TRANSCRIPT:

Hey guys, welcome to ManTalk. My name is Vince Miller. You're founder and host, so good to be with you this week. Again, uh, we're just journeying through our book 30 virtues that build a man. You've got to get a copy of this. You got to give it to your pastor, your friend, your brother, your son, whoever you want to give it to. Tom Just to dig in and they can use it as a, as a devotional book just on their own or they can get together with another guy like I am today with Tyler van Epps. Thanks for being with us. Men going to be here and it's awesome. So, uh, we're actually in the next lesson. This is core beliefs a man leads from what he believes, right? I bet you do. This is kind of like one of those topics that I would assume that you're pretty proficient on.

You know, I don't, I don't, might go that far. Come on man. I just like it a lot. Thinking about the things that we believe, right? Like it's, it's amazing how many like bad corrupt beliefs we really have, isn't it? Yeah, I think we have bad credit, but we have crept beliefs when it involves money, alive, marriage, family work, whatever it is. We probably got a corrupt believer buried in there so deep that we probably don't not even aware that we have it right now. Yeah, likely. You probably do. Yeah. Your wife probably knows what that belief has told. She probably has told you. You just pushed it off and say forget about it. I don't really believe that.

Okay, so what does one bad belief you think your wife thinks that you have one bad boy? She believes I'm OCD. Really? Borderline. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I'm not scared right now. You're a little obsessive compulsive. Maybe. I don't know. Why. What do you do? This obsessive compulsive. You got to do something that's just come on to be crazy. The, uh, the dishes. You do the dishes. I do a majority of the dishes. I don't do the dishes. I do a majority of the dishes. And you're obsessive compulsive about getting the dishes done. The behavior is. I always have to have them cleans within like five to 10 minutes after our meal. I can't let them sit there for much longer than that unless we have guests over or something, but that starts to just not in the back of my head. As soon as we get done. I'm taking you upstairs.

The silverware all has to be categorized. You can't just throw it all in there. It's got to be all the forks and peace. So when you put it into digital usually puts it away too and I just want to obsessive compulsive suite. Is your car perfectly clean right now? Right now? As of yesterday, was it yesterday? I can't even remember the last time I cleaned it before that. Oh Nice. Okay. Right. Like, like when I go into your closet, is everything hung up perfectly to. Are you kind of. Pretty much, yeah. The shirts hung in the same direction. They're not color coordinator, which is the, but they're all hung hanging in the same direction. Meaning that the, the buttons are all pointing in one direction. All using the same hangers. Right. Mine. Mine are always pointing left. Mine. Two are pointing left. And then use the same hanger usually.

Yeah. Yeah. The only one hanger in your closet. I feel you. Okay, so you're borderline. Yeah, maybe. But you know. No, you're not that bad. That's just called being neat. Come on, man. Route can be neat to. Or guys, we don't have to be slobs. Right? So we can have things organized. I mean so, so. Okay. So we do have some beliefs that drive us in. Your wife sees that in you. My wife probably see some things in me as well like that I may be be obsessive compulsive about, but we all have. We have these bad beliefs too. Like I can tell you from a very young age, we're getting beliefs beat into us. Right? Right. Usually by the people around us and we believed them over time. Right? Like, it's weird. I don't know if you remember that movie with Leonardo Dicaprio called inception. Great movie, right?

Like I love this movie. You guys should go see it if you haven't seen it, but a inception is this idea that Leonardo is planning these dreams into people deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep into their brain. So they, they'll act in a certain way and that's Kinda how I think of a core belief. It's something buried multiple levels deep that causes us to behave and act in a certain way and all kinds of men have all kinds of beliefs that are buried there that they're conscious of and maybe unconscious of how we act on a almost impulsively, right? Like, who can't, who doesn't remember a young man being told when we were kids like, stop crying, stop being a baby. How many of us were told that or like man up grow up, you know, those are in those seed, these beliefs, right? That look to be a man, we don't cry, uh, to be a man.

We kinda just muster up the energy, you know, don't throw like a girl has been the one that everybody's talking about it a day. Like don't throw like a girl, like that's a bad belief. Not only about men but about women too, right? We have these beliefs are very controversial today that we can't even have it anymore because they're so controversial and polarizing and demeaning other people. Right? So we do have bad beliefs, um, can, can you think of a, like a bad belief that you've had in your life that was like revolutionary for you to discover that you add? Yeah, it might be hard on the spot. I'd say it's good and it's really good.

Go there because I think it's something when you've had a belief like that deep inside, it's something that you have to keep just wwe wrestled with God wrestling with the Holy Spirit to um, to keep centering on his truth in that time.

You going to keep beating on this thing because it keeps beating on you.

So for me, it's that performance, a performance leads to affirmation or performance leads to love. Um, for me, I think it was probably as I was transitioning from high school to college and, you know, going through really becoming a man, becoming on my own self sufficient, all these kinds of things. I started to recognize just in different places that man, I'm, I'm so performance driven. And, uh, when I fail, I feel so inadequate when I succeed, I feel so, you know, the highs and highs and lows of that. Um, but to be, to have that replaced with God speaking, Oh, you're, you're my beloved son. You could sit in that chair right there, do nothing. I love you. I will affirm you that God's God's a. I'm trying to remember the verse. I'm dancing dancing over us with affection, singing over us with infections, um, and that I can, I can be completely still and at peace without any activity or performance and God's love and affirmation still gonna arrest us.

Yeah. So it would really hurt for you to like here, man, you suck to do on this podcast today. But, but that would really affect you, right? What was in, and you don't suck at this podcast by the way. You're doing great, man. You're doing awesome accolades. You can kind of let down. But, uh, I, I think that it's weird though, those little voices deep inside of us that are in incepted like Leonardo Dicaprio did. They're seated deep inside of us. They lead to all these interesting behaviors like, like, I wasn't good enough, or I'm, I'm not, uh, I'm not affective or I'm not making a difference in. And it Kinda, we almost, it's almost like we hear these voices in our head, right? Like, you suck. You suck today. Why did you say that? You stupid idiot. You know what I mean? It's weird, but I've heard those voices to.

And we're not talking about real voices right now. Weird here. Okay? So we're not talking about real voices. We're talking about the voices in our head that are real to us, right? That we hear that bad self talk. You know, I heard somebody recently from Moody College in Chicago, uh, who is a professor there said that it wasn't until his fifties and he doesn't believe in till most men are in their fifties, that they start to deal with some of those bad self talk. Isn't that crazy? Like until we're in our fifties, we start to deal with his bad self talk that we, these, these voices that we've heard and we're talking about core beliefs, right? These voices that we've heard over time are seated so deeply in us that there are these powerful shouting mantras that just that, that call us to behave and act in certain ways. In your case performance, right? Was success or failure to you today? Do you still deal with that? Some. Oh yeah, absolutely. But how do you deal with it? That's differently today? What do you do that's different? Yeah.

For me, everything comes back to identity. Uh, I'm just, uh, uh, I get obsessive compulsive

comes to just being able to have an inside joke.

My wife and I now I'm a, I think a hyperfocus on identity versus behavior activity. All these types of things is, has been my way to approach it differently than I have in the past. And so whether it's a, whether it's divo times, whether it's journals, whether it's conversations. Even right now in the season of life I'm in for the past maybe three to five weeks or something, a Holy Spirit's just been highlighting identity, identity, identity. And so for me, that's something I try, you know, every morning I wake up, I got a little reminder set on my phone, 8:45. That kinda reminds me of this mission statement. I am tyler. I'm a beloved son of God. I am a mighty man of valor and God has equipped me to do his good work. So just some different things.

Peanut to myself. I'm going to, I'm going to show you some. So this is a real thing. I didn't manufacture this but I went to this camp and I spoke at it this year, uh, in upstate New York. And uh, they gave out these man cards here. Yeah. You liked that man card? I got a man card finally 47. Got My man card. So, uh, anyway, they said by the end of the I was the keynote speaker at it. I didn't come up with this idea. I did think it was interesting. And I was like, what is he going to do with his man card by the end of this retreat. So anyway, this, this man card was given out. You're supposed to write your name on the front of it, so I wrote my name on the front of it on the back they said, write out your commitment, your kind of what you're committing to and your manhood.

So I wrote this like this, so this is me sharing kind of vulnerability here, so, and it's not going to make a lot of sense to you, but I'll make sense of it. It says, don't quit. Don't let emotions convince you. It's not worth it. You see what I did there. It's Kinda this, this confession that you know, we, we each have this desire to let circumstances define who we are and it begins this voice of like, maybe I should just give up. Maybe I should quit. Maybe. Maybe I shouldn't continue. Right? And it's a very subtle voice is not powerful enough to say quit, but it's, it's a voice that you kinda hear like, oh, it's not worth it. Men Aren't listening to you. Men Aren't. Men aren't using the stuff that you're using. A, you're not articulate enough. You're not, you're not big enough.

You don't have enough credibility in the space yet, and it's just this, this voice, these voices that you hear that say of give up, give up, but what you do did then to counteract that is you wrote something out that you're praying every day. Say it again. It's I am tyler. Have a beloved son of God, beloved son of God, but mighty man of valor. I love it. My mighty man of valor. I love it, and I think that is very powerful because the Jesus. Here's that same voice, right? Jesus hears his voice that it's awesome, right after baptism, right? This is my son and whom I'm well pleased, and what son doesn't want to hear that voice. What's son of God doesn't want to hear that voice. You want to hear their voice. I want to hear that voice. And that's kind of the voice of like, this is the belief that trumps all of their beliefs that all other voices that we hear in our life, right?

But we've got to dig out all these other bad ones first before we can really hear this other voice, right? So like, how, how do you think guys, what advice would you give guys now that you're kind of on the other side of this thing you're trying to, you've got this little, this little phrase that you repeat to yourself, and by the way that isn't positive self talk, that isn't positive. I believe that that's actually believing what God says. There's a complete difference between positive self, Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins talk, and then what God says there's a complete difference. There's a cavernous difference there is because God's truth is truth all the time because it works every time. I always say that and I think it's always true, but, but how, how, how, how do you do that, tyler? Yeah. What, what does it look like?

Um, I think brotherhood is a, is a big piece of that component there when, uh, when you're able to be vulnerable, speak out. These are the voices that I hear. These are the, this is the voice that I want to hear God's voice. I'm not even. And I think there's times a lot where we might wrestle with that we're trying to figure out, you know, just emotionally, what is this voice like? There's something I can tell that something's not sitting right with it. And so it's something I got to kind of split apart and dissect a little bit, I think. I think brotherhood helps a lot in that when you bring godly men to the table with you to help process that. So yeah, for me, uh, a journaling is a big activity for me. I'm a big thinker, so just getting things on paper that I can come back to a day later and be like, oh yeah, that's kind of where I left off in dissecting that yesterday. It's kind of like high school when you're dissecting the frog, you put it on ice.

Yeah. Nice. Nice analogy. Yeah. And, and I want to really draw attention to something tangible you did. You wrote out something that you put in stone before God. And I think that that is awesome. In fact, the texts from today is from exodus chapter 20 and you're going to find this interesting. It says this, and God spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the House of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or on Earth beneath or is in the water under the earth. Now, I find that to be very, very interesting because what God is coming against in this text is dollar tree, right? Making idols, making something carved. Now, you know, I think for most of us today, we kind of go, yeah, I don't make carved images. You know what I mean? Like I, I didn't want to go to his word. You're going to carve an image of myself out of wood and set it on the counter and go, I want to be like this. You know what I mean?

Widdling away an image that I'm going to worship, right? And I. But I think it's interesting what man always goes to in their date. That's the way that they idolize things in our day. I think one of the ways we idolize, we idolize these beliefs that we hold very subtly that are buried deep within our heart and I think in our world today, that's where idols begin. We have these idols that I am not good enough. I don't perform well enough. I'm not loved, right? I can't do it. I can't do it and I'm not talking about bad self talk again, I am actually talking about beliefs that don't align themselves with God's word that become a dollar tree. Exodus 20 to us and that's what we're fighting here. You chose to write in stone another command, right? I am the Lord your God. You are my son and who I am well pleased, and you wrote that down and you put a not a line in the sand.

You put some words in concrete and then you repeat them to yourself to remind yourself of who you are in relationship to God and his identity and that that way you hold his identity and his beliefs over your own. Oh man, that comes against anything in our life and I love what you did there, man. That is a great example for a new guy out there. I don't know if you believe that or not, but I think that's pretty cool. What are some of the things you do? Oh, you know, I just suck all the time. That's basically what I do specifically this

identify because I think for me, I feel I'll feel a tension in my life and I think that's what I know, that there's a belief. What are some of the ways that you would dive into that where maybe you feel the tension you feel some of the. The emotion or conflict of some of my behavior activity is stemming from a belief. How do you, how do you trace the thread?

Yeah, that is a great question. I, you know, I, I think that you kinda have to unravel the things. I think everybody's got these hairballs have core beliefs. Right? And they are they are I hairball, I mean, think about your, your cat coughing up phlegm abroad, cat hairballs. This is the only time I'm ever going to talk about cats on the show. I promise you I'll never bring it up again unless there's a lion. Okay, so let's imagine that lion coughing up a hairball. Alright, so you know, I was lying. Costs up this hairball and you know, it's all tangled and gross and disgusting. You know, and you can't untangle the thing. You know, you can't pull it apart, you just pull it. It just gets tighter, right? That's what happens. Do I hear ball? A big ball of string that's wanted together that you can't.

You pull on it and just gets tighter. Christmas lights that are all tangled. Thank you very [inaudible]. So much better or, or align when you're casting. Now we're getting masculine, right? I cast in my line out. Big Air Ball. You just gotta you gotta slowly kind of pull and tug on it, right? That's kind of the metaphor there. You've got to pull and tug on it and it, it's one step at a time. It doesn't happen all at once. There isn't one fail proof and Whoa, we're all fun, fun and, and back to fly fishing. It's, it takes time and I think that we've got to dig deep into where, where do these things come from? We've got to ask ourselves some questions going to reflect on it. We got to pose it to our spouses, we get to pose it to our friends and we listened to sermons.

Maybe we could dig into God's word and um, you know, suddenly we will come to discover what that thing is that has really caused that thing to get all wound up and us and didn't. Unfortunately, these core beliefs usually drive pretty deep. Actually in there. They're quite humbling. Um, they often require us to get pretty vulnerable before we get there. And, uh, uh, you know, like, like even in my own life, I've encountered many core beliefs that have, when I have unraveled them, have not only unraveled my life, but caused me to put it back together the right way. And that's the hope and it is, we're, we're looking to unravel things so that we can put them to bed together again in a way that honors God because a fishing line all wound up is useless. But a fishing line wound up around a spool is ready to use and I think that that's what God wants from us.

He wants to unravel those things so you can become useful and purposeful and I think that's what guys need. So whether it be going and sitting in front of a counselor, sitting in front of a friend, having a discussion, trying to dig deep on it, getting around some texts that relate to it, listening to sermons that might help us with it. I mean it'll unravel these core beliefs and then we can realign our beliefs with God's beliefs. That's what we're trying to do. Realignment. Right? Right. Just like when I banged my truck into a curb, I gotta go get it. Realigned. Or rather my wife bangs the car and do occur. You'll get it was never me, man. I never hit the curb. So anyway, so, but with that, I think that's where I think most men need to go. It's just taking those gradual steps.

It's not something that's going to happen overnight, you know? And so neither was it for you, right? Wasn't for you. Neither is it for me. So guys, with that, uh, I think it would be really valid for you to jump into our relationship. Like tyler and I got here, we got our books, right? We got a 30 virtues that build a man, a conversational guide for mentoring. Any man, we just did this right here. If we can do it, you can do it. Uh, it can be as fun or as funny or as ridiculous as ours, but maybe it's meaningful to write or whatever you want to go. Dissect the frog today, right? Discover what core beliefs are going on behind you and we hope you'll do that. It'd be resolute.org forward slash 30 t h I r t y. go grab a book today. We know you'll love it and we'll see you right back here next time for another edition of.