October 13, 2025 • 32 mins
In this powerful episode, Jimmy Rex sits down with Steve Mann, author of Stories That Shape Us: Unlock the Secret to Passing Down Your Greatest Lessons Through the Power of Story. Together, they explore how storytelling is one of humanity’s oldest and most essential skills — a way to preserve wisdom, build legacy, and connect generations.
Steve shares personal stories about working for three U.S. Presidents, living in Africa during the AIDS crisis, and learning to communicate timeless values through simple, emotional storytelling. He explains how anyone can start sharing their life lessons, the importance of passing down stories to children and grandchildren, and how storytelling helps build both identity and national pride.
This conversation dives deep into legacy, family connection, freedom, and personal growth, offering timeless lessons for anyone who wants to leave a meaningful mark on the world.
00:00 Introduction
01:12 Why storytelling matters + Steve’s introduction
05:02 Legacy & ancestors: why stories make us remember
08:02 How to start telling your own stories
12:00 Teaching values through stories (grandson example)
14:46 What legacy really means & why it matters
20:39 Africa: moving the family, AIDS education & lessons learned
27:10 Freedom, beliefs, and closing thoughts + where to find the book
31:49 Outro
Steve shares personal stories about working for three U.S. Presidents, living in Africa during the AIDS crisis, and learning to communicate timeless values through simple, emotional storytelling. He explains how anyone can start sharing their life lessons, the importance of passing down stories to children and grandchildren, and how storytelling helps build both identity and national pride.
This conversation dives deep into legacy, family connection, freedom, and personal growth, offering timeless lessons for anyone who wants to leave a meaningful mark on the world.
00:00 Introduction
01:12 Why storytelling matters + Steve’s introduction
05:02 Legacy & ancestors: why stories make us remember
08:02 How to start telling your own stories
12:00 Teaching values through stories (grandson example)
14:46 What legacy really means & why it matters
20:39 Africa: moving the family, AIDS education & lessons learned
27:10 Freedom, beliefs, and closing thoughts + where to find the book
31:49 Outro
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Jimmy Rex Show.
Today on the podcast, I sit down with Steve Man
and he is the author of a new book called
Stories That Shape Us Unlock the Secret to passing down
your greatest lessons through the power of Story. And I agree.
I think one of the best most important skills that
human being can have is to be able to tell stories.
And so me and Steve talk about the importance of that,
(00:23):
how that's shaped his legacy and his life. And this
is a podcast that as you listen to I think about,
you know, maybe in your own life, like what am
I doing to tell the stories and make sure that
the story gets told the right way, passing it down
to the next generation. So in today's podcast, by the Way,
is brought to you by Bucked Up Protein. These cans
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(00:43):
five grams of protein and only one hundred calories. It's
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least one a day usually twice and it's been awesome.
So if I'm looking and stronger to you guys, it's
because of these But anyway, so with that, let's get
(01:03):
to the show. Steve, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Thank you, it's good to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, you know, it's interesting you the topic of your book,
Stories That Shape Us, I really like it's all about storytelling,
it's about legacy. I want to get into a couple
of those topics. One thing that I've learned, you know,
studying this is that from the beginning of history, the
person that could tell the story kind of ran the village.
Like that was the person they would we used to congregate,
gri gate around the fireplace, and the person that could
(01:38):
keep people's attention with story really had a lot of
power in whatever community they were in. And so it's
kind of a lost art for a lot of people.
But that ability to tell a story is about as
important as any skill you can learn as a human.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
It is two little tidbits on that, you know. One,
we are clear back to the cave paintings in France.
What were they trying to do? Tell a story? Because
it was important, It was important for the next generation's
survival to learn how to hunt and how to recognize things.
Another litus little tidbit, Churchill said that I'm going to
(02:15):
look really good when they write the history of World
War two because I'm going to write it. And he did,
and he does. But there's an incredible amount of storytelling,
and you're right, we seem to be losing that ability.
We get everything from the Internet or social media and
(02:35):
now AI and you know, that gives us a lot
of bits and bites and baby pieces, but it doesn't
give us the humanity. It doesn't give us a context
of perspective as a story does, particularly a story from
someone you're related to.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Yeah, you know, my mom recently gave all of us kids,
like like a kind of like a book that she
made full of stories of some of our ancestors. But
I'll be honest, like it actually was a little bit
frustrating because there wasn't very many stories. It just kind
of told who they were, where they lived, showed a
(03:14):
picture of their house, and it just left me kind
of going, I don't know anything about these people. So
there was some like one story maybe you know. And
the thing is is you don't feel connected to your
past if you don't have the stories of them like
I was. You know, I read it, you know what
was there. But I do this game, Steve. It's kind
of interesting. I really have this theory that, you know,
one of the reasons why people don't leave more of
(03:36):
a legacy, they don't leave, you know, their ancestors don't
pay more attention, is because they don't tell any stories
about those people. Nobody knows anything about them. I ask
all the people that I coach, I say, what is
the name of your great great grandmother or great great
great grandfather, And probably one out of fifty people could
even answer that question. Steve. They don't even know their name.
This is two generations and they don't bother to get
(03:58):
their name because they don't have any stories about them.
I don't know anything about him, and so they don't
really leave a legacy. It's really kind of sad. It's like,
not only do you not know anything about them, you
don't even know their name. This was only two generations ago,
and so it was kind of eye opening to think
about that.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I've got a great great grandfather, great who joined the
Church of Jesus Christ in England as a young man.
He was living with his uncle who hated the church,
who didn't like him. He was apprentice to a baker.
So one night he went and got on a boat
to come to the US. How to get to New
(04:34):
York and then figure out how he's going to get
into Salt Lake. That's all I know about it. I
wish I knew what he was thinking, what he was feeling,
what he was afraid of, what he was scared of,
What did he think when he got to New York,
What did it look like? What is smell like? You know,
my world's very different from his, but I'd still love
to know more about him and what he did and
(04:57):
why he did it. And I think that's really true
with us. You know. I kind of started getting into
this when my youngest sons, Jeffrey and his brother were
I don't know about seven. We were packing up to
move to Africa, and they were helping me pack things.
(05:17):
Who were going through and found a file I had
some pictures of me with President Reagan and President Ford,
and you know, they pulled them out and said, well,
what's this this photoshop and dawn on me. I had
never talked to them about the times that I had
worked for the White House. They knew nothing about it,
(05:38):
had no idea. I thought, you know what, they really
don't know much about me at all, you know, along
the line of what you were saying, I about five
years ago, at the insistence of my wife, wrote a
history boring is all get out, and you know, nobody's
going to read that.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
And when I go.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Back and look at it, it doesn't tell grandkids anything
about what's important to me, what I believe, what I feel,
And that kind of led me into stories.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah, you have to really draw people in with the emotion,
and that's the beauty of any story. There, you ask
a provocative question, you tell an interesting story, and then
you bring some emotion into and all of a sudden
you're in. You want to know everything about this, You
want to know more about the story. Every good movie
that's ever been told follows that script, you know, and
you really do have to get really good at, you know,
(06:29):
telling the story, otherwise nobody's going to care about what
you've done, Like nobody just wants to read about where
it's always I used to read a lot of you know,
biographies and stuff, and my least favorite ones are when
they just start when they're kids. And they just tell
the storyline or whatever else. Even in the scriptures, the
worst part is when they start just telling genealogy and
boring stuff. It's like, give me the stories. Like everybody,
(06:51):
if you read the Bible or you know, any other
book of scripture, it's like, the interesting part is the stories.
That's what you want, that's what you remember, that's what
you want to like go out. I mean, I remember
the first I hear about David and Goliath, you know,
or even you know, the flood with Noah and and
you know, and uh, you know, all these fun stories.
That's what that's what moves you, that's what changes you.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
And yet we don't do that. It's like our lives
are so busy, and uh, you know, I look at
the grandkids. They're running to this thing in the summer
and that thing. They've got this practice in that practice,
and they're seldom time to tell stories. And so we
(07:30):
talked to our grandkids. But what do we talk about.
We talked about sports, we talk about where they had
to eat, we talk about movies. But how often do
we talk about something that's important to us? Things that
you know, traits or values or principles that have held
us in good stead, and we'd like to pass on
not very often. And part of that is because we
(07:53):
don't know how we have lost the ability to know
how to do that.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
So let's get into that a little bit. How does
one tell a good story?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
You start? You know, I think sometimes we get stopped
from telling stories because, well, it's a story. If I'm
going to tell it, to write it, I have to
have a protagon, notica. You know, I've got to go
through all this saying you don't. All you need to
do is start. You know, when I was a kid,
I did really and or when I first got married,
(08:28):
this happened. I'll talk to tell people about telling stories.
They say, I don't have any stories, and so I'll say, well, look,
why don't you tell me five major kind of times
in your life. Maybe when you were at university, maybe
when you were starting a family, maybe when you moved
to some place. Okay, and now think of what happened
(08:50):
when you were there. What's the first memory you have
of each of those things? Well, this and this and this,
Well tell me about it. I may start telling me
the stories. They're there, we just don't think they're there.
We don't know that they're there. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
One of the things that I encourage people. I always
tell people, guys, you need to have I have fourteen
on my phone, like interesting stories. I have it saved
letters because I get asked to speak a lot, and
so I just said it just says speaking stories, and
it's I literally have you know, I can join you.
But I have all these different stories about different things
that i've you know, and I just any time I
need to pull a story, or it's like if I'm
(09:28):
trying to teach a certain lesson and says, hey, you know,
I want to I want to hear about hard work.
I want you to teach us about hard work or
about networking, or about whatever the topic might be. Right,
then I just go to my stories and like, oh, yeah,
I got a couple of good ones for this, you know.
Or it's like, hey, we want something that's going to
be emotional, something that will pull out something out of us,
got it, you know? Or hey, we want something that's
going to help our guys realize this or whatever, and
(09:51):
it makes it really fun to be. And I've honed
those stories in, I've told them, i've practiced them, I've
written them out so that I have enough great story?
Is that when somebody says, you know, like, because I
always tell people, if you want people to be interested
in you, you got to be interesting. And you know,
one of the things about this is it's a really
good opportunity too to look at yourself and go, wait,
if I don't have any stories, maybe it's time for
(10:13):
me to get out of my comfort shell a little
bit here. You know, maybe I need to go live
a little bit differently, a little more dangerously, and try
to create some opportunities so that I do have some stories.
It's it's an excuse to me. With my coaching program,
we take these guys and you know, in a two
year program they do seventy different things, from jumping off
cliffs to swimming with sharks to running with the bulls
(10:33):
and all these things in between them. By the time
you get done, you know, with a year into this program,
you've done you got more stories of things that tell
In fact, I have this buddy. He lives in Colorado.
He's one of the guys in the group, and he
told me he's a super introvert. He's a lawyer, super
quiet guy, never talks, and he says, Jimmy everybody in
my work. He works in a government agency, and he's like,
everyone thinks I'm just this crazy adrenaline junkie because they
(10:55):
always see me doing all these things and talking about
He goes, I've never done a thing before or the program,
and it's just kind of cool. It's like it's just
an excuse to go out and make some amazing stories.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah, we all have tons and tons of stories. In
the book. There are probably sixty sixty five stories about me.
They're short, they're not elaborate stories, and short because I
use the stories to illustrate traits and principles that I
want to try to pass on. And you know, people say, well,
how did you come up with sixty stories? Well, since
(11:28):
I wrote the book, I can think of an easy
another one hundred and sixty stories. They just start coming
to mind, and so when I say people just need
to start, they really do.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah. Well, I'd love to hear you tell one of
your favorite stories and tell it how you would like.
This is, you know, the art of storytelling, and maybe
some people just like hearing it in real time will
help them understand what that sounds like to hear a
great story told.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Well, you know, the focus that I've had has not
been so much the storytelling has been using stories to
pass on traits and values that you're thinking.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Yeah, or maybe do that, Yeah, yeah, maybe give us
one of those.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
And how I got into that really a little bit
more was I was talking to a seven year old grandson, Benjamin,
and I was talking to him about my grandkids like
me to tell stories about myself at night. They like
that better than reading story books or or fairy tales
or something like that. So I was telling him about
(12:31):
his uncles Jeff and Hunter when they were younger, and
how they would often be followed, not often, but periodically
be followed home from school by the police because they
were black, and that some things would happen. And Benjamin
(12:54):
looked at me, and I remember, he's seven, Well that's stupid.
Why would they do that? And now how do you
explain prejudice to a seven year old? And you know,
if you said, okay, Benjamin, I've got a lecture here
for you on prejudice, that's the himb But he was
interested because it was his uncle's and he wanted to know,
(13:18):
and he kept asking questions, which led to this long
discussion the next morning he didn't want to let it go,
and so he brought it up at breakfast with his
family and again a big discussion, And that would not
have happened without me telling the story. And it didn't
have to be elaborate because he then started asking the questions.
(13:42):
And then I asked him, well, what kind of things
have you seen like that, Benjamin? And he starts, well,
I saw this happen in school. Is that prejudiced? And
now you're into not just storytelling, but you're into a
real discussion with a grandchild. Again, that's something we've lost.
We don't do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Well, and you see it even from a national level.
One of the things that creates national pride and you know,
civilians wanting to work to help each other in patriotism,
all these things is telling the stories of the national heroes,
right of people that you know, whether it's with politically
or with religion, all these kinds of things. When you
(14:23):
tell those stories, it emotionally can get you an attachment
because you care more about the person that you're hearing
the story about. But with our families especially, you're right,
there's so many different lessons that you can get when
you when you can wrap a lesson into a story,
it's going to be much more impactful because people are
always going to remember how they felt about something more
so than just the details of when they learn it. Well,
(14:45):
I want to get into this topic of legacy because
I think, you know, I think people study that a lot.
Or what does that mean to leave? So talk a
little bit about legacy. What is it all about? Why
why should we even worry about leaving a legacy?
Speaker 2 (14:58):
You know, let me move in here close to the camera.
Now you see there, what do you see? You see
a whole bunch of wrinkles. You see kind of bags
under the eyes. And behind that you got, you know,
two metal shoulders and a metal hip and a pacemaker.
(15:21):
And people will say, well, what is this guy's done with?
But this guy has, like I said, work for three presidents,
traveled to some sixty countries, lived nearly six years, seven
years in Africa, done all kinds of projects around the world.
In a couple of months, I'm going trucking in Patagonia
(15:44):
that I've always wanted to do. And so behind all
these wrinkles and parts is a lot of experience, a
lot of hopefully some wisdom that's come out of that,
and I think that's true for all of us, but
we tend to write that off. We sometimes get older
and we go, yeah, you know, I'm done. I'm just
(16:06):
going to golf or do whatever. And I think we
have a really critical task left, and that is to
try to transfer what we have learned to younger generations,
because that's where they're going to get that perspective and
humanity and understanding that it's going to help them in
their lives.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Now.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
I think that's really important for those who are my
age is just as important for the young people because
they're often struggling with who am I? Where do I fit?
You know what? How do I take all this data
and make sense of it? What do I do with
my life? And I can't tell them what job they're
(16:50):
to go after because the world's changing too fast. But
they can hear about the decision process maybe I went through.
They go, oh, you know, my world's differ, but maybe
I can learn from that. Or they might be down,
maybe a great grandchild who I'll never know, and they're
trying to figure out who they are, and maybe they're
depressed or anxious, and they read some story or hear
(17:12):
some story. Ah, I'm not the only one. My great
grandfather went through that. Well, his life is different. Maybe
I can apply that to what I'm doing. So I
think that transfer to the next generations is really really critical,
and we're I think we're failing to do that. Well.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Yeah, so with I guess one of the things that
makes legacy hard. I think in the past, we only
had maybe their journals or whatever they wrote or whatever else,
and so it was pretty sacred, you know, a couple
of pictures here and there. Nowadays, there's so much out there,
there's so much information, so much of their life is
already public with people. Is it as important to leave
a legacy as it was in the past, just because
(17:56):
you know, I know with me, I've got seven hundred
and fifty episodes of a podcast, I got thousand YouTube videos,
hundreds of posts on social media. I mean, people can
get a pretty damn good fill for who I was.
So is it still just as important to leave a
legacy or is the legacy kind of just in the
way that we live now with the way technology is, Well, you're.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Leaving your legacy where all that people can access. Most
people don't do that. But I think It is important
because again we have bits and bytes and pieces, but
we don't always put that together. It's like when I
first wrote my history, and as well, he was at
this place in this place and did this, and that
(18:36):
boring doesn't tell anything right. Well, this time, what I
did as I outlined seven traits and four principles and
three beliefs that are important to me. They aren't necessarily
the only ones or the best ones, but they're the
ones that I value. Then I illustrated each of those
(18:59):
with four or five six stories from my life. So
here's what I can do with that. Now the stories
are in a book, and so I can sit down
at bedtime with a grandson, start telling stories and say, well,
what do you think I want to hear that story?
That then leads us often into a discussion, not always,
(19:19):
sometimes into a discussion like the example I gave with
Benjamin and prejudice, or I might be talking about well,
I was in East Berlin, West Berlin, East has both
of them. It was divided that time with President Reagan
(19:40):
when he stood at Checkpoint Charlie and said, mister gorbachok
tear down that wall. But was checkpoint Charlie. And then
you explain this wall and the people who died trying
to get across it, and then your grandson or granddaughter says, well,
tell me about that, what happened, why was that there,
and what was the resolution to that and how did
(20:04):
you end up there, grandpa? Well, without going through a
lecture or them reading something in a book about the
Berlin Wall, which is just one more piece of data,
and now they connect. Now it's something real, it's something
they can put a person to, it's something they can
put some understanding to. And that's the context that I
(20:28):
think the youth are often missing. And the way to
get that across, I think is through stories, personal stories.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah. Well, speaking of your legacy, I mean you went
to Africa and you ended up over there. I'd love
to hear what took you to Africa and kind of
what you took away from going or like what you
did in Africa during those six seven years you mentioned.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Well, I started with a story when I was a kid,
I was really badly nearsighted, so I couldn't play games
because if the only way I could catch the balls
to hit me, and so I was the last to
be chosen on everything. They didn't find out. I needed
glasses till sixth grade. But what I could do is read,
(21:12):
and I read voraciously. I read the encyclopedias for those
who younger people who don't know what those are. There
are about twelve volumes filled full of information. I read
them cover to cover. Made me wicked at the trivial
pursuit later on, but I also would read all kinds
of books. And what I read was about doctor Schweitzer
(21:35):
going to Africa and setting up a clinic. I was
captivated boy by that. Now, I'm a young farm boy.
I grew up on a potato farm in Idaho. Africa
is about as far away as you can get. But
I was captivated by that. Now I didn't sit down
and say, well, I'm going to do this, this and
this and this so I can do that. But I
(21:56):
think when you have a dream, when you're aware of something,
you kind of see things that maybe other people don't have,
or maybe you take risks that other people don't have.
And so as I got older, I started doing a
lot of international travel with business, and I was making
friends and looking about things, and we sold the business
(22:17):
and I started mostly then traveling with people who were
involved in humanitarian things. And one time I had come
home from Africa and I had gone to a meeting
with my wife. I didn't really know what it was.
It turned out to be an advertisement for senior missionaries.
How do we recruit a couple of missionaries? And in
(22:39):
the middle of that, I turned to my wife and said, look,
we can't do that as seven or sixty tendant children,
but who cares? Want to go to Zimbabwe and see
if we can make a difference with AIDS. She said,
let's go. We talked to the kids that night and
five months later we were living with all six kids.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Of Hirari Wow.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Africa in Harari in Zimbabwe. That was then the highest
age rate in the world, about thirty eight percent of
all adults from HIV positive. That meant, as a general rule,
in five years they were dead because there were no treatments,
there were no anti retrovirals, And so we started going
around the country and started putting together programs to try
(23:22):
to teach youth how they could keep from getting AIDS,
and then that got more popular. We started teaching in
the schools across the country and then started taking it
to other countries. But that happened because of a story
that I had learned, and because I would take some
risks and take some choices that moved me closer to
(23:45):
that idea. Well, I ended up doing lots and lots
of travel to Africa, ended up being a mission president
in Africa, in South Africa, and going back to work
on a development program. And so Africa is dear to
my heart.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, wow, that's incredible. I've been to Zimbabwe, to Victoria Falls.
It's one of my favorite places on planet Earth. It's
quite interesting. It's you know, one of the things about
travel you said you've been to sixty countries, is it
really opens up your world and you're then able to
you know, share that, like you said, with other people,
sharing about this other part of this planet. That's I mean,
(24:24):
it's right there, we can go. You can be there
in twenty four hours. But you never even think about
it as you just sit here in your comfortable life.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Otherwise you don't and you don't realize how fortunate you are.
There was a period when the family had moved back
to Africa and I was spending six months in Zimbabwe.
In six months back in Idaho, not six months, six weeks,
six weeks, one six plays long commute, by the way,
(24:52):
and it was amazing to me because I'd be in Zimbabwe,
high age rate, high inflation rate, thousand percent a week sometimes,
and people were hungry, the farms had been destroyed, and
the government was a mess. And yet you'd be out
(25:12):
on the street and I would go out and just
walk on the street with people and start talking to them,
and they talk to me, and they were optimistic about life.
They were looking forward to things. And then I would
go back to Idaho in a big house, in a
you know, kind of a more exclusive community, and I
(25:33):
would go out on the streets almost nobody there. When
I wouldn't find somebody, they were complaining about how awful
life was and how they didn't get the new car
that they were hoping to get, and I just kind
of look at them and say, you know, I just
came back from Africa doing this, and somehow what you're
(25:56):
telling me just isn't very important. Oh, you're right, it's not.
But I do I think that travel, that international travel,
gives you a whole different perspective on what's important, on
what you have, on what you need to protect and defend.
And you learn really quickly that people all over the planet,
(26:21):
no matter their color, or the religion or their ethnicity,
are ninety nine percent the same. Yeah, they have the
same needs, the same fears, the same concerns. It came,
same hopes and beliefs. But somehow we fixate on that
one percent that might be different and then like, because
(26:41):
that's somebody we can blame for our own problems.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
It's true. Yeah, Well you mentioned your wrinkles earlier in
the amount of wisdom that you have because of that,
and it's true. It's just like, if you want to
get smarter, go talk to older people. I mean, they
just they have more wisdom, they have more life experience.
I'd love to, you know, the last couple of minutes here,
I'd love to hear some of the wisdom, some of
the things that you've learned in life that you could
share with the audience. Just a couple of things we
(27:03):
could take away from your life and your wisdom that
you've gathered over the years.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
You know, I told you that I had outlined in
the in the book kind of uh seven traits, four principles,
and three beliefs that were important to me. After I
had done that, I kind of looked at and said,
what are the commonalities here? Well, when I looked at
the traits that were important, they mostly focused on you
(27:30):
can make a difference, You can do something, go, take action,
dream dreams, make it happen. And that turns out of
the things that I've taught youth most of my life.
And so that was one set of things that I
think is really important for people to not let their
dreams go away, not let people beat them out of you,
(27:52):
but to do something about it, take some kind of
an action. In the principles, they all focused in the
area of liberty and freedom, and I realized how important
that has been to me in my life, and how
precarious that really is, and how it's a part of life.
(28:16):
I would get kind of tickled sometimes during the Black
Lives Matter times, people are saying, Oh, the world is
going to pieces. Nothing's ever been like this is horrible,
and I'm thinking, where were you in the sixties we
were burning down universities in the cities. This is nothing
compared to that. And if you're a student of American history,
(28:40):
our country has been like that since it's very inception
doesn't mean we can let it go. It means we
still have to always be fighting for the principles liberty
and justice are important. Well. The third area I wrote
some things out were unbeliefs, and those all to focus
(29:00):
around who am I? Who am I as a person?
What's my relationship to the universe, to other people, to God?
And I think the more as individuals we can understand
and be clear about the traits are important to us,
the principles that are important to us, and the beliefs
(29:21):
that report to us, the easier we can function because
we're not struggling with trying to figure that out every move.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
That's beautiful. Yeah, we saw during COVID just how tricky
freedom really can be. Right, We've always kind of taken
it for granted, And I think that was one of
the examples of like, oh, this might be something that
we need to quit taking for granted and really appreciate
and fight for at all times.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah, it is. And you know, I had a lot
of experience. I remember taking a hydrofoil from Manila out
to one of the the islands was one of the
major battles in World War two, and you would read
the stories about that, and they were set up in
(30:09):
caves and they would be ankle deep in blood because
all they could do basically is amputate and try to
save a life. And you walk around, now it's this
thick jungle and they have a lot of things written down,
and you think of all the young men on both
sides who sacrifice their lives so that we could be free,
(30:35):
and we just forget about all of the things that
have gone into giving us the chance to say what
we want and think what we want and vote for
the people we want to govern us. It's a rarity.
It's not just the way things are.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Yeah, No, it really is. Well, people that want to
grab your book, Steve, if they want to read this
become better story tellers work on leaving their legacy. Where
is the best place to send them?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Well, it looks like can you see that?
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yep?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Like that and you can find it on Amazon Stories
and shape us, or you can go to our website
which is Stevedshman dot com and that will tell you
a little bit about it and where you can get it.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Awesome. Well, it's an important skills. I know that I
have opened more doors in my life just because my
ability to hold core and to be able to tell
a story and be able to engage people than probably
anything else I've ever done. I did stand up comedy
for a while, and you really learn how to tell
a story because you got direct feedback and if you
tell it wrong, they're not going to laugh. And so
you get really good, really fast at telling those stories.
(31:43):
But appreciate you coming on and sharing your wisdom with us. Steve,
thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
It's good to be here, all righty sir, take care.
Thank you again for listening to the Jimmy Rex Show.
If you liked this episode, please do me a quick favor.
Just go online, leave us a review, subscribe to our
show both on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and on Spotify, and
if you would to share this with somebody else. Also,
if you're looking to make a real change in your life,
or if you have a man in your life that
(32:09):
you know, could you know just use a brotherhood or
some men around him to help him level up in
every area of life. I encourage you to look at
we are the day. This is my men's coaching program
I started several years ago and we have been able
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joined this program and had a life changing, transformational experience.
Several of these episodes we talked to members of this group.
(32:31):
We talk about this group and if you are interested
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dot com
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Jimmy Rex Show.
Today on the podcast, I sit down with Steve Man
and he is the author of a new book called
Stories That Shape Us Unlock the Secret to passing down
your greatest lessons through the power of Story. And I agree.
I think one of the best most important skills that
human being can have is to be able to tell stories.
And so me and Steve talk about the importance of that,
(00:23):
how that's shaped his legacy and his life. And this
is a podcast that as you listen to I think about,
you know, maybe in your own life, like what am
I doing to tell the stories and make sure that
the story gets told the right way, passing it down
to the next generation. So in today's podcast, by the Way,
is brought to you by Bucked Up Protein. These cans
of protein only have twenty five excuse me, have twenty
(00:43):
five grams of protein and only one hundred calories. It's
way protein, no lactose. It's not like that feel me
type of protein drinks you get sometimes and they're in
a can. That's my favorite part. You just get to
carry this with you anywhere you go. I have at
least one a day usually twice and it's been awesome.
So if I'm looking and stronger to you guys, it's
because of these But anyway, so with that, let's get
(01:03):
to the show. Steve, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Thank you, it's good to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, you know, it's interesting you the topic of your book,
Stories That Shape Us, I really like it's all about storytelling,
it's about legacy. I want to get into a couple
of those topics. One thing that I've learned, you know,
studying this is that from the beginning of history, the
person that could tell the story kind of ran the village.
Like that was the person they would we used to congregate,
gri gate around the fireplace, and the person that could
(01:38):
keep people's attention with story really had a lot of
power in whatever community they were in. And so it's
kind of a lost art for a lot of people.
But that ability to tell a story is about as
important as any skill you can learn as a human.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
It is two little tidbits on that, you know. One,
we are clear back to the cave paintings in France.
What were they trying to do? Tell a story? Because
it was important, It was important for the next generation's
survival to learn how to hunt and how to recognize things.
Another litus little tidbit, Churchill said that I'm going to
(02:15):
look really good when they write the history of World
War two because I'm going to write it. And he did,
and he does. But there's an incredible amount of storytelling,
and you're right, we seem to be losing that ability.
We get everything from the Internet or social media and
(02:35):
now AI and you know, that gives us a lot
of bits and bites and baby pieces, but it doesn't
give us the humanity. It doesn't give us a context
of perspective as a story does, particularly a story from
someone you're related to.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Yeah, you know, my mom recently gave all of us kids,
like like a kind of like a book that she
made full of stories of some of our ancestors. But
I'll be honest, like it actually was a little bit
frustrating because there wasn't very many stories. It just kind
of told who they were, where they lived, showed a
(03:14):
picture of their house, and it just left me kind
of going, I don't know anything about these people. So
there was some like one story maybe you know. And
the thing is is you don't feel connected to your
past if you don't have the stories of them like
I was. You know, I read it, you know what
was there. But I do this game, Steve. It's kind
of interesting. I really have this theory that, you know,
one of the reasons why people don't leave more of
(03:36):
a legacy, they don't leave, you know, their ancestors don't
pay more attention, is because they don't tell any stories
about those people. Nobody knows anything about them. I ask
all the people that I coach, I say, what is
the name of your great great grandmother or great great
great grandfather, And probably one out of fifty people could
even answer that question. Steve. They don't even know their name.
This is two generations and they don't bother to get
(03:58):
their name because they don't have any stories about them.
I don't know anything about him, and so they don't
really leave a legacy. It's really kind of sad. It's like,
not only do you not know anything about them, you
don't even know their name. This was only two generations ago,
and so it was kind of eye opening to think
about that.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I've got a great great grandfather, great who joined the
Church of Jesus Christ in England as a young man.
He was living with his uncle who hated the church,
who didn't like him. He was apprentice to a baker.
So one night he went and got on a boat
to come to the US. How to get to New
(04:34):
York and then figure out how he's going to get
into Salt Lake. That's all I know about it. I
wish I knew what he was thinking, what he was feeling,
what he was afraid of, what he was scared of,
What did he think when he got to New York,
What did it look like? What is smell like? You know,
my world's very different from his, but I'd still love
to know more about him and what he did and
(04:57):
why he did it. And I think that's really true
with us. You know. I kind of started getting into
this when my youngest sons, Jeffrey and his brother were
I don't know about seven. We were packing up to
move to Africa, and they were helping me pack things.
(05:17):
Who were going through and found a file I had
some pictures of me with President Reagan and President Ford,
and you know, they pulled them out and said, well,
what's this this photoshop and dawn on me. I had
never talked to them about the times that I had
worked for the White House. They knew nothing about it,
(05:38):
had no idea. I thought, you know what, they really
don't know much about me at all, you know, along
the line of what you were saying, I about five
years ago, at the insistence of my wife, wrote a
history boring is all get out, and you know, nobody's
going to read that.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
And when I go.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Back and look at it, it doesn't tell grandkids anything
about what's important to me, what I believe, what I feel,
And that kind of led me into stories.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah, you have to really draw people in with the emotion,
and that's the beauty of any story. There, you ask
a provocative question, you tell an interesting story, and then
you bring some emotion into and all of a sudden
you're in. You want to know everything about this, You
want to know more about the story. Every good movie
that's ever been told follows that script, you know, and
you really do have to get really good at, you know,
(06:29):
telling the story, otherwise nobody's going to care about what
you've done, Like nobody just wants to read about where
it's always I used to read a lot of you know,
biographies and stuff, and my least favorite ones are when
they just start when they're kids. And they just tell
the storyline or whatever else. Even in the scriptures, the
worst part is when they start just telling genealogy and
boring stuff. It's like, give me the stories. Like everybody,
(06:51):
if you read the Bible or you know, any other
book of scripture, it's like, the interesting part is the stories.
That's what you want, that's what you remember, that's what
you want to like go out. I mean, I remember
the first I hear about David and Goliath, you know,
or even you know, the flood with Noah and and
you know, and uh, you know, all these fun stories.
That's what that's what moves you, that's what changes you.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
And yet we don't do that. It's like our lives
are so busy, and uh, you know, I look at
the grandkids. They're running to this thing in the summer
and that thing. They've got this practice in that practice,
and they're seldom time to tell stories. And so we
(07:30):
talked to our grandkids. But what do we talk about.
We talked about sports, we talk about where they had
to eat, we talk about movies. But how often do
we talk about something that's important to us? Things that
you know, traits or values or principles that have held
us in good stead, and we'd like to pass on
not very often. And part of that is because we
(07:53):
don't know how we have lost the ability to know
how to do that.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
So let's get into that a little bit. How does
one tell a good story?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
You start? You know, I think sometimes we get stopped
from telling stories because, well, it's a story. If I'm
going to tell it, to write it, I have to
have a protagon, notica. You know, I've got to go
through all this saying you don't. All you need to
do is start. You know, when I was a kid,
I did really and or when I first got married,
(08:28):
this happened. I'll talk to tell people about telling stories.
They say, I don't have any stories, and so I'll say, well, look,
why don't you tell me five major kind of times
in your life. Maybe when you were at university, maybe
when you were starting a family, maybe when you moved
to some place. Okay, and now think of what happened
(08:50):
when you were there. What's the first memory you have
of each of those things? Well, this and this and this,
Well tell me about it. I may start telling me
the stories. They're there, we just don't think they're there.
We don't know that they're there. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
One of the things that I encourage people. I always
tell people, guys, you need to have I have fourteen
on my phone, like interesting stories. I have it saved
letters because I get asked to speak a lot, and
so I just said it just says speaking stories, and
it's I literally have you know, I can join you.
But I have all these different stories about different things
that i've you know, and I just any time I
need to pull a story, or it's like if I'm
(09:28):
trying to teach a certain lesson and says, hey, you know,
I want to I want to hear about hard work.
I want you to teach us about hard work or
about networking, or about whatever the topic might be. Right,
then I just go to my stories and like, oh, yeah,
I got a couple of good ones for this, you know.
Or it's like, hey, we want something that's going to
be emotional, something that will pull out something out of us,
got it, you know? Or hey, we want something that's
going to help our guys realize this or whatever, and
(09:51):
it makes it really fun to be. And I've honed
those stories in, I've told them, i've practiced them, I've
written them out so that I have enough great story?
Is that when somebody says, you know, like, because I
always tell people, if you want people to be interested
in you, you got to be interesting. And you know,
one of the things about this is it's a really
good opportunity too to look at yourself and go, wait,
if I don't have any stories, maybe it's time for
(10:13):
me to get out of my comfort shell a little
bit here. You know, maybe I need to go live
a little bit differently, a little more dangerously, and try
to create some opportunities so that I do have some stories.
It's it's an excuse to me. With my coaching program,
we take these guys and you know, in a two
year program they do seventy different things, from jumping off
cliffs to swimming with sharks to running with the bulls
(10:33):
and all these things in between them. By the time
you get done, you know, with a year into this program,
you've done you got more stories of things that tell
In fact, I have this buddy. He lives in Colorado.
He's one of the guys in the group, and he
told me he's a super introvert. He's a lawyer, super
quiet guy, never talks, and he says, Jimmy everybody in
my work. He works in a government agency, and he's like,
everyone thinks I'm just this crazy adrenaline junkie because they
(10:55):
always see me doing all these things and talking about
He goes, I've never done a thing before or the program,
and it's just kind of cool. It's like it's just
an excuse to go out and make some amazing stories.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah, we all have tons and tons of stories. In
the book. There are probably sixty sixty five stories about me.
They're short, they're not elaborate stories, and short because I
use the stories to illustrate traits and principles that I
want to try to pass on. And you know, people say, well,
how did you come up with sixty stories? Well, since
(11:28):
I wrote the book, I can think of an easy
another one hundred and sixty stories. They just start coming
to mind, and so when I say people just need
to start, they really do.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah. Well, I'd love to hear you tell one of
your favorite stories and tell it how you would like.
This is, you know, the art of storytelling, and maybe
some people just like hearing it in real time will
help them understand what that sounds like to hear a
great story told.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Well, you know, the focus that I've had has not
been so much the storytelling has been using stories to
pass on traits and values that you're thinking.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Yeah, or maybe do that, Yeah, yeah, maybe give us
one of those.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
And how I got into that really a little bit
more was I was talking to a seven year old grandson, Benjamin,
and I was talking to him about my grandkids like
me to tell stories about myself at night. They like
that better than reading story books or or fairy tales
or something like that. So I was telling him about
(12:31):
his uncles Jeff and Hunter when they were younger, and
how they would often be followed, not often, but periodically
be followed home from school by the police because they
were black, and that some things would happen. And Benjamin
(12:54):
looked at me, and I remember, he's seven, Well that's stupid.
Why would they do that? And now how do you
explain prejudice to a seven year old? And you know,
if you said, okay, Benjamin, I've got a lecture here
for you on prejudice, that's the himb But he was
interested because it was his uncle's and he wanted to know,
(13:18):
and he kept asking questions, which led to this long
discussion the next morning he didn't want to let it go,
and so he brought it up at breakfast with his
family and again a big discussion, And that would not
have happened without me telling the story. And it didn't
have to be elaborate because he then started asking the questions.
(13:42):
And then I asked him, well, what kind of things
have you seen like that, Benjamin? And he starts, well,
I saw this happen in school. Is that prejudiced? And
now you're into not just storytelling, but you're into a
real discussion with a grandchild. Again, that's something we've lost.
We don't do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Well, and you see it even from a national level.
One of the things that creates national pride and you know,
civilians wanting to work to help each other in patriotism,
all these things is telling the stories of the national heroes,
right of people that you know, whether it's with politically
or with religion, all these kinds of things. When you
(14:23):
tell those stories, it emotionally can get you an attachment
because you care more about the person that you're hearing
the story about. But with our families especially, you're right,
there's so many different lessons that you can get when
you when you can wrap a lesson into a story,
it's going to be much more impactful because people are
always going to remember how they felt about something more
so than just the details of when they learn it. Well,
(14:45):
I want to get into this topic of legacy because
I think, you know, I think people study that a lot.
Or what does that mean to leave? So talk a
little bit about legacy. What is it all about? Why
why should we even worry about leaving a legacy?
Speaker 2 (14:58):
You know, let me move in here close to the camera.
Now you see there, what do you see? You see
a whole bunch of wrinkles. You see kind of bags
under the eyes. And behind that you got, you know,
two metal shoulders and a metal hip and a pacemaker.
(15:21):
And people will say, well, what is this guy's done with?
But this guy has, like I said, work for three presidents,
traveled to some sixty countries, lived nearly six years, seven
years in Africa, done all kinds of projects around the world.
In a couple of months, I'm going trucking in Patagonia
(15:44):
that I've always wanted to do. And so behind all
these wrinkles and parts is a lot of experience, a
lot of hopefully some wisdom that's come out of that,
and I think that's true for all of us, but
we tend to write that off. We sometimes get older
and we go, yeah, you know, I'm done. I'm just
(16:06):
going to golf or do whatever. And I think we
have a really critical task left, and that is to
try to transfer what we have learned to younger generations,
because that's where they're going to get that perspective and
humanity and understanding that it's going to help them in
their lives.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Now.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
I think that's really important for those who are my
age is just as important for the young people because
they're often struggling with who am I? Where do I fit?
You know what? How do I take all this data
and make sense of it? What do I do with
my life? And I can't tell them what job they're
(16:50):
to go after because the world's changing too fast. But
they can hear about the decision process maybe I went through.
They go, oh, you know, my world's differ, but maybe
I can learn from that. Or they might be down,
maybe a great grandchild who I'll never know, and they're
trying to figure out who they are, and maybe they're
depressed or anxious, and they read some story or hear
(17:12):
some story. Ah, I'm not the only one. My great
grandfather went through that. Well, his life is different. Maybe
I can apply that to what I'm doing. So I
think that transfer to the next generations is really really critical,
and we're I think we're failing to do that. Well.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Yeah, so with I guess one of the things that
makes legacy hard. I think in the past, we only
had maybe their journals or whatever they wrote or whatever else,
and so it was pretty sacred, you know, a couple
of pictures here and there. Nowadays, there's so much out there,
there's so much information, so much of their life is
already public with people. Is it as important to leave
a legacy as it was in the past, just because
(17:56):
you know, I know with me, I've got seven hundred
and fifty episodes of a podcast, I got thousand YouTube videos,
hundreds of posts on social media. I mean, people can
get a pretty damn good fill for who I was.
So is it still just as important to leave a
legacy or is the legacy kind of just in the
way that we live now with the way technology is, Well, you're.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Leaving your legacy where all that people can access. Most
people don't do that. But I think It is important
because again we have bits and bytes and pieces, but
we don't always put that together. It's like when I
first wrote my history, and as well, he was at
this place in this place and did this, and that
(18:36):
boring doesn't tell anything right. Well, this time, what I
did as I outlined seven traits and four principles and
three beliefs that are important to me. They aren't necessarily
the only ones or the best ones, but they're the
ones that I value. Then I illustrated each of those
(18:59):
with four or five six stories from my life. So
here's what I can do with that. Now the stories
are in a book, and so I can sit down
at bedtime with a grandson, start telling stories and say, well,
what do you think I want to hear that story?
That then leads us often into a discussion, not always,
(19:19):
sometimes into a discussion like the example I gave with
Benjamin and prejudice, or I might be talking about well,
I was in East Berlin, West Berlin, East has both
of them. It was divided that time with President Reagan
(19:40):
when he stood at Checkpoint Charlie and said, mister gorbachok
tear down that wall. But was checkpoint Charlie. And then
you explain this wall and the people who died trying
to get across it, and then your grandson or granddaughter says, well,
tell me about that, what happened, why was that there,
and what was the resolution to that and how did
(20:04):
you end up there, grandpa? Well, without going through a
lecture or them reading something in a book about the
Berlin Wall, which is just one more piece of data,
and now they connect. Now it's something real, it's something
they can put a person to, it's something they can
put some understanding to. And that's the context that I
(20:28):
think the youth are often missing. And the way to
get that across, I think is through stories, personal stories.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah. Well, speaking of your legacy, I mean you went
to Africa and you ended up over there. I'd love
to hear what took you to Africa and kind of
what you took away from going or like what you
did in Africa during those six seven years you mentioned.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Well, I started with a story when I was a kid,
I was really badly nearsighted, so I couldn't play games
because if the only way I could catch the balls
to hit me, and so I was the last to
be chosen on everything. They didn't find out. I needed
glasses till sixth grade. But what I could do is read,
(21:12):
and I read voraciously. I read the encyclopedias for those
who younger people who don't know what those are. There
are about twelve volumes filled full of information. I read
them cover to cover. Made me wicked at the trivial
pursuit later on, but I also would read all kinds
of books. And what I read was about doctor Schweitzer
(21:35):
going to Africa and setting up a clinic. I was
captivated boy by that. Now, I'm a young farm boy.
I grew up on a potato farm in Idaho. Africa
is about as far away as you can get. But
I was captivated by that. Now I didn't sit down
and say, well, I'm going to do this, this and
this and this so I can do that. But I
(21:56):
think when you have a dream, when you're aware of something,
you kind of see things that maybe other people don't have,
or maybe you take risks that other people don't have.
And so as I got older, I started doing a
lot of international travel with business, and I was making
friends and looking about things, and we sold the business
(22:17):
and I started mostly then traveling with people who were
involved in humanitarian things. And one time I had come
home from Africa and I had gone to a meeting
with my wife. I didn't really know what it was.
It turned out to be an advertisement for senior missionaries.
How do we recruit a couple of missionaries? And in
(22:39):
the middle of that, I turned to my wife and said, look,
we can't do that as seven or sixty tendant children,
but who cares? Want to go to Zimbabwe and see
if we can make a difference with AIDS. She said,
let's go. We talked to the kids that night and
five months later we were living with all six kids.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Of Hirari Wow.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Africa in Harari in Zimbabwe. That was then the highest
age rate in the world, about thirty eight percent of
all adults from HIV positive. That meant, as a general rule,
in five years they were dead because there were no treatments,
there were no anti retrovirals, And so we started going
around the country and started putting together programs to try
(23:22):
to teach youth how they could keep from getting AIDS,
and then that got more popular. We started teaching in
the schools across the country and then started taking it
to other countries. But that happened because of a story
that I had learned, and because I would take some
risks and take some choices that moved me closer to
(23:45):
that idea. Well, I ended up doing lots and lots
of travel to Africa, ended up being a mission president
in Africa, in South Africa, and going back to work
on a development program. And so Africa is dear to
my heart.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, wow, that's incredible. I've been to Zimbabwe, to Victoria Falls.
It's one of my favorite places on planet Earth. It's
quite interesting. It's you know, one of the things about
travel you said you've been to sixty countries, is it
really opens up your world and you're then able to
you know, share that, like you said, with other people,
sharing about this other part of this planet. That's I mean,
(24:24):
it's right there, we can go. You can be there
in twenty four hours. But you never even think about
it as you just sit here in your comfortable life.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Otherwise you don't and you don't realize how fortunate you are.
There was a period when the family had moved back
to Africa and I was spending six months in Zimbabwe.
In six months back in Idaho, not six months, six weeks,
six weeks, one six plays long commute, by the way,
(24:52):
and it was amazing to me because I'd be in Zimbabwe,
high age rate, high inflation rate, thousand percent a week sometimes,
and people were hungry, the farms had been destroyed, and
the government was a mess. And yet you'd be out
(25:12):
on the street and I would go out and just
walk on the street with people and start talking to them,
and they talk to me, and they were optimistic about life.
They were looking forward to things. And then I would
go back to Idaho in a big house, in a
you know, kind of a more exclusive community, and I
(25:33):
would go out on the streets almost nobody there. When
I wouldn't find somebody, they were complaining about how awful
life was and how they didn't get the new car
that they were hoping to get, and I just kind
of look at them and say, you know, I just
came back from Africa doing this, and somehow what you're
(25:56):
telling me just isn't very important. Oh, you're right, it's not.
But I do I think that travel, that international travel,
gives you a whole different perspective on what's important, on
what you have, on what you need to protect and defend.
And you learn really quickly that people all over the planet,
(26:21):
no matter their color, or the religion or their ethnicity,
are ninety nine percent the same. Yeah, they have the
same needs, the same fears, the same concerns. It came,
same hopes and beliefs. But somehow we fixate on that
one percent that might be different and then like, because
(26:41):
that's somebody we can blame for our own problems.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
It's true. Yeah, Well you mentioned your wrinkles earlier in
the amount of wisdom that you have because of that,
and it's true. It's just like, if you want to
get smarter, go talk to older people. I mean, they
just they have more wisdom, they have more life experience.
I'd love to, you know, the last couple of minutes here,
I'd love to hear some of the wisdom, some of
the things that you've learned in life that you could
share with the audience. Just a couple of things we
(27:03):
could take away from your life and your wisdom that
you've gathered over the years.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
You know, I told you that I had outlined in
the in the book kind of uh seven traits, four principles,
and three beliefs that were important to me. After I
had done that, I kind of looked at and said,
what are the commonalities here? Well, when I looked at
the traits that were important, they mostly focused on you
(27:30):
can make a difference, You can do something, go, take action,
dream dreams, make it happen. And that turns out of
the things that I've taught youth most of my life.
And so that was one set of things that I
think is really important for people to not let their
dreams go away, not let people beat them out of you,
(27:52):
but to do something about it, take some kind of
an action. In the principles, they all focused in the
area of liberty and freedom, and I realized how important
that has been to me in my life, and how
precarious that really is, and how it's a part of life.
(28:16):
I would get kind of tickled sometimes during the Black
Lives Matter times, people are saying, Oh, the world is
going to pieces. Nothing's ever been like this is horrible,
and I'm thinking, where were you in the sixties we
were burning down universities in the cities. This is nothing
compared to that. And if you're a student of American history,
(28:40):
our country has been like that since it's very inception
doesn't mean we can let it go. It means we
still have to always be fighting for the principles liberty
and justice are important. Well. The third area I wrote
some things out were unbeliefs, and those all to focus
(29:00):
around who am I? Who am I as a person?
What's my relationship to the universe, to other people, to God?
And I think the more as individuals we can understand
and be clear about the traits are important to us,
the principles that are important to us, and the beliefs
(29:21):
that report to us, the easier we can function because
we're not struggling with trying to figure that out every move.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
That's beautiful. Yeah, we saw during COVID just how tricky
freedom really can be. Right, We've always kind of taken
it for granted, And I think that was one of
the examples of like, oh, this might be something that
we need to quit taking for granted and really appreciate
and fight for at all times.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah, it is. And you know, I had a lot
of experience. I remember taking a hydrofoil from Manila out
to one of the the islands was one of the
major battles in World War two, and you would read
the stories about that, and they were set up in
(30:09):
caves and they would be ankle deep in blood because
all they could do basically is amputate and try to
save a life. And you walk around, now it's this
thick jungle and they have a lot of things written down,
and you think of all the young men on both
sides who sacrifice their lives so that we could be free,
(30:35):
and we just forget about all of the things that
have gone into giving us the chance to say what
we want and think what we want and vote for
the people we want to govern us. It's a rarity.
It's not just the way things are.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Yeah, No, it really is. Well, people that want to
grab your book, Steve, if they want to read this
become better story tellers work on leaving their legacy. Where
is the best place to send them?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Well, it looks like can you see that?
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yep?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Like that and you can find it on Amazon Stories
and shape us, or you can go to our website
which is Stevedshman dot com and that will tell you
a little bit about it and where you can get it.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Awesome. Well, it's an important skills. I know that I
have opened more doors in my life just because my
ability to hold core and to be able to tell
a story and be able to engage people than probably
anything else I've ever done. I did stand up comedy
for a while, and you really learn how to tell
a story because you got direct feedback and if you
tell it wrong, they're not going to laugh. And so
you get really good, really fast at telling those stories.
(31:43):
But appreciate you coming on and sharing your wisdom with us. Steve,
thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
It's good to be here, all righty sir, take care.
Thank you again for listening to the Jimmy Rex Show.
If you liked this episode, please do me a quick favor.
Just go online, leave us a review, subscribe to our
show both on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and on Spotify, and
if you would to share this with somebody else. Also,
if you're looking to make a real change in your life,
or if you have a man in your life that
(32:09):
you know, could you know just use a brotherhood or
some men around him to help him level up in
every area of life. I encourage you to look at
we are the day. This is my men's coaching program
I started several years ago and we have been able
to help close to one thousand men now that have
joined this program and had a life changing, transformational experience.
Several of these episodes we talked to members of this group.
(32:31):
We talk about this group and if you are interested
in learning more, go to join what That's Joined watt
dot com
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