So as we go about assembling our lives, we can add things to our life at any point, the things that are supposed to be there. We can add them earlier on. We can add them later. But when we have to subtract the things we have to remove, that removal has to be timed properly.

[00:29:33] So I said that to say, when we are trying to build intentionally and we're trying to build our lives, there is a tendency to grab all the pieces. Instead of asking ourselves, what kind of person is this life going to require me to be? And then to cultivate that person, right? And not to get, you know, I wouldn't do the whole Bible verse of seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things to be added. But I did do it.

[00:30:02] Anyway, well, I was going to say you will find that if we are building the kind of man that we want to be, not the one we want to perform, the one that we really are. We're dealing with our issues, our fears, ego, all that other stuff. If we're building that, then we start attracting the things that that kind of man deserves. We start attracting the things that go with that kind of energy, that kind of lifestyle.

[00:30:30] Now, this is going to sound, again, probably like a not good analogy, but I do analogies all the time in metaphors. I don't know if you've ever noticed. Some really attractive people have a hard time keeping a girlfriend. They can get girlfriends all the time. I had a cousin like that. No offense, my cousin. Sorry, I'm not talking about you. We're not going to call your name. She'd be okay. But I had a cousin like that. He was a handsome fella, like Rico Suave. He had half Puerto Rican, half black curly hair. He came down to Mississippi with snatch and all the girls couldn't keep none of them.

[00:30:59] And the reason he couldn't keep them was because of his looks. Light skin and good hair. And he was like Puerto Rican when he wanted to be. He had a neck. He had a look exotic to him. But his looks never required him to develop the personality that would carry a relationship. So he didn't have to work at it. He didn't have to work at it.

[00:31:23] And because he didn't have to work at hewing in and sticking in with that woman and understanding her and getting on that vibe, he didn't learn to. And because he didn't learn to, he could get them, but he couldn't keep them. Surface. Surface. And that's my analogy for this idea of just building and trying to smash our lives together without making sure that we are intentionally building the kind of character that can manage it. Not just that it deserves it, but that can manage it. So earlier on, I answered you were talking about dating and this and the other.

[00:31:53] And I was thinking of pedal pushers up in the balcony of the church. Do you love me? Yes or no? Yeah. Do you love me? Take a number. Take a couple. All right. Let's talk about Goodwoods. Goodwoods is built on the notion that how you do anything is how you do everything. How does this apply to men trying to discover their purpose after a divorce? So I used to shoot rifles, air rifles in high school.

[00:32:21] I was in the JROTC program. We were a nationally competing team, did well, whatever. One of the things I learned is, and they also said this on the movie The Patriot, I think, with Mel Gibson. He's telling his son, he says, aim small, miss small. I use it for everything now. I use it for when I play pool. She uses it for everything.

[00:32:44] The gist behind aim small and miss small is we all have these great sweeping goals that we want in our lives for our love life, for how we want to be esteemed by our peers. Just we have all of these sweeping goals that we have. And we push toward them, but it leaves our energy diffused, right? Think of light, right? There's light all around me right now, but because the light's not concentrated, it's very powerless. I do feel some heat, but imagine the heat if it was focused.

[00:33:15] So what I speak of in terms of this is the focus. Not say, oh, I want to be rich. Say, I'd like to be financially sound so I can blank. That's a whole different proposition. Being wealthy is a big old dark man. Being wealthy because there's a purpose you want to accomplish, because there's something you want to achieve, gives you a bullseye.

[00:33:44] And it's a lot easier to come close to that bullseye when you're throwing at the bullseye and not just aiming at the board. So everything that we do, whatever we practice, becomes our character. So I practice being methodical and intentional and circumspect. Then it starts kicking in like motor memory, like muscle memory, right? It's just heaven. Our brains are little computers. They're always picking up heaven. Some we want, some we don't want.

[00:34:14] And so when I say that whatever you do, you want to do it well, you want to do it intentionally. And what I mean, I fear to say, make no moves that don't have purpose. Make no moves because you feel like you haven't moved in a while and you've got to do something. Sometimes doing something is doing nothing and just sitting with your thoughts, just sitting with your feelings and just allowing yourself to process and play back stuff. Right?

[00:34:42] Sometimes we blow through these levels of grief after a divorce so fast that we miss the point. We miss what it was we were really looking for in the mate. We miss what we should have seen, the signs that we should have seen in the mate who we just left. And we, most importantly, we were likely to miss why we missed those. Was it what we were really trying to, what was it that we wanted to see so bad we ignored what was there? Yeah.

[00:35:11] I think I went all the way around, but to say this idea of being in the constant present allows us to focus in the moment, allows us to be very present in the moment without being controlled or contained. And once we are present in the moment while still being above it as a player and not a piece, then it's easier to see how things lay. Then it's easier to start putting things in place where they should go.

[00:35:40] If we practice just moving, if we practice just performing, whatever we practice, that's what we're going to be good at. Gotcha. All right, Joshi. My men have about a half hour attention span, but I'm going to ask you one more question. So take that dart and that dartboard and you got one thing to impart to my men. What would it be? What's that zero? What are you going to tell them?

[00:36:08] Do not let anyone define your masculinity. Do definitely do not allow your circumstances to define your masculinity or your manhood. And the fact that there's a divorce does not mean that you are less than or it doesn't mean that you were way and found wanting. It could be that you guys outgrew each other. It could be that it was for a season.

[00:36:34] But the thing to remember about all of this is that if something has left your life, it's because it no longer has a place there for whatever reason. And fill that place with yourself. I have an idea, I would say. It is called building cut this through depth. Right. And depth means that I look at what's going on. I discern it. Right. And then I engage it. Right.

[00:37:01] And then I begin to practice this new idea. I look at my behaviors and I say, what does it say about me? And then I engage that and I shift it. And once I shift it, I begin to practice that. And once I practice that, it becomes part of my being. It goes for my personality and my consciousness. My very essence, who I am as a person is broadened. It's not because I'm super smart. Any of us can do it. And we can do it every moment. You can start tomorrow.

[00:37:31] You can start today. You can start as soon as you log on to this podcast. Somebody's going to come to you with something. Maybe something from the past. Something about your future. Stay in the present. Be intentional about who you want to be in this moment. And who you need to be. And who you'd be proud to be in that moment. And just be from moment to moment. Guarantee you'll make it to the future. If it existed. All right. We're not going to call that a mic drop. We'll call that a bill's eye. Hey. Here you go.

[00:38:00] Where from my man finds you on the internet? And I'll have... The best place to find me is mrgoodwoods.com. It's M-R-G-U-D-W-U-D-Z.com. I'm also on Substack. I have a Substack called Eternity in Real Time. But honestly, the best place to find me is mrgoodwoods.com. You can get a link to my book from there. You can get to the Substack from there. You can get to the podcast from there. All things are at mrgoodwoods.com. All right.

[00:38:27] And we'll have all those in the show notes and go from there. But hey. This was fun. You never know how it's going to turn out. Man. Like I told you before. This was awesome. You were very interesting. And we're not going to be in the show. But take your time and hold on the mic for a second.