Ex-Politician Who Thinks Men Can Be Men Without Being A *ick with Bill McCamely |264

Max Nijst: Welcome to the Fearless Happiness Podcast, where we showcase phenomenal individuals who have overcome serious traumas, life obstacles, and challenges to find their own path to fearless happiness. Listen as Max Naist invites guests from all around the world to share their experiences and spread strength, hope, and faith. This is the Fearless Happiness Podcast. And this is Max Naist. All right, everybody. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in this world. Don't shake your camera like I've been doing. But anyway, hope everybody is well. This is Max from the Fearless Happiness Podcast, coming to you with another special and amazing guest who has an amazing story, a book, and we're gonna get him to know him today. What I'd like to do, Bill, is have you introduce yourself to my audience, like who you are, what it is you do, and then you and I, like I like to say, are gonna rock and roll. Yeah. Well, thanks a lot for having me, Max. I really appreciate it. ⁓ my name is Bill McCamley. I'm either a retired andor recovering politician, depending on how you want to talk about that. I know you said you hadn't had one of our kind before, so it's nice to ⁓ pop that cherry, so to speak. This is my first ex-politician, everybody. So let's listen up. Yeah. So I ⁓ don't don't hold that against me for folks listening. I got into politics when I was really early in college. ⁓ became the president of my student government at New Mexico State University in my hometown, Las Cruces, New Mexico. Ended up getting really into that and doing a lot of stuff. Went to Harvard, got a master's degree in public policy, thought I was hot shit. Came back to my hometown, ran for county commission right away, and was elected at twenty five and actually became chairman right away. And did a lot of good stuff there. Again, thought I was great, ran for Congress, did not win. ⁓ lost to a guy who gave himself a million dollars by about three points. ⁓ but ended up in the state legislature in New Mexico, where I spent six years as a state representative, and I worked on anything for everything from cannabis legalization to aid in dying to more modern tax policies. I did a lot of economic development work and some education stuff, but mostly my focus was workforce development, economic development. And so in 2019. I became the secretary of New Mexico's workforce solutions department, which is the State Department of Labor, and really loved doing that job. It was amazing. I got to work setting up a statewide STEM competition for high school kids. I was working a lot of apprentice policy with a lot of my friends in the building trades unions and was going after people who weren't meeting minimum wage requirements. You know, that's one of the roles of these jobs is to enforce the law. So that people are getting paid what they are legally required to get paid. And all that was great until COVID hit. And the department I was in charge of was also in charge of the unemployment system for the state. And that's what Congress decided they were going to use to help people with aid during COVID so that we could keep folks home and stop the spread of the virus and all that stuff. But what they didn't understand. Was that that system was developed in the nineteen thirties for an economy that doesn't exist today. I won't bore you with all the details. I could write a master's thesis about it. But I'm sure you know a lot of people were back then they would work single jobs as W two employees in the same place. Now you've got people that are moving all over the place from state to state, depending on where the jobs are, sometimes two or three times in a year. You got a lot of folks working gig economy jobs. They're driving for Uber, they're yoga instructoring on the weekends. They've got a contract 1099 job as a as a barber, you know, not for me, but for other people. Right. they're they're sometimes have a lot of different jobs. And so the unemployment system, you not only had a massive increase in volume. We went from about 9,800 people in the system in the state in the second week of March 2020. To over 150,000 by the end of June. So you had this massive volume increase, and you had to really deal with all the different ⁓ variabilities that Congress didn't really think about. And what what that meant is a lot of people were having trouble getting the money that they needed to pay the rent, buy the groceries, all the basic stuff that we needed to live. And it got really hard because the federal government would make all these rules. But for those of you guys that don't know, a lot of these programs are Funded and the big rules are decided at the federal level. It's up to the states to implement those rules. So I was the guy on TV every other week having to explain why this wasn't maybe working and why these delays were happening. And it was just tough. ⁓ I did that for 13 months. It got bad. ⁓ My own mental health suffered. It got to the point where I was probably getting a thousand emails a week personally. Hey, I'm living in my car. I'm gonna lose my house. I'm gonna lose my kids. I'm gonna kill myself. My neighbor tried to kill themselves because they couldn't get their unemployment checks, all that kind of stuff. ⁓ my girlfriend and I didn't make it. We had a car bombing. Someone blew up one of our state cars ⁓ the day after Thanksgiving, 2020. ⁓ I got hard death threats. And then when someone got my address, my home address, and my mom's home address, I ⁓ I said I cut it. And I moved to Austin, Texas, just so that I wouldn't get shot. In twenty twenty one. ⁓ ended up coming back to New Mexico in December of twenty twenty-four. And a lot of my experiences were leading me to writing a book. And I I've just got a publisher. It'll be out on August 4th. It's called Write My Dudes Now What? How to be a Man in the Twenty First Century Without Being a Dick. I love it. And you know, I I'm on the left side of the political spectrum. You know, I've been a Democrat my whole life. I really believe in a lot of those things. And the Democratic Party has really decided ⁓ in in a lot of meaningful ways. And and there's some people that are not in this camp, but a lot of the folks are, that they're not going to talk to people that look like me. Up until about six, seven months ago, the Democratic National Committee's website had a a website, a web page called Who We Serve. And there were 16 check marks. And one of them was just women. And so if you were a man, you had to fit in one of the other check marks. I was not on there. And I had been, you know, a member of the Democratic Party as a flagbearer for all the stuff they really cared about. I was one of the guys that got marriage equality in the state two years before the feds did it. ⁓ all those things. And it was really hard. And so it's like, how do we as men navigate this 21st century for those of us that don't want to go full MAGA, that that really hate what Andrew Tate stands for, that don't really agree with the the Ben Shapiro's and and the Nick Fuentes's and the Donald Trumps out there. But there's a lot of feminists out there. Who are openly saying, Hey man, it's time for you to completely withdraw, step aside, let women take over. And ⁓ we've got to find a balance. Hi, Poppy. Sorry about that. It's all right. Gotta go. Could buy a dog. Well, bark. Excuse me, everybody. ⁓ we anyway, we just we've got to find a balance about how to be men and how to be true to ourselves and get the values and the stories that make us relevant today, without turning into, you know, people that believe that all women should just be sex objects or or baby makers and that sort of thing. And that's really what the concept of the book was. And that that theme throws goes through the whole book. You know, I'm glad you're here, right? Because the Democrat Party, I'm not gonna make this a political podcast, absolutely not, but what I'm getting at, it's not like the days of John F. Kennedy. It has changed. You just said it, right? Because you had to fit into this checklist. Like this is who we serve. So if you've been a lifelong Democrat and you I mean, I just want to hear your opinion. When you saw that, what what was your feeling on that? Because I wouldn't say I'm like an independent. But I do believe in a lot of some of the MAGA stuff, right? Like, cause I've seen people firsthand, right? Like as a vet, go, ⁓ you're a vet and get disgusted by it, right? Like, what's wrong with you? Right. Like, I understand that what we fought for is so you can tell me that, right? You have freedom of speech, right? But I also do too. And you're not gonna anyway, what this like 220, 2020 screwed. Everybody up, as you know, you know firsthand because you're on the front lines. I know as one of those people, right, that applied for unemployment because I got let go from a place and ⁓ I had someone steal my identity, right? And but like you said, I I had to call my state representative and go, look, I got a family, I got a mortgage, I gotta pay my bills, right? And it took them six months to finally figure out, yep, you got your. Identity stolen. But they were great, right? Like I'm sure you were. And you know, I like I said, I don't want to make this a political thing, but you know, I hate to say it. The politics everywhere in the world has changed how the world is kind of going right now, if you ask me my opinion. But ⁓ but see, this is gonna be proof, right? Like Bill and I can have this awesome conversation and not Have to, you know, well, you did do you guys do this or you do that, right? Or because it is, you know, what Bill's gonna tell you about, right? What he's trying to do, it is right, trying to make this world a better place, right? For all of us, right? Whether you're on the left or the right. And that's how I believe. And I mean, that goes along with my recovery. You know, I've been a recovering person for almost twenty three years now. So I I truly don't care. what side of the you're on, right? As long as you're doing the next right thing and treating people, you know, with respect and dignity. ⁓ but, you know, you know, Bill, because you've been like like you said, you've been on the news and stuff, right? Like the powers that be will show what they think everybody wants to see, right? They don't always show you what's really going on in the world, right? Yeah. And that's really Max I've decided that I'm not doing litmus tests anymore. I'm not doing red lines anymore. Just because I don't agree with one person on one thing. Exactly. That doesn't mean I can't have a conversation because it it frankly comes down to learning. If we are gonna become Twitter fied where everything's 120 characters or everything's a two minute reel on TikTok or Instagram reels, that doesn't allow us to dig deep into issues. And that's really at the end of the day, what I'm trying to have a conversation with these men about is look, I am very, very vehemently, passionately opposed to Donald Trump. There are so many reasons for this. The raping and the incompetence and the corruption are all there. But the biggest reason, I'll tell you this: you're a vet. My dad was in the 100 first airborne twenty-five years, did two tours in Vietnam. Thank you for your dad's service. He he walked the walk. And when he was raising my sister and I, one of the values that was tattooed onto our souls was the word responsibility. My sister's a doctor with the Veterans Administration right now. She had a a postdoc at Yale. They offered to keep her there. She's like, No, I just want to go take care of these guys. I'm out there, as we can talk about if you want to talk about later, working with these union construction workers on absolute suicide prevention, mental health, and substance abuse programming. Like We we both really believe that the value we as human beings bring to the world is what are we gonna do to make things better? And that's because we have a responsibility. I Trump has never ran into something that has not gone right that he has run away from as far as possible. He does not have the ability to take responsibility for stuff that goes wrong. Everything is someone else's fault. And so I can believe that and say we can't go down that road and I can also believe that for years in this country we've had rules that have made guys that look like me have an advantage. That is true. So those things are real. And we got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. We got to understand that 40% of men in this country exhibit depressive symptoms. 44% have thought about killing themselves in the last two weeks. 15 to 28% of men, depending on which study you look at, of young men. Admit to not having a close friend. And Max, that is a problem. And if we don't say, look, we need more male teachers out there as role models. We need to figure out ways about getting more men into the mental health and therapy spaces. Cause 70% of those jobs right now are with women and guys respond better to other guys, right? You see women out there saying, Hey, I don't want every man to be a gynecologist. I think that's fair. I think you can also say this other way around, right? So we've got to be able to have a balanced view of what's going on. And what I tell people all the time is look, it is my job as a big straight white dude to take on things like the rape issue. I mean, if you saw that thing on CNN a couple months ago where they were that rape academy where guys were showing other guys how to drug women so they could gang rape them and they didn't get any exposure. And that's bad. And we should fight the shit out of that. Right. Well, they're doing that everywhere, right? And I'm gonna say, right, because there has to be equal here, right? That's both sides that don't know how to take responsibility for the things they did. And I can give you examples, as you know, of people on the left that do the same thing. But I want you to understand everybody what Bill's saying, right? It is more than that, right? It is about taking responsibility for ourselves, right? And Doing right in my case, I believe it, I have a strong faith in God, right? God wants us to help each other, not hurt each other. And it does God doesn't sit up there in heaven and go, well, I can't deal with Bill because he's a Democrat, or I can't deal with Max because he's in on whatever. You know what I mean? He's an independent, or you know, you get what I'm saying, right? And I'm glad you're here because, right, this is what our country's about, right? Is being able to talk about. things that are difficult, right? And having the conversation without having to get crazy on one another and say, ⁓ I can't talk to you because that's right. ⁓ my God. You know, but I'm with Bill, right? Us men need to step it up, right? Because there are so many people out there that are trying to keep us men down, right? By saying there's toxic masculinity. Yeah, there might be cases of that, but your everyday guy like Bill and I, right? We really want to take care of our families, right? Show what it's like to be a man and you know, be productive and bring value to the world, right? That's what it's being a man is for me, right? And obviously other things that I've learned in my recovery, right? But could you imagine, right? Like, cause me and Bill did have a discussion. We had a little technical issues, right? For the first time we were supposed to meet. And right, so right, he was telling me, you know, could imagine if he Told me and I had this like strong opinion. I said, Well, Bill, you know, I'm sorry you're on the left, but I can't have you on my podcast, right? He would just kind of be like, Well, that's not cool, right? But I'm not like that. I want to hear everybody's opinion, right? The only thing I don't like is as you see it on both sides, where they try to shove it down your throat. We have brains that God gave us. They should just let us think about it and then come up with our own, what we think is good for us and our families, right? ⁓ because ⁓ you know, it's like being okay, I want to say my side of the family, right? My my exes and stuff, right? Because there's the USC fans and there's the UCLA fans, right? And most of the time us USC fans are outnumbered when I I used to go and watch football games. But we all got along, right? They didn't say, ⁓ Max, you can't come over because you're a USC fan. Or I didn't say, well, we're watching the game at my house. But US UCLA fans, you can't come because, you know, it it's red and gold, you know, to the max or whatever. But but these are the kind of conversations that I love having, right? They're open, honest, and vulnerable, especially when it comes to the guys. And ⁓ you know, I knew women too, right? I've had some great women guests. I continue have like I say I'm spoiled for having the guests like Bill that come and ask me to come on the podcast and have these conversations, right? But you know, what we did want to really talk about, everybody, and Bill's going to get into it more, is right, we we understand the the 22 a day when it comes to veterans, right? But little because it's not talked about, and I'm glad Bill brought it up, right? It's in the construction industry. And it was I was telling Bill like yesterday, I I had another guest who who did 50 years in the construction industry. And he right validated that too like The rate of suicide is higher than any other industry, right? And so Bill and I are on this earth, right? We want to help veterans, we we want to help people, but you know, I anybody, because ⁓ all you know the ⁓ all of you know and I've shared it on the podcast, I lost a brother to suicide. So I know from the other side what that feels like. So get into that a little bit more, Bill, like what you're doing on that front. Right. And how you're trying to help the industry, right? On all fronts, right? Whether it's plumbing, electrical, you know, carpentry or, you know, whatever, commercial, right? Helping bring awareness of that mental health problem that's out there, right? That, you know, for some reason, not even the news is talking about it, which we we they should be bringing this, you know. They have these mental health awareness months, right? Or months. But they never talk it's I you we you and I could be here for hours talking about this, but go ahead and talk about that. The person that probably said this best was Barack Obama, where he said, We assume men are gonna be okay because they always have been. And that's obviously not the case right now. Let me give you some numbers. Again, men are three and a half in general, three and a half times more likely to kill ourselves than women, or about three times more likely to die by overdose death than women. The three biggest reasons that women live longer in the United States than men, number one is car accidents, because guys sometimes drive too crazy. But then number two are suicide and death by overdose. And when you look at the construction trades, who are the guys I'm working with, it's even higher. ⁓ when you combine construction and mining, they have the highest suicide and death by overdose rates in the country by occupation, and it's not close. The number I give all the time was this. Across the United States, there are a thousand construction workers that die by accident. So they fall off a roof or they get electrocuted or whatever. 1,000. 5,000 kill themselves, 11,000 die by overdose, mostly opioids, mostly fentanyl. And so as a construction worker, you're 16 times more likely to die by suicide or death by overdose than you are by a regular workplace accident. It is just not good enough. And as I was writing the book, I did a whole chapter on mental health. ⁓ you know, we had this conversation last time, but I had my own suicide attempt during COVID. It it got horrible. And I had a shotgun under my chin, pointed at my brainstem because all that shit was going on. And I went online and said, What's the best way to do this? Finally found a website that was like, Hey, don't fuck around with a rope or knives or pills, you know, shotgun to the back of the head with slugs or buckshot. And I didn't do it for two reasons. ⁓ A, my mom was still around. I had just gotten the dog kind of in the split up with my ex. And B, I only had bird shot and not buckshot. And so it was like rather than going and buying those slugs the next day, I asked for help. And that's the reason I am still here today. And I tell that story to these guys. And it's one of the things, as you write a book, there's a lot of folks that write books out there. There's a lot of folks that do New York Times articles, and those are great. But what became very c crystal clear is there's not a lot of men talking to other men about these issues in language that meets them where they're at, with maybe strategies that can help them where they're at. You see a lot of, you know, people that have PhDs, but they use words that guys don't relate to. You see a lot of these websites that are basically very female. Oriented, and that's fine since they're the ones that generally ask. We as guys don't. That's one of our problems. Right. But that's not gonna get it to them, right? And so we need to have conversations with guys about the value of asking for help. We need to have conversations with these guys about being a little vulnerable once in a while. So many bros out there think, fuck that man. If I show emotion, that makes me wuss. That's woman stuff. If I ask for help, that's not being a man. I gotta be stoic. I gotta fix myself. All that stuff. You see with the veterans population. I see it with the construction workers. ⁓ I'm talking with a friend of mine who's a union firefighter president. Same thing with those guys, those sorts of things. So we have to be very upfront and take these issues head on if we're gonna get those numbers down. And that means all of us have to acknowledge that this is a problem, and then we all have a role to play, including, and I point this out. Women in education, women in mental health. Like if women aren't working with women, because they are the majority in those two fields and helping us get the tools we need to help with this problem, the the issue's not going to get fixed. It's going to take all of us. Just like I believe that guys like me have a responsibility to step up and and fight the sexual assault stuff and be very vocal about that. All of us have a responsibility to step up and help with these suicide and death by overdose. things. It's it's just not gonna work unless we're all talking to each other about this. You nailed it, right? That's why if if you listen to what Bill's saying, everybody, right, it takes a village, right? To do this. And right, I ⁓ trust me, I've been on my own path, right, in my addiction. But you know, as it was put to me when I was getting sober, right, I was Max, you were committing suicide on the installment plan is just when it was gonna happen, right? ⁓ And I was like, wow, really? Yeah, they're right. You know, because there's days, right? And when it got bad enough where I you know, I was too chicken to do it, but there was days I would say, God, please just let me sleep. Don't wake me up anymore. I don't want to do this. Right. Then my brother completes his, right? So it's been, and I cannot tell you, Bill, how many friends, right? Both that I know directly or indirectly, or as a substance abuse counselor that have done that, right? I I've lost count. And but that's what keeps me going, right? Because I'm like you. I want to change that, right? Because I learned thank you to my sponsor and the men that surrounded me, right? That they said, look, vulnerability is a strength. Asking for help is a strength. That's right. Right. Because you know, like your dad, who was an airborne ranger, right? And his generation and all those before him were taught, suck it up, buttercup. You don't talk about your feelings. You if you fall down, you brush yourself off and you keep going and you right. Or we come from families like, ⁓ we don't talk about that. So sh right? Like we don't. ⁓ so I learned the hard way because, you know, but I was stubborn too, like talk about my feeling. I don't want to talk about my feelings, you know what I mean? ⁓ and that's why it what we're talking about today is a big reason I want to go back. to grad school and get my master's and my LMFT so I can help those people, those men, you know, out there that are struggling with mental health issues or thinking about like the only way out is, you know, to end it. Right. Because sometimes you're right. I've been, you know, like well, especially in recovery too, right? I've been in with a therapist, right, who has no clue what their ⁓ addiction's about is, let alone what a man, you know, like You're talking to a woman and you you can see it in their eyes. They're really trying to understand you, but they you can see behind the eyes like I don't get this guy. Like I don't get it because right, I I don't know. And ⁓ I'm sure, you know, that's happened for you. You're talking to a woman about certain things, w whether it's a therapist or a fellow politician, right? And they look at you like, What are you what? Right. Like or it's like the peanuts cartoon, like I say, you know, all they're hearing is and you're like, okay. I I want to go into I I think that's right. I think sometimes I there's three points I want to make on on stuff you just said that I think you hit right on the head. Number one, we have to get over this pain olympics between the genders. Because if we are yelling at each other and not listening, I I used to work at a summer camp when I was in college called Seeds of Peace. They brought kids from Israel and Palestine and India and Pakistan and Kosovo and all these places where they wanted to shoot each other. And the guy that ran the camp was this old offensive line coach from Pennsylvania. And he would drive around his golf cart, Tim Wilson, great guy, because his knees were shot because he was an offensive lineman. But the kids would come out of this hour and a half every day that they had to go talk about their stuff. And sometimes they'd be yelling at each other. He'd be like, hey, and he'd do one of these. And if you have ever seen a coach with the finger coming at you, you know exactly what that means. That means you're not good. It's not gonna be good. No, but he'd be like, listen, and I want you to listen good. I'm gonna tell you something my mama always told me, which was God gave you two of these and he pointed at his ears, and one of these, and he pointed at his mouth, which means we have to start listening to each other. Again, it's my responsibility to listen to women when they talk one in five women has been raped or someone has tried to rape them, et cetera. Yep. And it's the responsibility of everyone else. When you talk about these men that are feeling lonely and withdrawn and they're confused about dating and they're having issues economically, you know, you you talked about wanting to go back and get your master's in therapy, which is great. More men, I think, we need going into those health education and literacy jobs. They're called the heel jobs, teaching, health care, social work, all those things. And there's a reason for that too, which is. We as guys like to fix stuff. Right. And guess what's better at that than we are a lot of times? AI and robots. So a lot of the manufacturing jobs around the country are being replaced by robots. Now, can we get educations to learn how to fix the robots? Yes, we can. But if we get jobs where we can help other people and we're not scared of that, that's going to be better for us economically in a lot of ways moving forward. And we're going to be able to help our brothers out in ways that that That doesn't exist right now. So that's number one. Number two, you talked about your sponsor. We have to take up the responsibility of being good, solid mentors to a lot of folks coming after us. You know, there are 76% of public school teachers right now are women. And the studies show once you get to middle school, boys do better. When they have a male teacher. They look forward to going to class more, they perform better academically, they don't act out as much. But because of those, I mean, there's a lot of reasons for this. But one of the reasons for the imbalance with a lot of boys that aren't performing as well in in school is a lot, a lot of times lack of role models. If I don't have a male role model until I get a football coach in high school, that that's gonna be an issue, right? So we've got to be able to say, hey, I wanna go be a big brother. I'm gonna go help the kid across the street shooting baskets. My thing, I substitute teach once a month. I go to a high school or middle school. I try I take a day and I go and do that because it is so important. And I can see the boys responding to someone that looks like them. The last thing and you talked about very well is that whole we're bad in emotion. You know, my father was terrible at this. He was a strong, good man, but his my senior year in high school, freshman year in college. His Vietnam PTSD came back raging hard. And he wouldn't deal with it. He kept everything bottled up. He would be pissed off every day, annoyed every day, throw things. It got so bad that my mom was about ready to leave his ass. And my uncle had to come to Jesus one day. He's like, Mike, your wife's about to leave you. Your kids hate your guts. Your family's falling apart. What the fuck are you doing? And he finally started going to a VA group, a speech therapy group with all his old Vietnam guys. He got on LexaPro. Which is a mild antidepressant, took some of his OCD off. And he got better, Max. And when he passed away, it was a four-year process. He had what Bruce Willis has now. ⁓ But we were all there because my dad was strong enough and tough enough that that old paratrooper, that was the hardest, strongest thing he ever did was deal with that shit that he was so scared to deal with. And I gotta tell you, I was raised in that family. He was my role model. When I went to write my book chapter on emotion. It took me three damn days just to start because it was so hard. And I finally, when I started, it was I'm really bad at this shit. I typed it out and I was able to kind of go from there. But we we have to get better. And that does not mean, that does not mean that we have to cry all the time or jump for joy all the time. But it does mean if we bottle that stuff in all the time and we never ask for help, it's a problem. I'll say one more thing and I'll I'll let you go. I love Jay Glazer. For those of you guys that watch football on Sundays, Jay Glazer is the Fox NFL reporter on Fox NFL Sunday. He's also a former MMA fighter. He's got a gym out in LA, kind of near where you are. He's got two professional bouts under his belt. And he says this: when you guys come he he experiences depression. He wrote a book about it. He does podcasts about it. When someone in the NFL unfortunately kills themselves, like that defensive lineman for the Cowboys last year, Marshawn Nealan. He's one of the guys they bring in to talk to these guys. And what he says is this if you come into my MMA gym and you got a messed up hand or you can messed up back, are we gonna ignore that? No, no, we are not. We're gonna take it head on. We're gonna fucking find out what the problem is and fix it so we can get you back into the ring. Dealing with the upstairs stuff, the mental stuff, the emotional stuff, it's no different. And we cannot be afraid to ask for help and express ourselves once in a while because if we don't. We end up in the situation where we have now where everyone either shoots themselves in the head with a shotgun or they end up self medicating on the booze and the drugs and that just doesn't end well. Yeah. Well, we all know because of COVID, right? Which I think was, you know, my personal opinion was Not right, let's just say, right, because a lot of people lost their jobs, right? But you know, suicides went up, drug addiction went up, right? Because we were shut down and we were told we can't go see people, right? How many people lost a loved one but could not go to the hospital to be there for their last breath, right? Like all the crazy stuff that we see in the world, right? Is I'm with Bill. Right now it's us men, it's time to take our power back, right? And acknowledging that we actually have emotions and that we can feel is actually a strength, right? And we have to be able to do that. Right. I'm with Bill, right? I don't need someone screaming and yelling at me and telling me how to be a man, right? Like this close to my face, spinning in my face. Cause usually that does that. It does the I shut down, right? And then I give you two options. Either get out of my face your way or you're gonna do it my way. And it doesn't go well. Right. Right. And then that's not a good ⁓ solution to the problem, right? But, you know, as you can see, Bill and I can have this conversation, right? And I don't have to get all angry and right, no, that's not the way I do it, Bill. We gotta do it a different way, right? Or, you know, your way's wrong, my way's right. No, but I'm on Bill's side when it comes to this, right? Learning to get a little bit vulnerable is a strength. Asking for help as a man, right? Because you're right. I didn't have a dad. My dad passed away when I was eleven, right? And I heard he was that typical old age man, right? Like you don't you don't talk about things. You don't do that. You suck it up and right. And I saw that in my uncles on my mom's side of the family, right? That's right. You they raise their families, you do as dad says, right, but not as dad does, right? And if he's struggling, you don't talk about it, right? ⁓ Like and ⁓ don't get me wrong, everybody, I even admit there's times I have to be able to share how I'm feeling better, like especially with my spouse, my wife, right? Because she'll tell me, like she'll call me on it. Yeah, yeah, I hear you in there, right? And like, but you don't follow your own advice, right? So then I go, ⁓ you're right, honey. And I gotta but I'm glad that she keeps me accountable, right? So that I can notice when I'm doing that, I can go, ⁓ here I go back, you know, to I I I wanna say face, right? But I gotta teach you something, Bill, right? This is this and this is kind of what I'm getting from you, right? So in my recovery, right, you cannot say face or your ass at the same time. It's gotta be. So I have learned to e crow many times, right? And and admit when I'm wrong, and you know, but that's why I'm here with almost 23 years sober. What does that have to do with this conversation? Everything, right? Because I'm learning to put into practice what Bill's talking about, right? You know, like if if Bill was in my neighborhood and I was struggling, right, I wouldn't hesitate to go, hey, Bill, I need your help. I'm going through a rough time right now. You know what I mean? I do that with my sponsor. I've got many men in my life that I can actually do that with. ⁓ you know, a f a select few that if it's really deep that I trust that I can do that with, but at least I have that. And that's what kind of Bill is talking about for us men, is that we gotta have that. you know, circle of support that we can go to, you know, and go, because you're right, Bill. Like I I've, you know, talked to therapists about certain things, like, and because they're women, right? They it's not that they don't, they don't understand. They just we're two different people. And it's like, you know, like a lot of okay, I'll put it this way. It's a like a lot of the clients that I work with that go to a therapist, whether it's a man or a woman, right? And if They haven't been through the experience of addiction, they always come to me as their counselor and go, I don't even know what to say to them. I I get this look like they don't understand what I'm talking about, right? And you know, but if guys like you and I are leading by example and, you know, doing the work that are making us better men, that we can be that example and and then in turn helping others, right? It creates a ripple effect. And that's kind of why I think You know, we're here today, you and I. It's to create that ripple effect and let men know like you are heard. We're here to help in any capacity that we can. But you gotta let us know what's going on because we can't read your minds, right? Yeah. Because all of the men will know, right? When the wife, you know, says something and we don't do something and right, and we go, Honey, you didn't tell us, right? But you should know, right? You know, I that's comedy, but a lot how many times has that happened, right? You're like, honey, I can't read your mind. You gotta let me know, right? It's the same for us guys, right? If I came to Bill and didn't explain what I needed or what I was going through, he's just gonna look at me like Max, I can't read your mind. You gotta tell me what's going on, right? And we gotta be able to be comfortable enough to do that with each other. Yeah, I I I think there's three things that you point out that I really like. I ⁓ the first is We're gonna have some different agreements on political stuff. I'll just give an example. You you talked about your experience with COVID, and that is real and that is valid. On the flip side, in my hometown during the height of COVID, there were seven frozen trailer trucks outside the hospital because there were so many dead bodies in the morgue that they couldn't fill them. And the governor of my state, you know, she had some of the longest, hardest shutdowns in the state, and they were hard. And she was terrified about overriding the hospitals. Because there were all these tractor trailers with dead bodies because we had an older, sicker, poorer population with less hospital beds per capita. And so these things are complicated. But I think the point of this is we can actually disagree on that stuff and still come together and talk about these things. If we draw red lines and say, I don't agree with you on this one thing, we are never gonna learn. We're never gonna establish connection. And that's important. Number two, in the book, I talk about. How a lot of spaces for men have kind of disappeared in our society. We talk about the barbershop. If you've ever seen the movie Grand Torino with Clint Eastwood. Love that movie. So good, right? And where does he take the kid when he wants him to learn how to talk like a man? The barbershop. Yeah. Remember? He has to go in two or three times and come back out. Well, those are going away. The VFW halls are going away. The bowling alleys, the bowling alley and playing in league night. was a space that guys would get together all the time to talk with other guys. There's not that many bowling alleys left. My hometown doesn't have one anymore. And crazy isn't it? That all of those spaces, and so how do we create spaces for guys that aren't these toxic, problematic spaces where it's, you know, the Andrew Tates of the world saying your reasons are all hating women, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's number two. And number three is The point of having those spaces is so we as men have connection. You'll know this from your work, but in the suicide prevention class I teach to a lot of these ⁓ construction workers, there's a Venn diagram and there's three overriding circles. And in the middle is where the real issue with suicide comes in. And one of the circles is I am a burden. So if I feel like I'm not providing for my family or I screwed up at work and other people can't rely on me, that's really tough. The second one is I am alone. I I I talked with one of our union guys ⁓ few weeks ago who was going through some real substance abuse issues on the phone with me. And over the course of a Saturday, Sunday, and Monday I was on the phone with him for like eight hours. But it was another worker that reached out to him after he had some issues at home and was in a hotel room and he talked to me and I talked to him. And between the three of us, he got into recovery. He's been sober now for a while, he's doing better. But during those conversations, he said, I texted my family. I texted my friends. You guys, this coworker and me, who we'd never even met, you're the only guys that will talk to me. And I had to say, brother, you are not alone. There are people that care about you. We want you to be around. Having that connection with people is important. And we as guys, a lot of times, are given up on that. I will I will give this to the women. A lot of times they have a word from men. Who use their wives as the only emotional sink. They call it man keeping. And it is so important for us to have dudes we can go play games with. We can go out to the bar and watch a game with and go to Comedy with. I I still play soccer. I am on an over thirty seven aside soccer team with a bunch of African graduate students, bunch of Hispanic guys, and me and another of the whitest guys you've ever seen. We just won our league championship. On Wednesday. It went to penalty kicks and I'm the goalie. I made the last save. Max, it was awesome. But part of the reason it was awesome was after I made the save, all the guys came in running to me and we were holding and hugging each other and jumping up and down like we won goddamn World Cup. And it was this moment of connection. We need those things as men so that we don't feel alone. Because if you take that out, it's the I'm a burden, I'm alone, and the I can, where I've worked myself into. This position, I've got the gun, which most of us have, right? If we can take out that I am alone piece and show that we've got the support of other guys around, we're gonna be in a better situation. And that is a requirement for us that we've got to ask for help when we need it. And it's a requirement for other guys to be able to listen and be there when one of our brothers is having issues. And that's some of the things I really talk about all the time is important, help bring in those death by despair numbers down. Absolutely, right? Because you know it's a dangerous place, especially while in the construction or the us veterans, right? When you hear a guy go, I'm tired, like that's a dangerous thing to hear because in his head, right, that they're they're checking out, right? So I love what Bill said, right? So it's our job as fellow men, right, to pay attention to the signs. Right. So when you hear someone saying that, maybe you take, you know, you put your arm around them, go, Hey, look, let's go for a walk or do something. Right. Right. You gotta but it takes practice, right? And you gotta be paying attention. Right. Because, you know, you know, you don't wanna do that to some guy just like Bill said, played a soccer game and he goes, I'm tired. And you go, Bill, what's what's going on with you? Right. And we joke about it, but I'm saying if you're sitting with someone and you can just see, you know, the look on their face and they're not in a good place and they say, I'm tired, right? Right, big but most people that do it, you know, the statistics show, right, won't tell you or show signs. My brother, for instance, right? Like I hate to say it. He, you know, the last thing he told me before he did it was, I got this. Yeah. Right. So it's like one of those phrases, right, that I've heard in my recovery and as a substance abuse counselor, right? Where it's like rubbing your fingernails on a chalkboard and just like, ⁓ it drives me crazy. And I go, Really? ⁓ tell me what that looks like, right? You know, and if they can't answer it, then we die, then I get them to start talking, right? Because but you know, this has been I knew it was gonna be an awesome conversation, right? And one that needed to be had. And I'm glad it you picked me to do it with you, Bill. ⁓ you know, because we are. We gotta see, and there's one thing that I've shared on the podcast many, many times, and it you this certain ⁓ TED talk. Right, relates to addiction. But what you said is about connection, right? Like so this there's this English journalist that talks about addiction and everything we know about addiction is wrong, right? And he talks about how Portugal, you know, these were years ago, legalized all the hardcore drugs, right? How the you know, the the crime rate went down, people were being more productive. But that wasn't the point, right? 'Cause at the end of it he asks, he goes, What's the opposite of addiction? And you can hear the crowd going, sobriety, recovery, right? And all this stuff. And he goes, Nope, it's connection. That's right. Right. And that's like I wanna use that part for all of us, right? What is the opposite of depression, right? Disconnection, ⁓ anxiety, it's connection, right? When you know you're connected and like Bill said many times, right? When you know you have that support, like there's nothing that you can't get over, right? Or or overcome any challenge, right? And I kind of teach that in my second book about building resilience. And that resilience is a skill, right? Not a something you're born with, right? It's something that you build over time, right? Through the challenges you go through, right? And all the help, you know, the lessons you've learned and all the help, right. And And I'm glad he we're here with Bill to, you know, hopefully help a bunch of men learn those, you know, perseverance, resilience, and most of all, giving themselves a break, right? Because we're just human, right? And I believe like some of the guests I've had, I'm here before that says, right, we're spiritual beings having a human experience. And the best way to have a great human experience is through connection. Well, and if you y you talked about your faith. I have a chapter in my book called What Would Jesus Really Do? And if you read the Gospels, the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John of the Gospels, what is the overall message of Jesus? It's reach out to the folks around you, care for them, forgive them, love them, build a community where we support one another. You know, when he had that Sermon on the Mount, they had the loaves and fishes, you know, let's feed everybody, right? That that whole conversation about he who clothes the naked and feeds the hungry and welcomes the stranger and they're the ones that are gonna sit at the right hand of God. And I hope, hope, because there's so many men that are going back to church. You see this real rise in folks going back there. Hey man, whatever way you find to get that spiritual connection that gives you what you need, you go for it. Like I don't care if you're dancing naked in the woods or going to church every Sunday. Whatever, whatever works for you, you go find it. But I would say for those guys that are doing that. Read those words because Jesus is pretty clear in what he's saying. I I love that message of connection, love, forgiveness, generosity, and being there for the folks around you. If we can just do that a little bit more as fellas, we can be strong. We can be tough, but we can do those things too. Combining all those makes us healthier, happier, more complete man. And that's really the kind of conversation I want to have with these guys going forward. Absolutely. And that's the kind of legacy you want to leave anyway for your kids, whether it's your daughters or your sons, right? Is build connections, right? Because you're absolutely right, right? Throughout the Bible, if they're talking about Jesus, he didn't just pick a certain group of people and say, Hey, I'm gonna go teach them how to be, you know, strong in their faith, right? He picked the destitute, criminals, prostitutes. I mean Romans who were invading at the time. Yeah, the ro exactly, right? So I guess the message is right, what I always take of it is that we all need to learn to get along, right? I hate to say it, right? You know, I mean people have made jokes about, but Rodney King said it best. Can't we all just get along, right? Like ⁓ it's true though, right? We and I'll tell you this before I get into the questions that I teasing you thought I don't remember, but there's a few, right? ⁓ and again, and if I repeat myself, I love it because I think I want everybody to understand what this quote is about, right? And it's from Jesse Jackson. I love it. It's one of my favorite quotes. And it goes like this, right? When any ⁓ the only time you should ever look down on anyone is when you're helping them up. That's right. Right. Right. And ⁓ we need to do that more with each other, right? And not just pick and choose. Right. And I've shared this, you know, on with many guests, right? My sponsor, when I my last relapse ⁓ said, Cause there's this part in our literature that says I'm responsible. When anywhere, anyone cries out for help, let the hand of AA be there. And for that I'm responsible. And I always get goosebumps when I because I it it did something to me. And he said, You're gonna take that AA part out, right? And it's when anyone anywhere asks for help, let your hand be there. And for that you're responsible. And that was the best thing that my sponsor ever did for me. Cause I I'm getting goosebumps again, right? Because that's I believe was what's kept me sober all these years because I don't pick and choose, right? Because I always hear in my ear, he said, Remember what I told you, right? You know, and it's sometimes simple things like you know, Bill, right? Like putting the basket all the way back to the cart thing. Or opening the door for somebody, right? And holding it open. Or like just being kind and, you know, smiling at someone and say hi, right? How many times have you done that, Bill, where you don't know the person, but you said hi and you could see it in their eyes, like, wow, they cared enough about me to say hi, and you just made their day. Brother, I it and it goes back, there's so much anger in the world right now. Yes. And frankly, a lot of that's on us. Like, we as men are taught growing up that the only emotion we can express outside of a sporting arena, for some reason, we've decided that at a game. I can laugh, I can cry, I can hug the guy next to me, I can slump in despair at a sporting. I actually just wrote a whole article on we've got the hardware to feel all of the emotions. And if you go to a goddamn football game, you will see grown men cry in front of other men in public, whether they win the big one or lose the big one, right? It will happen. So we've got that. But if if all we take into outside of sporting events life is anger. It's going to perpetuate the anger. The online stuff doesn't help either. Where everything's all about conflict and and negativity. I I really, and I get, I get frustrated sometimes with all the online dialogue because it's all about, you know, you're a pussy and you're a beta, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, let's have a conversation because guess what? Insults are the last resort of an insecure man with a crumbling argument. If you want to have a disagreement with me, that's how we learn. We shouldn't be scared. I I opened my book. In my intro, I say, look, you're not gonna agree with me on everything in here. And if you do, I'm sorry, because guess what? It would be a very boring fucking world if all of us agreed with everybody on everything. Right. But we've got to learn to, as you said, approach each other with compassion and generosity and try to learn from other people. And that means we gotta be strong about what we care about, but we gotta listen to where other people are coming from. Put yourself in another person's shoes once in a while. That's how we get. better. And I I just truly believe that that's one of the things, the values that will make us better men. We we can't keep withdrawing. We can't just be pissed off at everything. We've got to be part of the communities around us in ways that grow and build the communities that we are involved with. And that's how we get better. Absolutely. I couldn't have said that any better myself be that's true though. That's we Like I said on the last couple podcasts, right? Cause it really touched me, right? ⁓ my wife and I took our grandsons and we went and watched that new Michael Jackson movie, right? ⁓ yeah. Right. And one of my favorite songs from Michael Jackson or any song, right, is Man in the Mirror, right? How how spot on is that, right? He says, You want to make a change in the world? Be you know, make that change. I'm gonna look at the man in the first in the mirror. Right. It starts when basically what he says, it's gonna start with me, right? Like Gandhi says, if you want to be the change, you know, in the world you want to see in the world. That's what absolutely right. We have to be right. That's how I'm taught in my recovery. If I want to show the people what a sob sober person looks like, right, I have to do the same thing in front of them as if I nobody was watching, right? And practice. And I've always taught, right? There was a meeting that I went to my first five years. It was a book study, right? We study the book and ⁓ it always started off the very first night. Okay, you're gonna go do random acts of kindness, but you can't come back and tell us, right? Or you lo you lose it. You gotta start all over. Right. And I know I've been on the receiving end and I love when I can do that for somebody. But you know, like I said, like I've said hi to someone or or did something for them, right? Because you never know what's gonna no one's you never know what someone is going through at that moment. And you can see it in their eyes like. Wow, this guy cared enough to say hi to me. You know, just that little thing, right? A little kindness goes a long way. And like, you know, I agree with Bill, right? We need to be more kind, right? This anger thing that's going on in the world, right? It's a lot of it is I I this is my opinion, Bill. A lot of it is social media and the things they show us, right? The little like we're supposed to believe the world's the way it is off a 10 second clip, right? Or you know what I mean? Like, but you know, this has been a great conversation, right? Hopefully it opens people's, I like to say their minds and their hearts, right? And their ears, right? Cause in my recovery I was taught when I was new, right? Take the cotton out of your ears and shove it in your mouth, Max, because you need to listen more. And I would go like, You guys are mean, man. Like, golly, man. But you know, how true is that? We gotta listen more to each other. We have to learn more. Can I can I can I close with one more thing, maybe? Because I know we're run out of time here. I had a guy yes ⁓ a couple of days ago ask me when you're writing this book, what is the one thing that every guy can do? Like if you had to take one thing out, and I thought about it for a while, and it was this. In 2003, MySpace came out. And it was the first social media app. And at that point in time, the Census Bureau has what they call a time use study. So they ask people, how the fuck do you spend your time? Young people in the country. In 2003, spent 67 minutes a day socializing with each other. So MySpace 2003, YouTube 2004, Twitter, Facebook 2005, and then all the rest of them down here. And what you see is as people, as social media use goes up, the time we spend talking to each other in real life goes down. It's now like 30-something minutes a person, even for older folks, right? Right. Yeah. Go out. Watch a game with a friend. My my my soccer team, we my buddy Dave and I are gonna go watch Brazil, Morocco tomorrow at four o'clock, mountain time in the bar. We invited all of our team, all of our diverse Cuban and Mexican and African friends, and a bunch of them are gonna come watch the game with us. Spend time with people, get off of this more often, yeah, and go talk to someone in real life. Establish that connection. Be there for someone else. Let them be there for you. We are social people. If if all we do is live on the internet, that kind of addiction leads to more depression. It leads to more stress, more tiredness, as you talked about, as a lot of vets say, I'm tired. They that's the way they say, Hey, I'm not feeling so good in ways that they can do that, right? That's the translation. Find that connection with a couple of people. Make that effort to do that and keep it fucking up. And if we can do that, that's I think the single biggest thing we can all do to be better, happier, and healthier together. Absolutely. Right. And that just like brings me back to the Generation X thing and all the right. We had right. Our parents told us, go with your friends and play, but come back when the lights are on so you can eat dinner, right? That's right. Like we didn't have cell phones. We didn't have social media. We had to connect if we wanted to do stuff, right? Like Going surfing with your friends or going on camping trip or whatever, right? Like I think we've lost our way from that so bad because of social media. And don't get me wrong, you know, I'm not perfect. I scroll, I do my thing, and right. But I love that, Bill. So that leads me into the question then, right? We're gonna hit the questions that I do remember everybody, right? We're gonna start with fearless, right? Going through what you've been through, you know, in your personal life and in your your professional life, right? And all the things you've seen go on in this world, right? What does fearless mean to you today and how does that show up in your life on a daily basis? Fearless to me after all the shit I went through in politics and now what I'm seeing with the guys I'm working with is not being scared to do hard things. And for many of us men, those hard things, as I talked about with my old man, you talked about, you know, with your family. We've got to be able to confront this trope that we've seen as weakness and understand that attacking that is a strength. We've got to be fearless. In figuring out those issues to make us better people. One of the lines that I give when I'm talking to these guys is how many of you would die for someone you loved? And almost universally I get nods of the head. Of course, I would sacrifice myself for someone I love. I say, Why the fuck won't you live for ⁓ Because they don't want you to die. They want you to be around. And we need to be fearless in engaging with those things that make us uncomfortable sometimes. To become better people, not only for ourselves, but for the folks around us. That that's the thing that comes to mind right now. I love it. You heard that, everybody. I hope you're paying attention, right? That's a learning lesson right there. I love it. That leads me into happiness. And as you can see, I put a Y, right? It's not a misspelling. I did that on purpose. But knowing I put a Y in happiness, what does happiness mean to you today, Bill? And how does that show up in your life on a daily basis? It's connection with other people. You know, ⁓ I Social media does have its use. I'm on a WhatsApp group with buddies of mine in Ireland and Idaho and Florida and Singapore. We all cheer for the same soccer team and we support each other. And so that does have that value. But I go to Idaho and meet with a guy once in a while. I'm going out to Florida. That's the dude I was telling you who's in the firefighters union. I'm gonna help work through some of their mental health issues. I go to Northern Ireland once a year and meet my my friend Sean and you know, his two kids. I'm Uncle Bill to two little Irish girls. If you're going to use social media, use it to set up a time that you can meet with people in person. Right. Have that connection. Don't just use it to doom scroll. Don't just use it to talk shit and get into arguments because it makes you feel better because you own someone else. That's not going to make you happier. It's not going to make you healthier. And so being happy means having those connections with other people so that they can support you. And again, you can support them. That's meaningful shit, man. And that's the thing that has made me the happiest over the last years figuring that out and trying to live it. I love it. I love it. That's cool. Cause now I know where you live, kind of, Bill. So or you know, we're gonna have to connect one day and actually sit down and have a cup of coffee and continue. I will do that, brother. Right. Or a nice steak dinner, whatever you wanna do, right? I love it. I'm from New Mexico, baby. I like the steak. Yeah. Man, nothing like a good steak. ⁓ But this has been a great conversation, right? So this is the point I want to ask you, right? If the audience wants to get a hold of you, there's guys struggling, or just anybody want to ask you questions. ⁓ because we will bring you back once your book is published, because then we can focus on the book and how that can help people and right all that. But how can they get a hold of you, Bill, if they want to reach out to you? Yeah. So if you go to my website, Bill McCamley.net, B-I-L-L-M-C-C-A-M-L-E-Y dot N-E-T. You can get in touch with me there through email. I it goes right to my email account. And you can get in touch with me through social media. ⁓ I try not to spend too much time online, but I do monitor it and try to respond to people. And so if people want to reach out with questions, ⁓ want to know more about the book, want to know more about the mental health stuff I'm doing, I would love, love, love to have those conversations ⁓ to figure out how we do this stuff better. I love it. I love it. Well, you know, this has been a Wonderful and amazing and all the above time, right? I've had such a great conversation. I've enjoyed it to the fullest. Thank you for gracing me with your present. And, you know, I'm grateful that you did take me up on being a guest. So this is My brother, thank you for having me on. And by the way, I want to express gratitude to you. Having these conversations about these really important topics is so damn vital. And you doing that is important. I appreciate the work you're doing, and I encourage you to keep it up. ⁓ I will. One day at a time, as they say. Yes, sir. But you're not quite off the hook just yet, my friend. Yeah, I saved the best question for last. Like there's three. See, that's as much as my brain can remember, right? We were teasing about this, everybody. But the I do save the best for last, and it goes like this. So, Bill, what is the one piece of advice you could give my audience to help them grow as human beings and become better people? Max, I'll I'll say it again. Go have a beer with someone and watch the game this weekend. There's a great NBA game on tomorrow night. ⁓ World Cup is going on for the next 30 days. Football starting pretty soon. Go play Call of Duty with your friend in person, right? Play a role playing game. Go to church. Whatever you have in common with people that you care about, do those things with them in person. And those things allow us to grow, be happier, be more grounded and more connected. And that's what leads to a in a lot of ways a more happy, fulfilled life. Get that shit taken care of. We do that, we're going to be better for ourselves and we're going to be better for our communities. And that's what makes us better, man. I love it. Well, like I said, this has been a great time, Bill. I've had such a good time. I'm sure the audience well, I know I've learned a lot. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Well, you heard him, everybody. You know, if Bill made you think, if Bill taught you something, if Bill made you smile, and my famous, if Bill made you go, Hmm, I like that. Please go to iTunes and leave a five star review and come join us on my new YouTube channel where you can actually see Bill and I have this freaking wonderful, wonderful conversation. Well you can you can Max is good looking, I'm not. So glad advice. Anyway, but like you know, like I said, This was a great time. So again, everybody, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in this world. This is Max from the Fearless Happiness Podcast. Until next time.