I Knew He Would Come | Parables from the Pit | Ep 009

I Knew He Would Come | Parables from the Pit | Ep 009

Parable #1: Broken and Unspoken

  • Coach Sam: So many men feel that their freedom has been violated: the freedom to feel, be and live. Yes, we have the basic freedoms here in this country, but there are a lot of men that are not free in their heart. They ask themselves questions like: Why did I get married? Am I even real inside this relationship? Why does this seem like it’s a program that I need to be part of?  Life goes on for them and they pretend that one day things will be good for them.
  • Kevin: When I first saw the videos for Warrior Week, I was trying to copy them for my business. But in order to copy them, I had to watch them. Three minutes into the video, I’m fucking crying and I’m connecting with something that’s from my past. Everything that Garrett was talking about, described the pain and the trap that I was in.

QUESTION: Have you ever felt that your life is a program that you are living inside of?

Parable #2: Perfection is a Liar’s Game

  • Kevin: My response to an abusive mother was to keep trying to be good enough. If I excel at everything, then she’ll have to accept me, she’ll have to know I’m good enough. Between that and my strong religious background, I was pushed into this perfection game and I was fucking good at it. When you play the perfection game to win, you play to lie.
  • Coach Sam: There is no perfection in your leadership at home.

QUESTION: Where in your life are you playing the Perfection Game? How is that working for you?

Parable #3: The Checklist

  • Kevin: When I met my ex-wife, there was this new form of gravity around her. The next step was to get married and have kids. Suddenly, there was this list we were supposed to start living: I stopped living who I really was and became the list, fragmenting myself into little pieces of Kevin to check off all of the boxes. The actual me? I was fucking all alone.
  • Coach Sam: You are brought up under certain religious instruction, which is beautiful – and inside of that, you get married. It’s not your feelings that drive your life, it’s a checklist: certain laws must be in place in order for your feeling to rise. And obviously, that’s an impossibility because your feelings are going to go against this checklist.

QUESTION: What checklist is driving your life?

Parable #4: Cheating: A Family Affair

  • Sam: I don’t know how you operate when you cheat, what pain you can cause, or how it can impact your family because I haven’t done it.  When you have an agreement and there’s a violation to that agreement, it’s never going to be the same. Nobody wants to fuckin’ feel violated, yet when you bring a lie into your home, everyone feels it.
  • Kevin: I admit I took the coward’s path when I cheated on my wife. Many guys who cheat on their wife also lose their relationship with their kids. With every unexplained emotion in the house, the kids will either think it’s their fault or that it’s their job to fix it.

QUESTION: What lies are you bringing into your home and putting on a silver platter for your kids as truth?

Parable #5: I Knew You Would Come

  • When Kevin’s ex wife moved herself and the kids nine hours away, it was in that moment he really became a father, realizing that what he had had right down the hall was now nine hours away – which distance he has been traveling every two weeks for the past nine years to see them. Love for his kids is what drives him to do whatever he needs to do in order to be with his kids and to always show up in their lives.
  • Coach Sam to Kevin: That connection is healing your heart. That connection is Divine. It’s not based off some check list or what you are ‘supposed to do.’ Inside your soul, inside of your identity, there is a man committed to love. Inside Warrior, there are men modeling your love because that is their truth. There are too many men who are carrying similar pain who are not speaking about it

QUESTION: What actions are you willing to back your commitments with?

Parables from the Pit:

“You will never put this Shuilt on me – it’s this shame and guilt. You will not put that on me and you won’t put it on Kevin. It’s not that we are some fucking super heroes, it’s because we have learned the skills of not navigating the invisible maze that goes nowhere and is feeding some other mother fucker’s interest.

– Coach Sam

 

“In the words of Malcolm X,  ‘No man can give you freedom; if you’re a man, you take it.’  I’m not afraid to take it anymore. I will have my freedom. I will love my children, I will love my wife, and I will do it the way I want to and I make no apologies. I think the fundamental difference between me now and when things weren’t right is, I don’t give a fuck about the invisible rules that you put on me. If I put it on myself, great. If I don’t? It’s not mine and I won’t own it.”

-Kevin Voisin