Hello and welcome to Authentic on Air with Bruce Alexander. I'm your host, Bruce Alexander. A mellow vibe has settled in on our studio today, and that might be because we have one of the lowest static individuals I have ever met Connect remotely from, I believe, Merida, Yucatan. Michael Ruth joins us today. He might have the most unique identity showcased on the program so far. So you will not want to miss it. More on our guest after today's reflection.
What commitments have you made and carried out to honor your identity from coming out of career to your parents or leaving your established career to embark on a more authentic existence centered around a fulfillment of purpose. The way is to take active steps to commit to living authentically, run the gamut. But they all begin with one step a move in the right direction. A phone call to a friend or sit down with a loved one. Are you waiting for something to start your authentic life?
If so, is waiting on that thing going to provide the same level of relief that comes instantly from embracing yourself? As always, I'm generally interested and would love to hear any interesting, surprising or relational insights uncovered. So you can hit me up on Instagram, Facebook threads, or LinkedIn and authentic identity management. Type act. Now in the comments, if you are tired of waiting in fear as life passes you by.
I will reach out to you and set up a free consultation to see how I can help you. Start actively participating in your life and embracing the you that you are right now. You don't have to wait any longer to live authentically. Ramsey Zelman or who I knew as Michael Ruth is an outlier in many instances of his existence. A black man, he was like me, born into the minority and immediately saddled with a large number of expectations. He couldn't help but wear them on the outside.
I first noticed his separation from the pack in his choice to be kind and the society that expected the opposite of him. An imposing frame and shock of brown skin to to to many paints a picture of aggression. But in around 1999, three years behind him, a school I started as a freshman in all of his piece, getting stuffed in lockers and chased to the halls by junior and senior football players. That's how I spent the majority of my spare time.
This is how you were shown acceptance as a coach's son in a freshman varsity letter, but not by Michael. A senior at the time, I remember sliding to a stop my face in front of his feet, both two or three meatheads giving me chase and Amazon.com. Something like, That's enough, guys. They reach down and help me up my feet and asked if I was okay. How many genuinely nice people even exist in high school? I certainly wasn't one.
It might be my imagination, but it seems like the hazing declined steeply. From that day on, I followed his development from a distance over social media. One of the rare people who actually put their hearts on social media and don't ask for approval for doing so. I watched as he transformed a frame that had gone from opposing to obviously uncomfortable into something new and different, useful, healthy.
I watched to see a trailblazer amongst my network, amongst my network messages of black love, mental health, masculine mobility and bounce of the physical and mental to complete a more whole self. I learned how to get where I am today, in part by watching specifically Michael be unafraid or brave enough in his fear to share parts of himself. That informed my model of authenticity. Thank you for being there then, and thank you for being here now. Welcome to the show. Ramsay's amount of.
Well, I like to start that way. I like to kind of give people an insight into how they've affected me whenever they have those, because it's important to to recognize those people on your journey. I think I appreciate that. So in no means disrespect, but just in the way my brain works, In order to change identification of my mental Rolodex, I need to I need to hear explicitly from you. Is Ramsay is how you prefer to be called at all times. Now?
Yeah. I'm really excited to have you as I as I looked into your background a little bit, I got really more and more excited and interested because you, your whole, I guess, purpose in this life from at this point is helping people embrace themselves. Would that be pretty correct to say, well, you've definitely been the person who has acted that out as well in your own life. Let's let's go back to after high school.
How do you feel like you kind of you lost yourself to a degree and what did you do to get it back? Yes, There there are degrees. Absolutely. So, you know, you talk about giving yourself up to the government. I mean, to a degree, the fire department was a similar thing for me. It is it is paramilitary. So the process of breaking down is not meant to be so extreme, but often it is, especially for people of color, in order to fit in that mold.
It is it is pretty severe and the amount of breakdown you go through so I definitely I definitely empathize with that part. At some point you gained a comfortable amount of weight in there. What when did that happen and what did how do you feel like that was entangled with that loss of identity?
I was going to say, watching it from the outside, it seemed like there was a phase in which, you know, you went through your transformation and you became and this is you know, this is not a bad thing necessarily, but you became very focused on the how the outer, the outer expression of self, you know, gets gets your body right. You know, take care of your, you know, health is very important. But then as I continued to follow along that started to fall away.
And you can tell that once your body was right, you started to get your mind right and you started to encourage other people to do the same. And that's where you're at now right? Maybe even fear it. Maybe. Yeah. So as you were starting this, I mean, they are going through this mental, emotional, spiritual exploration. You were pretty outspoken about things like the black man's mental health and a lot of things that in our in our culture is not wildly widely accepted or talked about.
Did you experience any pushback as you were kind of getting into that stuff? I, I definitely agree with that. I'm glad you were able to to resist the resistance and continue on your journey. So it seems, you know, once again, I'm watching all of this all on social media, but it seems like your your path to self enlightenment has taken you all over the world. Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What was that? Was that that trope accurate?
What you know, is it really better everywhere else for Black man? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right. Is. Yeah. I hope you are enjoying today's episode with Ramsay The Moon. Ramsay's perspective on making the tough decisions to find the life. He was mean to lead challenged some of my own convictions and led me to some deep introspection. But first I had to ask him some hard questions. After a quick look forward to next week. Next Thursday on episode 14, Big Beautiful, but not the point.
Autism, animals and Autoimmune the many facets of Larissa Port will be live. I sit down with my amazing friend Larissa, a self-described pretend home setter and semi emotionally stable human being who is just taking it one day at a time. We talk body image, parenting, children with autism, Instagrams, and the struggle to allow people in. I am so happy to introduce one of my favorite people on earth to the authentic audience and I think you will love her too.
So don't miss next week's episode where she pushes me to widen my perspective in a very engaging conversation. If you like what you're hearing on today's episode, you might want to check out episodes three and four. Communicating across cultures, representing yourself while respecting others. With Derek Fire, a two part series that challenges how we communicate across community barriers and learn to understand each other. Now let's get back to this great conversation with Ramses Amun.
So you talked about leaving to save yourself, right? You were in there. We all have a complex system of relationships that we're part of. And when you start to choose yourself, boundaries have to be redrawn. And sometimes relationships are sacrificed. Some some people get hurt in the process of reclaiming your identity. What did you find in that? Did you have any children together? Your. Yeah. that we have to go through in life to, like, get to this point.
And without those experiences, you know, we're not we're not going to understand. So for me, like leaving was a it was a big decision on many fronts, like am I being selfish for choosing my myself? Am I being am I going to hurt my daughter? Bye
bye. Like leaving in the long run and all of these things, you know, it's part of the journey of understanding that and also trusting in the unknown, trusting that your, you know, guides your, your inner wisdom, your inner guidance system is leading you down the right path. And that in the future, the seeds that you have planted, like they'll they'll finally see once once they're old enough to to to recognize like the choices and decisions that you had to make for yourself.
And I hope that I'm an example. So so when my daughter gets old enough to choose herself, she'll she'll look back and be like, that's what Dad was talking about. That's what he that's why he chose to do what he did. I see it all the time. You know, people think about their loved ones that they leave behind and things like that. I'm like, They'll be fine. You choose you because you can't be any good to them.
That's another reason why I left. Like I wasn't treating the people who I When you sit down to that conversation with your daughter, letting her know that you know you're leaving. What what goals and objectives do you lay out for her? And how old is she at this time? And what plan do you lay out for us to how long you'll be gone, what the plan is like, how much stability and certainty are you able to offer a child at that point? wow. That's a I'm not disagreeing with you.
It's just that's a big that's a big commitment. Felt. Yeah, it's right. That that makes me want to ask you two more. Two questions. One. Was it always the plan to leave and stay out?
Was that was that the initial plan from the beginning and to at what point along the journey did you start to involve your daughter in the process in which you were like, Okay, I've done enough at this point to where I'm ready to have you with me as I go through it through, you know, as long as you're able to stay or whatever. Yeah, right. But he's changed. With who?
Well, the reason why I. I keep turning back to your daughter is because to me, as you're, you know, really kind of trying to define who you are, you can you get to choose who you're accountable to to a degree like you. You being married is an optional accountability. Having, you know, being part of a group or a system is an optional accountability. But when you have a child, I believe you have a responsibility to be accountable to that person.
That was not optional because they had no choice but to come into this world by your doing. So that's that's why I keep coming back to those, because I'm just curious how you navigated that, because it is such big life change both for you and for your your child and then what you're saying about how it is now that they are getting a more a better worldview. They're not just seeing America from inside, which I think is actually very important.
I traveled to a good amount in my in my teenage years, and I think it helped me a lot with my ability to separate from the ethnocentrism and I think that spending a lot of time out of the country is great. But in that in that first period, I'm just curious as to curious as to how accountable you felt toward your daughter, even though you did, you know, you had to choose yourself. Like, were you still clear to where she understood what was happening?
Yeah. Well, I'm not going to shift a little bit. Black men don't do yoga. How often have you heard that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When? Yeah. You know, we. We do have a shared cultural trauma by being American black men. That is kind of uncommon in most cultures. And that's. And yoga is definitely a path to healing for that. So I definitely appreciate what you're saying there.
What you just spoke to kind of raise several different questions in my head that I can't figure out which path to go down. So I'll give you a couple of options and you can just kind of, you know, latch onto what intrigues you. I didn't know about Egyptian yoga.
From what I understood, yoga was something that came from, you know, a poses that were part of Hinduism, that were then, you know, had been appropriated as a popular take on it in the Western culture is that it's been appropriated to the SoCal Calabasas. White women do and think that's kind of the thing yoga kind of one thing would be to explain the the nuance between Egyptian and the the more the more present like traditional yoga, I guess. But yeah. Right.
I don't think there's any any doubt in my mind that you are a true appreciator and practitioner of the, you know, the the functional. But what did you call it, functional development. Now, in your bio, you kind of categorized all these arts in, in one way that really I thought was really poignant. But some people say that learning yoga and it not being germane to your culture is appropriate of how would you argue against that? Right. So it's really all about intentionality And and.
Yeah. And so as you're, you know, building your own practice and you're, you know, looking to create a space where people who were you when you first started, how do you avoid creating the same type of, you know, the team, this team type of situation that scared you away from yoga? Right. Yeah. So I think I've got a pretty good analogy for what you've been talking about.
Your your practice is kind of like a support group that can go anywhere from, you know, supporting general trauma, which is for everybody to victims of sexual assault. But you're not going to want people who look like the most common abuser in that class with the people who are trying to heal. And so you try this basis for that as well. So that's I think that's a really special thing. And I think that helps my understanding of what you're doing. And I think it's I think it's amazing.
Yeah. Then I want to I want to try to start wrapping this up because we've been going for almost an hour and a half and I, I still have a ton of questions, so I could go for a long time, but I respect your time and also my audience this time and not talk their ear off for 3 hours. That's usually asked is at the beginning, but having a better understanding of you. How do you define authenticity? Yeah. Yeah. Can you think of a time whenever being authentic has burned you?
Wow. I kind of accent is a trick question because I'm. I love to hear the different ways in which people answer it. And a lot of people end up saying something like, well, yeah, it actually turned out to be be a good thing. But I was like, Well, I didn't actually burn you, but I like a chance to tell challenge people with that question because when you are your best, like when you are the best version of yourself that you can produce.
I can't think of a time in which going to not serve you in the long run. Yeah. It's beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. If people want to find out more about Moon Ramsey's hour, Ramsey's moon, where do they where should they go? To find out more about you. What's next for Ramsey? Is anything big coming up, or is there anything else you want to share with us? Okay. Yeah. So. So you're not coming back to Mexico any time in the foreseeable future. So. So this is Mexico's your home base?
Wow. I'm trying to understand how you do something like, you know, teacher practice whenever you are starting over at a new place all the time. If you're, you know, moving all the time. And, I mean, maybe it's just because you are aligned up with your, you know, in alignment with your path. It's the people just show up where you end up. But I mean, what does that look like? Right. Very cool, Master. Wow. So, yeah. Thank you for being so open and answering everything so fully.
And, you know, without any reserve. I really appreciate that. Yeah, well, yeah. I'm trying. I'm trying not to tear up here, man. I thank you so much for staying. Thank you so much for saying that. I really appreciate hearing that. You know, sometimes I feel like I'm screaming into the void, but I'm hearing more and more that what I do does make a difference and has made a difference longer than I realize it. Because for a long time I was floundering in my life.
But I always tried to project something better than where I was at. And, you know, that was not out of falsehood, but that was out of a genuine concern for the people around me to to live better lives. And I was. So now I'm living here.
I'm living that life for myself and being my authentic, authentic self and am enjoying it and enjoying sharing the space with others and giving people a chance to share their stories and hopefully help people heal in their own lives and come into the place where I'm enjoying and you're enjoying so and you know, if they're not there yet, I hope that they hear parts of our stories and are able to say that they're, there is hope, there is something on the other side. that its there.
You just got to get it. So thank you so much to everybody who's listened in today that it's been a great conversation. If you've enjoyed today's episode, give us a follow and the like and share it with someone else who you think might benefit from listening to it. Also, check out earlier episodes to support the future creation of great content.
Don't forget to like us on up in academy management on Instagram, Facebook threads, and LinkedIn, and you can also head over to the authentic Bruce YouTube channel for podcast video or bonus content and impactful clips from our conversations with these great guests. Finally, if you are struggling to show up as yourself and your content, your work, your family or your life, I would love to help you.
Authentic identity management does identity coaching to help you align yourself with the identity you share with the world. It's exhausting to live someone else's life, live authentically, and access the potential that belongs only to you. You can contact me at social or email at Bruce an authentic identity management dot com so we can set up a 30 minute consultation for free. Thanks again to my guest, Ramsey Zeman.
It has been fantastic to get a deeper knowledge of you and I think it's really just been very inspirational and I hope that people get a lot out of it. That is it for today's episode. Until next time. Be yourself and love yourself by everyone.