Some men don't fall apart because they're fine, they fall
apart because they feel like everybody depends on them.
Today at the All In podcast, we're going to be talking about
the pressure of being the strong one, how that role forms, and
what it costs when you feel like you can't depend on people in
your life. This is the All In podcast.
Thanks for tuning in. Did you guys say that you are
dependable people? I have a big back that can carry
a lot of weight. Short king with wide lats.
My lats are so big I have to put chafing ointment under my
armpits every day. I like that.
That's cool. Thanks for.
Sharing. Thanks for sharing that, Joe.
Michael, you're welcome. I would say I'm dependable,
Yeah, yeah. Tell us why.
I, I'd like to come through for people.
Yeah, you know, no, I, I think mainly I am someone that's very
steady. I would agree.
And I think people know that, or at least my friends know that,
and they can depend on me just being steady and being, you
know, dependent. Be the strong one.
John, Michael, this is something that, you know, again, we've
known each other for a very long time, too long.
And in college, you were a bit all over the place.
He wasn't. You were.
What? Did you say who was it?
Well. There's there's people that we
can think of, but but John Michael was one that you didn't
know if he was going to show up when he said he was going to
shout out. Oh yeah, early.
Early, early. To a different place if.
He was going to respond to your text if he was going to, if he
was alive. You just never knew what was
going on. What?
What mode of transportation was going to get him from point A to
point? BI have a tier list on like who
I who I'm dependable towards. I don't know if this if you're
the same way of like there's some people that I will move
everything else for and there are people that will move
somethings for and there are people that I won't move much
for. You know what I mean?
I don't know if that's what you're saying with John Michael,
you'd. Be in that third.
Category No, no, no. You'd be in the top category.
What would you guys? Let's define that a little bit
more. When you say someone is
dependable, what exactly does that mean?
You can depend. You can't use the word in its
own definition. In this language.
Yes, thank you. You could do it in Spanish if
you wanted to. How do you say dependable in
Spanish? I don't know dependable.
I don't know. You have to remember that I
moved to states when I was in 4th, 5th grade.
I I still talk Spanish with my family but.
But you don't talk about being dependable.
I don't know how many third grades you know that talk about
different speak dependable not a word that.
Is do you have a third grade vocabulary in Spanish?
No, I would say I have more. It's hard to define, you know, I
would say I have, I definitely have a vigor vocabulary in
English, in Spanish, but I would say I have middle school, high
school level vocabulary. Really interesting.
I have no grammar skills. I'm not dependable when it comes
to the grammar in Spanish. In Spanish, like how would what
does that mean in English? Like if you're bad at grammar
when you're speaking, but it's like what you're.
Saying if you're bad in grammar in Spanish, you're bad.
What? Is English.
I don't know what that means though.
Like to be bad. OK, I'll I'll, I'll share this
story. That was wrong.
Pronouns you. Did that good versus you did
that well like that kind of thing?
That's great, no? Like in Spanish accents, like I
don't know how to write in Spanish that well.
Accents. There's a lot of hidden letters
like. A little mustache over the end.
Yeah, the Enya. Enya is.
It like when John Michaels says I axed him versus asked him do.
You say that? Yeah, my wife says that.
I axed him. It's a very losing anything.
I think it comes from my background in the hood.
And your private school and your private school in Dallas.
Yeah, but I I'll close this out and then go back to
dependability. It is So when I moved to the
States, when I got here in 4th grade, they had already done
grammar like in in America, like a dude, like second, third
grade. So I still get really lost with,
I know an adjective is a person, place, or thing.
That's about as far as my grammar goes.
I know how to draft a sentence. I know how to write.
I know, but I don't know what an adverb is.
Fascinating. Yeah.
What are we talking about? Again, the chosen ones.
So whenever you opened up this episode, I really thought you
were going to say the hidden pressure being a chosen 1.
Yes. That's how you named it, which I
thought was a killer name. Do you think Anakin felt a lot
of pressure? Did he know he was a chosen 1?
I don't. At what point did he find out?
You, you you're the, you're the Star Wars guy.
You're a huge Star Wars fan. I would call you Star Wars nerd.
Really. Yeah.
I read the books. Yeah, other books, the comics.
Absolutely, there's books. No, but the the movies didn't
come from books I don't think. The books came out of.
Movies. The books came out of movies.
OK, I'm a Harry Potter nerd. Yeah, yeah, Chosen 1.
In high school, I was ranked in the top 1000 in the world in
Harry Potter trivia. On on Sporkle.
Or there was a trivia app but everyone was on it and so it was
a good ranking. I I still hold.
You got to think that's a lot of pressure.
Both of your parents get murdered when you're an infant
and the whole world is depending on you by the time you're 11
years old. Yeah, No, Yeah.
I mean, yeah. Hard to find more pressure in
the world and your best friend's a ginger and your.
Best friend's ginger. That's tough.
There were some other movie chosen ones.
We named Anakin. We named Harry Potter.
What is Anakin the Chosen 1? He was, he was supposed to be
the future. But in this is where I get lost
in Star Wars. You guys can correct me.
I thought. Wasn't Luke Skywalker the chosen
1? Isn't that up for the bait?
Is that? Well, he was the chosen one, but
then that's the whole thing is Anakin's his son and so it was
supposed to. Pass down.
Anakin is the dad he becomes. I got my movies, I think.
Palpatine was a Chosen. One I got my.
Movies mixed up anyways. Other people.
Would you say? Simba is was a chosen one.
That's a lot of pressure. Huge.
You watch your dad get murdered. All in cold blood movies have to
do with murder, murder, attempts of fathers and then the sons
become yeah, the chosen one. But isn't.
OK, back to the Star Wars thing. What's the what's the the girl's
name in the last one? Elsa.
Hermione. It's Sky.
She's a Skywalker. She finds out.
She's Layla. Layla Ray.
Ray Skywalker So is it, you know, obviously those movies are
would you? I wouldn't call them spin offs.
They're sequels. But it was stories that were
created not by George RR Martin, but by George Orwell, George
Lucas, George Orwell, excuse me, George Lucas, but by whoever it
was. George Lucas.
No, he didn't write the, he did the.
First, oh, the sequels. What was his name?
Well, that was the whole thing with it.
It was that big director JJ Abrams.
JJ Abrams did well. He only did.
Want it too. He wrote the first one, which
was copy paste one of the other movies.
And then Ryan Johnson, who all of his movies are fantastic that
not relate to Star Wars, wrote the the one after and he tried
to like add things to it and like just like be more creative
with Star Wars because I would Star Wars I think gets a little
stale when it's like everything about these movies has to be
like surrounds one family. You know, it's like the whole
Galaxy surrounds one family, the Skywalker family, so.
In in the and. Then people didn't like it, and
so JJ Abrams took it back over. And then the last one did
storylines, things that Ryan Johnson did.
And that's where it got like even wonkier than it did before.
And it it was just a mess. But in But you would would we
say now, now knowing now having seen all nine of the movies,
it's 9, right? Yeah, 9 movies.
Yeah, plus. Cartoon Network series you kind
of throw. That in there, yeah, Attack.
The Rogue One. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
We have some of those. But now, seeing all nine movies,
would we say that Ray Skywalker is actually the Chosen 1?
That's a great question. I.
Played the entire time I played the.
That's a great question. What a great scene.
But she's somewhat, you know, in the final.
In the final scene. She has to learn dependence.
You know she's in. She's an orphan, right?
Or yeah, she's an orphan to an extent.
Or maybe her. To an extent.
Well, I mean just. Only one of my parents died.
Well, yeah. So I'm trying to remember.
She disbanded the. Work like a medical news como so
yeah. But she learns dependence in the
final scene. Not to spoil it for our
listeners if you haven't. Well, she she learns dependence
using. I don't think we're spoiling
anything, I don't think. We're, I think we're.
We know nothing. Well anyways, I got to imagine a
lot of these people bought some pressure in their lives.
So what do you guys think it means to be dependable?
I wanted to go back to our list of of chosen, the chosen ones
that didn't work out because we hit the movie.
We hit the movie realm. Yes, maybe we can go to like a
politics realm, a sports realm of who are the chosen ones.
That never worked out. Can you know someone that
probably had way too much pressure on them?
Tell us. MO Bamba, you like I, I, I, I
don't remember if he was that good in college or anything.
He didn't. Even.
Play for he went to UT Austin. Oh yeah, he's.
A Longhorn 71. Yeah, he, he's a tall dude, but
I don't remember him doing much. And then next thing you know,
there's a song with his name that blew up that.
Everyone was. Like the song I?
Don't know if people know that it's about an actual person.
No. But then I don't know if he's
still in the league. I don't think he really worked
out. That's got to be a lot of
pressure. You're a household name not
because of what you do, but because someone wrote a song
about your name and now you're not that good at basketball.
Is he even in the NBA anymore? I don't know.
I thought in Europe. Brownie James.
Right I. Mean it's too early to tell if
he's too. Early.
I wouldn't say it too early. What about Zion?
I mean, yes, for sure that's that was the next route that I
was going to get was #1 draft picks that turned out to be
busts. So I feel like that's kind of
like the. I don't.
I wouldn't put Zion in the bust category.
Where would you put? It I would put him in the.
Hasn't just yet. He's been a while, but.
He's a. 100% a bust. You think so?
Eight years in the. NBA.
So I saw a stat that he has been injured for more games.
He's been on the IR, more games than he's played in his
eight-year NBA career. He's a full bust, just like he
busted his shoe because he was £300 and the shoe couldn't take
it any. Well, so I mean, OK, there
there's an element of him being a bust.
A lot of his injuries were due to the fact that he's
overweight. And so you could say maybe you
could put, I just think if you're dealing with injuries, do
you count that person as a bust? I'm talking you think that their
talent level because he's extremely talented.
But he can't play. Right, because he's well,
because. He's not dependable.
He can't play. That's the definition of a bust.
Like maybe for your average fan he's not a bust, but for the GM
that made that pick, that's a bust because this person was
going to change your franchise. That's fair.
But I, I don't, I don't know. I'm just like.
OK, talk about pressure. Someone that actually, I, I
think of two people that had all the pressure in the world but
actually panned out, Kobe Bryant.
Kobe and we we. Have not talked about Kobe in a
couple episodes now. Yeah, I'm glad he made it back
on the cast. Yeah, absolutely.
But both of them had so much pressure, and you could argue
that maybe LeBron had more pressure.
I think so. Right.
It, it's like it's, it's actually kind of cool to see.
I don't know of any any high schooler that's had as much
pressure as LeBron James. You know they're.
Common not just like hasn't just lived up to the explanations,
but surpassed all the expectations, has never had
anything bad come out about them.
Like, the worst thing that's quite about LeBron James that
he's a little cheesy and uses too many emojis.
You know, like, oh, he loves pictures.
He loves kids. I can't believe this in my life.
I. Love that picture that's.
True. What both of them have in
common, what that two people have in common at this table,
they went to private high schools.
Catholic High School. Catholic private high schools.
Yeah, that's. Probably why they're successful.
Yeah, that's a good. Point.
That is an interesting thing. How many elite level athletes
come from Catholic High schools? Kevin?
Durant, Leonard, Fournette, Mobomba, Potentially.
We didn't look that one up. Yeah, well, so here's the thing.
I think there's 2, two different types of, you know, OK, so we're
talking, we're talking about high level athletes and we're
also talking about historical figures like Anakin and Harry
Potter. And King David.
And King David and you know, there's there they they
literally are the the the chosen ones to an to an extent.
I mean, LeBron has been, you know, the chosen ones.
Chess are back. What does it say?
Chosen. It says chosen one.
I mean, it's literally been since he was a sophomore in high
school where he's supposed to be the greatest.
Player on the cover of SI Magazine at 16.
Exactly, You know, And so the amount of pressure that's placed
on him, same thing with Harry Potter.
You know, everybody knows what he's he's supposed to do before
he even knows. So there's there's that reality
of the immense pressure that comes from having a high level
of talent and people expecting you to perform.
But then I would say there's also the pressure that we place
on ourselves and the roles that we play in our life of, you
know, there's almost like manufactured pressure to an
extent of like, you know, I, I need to perform because other
people are, are depending on me in situations where maybe that's
true of situations that maybe it's not true at all, but
they're just a random example that I'm thinking about.
John Michael is one of our roommates in college was
responsible for our house budget when it comes to the our our
rent and utilities, you know, and he made this huge
spreadsheet and, you know, you know, we were supposed to pay
him at a certain time every month.
And he was always the one that was getting on all of our butts
of like, hey, you need to do this.
And it's like we all pay the rent, you know, but for whatever
reason that that role was, was placed on him and then the rest
of us kind of became undependable.
At least I did for sure. I was always late on my Venmo
payments to, to him, but he, he, he took on that role in their
lives. Have you guys seen seen that
play out in your lives as well, where you kind of manufacture
this pressure and make yourself think that, you know that
there's more people depending on you and you have to be, you
know, the strong one in certain situations when maybe that's not
necessarily true? Yeah, I mean, I think right off
the bat I think about I'm the oldest in my family, Clayton's
the oldest. You are not middle.
Middle explains a lot. A lot.
But I think when you're the oldest sibling, you naturally
kind of have to take on more responsibility than your other
siblings because you're you're thrust into a leadership role
where you have to take on things quicker than your siblings.
And so I think that honestly, for me, that created a sense of
kind of that burden of responsibility of like, I can't,
can't really ask anyone for help because everyone is depending on
me. And when you create that sense
of I can't ask for help because people are depending on me, it,
it creates a sort of hyper independence and and
self-reliance that in from the outside looking in is a example
of probably a successful person, but interiorly can be a very
dangerous thing when you start believing I can't be helped by
other people. And you know, I felt that at
certain points as a father where, you know, your wife leans
on you, the kids lean on your wife and on you.
And then you're kind of sitting back going, well, where do I,
how do I help? My wife's having a hard time.
OK, she's leaning on me. My kids are having a hard time.
They're leaning on her. And therefore she's leaning on
me. Where do I go?
And I go to work and I'm the man and everyone and everyone is
leaning on me and everyone's asking me for things.
And then I, I talked to my dad on the phone.
He's like, hey, can you talk to your brother?
And, and all of a sudden you, you feel like I am, I am the guy
for everyone in my life. There is no one to come help me.
I'm by myself. My parents need me, my siblings
need me. My, my kids need me, need me.
And, and I think that's honestly one of the struggles of having
come to faith in Christ and having come into leadership
early in our lives is that we have many people who aren't at
that level. And so they look to us as a
sense of stability in their lives.
And it's, it's lonely, man. It's lonely.
Yeah, now, and I would say that that I feel like that's a common
thing amongst men, right, Is you, you put that pressure on
yourself and and you attempt to isolate and and even from the
small silly ones too. I know we've left about this in,
in previous episodes of I, I put this pressure on some of that.
I feel like I have to fix everything in my house, right
from the silly things of like, you know, we, we got some what
portraits, pictures of like our wedding and it and it took me
like weeks to put it up right. And I was like, can you just do
something? I was like, no, I'm supposed to
fix it. Like I'm supposed to do this,
right. Hey, our washing machine work.
OK, I need to fix it. She's like just text her
landlord. It's like, no, I have to fix it.
And those are silly examples. But I do feel like that that
does magnify. And it keeps building and
building where I'm like, yeah, whether you're the oldest child
or not, that's a very common experience amongst men, that
you've put this pressure on yourself and you tend to
isolate. And you're right.
Where do you turn from there? And we can get stuck because
we're because we don't know where to turn.
I think one of the, one of the issues is when you show
competence in life that people just start assuming that you're
OK. And so when you, when you are
coming across as, Hey, I'm doing well in my life, I got this
leadership role, I got this job, whatever.
People are just like, oh, well, Jose is fine.
You know, I'm not worried about him.
He's doing great. I'm, I'm, I'm never going to
check in. And so competence becomes a, an
excuse for people to not engage you and actually say, Hey, it's
OK if you're not, it's OK if you're not hitting the boxes
this week. So.
I think we've all heard the phrase it's lonely at the top.
It's lonely at the top and this is that experience of
loneliness, I think is something that a lot of leaders feel, you
know, whether you're at the top of an organization or you're
leading A-Team or you're leading a family or you feel like you
kind of play this leadership role, you know, amongst your,
you know, amongst your siblings even or amongst your friend
group. What would you guys say is the
difference between self-reliance and authentic leadership?
You know, I think that when people say lonely at the top,
there could be a reality that they have forced that upon us.
Like they, they've actually created that situation for
themselves because, you know, they've lost, they've lost trust
with people and now they're calling it loneliness.
And oh, it's, it's only at the top.
You know, meanwhile, I actually just burn bridges with those
that I work with and they don't want to work with me day in and
day out anymore. Or, you know, you confuse the
solitude with being significant in your in your company or in
your organization. And so there's there's a reality
that you pointed out of it could be loneliness at the top, could
be an example of virtue and that you have being been magnanimous
and achieved a result or an outcome that nobody else has.
And that has created a natural distance between you and people
who may not have the same capacity or environment to
thrive that you have. It could also mean, though, that
maybe you're actually the issue and you need to take a deeper
look at that and figure out, all right, why am I the type of
person that people actually don't want to engage with?
And I'm confusing that as leadership.
I think one thing that I've kind of felt in that I've come
through is my own life, and I don't know if you guys would
relate of a yeah, this loneliness a lot of times was
self-imposed, right? And what actually needed to
happen was I just need to put an effort to connect with people.
But I was confused on what connection meant because sure,
maybe, you know, I was at a role where I was, you know, in charge
of a team. Oh, well, it's so lonely because
other people don't really know what this is like.
Therefore we can't connect. But it's like, I don't, they
don't need to know what it's like for you to connect, right?
They don't need to have the same experiences for there to be
connection. There just needs to be more
effort for me to like be able to reach out and to explain and and
for the other person to receive without having to say, hey, I've
actually been through that too. And I think I got confused in
that a lot too, where I thought connection meant you have gone
through the same thing, therefore you understand.
But it's like, no, you are just my friend and you want to listen
and you understand what I'm feeling.
You might not understand what it's like to lead A-Team.
This is a, a, a small example, right?
But I, I got so confused with that of like, what does it
actually mean to connect that I thought it was loneliness?
When in fact, I seem to make a bigger effort to actually, you
know, talk to other people and, and explain what's happening to
the people and be OK with them not having the same experiences
and still finding connection to that.
Does that make sense? Very well said.
Would you would you very well said No, absolutely.
I think that the thing that you said that I was like, wow, that
pull that out as a nugget was when you said shared experience
doesn't mean connection. We don't have to have shared,
shared experiences for us to actually connect on things.
And I thought that honestly, that's that's the mindset of a
leader is we may not actually see the same things.
We don't get the same emails. We don't have the same
responsibilities. I'm more at pressure than you
are. But that doesn't, it doesn't
really matter when it comes to connection.
And so I want to, I want to take an opportunity to find things
that we connect on so that it is lonely in the sense of I'm the
one who has the responsibility, but it's not lonely in the sense
of I have a community of people that I'm engaging with to help
me solve creative problems. I, I know for myself too, like a
lot of times the the lie that I keep telling myself is like,
well, they don't get it right. They don't know what this is
like and all that light did was make me isolate.
One of the things that I've been wrestling with myself recently
is asking the question, what does it actually mean to rely on
God? I, I don't, I do not have an
answer to that question because I do not understand it myself.
But one of the things that I've thought about, you know, over
the course of of my own, of my own fatherhood is that, you
know, as a, as a husband and father, I want to be someone
that is reliant on God. But it's, it's hard to say that
I'm dependent upon God or I'm dependent upon other people when
there are other people that are depending upon me.
My children are depending upon me.
My wife is, is depending upon me.
And the temptation is to say, if I have other people depending on
me, then the safest thing for me to do is to be hyper independent
and to be completely dependent myself.
I need to be able to know factually and certainly with
certainty that that, you know, I can provide everything that is
needed for my wife and children, if you understand what I'm
saying there. And so, you know, the, the, the
reality is, is that, you know, I can go to prayer and I can say,
God, I need help, you know, like I'm, I'm feeling weighed down by
a lot of different things, you know, and I can go to him and I
can express those things to him. But then that there's a part of
me that it's like that doesn't, that doesn't change the, the
reality of, of what's, of what's going of what's going on here,
which is just that the things still need to get done.
You know, there, there are things that are, are dependent
upon me. And so I don't know, I, I, I
don't know what to, what it actually means to say I'm there.
There's a freedom that exists, you know, exists when you are
dependent upon God that I don't, you know, there's a part of me
where I'm like, I don't know what that experience is actually
is actually Like, does that resonate with you guys at all?
Yeah, I think it does. And and we could spend like a
whole other three hours talking about this and maybe we will
later on. But that what you're saying
reminds me a lot of the idea of surrendering.
And I remember when, you know, as I'm maturing my spiritual
life, people tell me like, well, you need surrender things to God
and be like, OK, I did. And then now what?
Like it didn't change anything. I said the prayer, I said the
surrender prayer, and now I'm surrendered.
But it's similar to that. It's like, OK, you need to bet,
not God. It's like, OK, I thought I did.
No, like, I'm still lonely. I'm still going through
something really hard. I relate to the experience and
honestly, what I relate to the most is not having a a
formulated full answer to the problem, right.
And I think as we're, you know, a couple seasons into this
podcast, I think what's what we've discovered is, you know,
for our listeners, it's it's that it's not that we have
explicit theological answers to your problems.
We don't we are not theologians. We say things that it maybe are
even a little heretical, like talking about King David
earlier. But but our shared.
Experiences that we have no idea what we're doing, but we're
trying to chase after it together.
And so to for our listeners to recognize.
Obviously we don't have the full on answers to what it's like to
be the chosen 1 and to hold the ball and to be the one to take
the shot. But we are dedicated to figuring
it out and we are also willing to share our faults, losses,
vulnerabilities, lack of understanding in the process of
doing that. Yeah, I think we need to learn
how to give other people permission to support us and
understand ourselves what exactly that that looks like.
And I, I think Jose, you, you, you the highlight of, of our
conversation here is what you were saying, which is just that
the shared experience, not having the shared experience
doesn't eliminate, you know, the opportunity for connection.
And I think something for our, our listeners back home is, is,
you know, to, it's OK to wrestle with the idea and not understand
what it looks like when you go to prayer and you want God to
fix your problems. You want to learn not to rely on
God, but you're still feeling, you know, this pressure
yourself. And there's different instances
of pressure in your life. There's, there's actual, real
pressure of, hey, there's a time crunch, There's things that need
to get done. There's pressure at work,
there's pressure in the family life and things that exist.
And that's, that's part of our life.
That's part of our exile here on earth.
And our and our pilgrimage is, you know, going through things
that are really difficult and then being, you know, learning
to have the self-awareness and understanding of knowing when am
I actually just putting pressure on myself that's that's undue.
And I need to be able to express that to other people so they can
speak into that and saying, Hey, you're being too critical of
yourself, you're being too hard on yourself.
You know, it. The what, the way what you're
feeling, what you're thinking is, is not actually quite true.
And then there's the pressure of of, you know, of being Harry
Potter, of being Anakin. And so far, our our listeners
back home, if any of you are responsible for saving entire
universe of defeating evil itself and its entirety, if your
father is LeBron James and you happen to play on the same
basketball team as him and you know you're expected to be what
your what your dad is, just know we're with you.
We understand what you're feeling.
And we invite you to share this podcast with others that you
know are going to be there to carry these things alongside
with you. Share this podcast with others
that that you can be vulnerable with, that you can share your
experience with that you can, that you can connect with, share
with someone who carries who, who, who's, who's carrying a
load right now. And they need to just hear some
humorous points about Anakin and Elsa Skywalker and, and, and,
and John the Baptist. This is the all in podcast.
Thanks for listening.