How To Build Your Life After Tragedy - Michael Smoak (HigherUp Wellness)

1. 0:00 – 1:30

   Reunion in person & defining “turning pain into purpose”

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr0:00

      Michael Smoak, welcome back to Origin Story

   2. MSMichael Smoak0:03

      Dude, we're doing it in person this time.

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr0:04

      Yeah, you're in 3D. [laughs] It's weird.

   4. MSMichael Smoak0:07

      This is way better than my shitty little camera setup at home when I was still living with my parents in 2024, I think when we decided that was.

   5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr0:14

      Yeah, man, a lot's changed for us both. A message that you promote online is turning pain into purpose. When I say Origin Story, what's a moment in your life where you feel you alchemized that pain from a wound into work?

   6. MSMichael Smoak0:30

      It's an interesting question 'cause la- last night we briefly touched on the concept of, of alchemizing, turning something into something else, and I think we're always doing that unconsciously or consciously, and how we decide to do that is ultimately what brings the unconscious to the conscious. It's like we... The quote I love, "Un- until you make the unconscious conscious, it will guide your life, and you will call it fate." That's, that's Carl Jung. So when you experience loss or I experience loss or pain or uncertainty, I can choose to unconsciously just say, "Well, that sucks and that's another hard thing and that's gonna guide my life and make me bitter." But when I think about why it's important to do the opposite, I'm, I'm always called back to the scripture James 1:2-4, "Count it all joy when you face trials of many kinds." The rest of that verse is great. I suggest everybody look it up. But if we truly are able to count it all joy when we face trials, no matter how bad, how severe or moderate or mild they might be, we can then alchemize, as you say, or turn it into something that, like

2. 1:30 – 3:47

   Processing grief after his father’s death: non-negotiables and growth

   1. MSMichael Smoak1:30

      the end of that scripture says, "Makes us more complete and lacking nothing. Let perseverance run its course so that you may be complete and lacking nothing." So when I view or I look back on my life and I think about the difficult things I've been through, and I've been very blessed to not have been through a ton, but when I think about the worst thing I've been through, which was the death of my father, and specifically because if you've ever been or anyone's ever been in a situation where someone is slowly getting sicker and really suffering, people are afraid to say this, but for all parties involved, the death can feel like a relief 'cause they're not in pain anymore. It's just the truth. People are afraid to say that. It's the six months of [clears throat] high stress, high cortisol, nervous system being lit up for 24 hours a day that is the difficult part. And so when you ask where, where is a time or what comes up for me when I think about turning pain into something purposeful, I took the worst thing that ever happened to me, and I've learned that I can show up for myself [clears throat] in a capacity that I never thought possible, and I can still go train or coach my clients or create content and do the non-negotiables I knew I said would always be my non-negotiables even when I'm in this immense emotional and mental pain. And that taught me, well, if I can do it in that state, how good can I get when I'm in a peak state? That's a powerful lesson. [clears throat] It took me fully feeling and processing grief, and it was an... which was an incredibly painful experience, to be able to talk about my dad and what we went through comfortably. But now I can take that and teach other people how I did that. And one of my favorite lines from a Christian creator, if I knew his name, I'd credit him, he said, "The ultimate key to purpose in life is taking what God delivered you from and showing people how that happened." And that's what I do, uh, with grief specifically, and that's, that's the clearest example that comes up for me, and I'm ultimately grateful for the worst thing that ever happened to me because it has, as James says in the Bible, made me more complete and lacking less than I was before that experience, which the more we experience, the more we have to offer, and I feel like I offer the world more now.

3. 3:47 – 6:10

   Dead Parents Under 30: mortality, presence, and living with minimal regret

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr3:47

      It's something I relate to you upon. What is something young parental grief teaches you that you can only learn by experiencing it?

   2. MSMichael Smoak3:59

      This is unique 'cause I remember the day my dad died, a friend of mine, her mom passed when she was probably 25, 27 maybe, and she said, "We belong to a club. It's a specific club, and it's a shitty club, and you and I, David, both belong to it. It's the Dead Parents Under 30 Club, and it sucks." But it's unique because it's... you're not a kid, you're not 18 with the whole world ahead of you when they die, or I wasn't. I was 27. But I'm not there yet. I'm not married. I don't have children. I don't have a home. I don't have my own family life built and solid. So in a lot of ways, I'm still a kid, [clears throat] and there are things that my old man was still supposed to be here for. That's a weird experience. And I think the most valuable lesson above all else that I have learned is the finality of life and what matters at the end of our lives. Getting that... I know your, your mom passed suddenly, right? And I'm sorry for that. The, the thing that I think was powerful for me was listening to what my dad would tell me he wished he did more of in his life, and it was never work more, it was never think more, it was never take less risk. It was spend more time fully present with the people he loved. And this was a guy that lived an incredibly full life, like really, really intentional, and he still just wishes he spent more time with the people he loved. And so I think the best lesson it ever taught me [chuckles] is just, "Fuck it. We're gonna die." Like, do what you want. Be present. Love on people hard. Love hard. Live fully. Empty the tank on your life. I want to empty the tank on my life. That's why I'm traveling the world full time now. I wanna look back and go, "Wow, look at that thing I did for a year when I was 28. That was awesome." And I wanna get as close as I can in the last months or weeks of my life, should I have the privilege of knowing it's coming and not ending suddenly, to know that I have minimal regret. I don't have any hypotheticals I wish I'd played out. I just played them out. And I'm so grateful for that. I don't take anything for granted anymore because I see what it's like to be at the end

4. 6:10 – 11:23

   Rocking-chair cinema & redefining risk through mortality awareness

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr6:10

      I learned from my experience this idea of the rocking chair cinema. And what I mean by that is that-

   2. MSMichael Smoak6:17

      Mm-hmm

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr6:17

      ... at the age of, let's hope, 90, 100 years old, all you will have is your thoughts and your memories to keep you company. Hopefully, some grandchildren and some children around you. But either you're gonna be keeping yourself company with the cinematic experience that we call memory while you... or you'll be sharing those stories with your, your infants and their kids. And when I'm making decisions, specifically around opportunity and adventure, I play it through the lens of this 80-year-old fella, this phantom older me who will be reliving what I'm currently doing th- via memory and asking him, "In this moment, what would you choose to do?" And I only learned that through losing my mother. You may have only learned that through, through losing your father. And it's what I think the YOLO movement got wrong. You only live once. It's entirely false. It's a lie. You only die once, but you live every single day. It should be YODO. [laughs]

   4. MSMichael Smoak7:17

      [laughs] That's good.

   5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr7:19

      And yeah, through that lens, I've been making decisions. It's why I'm out here in Long Beach, California. But I only learned that through gamifying mortality, and you can only get that 3D lesson from being in that shitty under 30 club. It's not Forbes 30 Under 30, it's Dead Parents Under 30 Club. And y- you mentioned it in your opener. As much as I would pay every last penny in my bank account to have one last day with my mother, and I'm sure you would with Mike, your father, there is a sense of liberation from that struggle because life is now for itself and not the servitude of others immediately. But when turning that pain into purpose, turning that wound into work, in fact, they live on. They live on in that servitude. So you might not be serving them, but you're serving via them.

   6. MSMichael Smoak8:16

      Mm-hmm. Yeah. And in, in understanding the finality of life and how quickly it can come to an end or slowly, think you only die once is interesting because at the end of your life, you're gonna relive it through your own eyes. So that rocking chair cinema you alluded to, I, I watched... 'Cause there will come a point for most of us, most of us aren't gonna be lucky. We aren't just gonna go to sleep and never wake up. That's the best way you could possibly leave the earth. Most people don't have that blessing. For most of us, we're gonna suffer, we're gonna get weaker, we're gonna be in pain. Our friends are gonna die. Our kids are gonna get busy. Our grandkids are never gonna come visit. We're gonna be alone. And then, only then maybe will we have the relief of death. And I watched that. I watched a guy who's full of agency and autonomy be forced to sit on the couch and just reflect. And luckily, my dad lived a very full life. He did a lot of cool shit and built an incredible family and loved others, and others loved him, and so he had a lot of good to reflect on. I worry about getting to the end of my life and not having as much good as I possibly could to relive the movie. There's gotta be enough material-

   7. DJDavid McIntosh Jr9:27

      [laughs]

   8. MSMichael Smoak9:27

      ... to carry me through to the end, or I'm gonna go insane thinking about all the things I didn't do. And so I think when I think about that question you just asked me, the pow- most powerful lesson I've learned, I truly believe that risk is not real. If, if it's not gonna kill me, if my immediate physical safety is not harmed, and if I'm able to eat and pay rent or pay my mortgage, all risk is psychological. It's not real. It's a narrative that our minds craft to keep us safe because our brains are designed to identify patterns and familiarity. And now we don't live in a world where there's lions that could eat us or tribes that could attack us, so it looks for lack of safety elsewhere because that's still what it's designed to do. And that's why I love the, the phrase, "You are not your thoughts, and your brain is not always your friend," because the idea of mitigating risk is not real if our wellbeing is not being potentially comp- compromised. And so it's caused me to do a lot perceivably... People ask me about what I'm doing now, the nomad thing. Like, "Dude, that's fucking crazy. I can't believe you're doing that." And I just go, "What do you mean? I'm just living in Airbnbs. I have stoves. I have a bed. I have a roof over my head, and I'm making an income where I can... What do you mean it's crazy?" It's crazy because our threshold for risk is completely different because you don't really remember every single day that you could fucking leave this earth at any moment. Marcus Aurelius, "You could leave this earth at any moment. Let that dictate what you say, do, and think." And I truly believe that, and it's only through what we went through that I really embody that, and I want people to not have to go through what I went through to be able to embody the same. It'd be the best thing ever if I can teach people what I feel in my heart and my bones about life without them having to carry their dying father to the bathroom and back. I don't want people to have to do that. So I'm trying to, through my conviction, teach them.

5. 11:23 – 14:03

   Caregiving, pride, and being placed there for a reason

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr11:23

      What did caring for your dying father teach you about contribution and service for others?

   2. MSMichael Smoak11:29

      Oh, dude. It's such a double-edged sword because it was, it was weird from a, from a power standpoint. It was strange for us for a little while until there was just no room for it. So w- I remember at one point when he got really sick, I would just say... I, I was bending down, tying his shoes. We were taking him to a doctor's appointment, and his feet were super swollen, so it was hard to get his shoes on 'cause he just, he had this fluid buildup called ascites. It's a liver failure thing. And I said, "I know you hate me doing all this for you, Pop," and he just said, "There's no room for that anymore. There's no room for pride." 'Cause old men are proud. He didn't... He was my 10-foot-tall bulletproof role model, and now I'm, I'm dressing him and, and feeding him and bathing him. And that's gotta be hard for an old man. And it was, it wasn't hard for me in the way that, like, felt I shouldn't be doing it. It was just strange that, you know, my hero was now the one I was caring for. So when I, when I think about servitude, I think about how it was terrible, but I wouldn't have wanted it to be anybody else. I wouldn't have wanted to be some random nurse coming in and doing those things for my dad, and so I'm grateful. You know what it taught me? It taught me about the interesting and, and fickle ways that God will put us in the positions we're supposed to be in exactly when we're supposed to be in them. Because if you look at everything that happened to get me back to that house, my childhood home, for the last six months of my best friend on the planet's life, you, you could never convince me that's coincidence. It just isn't. I remember the week my dad got sick, we hopped off of a Zoom call with one of the doctors, and he was a naturopathic doctor talking about supplementation and lifestyle, my language. My dad was completely overwhelmed, and he walked out of his office where we had the Zoom call, and I was still sitting there taking notes, and he walked out, and he stopped, and he just turned around and looked at me, and he said, "I know it feels like you're here for a shitty reason right now, but I think you're here for a bigger reason, and it's this. It's to help me." Because I was really placed there because I had ended a long relationship where we lived together, and that sucked. But ending that relationship and not moving to another city across the state with her is what kept me at home with my dad until he died, and I don't know what I would've done if I missed out on that part of his life. I don't know if I'd ever forgive myself. I don't know if I'd be sitting here. God put me there very intentionally.

6. 14:03 – 17:10

   Elective vs. unelective strength: the quiet nature of real courage

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr14:03

      Jimmy Carr taught me that you can't have an easy life and a great character.

   2. MSMichael Smoak14:07

      [laughs] Yeah, that's true.

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr14:11

      And they're... It allowed me to discern elective strength and unelective strength. An elective strength is the 6:00 AM cold plunge. It's the half-marathon before work. It's the reading five pages a day. It's the 75 Hard. It's the HigherUp Wellness challenge. That's elective strength, and there's nobility in that. There's courage in that. There's agency in that. But some of the people I admire most are people that have corralled strength from unelective challenge, where they've had no option but to be strong. And we were having dinner at this amazing fireplace last night. We're having dog bowls, rice, beef, guacamole. It was the entire American experience by a boathouse in Los Angeles. And we're sharing frameworks for resilience and talking about content creators' aphorisms around strength and courage, and then we had my friend who's here with us talking about the moment he was stabbed by his, uh, best friend, or was set up by his best friend, and how he overcame that. And when we pointed our nose towards this unelective strength, and that was told through lived experience, it harnessed a togetherness that is, for me at least, more indescribable than a framework, something you can learn in a book. And when I interview people like yourself or my friend David, who's here with us, who have been forced or forged in the fire of real life and found courage and strength, and therefore intelligence from those moments, I really feel, and it's one of the reasons I started this podcast, is learning through lived experience. You learn the discovery of self through the detour of another, and I... You, you can't perform those acts of strength online. You can't document wiping your father's ass because he's incapable of doing that.

   4. MSMichael Smoak16:18

      That's it.

   5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr16:19

      A billionaire once taught me that wealth whispers, but I also think s- uh, strength shushes. It, it's silent. It, it, it, it, it doesn't speak. Real strength doesn't speak. And similar, when you see a UFC fighter or an MMA fighter, it's the guy in the room who doesn't have bravado, who doesn't speak up. That's real strength. And yeah, there's a hidden and unobservable metric in the strength that you have through your story. And I guess to do a full circle on this is that that wound became work. It became contribution. It became service. It became purpose. It became a message. But I can only imagine to embrace that role that you had as a carer for your father, an older version of you had to die.

7. 17:10 – 20:59

   Letting the “boy” die: idolatry, dependence, and sanctification through suffering

   1. MSMichael Smoak17:10

      Yeah, I was just thinking that. As you were completing that thought, I was thinking about how powerful struggle is and how necessary it is if you want to become who you're meant to be, who I believe God calls us to be. In order for me to survive, parts of me had to be cut off, parts of me that weren't truly me, that weren't the essence of the strength and character that God instilled in me, that I've built through showing up for myself and through evidence. There was a boyishness in me, a helplessness in me that had to die, a dependence, a codependency on even my father, that I look too much, outsource my strength to another person. And in Christianity, idolatry is a sin. To idolize anything of the world is a sin because it will fall short or die or perish. That's why, like, sin is a protection mechanism from God, in the same way that your parents didn't want you to stick the knife in the electrical outlet or go out too late or mess around and date around when you're a young kid so you don't knock some chick up. These weren't be- put in place, these rules weren't put in place because they hate you. They were put in place to protect you, and sin is the same way. Idolatry is a sin because something of the world will always let you down. Not that my dad ever let me down as a human, but I place so much worth in him, and I've never really said this out loud 'cause it can really stir people who aren't Christians up. But I put so much of my, my value and dependency on my dad and who I saw him or who I wanted him to see me as, that he was an idol for me. But one day he was gonna die, and if I wasn't prepared to depend more on my heavenly Father and on my earthly father for that relationship, it was gonna break me. And so I'm grateful for the ways that it made me more of a man. You know, in- so it's interesting we have Jesus right here on the table, but there's a lot of talk of sanctification in the Bible, to be sanctified. And to be sanctified is to be... People think Christianity is to read the Bible or to go to church. No, one of the purposes of Christianity is sanctification, and to be sanctified is to be more like Christ. That's the goal of Christianity. It's very simple. Be more like Christ. That's it. Follow His teachings. Live the way that He lived. Love those who hate you, and serve people. And there's this great clip talking about a silversmith, 'cause in the Bible they talk a lot in scripture about how God will forge us in the fire like silver, and how to be sanctified, a silversmith describes how he has to place the silver directly into the middle of the flame, not the edge of the flame, into the hottest part of the flame, or the worst thing you've ever been through, the worst thing I've ever been through. And the lady asked the silversmith, "But how do you know when the silver is done? How do you know when it's ready?" And he says, "When I can see my image in it."

   2. DJDavid McIntosh Jr19:56

      Oh.

   3. MSMichael Smoak19:57

      And that is what suffering does. That is what trials do. They allow us to be more like God until He can see us within Him or see Him within us, and that's what I really think the purpose of hardship is, and that goes back to alchemizing, deciding if this is gonna break you and make you bitter and angry, or teach you how to love fiercefully and serve others relentlessly. And that's what the death of my dad did for me.

   4. DJDavid McIntosh Jr20:24

      I love, I love that. I'm reminded of Dr. Jordan Peterson when he says something along the lines of, "A boy becomes a man when his father dies." And somewhat that can be figurative or literal. In your case it was literal. For me it was figurative. I have a great relationship with my father. Uh, he's still very much alive. I see him very regularly. But during that moment of young grief, I stepped up to the plate. I had to look after my dad and my family. I- his role of a father figure died to me. He became a friend.

   5. MSMichael Smoak20:58

      Yeah.

8. 20:59 – 23:33

   Belonging in a secular age: status, success, and the “God-shaped hole”

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr20:59

      And again, it's not elective. It's not elective at all. I love that a lot of your learnings are deep-rooted in religion and Christianity. Where I'm from in the UK, specifically in Scotland, we have replaced religion. We're quite a secular society. None of my friends go to church. None of my friends pray or read scripture. And in this secular s- s- society, we've replaced the land of milk and honey or heaven with fame and fortune. That seems to be this new utopia. If you do good things, you will arrive at a follower count that will look after you. But I think we're missing it a lot, the sense of community, the sense of moral compass, the sense of having someone to be accountable to.

   2. MSMichael Smoak21:46

      Sense of belonging.

   3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr21:47

      Sense of belonging.

   4. MSMichael Smoak21:49

      My pastor says everybody has a God-shaped hole in their heart, and they try to fill it with money, with fame, with drugs, with sex, any of the things, but it never works. You- there's never gonna be a degree of success that gives you the thing that you're looking for, because you don't want the thing. You want the feeling that you think the thing will give you. It's like An- Andrew Tate gets a lot of heat, but he has this great quote. He says, "You don't want a Ferrari. You wanna get a Ferrari and let other people know you have the Ferrari and they can't have the Ferrari." It's not about the car. It's about the feeling you think you'll get from having the stupid thing. But it never gives you truly, in my opinion, as someone who's been able to establish objectively by worldly metrics a degree of success that people would strive for, none of the f- 1 million followers, 2 million followers, getting on podcasts, creating podcasts, none of the achievements actually solved any of my deep identity-based issues. They just didn't. They're nice to have, and they're fun to work towards. And this is where the self-development pipeline gets sort of dangerous. I view all of these achievements and accolades as nice to have and fun parts of the game, but I don't think that's why I'm here. I think that sometimes they can feel like a nod that we're doing the right things. Like, "Oh, cool. I did this thing. I got feedback that was an accolade or achievement. This is working. Yeah, exactly. Here, we got this. Now let's move." But people are looking for this feeling that I believe only a relationship with this little guy right here can give us, which is a sense of belonging, of feeling seen, heard, and understood, of feeling significant. These are, these are akin to the six basic human needs are very deep in, in human psychology, and we get a lot of it from a relationship with Christ.

9. 23:33 – 26:15

   Practical entry point: relationship over religion (Bible, prayer, and honesty)

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr23:33

      If one's simply listens to this and they can't attach themself to religion, they still feel secular or atheist in nature, do you have any advice on how they find that sense of belonging outwith religion? I can't imagine it's the only place in which you-

   2. MSMichael Smoak23:48

      It's not religion. It's not religion. I wanna be very clear about that. And, uh, it's not about religion, it's about relationship. You don't have to go to a certain building and say a certain prayer and sing a certain song. But if I wanted to, if I wanted to get to know a guy better, would I go to his place of work or would I go have a beer with him? Would I go to his place of, of work or would I go for a long walk with him? It's these two different things. The church is the place of work. I think it holds a, an important place for community and belonging, for sure. A good one. There are bad ones. But if you wanna really build a relationship, it's two simple things It's read the word of God and it's pray. That's it. You don't have to start with church. You don't have to start a Bible study. You don't have to do it with anybody. A lot of times the best place to start is alone. It's where I started. And practically, if you want a practical way to do this, 'cause this is where people also go, "But what does that mean, pray and read the Bible? Where do I start? What do I read?" I would have a physical Bible, preferably a New International Version, 'cause that's the easiest one to read, NIV Bible. I would read the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, which is Jesus' life on earth before he was killed and resurrected, and then I would just pray. And I- the most powerful prayer I think I've ever prayed in my life is the prayer of asking God to reveal Himself to me. And it doesn't have to be this buttoned up, "Oh Lord, ye reveal thyself to me." No. My pastor, Philip Anthony Mitchell, says, "Wring out your heart in prayer." God already knows what you wanna say. Talk to Him like you'd talk to your dad, not like you'd talk to some man in the sky with a beard, 'cause He's not that probably. And so I just remember there was a time in my life where I said, "Big man, I know this is selfish and I know I've done this before, but I need you to show me something right now. I fucking need it." And I cursed. I did curse in that prayer. I remember doing that. And something happened in, along the lines of around my birthday that was so, again, so wild that you couldn't have told me it was coincidence, and it was just such a clear nod from the Lord that He was watching me and He was with me, and it felt incredible. And it's a long story. I'll spare you the details, but just ask God to reveal Himself to you openly and earnestly, and then just notice what comes up as a byproduct of that in your life, and read the word of God. It's pretty powerful. It's a pretty powerful book. [chuckles]

10. 26:15 – 30:00

    Anger, free will, and surrender: radical acceptance as relief

    1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr26:15

       I can imagine when you were witnessing the literal decay of your father over time, you could either have leaned forward into religion or I can imagine a, a huge cohort of people that are experiencing something like that step away from religion and think, "If God is real, why would you let me endure this suffering?" Or, "Why would you take my father from me when I'm, when he's so young?" Did you have a tumultuous relationship with God during that period of time, or was it s- more steadfast because of the decaying nature of your father's health?

    2. MSMichael Smoak26:49

       It certainly went there. It was certainly a why me for a little while, and people ha- asked the, or raised the argument of if God was real, why would He allow strife and bad things in the world? Well, God allows free will in, in Christianity. Loves us so much He allows us to choose to live our lives by His will or not. 'Cause your parent, a parent who truly loves you wouldn't make you do anything. They would allow you to choose your life for yourself, like my dad did. He would always tell me, "Live your life. Make your own choices, and I'll be here to pick you up if you fall, if you need it." There was a time where I was like, "Why me? Why is this happening? I don't understand." Two things. My friend Gabriel, who was my coach at the time, said something to me I wasn't ready to hear, which is, "What if God's will for your life is your dad dying?" And I was not ready to hear that. I was fucking pissed 'cause why would God do that? Looking back and where I am now and what I'm doing now and the ability it's given me to help other people, and if I truly believe in an afterlife, then this is a really small part of my life without my old man in order to help glorify and further the kingdom of God. It makes sense, and I hold no anger in my heart about it if this was in fact His will for my life. If it wasn't, it's a different conversation. Outside of that, the best thing this ever did for me, and I think what a lot of people would benefit from, is it gave me a place to surrender all of my hardship. 'Cause a lot of times we're suffering because we're just holding onto our pain and trying to manipulate it and change it rather than just radically accept where we are and what it is. Like Peter Crone says, "There is where we are and there is where we want to be or where we think we should be, and the delta between those two things is suffering. And in order to stop suffering, we need to metaphorically place the hot pan down." Ow, this is hot. This is burning me. This hurts. Just set it down. Surrender it. Lay it at the feet of God. Lay it at the altar, as they would say in Christianity. And that was a big part of me and my old man. It was wrestling with doctors and my dad and trying to get him to change his habits at seventy-one years old and calling and following up, wondering why we didn't have a diagnosis. It was wrestling with the situation, trying to change it that was creating so much of my pain. And I remember this moment in the car where I just said, "All right, Jesus, I'm done. If he dies, I know you'll make something great out of it. I'm done. I surrender this completely to you. Submit to your will for my life," which is very hard for men to do because the act of submission is a feminine act, energetically speaking. And so submitting to a guy, to a male authority or perceivably male authority can be very difficult. What do you mean this thing knows better than me? But the peace that followed me going, "Here, I'm done. You handle it completely," was the, the supernatural peace that I've heard people talk about in the faith. So that's what it led to. It was tumultuous at first, and then it was, "Here, I give it to you," and look at all the wisdom He gave me as a byproduct of that trial.

11. 30:00 – 35:52

    Heartbreak advice for type-A men: feel fully, don’t suppress

    1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr30:00

       I'm learning a lot from your thoughts on radical abs- acceptance at the moment. Recently, I've learned that grief is the price we pay for love. I went through a, a recent romantic heartbreak and very similar to you, I have this type A mentality of holding the hot pan, trying to still cook with the hot pan even though it's burning me. It's serving me less good than it is good. And I learned a lot about love as a whole during heartbreak, both romantic and paternal And it's love is not a closed fist. It's not a tight grip. It's an open palm. And both in death of my mother and recent heartbreak, the greatest way in which I can love both of those people is through learning to let go. Love is letting go. But as a type A, almost red pill type of podcast bro, you're taught that your agency is your everything, and that you can fix and change and determine your entire life. But I do think that has a threshold at the limits of other people and their wants and needs, and sometimes those needs are for them to, to pass on and die. Uh, and it's something I'm wrestling with at the moment, specifically within the realms of romantic heartbreak. I think men specifically don't speak openly about heartbreak. I don't think there's a lot of content online tailored to practical advice to type A guys who are trying to let go of a love that served them for very long. I know you've been through heartbreak in your life, both paternal and romantic, and in that case, what advice do you have for a young man who might be f-facing their first heartbreak?

    2. MSMichael Smoak31:54

       Yeah, it is definitely something that men don't feel safe to talk about. Their emotions in general is societally across the world there's this narrative of masculinity being quiet strength at all times, which means somehow don't feel anything other than strength. It's, uh, there's this great bit from the standup comedian John Mulaney, where he's talking about his dad being an Irish Catholic, and he said, "If you know anything about how they handle emotions, the way that they go is, 'I'll just bury all of my emotions right here, and then one day I'll die.'" [chuckles] And that's the belief system. He says his son could die, and he could say, "Bury the boy. Bury the boy. It's over." And that's sort of masculinity in the Western world as a whole, or the perception of masculinity. I think masculinity and masculine strength comes down to the ability to feel and observe our emotions and fully understand them and not be run by them, and you do that by processing emotion. You don't feel grief, because breakups are processed the same way neurologically as death. But it's a little harder because when there's death, there's an actual gap. There's a sever in the tie. And so with heartbreak, there's not. It's like if you and I were... We're not into each other, but if we were dating and we broke up. [laughing] Flip that. If we were dating each other and we broke up, you'd still be there. There'd still be a way to open up the line, so it's very hard for our brain to process that grief. What I would tell people, tell men specifically when it comes to navigating heartbreak and negative emotional experiences, feel the emotion. Suppression of expression leads to depression. What you don't feel, you cannot heal. And what you don't... It's, it is a great quote. "You cannot heal what you are unwilling to feel, and you cannot feel what you are unwilling to reveal." And if you're unwilling to reveal, it's because you will not, you will keep it concealed. And so for that, I would say when you feel grief, when you feel anger, when you feel sadness, when you feel happiness, feel it at its full expression. Don't go, "Well, I'm angry at her. I'm grieving the breakup, but I shouldn't. I should lock in and fucking start the podcast and get shredded." It's like there'll be a time for that. There'll be ti- Right now, be fully sad. Go all the way in. Like my coach said once, that I work with, Kian, we were talking about, uh, a, a f- I've never shared this. [laughs] This is a funny thought though. It's pretty vulnerable. But I was in the midst of a breakup, and he was like, [laughs] he was like, "Dude, just..." This is like the most masculine dude I know. Like big, jacked, tatted, played in the NFL, travels the world full time for years now. He was like, "Dude, I remember last time I broke up with, with my chick at the time, I just like got in the shower and I threw on Drake and I just cried for like two hours." And I was like, "What?" He was like, "Dude, I'm so serious. Just two hours and then I was good. Like I was actually... I had processed the breakup." He said, "I emptied the bucket. I wrung out the sponge by letting myself go all the way into that seemingly vulnerable place alone." He processed a breakup in two hours that if he would've continued to suppress the expression may have dragged on for months 'cause there was still that energy inside of him that hadn't been moved through completely. It might sound silly, like get in the shower and cry to Marvin's Room. It's funny. But if you would just, for a lot of us, if we would just process the emotion fully, weep, sob, cry, scream, whatever, whatever you have to do, you could move through it quickly and then get to the clarity on the other side of the processed emotion. But if you just drag it around with you, it fogs our judgment, it fogs our inspiration, our creativity. It is a bucket that needs to be emptied every once in a while. And so give yourself permission. Find a safe space where you can go into that submissive, weak perceivably by society area of, of deep emotion. Feel it, move through it, process it, understand it, and that's how you process emotion and don't be run by emotion. But it's very hard for dudes. Very hard.

12. 35:52 – 40:21

    The shrinking grief ball & diversifying emotional “homes”

    1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr35:52

       One of the things I've learned both from grief and romantic heartbreak is that this longing feels like a exercise ball, you know, like an inflatable exercise ball in a, a room, and on the roof of the room there's a pain button, and at first when you experience the heartbreak or the grief, this big huge ball bounces across the room. At first it's touching the switch every single time. You're feeling that pain, you're feeling that pain, you're feeling that pain, you're feeling that pain. But conversely, every time it touches the pain button, the ball shrinks. So over time, the ball gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, and the ball still exists. It will never go away completely. But it just touches the button more infrequently. It still hurts when you touch it, but because you're processing and hitting the button, the ball is shrinking. And it'll never eradicate completely, but the only way in which you process and shrink the ball is by touching the button. And it's one of the most beautiful analogies that I've learned personally for my heartbreak with my mother and romantic relationships, and it encourages you almost to touch the button.

    2. MSMichael Smoak37:00

       Mm-hmm.

    3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr37:00

       Go towards the red button. It's kind of like, uh, from Hollywood movies where there's, like, awesome powers and he, he sees a nuclear button. He's told not to touch it, and he touches it, and it's kind of like that analogy. Um, but for me, it's, it's always been the source of clarity, like you said.

    4. MSMichael Smoak37:19

       Yeah.

    5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr37:19

       One thing I also realized, because of the inability to express emotion within cohorts of young type A men, is that they put a lot of their expression into their romantic relationships. So they might not be as emotionally expressive with their friends or their, their family or their, their passions, purpose, outlets, and they deviate a lot of that submissive, softer, loving emotion into a specific person. So then this beco- person becomes an emotional home for a lot of the unexpressed emotions that they have. And like any good investment manager will tell you, diversification is so important to spread risk. Yet a lot of-

    6. MSMichael Smoak38:01

       Yeah

    7. DJDavid McIntosh Jr38:01

       ... I, I, I know I, I can be, be guilty of this. I know some of my closest friends are. They put a lot of these warmer, feminine emotions into a person.

    8. MSMichael Smoak38:11

       Yeah, become a lover boy.

    9. DJDavid McIntosh Jr38:12

       Become a lover boy. And what I learned through love is that love is a joy that you do not own, and if you concentrate that into a single person, then you can eradicate quite a lot of human experience. And I guess my piece of advice is to find that joy in people, places, things, hobbies, outlets, interests, so that when that emotional home is burnt, is ripped to the floor, is torched, you have other places in your life in which you can express that emotion.

    10. MSMichael Smoak38:44

        For sure. Without a doubt. The, the, the... I can't remember his name right now, but he's really well known. He's been on Modern Wisdom. He's been on Andrew Huberman, I think. He's the divorce lawyer that's so well known, covered in tats. And he talks about, he says, "To love something at all is fucking insane," because you're placing an emotion to something that is going to die or go away at any, at some point in some way. It's f- completely finite. And so I think that's a great line of thought is don't, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Don't idolize a human being. Like, that's my place for love. Well, actually, I b- like, the one true vine is God. That's the place we will always find love and acceptance and peace. That's my belief system. But to not place, to not be a lover boy. Love the woman. I, I love loving women. I love being a great boyfriend to a woman. Like, I love it. I miss that part of my life a little bit. It's been a while. But I do remember times where I, to no fault of their own and my own, placed a lot of my worth and identity in the ability for me to perform acts for them, and if they didn't perceive it or receive it how I wanted them to, which is manipulation, by the way. To do good with the intent of a certain response or expectation of a certain feeling afterward from the other person, that's manipulation. Yeah. It's a psyop. [laughs] It's, it is literally, it is wrong. It is, "You should give love without the expectation of what you should receive in return, if anything." And I did that and was always let down. And so I, I just view, I view love very differently. I like that, uh, what did you say? A joy that you do not own. That's good. And to, to act in the way I used to act in relationships was trying to take ownership of a feeling that wasn't mine.

13. 40:21 – 52:02

    Reframing “loss,” choosing memories, and writing the eulogy with presence

    1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr40:21

       I saw Bill Burr either in a movie or a series. I just saw this clip of him talking about processing a heartbreak, and his friend in this video says, "This is the good part. This is the reminder that you loved." Like, the wallowing, the missing, it's still very much real. There's gonna be a day where you forget that love, and you're not reminded of it every single day. And I think I saw another guest, and I can't remember his name on, on Modern Wisdom, but he says, "I look forward to heartbreak," because it allows him to feel this expression of emotion that is the, is the inversely correlated effect of love.

    2. MSMichael Smoak41:00

       Yeah. This is, th- this reminds me of you said it earlier twice, and I'm gonna challenge you on it, which was when I had Peter Crone on my podcast, he coached me through the death of my dad live, and it was far and away my most high-performing episode, and I think that that was why. It was a very anointed conversation. And he said something. He said, "Can I offer you some feedback?" And I said, "Yeah." And I said, Peter said, "Three or four times now in the last couple of minutes, you've said, 'I lost my dad.'"

    3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr41:28

       [laughs]

    4. MSMichael Smoak41:29

       "And you said, 'I lost my mom,' and then I lost my dad. I didn't lose anything. What I found was a relationship with a man that was so deep and so joyful that it is worth feeling sorrow for. That's not a loss. To imply loss is to imply that I am now without something, that I am now in a place of scarcity, but I'm more abundant and more full as a result of the life I had with my old man than I ever could've been, so I didn't lose anything." And he says the words that we use matter around that topic. Like, a- abracadabra translates to, "As I speak, therefore I create." And so when you say, "I lost, I lost, I lost," every time you associate it with this memory or person, you're reinforcing in your mind, in the synapses of your brain, a narrative of scarcity, of lack, of being without. And so you didn't lose your mom. She just died. I didn't lose my dad. He just died. He's just not here.

    5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr42:19

       Holding my hands up to that, coaching in real time. I need to find this, uh, quote, live and direct. David, could you pass my phone over? I need to bring up the phone for this one. Uh, I read this book called Slaughterhouse Number Five by-

    6. MSMichael Smoak42:33

       Sounds like a light read.

    7. DJDavid McIntosh Jr42:34

       [laughs] By a g- it's, it's, it's a novel by a guy called Kurt Vonnegut Which is half biography, half fiction. So he basically kind of extrapolates his story and, uh, changes the character. And at this, uh, at this point, he is processing what I like to believe is maybe like PTSD or some sort of affect of being in war, and he thinks he can visit this alternative race, and they teach him something about loss and death. And it's one of the most pr- profound pieces of content I've ever written. Not ever written, I've ever read on, on loss. Um, so he sees, he says he goes to this place called Tralfamadore, and they teach him this lesson. So for context, this will, this will make more sense. He says, "The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies, he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are and how they can look back at any moment that interests them. It's just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another like beads on a string, and that when one moment is gone, it's gone forever. When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I hear... Now, now when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is, 'So it goes.'"

    8. MSMichael Smoak44:20

       [laughs] So what do you take from that?

    9. DJDavid McIntosh Jr44:24

       That all of the... I mean, if you think about your story where you were caring for your father, where I think of my story where my mom passed suddenly and I watched it unfold, all of those moments are horrendous visualizations. And I have a lot of people project grief onto me when they haven't experienced grief. For example, I've had someone close to me ask me to create an anniversary around the death of my mom, which means host a dinner or have a s- like a kind of celebration of their life, but do it on the day that she passed. And I said to them, "Why would I want to commemorate the worst memory I have with my mother?" For me, on the, the anniversary of my mom's death, I let it pass like a scent. It comes, I smell it, I appreciate it, I remember it, and then it passes again. I don't wanna create an, an over-exaggerated celebration on that day. For me, I prefer remembering the days we were laughing, when we were joking, when we went for dinner, when we went long walks on the beach. And it's, the only positive experience that I have with Apple and iPhone is that, you know, you get those, um, notifications, "On this day three years ago." They're the moments that I celebrate when I get a photo reappear, or I visit a family member's house and they have a framed photograph of my mother and I get to ask questions about the day. I prefer grieving in that way. And in, and in that way, like the stretch of Rocky Mountains, I can be elective and selective what memories still exist. Uh, so for me, it reminds me that, yes, she might not be here now, but she exists in all these colorful, nostalgic, euphoric memories that I get to choose to live in when I get to choose to live in them.

    10. MSMichael Smoak46:18

        It's beautiful. It's like the death of my father is real. January 19th, 2025 is real, but the last time we played catch in the yard the year before is also just as real as that. I could just focus my energy on that moment in time where I was thinking. I remember thinking, "This man's 70 years old and still throwing fastballs at me. This is sick. How lucky am I?" And I sometimes feel like God was nodding me in that moment. I remember feeling like I needed to be hyper-present. Like, I remember the temperature, I remember the weather, I remember watching the ball hit the mitt and being like, "This could be the last time we ever do this 'cause I'm grown. I haven't played baseball in 10 years." And it was. It was the last time I ever played catch with my dad, and I could choose to focus on that or the moment the coroner wheeled him out. And I, I like that approach quite a bit. So it goes.

    11. DJDavid McIntosh Jr47:04

        So it goes. One of my pieces of advice to some of my friends, I'm very lucky with the podcast that I get to work with some amazing people, and one of the lads, his name is Howie, he's 21 years old, and he asked me the, the other, the other month, "What's a piece of advice that you would give someone my age?" Or, "What advice would you like to give me?" And first of all, I said, "I'm in no position to give you advice on how you should live your life. You're your own being, and that's the exciting part, that you get to write this story forward with the finest quilted pl- pen. The caveat is that there's no eraser, so choose wisely, but I'm not gonna prescribe my life experience onto yours. However, if I were to give you a single nod that I could give you from my story was attend a public funeral. Watch a eulogy. I think everyone should go and experience a eulogy at some point, hopefully early on in their life, hopefully not someone that they love dearly, because that is devastating. But when you get to enjoy a eulogy, which I like to describe as enjoyment, is that you don't hear about what bank balance that they had or what designer brand that they wore out on a Saturday night or what car they drove. It's always the hilarious stories of serendipity or the noble affects of adversity. It's always about family contribution, servitude, and community. It's never about the vanity projects that you worked on. It's always about a lot of the rewards of satisfying Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And- That's a way to gamify mortality. You get to live through someone's life through hearing their eulogy. And we can all write our eulogy now. What do we want to be remembered by? If I were to die today, what would I contribute to my own eulogy? It probably wouldn't be the stressors of answering emails on a 9 a.m. Monday morning workday. It would be being in Los Angeles in Long Beach with Michael Smoak, my good friend, with Elliot and David. It would be those core memories and tenets of my life. So my advice to him was either attend a eulogy or write one for your own or do both. So I guess that alludes me to my next question, given that you have performed the eulogy of your father as we wrap up for time here. We have spoke about heartbreak, grief, loss, a lot of episodes of servitude that young men don't really speak about on podcasts as much as there's a lot of bad out there on podcasts. And there's a lot of great. I don't really see conversations like this. So with that in mind, Michael, if you were to be writing your eulogy right now, what sentences and maxims and quotes or lessons would you like to leave behind?

    12. MSMichael Smoak49:56

        You and Elliot with these hard-hitting questions, unreal. If I was writing my eulogy, I think the way I view this is not if I was writing mine, but if the goal is to leave each person in place better than we found it just a little bit, something my dad believed in deeply, I think I can only hope for what I would expect or hope my friend, my best friend would stand up and say about me in a room full of those people. And I think that all I would want is I hope that when people interact with me, they feel like they're the only person in the room, like I was really present with them. Because I think that's really deeply what we want. The power of presence, when you can give that to another person to make them feel significant, seen, heard, and understood, like I said earlier, is a gift that not a lot of people get. They feel invisible. They feel insignificant constantly. And I would just hope that anyone that I interacted with, even if I was having a bad day, that I had the discernment and the energy to make them feel like they mattered because they do. They truly do. And they mattered to me in that moment. And I believe that the deepest part of my spirit and that I served others to the best of my abilities because I felt that doing that honored God. And I think that the best thing you can possibly do with your life is what he calls us to do, which is love those who hate us and serve people. That's all I want to do before I die. I don't care if that looks like a podcast. I don't care if it looks like going back to washing cars when I was 17. I want everybody, no matter where they meet me in that experience and the timeline of my life, 17 washing cars or right now in this podcast in their car or somewhere on the street in LA today, I want them all to feel like they got the same thing from me.

    13. DJDavid McIntosh Jr51:56

        Michael Smoak, everyone. Thanks for coming to Origin Story.

    14. MSMichael Smoak51:59

        It was a blast. Thanks for having me in real life this time. Peace.

Episode duration: 52:03