Conversation: Nic Collins on Authenticity, Community, and Starting Today

What happens when the life you built no longer feels like your own?

In this conversation, Michelle sits down with mental health professional, author, and speaker Nic Collins to talk about leaving corporate America, rebuilding his identity, and learning to see vulnerability as a strength rather than something to hide.

They explore the power of saying things out loud, finding community that allows you to show up honestly, releasing the pressure to be everything for everyone, and taking action before you have the entire path figured out.

Because you’re not behind, and step one is simply taking one step.

Learn more about Nic:

Nic Collins is a public speaker, mental health professional, and author with a passion for helping others live with authenticity, confidence, and alignment. He is a Certified Rehabilitation Counselor and Maxwell Leadership certified speaker, coach, and facilitator. 

He is the author of ADVANCE: Discover Alignment and Authenticity by Living in Concert With Your Situation. He is creator and co-host of the Constant Quest Podcast, and curator of The Constant Quest men's gathering in the mountains of north Georgia, focusing on community, connection, and growth.

Connect with Nic:

Website: https://niccollinsauthentic.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nic_collins_authentic/

Purchase a copy of ADVANCE: https://a.co/d/0cv8hWGN

Connect with Michelle:

Website: michellegruening.com
Instagram: @michellegruening
LinkedIn: Michelle Gruening

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hey Yumble, and welcome to This Is Nothing New, the podcast where we drop the trends, get back to the basics, and uncover the lessons hiding in everyday life. My name is Michelle Grooning, and I am super excited to welcome my friend and fellow podcast host, Nick Collins, to the show today. Nick is a public speaker, a mental health professional, and an author with a passion for helping others live their lives with authenticity, confidence, and alignment. He is a certified rehabilitation counselor and a Maxwell Leadership certified speaker, coach, and facilitator. He is also the author of Advance Discover Alignment and Authenticity by Living in Concert with your situation. Because he has to do even more, he is also the creator and co-host of the Constant Quest podcast, as well as the curator of the Constant Quest Men's Gathering, which is held in the mountains of North Georgia, focusing on community connection and growth. Nick, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

All right. Thank you, Michelle. I'm so happy to be here and to chat with you. Good to see you. And I'm, yeah, ready for a great conversation.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Nick and I grew up in the same small town in South Carolina. And I feel like we have both lived quite a few lives since our time back in North Augusta. And, you know, just reading the things in your bio and all of the things that you're doing now, I know that it wasn't just a quick flip to doing all of these things. So can you kind of give us like just a little snapshot, a little overview of your journey to the Nick Collins of today?

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Absolutely. Yeah, it's been great getting reconnected with you, Michelle, and seeing some of those similarities too, that a lot's happened since we saw each other in North Augusta, you know, 20 years ago. Um and so yeah, mine is similar. I did the quote unquote normal route, what I thought I was supposed to do, went to college, got a job, tried to move up in that job, was successful at that by some measure, um, had some success by several measures. But I think we should all have our own definition for what success means. And mine has drastically changed over time. Now it is not quite what it was when I was 20 or even 30, probably. So I worked in corporate America for almost 20 years in various roles. I ended um at the end, I was a salesman um in the industrial distribution world. And I just always felt like it didn't really serve me and that I wasn't able to serve people either, which has always been a passion of mine. It didn't feel like it was in alignment. You read that word in my the title of my book. It didn't feel right. I just always felt resistance to it. And I had the itch to do something different for a long time, but I never really had the confidence and courage to do it uh for probably most of my 30s. And eventually I just got to the point where I felt like the corporate world took my soul. I say that often. Now I've changed it a little bit, and I say I allowed the corporate world to take my soul because I realized that I did have a place in all of it. Um, and I'm glad that I've learned skills and tools to work through that. But I ended up starting a master's program to become a therapist while I was still working full-time. I was going to school at night full-time. I had just started a relationship with my now fiance, Nikki, um, right around the same time. So life got pretty hectic uh right around the time I turned 40 years old and finally walked away from that career in 2024. So a little over two years ago, now I'm a licensed therapist, um, public speaker, coach, author, all those things that you said. And it's interesting when you go through that transition. Like for a while, you know, I still felt like I was a corporate employee trying to do all this other stuff, or a salesman trying to dress up as a speaker, and to see that ship kind of redirect. And now, you know, it's huge parts of my identity that I am speaker, coach, all of those things. Um, and it feels really good to do something that finally is in alignment.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Yeah. And hey, congratulations on your recent engagement to a lovely gal. I've gotten the pleasure to meet Nikki and um y'all are just such a great team and a great partnership. Thinking on your kind of part of that story of like working in corporate. And I kind of chuckled to myself when you said, you used to say corporate took your soul. Now you say I allowed corporate to take your soul because the personal growth journey, it teaches us a lot about how we have responsibility in a lot of the things that happen to us. Um which I feel like is kind of one of the reasons that people tend to be scared of or kind of um averse to going into personal growth because there's a lot of responsibility that comes with it.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Wow. Yeah, there is. There's a lot of accountability also, I think, that comes with it and and responsibility. Yeah, for sure. And and it's it's an evolution for the rest of our life too, you know, when you start working on refining yourself and understanding self-image, self-worth, um, growth in general, what it takes to grow, how to sustain growth in a healthy and meaningful way and purposeful way. It's it's just there's so much to learn about ourselves and the you know, catalog of information at large that there is to learn. And which is why I love things like this podcast, because we get to chop it up on these things that aren't brand new. Um, I love your show for that reason because people have been struggling with a lot of the things that have, you know, plagued me and plagued you. People have been struggling with them for such a long time. Um, but we we need reminding, we need new ways to look at it, we need conversations like this to um reach people, you know, uh different strokes for different folks. So we, you know, um we have to come up with creative ways to reach a broader audience, and that's what we're doing here.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

And I uh see a lot of similarities in kind of our our stories and our paths to how we both got into this personal growth, self-leadership, like this personal accountability space. Because for before I started, you know, my whole thing about five years ago, I was also working for somebody else. And at that point in time, I very much had a different view of success. For me, it was how much money do I make and what's my title? And how many people report to me? And that you know, I think one of the things we've talked about before is that sometimes it's really hard to know what is best for us when we have a company or a boss telling us what they think is best for us or trying to fit into what Sassuna lady says is best for us. And I feel like that's something that I don't know. I would love your opinion on that and kind of how how you finally arrived at kind of like something has to change. Like, what was that catalyst for you to one? I mean, want to become a therapist? Like, I mean, congratulations on that too. So, how did you go from industrial sales to wanting to become a therapist? I love that journey.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Yeah, it's a circuitous route, I'm sure. And and and I think that it happens incrementally over time. You know, it wasn't like I woke up one day and was like, I just had this, you know, uh dream last night and I decided to go a whole different direction. It wasn't really like that. And and I didn't, in that case, I didn't make an impulsive decision to change. Um, it was a gradual thing. But yeah, it's it's a really interesting question because I think first I'll say that like I don't want to just badmouth corporate America. It it became a place that was hard for me to exist in and feel like I was doing something meaningful, but that doesn't mean that people can't find great careers in corporate America and that there's not businesses and companies that are super healthy. And uh and mine was I made amazing relationships with a lot of people, but I did get to the point where I felt like I would resent a lot of things if I continued to stay there. I love to talk about impermanence. I talk about it quite a bit in my book, but just the idea that things have a shelf life. We we act like if we leave something, then we we gave up on it or we were a quitter, or you know, we have to stay in this thing forever because we started it and now we have to see it through. Well, if I stayed at that company until I retired, I wouldn't have liked myself, I wouldn't have liked the company. I would have been a bitter old person at some point for staying there too long. And I don't think that that's helpful. It had a shelf life, it served me so well in so many ways. When I measured success by money, I needed to be there. I made good money, I was very fortunate. I was compensated well for what I put in. And that was important at a time in my life. It afforded me the ability to do all of the things I'm doing now. So, I mean, there's I have to acknowledge that and honor that. I think that's really important. And now I'm so excited that part of my work is to go back into those environments that I was in and teach the skills that I didn't have to learn how to cope and care for self and communicate with others and hold boundaries and honor my views and needs and wants. And so that part is really, really cool. Um, but I think that I was to circle back a little bit to stay on track with your question. Something was always nagging at me to do something more service-oriented. I want to feel like I'm making an impact. One of my core values is achievement and the way that I view achievement is can I move the needle? I want to have meaningful achievement to where I'm making a difference in whatever it is that I'm doing. Not that I couldn't do that in the corporate world, but I thought I could do that at a broader scale and with more depth. And I toyed with the idea of moving to another country and living on the beach in Nicaragua for a little while. I just knew I needed something different, but I had a hard time, as many do. And I'm sure you can relate to this when you're in that cycle, like you said, it it's perpetual. We're conditioned this way, we're taught this way, we're told what is important and valuable and successful. And so you get in there until one day it's like, oh my gosh, I'm drowning in here. Um, and so um fortunately for me, I think I had some pretty significant interruptions there. I got pulled over in a traffic accident at one point in uh in 2019, and that ended up being the last time that I ever took a sip of alcohol. So stopping drinking was helpful. Um starting to see a therapist around 30 years old uh due to some depression and suicidal ideation that I had. I ended up seeing her every Tuesday at 11 o'clock for 10 years. That was very helpful because I learned more about myself and that um how to understand what I wanted and that that was okay. So some of those things, you know, kind of culminated in this idea that like I I can have the confidence in believing in myself to chase the thing that that I believe in. And if it doesn't work, if it's impermanent, um, if it has a shelf life, it's cool. I gave it a shot, but I'll never know unless I give it a shot.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

I really appreciate your openness and your vulnerability to share about some of those darker times that you experienced on your path. I think that it's so easy now for people to just see the place that people exist right now and they don't see the journey and they don't see the struggle and they don't see the shitty days that we all have when we're not in front of a screen prepared to talk about all the fun stuff. And I just I just appreciate you being real.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

I appreciate that. I've been told by a couple people that um have seen me in some pretty vulnerable moments that my vulnerability is my superpower. And it didn't always feel like that, Michelle. I can tell you uh to the point that you just made about there's a story behind the lens. There were decades of my life where I showed up in every capacity and tried to be the person that I thought everyone wanted to see. And I knew that I was an emotional man. I struggled with that since the time I was in elementary school. I felt like I cried more than somebody else. And I don't just mean like we lost the championship game and I shed a tear, you know, and then I got back to being a man. It was like I could hardly watch a movie with my friends, and something in there would like make me tear up and I would have to excuse myself. And so I was just it like it, it influenced my behavior in a major way from the time I was in elementary school, certainly in middle school, high school, when your body starts to change, like I felt like I was weird. And so it was really hard for me knowing that I was emotional and that I felt so deeply for myself and for others. Um, and then having to feel like I need to mask it in every capacity. So I felt like I needed to mask it certainly by the time I became a working professional in a male-dominated industry. Like, I sure as hell better not talk about my feelings and how something touched my heart or you know, whatever the case was. That that didn't feel very welcome and acceptable. But even in relationships, friendships, romantic relationships, I felt like I had to wear a mask in every way to mask, you know, what it is we're talking about, my vulnerability. And so that therapy that I mentioned earlier played a big role in just understanding who I am. I mean, I had to pretty much strip away everything that I had been conditioned to believe my whole life, all the way down to the base of it, the ground level, maybe even below the ground level and get the roots dug up to grow a new person and understand who I was. And so then I could really dive into the things that I was interested in and passionate about and have confidence in those things, and then show up as myself, which ironically becomes what I've realized to be one of my greatest strengths. I mean, this is something that I hid for 20 years, 30 years, you know, it's just amazing how that works. And I know that that's a common story with so many other people, men specifically, but I think women as well. We now it's harder than ever. We're compared every step of the way, you know, on social media or whatever the case is. It's just really hard to show up as ourselves and feel confident and comfortable in our own skin and to show up as we really are. That's why I talk about authenticity so much, because learning who learning to be okay with who I am saved my life, you know. Um, and so that's that's so important to me.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

It's the idea that the things that we have realized are like major strengths and our superpowers now are the things that we used to be ashamed of and hide. Like it's such a, I don't know, it's such a full circle moment. And a lot of what you were saying there has me thinking about how a lot of us are trying to be a version of ourselves that we don't even know if we like or we don't even know if we believe in because there's just all of these conflicting messages. And and part of that is let's come back to the personal accountability and personal responsibility is us being able to have that level of discernment to know that message is not for me. Maybe there is a lesson in that message for me. But one of the things that I am so curious about is especially, so you know, I've also been in and out of therapy and I'm always very open about that. And I my therapists have done incredible things for me. And I'm a big advocate for it. So, as someone who has been on both sides of those therapy sessions, I feel like a lot of times people struggle to start like the next level of improvement for themselves or start helping themselves because they just don't, they have literally no idea where to begin. And we talk a lot about like, let's get back to the basics, like let's get back to the simple things. But sometimes even that is too much. So, for you, when you were talking about like you just had to strip it down to the ground level, maybe even deeper. If you're open to sharing, what were some of those like small steps, the little like increments that you you worked through to build your confidence back up in yourself?

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Yeah, great question. Great question. And I hope I have an adequate answer. Uh, you know, I'm I'm smiling because as soon as you were asking that question, I'm I'm like have images pop up in my mind of my very first experience going into therapy. And like, I had no idea what I was doing there, and that's okay. Ignorance is bliss. I showed up there because of a failing relationship, and I was like, how do I get this girl back? That was what was on my mind, and it had gotten to a point where I felt like I couldn't get myself out of bed. What it really did was exposed my own insecurities, it had nothing ultimately to do with that person, really, if if if I think about it that way in hindsight. And I got to those things in therapy. But at first, I thought that I was showing up to mend a broken relationship. And I'm so glad that I was ignorant that I was gonna actually go in there every Tuesday for 10 years. I had no idea that was gonna be the case. Maybe I'm a slow learner and that's all right. But um, yeah, there's there's really significant barriers to starting. Um, again, I I don't want to go down this like specifically men thing. My only experience is as a man is as a man, and I've had conversations over the years about therapy. I didn't want to talk about it when I first started going either. And I've also had a lot of conversations with women. It's like, I'm good. Or I actually I have more conversations with people that say, yeah, I could probably benefit from therapy. And like that's the end of the sentence, period, paragraph. And I'm like, okay, well, you just acknowledge that you could benefit from it. So when's your appointment? It's like, oh no, no, I don't, I'm not intending to go, you know, because then that creates that speaks to what you were just saying. That's like, that feels so overwhelming because how do I find one? Are they in my network? How much is it going to cost? How many sessions is it gonna take before I'm quote unquote fixed? You know, all these things that start piling up in our head, and and those are all fair and valid concerns. And I mean, I guess that I would just say I feel like over the course of my life things have always wound up better the more that I said them out loud. I mean, that maybe that sounds really simple, but when we keep stuff in our head and it swirls around, we can start this rumination cycle. And at some point, we end up having core beliefs about the things that are on loop in our head. So whether other people see them as reality or not, if if we're telling our brain this thing about ourself over and over and over again, then then our we believe it. We are that to ourselves. And so that generates a negative self-image and negative core beliefs about ourselves. And but man, if you can just use someone as a sounding board and start saying that stuff out loud and putting it out into the world, um, it's it's very scary to do that. But then you can then you can start to to work through it. Then you can sort the pieces out and start to line them up in the right order. And and it takes time. Time is a component. Time is a component that generally we don't really love these days, but anything we do, we, you know, I want my business to be successful tomorrow. And that's, you know, we probably all deal with that a little bit. But um, yeah, I don't know if that adequately answered your question. I went down a little bit of a trail there. So if you want to, if you want to bring me back on track, you can do that.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

We can go off trail. This is, you know, this is our conversation. We can do whatever we want, which is great. So I pulling on a couple of those threads, one of the things that stood out to me when you're talking about like our our thoughts can just keep spiraling. And if we don't get them out, it just becomes these patterns of our mind, the stories that we're telling ourselves. And the more we tell them to ourselves over and over and over, the more our brain's gonna believe them. Like our brain is a supercomputer, but it's also kind of dumb. So whatever you tell it, it's gonna believe. So I think about that, the whole thing of the your reticular activating system, your RAS, which is essentially just a filter in your brain that is showing you what you say is important. So if we keep telling ourselves, I'm a failure, this isn't gonna work, why can't I find a partner that I love? I'm not worthy, I don't have value, your brain is gonna find confirmation for that. So it's like flipping it to something that we can take action on. And so I love how you were talking about when we can say it to somebody else. That is such a huge step. And I would even take it like break it down to an even more basic level of just if you're in your car by yourself, just talk without. There really is power in just literally verbalizing it.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

100%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

Even if you're not talking to anybody, what I have found is once you verbalize it or you journal, big journaler, it takes it from an identity problem to a problem that you can now separate yourself from and work on. Instead of I am the problem, it's this is a problem.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

A hundred percent. Can I speak to that real quick or I don't want to cut you off? Yeah, that's huge what you just said. And it it it makes it external. It takes it out, it doesn't, it doesn't define us anymore. It's not our whole identity anymore. And so this can be done with emotions, feelings, and in therapy. They some therapies call it parts work, but it's like, you know, my anxiety or I'm so I have so much anxiety, and we it controls us, it consumes us. But if we can think about it like it's sitting in the passenger seat of our car, like anxiety is fine to some degree. It's telling us something, it has a reason, and and we can figure out why our body is telling us that we feel this way. But when we feel so overwhelmed, it's hard to sort that out. Um, but all those little parts, as soon as we can externalize them and think about them as if they're sitting in the chair over there and they're we're all sitting at the table together, and there's all these parts of me. And so we have the anxious part, the fear part, all of them are fine. Um, but but they can't dominate the conversation. They don't get to hold the wheel, they don't get to drive. Um, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about that in Big Magic. It said, fear can ride with you, but it it doesn't get to drive. You're you're driving. Um, but what I love about the parts work is those are all the what we consider, you know, negative emotions. But there's also a whole bunch of positive parts too, that if we speak those out loud, and and I heard this in what you were saying, it's like the inputs determine help determine the outputs. And so if we also acknowledge the parts that are the supporter, the encourager, the cheerleader, the, you know, whatever all of the other things are, we have we have those within us as well. And so if we tap into those parts and allow them to do their work, then we can get a positive loop in our head. And then we're feeding ourselves, um, then we start to have positive self-belief and courage and excitement and joy and happiness and all of those types of things.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

And it I have found that that journey is much easier to walk when we're not doing it by ourselves sometimes. And, you know, one of the things I shared at the beginning when I was telling the people a bit about you is um this men's gathering that you started. And I think this is a really important topic. We were talking about this a little bit before we hit record, but I have seen that there is such power in us being able to commune with people like us. So right now we're just talking women's groups, men's groups. So I have a women's community that I'm a part of. It's changed my life. It's absolutely incredible. But what I have found is that oftentimes when men try to have some type of community, it's immediately seen as exclusionary. Like, well, men are trying to commune and so they are excluding everybody else. How dare they? And I think this is a really important topic. And especially especially for women to hear too, who are in some type, you know, in a partnership with men. Maybe they have a husband or a boyfriend. But it's there are conflicting messages out there for men too, on what it means to be masculine, on what it means to be a man or be a provider, or don't get too emotional. Like we're all told not to be too emotional. So I would love for somebody one day to define what the right amount of emotion is for all of us to feel because we're always not enough or too, and it's a whole thing. But I I went on that little soapbox because it seems like you have I would love to know how you like what you saw as a need that was like the catalyst to really create this men's gathering. And just more about it. Like tell me how it got started, tell me why you started it, what it has brought you, and the importance. What I really would love for you to speak on is the importance of men finding community with other men.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Absolutely. Yeah. And and if I skip some of those, feel free to ask me again parts of that.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Yeah, that was a lot. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

No, no, it's all good. It's multi-stepping structures are hard for for this uh brain, but um no, it I I love talking about it, and thank you so much for asking about it. I started it for me. I started it well, the last thing you ended with community. That's I wanted to be surrounded by people that feel comfortable getting it wrong and screwing up and asking questions and being vulnerable and crying and hugging and also listening to music and jumping off a rock into the river and going rafting and you know, all of those things can still happen. You know, both can be true. I think we're I think a lot of men are in fear of that. Like, oh, if I go down this road, well, then I'm I can never play sports again or try to win or be competitive. Like, that's not true. We can hold both of those fairly easily, uh, I think, but we are conditioned, and again, my only experiences is as a man, but there's a very, very serious conditioning over the course of our lives about what it means to be a man. And thankfully that's shifting some, but it's still very, very prevalent in my experience. And and it's just this idea that we we have to show up in a certain way and appear to be tough and that we have it all in control. And yeah, that it's it's a big challenge. It's a big challenge for us because we're targeting people that are pretty highly unlikely to come show up in an environment like that. Like once they get there, it's so valuable for everyone that comes, but it's hard, it's been a challenge to get to get it off the ground. Now we kind of have it going. We have our fourth one on the schedule, so now it's starting to get some momentum, which is great. And hopefully that continues. Um But I I think it's really interesting, Michelle, and I I you know I love your take on it as well, or maybe from not that you have to speak for all females, but the female perspective. But I what I see a lot of times is is men feel like that that they get uh many times that they feel pressure at home to show up as the one that has it in control, the one that can handle the the emotions of the partner, um, that they can take care of things when shit hits the fan. And I from what I've seen, I feel like that comes with a lot of stress and pressure on men. Um, and when they go quote unquote play, I think that men, a lot of men feel like that they're seen as just going to screw off and just go do boy stuff, like they don't even really care. And so showing up in an environment like we have is is difficult. Um I don't know. That that's my initial thought on on kind of that dynamic. And a lot of women are super supportive. I mean, we we target people's wives strategically also, and like, hey, would your husband benefit from this? Yes, okay. Well, circle this on the calendar, make sure he doesn't have anything else going on and help convince him to go. I mean, ultimately the man has to make their own decision to come, but it has been a group effort a little bit sometimes. Uh, but then once we're there, the the most important thing is that we try really hard. Taylor and I try really hard to create an environment where people can just feel comfortable being themselves, being open, and whatever comes up comes up, and you're gonna feel supported. I'm not judging you, no one is judging each other. We're all in support of each other, and that's not something that men experience all the time with with other men.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

Yeah, yeah. And congrats on your fourth one coming up. That's awesome. It's clearly something that people need and enjoy. So, congratulations on that. That's really exciting.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

And again, we can only speak to our experiences. And I feel like from what I have seen, there is comes back to that. I know I keep circling back to personal responsibility and accountability. But when we think about in the example you were using of sometimes there's men who feel a lot of pressure. And my assumption, my hallucination is that they're holding very tightly onto the societal definition of what a man is. And typically that is provider, protector, the person, you know, the person who is the head of the household. There's nothing in there for the comforter or the being soft spoken, or some of the more feminine traits that are, you know, like stereotypical feminine traits. But then I think it's, you know, there's also the flip side of there are women out there who are the providers, the protectors, the people in control at the end of the day. And I feel like what I would love to see in kind of personal development as a whole and just kind of a societal shift is it we can hold multiple things at one time. I think that's what a lot of people struggle with is they're like, no, one truth, one truth and one truth only for a variety of things. But seven things can be true at the same time, some of which may feel contradictory. And being able to get to a point where you can hold those truths is part of the personal growth journey. I mean, I'm I'm certainly wouldn't have been talking the way I am now seven years ago, like, no way. But it's part of this personal growth journey. And so it's, I would just kind of like encourage people who feel like they're stuck in a dynamic that maybe doesn't fit them anymore, is like start with the journaling or start with talking to yourself out loud. But from your perspective, let's actually flip this back to you. Yeah. In that scenario where people may feel that pressure. So again, from the male experience, those men who are really feeling that pressure to do everything and never be able to crack, what would be some of like what are would be some of the encouraging first steps back to the basic type things you would recommend they do?

SPEAKER_01 33:03

Yeah. I I think that's a great question as well. And and yes, some of that expectation and pressure that men feel is self-inflicted. I do want to say that that or societally inflicted, maybe not self-inflicted, but you know, the way I said it was almost like uh inflicted by a partner, which can be the case. But in a lot of cases, I think men carry that pressure as an expectation that they've felt and been been conditioned by for their entire life that this is the way I'm supposed to show up. I would say some things that could be done. You we've talked about a couple of them, which is say it out loud, talk about it, ask questions, say sometimes I feel like this, or it it it made me think about this when this situation happened. You know, we don't everything doesn't have to be like, well, you did this, well, you did this. You know, if we can have some uh constructive conversation, just some open and honest conversation, I think we we challenge to do that because we try to out nice each other sometimes, and we don't end up saying what we need to say. We don't end up respectfully saying the things that that need to be brought to a relationship. Um, so I think that's important in the context of a relationship, and I think it's critically important that men build community with other men and women build community with other women. And I have the belief, this I don't know that this is a popular opinion, but I think that men need to build relationships with other women, and women need to build relationships with other men. Not everybody under the sun, not you know, but I think it's helpful to get a perspective from other people of the opposite sex. I think that's super helpful. Um, and that gets frowned upon a lot, so I'll just leave that there. But but building the community is huge and intentionally building the community, it's not like, okay, well, I'll just go play soccer with this group of guys that play soccer. Maybe that can be a healthy place. But what are the things that that you want to get out of it? What are the things that are important to you? I always use this running man festival as an example for me that Jesse Isler puts on. I saw the flyer for it the very first year. They're doing cold plunges and saunas, they're running, they have music at night, and a couple of podcasters that I love were panel people. Um, and so I'm like, okay, that's the they're doing everything that I love. So I've got to go there. Like, I have to, I was nervous, I was scared, whatever. But I you have to put yourself in positions where people are doing the things that you really are interested in. And that's hard for people that stay in a hometown where they were from. They end up hanging out with the same crowd and we grow in different directions. Like it's okay, it's the impermanence thing again. Every relationship you had for your whole life doesn't necessarily serve you throughout your whole life. You can cheer for them from over here and intentionally build the community that you need. And so when people show up at our men's gathering, it's interesting how many of them are like, oh my gosh, like what I love the most about this was I was able to just show up here and not be in charge of anything. You know, like whether it was self-inflicted or not, they feel like at home everything the buck stops with them on every single thing. Like, ultimately, this is your fault if it doesn't work out right, is the way that it's perceived, whether that's actual or not. So we've heard multiple people say, like, I would come again just to not have to plan the day, not have to feel like I'm responsible for these things. Um, so that's pretty powerful to me that a lot of us, and I think women included, women probably feel like they have to plan everything and get it right because men are just like, whatever. Um, I think both of those are true. That yeah, we carry a pretty heavy burden of expectation that maybe we could break down a little bit and be a little more okay with just getting it wrong and being how we are and being the people we are, and starting where we currently are right now.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

Yeah, and releasing some of that tendency to people please, literally everybody but ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

100%.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Yeah. And I I think too, when it comes to finding community, there are a lot of people who feel like they don't have any type of community. And I've been in that, I've been in that place, and it sucks. But I think what's also really important is for me, one of my goals is to not try to put the pressure on one community or one relationship to be everything for me. So I have a community that's for connections and com and community. I have another one that I look more for business opportunities. I have another one that's purely just friendship. And I think too, that can be tough when we try to place the expectation on a partner or a best friend or a community, be like, no, I need you to, I need you to satisfy everything that I need. I need support, encouragement, challenge, tough love, uh, whatever. And not every community can deliver all of those things. So I feel like sometimes people go into a community thinking they're gonna get everything and they don't, and they feel like they get nothing, and they leave and they're back to square one.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Yeah, and and I think a lot of times we also expect that from our partner.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

And that's hard too. And so I would say, as a partner, anyone out there that's a partner, I would say be supportive and encourage, encouraging when you can to your partner going out and seeking the community building aspect. And it may be an interest of theirs, it may be in a shared interest, it may be, like you said, business or running or personal or music or whatever the thing is. But um I think we need, I think there's three parts to a relationship. There's there's my growth, there's my partner's growth, and then there's our combined collective growth. And I think all of those, all three of those need to be nurtured because if one of them is not nurtured, it's gonna impact the other two in a dramatic way eventually.

SPEAKER_00 39:13

Yeah. And one of the things I know that you really help people do is to take that action, is to advance. Wonder why that was the name of your book, Nick. Um, but it's to really help people advance. And so as we're kind of coming to the the close of this conversation that we know we could talk here for we could yap for hours. Um I would love to have you just kind of leave our listeners with a reminder. What is a simple reminder that you want listeners to take away from today's conversation?

SPEAKER_01 39:54

All right. I wasn't prepared for that, but that's all right. I I like to think about it on the spot. Um, trying to to base it around action because yeah, that I think that is my place in people's lives and pretty much every capacity that I work in. It's to help people move to action to just start. Um I heard Mike Posner speak a couple years ago, and he says step one is to take one step. Like it doesn't matter what the rest of this picture looks like until we start, until we start. Um, he walked across America and he was like, none of this stuff mattered, like where I was gonna sleep, how far I was gonna go, were people gonna join me? What was I gonna eat? What was my body gonna feel like? What was the weather gonna be? He's like, none of that mattered until I stepped out of the Atlantic Ocean onto the beach in New Jersey and took one step. And then he took another step and another step until six months later he dove in the Pacific Ocean in California. And then ultimately, a couple years later, climbed Mount Everest. So, same philosophy. You've climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, same philosophy. Like, we just have to start. You weren't prepared for Kilimanjaro. I've heard you say that several times. Uh, or you weren't thinking about it. And then it's like, okay, agree to do it and then just start. You're not behind. That's what I love to tell people. You're not behind. TikTok is lying to you. You're not behind. You're okay right where you are, you know. Just start. Oh, one more. Can I give one more? This is this is a favorite quote of mine. It's in my book from Eleanor Roosevelt. Today is the oldest you've ever been and the youngest you'll ever be again. So if today is the oldest you've ever been and the youngest you'll ever begin, the way that I interpret that is you have more combined experience and knowledge that you've ever had before in the rest of your life. And you have more youth and ability than you're ever going to have again. So there's no more perfect time to start than right now. If maybe you're too old to start now, you're definitely gonna be too old in 10 years. So start today. Start today.

SPEAKER_00 41:51

That's a powerful reminder to end on. Start today. I mean, we get so caught up with what is it gonna look like a year from now? It doesn't matter if you don't start today. Nick, thank you so much for a great conversation. Um, being open, being vulnerable, and sharing more about this really incredible community that you're fostering down in Georgia. All of Nick's contact information and you can find out more about his book, about the men's gathering if you want to travel into North Georgia and connect with him. Everything will be in the show notes. And uh, y'all, just a reminder everything we talked about today, this is nothing new. These are timeless reminders, basic things that we can get back to. And like Nick said, you are never behind. So until next time, I'll catch y'all later.