00:00 Chris Grainger
Welcome to the lion within us. A podcast serving Christian men who are hungry to be the leaders they’re predestined to be. I’m your host, Chris Grainger. Let’s jump in. All right, guys. Welcome to the meat episode. So we’re gonna be talking about designing life God’s way, yo, not our way, but God’s way we’re gonna be really hammering on this.

So we know we start off every line within a Swiss scripture gonna jump right in job 23, verse 10, but he knows the way that I take when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold. That is powerful scripture, right there. Guys, go back to the spiritual kickout on Monday. If you want to dig deeper, get some more insight.

I really broke that scripture down. So guys, today we’re gonna be really digging to a lot of things. I think you are gonna want to hang around in this conversation because we’re gonna get practical. We’re on areas that you can actually implement in your life right now to start leaning in and making some changes, that’s gonna make an impact.

The guests for today, his name is Carlos Sado and he’s a life design coach. All right. So, and he’s, he’s doing that at corporate wellbeing development consultant, and he’s a two time author. He’s actually a TEDx speaker. Guy’s this unreal what this guy’s doing. Okay. He’s an international keynote speaker and he’s out there constantly bringing positive messages and trying to share wisdom and insight.

You know, for 25 years he’s held corporate roles. He started his own entrepreneurial ventures. He led his company to multiple ink, 5,000 awards and served in nonprofits. He’s now dedicated and really dedicated. This is why I think you guys are going to enjoy this to help others design a life. They love to live every day, every day.

Okay. And he’s calls it the life design coaching and corporate wellbeing services. So he’s got a book guys. We’re gonna talk about that a little bit. It’s called the un-American dream. That’s right. un-American dream. And it’s a really cool book guys. It, it details his journey from being that workaholic.

And I think a lot of us got there. We can resonate with what a workaholic is. Maybe you are workaholic. Lets just have a little truth at times I am a workaholic, but you know what? He talks about how to take that workaholic life and kind of turn it to a life that you love. And I’ll tell you what, that book’s amazing.

It’s gonna be on our show notes, check it out. You, you know, go to the book of the week page. We’ll have it right there. You can follow, uh, Carlos on Twitter and Instagram, check out the show notes as well. We’ll have his handle so you can, you can connect with him directly. But guys, this is gonna be a fun conversation.

It’s gonna be powerful. Give you a lot of wisdom. Lot of insight. You may wanna take some notes, so I’m not gonna make you wait any, any longer. So here we go guys, let’s get into it.

Tell us a little bit about your journey to, to where you’re at now. Oh,

02:48 Carlos Hidalgo
wow. Uh, my journey to where I’m at now is there there’s one word it’s called grace. Um, long time ago I started calling my wife. Uh, her nickname was grace and little did I know then that now that just plays such a huge role in my life.

Mm. Um, God shows that through her constantly to me. Um, but it it’s, it’s amazing, uh, where I am now. I live in the Adirondack mountains of New York, a little town called SCR lake. Um, spent a lot of time here as a kid. We got married, moved up here, moved away 26 years ago. And so thankful to be back home. It’s been just over a year since we came back since then we’ve lived in Texas for 13 years.

We lived in Colorado for 11 years. We lived in RV full-time for seven months. We have four amazing children and an amazing daughter-in-law. Scattered all over the country from Kansas to Tennessee, to Mississippi. And, um, just feel every day I wake up and I breathe. It’s a good day.

03:55 Chris Grainger
that’s all now I need, I am curious.

Did I hear that right? Seven months in an RV. So what what’s, what’s going on there?

04:02 Carlos Hidalgo
Yeah. You know, as, as part of our, we, we, we call life design. We encourage people to say, what do you want life to look like? And we knew our youngest, uh, was home alone for three years after his, his sister who was the, the next one in line, uh, went to college.

So I think it was towards the middle end of his sophomore year. We started saying, you know, what, what do we want life to look like when we’re empty nesters? Because there’s such a, as you probably well know, there’s such a, um, a problem. They call it the grade divorce where these couples build their lives around their children, the children leave and they go, oh, we’re not even sure.

We like each. And we really just started to throw everything against the wall. We talked about going to Europe for a year and country hopping and, you know, we can work from there. I, I can work from anywhere as long as I have an internet connection and a phone. And so we talked about that. We talked about, Hey, do we do that in the states?

And just Airbnb and pick a region of the country, want to, we wanna see and do that for a month. I mean, we literally threw everything against the wall. Then of course the pandemic hit and put the Gabo on any real kind of travel. And my wife said would, should we consider an RV? And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down.

Um, going to 3,700 square feet into about 300 square feet was quite a change. I, I am a recovering control freak. And, um, I don’t do change really well. Okay. But, um,

05:35 Chris Grainger
so are you a six on a angiogram?

05:37 Carlos Hidalgo
I’m actually a seven.

05:38 Chris Grainger
Okay. I’m a six. Okay. So we’re,

05:39 Carlos Hidalgo
we’re close. Okay. Yeah, I’m a seven. And um, so she got really smart though.

She came into my office one day and said, Hey, I have an idea. If we got a fifth wheel, that means we would have to get a truck. And I’ll be honest with you, Chris. I don’t know what she said after truck. You had, she had you, man. She played you. She could, she could have told me. And in order to do that, you gotta run naked through downtown.

Yeah. And, and I, I don’t know what she said, but all I heard was truck and I was sold so long story short. We sold our house in Colorado in 2020. Uh, and we moved into an RV and. I gotta tell you, we loved it. Loved it, loved it, loved it. We had such a great time. We saw 11 different states saw things and did things we would’ve never done on vacation because they were so off the beaten path.

Um, it was just a time of us to being together. I worked from there, we ran our podcast from there. Um, and then low and behold, the house became available in this little town that we’ve loved. Our kids have loved, and we did what we followed our clients to do follow what’s unfolding. And we bought this house.

We still have the RV. We’re trying to sell it, but we will have one again, uh, hopefully sooner rather than later, and try to escape winters here may even come down and join you in North

07:01 Chris Grainger
Carolina. That’s right. Come on down North Carolina. It’s not that bad. This is, you got the, you know, kind of a mild winters for the most part, but yeah, man, that’s, that’s amazing.

This sounds like a, a fun time. So that was really recent then within the last year that you did that journey.

07:15 Carlos Hidalgo
Yeah. When we bought, as a matter of fact, when we bought the house, um, that was ju it was almost a year ago to the day. Uh, we backed our, our RV into the driveway and lived in it for another two months because we came into this house and started it immediately.

Not almost, almost immediately tear it down to the stud. So it was a livable. So we just lived parked the RV in the driveway and lived in the RV. So technically it was nine months, but we traveled, uh, a good part of that. Um, you know, I, I don’t really count the two months in my driveway.

07:48 Chris Grainger
that’s right. That’s awesome.

Well, you know, we, I, I’m excited to learn from you today, Carlos. And I know that our, our listeners are too, because, you know, I kind of, I kind of teased him. I got him, I got him going in your intro thinking about, you know, this guy’s gonna be talking about, you know, life design and, and, and designing life God’s way.

And, and what that looks like. So, I mean, what led you to creating life design and how, how do you explain that to someone, you know, fresh, fresh off the street?

08:13 Carlos Hidalgo
Yeah, life design. Simply I’ll answer the second part and then I’ll jump to the first part. Okay. Um, life design simply is designing a life that you love to live every day.

And it’s fundamentally rooted in first and foremost, your identity and getting back to who God created you to be that that’s. If someone has said to me, you do life design, what does that mean? That’s exactly what I would tell them. Um, and I believe fundamentally that most of us, at some point in our lives were knocked off our central identity, our, our center point of who we were created to be who God created us to be.

And we live from a false identity. And what we’ve done is we have jumped the shark a little bit in that we all wanna understand our big, why we all wanna understand our purpose, which hear me, I believe is really important, but we cannot fundamentally correctly identify our purpose if we’re operating from a false identity.

So it’s more important for me. To start with who then to start with why. Mm. And so the way I came about that is just my own story. I, at a young age was knocked off my center through a series of events and things that were said, uh, by people that were close to me. Uh, family members, coaches, teachers, my, the entire story of my life growing up was I can’t, I was a baby because I cried easily.

Still do. Um, I was unathletic. I wasn’t smart. I wasn’t intelligent. And the list went on and on and early in my teen years, I embraced that and I started to believe it. Mm, well, my personality is such instead of crawling into a hole, my personality was if that’s what you believe and deep down inside, I believed, but I just lived life with a chip on my shoulder.

And so instead of my, my whole purpose was proving everybody and myself wrong. And so that became my drive in life. And it, it, I wanna be clear. I couldn’t articulate it, that at couldn’t have articulated that then, because I was far too young mm-hmm , but even into my college years into my marriage, I got married at 23.

I had a, my, we had our first child a week before our first anniversary at 24, but that carried me through business. And it, it stayed with me for decades, Chris, where I literally was operating in this. I’m just gonna prove everybody wrong. I was angry. I was anxious. Um, I, it just, then the list went on and on and what it did, it led me down a horrible path.

Um, I got to a point where I started to resent God. I started as ridiculous as this sounds. I got, I remember telling somebody that I, I, I got so angry that God was sovereign and I wasn’t now that’s insane. Right. And that’s nuts, but that’s the level I got to. And then as I started to find success and my, my own drive to prove everybody wrong, I started to realize that like, Hey, screw you, right.

Look at me, look what I’m doing. My ego just conflated. And honestly, as I, as I write in the book, I think it’s in the introduction. I became real, really narcissistic. And my whole life became about me. And then I started to believe like, I can do whatever the heck I want God be damned. Mm-hmm . And I did. I did.

And like I’ve told my children is short of hard drugs. I have done everything that this world tells you is going to bring, bring happiness. Satisfaction and fulfillment. And there is a reason I came back to Christ because none of those things satisfied. And so that is my journey. In a nutshell, it is full of grace.

It is full of redemption. It is full of forgiveness and it is a guy who said, I so desperately want to get back to who God created me to be. And now that I am, my passion is to help others find that same because that’s when you can start to live a life that you love every day.

12:38 Chris Grainger
I love it. So I’m curious.

And, and, and if you don’t want to answer this, that’s fine, but was there a moment? I mean, where was that moment where you say, okay, my way’s not working. God’s ways away. You know, a lot of times for some guys it’s when kids are born or something traumatic happens with. Was there a moment like that to where you, okay, this is the, this is the inflection point where I gotta, I gotta repent.

I gotta turn. And I gotta make my, my correct my path. Yeah.

13:05 Carlos Hidalgo
I wish there was a, uh, moment as I shared with our good friend, Pete Durham, uh, I wish there was a Paul on the road to Damascus moment. It probably would’ve been easier for everybody involved, but it honestly started when my wife rounded a corner.

Uh, I was sitting on my front stoop of my house at that point and unexpectedly rounded the corner and heard me on a conversation with my mistress and sat down next to me. And when I hung up said, who was that continued to press and the gig was up. And to be honest, the first, probably six months I was in damage control, I wanted to control how much she knew about how many about.

My secret life. I wanted to control the narrative with close friends and colleagues. And somewhere in that time, I had a good friend of mine who was then our attorney call, who was also a Christian man and said, you have one of two choices. You can continue. First of all, just be honest and reject God and go live.

The REAT life that you have been hiding from everybody that’s choice one or choice two is to fall flat on your face before an almighty God and beg for forgiveness. He said, which he’s already given you. He said, those are your two choices. And then he hung up the phone pretty much. Um, I remember exactly where I was.

I was in orange county airport. I had just landed. And that was kind of the beginning of, oh man, I’ve got a lot of work to do. Right. And then the second kind of light bulb moment was when I sat down with my therapist, a dear man named Clint Clark, I will always be thankful for him and his influence. And I listed out for him, basically the implosion of my life.

And I think I used the term, I I’ve newed my life. And I, and he said, so why are you here? And I said, well, I just told you why I’m here. I want my wife back. I want my kids back. My kids were older then. And so they started to kind of piece things together. And then we eventually, uh, I confessed to all of them.

And I said, I just, I just want my life back. And he said, you know, if you’re doing this all to gain things back, I can’t help you because you and I will be here in five to seven years having the same exact conversation he said, but if you are truly wanting to live life to its fullest and do this for yourself, Because you’re sick and tired of living.

So in such opposition to what God’s will is for you, let’s get to work. And I’ll be honest when he first said that it, it, I was really angry because it was kind of like, did you hear what I just told you? Like my wife and I are on the doorstep of a divorce. She wants nothing to do with me. My kids want nothing to do with me.

And you’re telling me I have to do this for me. Like, that’s really selfish. The reality is it wasn’t selfish. It was the most loving thing I could do, cuz it got me back to who I was created to be.

16:15 Chris Grainger
Yes. And what stands out to me when you went through that whole dissertation there, Carlos was yet two men.

If, if I, if I’m remembering a story card, two men that spoke those hard truths to you. I mean that, that, that phone call, I mean, what a powerful phone call did take into orange county airport. Just that, that moment. But then the therapist also just, just not trying to patch, I mean, he’s trying to solve and, and.

Sometimes that’s solving that, that that’s where the hard work comes into. So, you know, you didn’t have appall, but you did have some men that were unashamed and, and could at least had, had had guts and, and, uh, um, just courage enough to speak truth to you unfiltered. And I think that’s what you needed at that moment.

17:03 Carlos Hidalgo
Yeah. And, and, and through my restoration process, um, my best friend in the world, he would listen, but man, there were some times where he would call me and just, you know, it wasn’t a screaming and yelling, but it was kind of like, dude, stop this you’re you’re doing this or you’re falling into this trap.

And it was there, there was so many times where it, it would at first I’d be like, are you on my side or not? And, and playing that victim, the reality was I wasn’t the victim at all. My wife and my children were, um, but. But I’m so thankful for him. And there were, there were several men through that journey who loved me, but love is not always just a pat on the back.

Love sometimes is a kick in the backside, right. And these guys truly are a Testament to where I am today. The marriage that I have today, Suzanne and I talk about being in our second marriage the same, but two very different people. And I would just encourage anybody who’s out there. Who’s listening who says, yeah, but you don’t understand my situation.

Our situations are different. Sure. But man, mine was pretty dark, pretty ugly. And I, I, we are a walking testimony to say that God can redeem everything. If you’re willing to surrender to what he’s got in store for you.

18:27 Chris Grainger
I love it. Let’s take a quick break, cuz I want to dig into that a little bit more cuz you’re, you’re, you’re touching on something.

I know’s gonna impact a lot of our guys. So we’ll be, we’ll be right back.

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You had this, these, these areas of your life, it’s your hiding, you know, and, and your wife found out you had these two men that spoke into it. And then there has to be that restoration, that rebuilding, you know, so you’ve, you’ve repented sounds like you’re, you’re working on that. I’m curious. Cuz there may be guys that you just alluded to are going through this.

Maybe they’re going through this right now. What are some of the first steps and that you had to take to really start working primarily on your marriage to, to, to heal that relationship. Was there anything in particular that stood out as you, as you think back now, and also if you wouldn’t mind give a, give us a friend a timeline to, to how long some of these things took.

Because sometimes I think as guys, you know, we, we, we try to rush this stuff and, and that probably is not the case on, on stuff

20:07 Carlos Hidalgo
like this. Yeah. And, and I was that guy. Right, right. Um, for me as Clint, my, my therapist said to me for you, it’s freedom. Right? For, for decades, I’ve been hiding this life of darkness and it was exposed.

And finally I’m like, I can keep the plates to stop from spinning. For Suzanne and the kids, it was like, Hey, I just backed up a dump truck and, and unloaded on your doorstep. And in three months I want you to move on and trust me. So there’s that, um, for me, the process of working on my marriage, it’s not where I, well, it is where I started, but it shouldn’t have been where I started.

I had to work on my own self and, and we did have a counselor who said, I can’t do this anymore with you two, you two need to go work on yourselves so that you can then make the decision. Do you want to rebuild your marriage? And I wanna be clear. We decided not to rebuild our marriage. Cuz rebuild means let’s keep the framework, but build a second one.

The first one. Just is not what we wanted. So we literally, like I said, we started, we talk about being in our second marriage, which we are, so we’ve built a whole new one. It’s like, we tore the house down, leveled. It didn’t even leave the studs up, leveled it and then built something all new together. And that’s a whole other story.

And, and that’s, that’s an ongoing process, right? Because marriages take good marriages, take hard work. Um, so all of that said, I started work on myself and where I started was not as an excuse, but where did I go off course? Cuz it wasn’t like I woke up one day and thought, Hey, I I’ve got a great idea. Let me start sleeping around in my marriage.

That’ll be awesome. Right. It was a slow burn. And one of the things we have to understand is the enemy Satan is really, really patient. So as far back as I could go, I got to 13. So this all blew up when I was about 43 40. I’ll be 51 in July. So that gives you a little bit of a timeline. 13 was where the first time I saw pornography and it wasn’t like, you know, we didn’t have the internet then and all this stuff.

And I know that makes me sound old, but I saw it in a magazine, saw it at a front. Actually, I was younger than that. I, I was younger than that, but it was 13 where I really started to kinda, I would say crave it. Right. Um, and there would be periods where I would, I would sneak down somewhere or, or sneak out or, or, or consume it and then periods of, you know, dry spells, whatever.

And, and so I had to go back and understand what was it that I was trying to account for? What was the, the pain, the hurt, what was I trying to medicate? And so, but I never shared that with anybody. I never shared with my dad. Hey, I’m really struggling in this area. I never shared with my youth pastor, I’m struggling in this area.

I started to isolate. And man, when you isolate, that’s where the enemy does his best work. And as you and I have talked about before, isolation is not I’m alone in a, in a house. I’m not letting anybody in. I was a, I’m a very gregarious individual. I was always around people, but there was a whole part of my life that I was never, ever, ever gonna let anybody into because I allowed shame.

And I wanna be very, very clear on my language. I’m not saying shame did this to me. I allowed shame and permitted shame to take a place in my life. And I bought into the lie that said, if they only knew who you were and what you were doing, nobody will love you. And that I carried that for decades. And so that little bit of porn consumption.

At a very early age, more into my teen years and then in college, not so bad, but then early on in my marriage, it started up again, never shared it. And then when Suzanne did find out about it, the first time I addressed it, but I kept it very quiet. Didn’t share it with, I shared it with one individual who knew me and then it grew and it festered.

And then when I struggled with it again, never shared it again. Mm-hmm so I isolated and then it just festered and festered and festered. And guess what? Porn turned into more porn and then it turned into affair, one affair and then another affair. And, you know, that’s, that’s the, the thing with sin, especially when it’s kept quiet and buried is it’s never enough.

It never satisfies. And it’s a deep dark sister. And I can tell you, you get to a place. And I remember. There was a hotel one night where I literally looked myself in the mirror and out loud said, what is wrong with you? Never thought I’d get to that place. So I had to go and journey back to all of that and say, that’s not who God created me to be.

Mm-hmm where did I, where did I allow myself to get knocked off center? And then what reject lies that I had believed and embrace the truths that I know starting with, regardless of what I’ve done, God still loves me. And I’m his son. Right. And that’s a pretty powerful position.

25:43 Chris Grainger
Absolutely. I mean, and to your point, I mean, I’ve never heard someone say to Des Satan is patient, but I, I think it just cuz you, you said 13 or even earlier that slow burn and progression and, and it’s building momentum and it’s getting the bigger and bigger.

And all of a sudden, you know, you can’t hide that in your life anymore. That’s just too much of a burden for any one man, to be able to hold. And, and too often as guys, you know, we walk in, this is a pandemic in the church right now. I mean, pornography is the pandemic right now. And, and if you look at the stats, they’re not good.

And you know, we hide it, we suppress it. I’ve even tried to coach men and talk to men and they they’ve taken it to their church and they basically get shunned or they definitely don’t get any support. So cuz I, I, churches are struggling with how to, how do you help men with, with this stuff? So, I mean, there’s, there’s so much an opportunity there for us as well, but I just it’s, it just shows the power of sin and what it can do in your life if you let it, uh, and you don’t address it.

So I mean, hats off to you eventually you did address it, head on because that’s when the true healing can occur.

26:51 Carlos Hidalgo
Yeah. And, and honestly, like I said, I was in damage control for the first six months and. And then there were a couple of times where it was just so overwhelming the darkness of it all. I mean, I, I remember there was one night I literally just laid on my couch and I think for two, almost two straight hours just sobbed uncontrollably.

And it was just almost this, this physical release of sadness and stress. And, and, and you mentioned something else, you said, you know, we think we can hide it. I, I thought I hit it really well. Um, looking back like my kids and my wife are like, oh, you were miserable to live with. And, and I do, I was short tempered.

I was snide. I was mean I was ego driven, everything. And that was the other thing I had to come to the, the reality that, regardless of what I said to my wife and kids, nobody else mattered. I was the only one I cared about. And that’s why I say I was quite narcissistic. And that’s the other thing that sin does.

It changes you from the inside out. and what’s been, what’s been, I don’t wanna say fun cuz none of this was fun. What has been affirming for me is when I’ve encountered individuals who knew me back then, you know, 10 years ago and I encountered them now and I, I just visited with one here in our hometown and um, last fall at church, he pulled me aside and he said, man, I, I don’t know what’s happened.

But I remember when I saw you in 2014 and we had coffee together and he said you were angry. And when you would tell these stories, your veins were popping out of your neck. And, and here I was thinking, oh, I’m hiding this right. I’m nobody know nobody. And he started to cry and he said, I look at you now.

He said, and the joy that you have and the smile is back. And he said, I also see it in the eyes. And Suzanne has said that your eyes are different and it’s just such a, to me. I don’t go, oh yeah. That’s, you know, I’ve done all this work. I just think, man, God. The fact that you did this, you’re really still in the miracle business and the business of redemption.

Right. And so it’s that for me? And I can tell you just physically, I feel different. I can’t explain it because I’m the only one going through it, but physically, I just feel different than, and, and, and again, here I am almost a decade older. And, um, the, the other question you asked I didn’t get to was, you know, how long did it take?

Um, we’re still working through a lot of this. And when I say that it’s not like a day to day thing, we have a vibrant, awesome marriage, but there are some days where stuff comes up and Suzanne, and when I say working through it, what I mean is Suzanne will have a question. Um, if I’m texting someone at night, she’ll just go, Hey, who are you texting now?

It doesn’t mean she’s sitting there going, I don’t trust you. Or I think you’ve got something going on. But it, it’s more of this, this openness now. So it has definitely changed how we communicate, what we communicate, the, the depth in which we communicate. So that’s what I mean when I stay, still stay working through this.

Yeah. But I can say that probably in the last, I wanna say three, maybe three and a half, four years. Um, we really started to see the work we did in ourselves as individuals come together and surely the last two and a half to three years have been a marriage that I ever dreamed I could have. Um, even before all my stuff came out.

Yeah. But this marriage that I have is, I mean, she’s truly my best friend.

30:34 Chris Grainger
Right. And what is, it’s the ultimate covenant? You know, and you know, when, when you mentioned, think about the texting, something that, that came immediately to mind, I can only take it as a spirit to us. I feel like I need to share right now for our listener out there.

If you are a listener and, and you, your wife can’t access your phone. Oh, amen. Uh, what, what are you hiding? So there, there needs to be, she, you know, my wife, all these phones now have the phone print, things, things like that. So you can access ’em she needs access. There should be no reason why you don’t leave your phone or, or, or you forget your phone and she can get into it.

Uh, there there’s nothing there. So, and that could be a litmus test for you guys. If you’re listening, if that, if that makes you cringe the thought of your phone, your phone, your wife, accessing your phone, that may be, uh, telling you something that there’s an area of your life that you need to work on. And, and Carlos.

You picked also, I wanna ghost to scripture that you pointed out this week, Joe 2310, that was a scripture you referenced, but, but he knows the way that I take when he is testing me, I will come forth as gold. When I unpack that scripture on our spiritual kickoff, I talked about, uh, you know, what that looks like from a furnace standpoint, how do you make gold?

You have to, you have to purify it and you can either scorch it or it gets purified, but you have to have the fire to burn off the self to then ultimately, you know, be redeemed and too many guys, they just think they’re fireproof. , you know what I mean? And, and they’re just not gonna lean into that.

32:04 Carlos Hidalgo
Yeah. I, I, I you’re exactly right.

In, in the thought process and the, the process of how you refine gold. Um, it, it does come with some heat mm-hmm and none of us are fireproof, uh, because we are human. We are flawed. Um, we all have strengths. We all have weaknesses. And, um, you know, you mentioned something about the phone, you know, if you’re sitting there going and I’ve had people, I would never do what you did.

I’m like, you know what? I used to think the same thing when I stood and exchanged vows with Suzanne at 23, if you had said to me, this is where you’re gonna go, I’d be like, absolutely not never in a million years. Right. And again, maybe you won’t go there and I pray that you don’t, but to sit there and say, well, it’s just this one thing it’s just, I’m just gonna connect with this one person.

I’m just gonna see how they’re doing. If you can’t tell your wife about that. And I’ll, I’ll take it even further. If you won’t tell your wife about that. And I will tell you what I would do the way I just fi oh, if I tell her she’s gonna do this. So I would start to write a story in my head about how Suzanne was going to respond so many things wrong with that.

First of all, it, it just screams that I don’t trust her. Right, right. Um, secondly, who am I to write a story for somebody else? And so now, I mean, I walked in the other day, came in the other day for a run and she was sitting here on my laptop and I’m like, Hey. And she’s like, oh, I’m just checking. I’m like, you don’t have to tell me what you’re doing.

Right. I’ve got covenant eyes on my laptop. Um, I, she has full access to my phone now, before when that, you know, decade ago she’d pick up my phone, I would be like, oh, I mean, literally tightness in my chest and, and get angry. What are you doing? Gaslight, all these things. I couldn’t care a lot. She has access to my LinkedIn, my Facebook.

And again, it’s not a police state. She has been very clear. I don’t wanna be in a marriage where I have to babysit somebody. Right. But for me, it’s a way to just say, Hey babe, I got nothing to hide from you. And I’m gonna tell you. And even if I ever get a text a message and I’ve gotten some weird things O online, first thing I do, I show her, I have a game online that you can invite other people to play every time I decline.

But every time I get a bot or something like that, I show her mm-hmm . And it’s just an, it’s a way where I show her where first of all, I wanna be accountable to her. I want her as my closest community. Right. So I shouldn’t be wait around, you know, Paul says, confess. Uh, your sins to each other. That means when I’m accountable, I need to be accountable to someone, not wait for them to hold me accountable.

And so I want that to be a way to just restore, continue to give her confidence in who I am in our marriage and say, you know what? There are zero secrets here. And go ahead, go crazy, open up my stuff. Look at my files. I got, I got nothing to hide and I’ll tell you it’s so refreshing. And she does the same for me.

I can pick up her phone. I can look at text, I can do anything. And again, it’s not policing. It’s just building that layer of accountability because we are all capable of anything. That’s right.

35:36 Chris Grainger
And as I tell, so all our guys, they, I mean, they probably, they, they know it’s coming. Satan wants your fair, your marriage to fail, and he’s gonna find a little inflection point.

And it’s the most innocent thing. It’s just coffee, it’s just lunch. All these things can disrupt your testimony and really pull you off the path. And I mean, you know it, and the Bible’s very clear. We can go ahead to head versus Satan directly. I mean, he could be in my driveway right now and I could walk out and I know how to fight him.

I have the armor of God, the helmet of salvation, the, the, the, the shield of faith. And then I had the, the sword of spirit, but what does he tell us to do about sexual imorality we’re supposed to flee so we can fight Satan hand, you know, hand to hand combat if you will, but we’re supposed to flee from the sexual.

So, and that’s, and you have to flee those scenarios and you’re, you’re all over Carlos. And, and this is the second time I’ve been married. So I’ve, I’ve gone through a divorce and this time it’s just, God has blessed it. And there are no, there are no secrets. There’s, everything’s open, but I’m just like you, you know, I coach I, I do, uh, you know, I’m building an online community and if you’re online, You’re open to anything.

Yeah. And anybody. And I’m very transparent with my wife. Hey, this, this, I got this weird message or this person come through or, Hey, I talked to this lady anytime there’s a female, I’m just open and transparent. I don’t want it to be any hidden areas. It’s just, if it’s out in the open, it’s it just, the Bible said the truth will set you free.

It really does in your marriage as well, right? Oh,

37:07 Carlos Hidalgo
a absolutely. And I think too, you know, the, the, it, it is the little things, like I said, I didn’t wake up one morning and go, Hey, this is great idea. I, I, it was this slow. It, it was a series of the most minute bad decisions. Right. And any, any time you sit there and you realize I’m trying to justify this in my head, mm-hmm, , I’m gonna go out and say 99.9% of the time.

It’s a bad decision. Yeah. Anytime you say my, my wife or don’t, you know, the old, you know, what, they don’t know won’t hurt. ’em that is the biggest lie because my wife went through a lot of pain, even though she had no clue what I was involved with. And so to your point, the fleeing, um, I, I’d never, never really compared the two on a attack, you know, go head to head versus the fleeing.

It is, it is so destructive. And then societally and, and you, and I exchanged some stuff on LinkedIn about this, you know, pornography and all that stuff. It’s, it’s, it’s kind of taken as a given like, well, of course, yeah, you’re a dude and, and we’re seeing rising numbers of women be involved with in, in viewing and consumption, but even secular publications and experiments and research are showing the huge detriment.

That this toxicity is doing. And, and I read an article the other day where literally the author was, was talking about scientific research, saying, these guys know that it it’s never enough. You constantly need more to drive those dopamine levels in your brain. Right. Which means you will go to places that you never dreamed you would go.

And for me, it started decades ago seeing a pornographic photo as a little kid mm-hmm right. That was that seed planted. And I never told anybody because the shame that I felt with it. And so, yeah, it, it’s not, you’re not gonna wake up one day and go, Hey, let me just join an online community so I can find this stuff.

No, it’s probably gonna start with a search term,

39:26 Chris Grainger
right. That’s right. That’s why you have to constantly have our guard up. So, Carlos, let’s take a quick break. And then I, I, I be remiss if I don’t take some opportunity to walk out a couple things outta your book or around the life design that I’d love to, to unpack.

So we’ll be right back guys. And we’ll jump into that

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I do want to touch on your book. Cause I think there’s so many things here just that I’ve learned and I think it would serve our, our listeners very well. First of all, I love the title. I’m sure you got a little bit of, uh, uh, mixed response on the unAmerican dream. That’s pretty cool. So maybe just start there.

Why, why name it? That?

41:12 Carlos Hidalgo
Yeah. You know, John, uh, Truslow Adams, John Truslow Adams coined the term, the American dream in 1931. And if you read it, which I actually talk about it in the book. Mm-hmm he, he talked about it. It, it’s not really this, I believe the exact quote. It’s not merely about material, uh, gain or the number of motor cars, obviously 1931 language.

Right? He talked about it being where a land of opportunity where anybody and now I’m paraphrasing anybody, regardless of background has opportunity. Um, I am a son of an immigrant. My father came from Cuban in 1960. And he came to a land of opportunity, didn’t know a lick of Spanish, or I’m sorry, a lick of English, right.

Spanish quite well. Um, and my dad by all accounts has been very successful. So I, as I started to look at my own life and what I did and that I made my business and the growth of that business, I was absolutely hell bent and, and, and threw every ounce of energy into that. And then my life imploded. And then when I posted that I was leaving that agency, the number of texts and emails and, and phone calls I got from people just like me going, how did you do this?

Cuz I’m miserable. I thought this is not at all the American dream. Like this is what, this is what we are killing ourselves for. This is insane. And then I found the, the quote by trust, low Adams. And I’m like, this is what we’re doing is actually really unAmerican. We are the most overworked nation in the world.

We put our identity in our jobs and in our titles and our material possessions we’re overmedicated, uh, with, with prescription drugs, we’re angry, we’re anxious. We’re I’m like, go back to the declaration of independence. This doesn’t sound like the, they pursued a happiness to me. So I that’s where I kind of came up is what we’re doing is un-American and we keep dreaming about it, like attaining to this next level and it’s killing us.

Mm-hmm

43:23 Chris Grainger
that’s right, because so happiness we’ve, we’ve wrapped that in, in so many of the wrong things. And that’s why I think I love about the way you unpack it. Happiness is not, you know, new cars and big houses and, you know, golf club resorts and all this stuff, you know? Right. Again, keeping up with the Jones.

I remind you guys all the time. We’ve gotta remember that Jones are broke. There’s so many areas of just of happiness that, that I think are that you touch on. But I, I, I’m wanting to learn more about chapter two because I love it because you talk, everybody talks about life balance. Well, I just need a work life balance.

Just gotta get that balance and you completely just demolished it and you say, you know, no, and we need boundaries. And, and so maybe unpack that for the listeners. Why’d you go there cuz I I’m glad you did. I talk about it a lot, but I’d love to get your perspective here.

44:10 Carlos Hidalgo
Yeah. First and foremost work life balance is a myth.

Yeah, it it’s a myth and it, and it is the only place. Think about this. It’s the only place in our lives that we try to separate Uhhuh. Nobody talks about kids, life balance or finance life balance or marriage life balance or. Uh, physical health life balance, but we’ve somehow say out of the 168 hours that we have each week, let’s separate work from life, instead of saying it’s life and work is a part of that.

Mm-hmm so that’s number one. Number two, the reason I hate balance is it’s so stinking hard to achieve. Um, in the book I talk about my daughter being a gymnast and, uh, all my kids were involved in extracurricular activities, whether sports, concerts, theater, um, and I’d always get nervous for them. As a dad, you’re a dad of three daughters, nothing made my heart race more than when my daughter was on a balance beam.

Now being my daughter, I always was like, what do you mean she didn’t get higher than that now to be clear, She was a great gymnast. I, I know nothing about the sport. Right. Um, you know, she, but we got a question

45:29 Chris Grainger
in numbers though, right? That’s what we

45:30 Carlos Hidalgo
guys do. Yeah. She, she would do something to my wife, like, well, she didn’t keep her legs together.

I’m like, are you kidding me? She’s on a six inch beam. . So to watch this kid balance, and then I watch professionals try to do this. Yeah. Especially a lot of women who, who, because guys think, well, it’s their job. Take care of the family. Um, check yourself on that. Um, you know, this, this whole idea of balance, and then you see research, this is up to 70% of professionals say, I don’t have work life balance, or I’m struggling to find it.

So where are we trying to pursue it? When you think about a boundary boundaries are more permanent, they’re more established. They’re more defined. I have to work hard to move a boundary. When we brought, bought this house, they literally came out with, I live in a very, very, very small town. With orange spray paint and marked the boundary of my property line.

So I knew what I was buying. Now, if I want to buy more, there is a process for me. It’s not like I’m just gonna go, oh, I’m gonna build another 5,000 square foot structure on this guy’s property. No, I have to approach him. I have to make an offer. We have to go through all these things. So that’s why I believe in boundaries is, and I should be setting boundaries in all areas of my life, my marriage, my spiritual health, my financial, emotional, mental, physical health, my time with my children.

Oh. And my work. So, and, and the reason we do that is so that I can bring the best of myself to each of those areas of my life. And that’s why I believe in boundaries instead of balance. So what does that look like? My boundaries are ingrain, but they are established. Okay. My first boundary is. My, my walk with Christ and my time with God, I’ll be honest.

I get more when I’m out in the woods, walking in my community with God than when I go to Sunday morning church. I tell people all the time the woods are my church doesn’t mean I don’t go to church. I do go to church. I love my church, but where I feel closest to God is either in the middle of a river with a fly rod in my hand, or walking in the woods.

And it’s one of the reasons I love to go hunting because it’s six weeks where I know I’m gonna get in the woods at least 12 times, and it’s gonna be awesome. And so many times I pray and I just think about the goodness of God, right? So I put, I put boundaries around my spiritual life. I put boundaries around the time with Suzanne.

My kids are grown and gone now. So I don’t really have to put boundaries, but I do make it an effort to connect with them, to see how they’re doing to engage right. My physical health is really important. So I put boundaries in, in my calendar around, around my workouts. What do I eat? Seven to nine hours of sleep a night.

Mm-hmm those are the things that I do. If I move those, it’s a conversation. If I don’t have morning coffee with Suzanne, we discuss it. Hey, so, and so wants to meet at seven 30. Are you okay with that? It’s a respect thing and it’s a boundary we’ve established. So, and I will tell you in the years we’ve had, we’ve lived this way.

I can’t think of one time. She’s like, no, you can’t do that. Or I’d prefer you, you don’t right. It’s it’s and she will tell you right now. I’m just glad. We’re not just glad, I’m glad we’re having the conversation because now our marriage is a team sport. Right. And so we’ve established these boundaries together, right?

49:05 Chris Grainger
What about the guys out there? I mean, you know, you talked about a boundary between work and home and I love it. Cuz you have boundaries around the three areas of the line within us, health, wealth, and self. I mean, you got, you’re not carving out that time. Take care of your mind and your body guys. You’re you’re, you’re not going, you’re not gonna win, you know, self you’re marriage and your kids.

You gotta carve that time out there. And then wealth you’re all over. You have to have financial boundaries as well. Yeah. And, and from career, but so many times as men we’re driven by the career, we’re chasing the next thing we’re we’re we won’t feel like we have to always be on. Right. So are there any tips or ideas or advice around, how can you set a better boundary around that work so that you can, you know, obviously you want to crush it when you’re at work, but you gotta protect these other areas.

So what, what works for you? Where do you, what have you seen other guys do that? That makes a, a big impact

49:56 Carlos Hidalgo
yeah. Align with how we are wired. So I, I would encourage everybody to go out and start to read any kind of the material around ultradian rhythms. Um, primarily by a woman named PLAR SMO.

50:12 Chris Grainger
Um, well, sync that up in the show notes too, for

50:15 Carlos Hidalgo
listeners.

Okay, great. I started working in what I call sprints. Okay. Um, so I w and again, I didn’t know there was any science behind this. It’s just, what’s worked for me and I’ve owned my own business for a while. I’m about to join an agency. So by the time this airs, that’ll all be, be out there in the public anyway, but I work in, in 90 to 120 minute sprints.

Okay. And what I found was I would sit down and at about the hundred minute mark, I could start to feel a little bit of mental fatigue and depletion. Once I pushed through and got to three hours straight, four hours straight. I’d I’d be in a meeting and it was like, everything I could do to focus now, here’s what we do.

Especially when we were in the office setting at 10 30, we’d get up, go get a cup of coffee. Cause we needed that caffeine. Um, at we’d go to lunch. We’d come back. We’d call it the carb coma after lunch. Yeah, by four 30, we’d another cup of coffee or soda to get another caffeine jolt. We get home, we eat dinner and we are just gased scientifically, we are screwing ourselves over, um, biologically, because we all have ultradian rhythms and it’s ultra radiant rhythm, which means scientifically our brains can only go hard for 90 to 120 minutes before we need a break.

So what I do, I, this morning, I. Made sure there was no fire that I needed to put out immediately. I went for a run. I don’t run with headphones. I like to be alone with my thoughts. Um, I went for a three mile run, walked about another half a mile came in. So I started the morning with my break. Right? My physical boundary, I came in, had about a half an hour of emails, had another recording.

This podcast. After this, I will take a 20 minute break and that may just simply be filling up a glass of water and staring out the window in thinking I’m gonna give myself and my brain the time it needs to flush out all the mental debris that I’ve accumulated in the last two hours. Now, what that has led to is my work work.

Like how, how many hours I work each day is probably between six and seven tops. Right. I get more done and less time with better quality than I have in the last 30 years of my career. Right. And when I start to see, um, meetings pile up, so I told you, I’m, I’m joining an agency next week. I mean, meeting, meeting, meeting, and I’m like, Nope, I’m putting in a half hour block.

Right. And I’m not moving it. I’m not moving it because by the time I get to the fourth meeting, it’s worthless. I’m not gonna be my best self. I’m not gonna be sharp. Um, and again, I wanna be clear this isn’t me running my own business. I’m, I’m now part of this agency. So, but I, but I know I need that. Right.

I start my money mornings. I block three hours of my Monday mornings where I’m like, no meetings, no calls, because I know Monday I need those three hours to get mentally aligned to all the things I have to do. Everything they carried over from the week before and allows me to process same on Fridays. I, I, I typically work four day work weeks.

Because I want that extra day to just do what I need to do. So you may, you know, you may be listening and going well, that’s all fine and good. I can’t do those things. You do. You should have control of your calendar. You can build in 15 minute breaks. You can, if you’re working from home, my guess is there’s nothing that you or I do that is so important that we can’t step away for our computer or our phones for 20 minutes and go take a walk around the block.

Right, right. Nothing, unless you’re an emergency room surgeon, an EMT firefighter or cop. Right. And so, um, this woman, Pilar, who was on our podcast, she’s brilliant. She’s actually started to work with the military and, and the military has started to understand this is that we can’t ask these guys to go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

And that’s what we try to do in our careers. I’m gonna be the hardest working I’m gonna work, you know? And then we got this hustle culture, the Gary V the grant cards. Oh, you know, sleep, sleep when you’re dead. That’s the dumbest most toxic thing you can, you can say to somebody professionally, I get seven to nine hours of sleep every night without I don’t take anything.

I get seven to nine hours of sleep. I don’t use an alarm clock. Typically I wake up between five 30 and six 30 every morning. Right. And I’m ready to go.

55:15 Chris Grainger
Right. Well, I think what the came to mind when you walk through that intentional resting or intentional recharging, maybe throughout your day and, and, and taking those breaks, cuz that’s, I mean, I I’m guilty too with my calendar.

I get anxious when my calendar isn’t stacked. And, but I’ve noticed to your point, if I have ’em back to back to back to back. I’m no good. So I’ve had to, you know, I try to do the same thing too. Design an engineer inside my calendar, 15 to 30 minute windows and breaks. So that maybe, maybe it’s just, I just didn’t realize about this, this Alterra rhythm.

I didn’t, I didn’t understand that. I never heard it before, but it totally makes sense because that’s why I found myself being much more productive when I engineer those things in. And as guys too often, you know, any guy you talk to, you know, about work, oh, we’re busy, wide, open, busy, busy, busy, you know, but are, are you being productive?

You know? Yeah. There, there’s a difference.

56:17 Carlos Hidalgo
Huge. And we are as a society, we are addicted to busyness. And why? Because we may, we feel like it makes us, it makes us feel important. It validates us. Right. Oh, sure. If I’m busy, I’m important. I, I remember I share a story where I was on the road with a colleague and, um, we were visiting some customers.

We got to the after dinner, we got to the hotel, it was like 9, 9, 9 30 at night Uhhuh. And he flipped open his laptop and just started pounding away. And I’m sitting there going, oh, I, I should open my laptop too. Right. I, I, I want to be, I want to be important. I want to be. And then I caught myself and I was like, it’s one of the dumbest things I ever thought

And I finally just said to him, I said, Hey bad. What is so important at nine 30 at night that you can’t just get to it tomorrow. He’s like, oh, so many things. And I’m like, no, no, no, you’re not answering my question. Like, is anybody gonna die? If you don’t send that email right now, all I’ll be clear on occasion.

A few months ago, I had to work over a weekend to meet a deadline for a client and I can’t get into details and I won’t get into detail cause it’s not important. But I had to, I had hundreds of pages I had to read. But before I committed to that, Suzanne and I had a conversation and I said, Hey, it looks like Friday and Saturday, or is it better if I do Saturday, Sunday, should I do Friday night, Sunday?

Right. It, we had a discussion. Okay. So I moved a boundary

57:51 Chris Grainger
back to the boundary, right?

57:52 Carlos Hidalgo
Yeah. But that is the exception versus the rule. And if you think about the world’s greatest athletes, how do they get into their flow state? How do they get locked in? They take rest. They’re not always going. They’re not always propelling forward.

They’re not always, you know, I think of, I’m a huge New York Yankee fan. I hope that doesn’t alienate, alienate half of your audience. Um, but I, I think of Aaron judge and the tear he’s on right now, Boone gives him off days. Right. So he doesn’t play sometimes he doesn’t play the field and he DHS. This is, this is a guy who’s at the top of his game.

Athletically built like a mountain and this guy needs rest. If he needs rest, I need rest. And even more than that, Jesus rested. He, he removed himself from the crowds. He left his disciples to go and rest yet, somehow in our workaholic consumed with busyness culture. We think we’re immune to it. It’s ridiculous.

59:00 Chris Grainger
Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s unreal. And, and it it’s a drug many times for, for many guys, the drug of busyness and, and to feel important. I mean, we’re getting ready to, to implement some new things at, at, at my other job and a new eCommerce platform and, and ways to engage with customers. And there’s actually resistance from like our inside sales group and, and some of these people, because they don’t want customers being able to sell, serve, because why.

It makes them feel not as needed or, or less validated whole insecurity thing. So I mean, guys, if you’re bringing value and, and, and you’re, and you’re producing, you’re contributing that’s enough, but you’re only gonna do that if you’re sharp and to, to regardless your point, protect that time, give yourself that recharge time so that you can produce the best, you know, when, when it’s time to go.

59:52 Carlos Hidalgo
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It, it, it’s so vitally important. And again, I think INESS is a beautiful thing.

1:00:00 Chris Grainger
It is, it is, well, I mean, we literally talked about two chapters guys of this book, so I mean, that is why I’m telling you the un-American dream. It’s gonna be in the show notes. We’ll sync it up. It’ll be the book of the week guys.

So, you know, go, I usually tell you guys that on, on the fun Friday, but I’m gonna go ahead and give you a little warning now. Yep. This is the book of the week. Go check it out. You know, support Carlos and, and Carlos, before we wrap up, I do something on the line with Dennis. We call it defeat. And it’s it’s I got eight questions.

It’s gonna fire matchy. It’s kind of, kind of a lightning round type thing.

1:00:33 Carlos Hidalgo
Sure, absolutely. Let’s try

1:00:34 Chris Grainger
it. All right. So what’s your favorite thing about God? Uh, his grace. I love it. What, what’s your least favorite thing about God?

1:00:43 Carlos Hidalgo
Um, probably his, his fear of justice. That is, uh, a result of his holiness because man, I sometimes wanna find some loopholes.

1:00:54 Chris Grainger
those loopholes. I think we’re all searching for those loopholes. They just right. That’s right. All right. The next one. What are you currently struggling with right now?

1:01:03 Carlos Hidalgo
Um, I, I, right now I’m just struggling with, uh, anxiety of starting a new gig. I’ve been on my own for 15 years and I I’m realizing the stress that that caused Uhhuh and the anxiousness of, I want to hit the ground running and I don’t want to disappoint.

I gotcha.

1:01:24 Chris Grainger
Okay. Next question. What are you most afraid of?

1:01:29 Carlos Hidalgo
Um, I am most afraid again of walking away from God. Okay.

1:01:35 Chris Grainger
What did you spend too much time doing last year?

1:01:40 Carlos Hidalgo
Uh, working on the stinking house we bought an 1888 Victorian and, and it consumed us. Okay. So we’ve actually said we’re looking forward to having a, a house where we have, uh, a summer where we have fun and a little bit of money to spend.

So, and not on the house. That’s awesome. yeah.

1:02:00 Chris Grainger
Yeah. I got three to go. So what do you wish you have learned sooner about God?

1:02:07 Carlos Hidalgo
I think I wish I would’ve learned sooner that God is a God of a boundless grace, a boundless, mercy, and love, and there’s nothing I have to do to prove myself to him.

1:02:20 Chris Grainger
Amen, brother.

How about no, next to last question. What’s, what’s a new habit. You’re going to create

1:02:27 Carlos Hidalgo
a new habit. My newest habit that I have been working on is contentment. I’m not a big word of the year guy. Uh, but this is the second year I’ve done this. Okay. And contentment for me. And, and to me, that is living in the moment and appreciating the moment and saying, man, if this is all, if this is as good as it gets, I’m gonna relish

1:02:49 Chris Grainger
it.

Amen. Amen. Last question, Carlos, what’s the one thing that you hope the, the lions out there that are listening, what do you hope they remember from our conversation today?

1:03:00 Carlos Hidalgo
Guys find one or two people. If you’re married, make it your spouse who know the ins and the outs of who you are, your, your darkest parts overcome that fear.

Be vulnerable. And just know that you were not designed to live life in isolation, right?

1:03:24 Chris Grainger
We are that, that that’s completely against the scripture. We are not Des designed to be alone. So that’s right. Carlos, this has been an absolute blessing to me, to the listeners. I mean, just getting to know you we’ll sync up all the ways to connect with you in the show notes, you know, for, for wait for, for, for guys, but anything else you want to, to share before we part ways today, sir?

1:03:44 Carlos Hidalgo
No guys. I would just say, go for it. Life on this side is so much better than living from a false identity and, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s scary. And, and I will say, Chris, I’m happy to just take any of your guys and just say, I, I don’t care. I’ll just get on a phone call and pray with you. That’s it. Right. Um, but I know you’re doing the same.

I love what you’re doing. So thank you so, so much for this opportunity to love the chat and. Look forward to meeting person Sunday. Absolutely.

1:04:14 Chris Grainger
Even though I’m a Braze fan, we can still break bread

1:04:16 Carlos Hidalgo
together all. Hey man, you guys beat the Astros. That was, that was if there’s, if there is proof of a God, it’s the fact that the Astros got beat.

So that’s right. I was very, very happy. I was a brazes fan in October too.

1:04:28 Chris Grainger
I think the whole U the United States outside of the city of Houston was the brace fan. I saw a little map one time and it was, it was all blue. This is the brace fan and it was one little yellow dot. And that’s the Astro fans. It was right in Houston.

Yeah. So I mean, that, that kind of spoke to that world series.

1:04:43 Carlos Hidalgo
I had a friend of mine who said that, uh, he was in an airport recently and a guy, uh, I think it was in LA and a guy was walking through with Astros hat and he was being booed in the . It’s tough times, tough

1:04:54 Chris Grainger
times for those guys, but that’s okay.

Pray for them too. So there you go. This has been awesome. Thank you so much for joining line within us and for everything you shared, sir. And it’s been absolutely blessing.

1:05:05 Carlos Hidalgo
Thank you Chris. Much appreciated.

1:05:10 Chris Grainger
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That was a powerful conversation with Carlos. I’ll tell you what I mean, just so much we learned from him. I loved how you just started off at beginning. You know, you know, look, start with who not with why, who you, you need to get routed in, who you are, understand that and understand that’s how, you know, God designed you to, to be you.

Right? So guys, there was so much power there, you know, Satan, this patient, I learned that new, that’s a new new area that, that he really, uh, highlighted for me. And then ultimately talking about those boundaries, you know, balance it’s, it’s not there. It’s about the boundaries. That’s more important for sure.

And, and the, the, the impact that that can have on our lives. So guys, I, I, I pray that that brought you some value today. The question of the week, I asked this on our spiritual kickoff. I want you to think about this as you go the rest of the week. Do do the fires of life scorch or purify you. I think if you listen to that conversation with Carlos, he UN he just, he let it all out.

There was nothing, he held back. It was completely unfiltered, but going through those fires, you know, he, he, he ultimately was purified and it’s a constant, constant work, constant effort. The guys gotta put in it, gotta put in the work. So guys, if this conversation helped you, if there’s something that you picked up again, designing life, God’s way, send it to someone, share it out with somebody, you know, give us, give us some feedback.

Let, let me know if this impacted you. And, and in what ways did it, maybe if you’ve had a similar story, you know, share that, let me know. Or if you’re going through this right now, maybe you’re struggling with some of the things Carlos was struggling with. Maybe you’re having an affair, maybe you’re struggling with pornography, or it just lies and deceit and you don’t, and you’re, you’re struggling with being truthful.

Guys. You’re listening to this for a reason. There is hope. We can help support you at the lion within us. That’s what we’re about. We’re here to help coach guys to help build a community of lions out there that are gonna be the iron that sharpens the iron. So go to the lion within.us, check out our website, check out our resources, our blogs.

Maybe you just need to sit and go through one of our online courses and, and it could just be, you know what? I wanna work on my marriage. All right, we’ll go to go to our course section and click on the self, cuz that’s gonna talk about being a better husband and a better dad and what that looks like.

That could be a very simple way. Very simple that you start working intentionally to improve, to get better, or maybe you wanna jump in and do all three, you know, health, wealth, and self. Go ahead. Jump on that online course that’s designed to serve you. Okay. Go check out the Bible, study everything. We got swag.

We have new swag out there. Guys. Remember DeMars my birthday. So, you know, hook me up with some birthday wishes on, on Facebook or wherever you connect with us at we’re on LinkedIn as. We’d love to love to hear from you’d love to see how I can serve you better again. Join the lines then that’s free. We’ll get, we’ll be able to connect with you, uh, directly through email, not send in spam, cuz don’t have time to send it.

Just gonna try to send you encouragement. Thank you. First of all, thank you for listening to the line with Dennis. There’s so many podcasts out there. There are definitely better podcast hosts out there. I get it, but you’re listening to us. I pray. We’re bringing you value. We’re constantly working to make this show better to improve the quality of, of what we’re delivering you guys.

Week, weekend, week out, come back on Friday, check out the good Fri the, the fun Friday episode. Rather be going through some things, some tips there that I think are gonna serve. You will, as you, as you going into your summer here, guys lead that late, that rating and review five star to be wonderful. If you think that the show is worth it, that will make a big difference.

So guys, I pray you have a great day. Thank you again. Now. Get out and unleash the lion within.