On this episode of the podcast, we have a special guest, Kip Sorensen. Kip is a man of action. He has been through hell and high water, but he always comes back with a smile on his face. In this episode, we talk about how important it is to live life to the fullest.
00:07:42.620And while that's true, that doesn't paint the entire story because if you go to, and this is from in 2021, 40.1 million people in the United States were non-Hispanic black alone, which represents about 12% of the population.
00:07:57.800So if 12% of the population, again, in 2021, is black, and yet if you look at murder, then blacks are responsible for 52% of the total murder or non-negligent manslaughters in America in 2016.
00:14:33.820She's in the bank, and she's got, I didn't know it was her uncle at the time, but she's got this man in a wheelchair who is clearly either completely incapacitated and brain dead or actually dead, and he is actually dead.
00:14:50.900Yeah, she attempted to secure a loan, and she would grab his hand and actually sign the document to help him sign the document so she could secure a loan from the bank.
00:15:20.540At first, I watched the video, and I thought, oh, he's got maybe some sort of, like, mental handicap or something, or he's in a coma, something.
00:15:32.240And then I'm like, no, that guy's dead.
00:15:38.480And I don't even know where to go with this, Kip.
00:15:40.980I don't know where to take this conversation other than – I will say this.
00:15:46.920There needs to be some consequences for people's behavior, and I – and this is a broader subject, but we see so many people trying things like this, which is just repulsive and disgusting.
00:15:59.260But then other things, you know, I listened to a headline over the weekend, and I can't remember the woman's name right offhand, but she admitted to smothering her baby.
00:16:12.280She had a baby who was – the mother was high on cocaine or heroin or something at the time, and she admitted that she killed her baby because the baby wouldn't stop crying, and it was frustrating.
00:16:26.520And the judge – so the prosecution tried her for negligence, which led to the baby's death, which is not negligent.
00:17:11.660She's going to get pregnant again, of course, and she's probably going to get high again, and she's probably going to do this again because she believes that she can get away with it.
00:17:21.460We live in a society that is devoid of law and order or at least law and order for certain individuals, and this ties into what you were saying is that there's a complete double standard based on somebody's victim class.
00:17:55.580We need to impose – excuse me, impose harsher convictions, harsher penalties for these behaviors, including things like you saw these Hamas supporters closing down the infrastructure of the United States.
00:18:14.580Golden Gate Bridge, a lot going on in Chicago.
00:18:53.020They're literally engaging in military operations, coordinated, logistical, well-thought-out attacks against everyday citizens who are trying to get to work, trying to go see their kids' game, who are trying to run their errands and do their jobs and do their work, who are trying to run life-saving medical runs with EMTs and firefighters and police officers.
00:19:21.340And these terrorists – and the only state that really did anything about it – guess – I'll give you a guess.
00:19:33.000Florida said nope, and they arrested them immediately.
00:19:36.160Everywhere else is like – hummed and hawed around and created real problems for people.
00:19:41.700These are terrorists, and they deserve to be treated as such.
00:19:43.640That's a little bit of a stretch from the original headline, but there has to be harsh consequences for this type of behavior, and we can't condone it.
00:19:54.440We can't make excuses for it, and we need to start cracking down.
00:19:59.100Let's jump into questions from the Iron Council.
00:20:01.860To learn more about the Iron Council, you can go to orderofman.com slash ironcouncil.
00:20:05.960So our first question, Brian Basteo, how do you deal with overwhelmed stress from busy seasons or weeks?
00:20:14.720You know it's not going to last, but you still feel all the weight pushing down.
00:20:18.860Yeah, with the busy season, it is hard because what ends up happening is you cut yourself off from activities that are healthy for your mindset and for your mental well-being.
00:20:33.740When it's busy and life's hard and it's challenging or there's changes in life, it becomes difficult to do.
00:20:39.440But what I would suggest to you is that that is the absolute worst time to cut some of those things out of your life.
00:20:45.300Now, I realize that your schedule may need to change.
00:20:47.920So, for example, if you have a project at work that requires you to go in two hours early every morning for the next 30 to 60 days, but that's normally the time you get into your gym sessions, you know the gym is good for your mental health and your physical health.
00:21:24.040I know you take lunch and you go train jiu-jitsu.
00:21:26.180And so you're a little bit more planned out about your meal planning so that you actually have it with you and you don't need to run somewhere.
00:21:33.040So you eat real quick and then you go train or you train and then you eat.
00:21:36.020And maybe instead of an hour, it's only 30 minutes.
00:21:37.940But you have to continue to do those things.
00:21:40.140And what I would suggest is that even though your schedule may change, don't eliminate those.
00:21:46.180Find different ways to become more efficient with your time so you can continue to pray, read your scriptures, go exercise, see your friends.
00:21:54.760Now, are you going to go spend the entire weekend with your buddies on a campout?
00:21:58.380No, that doesn't make sense in this season.
00:22:00.320But could you go out together and hang out for an hour and grab dinner one evening?
00:23:55.260If you're so rigid in your workout schedule that the minute you can't go work out at 6 a.m., everything about your life falls apart, then there's a problem.
00:24:04.140If you're so reliant on somebody else in your life, like your wife or your kids or a friend, that that person is maybe no longer in your life for whatever reason, maybe they pass away or you and your wife split and your world crumbles, then that means you were too rigid in your life.
00:32:55.060And when he was telling me this story, he said that he had somebody come up to him and who was super inquisitive
00:33:02.600about what he was doing and was really excited to see that he had taken his son out to do this.
00:33:08.860And come to find out that man who approached my friend has a son with a similar condition, but didn't know it was even possible to do something like this.
00:33:18.080And so my friend, through his own actions of serving his son and being a good dad, actually ended up serving somebody else who then could go out and do the same thing with his son and experience life the way that he wants to experience it and raise his boy.
00:33:30.640Um, I just thought that was really powerful.
00:33:32.920The lesson that I extract from that is maybe we shouldn't always turn inward so much and think about the great opportunity and blessing as hard as it may be to realize that we have now to serve other people.
00:33:48.420And is this something that you and your son could do together to not only forge deeper bonds amongst yourself, but to help inspire other men who are in similar situations to forge the type of bonds that you're developing with your son?
00:34:03.180In other words, turning this into some purpose and turning this into some passion and creating something really, really powerful.
00:34:12.040Even if you just serve one other guy or five or 10 or a hundred, or imagine you serve a million other people all because you decided to take this challenging set of circumstances and stop wallowing in it.
00:34:23.220And I'm not saying you are, but not wallow in it and instead turn it outwards and make it something very positive.
00:34:30.200My, my son, Brendan, um, he skis and, and the ski resort has like a vest, like a orange bright vest that says blind skier.
00:34:40.800Or more or less, this is, do not go by the sky.
00:34:44.400He's going to plow you over, you know?
00:34:47.220And, and I write, I write in front and my son, my other son or my wife will ride behind him.
00:34:54.440And I kind of make sure that, and I'll yell, you know, if there's like a path issue or something and he just goes down the, down the mountain, you know?
00:38:14.940We work together in that, but I don't have any sort of like, I don't even, I don't even want, I don't have the desire to make anything work or turn it back to the way it used to be.
00:38:25.380Which is really weird because I remember how poorly I felt as I was going through all of this.
00:38:32.280And so I've, I've completely let go of that and I'm learning to just focus on the controllables.
00:38:38.300So when my kids are here with me, I'm trying to give them maximum time and attention, trying to teach them and inspire them and spend time with them and laugh with them and play with them because that's the time that I have.
00:38:50.400So I make the best of it and the rest is beyond my control.
00:38:55.820And I would say this, and I've talked about this at length and you have too, Kip, is that a lot of the times we make enemies of our exes and you just end up shooting yourself in the foot.
00:39:42.340Just be cordial and be helpful and be friendly and be accommodating when you can in anticipation and hope that she will do the same to you when you need that.
00:41:57.220And she said something to me and I won't get into the specifics of it, but she said something and it was the most painful thing that I've ever heard her say.
00:42:08.040And I don't even think she was being mean spirited when she said it.
00:42:51.640Which is really freeing and liberating.
00:42:53.200It allows me to move on with my life and focus on my kids, focus on my girlfriend and her daughter, focus on my business that I wasn't doing before, that I couldn't do before.
00:43:01.160Because I was just clinged on to this thing that could no longer be.
00:43:16.960If anything, she was like, hey, trying to like maybe see if we could put things back together.
00:43:23.400And in that moment, you know, and I'll respect her by not sharing the details, but like in that moment I went, whoa, yeah, this is never going to work.
00:43:37.380Like it is over, you know, and I was pretty much thanks, but no thanks.
00:43:43.800And she couldn't understand it, but I just knew, you know, and then I felt at peace.
00:44:13.060But I'm curious how you dealt with a mentor and close friend coming at you with such aggression when you went public with your alcohol problems.
00:44:21.620I personally was encouraged to see you facing your problems so openly, but I can't imagine that that kind of reaction was difficult to deal with.
00:44:38.960Like I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't have time for drama.
00:44:41.840I don't have time for nonsense, but a lot of people listening, um, know that Sean Whalen, when, when I had posted this on Instagram, uh, had, you know, made a comment that was entirely inappropriate.
00:44:58.680And then, um, and then followed up with his own post on his channel, basically throwing me under the bus and using it as an opportunity to, I don't know, gloat or showboat or I don't know, whatever.
00:45:16.300Like I don't, I'm not really going to get into motives cause I don't know other people's motives, but it was, it was a low blow on two different accounts.
00:45:22.720And I didn't, I didn't, I didn't respond to his comment and I didn't respond to his post because again, I'm not going to get wrapped up in the drama.
00:45:34.140Uh, Sean sent me one message that I, I'm not going to share the details again cause we're not doing drama.
00:45:41.800It was, it was, it was just, I don't even know how to describe it.
00:45:49.940It was, it wasn't, it wasn't mean necessarily, or he wasn't like getting after me, but you know, he said something and, um, I, I felt like I was pretty gracious in my response to it.
00:45:59.580And then I saw him maybe like three or four weeks later at an event and I shook his hand and he shook my hand and we talked for a minute and that was it.
00:46:07.360Like that's it. Like I get so frustrated with social media at times because I know that I could probably make a bigger deal out of it and I know he could probably make a big deal out of it.
00:46:21.160And then we could, you know, fight about it openly and publicly. And then we could do maybe like a charity boxing event and like, like all this shit that people do just to like drum up attention and nonsense and chaos.
00:46:34.580And I don't, I just don't care. I really don't. It was unfortunate. I think the way that he responded and handled that and that's it. I don't have any ill will towards Sean. Like, I mean, look, do your thing, whatever. Um, but I'm not going to get sucked into that because my mission of serving you guys and, and also personally learning from my own shortcomings and my own failures is where my focus is and where all of our focus should be.
00:47:03.160Yeah. And if you're getting wrapped up in my drama because I'm creating it, then that's antithetical to the mission that I'm trying to lead, which is to help you with all of the tools and resources and conversations that you need to be the best man possible.
00:47:18.860And I know I could drum up drama with Sean or other people. I could do that, but I'm not going to do that because that isn't how I operate. And that's not what I want to occupy my time with. So it's unfortunate that that's how that went down.
00:47:35.320But it is to your point earlier, the way it went down and that's it. And I haven't really thought about it for probably months until you brought it up again. Yeah. And I'm not saying like, shame on you for bringing it up. You're just curious, but it's not something that occupies my mind because people are people and we make mistakes.
00:47:54.820And I try to afford grace when people say and do dumb things. And I've talked about that. And I wish people would do that for me. I'd say and do dumb things all the time. If I expect people to give me a little bit of leniency and grace, then I have to do it for other people as well.
00:48:08.620That doesn't mean I need to continue to be friends with people or associate with people. It just means that I'm willing to let it go because it's just not really that big a deal. And it isn't. It's not a big deal at all.
00:48:20.620Yeah. And I, I hope you guys heard that and, and took the answer out of the circumstance and the situation of how to deal with it. Right. Right. I'm not, I'm not going to get sucked into drama. If drama shows up on my door, I'm not going to get sucked into it. Why is it going to serve me? Is it part of an alignment with the mission of what I'm trying to achieve? It's not. Oh, okay. Is it outside of my realm of control?
00:48:49.680Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm not. Yep. I'm going to afford some grace. People make mistakes all the time. Continue to operate in an empowering way. And I can't help but think all the times where I see that scenario all the time. Like I struggle with this all the time, even from a leadership perspective at work where we might do things as an org and I might get frustrated. Why are we doing that? And I'm like, wait a sec, Kip, you can't change people.
00:49:19.680And, and, and one of my, one of my mentors, his name's David Russell. This, I could talk to him for hours and he had, he would gladly talk for hours. He's, he's a talker. But he said, I was frustrated. I was like, man, I'm so frustrated with this and I can't, we shouldn't be operating this way. We shouldn't be doing whatever. And it, you know, I'm dealing, I'm not dealing in reality. I'm dealing with what I think should, should be.
00:49:48.680And he goes, Kip, your job is to illuminate and present possibilities for others to choose for themselves.
00:50:01.400And we grow when you're capable of growing from other people's share and when they grow from yours. But it's not about getting people to see things the way we see them. It's more about creating opportunities for us to see how other people see things.
00:50:25.140And that's all we do, you know, and we live in this world. It's like, oh, well, you got to reply, man. You got to reply back because then you'll convince whoever convinced anybody out of an argument and be a little bit.
00:50:39.280Like, and you're going to sound like an idiot.
00:50:40.920Yeah. And that's why persecution is so ineffective. Back to like my opening comments. You don't get people. Let me say it this way. You can get people to do things by persecuting them.
00:50:56.020But it's not an empowering way. It's not empowering growth. You're not really helping them. Right. Thus, thus, persecution is not that beneficial.
00:51:07.280No. Well, look, I had other people take pop shots from the cheap seats at me, you know, during that time.
00:51:13.080And not one of those people who took those type of shots reached out to me and asked, hey, man, like, how are you doing? Or, hey, you really messed up. Like, what can I do to help? Like, not one of those critics did. But you know who did?
00:51:27.820Guys who weren't the critics. Guys who were like, yeah, man, you really messed up. But like, what's going on? Like, how are you doing? What are you doing to fix it? How are you going to correct the behavior? Hey, like, what, how can I help you?
00:51:38.880Those are the people that didn't say anything online. They didn't say anything publicly. But you know what? My phone blew up with those people. You know, it's the people you don't know. It's the people who want to send. And I had like half a dozen people send emails to their lists about why, you know, this and that about me. And like, I don't need to respond to that. I don't need to get into that. Not one of those people called me. Not one of those people reached out to me. Not one of those people cares about me.
00:52:03.640What they care about is an opportunity for them to boost up their own followings or their own movement or whatever else it is they're doing. And those people aren't going to last. And people are going to start to see right through them. But it's the individuals who, they don't blast it on social media. They reach out and say, hey, man, you screwed up. What are we going to do about it? But they stand by you. And those are the people that I invest my time in.
00:52:25.140Yeah. Well said. Gabriel Rejos Davila 1074. I always wonder where people come up with these Instagram names. I'm like generic. Kip. All right. How do you deal with forgiveness with an ex-family member? Ex-family member. Oh, in-law. When you knew or know you weren't at fault for the situation?
00:52:51.140Well, you don't know that. Because if you knew that, then you would have already let it go. So you're holding on to some guilt or something. Some weird, you're holding on to something.
00:53:06.080This whole, the theme of this conversation should be letting go. Why are you holding on to it? Like, what do you need from them? Well, you need their approval. You need their apology. You need their-
00:53:16.140Validation. Validation. Yeah. Like, what? What do you hope to get from dealing with an ex, an in-law? I don't really-
00:53:28.740I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the question because if you knew you were in the right, then that's it.
00:53:35.960And why are you trying to convince them? Why does that matter to you? I think that's the real question.
00:53:41.880Why does their validation matter? And if you're going to say here, well, it doesn't matter, then you would have already let go.
00:53:52.580You know, it sucks. I don't know what your in-laws did. Maybe they talked poorly of you. Maybe they screwed you over in a financial deal.
00:53:59.140There could have been a number of things that could have happened, but it's done. And it happened.
00:54:03.540And they're ex-in-laws for a reason. And that's it. Like, okay. I think forgiveness is powerful, you know?
00:54:14.440And it's not for the other person. It's just so I can move on in life. Like, I've talked-
00:54:18.580We're talking about letting go. There's people who've said things about me who I forgive.
00:54:22.120Now, I'm going to be best buddies with them? No. But I forgive them.
00:54:25.040There's other relationships that I think weren't handled properly when it came to my situation over the past year and a half to two years.
00:54:34.440I have frustrations about it, but I forgive those people.
00:54:39.780And what they do now is really on them.
00:54:43.040I'm not going to stand at the judgment seat and be judged on how they respond to me in their lives.
00:54:49.160God's not going to say, hey, well, you know, this person didn't validate you.
00:54:52.440And you didn't make this person feel good.
00:54:54.800And you didn't make this person feel comfortable with all their decisions.
00:54:57.340So what do you have to say about that?
00:54:59.040Like, I'm not going to be asked that question.
00:55:02.380The question I'm going to be asked is, did you do the best with what I gave you?
00:56:23.500I have a lot of people who I love and care about who rely on me.
00:56:26.780And I can't take on other people's problems.
00:56:30.460Gabriel, I want to make sure you don't miss what Ryan just said.
00:56:35.520You're frustrated that they have not forgiven you a little bit.
00:56:43.740And some of the response is, forgive them.
00:56:47.200Like, our heart at war towards someone requires us to give forgiveness to get rid of.
00:57:04.780It doesn't require them to change whatsoever.
00:57:09.780And that's outside your realm of control anyway.
00:57:11.580So if you have a heart at war towards someone, a parent, an ex-family member, an ex-spouse, your abuser, and you have a heart at war towards them, figure out how to forgive them.
00:59:17.220I've spent all these years trying to become a self-sufficient, high-value man, and now I'm scared to let a woman into my life.
00:59:24.740The cons seem to be outweighing the pros when it comes to a wife, but then again, I've never been taken care of or loved by a significant other yet.
00:59:56.480I mean, I can tell you the reasons why I think having a good woman in your life is beneficial, and I certainly will do that in the spirit of the question.
01:00:03.100But I think the real thing is, like, I don't need to convince you.
01:08:33.460You know, I've had honest conversations with my girlfriend where she's asked me things, and I've been tempted to not lie, but just like put a little bit of a wall up.
01:08:41.180But I'm like, no, she wants honesty, so I'll be honest with her.
01:08:43.360And I'll tell her things I'm afraid of, or things that concern me, or things that keep me up at night.
01:08:49.220But I'm not going to babble and cry like a baby, like a buffoon in front of her, because what kind of confidence does that instill in me from her?
01:09:04.300You know, I've been hurt in the past, or I'm scared of this, or I'm scared of that, or here's some things that I'm worried about, or here's the struggles I'm dealing with at work or my children.
01:09:11.260But I'm not going to cry and be a baby in front of her, because it's inappropriate, and it doesn't actually help the relationship.
01:09:21.860And I know all the people who don't agree with that will hear that and say, well, you need to be able to cry.