Dylan Bain: It’s time to reject the domestication of a manufactured society and reclaim the human wisdom that lives within our hearts. Welcome to the human revolution. I’m your host, Dylan Bain.

Joshua Laycock. Welcome to the human revolution.

Joshua Laycock: Thank you so much. I’m excited to be here.

Dylan Bain: I’m excited to have you. So we were talking a little bit right before we hit the record button here about, you know, life transitions and kind of get into that, the back half of the life and surrendering to your purpose. I’d like you to kind of just recap what we were talking about and tell us your story.

Joshua Laycock: Oh, geez. Yeah. I love the quote, although I don’t think it’s perfect. You know, Steve Jobs talks about you can never connect the dots going forward. You can kind of only connect them going backwards. And looking back, I’m 43, looking back on my life, it’s whenever I’ve sort of surrendered to change and allowed myself to change out the masks that I wear and to allow people what my body is telling me, what my soul is telling me I should do. It’s only when I listen and then have the courage to kind of do something about it, that I’ve made huge strides in my life.

So the backstory is pretty typical up into a point I raised in a nice upper middle class family, awesome upbringing, wanting for nothing. Went to one of the top finance schools in the country. I’m here in Canada. I graduated near the top of my class, had the pick of jobs coming out, which is great. Had a wonderful job, got into a really sweet career, commercial insurance, working with a lot of financial institutions and, and just sort of like by luck landed into one of the best groups within the industry and learned from the pros and had a pretty awesome career, continued to have a pretty awesome career in that space.

But I, I had moved out West, I was living, I changed companies for the first time I was, I was making all the, the money that I wanted. I’d hit my financial milestones. I was married. I had a son. I had a dog. I was living in North Vancouver in the mountains, arguably one of the most beautiful places on earth.

I even had the old truck that I wanted, an old Toyota forerunner that I just happened to find on the yard. I was like, that’s the one I want. And I bought it and everything was going up. Joshua, you know, like everything’s millhouse. Everything was just amazing. And I was out for a walk one morning and it was just, why am I so miserable?

Dylan Bain:

Joshua Laycock: I just was, why is it that if I have everything on paper, why am I so miserable? And I was having like, I was rumination. Like my thoughts were running wild. I was replaying conflicts. I was obsessing about things and I was just miserable and it was impacting my job.

I knew it was going to impact my marriage. I knew that if I didn’t make some significant changes, I was destined to be a shitty father. And it was really unsettling because that’s probably around 30 ish at the time. It’s like, I have done everything that I am quote unquote supposed to do. Why am I not over the moon?

And I remember couldn’t sleep one night and thinking about things, mind running wild. And I just Googled, how do you shut your brain off? And that led to the first ever, really like self help I guess, or personal development book that really changed my world. And it was the first time that I’d ever seen the mind as a muscle, uh, something beyond just this terrible inconvenience in between my ears.

And then that led me to podcasts, which led me to groups. Like a lot of people I hovered over the by, don’t buy, buy, don’t buy joining a men’s group for the first time. Am I really going to buy friends? It’s just kind of the mindset that I went through. But it was really eye opening to me, and as I finally joined my first online men’s group, I got a lot out of it in a really short order.

And one of the things that really helped me is this notion that sort of Irving Yellum, who’s one of my wannabe guru, I wish that I knew this guy, he’s an old psychiatrist who writes these incredible books, but anyway, he talks about the group experience, particularly for men, is this notion of universality.

In other words, The problems that I’m facing are not unique to me, but especially as men, we walk around acting like we have our shit together and we see ourselves from the inside and we see everyone else from the outside. Of course, I’m the only one struggling. I’m the only one who must be feeling like this.

And that’s, so it’s bad enough that I feel this way then I’m going to add on this layer of shame and guilt because I must be the only one who can’t find extreme gratitude in living this very privileged life. So when you get in a group of guys and there’s 20, 30 guys, when I joined the first group, there was under a hundred guys in this group.

It was like we all had some version of the same issue and just that universality of it instantly diffused a lot of its potency. All of a sudden it was like, okay, I can kind of let go some of the shame and I can kind of let go some of the fear that’s associated with it. And now I can start to actually approach the problem or whatever that thing is with a little bit more clarity and specificity.

And then in time, apparently I was pretty decent at it. And I rose kind of through the ranks, I guess, for lack of better words, started running groups, programming content for different groups, actually became a consultant for different groups. You know, depending on how fast forward we want to go, that was essentially what got me into it.

But I look back, the first moment was recognizing that I didn’t need to walk this path. When I worked in my first job. It was a Bay Street job. So like the Canadian version of Wall Street, I was 3 piece suit button down and my personality matched it. I was always working, first one in, last one to leave, six, seven days a week as a single guy.

I didn’t socialize. I wouldn’t be outworked. I wasn’t a lot of fun. Everyone says you must be fun at parties. I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t go to those. I was really kind of an uptight ass. And it’s funny my wife, I actually met her working there. She was the receptionist and we sort of tried to hide it for a while.

And I actually overheard someone say to her, like, why are you dating that guy? Like, what is that? And her thing was, I wish that you would see weekend Joshua. And that was one of the first times that I was like I am a different human, like a completely different human, but I had really bought in to this mask of hyper conservative, hyper professional, no soft edges, no weakness, no surrender, never stop working.

And when I was able to recognize that there’s parts of me there that I don’t mind, but also I was really not living in congruence with how I wanted to live, how weekend Josh was so diametrically opposed to during the week Joshua, that was an eye opener for me and over time, fast forward now being in my forties and on the verge of another major life transition, it really does boil down to one, being grateful for the people around me to kind of shed light sometimes on some of those blind spots, but also summoning up, I guess, the courage to say I’m okay to kind of reinvent myself and I’m going to lose some people along the way with no malice, that’s okay. We’re going to move in different directions, but every time I power through it, the transition is, is painful. The one I’m going through now is far and away the most frightening and most difficult I’ve ever done, but there’s never an ounce of regret on the other side of it. So it’s kind of the backstory in a nutshell.

I mean, there’s a lot there, but really that was what it, what kind of sparked this whole process of me being a very different person than I was. Call it 15 years ago.

Dylan Bain: That’s amazing. There’s so many points I want to go back to. I think that the first one I’m going to, I want to talk about is like, you’re, you’re talking about taking off these masks and wearing masks.

And I think particularly when we talk about like the masculinity space, there’s always the idea of like, Oh, there’s the mask of manhood. And I’ve never liked that term. And at the same time, I fully acknowledge exactly what you’re talking about. Cause I too work in corporate and I, I too, you know, have that, that same, what I am speaking to the CFO is very different than when I am with my kids.

So talk to me a little bit about what it’s like to take that mask off or even to realize that you have a mask on.

Joshua Laycock: Yeah. So it’s fresh in my mind. I just finished reading a great book. I was just clicking on Amazon to remind myself. So it’s called the shaman’s path to freedom. It’s by Don Jose Ruiz. It’s the son of Miguel Ruiz, the four agreements.

And he talks deeply about this, the freedom to change. And he talks about masks in a, in a slightly different way. And, and, um, I actually talked about it on my podcast last week, a little bit about this is masks can get a bit of a bad rep, but I think the truth is we have to wear different masks at different times I mean, in order to kind of function in society. If I’m therapist Joshua and I come home and I just start providing therapy to everybody, or if I’m teaching jujitsu, I can’t be the therapist on the mats, or, you know, if I’m just kind of hanging out with the parents at the birthday party that my daughter is going to.

It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to show up in that persona all the time. There’s a huge part of me, whatever that means, that kind of is part of that role. When I’m sitting in front of my clients in session, I am in therapist mode. And we can call that a mask. And I think why it’s healthy is when you can turn that off.

We all know the person who can’t turn the work version of themselves off, and it permeates every aspect of their world. I don’t think that’s healthy for a few reasons. One, because I think the moment we become completely attached, our sense of self worth and our own overall dynamic image of us is tied to this one persona. It’s often our careers. Then I think it’s unhealthy. I think it’s often not compatible with a lot of society, and I think it’s going to impact relationships. I So recognizing that I have to wear different personas as I walk through life is okay. That’s just sort of part of maturity. The other end of that is like, this is me, take it or leave it.

And then realizing that people are leaving it. But one, when they become sticky and we can’t take it off, then I think it becomes a struggle. But also, I don’t think a mask is something that we should be hiding behind. And this is where this, this concept of masks can get a little diluted, I think. And I don’t want to confuse people.

When we hide, right? behind something that I don’t, I don’t think it’s the right, it’s not what I am talking about when I’m talking about a mask, because the mask should allow your eyes and your senses to still come through and it should still allow your emotion to shine through and there has to be a, forgive me for using the word, there has to be an authenticity that comes through or else now you’re really just Denying who you really are, if I’m articulating myself clearly, so I think when I’m at work, there is still Joshua, the human, and the elements of me that make me wonderful show up, but I interact differently.

I don’t swear. I dress differently. I do what needs to be done to get the task done. Same with when I’m sitting and playing with my children. There’s still an element of me that always shows up, but now there’s a bit of like a sillier, more playful version of me. There are times when I will put on that sort of more hardcore masculine kind of persona, if I think the situation warrants it.

But where it fails is if I don’t know, well now I don’t need to show up as This really tough guy who’s sitting seated deep into his masculine. Maybe I need to soften here and allow my feminine energy to show up, my divine energy to show up. Then I put a different version. And again, maybe the mask analogy throws people off because it implies like it’s an all or nothing sort of thing.

That’s kind of how I view it is if you can be fluid, if you can allow the true core of yourself to show up in different scenarios without it seeping in and leeching in to who you are at all times, then I think if you can allow that flexibility, it’s healthy. That was a bit of a roundabout way of trying to explain this, but when we hide, I think it’s dangerous.

When our sense of self worth is tied exclusively to sort of one quote unquote persona, I think that’s a little unhealthy, and when we resist allowing ourself to change, notwithstanding what our body and our heart and our soul is telling us, because I’m so bought into this, it’s like politics and like identity politics, right?

It’s like there’s, you can have it. a political view, and you can share certain common views with other people, but when like your true essence is now fused with a political movement, or like, we all know, like, the vegans, like, I don’t have a problem with people who choose not to eat meat, but when your full identity is completely wrapped up in this, and then you’re just sort of spewing that everywhere you go, well, that’s not healthy to me.

So, it’s the fluidity of it. It’s allowing ourselves to hear, and then having the courage to maybe say that. That time has passed, like my button down three piece suit, Bay Street persona doesn’t really have a role in my life anymore. So somewhere on a shelf, there’s a mask that’s getting dusty.

Dylan Bain: That’s amazing. I love how what you said about there’s a time where this mask fit my face, but I have changed and it’s no longer there. And the idea of congruence that the mask matches the face that’s underneath it. And I, I’ve kind of thought about this in my own life because I, I used to be a teacher before I was an accountant and there was a very distinct day where it was like, this no longer works.

I think about that frequently because there are skills that when came forward with me, but basically the mask no longer matched the man underneath. And so the mask was, was there to hide and conceal rather than to actually allow me to live and interact. And I think for a lot of men, there’s a great deal of, of resistance.

And like they’re handed a mask and that’s it and then they forget that the mask is there and they think it’s their face.

Joshua Laycock: They’ve been wearing it for so long, right? That that’s, it’s fusing now with who you are. But if you take that analogy literally, something that is on you that is now fusing into you.

It’s why it’s deeply uncomfortable. It’s why your body’s going, This doesn’t feel right. Something is wrong here. I know it’s not a literal translation, but if you think about it that way, that doesn’t sound pleasant to me. That doesn’t sound fun. And I think our bodies are really good at letting us know that something is wrong when that happens.

Dylan Bain: Yeah, I agree with that. And I also think that a lot of men are taught to ignore what their body’s telling them for sure. And like, for me, like, you know, in, in the last, probably the last six weeks I’ve woken up most mornings at 5am and just felt terrible. Stomach and knots don’t feel safe. I’ve been working my way through that, but I was having a conversation with a mutual acquaintance of ours, Dewey Freeman.

I was talking to him yesterday and his point to me was, well, I asked him, why can’t I just do what I used to do? And have I lost the capacity to just stow my shit and go, go forward and get it done? And he’s like, you have the capacity, but you’ve also allowed your whole self to be at the table now and your whole self gets to say, so your emotional capacity, what you know is true in your heart is now at the table.

And so the hard charging Viking that you, you were three years ago is like, tally ho let’s go. And your emotional part going, but we’re not that anymore. We’re also a husband and a father, and you have a wife that you have to care for. And these things are the things that you actually need to pay attention to.

And that has been a hard place for me to be, because there’s this constant question you brought up identity of like, well, if I’m not that hard judging person, then who am I? It feels so squishy. Whereas the other one, yeah, my body might reject it, but at least I know what I am. And that is a place that I’ve seen a lot of men, like, oscillate in.

What has been your experience with men who wear that mask, it’s fusing their face, and they just, they don’t even see it that way, even though it’s apparent to everyone else.

Joshua Laycock: Yeah, so when I start working with men, I often ask, are you ready? Because it is very difficult to unsee something once you learn how to see it.

It’s very difficult to unlearn something once you begin to learn, right? And it’s exactly what you were talking about is that first I was a hard charging person and I could deny the pain. I could deny the discomfort. Well, it’s because You hadn’t yet learned one, that you should be paying attention to those other things.

Sometimes it’s that those things even exist. For a lot of men, if you ask them to explain their emotions to you, it’s not that they’re resisting. It’s not that they’re sitting back and being like, No, no, no, no, no, my dad said don’t. My dad said don’t. It’s right here. My dad said don’t. It’s like you haven’t been taught how to speak the language of emotion.

How to articulate your needs, that those needs have value. So sometimes, yeah, it’s repression, but a lot of times it’s just genuinely an absence of knowledge, right? It’s like if I were to say, let’s finish this conversation in Portuguese, you know, you’d be like, well, I can’t do that. I doubt that you’re going to have shame.

I doubt that you’re going to have a feeling of Inferiority because we can’t finish this conversation in Portuguese. You can be like, dude, I never learned Portuguese. Okay. Me either. So let’s not do that. But for the average man, if I were to say like, how does that make you feel? A lot of guys genuinely have no idea.

So for a lot of times, they’re not even aware that the mask is a mask, first of all, and because it’s become so common, that suffering, that disconnect, that out of resonance with life is their steady state. Okay. Our bodies can get used to anything. A lot of our maladaptive traits and things that we repress and the way that our body responds, it’s we’re used to that.

Doesn’t mean that’s a good thing. You know, it’s like, like a lot of people who might have a father who screams at them or hits them, they can get used to that, but doesn’t mean that it’s an acceptable thing. So I think for a lot of men, they’re wearing these masks or they’re slapping on this persona because one, it’s all they’ve been taught.

No, one’s ever told them, do you know there’s other masks you can put on? There’s other pieces of you that can shine through. So one, it’s about learning because you’re right. Once you, I hate to use the, the matrix analogy, but like once you’ve been unplugged, it is very difficult to go back. So once you’ve had that awakening, when you realize that, you know, maybe I I’ve seen life only through my eyes, but now I can hear and I can smell and I can taste and I can feel you could long to go back.

And maybe even if you tried hard enough, you could jam it down and get there. But it’s painful. So it requires an element of courage to do that. And I think the other piece also though, is that we need to integrate the word and into our life a lot more than or I think for a lot of times, or in a lot of situations, there’s this assumption that I can’t be that person anymore.

I now have to be this person as opposed to maybe I can be part of this human. And I can also embrace this part of me and find out gloriously how they can come together and create this really unique person who’s doing a lot of different things, but this either or left or right, up or down, black or white kind of mindset, I think also creates an unnecessary amount of pain because life happens in the gray.

So you could be a corporate person, you can operate in a corporate environment, but maybe you’re not entirely bought into what it would take to become a senior vice president, but you’re okay kind of in that middle ground because maybe this is not perfect for me, but I can kind of, there’s elements here that align with me.

There’s parts of myself that can show up, but then I can also use that spare time that’s not spent hustling for promotions and raises all the time to give back and to serve and, or just to be the silly kind of dad who wants to sit on the floor and play Lego with the kids. Like, do you know what I mean?

Like it’s, it doesn’t always have to be either or, but yes, when you choose to do the work, it is difficult to undo it. And that’s I think a big, big misconception about the work as we call it. First of all, it can be a very lonely path because there are a lot fewer people walking that path. So a lot of friends and family that you may have been able to connect with and resonate with, they may not Jive with the path that you’re on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told like you’ve changed. It’s like, wow, thank you.

Dylan Bain: Yeah, we’re supposed to.

Joshua Laycock: We’re supposed to right? So there’s that element, but I think once you walk the path It’s not a like what’s the six week program to becoming an awesome man. It doesn’t exist. You’ve opened yourself up to a new existence.

This is it going forward and what I really do believe is Is that this pain, this angst of like, why can’t I just go back? Why can’t I just, I really do think it’s, we can call it resistance. You know, I believe very strongly that our minds are much more content to be consistently miserable than inconsistently happy.

We like predictability. Our brains are wired for predictability. Our brain isn’t going, how do I make Joshua happier? How do I make Dylan happier? It’s an efficiency play, right? It’s when you consistently think about something or you consistently go somewhere in your mind. I’m drastically oversimplifying, but essentially your brain, which is hugely efficient, is going to go, we’re doing that a lot.

Let’s just do more of that to make it easier for him. The analogy, and I took this from, it was Michael Neal, who’s an incredible coach. He talks about this bus and I use this with my clients affair. But if you think about standing at the corner, waiting for a bus and the buses represent thoughts or emotions or something that, that our brain is just sort of downloading and our brain is hyper efficient.

Like it’s a super, super efficient city planner. And if maybe we want to go downtown, But we keep jumping on the Uptown bus and we keep getting on that Uptown bus. And the Uptown bus is self loathing, you know, self flagellation, telling myself that I’m worthless, playing it safe, maybe conceding or caving into certain addictions, porn, alcohol, whatever.

If you keep getting on that bus going Uptown, the city planner of your brain is going to go, well, then let’s just send a lot of those buses cause that’s where he wants to go. And we forget that we can push the yellow thing and make the thing and get off the bus. One, awareness, shit, I’m on the wrong bus, time to get off, and we might have to wait a little bit longer for the downtown bus to show up.

Maybe it’s not the nicest bus, it doesn’t happen as often, but when it does, then we latch on to it, and the more we start to focus on the things that we want, and I’m not talking energetically, if I just think about a Ferrari, a Ferrari’s gonna show up, I’m just talking about if we can, Through various techniques start to pay, be very, very mindful of the kind of thoughts that we pay attention to that we latch on to, eventually we’re going to learn to rewire our brain and those more optimistic, more helpful thoughts over time are going to start to show up with a little bit more ease and then in time the resistance is going to soften, but the resistance is very, very real and therapeutically we talk and it’s a tricky one. I’ve been working through this myself as well. This what is this resistance and how does 1 tackle it? Because for many people, maybe the resistance is showing up as automatic thoughts or core beliefs that have been conditioned that you’ve been conditioned to believe and to have through maybe abuse or trauma or neglect or sort of adverse childhood experiences that set you up early on to just kind of compensate for

things, and I always talk about approaching those things with compassion, right? We don’t heal through hate. We have to recognize those parts of us. And why are they there? And why are they showing up? And maybe what purpose did they used to serve? And maybe now that’s no longer serving me. But then there’s other people like Francis Weller, who’s also a therapist.

I have a lot of time for, and he talks about like, it’s the predator. And it’ll kill you. This resistance, this predator will take you down. And if you don’t attack it viciously, it’s going to get its teeth into you and drag you back down. So I don’t know. I think for some people, you can bash through that resistance with, With compassion, I think some people have to use brute force, but I also think that I’ve not met anybody who hasn’t faced significant resistance as they’re evolving, as they’re having a revolution, right, as they’re trying to become something different.

There are very, very real forces saying, go back, go back to where you were, even if that is painful, even if there was suffering, your brain is like, give me more consistency. And we have to brute force our way, I think, through sometimes that transition of we’re going to have to accept a level of inconsistency here.

And that is scary as hell for a lot of people. And a lot of people surrender.

Dylan Bain: I love that consistency piece. And the bus analogy is amazing. Hopefully for my American audience, they’ll understand what a bus is. And I, I think about this frequently in terms of like the human elements of things of how society is set up to, I call it the anti human society.

It’s set up for the car, it’s set up for commerce, it’s set up for everything except for the actual people. And so there is a systemic entropy that goes on when you try to set, you know, differentiate yourself from that, that system and for me, one of the things that I’ve been working on is what is walking more, right?

Our ancestors got 15 to 20, 000 steps a day. So that’s what I’ve been doing for this quarter. And it’s been just fascinating, like the things that I’ve noticed. And the thoughts that I’ve had, like, there’s a grocery store within 2 miles of where I live, so it’s like, okay, I walked to the grocery store and then there’s the resistance of like, yeah, but it’s a 5 minute car ride, whereas if I do this, it’s like a 2 and a half hour thing. For me to,

Joshua Laycock: or the image, right? Of like, why is Dylan walking? Oh, he can’t afford a car.

Dylan Bain: Oh yeah.

Joshua Laycock: So then there’s like, what are people going to think? What might people think if I choose to walk and drag my groceries home in a wagon, as opposed to getting in the Volvo?

Dylan Bain: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I was having this conversation with my mom. When I, she said, well, what are you doing right now? I said, well, I’m walking to the grocery store. She’s like, well, does your car in the shop? And she said the exact same thing. I said, no, it’s springtime. And the path goes through this beautiful prairie and river system that right by my house.

I was like, so I’m, I’m out getting sunlight. I’m, I’m seeing these things. And she’s like, well, don’t you have work to do? And so there’s that other thing I’m like, Mom, it’s a Saturday. The idea that these types of things are frivolous is, I think, part of that resistance piece. Right? You were talking about being the Bay Street or, you know, for the U. S. audience, the Wall Street guy, the three piece suit, buttoned down, ready to go, and then having to let that go, and what are the societal, oh, he can’t hack it. And I would argue that it’s the exact opposite is true. That you actually did the harder thing of saying, hold on a second. What is my heart telling me?

What do my relationships need from me? What are the different pieces that are actually, that I don’t want to look at? Facing down the predator, as Francis Waller calls it, is a scary experience. Because you have to turn and fight the dragon. And the predator never comes for you if you never actually try to walk out of the cave.

Joshua Laycock: Yeah, but then we don’t think about what are all the consequences of never coming out of the cave. And that’s the piece there. And a couple things that came to mind is I’d love to redefine work or productivity. One of the things that I’ve done and people who know me joke about it. It’s a thing now is I try desperately not to use the word busy.

I despise the word busy because we carry it almost as some badge of honor, right? Like if you’re in the office, especially, how are you doing? Oh, I’m busy. Oh, I’m busy. I look how busy I am. And even when people come part of my role in the company that I work for now, it’s supposed to come to me for advice and guidance on things.

And they always start with, I know you’re really busy, but, and I have to now say like, well, I’m not, even as I say that there’s a bit of a pain of like, Ooh, are people going to think I’m not working hard enough? But I’ll say I’m not busy. This is my job. My job is to be here for you when you need some help.

Let’s have a conversation. And to me, having a full schedule is not necessarily the same as busy, busy to me, and it’s a personal sort of thing is to me, if I feel busy, I’m out of control. Something else is running my life as opposed to I have a full schedule. I get a lot done in a day, right? Between my corporate job, between my therapy practice, between my coaching practice, I teach jujitsu.

I’m in school finishing my master’s and I make a lot of time every day for my family. There’s a lot there. It is a full long day, but I am very rarely busy. And now when I tell a lot of my clients that I have pretty much every moment of my day scheduled and blocked in my calendar, most people go, Oh my God, I couldn’t do that.

That’s a level of freneticness I can’t handle. And I show them my calendar. You realize that I block almost three and a half, four hours every afternoon for family time, whether that’s hanging out with the kids after school, cooking dinner, sitting down with dinner, watching a show on the couch with my wife afterwards.

Like, yes, my time is blocked, but I’m not busy. And for some people that might be downtime, lost productivity. I don’t know. For me, that is the work that’s the work, right? It’s like, I can’t go to the gym because I don’t want to take time away from my family. It’s selfish. No, it’s not. It creates resiliency.

It creates health and longevity. It’s probably one of the most selfless, selfish things you can do. It’s our perception. We, particularly men, but I think it’s happening for women now as well. It’s creeping in around this notion of productivity equals like financial output. Is your time spent making money?

And to me, look, if that’s your priority, if you exist to make as much money as you want to bully for you, go for it. But I think where a lot of us struggle is that we have a misalignment between what we want to be a priority versus what we actually make to be a priority. And we’re not readily aware of what it costs us.

Everything has a cost, right? I, I submitted a long time ago, recognizing that there are things in my life that I will and want to accomplish. And there’s the kind of human and the kind of man that I want to be. And one of the sacrifices that I had to make, and I was able to make it joyfully, although there’s still moments, is I’m not going to pursue promotions and raises at work.

I’m going to do my job. I’m going to do my job well, but at the end of the day, I’m done. And I’m now going to commit the rest of my day to myself and to my family. Now there’s moments where it’s like, boy, I wish I was making some more money. Well, that’s a conscious choice that I made. And I recognize that.

And I think we’re losing a little bit of this one, what does something cost? Everything costs something. And I think we also struggle with how many of my clients walk through the door and they’re like, my wife and kids are my priority. Are they okay? What’s your work week look like? I don’t know. 70, 80 hours.

Okay. When’s the last time you’ve been to the gym? What’s a gym? When’s the last time you took your wife on a date? I don’t know, 2005. Okay, so then it’s about understanding what are the priorities. So tell me how that puts your wife and kids at the top of the priority list. And usually it’s, well, they need money.

So I make lots of money and that makes them happy. Have you asked your wife what you, what she wants? No. Why would I do that? It’s opening and having these conversations. And so, first of all, one, as you said, we are way over indexed on money equals worth. Money equals our sense of value. We need to work through that.

A lot of men are taught that, and it’s a hard one. That’s a hard one to let go. I mean, that’s your world. That’s not my world, but like once money gets its claws into you, that pursuit of money, it’s brutal. How many marriages have we heard about that have exploded because the guy spends 80, 90 hours a week working, thinking genuinely that he’s providing his family with everything that they possibly need.

And then when a spouse says that’s enough and leaves, they’re blindsided by it.

Dylan Bain: Yeah. Or worse, they work that and they’re, they say, you know, I’ve worked hard my whole life now for destroyed marriages. And at the end of the day, we move some good product. The person they’re talking to says, well, at least you’re rich.

And he goes, no, I get the satisfaction of knowing I made someone else rich.

Joshua Laycock: Well, there’s that too, depending on what system you’re plugged into. Yeah. Oftentimes we’ll kill ourselves for someone else. We’re strapped to the plow.

Dylan Bain: Yeah. And there’s so many people who will like, we already kind of broached the matrix analogy, but there’s also a point in there of like, people will fight to stay plugged in and when you start saying things of like, this doesn’t seem to be aligned with what we’re supposed to be doing and you’re asking me to go above and beyond, but there’s nothing in it for me.

I remember when I was working in public accounting, it was a Fortune 100 company, international manufacturing, first year audit. We’re a skeleton crew. We’re actually below a skeleton crew, and I’m running this engagement with minimal people, and I’m doing 80 to 100 hours a week. I slept at the client’s site.

They had a gym on site, which was nice because I could shower. You know, I hadn’t seen my kids in three days. We’re trying to get Q3 filings done. We get him in and I say, I say, I prepare the bill and realize because we are so understaffed, the partner is now running the most profitable engagement in North America.

And for that, he’s going to get a hundred grand bonus for Q3. And so I went to him and I said, Hey, I’m killing this for you. You’re going to walk away with it. I’d like 10%. I’d like, you know, a 10 grand bonus. If it’s not material to you, but it would be enough to buy my wife a new car. And he looked at me and he said, I’m going to do you one better.

And I was excited. So the next day he gave me a 25 Amazon gift card and told me to expense lunch. And I quit that job, I think three weeks later. And that becomes in my mind that that becomes the thing of like, we’re told, like, if you work and you work and you work, you’re going to be eventually be rewarded.

And there’s a lot of men who get to that point, wash out of the system and realize there was never a pot of gold there. So they sacrificed their wife, they sacrificed their kids, they sacrificed their health, and they didn’t even get the payoff.

Joshua Laycock: Yeah, and I want to be clear, like, I still work in corporate.

I think that there is a lot that is wrong with that model. But it’s interesting, I do know some people who love it. I know some people who it just, for whatever reason, it scratches their itch, whether it gives them the flexibility to be able to, you know, take an afternoon off, or they like the consistency of the pay.

And I think there are some people that recognize that this is probably what I’m going to get paid. And everyone realizes I’m never going to get rich, but this is kind of what I’m going to do. And I’m never, ever going to say to someone, like, if I, if I really believe that someone is happy, whatever that means.

We can define it later, but like, if you’re content, I’m never going to say, don’t do that. If that thing works for you, then, okay, great. But what are your expectations? And chances are good, the people that I’m speaking to, something’s not, not aligning. And that’s where it’s worth exploring. It’s like, what are your expectations?

How do those expectations align with the probable reality of what you’re looking at, and then can you muster the courage to do something else about it? But it is shocking to me. When you look at the numbers, I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but they’re high, the amount of people that hate their jobs, you know, I have a client who with incredible courage has walked away from his career. He’s going to travel for a while and it’s going to go find himself. You know, we, we talk about what that means, but he’s going to go explore different avenues and really just kind of look at what it means to not work in that world for a while and see how his body reacts.

And although he’s, he’s had a lot of people who have said, amazing, there’s also been a lot of people that are like, you’re making a big mistake. This is ridiculous. I would never do that. And it stirs up all the fears in them. I said, how many of the people that were saying you’re making a big mistake. Love their job.

None of them. And how many of the people who were in that role who are wishing you well, love their job? Most of them, there was a little bit of bit of both on either side, but for the most part, it’s sort of like I’m in this misery hole. You’re getting out. Let’s drag you back in. But I think to me, it sounds like with you, there was a significant misalignment of expectations versus that reality.

And sometimes we need to be slapped around a little bit to recognize it. That’s They don’t have your best interest in mind. A good example is going on here in Canada. Food prices are going through the roof. It’s insane. It’s shocking. And then some of the main retailers are making billions of dollars of profit a quarter.

And there’s a lot of hatred for these huge corporations right now that are getting very rich off the back of Canadians, but particularly low and middle income Canadians. And there’s a boycott going on. We’re not going to boycott. We’re not going to buy your stuff anymore. And I’m pretty quick to say, like, I can’t jump on the hate the corporate bandwagon.

Like they have a job to do. The system is what the system is. I think you’re going to push profits. We’re going off on a bit of a tangent here, but it’s okay. Like we’re going to push profits. We’re going to push the price as much as we can. They have a fiduciary obligation to maximize their profits. But when people complain about it, they’re like, well, that’s capitalism.

That’s the way capitalism works. And I said, right. But capitalism also works with my ability to say, no, thank you. I’m not doing that anymore. Right? Like I’m going to walk, I’m not going to shop at your grocery stores because I don’t buy into the price that you’re pushing. So it’s the same with a corporate job.

That’s capitalism. We’re going to do our thing, but if you can get to a point where you say, what you’re asking, what you’re expecting doesn’t align with what I want out of life and how I want to spend my time and my energy and my soul, then I’m going to step away. And I think the thing that we all forget is we have the capacity to step away at any time, but it’s like the analogy of the baby elephant, right? Who’s tied to the post. And when they’re a baby elephant, they can’t do anything about it. And as they grow to become this big, powerful behemoth, these elephants won’t pull against the post because they’ve been conditioned to think there’s nothing they can do about it.

That’s their reality. And in many ways, that’s us sitting in a job, sitting in a condition, sitting in a situation, and then telling ourselves that we can’t do anything about it when the reality is it’s bullshit. It’s hard. It’s scary. It’s going to require letting go of some things that maybe you’ve become accustomed to.

But I focus really deeply on needs versus wants, because a lot of times we use that word very, very interchangeably and very inappropriately. Our needs are actually very little. Capital N survival stuff, right? What do we need? I had a client who had a significant amount of stress in his life. He was doing really, really well financially.

He was doing okay. He had a big house, multiple cars. He had an expensive lifestyle, right? And he was constantly struggling with it. And one day when we were speaking, he said, we sold the house. We’re going to rent a little condo, getting rid of one of the cars, and we’re completely overhauling our life. And we make the same amount of money.

And the best thing we’ve ever done because we’ve changed and we eliminated this major stress out of our life. We realized how much superfluous stuff we had that we didn’t actually need. Like easy? No. Simple? Yes. Ego? Big time ego issues, right? Like he checked significant ego out the door. That was one of the most courageous things that I’ve seen someone do because he was able to differentiate the difference between needs and wants.

And how many things are we holding on to because we think we have to stay like, what is our chain that we’ve told ourselves in the world that I can’t bust out of and what does that chain and that little flimsy pipe in the ground represent, the value of money, the value of things, the value of predictability.

Our commitment to suffering, like we’re all attached to that chain and very few of us can muster the courage to kind of pull it out of the ground and go, Oh, it turns out I wasn’t really stuck here all along. I just been telling myself that I had been

Dylan Bain: committed to the suffering is I think a huge point.

One of the questions I ask people in financial coaching is if I gave you 5 million, what happens? Let’s just sit with that feeling, whatever comes up. And there’s a lot of people who come into the, well, I didn’t earn it. I was like, but it’s a gift. Well, but I should earn a gift. No, by definition, you don’t.

So what’s the thing? And they’re like, well, if I don’t suffer for it, then the money is tainted. And I always looked at that and be like, we have institutionalized that of the idea of like, if it’s not painful, then you don’t deserve it. And I think that that’s a deeply anti human idea of like, no, we’re not meant to be set up as a struggle.

We’re not meant to be killing ourselves for 12 hours a day. And there’s a lot of incentives as we’ve covered throughout this entire discussion to keep us doing just that thing because it’s extremely profitable. And like the food prices is a great example, the fiduciary duty thing. And I work in capital markets so I hear that all the time. And one of the things working with regulated entities where. Yeah, they’re like, well, we have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value. It’s like, okay, well, does that include doing something illegal? So if it was profitable for the shareholders for you to do something horrific, should the corporation do it?

And if we go with the idea that money, you know, that that is the only obligation that this entity that interfaces with society has, then the answer is yes. And then we should all just be like, yes, we’re, yo, everyone gets to be gangsta till the Amazon death squad shows up. Right.

Joshua Laycock: I hear that too. And I would say, but that’s why we have laws and that’s why there are in theory protections.

But I would argue, cause I’m, I’m, I agree with you to an extent is like, but I am obligated to ride the edge as hard as I possibly can. Which is why we fall on the other side every now and then. And how easy it is. And then with fear that I’m going to now willingly cross that line, perhaps because if I didn’t, things were going to start to fall.

And I’m going to get sued and all these sorts of things. But I don’t, I don’t believe anyone is of the delusion that willfully breaking the law is acceptable. But getting really fucking close And I’m never comfortable with this idea of what can I get away with? That’s really, I think what you’re talking about is like, we’re riding the edge of what can I get away with?

And I, we will in life face ethical conundrums. And I think that it’s good if we have a process and a support network to talk through those things. But the moment that we think that we are infallible and that we will never cross that line, we’re doomed. Because our capacity as human beings to justify behavior is shocking to me.

I really don’t believe, I can’t, I think it was Socrates who said this, but I could be wrong. Where it’s like no one ever does anything with the willful knowledge that what they’re doing is wrong, right? Like we don’t ever go, this is wrong. Clearly we do the math. We have the capacity to justify why in this situation, in this moment with my unique set of circumstances, what I’m doing is okay.

I’m okay with it. And that’s everything from little white lies all the way up to horrific acts of violence. You look at some of the most atrocious acts in the world. I don’t think those people genuinely thought they were doing something wrong. That’s not excusing it. That’s not saying it’s okay. Not by a mile, but in that moment, do they think they’re doing something wrong?

No, they’re justified in their mind. That’s why we have those rules. That’s why we have those boundaries. That’s why we have societal expectations. But what’s really interesting, if we can pivot a little bit from that, is we’ve lost this real sense of community. We’ve lost this real sense of communal value.

And is what I’m doing good for the hive, not just the bee? Which is why I think in many circles, the fear of being shunned and outcast has been lost. And I know that’s not a popular thing to say. And I’m not talking about The teenager who tries to morph themselves into something deeply uncomfortable just so that they can fit in.

That’s not what I’m talking about, but in community, back in the day, whatever that means, when we had a community raising children and as part of family, there was a bigger picture. There was, even if this isn’t exactly what I want to do in the moment, it’s good for the whole and the whole is good for me so we can kind of work together on this.

But I think if we’ve lost that sense of community, if we’ve lost that sense of the greater good, then that line becomes really, really fuzzy around ethics and morality, because we’ve almost said like, fuck following the crowd, fuck all of that stuff. So it’s almost like this badge of rebellion. I’m not worried about being alone, probably because I’m already alone.

And I think that, that morality piece is falling out of it that, that do I consider the repercussions of my actions who is impacted by my decisions? What’s the wake that I’m leaving in life because we’re very Individual centric and we don’t anticipate the wake. It’s like the dad who works a million hours and thinks that he’s giving his son or daughter and wife everything that they need He’s not clued in to the wake that being absent leaves Never being present, right?

Very few kids say, I wish dad had made more money, but how many kids say, I wish dad was home, I wish dad, and when he’s home, is he home or is he playing on his phone or is he checking work emails? Like when we’re aware of the wake and the wake only matters when we give a shit about what’s around us. I don’t know if it’s the same down there, but up here we’ve got cottage country and a real big issue, like literally are like people with speed boats in these small little lakes ripping around at full speed because it’s fun for them.

But the wake that these boats create literally decimates the shoreline. It creates noise pollution. It’s destroying the tranquility of everything. The birds are leaving like it’s destroying everything. Utterly unaware. Don’t give a shit about the wake that I am leaving as long as I feel good about myself.

And I think at its core is because we’ve, we are deeply, deeply disconnected from a sense of meaningful community and from our environment. And that to me is the scariest thing because that natural checks and balance, I think are, if not gone really close to being gone.

Dylan Bain: Well, I think that’s the mic drop moment right there. I love that. For everyone who’s listening, who wants to find more Joshua Laycock in their life, how can they find you and what you’re doing?

Joshua Laycock: I’m not hard to find. I talk a lot. I think literally if you just Google Joshua Laycock, I’m on Instagram, joshua. laycock. And if you start there, there’s links to everything.

So I do, if you’re in Ontario in Canada, I am a registered psychotherapist, qualifying operating under supervision. So I provide therapy principally to men here in Ontario, and you can find me online there. I have a one on one coaching practice. I’ve been coaching men individually for the better part of 10 years, and I have an online coaching program for those of you who like to be in community, because I think it’s fantastic.

We just launched that called the lifestyle evolution project. And again, if you Google me, you can find all of that. What else? I’m kind of all over the place. I’ve got the lifestyle evolution podcast on Spotify, uh, where I, I rant and rave about different things that are on my mind, but really, if you just Google me, I’m kind of everywhere and I’m not hard to find.

So if I’ve done one thing, right, I’ve made myself fairly easy to find.

Dylan Bain: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on. We’ll get that all linked up in the show notes and I hope to have you on again.

Joshua Laycock: I appreciate it, brother. Thank you.

Dylan Bain: Thanks for listening. The conversation doesn’t stop here. You can find me on all the social media platforms at the Dylan Bain, and you can sign up to get updates on workshops, events, and more at DylanBain. com.