Struggling with depression

So many good things to talk about today and one of my favorite people to talk about it with, Bernie Calcote. I'm back on the podcast. You keep asking me, I'm gonna keep coming. I'm not asking you. In fact, I'm like you again. But people keep people keep emailing. I want more Bernie. People comment and say, bring Bernie back, and so that's what I'm doing. You could email me

anything you want Grangersmith Podcast at gmail dot com. If you have a question, I will answer it, and Bernie is one of the best people to talk about your questions with. We go back twenty plus years a friendship of dissecting life's problems of our own together. We've had We've sat around many times and had a beer or two and discussed something deep in our lives, or many phone calls. I've called you and said, Bernie, I got talked to you about something, man, something going on in

my life. Can you help me? And you've done the same back to me. And I love your advice. And what's odd about Granger and I is that although our lives look very different, I feel like we have experienced some things just across the board that are very similar in life. And so that's that's very much helped us. It's like, oh, you're going through that, man, I'm going

through that. Oh you dude, you turned me onto this and this, you know, So yeah, we have I think that's a good way to put it, because guys, we don't have answers for you. We can dissect your questions and bring our experience and discuss them. That's that's what

we can do. And we hope that you take, you know, some encouragement and some inspiration from it to dig into God's word, dig into community, find some stillness, and that's where you're gonna find your answers, find your way out of being stuck or trying to make a hard decision or trying to get it started. How do we start

something that we've been wanted to do? And like you said last week, what this would be really cool is if we one day we hosted a live podcast me and you and answered people's questions live, had a live studio audience and people could stand up on a microphone and just and then you could ask your question, and then we could ask a couple back to get the full story. But what I want this podcast to be wherever you're listening, thank you for thank you for tuning in.

I want this to feel like we're sitting around a campfire and we've cracked a few beers and you say, can I ask you guys something something I've been dealing with, or something I've been wondering, or something I've been worried about, And we could go, huh, let's let's dissect this and take a long time to answer it. And so some

great questions lines up lined up today. Can I do a quick shout out Josh Thacker, my brother in law, faithful listener, nice ye guy, loves you, loves everything you do, and was thrilled as much as me when you asked me to come on. But I saw him just the other day and he's just so encouraging and it encouraged me just the way that he talked about this podcast and what we get to do, and so just love

you man. Tune up. That's awesome. If if you if this podcast means anything to you, if you've listened before and you hear a question that maybe you're going through, if someone else is going through something similar, the best thing you could do for Bernie and I is share it with that person. Just say hey, dude, because this is what I do with other with other things YouTube videos or podcasts. Send it to your buddy and say hey, start at minute eighteen thirty and do that's your life

right now, brilliant. So we would love nothing more than to grow this audience on here for that reason. It's so fulfilling for us. By the ways. One time someone said on a comment and they said, Granger, be careful dealing with these people and their questions, because you don't want to get pulled down into this dark world of dealing with their anxiety. And I just I just thought, man, that's my calling to some level, like bring it on.

I want to get down in the dirt with some of these questions and into it, because that's that's a fulfillment of some sort to me, to be able to dig in. I'm not worried about me losing my sense of reality by dealing with all these other questions. I'm not worried about it. I know you're not. Yep. So I'm gonna start with at least one or two light questions starting with this one once again. The email is

Grangersmith Podcast at gmail dot com. The first question comes from Jacob that says, Hey, Granger my name is Jake. I'm from Grand Island, Nebraska. I'm twenty nine years old. My question is have you ever done any fishing in Nebraska? If so, where? If not, you should check out some of the canals here. If you're into catfish, what are your favorite things to fish for and what type of big fish are there in Texas. Thanks for your podcast.

I enjoy watching. Thank you, Jake. I have not. I've been to Nebraska many many times to tour, but I've never fished there and I didn't even really know about these canals he's speaking of sounds cool. I've never even been to Nebraska, So, dude, Nebraska is I'm going to tag along next time Granger goes that you should, actually, because if it wasn't for touring, I could say that I could start a lot of things with that sentence

if it wasn't for touring. But I've gotten to see the flyover states that as a Texas boy, I typically wouldn't see, like Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Wyoming, Ohio, South Dakota, North Dakota, Kansas. There's a lot of these places that just the bread basket of America, just good people and beautiful,

beautiful places. And you go to in the summertime when it's everything is starting to turn brown in Texas and you go to Iowa, Nebraska, and it's just rolling, beautiful green cornfields and a red barn on a hill with a white farmhouse and a windmill, and you're just like, that's America right there. Yeah, that is America right there. It I've never fished in Nebraska. To answer question Jake, I probably should. In Texas, we have a lot of largemouth bass. Of course, we have a lot of catfish.

What we have interesting in Texas that's a little bit different than Nebraska is we have a coast, and so we also have I'm not into deep sea fishing, my stomach can't handle it. But you're kind of from the coast a little bit. You're from Yeah, but I was just, you know, a poor boy going to the levee catching Flounder's well, it's about what we could do. So that's where I read it. Go That's where I was going to go. Though it's because regardless of who you are,

it takes some money to go out deep sea. I can't do that. But going to what we call the Laguna Madre, which is there's a bay that goes from South Texas, Mexico, all the way up through Galveston, and

there's this space in between. There's usually a long island and then there's a space between the island and the shore that it's the bay, and it's in many spots it's like two to four feet deep the whole way through, and there's flounder and redfish and trout and sting ray and you could literally walk through it because it's so shallow and that Some of the most fun fishing I've ever been in my life is take especially if you can get on a little flat bottom boat and just

go out a little bit and you can get into some red fish, when they're spawning. Yeah, those are fighting fish man. So here. So let me just say here is the secret that I never revealed to you guys. Okay, all right, Burn is a city boy. Okay, Nation, I'm sorry, don't just like off the podcast. Okay, but here's the thing. I'm a city boy from a small town, from a small town. But that doesn't make doesn't make any how are you a city boy from a small town? What

does that even mean? Because like I lived, I live in the city. I've lived in cities. I like the cities. I love the city life. I do love. There's there's things about like country life, you know, outdoors ee everything that I love. But I wasn't raised with my dad taking me hunting and fishing. And but I need your help. I need your guidance, the king of Yee Nation. I need your help to I have a compound bow that my wife tells me how to sell because I don't

know how to shoot it. Can you help me with that? Well? Yeah, you've been the ye farm we have where you have targets right out here for that just we actually have a rack two doors over where we're sitting. That's a rack that holds compound boats. Okay, you guys are gonna witness this. There's gonna be the slow conversion to I know how to do outdoor stuff better than I do now. I used I used to fish more than I do. But easy, easy, easy, I'm bringing the bow. Next time

you do the podcast, bring your bow. We'll make sure it's set up right. And then we have targets. Right out here, Parker goes out for as a stress relief and yeah, shoots his compound bow. And that's the That's the easiest thing you could have said to me if you said I have a fly rod or I have a new deer rifle that takes a lot more effort to do those things. Well, I want to know how to do those things too. I did go fly fishing in Park City on the Provo River last September, and

I caught like five trout. It was it was like one of the best experiences ever. I did have a guide, but you know, all right, we all got guides in life, right, Yeah, and it was really awesome. So I I am from the city, I confess, but I'm here to learn more about the country boy life. Let's go teach me your ways country country life is in your heart, not in your closet. We like to say that a lot here. It's it's not about there's plenty of country dudes that

that are trapped because of work and family. Usually they're trapped in a concrete jungle. And then there's plenty of people that live on farms and ranches that are don't know anything about it. Yeah, so there it goes both ways. You're right, I know you you're from a small town. You just because your dad didn't take you hunting and fishing does not change anything about what's in your heart. Right, that might have been the best piece of this whole question,

that what you brought up. Thank you, Jake so Burne. Do you want to take the reins here on some of these subjects, on these emails that I have? Uh? Yeah, sure. Wow, we have pulled in too many directions. Oh, we have history question, we have granger I need some advice. We have promotion, we have alcoholic veteran needs help. We have a please read in all caps, and we have faith in friends, fan reactions, we have playing overseas. Some of these are ones we didn't answer from last week's podcast.

When you're here, anything stick out I want to go to the first one, but before we do that, I want to go to the please read, because I don't want people thinking that if they're more creative with their subject line, we're going to pick it, We're going to It's just, Hey, what do we like that? What are we feeling here? Let's go with it, says Hey Grangeer.

This is Jesse from Azel, Texas. I just wanted to ask you if you ever struggle with depression and anxiety from time to time, and if you do, how do you deal with it. I'm in a really dark place in my life right now. My dad and grandpa were both killed in a car accident three months ago in Dallas. Other than my wife and kids, those were the two most important people in my life, and now they're both

gone at the same time. Why for what? Why couldn't they stay here to get to know their grandchildren better. It's all part of God's plan, But I still struggle with it every day and sometimes it makes life really difficult. One thing that does help me is when I'm down. When I'm down, it's cranking up dirt road driveway or Remington while I'm cruising some back roads in the small towns. I know both most of those both of those albums better than any of than my own two hands, it says. Anyways,

thanks for all you do and continue to do. I love country things. Keep up the great work, Jesse. Thank you, Jesse for your kind words. You didn't have to put those in there into this email, but thank you for that excellent question, so relevant to human beings, so natural

for you to feel that way. I'm gonna first of all, validate your feelings here and just say it's natural for you to lose your dad and your grandpa in a car accident three months ago, and it's natural for you to say why, for what, Why couldn't they be here to get to know their grandchildren. So you are justified in thinking that. Now me and Bernie are going to take in a new direction. But I first wanted to validate this, and I also want to say I'm so

sorry for your loss. We struggle as humans. We will have struggle, we will have suffering, we will have pain. If we haven't already or if we're not currently going through it, then we will. Why because we're humans and that's what's promised in a fallen world. But there's a big butt here. We each have our own struggles and

our own story in our own way. Meaning whatever I've gone through and whatever Bernie's gone through, we cannot directly relate to losing a dad and a granddad in a car accident at the same time, because that is your story and that is your pain and your loss. And so I'm so sorry that you you had to go through that. Do you know where you want to start with this guy? Yeah, So I would say a similar sentiment, It's just terrible. You're you're still very much in the

throes of grief, Yeah, which is natural. You you have to work through those. I hope that you have God's were near to you as hope, as a foundation, as a reference, a point of reference to help not answer, but to help navigate through that question of why and why now and all that. I hope that you have community around you. And also, you know, I know that when we've lost people that counseling is very helpful to help process the feeling of grief and of you know,

trauma and whatever it is that you're experiencing. So I'll first say that, and Grain, I'm not sure which direction you want to go, but let me just draw from my own experience. There was a time that I had to process what I was feeling and what I had experienced. And I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before. There was a time where I had to let my feelings go and I had to remember the standards that I had for my life, and that my standards were

going to dictate my life, mind, body, and spirit. My standards were going to dictate how I live those out versus letting my feelings continue to be the thing that talked to me. You know, that directed my actions. And I know that everybody has the timing of that is

going to be very different for each of us. For me, there was, you know, recently, there was a very clear moment, and I remember journaling about all of this, and I remember waking up one day and making the choice today, I'm choosing my standards like this, you know, from my form my mind and protecting my mind and building a strong mind. Here is my standard. My spirit, the word of God is my standard. My my body, my exercise is my standard. So I'm not just gonna hit snooze

and stay in bed anymore. No, I'm gonna get up. I'm gonna I'm gonna read God's word. I'm gonna meditate, I'm gonna work out, I'm going to like continue to do these things. And through that and the relationships around me, I help. It helped me to find some healing. Absolutely. So do you have any grandparents left or grandpaus? I have one grandmother, yeah, yes, so when grandmother left, yeah, I do not have I do not have my grandfather's left,

and I do not have my dad left. So one thing I could, Jesse, I could relate to you in fact that I don't have a dad or a granddad, And it does affect me when I think about this fairy tale world of the grandpa's. We always think of this image of speaking of fishing. We think of grandpa fishing with the grandson and they're fishing for catfish on the shore and the kid says, Grandpa, tell me about the good old days, you know, like it's a Judd's

country music song. And we think of this just beautiful picture, and then we go to our lives and go, well, my kids, my kids don't have a grandpa. And then even worse than that, I think, man, my dad, my dad would have been that guy. He would have been the guy to take on fishing and to stand on the shore and talk about life. He would have been such a great grandpa in that way. And he died, and I'm sure that those kind of thoughts are go

through your mind. Jesse. The best part of your email is that you said, I know it's all part of God's plan. Unfortunately you added a butt right after that. You don't have to add that butt. I understand that you struggle. What I want to do for you right now, Jesse, is I want to change the why. You said why why, and you could put a God at the end of the day, why God, why would you do this? This was a great little plan we had and you know what,

this is a great setup and now it's gone. I just I want to change the why into a instead of why God, change it to what do you need from me? Now? God? What do you want from me through this? And if you start focusing on that, it flips the whole script. Instead of acting like it's his fault and he made a bad decision, like did you mess up? Well, God doesn't mess up. He doesn't. He does not mess up, So you can't think, oh, God, you took the wrong one. You took the wrong Grandpa.

This was perfect, you took my dad, this was a good plan. You messed up. Instead, flip the script and go, You're always right. So what do I need to do with this, this plan, this purpose, this life that you have now rolled out for me? That's a little bit different than I thought it was going to be? What do I do with this now? And it flips the script and puts it back on you to start listening to more and following more of that purpose and that plan.

And there's a million directions you can go. But when you flip it from you messed up? God, why'd you do this? Which is a sentiment that everyone could relate to, you flip it to Okay, this is the hand I was dealt. Now what am I going to do with this? How am I going to carry on Dad and Grandpa's legacy and teach my kids? Where do I go from here? And your whole world opens up at that point when you realize that it wasn't an accident that your grandpa

and dad died. Now, a lot of people are going to disagree when they hear that, But I believe that God is sovereign, He's controlled, He controls everything. He has everything for a plan. He's God the Living because to God, all people are alive all the time. There is no death. I look at it like this. Have I told you the fish, the fish and they We've talked a lot about fish, the fish, and the mud puddle. So it's like, look at it this way. This is how God sees it.

Because God doesn't see death. He sees it us as eternal beings. So right now we're all in this muddy puddle. And I noticed this last summer when I was driving down this country road to get to the farm. There's this muddy puddle in the middle of a creek that's starting to go dry. And in Texas, this creek will go all the way dry and eventually it'll be completely

gone and dried up, will be nothing left. So I saw this puddle and I saw fish in the puddle, and I was thinking, those fish don't know that they're all going to die in that puddle. And it's like if I was going to play God in that situation, and I go and get one fish out a time, and I take the fish and I put it in a bucket and I take it to a beautiful, big lake that never goes dry, that has abundant food, abundant

every resources. It's perfect. And I take What would the other fish say, is I pick up one and take it to the lake. They'd say, oh no, why you're God. He's gone, he's got forever. We're we're gonna miss him, We're never gonna see him again. And me at playing God in this situation, I'm like, would you just hush, I'm just taking you one at a time to the lake. The lake you'll see everybody again. It's abundant, it's beautiful.

You're living in a mud puddle. You're living in a tragic mud puddle that is going dry, and I'm going to dry up. And I feel like, in a way, God is taking one at a time. He takes us, and he takes us out of this terrible mud hole and that we think is perfect because it's our world, it's only thing we know, and it puts us in the lake. And if you realize that your dad and your grandpa were never meant to do anything past this point.

This was always their story. It was always written this way, that that car crash that happened with them was always supposed to happen that way, then you don't live in this weird alternate reality of Dad would have been. Dad would have been sixty seven today and you would have been at my son's graduation and he's there's the empty chair where he would have been sitting, and no, that's impossible, right, but never was going to happen. Yeah, now that's that.

I love when you speak in parables, dude, I love it. I'm serious. I think that we all understand when it's spoken in parables. That's so good. So don't be the fish in the mud puddle. That's, you know, asking why. The other part of this is it's completely okay to be where you are. You're three months after a tragic car accident. Just keep processing, keep pushing in. And I'd

venture to say, Jesse, right, yep. Venture to say Jesse that there was a point in your life where things were pretty good and you said a prayer God, I just I want to know you more deeply. Could have been as simple as that. What suffering and struggle and trials and these things do to us is they make us more dependent on God. They help us to know him more, so we in a way, he's kind of answering our prayers. It just sometimes doesn't come the way we want because it's like, oh, God, I want to

know you more. I know what you've been through in your life that you would say, Man, I know God so much more deeply through this than when everything was good, because we tend to not be as dependent, but when we are just like stripped, vulnerable, hurting and pain, it's like weird. God's like, hey, you know, come to me all who are weird. I'll give you rest, like I'll be your comforter. I'll give you everything that you need.

But the problem is is we come to God with most of what we need, we think, and so He's like, well, I can't help you. But if you're asking, then I'm going to take this away. I'm going to take this away. I'm going to take this away. Then I can answer your parer. That's it. So, Jesse, here's your task. What do you do now? You take it one day at a time. You comfort your mother, You comfort your grandmother she's still around. You give them what you need. You

serve them, serve your mother who's now a widow. You be the rock that your family needs. Let your wife and your kids look to you and say, man, Dad lost his dad and his grandpa, and he's still there for us. He's still strong, he's still the backbone. He's still emotional about it. Every once in a while I see him cry about it. He's real, he's vulnerable, but he's not going to give up on us. He's not going to lose his mind. He's not going to quit on this family. He's not going to quit on his

own mother. He's taking care of her, he's bringing her meals, he's bringing her over, he's trying to comfort her. That's your task, one day at a time. And what happens is, Buddy, all of a sudden, the year goes by and you go, it's the year anniversary of Dad and Grandpa. And you look back and you go, am I a little bit stronger than I was at ground zero? Day one? Yes? And then you keep going another day, another day, another week,

another month, and then you're two years in. Then you go, I miss Dad and Grandpa, but I'm not as sad as I was. And then ten years goes by and you think about Dad and Grandpa and you look back on them with a smile, and you remember Dad used to say that Dad would dad love that? And you And then you go, I'm smiling. I'm thinking of the good things about him. And then you start telling your kids. You go, you know what's funny, Your grandpa love that

chocolate cake too. He loved it. You're just like your grandpa. And then they smile and you smile, and you're you're spreading that joy and you're you're moving forward. You're never gonna move on because they're always a part of you. You're never gonna forget them. You're never gonna separate further and further till you think I can't even remember my dad. That's never You're gonna go to your grave, buddy. You're gonna go to your grave with a good, strong memory

of your dad and his impact on your life. And we said on the last podcast, the level, the level of your grief that you have for them equals the level of love that you had for them. So the fact that you're grieving means the fact that you loved them, and that is infinitely more valuable. That you loved them and then they impacted you and you carry on. Now that legacy, that's your blood, man, that is your genetics

that you're carrying on their name. You're passing on to your kids, and that is powerful, and that is how you fight this this anxiety and depression day by day by day. Quick break be right back. If you're looking for a way to connect best with EE Apparel, say that you've seen the EEE shirts around and you're like, I've been to the website and I like some of your stuff. Let me tell you a really cool way

to get involved with us. We have a T shirt subscription where you can get a brand new shirt that we don't sell anywhere else that's exclusive every single month. If you sign up for this subscription, you will get a T shirt at your doorstep at the first of every month. This is a shirt you will not find on the road on tour, and we specially design it seasonally for that specific moment, that specific month. And it's just a really cool program and I love watching it.

We love going through our design process for this T shirt of the month, and it's just always a little bit different, and we take a lot of pride, my brothers and I here at EE Apparel. We take a little bit extra pride with our subscription service just because that's that's in a way that's like our apparel fan club. I have my fanclub at ee nation dot com, which is music related and life related to me. Ee nation

dot com. But at ee dot com with the apparel, the T shirt subscription, it's kind of our baby, So check that out. It's also a really cool gift idea for somebody. You could gift them that subscription service and they're gonna get a shirt without even looking, without even choosing in their size, the first of every month, with a very specific design for them. I also wanted to

talk to you guys about tour dates. We have a lot of tour dates coming up, and I think this is kind of a good opportunity to talk about it. We have May twenty eighth in Cany, Kansas, twenty ninth and Lafayette, Louisiana, June the fifth and Bakersfield, California, and June ninth in Houston, Texas that's a radio show. June the twelfth in New Bronfles, Texas that's open to the public. June seventeenth, Roxton, Illinois, June eighteenth, Cincinnati, Ohio, June nineteenth, Jackson, Michigan,

June twenty fifth, Cadet, Wisconsin. I think somebody actually corrected me and said it's Cadot help me out comment below, Condott, Wisconsin in June twenty fifth and the twenty sixth of June, Iowa City, Iowa. And I'll get into July another time. So those are all tour dates that we have in the book. In the books, we'll be adding more and more. We'll be coming to your town soon. You could find those at Grangersmith dot com. It's right there on the

homepage tour. You could get tickets there on that splash page, and you could also get VIP tickets, which allows you to get backstage and hang out with me, get to have a conversation, we get to get to know each other a little bit better. We sell those VIP tickets for every show. If you can't do any of that, if you have no getting to my show, and there's no way we're coming to you because you live in Hong Kong, I don't know, I don't know where you live, but in a place that we would never tour at

least anytime in the near future. You can go to cameo dot com and find me on cameo and you could book me for a personal video message that I'll send to you. I could say whatever you need, could be happy Father's Day, could be happy birthday, could be some kind of encouragement that you might need. But I love cameo. I've been doing it a couple of years now. I check that app daily to look for your messages and to send out little FaceTime video messages to you.

So it's a really cool way to connect. Yeah. So back to the podcast with old Burns y Y digging into more questions here. If you have a question, email Grangersmith podcast at gmail dot com. We'll take anything from you me and Burns anything you got, so I'm kicking it back over to you. Okay, we have the subjects pulled in too many directions. That was the one from the last time in right now Okay, says hey Grader. My name is Cody. I'm from upstate of South Carolina.

I came across some of your YouTube videos and started looking for your music and found your podcast. I'm really thankful for you guys and the way you take a stand in your faith and giving more believers hope. I have a wife of eight years, two sons aged six and two. I also work a full time job where I'm a supervisor. As my kids get older and my job gets more and more demanding, I feel pulled in so many directions that I just can't breathe. I work all day, I come home and cook and do stuff

with my boys. The boys are really attached to me, so I pretty much take care of what they need. Then my wife wants me to give her attention and do stuff she wants me to get done. Any advice on managing time with all this and getting some time to breathe, Thanks God bless Cody. We can all relate to that, buddy. Yeah, good question, great question. Yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of folks, I mean a lot of folks out there, especially in our culture, that are

stretched thin and stuffed full too much. Yeah, so let's dive in a wife of eight years. Yeah, you're also in a very this is Cody. You're also Cody in a very busy time just of life, right, very like you do. You're in a season of life where you do have a lot of things and people that are

gonna be kind of tugging at you, naturally young kids. Yeah, you're a supervisor, so you also have that means you also have a lot of people working under you that are depending on you and your leadership, and they're not all moving in the same direction, which is probably frustrating. You didn't even say any of that, but I just know it from you. Being a supervisor. You got boys, two boys too, is not easy, especially that two year old. He's attached to you. He takes a lot of energy.

Everyone knows that. Of course your wife wants her attention and that yeah, absolutely she wants you to get stuff done. Yes, so managing time and still getting time for you to breathe. Let's start with anytime I think about time management, I always want to go first to time blocking and when what I would recommend Cody is going through a seven day period one week of first of all, without changing anything,

without doing anything differently than your current life. Start writing down you're a full day and what you're doing and how many hours you're doing it, starting when you wake up all the way down to lights out. Do that seven days, and then review on the eighth day, review your previous week and look at where you're putting your time. So it could be you know, for you woke up at this time and took thirty minutes to make coffee brush my teeth, take a shower, get dressed, then you

give your commute to work. That takes time. Then you have you know, you could block out your day, like with your lunch break, what does that look like? When you get home? What do you do at night? And then all the way up to your lights out, look at that and you are going to find instantly you're gonna look at that and go I literally spent two hours doing that, and you'll immediately start finding things that

you could either eliminate or help to make better. Right, absolutely, So let's put it this way, since we were just talking about speaking in parables. Let's say you go to the gym and you throw the headphones in and you walk in and you're like, okay, let's uh maybe walk over to the bench. I'm going to do that. And then you're like, okay, well, man, my legs are still kind of sore, but I need to work those out,

so I'm going to do that. And then and then you're kind of like, man, I don't really know what to do next, and so then you know, you just kind of work your way around. You kind of get frustrated a little bit because you don't have anybody guiding you, but you're trying to get a good workout in. You don't really feel it's hard to push yourself, so your workout is kind of halfway anyway. You you know, have a TV at the gym, so you end up just watching ESPN for half the time. Right, yep, Well let's

change that to something more like Granger saying. Let's say that you prepare before you go to the gym and you talk with somebody else. Hey, I'm trying to make this the most the best workout, like can Okay, well what do you want to work out? Hey? Well, I want to here, here's my goals. Okay, so you have to first set your goals right at the gym, and then you have you work Okay, here's here's my workout. I go on Mondays and this is what I do. And you get done with that, and you just feel

more accomplished. You feel better. You were able to give the smaller amount of workouts and exercises you did. Those muscle groups were given more attention and worked out better knowing that tomorrow I'm going to hit my legs and I'm going to give those the attention, and eventually you're going to reach your goal. So bringing that back to the family and the work and everything you have, you have to kind of like establish your goals, like what what do you want your family like to look like?

What kind of involvement do you want to have with your kids? What kind of what kind of date nights do you want to have? What with work? What is your what do you see your supervisor role looking like? I think you prepare and then you, like Granger said, whenever you are in that thing, you be completely present in that thing, knowing that one you're going to serve that thing better. Whatever it is, your kids or your job, you're going to serve it better being fully present and

that those other things. You've already prepared a lot of time for those things, so they're gonna get and when they do get you, when their time comes, they're getting all of you. They're not getting a distracted, disproportionate part of you that they're getting all of you. Man, I could go so many places with this Cody, And because I love this kind of stuff, So here, I'm gonna

give you some task here. You need that those seven days of recording what you're doing first, because you got to have a starting point so that then you could look at and like I said, don't change anything before you start writing it down, because you want to look at what you did. But here's after you do that, you're then going to be able to tweak. And I would suggest, I would suggest this, first, get up earlier. Yeah, you are a five or five thirty guy, five thirty.

I am too. Me and Bernie are both five thirty am. We wake up and I do not start work related things at five thirty in the morning. I get up. That is my time, Cody. You need your time if you want time to breathe that. Look at this. When you get on an airplane and they say, in case of a low pressure situation, they're going to drop mask out, you put your mask on you first, and then you put the mask on your children. They do that because you have to be in good health to be able

to take care of anybody else. So you need to be good. If you want to give your wife the time, and give your boys the time, and give your employees the time, you need to be good first. So I would suggest, first set that alarm five or five thirty. That seems to be like the time right there, and you get up and you have your coffee, it's quiet, no one in the house is awake, it's still dark outside. You could do your reading. You could do like that's

usually my Bible time. That's when I pull out and I have a little reading plan and I love it. I crave it. No one's gonna bother me. I don't check my phone, I don't check my text I don't check my emails. It's me and a cup of coffee and a quiet environment. Everyone's asleep, and I open up the Word of God. That's me. That is something Now, it's like Christmas morning. Every morning. I have to do that. I do it seven days a week. Oh, I have

to because I love it so much. It's also going to force you to go to bed a little bit earlier because you're just not gonna be able to function. If you're going to bed at midnight, it's gonna catch up with you. So you're gonna push your whole nighttime routine up, which I think is valuable because you start

getting into trash time I talk. I like to call it at night when your brain's tired, and that's the time when it's easier just to cruise Instagram or cruise Netflix, or watch ESPN way too long, where you've seen the same news rotate twice in a row and you're having meaningless conversations with your wife. It doesn't matter. So you're gonna go to bed earlier, which I think is good too. And then exactly what Bernie's saying, if you start planning your day and this is, this is, I'll give you

some things to start with. Start with the cell phone. You make it very clear with your boss that your phone for work. And I'm sorry, I don't know your work and I don't know the exact hours, but I would say something I'm going to average out here. Your phone turns on at eight am and it turns off at six pm. That's a long window. But you do not reply to a text or a call or an email after your given time, which I'm suggesting six pm.

We're actually we're building a house right now. And the construction supervisor, when I first met him day one, he said, what's that man? Who's a super cool guy named Rob. We met, we talked, and he said, just so you know, I have family time. So my phone comes on at eight am and it cuts off at six pm. And they're just not going to reply. After that, he made

it clear it wasn't rude, and I respected that. And to this day, I'll think of something I need to ask Rob and I look at my watch and at six oh five, I don't text him, I don't call them. I gotta wait till tomorrow. You establish how people treat you and how people communicate with you from the way you respond to them, and no one is going to blame you. You're not a twenty four to seven guy. Man.

You can't be that. You can't have your phone on your nightstand and answer it at midnight because there's a problem at work. Like I said, I don't know what your job is. If you're a brain surgeon, it's just there's gonna it's gonna be different. But start with your cell phone and establish your times when it's on for work, and do not deviate from that. If you have your weekends off and you're with your boys, you're not looking

at your phone work related. The second thing I will do is schedule, Just like Bernie said, schedule your entire week, and you could do it daily. You could do it during your five thirty when we wake up and you're having your coffee. That could be a good time to say, all right, what am I gonna do today? And there's so many good apps for reminders and checklists and to do lists you set. You go, okay, I got this, this this, I got this meeting, I get this. It's

gonna be a busy day because of this. And here's my lunch. And then you look at that and it's no more, no less than what you write down. And then your wife schedule her in there. I know that doesn't sound romantic, but you need to schedule your family time, your kid time, and your wifetime in your book. So you go, Thursday night dinner, We're gonna go to dinner at six o'clock and you're gonna put that and nothing

will take you out. That is your schedule. So if your boss calls and goes, hey actually need you to work late, you go, I'm so sorry, I have something I cannot get out of on Thursday. Because this in your schedule. You're going to dinner with your wife. You're giving. And when you're with her at dinner, the phone's down and it's babe, tell me about your day. You're soaking in her. It's a good adult conversation, and you the same thing with your kids. You schedule your kids times.

You don't have to always do this the rest of your life, but you, because you emailed me code, you need to establish this early and so you'd need to be regimented about it. Yep, yeah, no, I think that's great. The last thing that I'll add is that you also have to understand that your boss or your colleagues, your friends, just being on social media or living in the world we live in, you're gonna see things that entice you to cross your boundaries in order to accomplish more things,

to earn more things, to do more things. So at the end of the day you need to, you know, kind of do what everything Granger's talking about, but then pray over it and say, God, I I trust that

you're gonna bless my work, gonna bless my focus. You're gonna bless the amount that I am investing in people and the work you've put in front of me, and and what ends up coming the reward that comes from that you're gonna find and and this is the tricky part, is to find contentment and what comes of it and not say, oh, man, well I know I said that six PM thing or whatever it was. But man, my boss said, if I just worked till seven for the next month, I'm gonna get this bonus or I'm gonna

get this new opportunity. And so, like you said, you you stick to those things, not you know, out of like a militant nature, but you stick to them out of faithfulness to your priorities and saying, look, I'm gonna I'm content with the amount of money that I'm gonna make because I'm not willing to give up the other things that i have priorities, ties time with my family, space, margin in my day to serve others and take a phone call or sit and talk with somebody that needs

to talk with somebody. If I was just always go go, go and stuff everything thin and wanted to accomplish more, I would basically have to say, hey, Grandeur, I can't talk right now. I go I'm working. But if you leave that margin and you're okay, you're just saying, hey, God's going to provide, and be content in that because you're always going to see things that you can continue to just push those boundaries on and it's just not

really worth it. I've learned. You said the word contentment I've learned in maturity that that how important that word is and biblically what that word means. Being content, Being content, Paul says, I have learned to be content in all circumstances,

so that that is true. Maturity of a man is knowing that there's always another opportunity, there's always another problem, there's always another bad situation with one of your employees, There's always another bonus you could be getting always, and sometimes you have to know when to cut it off and just be content where you are. In my life,

I have tour dates coming in. I could be on paper, I could be a lot more successful to the rest of the world if I just accepted everything and fought every battle and fixed every problem and didn't get any sleep and neglected my family and took another tour date that came in that replaced a little family vacation all was supposed to be having, and then took another date that missed a good buddy of mine that's getting married.

I'm not going to be at his wedding now because there's a tour date that's going to make more money. I could do that, and what would I have to show for it? In my life. That's right, Or let's just flip the script on that and say, because what you're trying to do in saying no to some of these tour dates is be faithful to your priorities. But your career is a priority. It's a work that God's put in front of you. So what if the inverse of that would be just declining all opportunities? Exactly So

it's it's exactly right. We have been given these things to steward our work, our families, our children, and it is a tough it's a tough balance and you're kind of in the throes of it right now. You're kind of growing your career, you're growing your family, and growing pains is a real thing. So just keep keep fighting. Take some of the things, the practical things that grizz has just told you, and put them into action. These

are all just words and experiences. But the part where all of this starts to change our lives is when we say I'm going to do that. I love this question, Cody. I'm so glad you asked it. I've heard before that life is life is juggling. You're juggling constantly now. But remember, as you're juggling that when you have these juggling balls, you have your rubber juggling balls and your glass juggling balls. So as you're juggling all these together, remember there's some

of them you could drop and they're gonna bounce. Some of you drop and they're going to break. So just keep in mind where your glass ones are that to me, that your family and your kids. There's certain ones you cannot drop, and there's certain ones that's usually work related or hobby related that you could occasionally drop them. They're gonna bounce right back up into your arms. Those are the rubber ones. So life is a juggle. You'll enjoy it, dude.

Parable nobody's business this week. Here's the one, says, here's it says, Hey Granger. Here's an easy question. What are your top three favorite eras slash events and history? And why? It comes from Lakeisha. Okay, I'll let you. I'll let the history buff take this one first. That's a tough one, Lakeisha. It's tough. What are my three favorite eras? I love? I mean, should we discount biblical times? I mean I

don't think you can. I mean I think we're talking about history because wouldn't you want to see the life, the teachings of Christ, the three years of ministry of Christ. Yeah, we got to add that in there. I love that, And Bernie and I both look at we look at Christianity as a historical event. So there's a difference. I know some of you have asked questions like about faith and spirituality and kind of thrown out the word religion,

and I do want to say that I am. I kind of reject the word religion when it comes to Christianity because I'm religious when it comes to working out. I'm religious when it comes to making my tour list. I mean my set list on tour. I'm religious when it comes to eating certain things and making my coffee and making my shakes. And so religion is a tough word. I like to throw that out. But we look at

Christianity as a historical event. So our faith is based on the Word of God that we read in the Bible, but it's also backed by historical evidence. And so the reason I say that is because it is not a fairy dust religion that some man had a dream under a tree, that an angel visited him and spoke spoke a prophecy, and we just believe it. Why because he

said it and we feel it. It's more than that, we believe it because it's it's a set of historical events that happened, but in front of eyewitnesses that wrote it down during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses at one time during the resurrection, over five hundred at one time, five hundred people saw it. So I look at biblical history as a big backbone of the reason I believe it. Yeah, Like, yeah, I was, I was tracking with you. I I would take that for sure. I think medieval times would be

kind of cool. Yeah, not because I'm like, you know, well versed in uh anything that actually happened, but based on the entertainment that I've seen, I think that the medieval times would be kind of cool just to see, like how did you guys live without these things? And what did you do? What did you do for like what did you do for fun? Like what did you you know? I say the same thing about the Old West. The Old West fascinates me, and I'm a huge fan

of Western movies. It fascinates me because it was a time period following the Civil War that and it's like post Civil War pre railroad, there's a twenty year time. You could even get even narrower. It could be like a ten year period when there was these cowboys taking driving cattle north to auction from from Texas, from Mexico, from Oklahoma, driving them north up to Montana and selling

them in Kansas City and selling them. It's that only happened in a short period of time when these old Civil War veterans needed work and there was no fences and no railroad. And yet during that short time we have we have put that into the fantasies of mankind ever since, and the movies and books and culture and heroes and cowboys have just they just became this legacy. And I love to watch your Western and it's usually

the same type idea on every movie. I'll watch it all over again because you think about the old saloon and kicking open the doors and there's the girls. When you walk up to the bar and you say whiskey yeah, and they slide you take a shot, and you slide it back and he pours another one out of the same looking it looks like a wine bottle, but it's full of whiskey. Pours it and he slides it and it's like you're dirty. It's like you're you're so thirsty.

You've been out on the on the prairie all day and the first thing you drink is whiskey, not water, probably because the water was nasty anyway. Man. And then you see the guy. The guy comes out of the shadows, and you're like everybody's barstools kind of like, you know, pull back. Yeah, man, i'd love to you not from around here. Yeah, yeah, the teeth of the guy that's playing poker in the corner, or it's the sheriff that walks through the double doors and says, where'd you come from? Yeah?

You know, like, man, I love it. Remember when we decided to hop the or try to hop the railroads and almost got run over, and then and we slept out in somebody else's pasture surrounded by cows. The next morning we ended up get back on the railroads and walking into that small little cafe. I feel like that's what people did when we walked in, because we were just like dirty as anything. Small town cafe. We walk in and it's just like, dude, everybody's looking at us.

So I want to go one more place world War two. I'm so passionate about World War two and that era of history, and I'll tell you why, because that was a time similar to the Old West, when things were changing, like technology was changing so fast, and there was a time when Germany was going to take over the whole world, and they had a plan for it, and if it wasn't been for just a few mistakes here and there,

they would have done it. And the fact that the world, a lot of the world, came together as allies and defeated them and flipped the script where they went from the aggressor to the defenders of their homeland in Germany. And we want it through the air. The majority of World War two was one from superior airpower. And what really gets me going and gets me just thinking is, first of all, that kind of war will never happen again,

and the way that our airpower dominated them. So my grandpa was a pilot of the B twenty four bomber, so I might be a little biased in that way, but in the war in Europe, we decimated their cities. Terrible, terrible thing that we did. We had to Americans bombed by day, the British bombed by night, and we never stopped once we had a foothold on them, and we had them on the run. We were manufacturing aircraft in the United States in the Ford plant, the GMC plant.

No more automobiles were being made. We flipped it all to aircraft. There was women making these bomber planes in there. And the country has never united like that. It never had before and it never has to this day. Like we did in those few short years to beat Germany. We all came together and we made war bonds, and we got our money together. We stocked food together, we collected metal together, we collected rubber together. We are women

that were widows or had men overseas. They came together in these factories, and the factories said, here's the keys. We no longer are going to make cars. You do whatever you got to do, make airplanes. And then we took those airplanes and we flew them over Germany every single day and bombed the crap out of them. And it's a terrible Like I said, it's a terrible thing. I loved the country of Germany. I love visiting and it breaks my heart that we were forced to do that.

We had to because that was the only way at the time, it's the only way we knew how, and it's the only way it was winning the war. But we decimated these ancient medieval cities, and we didn't have strategic bombing, We didn't have good precisions, so we were just just go just dropping on and hoping that we hit the refinery, and half the time we were hitting neighborhoods. And that's the terrible thing about World War two. But it's just so fascinating that and they were not surrendering

during this whole They were fighting to the end. And so I don't think we'll ever see God willing, we'll never see the world in that kind of state again. And it wasn't before that, with that kind of devastation. So yeah, I have to put that in there. Let me ask you this, the B twenty four music video. Is it still up on the internet? Yeah? It is, Okay, go watch that. You haven't seen it that it's a parody by the way, Yeah, but it's amazing. You know,

this guy can do a parody like nobody else. So I did Biblical I did Medieval we only because I want to get on the horse and do the thing. The jousts. But I want to make sure my sticks a little bit longer than the other person's. That would be kind of cool in the armor and everything. My third, I would think I would want to live in the era where space travel is as common as air flight right now. Yes, I think I think that's I hope I'm still alive. I feel like there's people working on

that becoming something very common. But I think that that would be absolutely to be able to see the Earth from that viewpoint, I think that would be pretty cool. We're running out of time here on this podcast, but I want to show you, Bernie, if anyone can google google Berlin nineteen forty five and look at this. You're talking the whole city is destroyed. Wow, the aerial shots of Berlin is it's just like look at you can just zoom in and it's just nothing but rubble. Wow. Crazy.

That's all we got. You guys are awesome. All right, Hey, thanks for having me back, guys on the best yegee, thanks for joining me on the Granger Smith Podcast. I appreciate all of you. Guys. You could help me out by rating this podcast on iTunes. If you're on YouTube, subscribe to this channel. Hit that little like button and notification spell so that you never miss anytime I upload a video. If you have a question for me that you would like me to answer, email Graingersmith Podcast at

gmail dot com. Yi