Something hit me pretty hard this week. Being a strong man doesn’t mean you don’t have emotions. It doesn’t mean you never get scared, overwhelmed, sad, frustrated, or question whether you’re good enough. But I think there’s a massive difference between processing those emotions and transferring the weight of them onto somebody else. Especially your wife. And I’ve been getting that wrong recently.

For those of you who have been reading for a while, you know I’ve been leading a small group of men for about the last year. Some guys have lost 13 pounds. Some have lost 20. Others have told me they feel better in their clothes, more confident around their wives, and just better about themselves. And the biggest thing I’ve learned through all of this is that fitness is really just the vehicle. The real power is accountability.

There’s something powerful about having other men around you who care about you enough to tell you the truth. Men who will call you out when you’re making excuses and expect you to do what you said you were going to do. Because what I’ve seen over and over again is that accountability builds discipline, and discipline shifts identity. Eventually you stop being the guy constantly trying to get back on track and become a man who just shows up. And that starts carrying into your marriage, fatherhood, career, business, and everything else.

That’s really what the Change Your World Project is about. Instead of spending all of our energy worrying about changing the entire world, maybe we start by changing our own. Become better men, husbands, fathers, and leaders and see what happens from there.

The last couple of years have been hard. Business hasn’t gone the way I thought it would. There have been financial pressures. I’ve questioned whether entrepreneurship is actually for me. I’ve had days where I feel like I’m failing and days where I genuinely wonder whether I’m enough. And recently, I’ve been dumping way too much of that onto my wife.

The other night she finally came to me and basically said, “I don’t know how much longer I can do this. You’re all over the place, and it’s starting to take a toll on me.” That fucking hit me because she was right. I’ve been weak recently. Not because I’ve had emotions or because I’ve struggled or questioned myself, but because instead of taking responsibility for those emotions, sitting with them, making sense of them, and deciding what actually needed to be done, I was handing them directly to her.

And she already has enough on her plate. She has a corporate career. We have a seven-month-old son. Life is wild right now. She doesn’t need to carry my emotional roller coaster too. So I made her a promise that night that I was going to change that, and honestly, I already feel better because of it.

What’s interesting is that most of my adult life, I had the exact opposite problem. I didn’t talk about anything. Sadness, depression, fear, insecurity—I swallowed that. Eventually it would come out as anger because I had absolutely no healthy way of processing what I was feeling.

Then I joined a mastermind and, for probably the first time in my adult life, found a group of men where I felt comfortable opening up. I could talk about my past. I could be vulnerable. I could admit when I was struggling. It was freeing. But somewhere along the way, the floodgates opened so far that I lost the ability to determine when it was appropriate to share something and with whom.

I think that’s what I’m starting to understand now. The answer isn’t going back to bottling everything up, but it also isn’t dumping every emotion I experience onto the person closest to me. There has to be a middle ground.

After everything happened with my wife, I talked to some really close friends about it. Their response was basically, “Dude, you fucking idiot. That’s what we’re here for.” And they were right. That conversation actually reinforced everything I’ve been learning through Change Your World. Men need other men in their lives who aren't going to dance around their feelings.

That’s where I can go when my thoughts are all over the place. I can talk to those guys. I can go to God. I can get outside. I can train. I can pray. I can write. I can word-vomit some of this to men who know me and trust them to tell me when I’m full of it. Then I can make sense of what I’m feeling, figure out why I’m feeling it, determine if there’s something I need to do about it, and then decide whether it’s something I need to bring to my wife.

And I want to be really clear here because I don’t want the lesson to get lost: I’m not saying men shouldn’t share things with their wives. There are absolutely times when I need to sit down with my wife and say, “Hey, I’m not okay right now.” There are financial conversations we need to have. There are decisions we need to make together. There are fears and struggles that are absolutely appropriate to share with the person I chose to build my life with.

What I’m saying is that I don't think I need to word-vomit every raw emotion onto her while I’m in the middle of experiencing it. Because whether I intend to or not, now I’m asking her to carry some of it for me. I want to share things with my wife to build a bridge between us, not hand her another burden to carry. And I think that distinction matters.

Something else happened once I started actually processing what I was feeling instead of just reacting to it. I realized that a lot of the stuff I was anxious about had solutions sitting right in front of me.

I’ve been worried about business. Okay, have I actually been doing everything I know I need to do to make the business successful? No. I haven’t consistently been putting out the longer YouTube videos that I know could help grow this thing. I haven’t always treated the business like a business. There are areas where I’ve been half-assing it.

Well, there’s my answer. Do the work.

And then understand that even when the work is aligned with the goal, the results might take some time. That’s where I need to be strong. I signed up for a 100-mile ultra. I’m going out and running for almost two hours at a time right now. I’ve pushed myself through workouts I wanted absolutely nothing to do with, and I’ve done that consistently for years. If I can build that kind of discipline physically, there is absolutely no reason I can’t bring it into another area of my life. I can do this.

I also put in some job applications today. Maybe I go back into the corporate world for a while. Is that what I ultimately want? No. I want to build the Change Your World Project. I want to build something that supports my family, gives us freedom, and allows me to spend my life doing work that actually means something to me.

But maybe the right move right now is getting a corporate job, creating some financial stability for my family, and continuing to build this on the side. And I think that’s another part of being a man. Sometimes we have to do things we don't necessarily want to do because it’s the right thing to do for our families. That doesn’t mean giving up on the dream. It means carrying your responsibilities while you pursue it.

As shitty as that conversation with my wife felt in the moment, I’m grateful for it. I’m grateful that I have a wife who loves me enough to come to me and tell me the truth, even when that truth hurts. Maybe it was God speaking to me through her. Maybe I needed somebody I love to essentially say, “Hey, you cannot keep doing this. If you truly want to build the life you keep talking about, it’s time to sack up and handle your shit.”

I’m also grateful for the men I’ve surrounded myself with. Men I can call friends and brothers who I can go to when this gets heavy, who aren't going to dance around my feelings, and who will tell me when I’m messing up. And I’m grateful I’ve built a relationship with God, because for most of my life I didn't have that either.

I don’t think strength means becoming emotionless. I know from personal experience where burying everything can lead. I’ve lived through depression. I’ve had suicidal thoughts. I know how dangerous it can be when a man convinces himself he has to silently carry everything alone. That isn’t what I’m talking about.

Have the emotions. Talk about the hard stuff. Ask for help. Build relationships with men you trust. Build your relationship with God. And when something needs to be shared with your wife, share it. But learn the difference between sharing something to strengthen the relationship and dumping something on her because you haven't taken responsibility for processing it yourself.

That’s what I’m working on right now. Not becoming a man who doesn’t feel, but becoming a man strong enough to feel all of it, process it, decide what needs to be done, and then do it.

One workout. One decision. One conversation. One man. One family at a time.

Change YOUR world.

As always, thanks for reading. 

Kyle 

I’ve always loved this song, but listening to it through the lens of this week’s lesson gave it a little different meaning. “The Red” is really about that point where anger and emotion start taking over and you can feel yourself losing control. I think that’s what makes the song hit so hard—the intensity of the music almost feels like what’s happening inside your head in those moments. It’s heavy, aggressive, and chaotic, but there’s also this awareness underneath it that you need to recognize when you’re getting to that point before it takes over. Definitely felt like the right song for this week.