Have you ever stood at the crossroads of self-improvement, feeling both daunted and determined? Join me, Aaron Thomas, on Excellence Above Talent, as we traverse the rocky terrain of personal growth and male leadership. This year's journey has been a profound one, wrestling with the ego and learning to let faith lead the way. It's been a battle against the lure of destructive habits and the quest to find value beyond our missteps. Through candid discussions, I delve into the power of our surroundings, the role of intentional living, and the courage to travel those dark roads with the light of self-awareness guiding us forward.
As we draw the curtain on this transformative year, I want to leave you with an empowering message. You are worthy, and your value isn't diminished by the challenges you face. Tune in for an intimate conversation that promises to bolster your spirit and ignite your passion for what lies ahead. We'll explore the vital impact of structured habits and the importance of spiritual accountability in steering our lives and those we love. As we look to the future, I invite you to continue this uplifting journey with us, always striving for excellence and inspired by the hope that the best is yet to come.
#excellenceabovetalent #EAT #dontgiveup #youdeservethebest #youareenough ...
Have you ever stood at the crossroads of self-improvement, feeling both daunted and determined? Join me, Aaron Thomas, on Excellence Above Talent, as we traverse the rocky terrain of personal growth and male leadership. This year's journey has been a profound one, wrestling with the ego and learning to let faith lead the way. It's been a battle against the lure of destructive habits and the quest to find value beyond our missteps. Through candid discussions, I delve into the power of our surroundings, the role of intentional living, and the courage to travel those dark roads with the light of self-awareness guiding us forward.
As we draw the curtain on this transformative year, I want to leave you with an empowering message. You are worthy, and your value isn't diminished by the challenges you face. Tune in for an intimate conversation that promises to bolster your spirit and ignite your passion for what lies ahead. We'll explore the vital impact of structured habits and the importance of spiritual accountability in steering our lives and those we love. As we look to the future, I invite you to continue this uplifting journey with us, always striving for excellence and inspired by the hope that the best is yet to come.
#excellenceabovetalent #EAT #dontgiveup #youdeservethebest #youareenough ...
You're listening to Excellence Above Talent, a podcast where we have the hard conversations about the lives of men and what leads us to achieve greatness and suffer defeat. Hear from other men's journeys as well, as we all learn and grow together to become inspirations to ourselves and those around us. And now your host, aaron Thomas.
Speaker 2:What's up, my beautiful people, aaron Thomas, with Excellence Above Talent. Man it has been a minute since I put out a podcast. I've been telling myself I need to be more intentional with it and I just have not been. The first couple of years I was very intentional. 2023, I wasn't as intentional as I wanted to be, and have nothing to do with anyone else but myself. So last episode of 2023 and I want to talk about the importance of knowing who is leading your life because I feel like 2023 has been a year of amazing learning.
Speaker 2:I have gotten to learn about myself in so many different ways. One thing I've learned about myself is I have to have a better plan. I have to have a routine, because I'm the type of person that, if I'm not doing something productive or if I'm not, if I don't have like a routine or a plan, I get off of the track and I start to put myself higher than I need to put myself and replace myself with God and become the God of my life, and when I start to do that, I know that trouble is right around the corner.
Speaker 2:I know that there are temptations that I will want, with him falling too, because I'm trying to make myself bigger than what I need to. And so 2023 has just been that. It's been a rollercoaster of letting God lead and then me trying to lead, and letting God lead and me trying to lead, and there is a lot of not trauma, but there's a lot of stress and frustration and anger that has been brought up because of my own action, like I've stressed myself out by making choices and decisions that wasn't conducive to living a life that God wants me to live. And it's a battle, like it's not something to where I'm gonna fix it immediately. It's just I'm in this war and I feel like a lot of men is in this war of when leading we get comfortable.
Speaker 2:We feel like we have it under control and I'm starting to realize as a man, you never have it under control. You just every day. You know work to make it better and you have to make sure that you're being led by something that is going to lead you in the right direction. I'll say this.
Speaker 2:So if you don't let, God lead your life, something else will, and there's a lot of men who have became monsters not because they are and lately a monster, it's because they allow something else to lead their lives and it took them down this path to where they became a monster. So I know when I watch porn and I don't get it under control. There is a monster inside that comes out of me when it comes to it's never enough. She can't give me enough.
Speaker 1:I want it from other people.
Speaker 2:I need it from other people. I want to see what it feels like from other people, right, and so I know, you know, from the struggles of having porn. I know that if I go down that path, if I allow porn to be my God in my life, it's going to lead me down a path of destruction.
Speaker 2:There is no if answer, but about it? Alcohol is the same way. You know, if I mix alcohol and porn together, it's a combination of like. I could care less at that point. I don't care who I hurt or what I hurt, it doesn't matter. And so this process of understanding and trying to learn, you know from my past and why I did the things I did.
Speaker 2:2023 was just a year of a lot of personal growth, a lot of challenging myself to be better, the ups and downs and realizing that I am not the monster that I thought I was in my head. Yes, there are things that could make me a monster, but that does not define who I am as a person.
Speaker 2:And I have to make sure I am around the right people and I'm doing the right thing when it comes to people, friends and family. Making sure I'm at the church that's going to help me grow and be better. Making sure I'm at a job that isn't sucking the life out of me, that I really get to enjoy. Making sure that.
Speaker 2:I have hobbies that are productive and it's not going to lead me down this crazy path I've had to make those changes, and change is hard, and so you fight it every so often because you don't want to alienate yourself from the people that you thought were your friends. But once you start changing, the people that you thought were your friends will start to pull away from you.
Speaker 2:They'll say that you're different or you think you're better, and our reality is just that you want to, to grow and be a better person. So it's like going off on a tangent. As a man, you're not a monster. You are what you do, what you listen to, who you talk to, who you let lead. And if you're in a place in your life where there is unnecessary stress and frustration and anger, you can't look at your wife and your kids to try to figure out, you know, or blame them for why you feel the way you feel.
Speaker 2:You have to take a look within yourself and ask yourself who is leading your life and where are you? Going, because a lot of times when I asked myself that question. I was leading my life and I was going nowhere, and that's one of the most frustrating things as a man Like what's the point of living if I'm looking in the mirror and I don't know who I am? Because, me trying to be God, I'm leading my myself in places I shouldn't be and it's taken away from the essence of who I am.
Speaker 2:And then two if I don't know where I'm going if I'm just waking up and just living like just going to work coming home going to work, coming home, that's not really living. What's the purpose? What's the point being?
Speaker 2:a provider is great, but that's not what you were called to do when you were put on this earth. That's not what we, as men, were called to do when we were put on this earth. We were called to live in our purpose whatever purpose you have for God but you also didn't have to provide a protective protection. You can take care of your family, but I feel like with me, I can't stay with anybody else you get so caught up in the I gotta provide and protect.
Speaker 2:That you forget. There is a provider and a protector for you, and sometimes we as men are. I'm the one, but we're not the one. God is the one that provides and protects and in return, we turn around and provide and protect for our family.
Speaker 1:And I see it, and I've done it so many times.
Speaker 2:where I'm the provider, our protector, it's all on me, it's all on my shoulders.
Speaker 1:No one else can do it, but me.
Speaker 2:But there's a verse in the Bible it's from Matthews 11 and 30, and it says for my yoke is easy and my burden is light, For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I, for some odd reason, want to carry a heavy burden because it makes me feel more manly. But in carrying that heavy burden. I break myself down to become an easy target to temptation, and these are some of the things that I've learned and I am learning in this process of where my life is going now.
Speaker 2:God is trying to lighten the load so that I can give him more and then turn around and pour back what he's giving putting in me, pour it back into my family and friends. But instead of allowing God to lighten my load because I don't think it's manly, I try to hold on to the burden that life is creating, and I hold on to it because it makes me feel more of a man.
Speaker 2:But, holding on to my burdens push me further and further away from God and makes me God of my life. And when I become God of my life, everybody suffers. Everybody suffers because I can't carry that load. I can't carry those burdens by myself, and we live in a society where men don't have the opportunity to have conversation and to talk about the things that they're going through.
Speaker 2:We don't have the space to be open and to be vulnerable, to talk about the burdens that we're going through, so we try to hold them all in, hoping that it doesn't break us. But when you look around, the suicide rate is high. There are young men in the eighth grade trying to kill themselves because of the burden that they feel that they have on their lives in eighth grade.
Speaker 2:I have talked to two of them. One he's taking pills and making sure there's Narcan, so if he passes out they shoot him with the Narcan. He has told me he has over those five times. And there's another kid that took a bunch of pain pills because he don't want to be here in the eighth grade.
Speaker 2:We are not teaching young men to unburden themselves, so they feel like they have all this weight that they have to carry around. When there is a person, there is an entity, there is a thing that wants to take your heavy weight, your heavy load, your heavy burdens, and he wants to make it lighter, it's not going to be where what you struggle with is going to disappear.
Speaker 2:It is you now have strength to fight what you're struggling with you now have strength to continue to get up and walk with that heavy load, because there is something that is helping you with those burdens that you have. It is not porn, it is not sex, it is not alcohol, it is not drugs. That's going to help you unload that burden. And those were all the things that I tried to do to help me unload those burdens, that heavy weight that I felt on my shoulder. But those things only make it worse. Those things only add more weight to your shoulders. So you have to find something that is going to help with that heavy weight that you're walking around with.
Speaker 2:There has been an attack on men where weak with soft, we hurt people. Women are strong. There's just been a negative attack on men from people who don't understand where men are coming from, like there is this big thing on toxic masculinity, which I hate, because if you as a person, is screaming out toxic and you're calling someone toxic, and you're calling someone a narcissist and he's a gas fighter he's this and he's that.
Speaker 2:I have a hard time believing that there is something that in you as well, because you know it so well. But there's a frustration in this word toxic masculinity, where people try to break down men and tell them that they're not good enough that they have to be docile, and they can't really be who they were called to be, because then you become toxic.
Speaker 2:And so men are afraid to be men, and we're also afraid to teach our young men what a man is. So we're stuck in this middle ground of not wanting to piss people off and struggling with our manhood. And I'll tell you this right now I would rather piss people off and not struggle with my manhood than to try to find a common ground because there is not one there isn't one Men are not toxic because we aren't doing what you feel like they should do in their lives.
Speaker 2:If you really want to look at it, that's bonus or this that's gaslighting, that's abusive. If your partner or your significant other is always calling you out to be something that you're not, you have to sit down and have a conversation with yourself when is it? Coming from.
Speaker 1:Am.
Speaker 2:I, and if you are, then work on it, but if you're not, are you struggling with it?
Speaker 1:Then you have to then pull back and be like am I the?
Speaker 2:one being manipulated in this situation. I have been through the ringer in 2023. And it's a lot of. It has been a condition of me making the wrong choices in my life, but there's beauty in and I don't run away from learning from my mistake. A lot of people want to act like they're perfect or they don't make mistakes or they don't have these deep, dark, sadistic secrets that they would do anything to not let out.
Speaker 1:But in my life.
Speaker 2:I have realized that talking about it, letting people judge and make you and make themselves feel better because of your mistakes or because of your bad choices, frees you to where you don't have to walk around acting like your stuff doesn't stick. I know my stuff sticks, I know yours do too, but if you want to walk around like it doesn't, you're cool. You don't have to. You can just walk around like your stuff doesn't stick. But all of our stuff sticks and we're all trying to figure it out.
Speaker 2:And that's the beauty of life. Every day that you have been gifted this life is a day you can figure out how to make it better. And the first thing you can do to make it better is, when you get up in the morning, have a session with God each and every day, because what you seek in the morning is what you will seek all day. If you see social media in the morning, that's the first thing you open your eyes to. You look up, you grab your phone, you jump on social media. When you get bored or frustrated or angry, that's the first thing you're going to look up. That's the first thing you're going to grab throughout the day is social media. If it's porn, the first thing you're going to pick up or think about is porn sex, ass and titties. If it's alcohol, the first thing you're going to think about, the first thing you're going to want to grab to drink when your day is going a certain way.
Speaker 2:Good bad it doesn't matter. It's alcohol If it's.
Speaker 2:God that's the first thing you think about when things are good or bad is the amazing God that you serve and how much he loves you. It matters, especially as a man. It matters that you have a routine and a plan in place for your life, because if you can't lead you, you can't lead anybody. If you can't lead yourself, you cannot lead anybody else. Your wife, your kids, people at your job, you can have the title of management or leader, but if you have trouble leading you, if you have trouble having a conversation with you about making your life better and holding you accountable, how do you expect to lead anybody? And that was one of my issues in my last marriage. I wasn't a good leader.
Speaker 2:I wasn't accountable for my actions until later on down the line, but at that point it was already too late. The damage was already done. You have to learn to lead yourself as a man, and then everything else follows. But you have to learn to follow in order to be a leader and in order for others to follow you. God is the ultimate leader.
Speaker 2:You have to follow God as a man and when you're following God as a man, he will lead you down the path where you need to go.
Speaker 2:And if you're married with kids, then they're going down that same path and it's a path where they need to be, versus a path where it's just chaotic and destruction and hurt and pain and trauma because you're trying to lead without no life. Let's just say you are the driver of a car. You have your wife, your kids, your goals, your dreams, your aspirations, your job, your career. You have everything in that car which you have as the leader. And you're driving in this car and it's pitch black and as far as you ask in for help or being led and the direction that you need to go, you just keep driving your car and it's on a thick, dark road, hitting potholes, hitting things, swerving, getting into wrecks. What's gonna happen on the inside of that car With your wife and your kids and your career and your goals and your aspirations? They're going to be beaten up. And if you continue to try to make yourself, God over everything.
Speaker 2:You will be beaten up, and there's nothing harder to me than to look around your family and friends as a man and see the destruction you have caused, because they jumped in the car ready to follow because they thought you were a leader. And after a while you look around, you're beat up and they're beat up and they still love you and they still believe in you. And all you have to do is cut on the light.
Speaker 1:ask for help, god I can do this by myself. Be the light.
Speaker 2:Help me see where I'm going, that I'm not hurting the people in my life that you have placed in my life to love, provide and protect, for Nothing is heartening as a man when you look around and you're supposed to be providing and protecting for your family and you're making it worse. God is telling men to turn on the light. God is telling men to speak ask for help.
Speaker 2:Surround yourself with men who aren't going to just allow you to say and do anything. Surround yourself with men who are going to hold you accountable for your actions. God is saying turn on the light so I can protect you, your family, your aspirations, your career, whatever it is that you are asking me to protect. That's the only way, as a man, you'll be able to in this world that is so freaking dark.
Speaker 2:God wants to unburden you as a man. God wants to show you where you need to go. All you have to do is ask. All you have to do is turn on the light.
Speaker 2:All you have to do is make sure, whenever you get up in the morning, that he's number one priority. Everything else has to wait. Everything has to wait. May God be number one in 2020. Try it for one year, I am. I'm going to try it for one year because I know that God is good and I know that he's going to watch over me and protect me and love me and show me where I need to go as a man.
Speaker 2:So 2024 is just a year of letting go and following where God wants to leave me. I dare you to try it as a man. So I want to wish you a happy New Year's and 2024. I see you. You are enough, you are worthy, you are strong.
Speaker 2:Don't let this world tell you otherwise, because it will look back at what you have accomplished and what you have done in God and with God, and know that he has so much more for you in this world. I love you. I can't wait to see the amazing things that God is going to do in his New Year's. You'll have a blessed day. Bye-bye.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode and for daily motivational and up-to-date content. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram at excellenceabovetalent. And remember keep moving forward, never give up and you are never alone in this battle. We'll see you next time.