Navigating the Crossroads of Life: Faith, Masculinity, and Personal Growth with Nico Lagan

Ever find yourself at a crossroads between the life you're living and the one you're meant to lead? Our latest conversation with Nico Lagan, a luminary in the realm of personal growth and men's coaching, might just illuminate your path. As we unravel Nico's journey from a technical sales career to becoming a beacon for others, we uncover the power of authentic connections in sales, rooted in a profound understanding of others' needs and an unwavering faith in divine orchestration. His insights into the critical nature of faith in shaping belief systems serve as a compass for those of us navigating the tempestuous seas of life's purpose and direction.

This episode isn't just about the individual's quest; it's a deep dive into the societal constructs that mold us – from gender roles within Christianity to the crisis of modern masculinity. Nico and I tackle the sensitive yet crucial topics of motherhood versus career and the integral role of the nuclear family in child development. We also shine a light on the virtues that define a good man in today's world and the dwindling spaces where young men can learn about manhood exclusively among other males. It's a candid examination of the cultural currents shaping the identities of men and women alike, and a call to acknowledge the enduring importance of traditional family values.

Journey with us as Nico shares his personal saga of faith and sacrifice. We discuss the courage required to leave the beaten corporate path and embrace uncertainty, the profound growth that springs from life's challenges, and the pursuit of happiness as a mindset rather than a destination. Whether it's starting a business with the odds stacked against you or finding redemption through service, Nico's story is a testament to the strength inherent in following one's spiritual compass. Join us for an episode that promises to be not only a reflection on personal growth and responsibility but also an inspirational guide to living a life of purpose and impact.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:59

My guest today is featured in Times Square Nico Lagan. He's an influential entrepreneur, men's coach, AI specialist, social media strategist, sales expert, author and host of the VARP-provoking podcast, the Nico Lagan Show. With more than 100,000 followers, his content currently gets between 5 to 10 million monthly views, leading him to appear on TV, radio and podcasts like Sean Kelly's Digital Hour, with over 300 guests, appear under his belt, both as a guest and a host. Nico's story is both inspiring and enlightening.

Speaker 1: 1:40

Nico was an experienced sales engineer in the technical communications sector for over a decade, but it wasn't until his technical knowledge that made him great about his commitment to personal growth and art of human connection. Realizing that effective communication is such about understanding human behavior as is about the subject matter, he delved into the world of neuro-linguistic programming, NLP and psychology. He became a cornerstone of Nico's sales approach. He quickly learned that, leveraging these techniques, he could not only establish rapport with his clients, but make them feel understood and valued. This wasn't just about mimicking gestures or repeating phrases. It was about genuinely connecting, about recognizing a client's underlining needs and addressing them proactively. Welcome, Nico, to the podcast. Well, Nico, it's good to have you on the show today. How are you doing?

Speaker 2: 2:37

I'm good you.

Speaker 1: 2:38

I'm great Enjoying the so far. The new year has gone pretty well, but it's only three days into it, so there's plenty of time to mess it up.

Speaker 2: 2:47

don't worry, that's right, plenty of time.

Speaker 1: 2:50

Plenty of time for things to go south. So far, so good. I'd love to ask my guest this question kind of get a chance to get to know you a little bit better what's the best piece of advice you ever received?

Speaker 2: 3:06

That's a good question. I can't think of one right now. I don't think. Unfortunately, I don't think I was given that many good advice, as in my life they're mostly learned by trial and just by doing, by making mistakes. Because I, off the top of my head, right now I cannot think of a piece of advice that really changed my, changed my life, outside of just listening to myself, like just listening to.

Speaker 2: 3:38

This might sound weird for a lot of people. I don't know exactly the audience, but I've always had instincts, sure, and forever I called it instincts, until about a year ago I discovered that it was just God speaking to me. So that's it. I just I get all the information I need by just listening, so by listening to something that's not necessarily physical in front of me. So advice, I get it. I'm being told what to do all the time. So, but are they advices or, more highly, recommendations that you should follow? It's really. It depends on how you see it. But yeah, to answer your question, I don't have one specific one outside of just make mistakes and learn from them.

Speaker 1: 4:25

You know it's funny. You said that for years I thought I was really smart and then, like you, I had the revelation that it wasn't me who was picking up all these things, but it was God giving me things to do. And I'm like, oh, I hear, I thought these ideas were mine. It was very humbling.

Speaker 2: 4:38

You know. At the same time, I think it's a great thing because, you know, I'm a big fan of Nikola Tesla and one of the smartest guy like even Einstein considered him the smartest guy that ever lived. So, and he speaks in one of his book about how he was able to connect with some type of information base database somewhere, that there's something in the universe that's that he could access. Nothing is invented. That everything's already been invented is just certain people have access to that database, if you will, and they're capable of downloading stuff from it. But he it's interesting because that's how I see it too Like I didn't really I understood what he meant, but I didn't understand it personally. Like I saw what he meant. But then when you realize, once you realize that God's always talking to you, you realize that it doesn't belong to you, and if it doesn't belong to you, all you need to do is to listen and to serve. It makes things extremely simple when you realize that you don't have a lot of control.

Speaker 1: 5:47

Exactly. You know, we always thought that we're just stewards while we're here, that we don't own it. But we're we're borrowers of it. God controls it all and he gives it to us and gives us the task of managing it, being good managers of the resources he gave us. So you're right, You're just stepping into the resources that really aren't yours anyway and only here for a limited time while you're here to use those. So make the best use of the time that you have.

Speaker 2: 6:12

But one thing you do need to have as an individual, though, and that one is on you as faith.

Speaker 1: 6:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:18

This. Unfortunately, that one's on you. That's 100% you. God cannot give you faith. You're going to have to have faith by yourself. You just need to start listening, paying attention to what's going on around you, and you know, if you believe in coincidences, you don't have a lot of faith. Right? You know, people question my faith all the time, not in a way that they don't believe I believe, but just simply that they don't believe, and I'm crazy for believing in. My first question to them is always the same Do you believe in coincidences or do you believe that everything happens for a reason? Right, and I've come to realize that if you're telling me that everything's a coincidence, you don't have any faith, like zero. You don't have any faith in something greater than ourselves. Right, then, and there, that's the, that's the I don't want to say a red flag, but that's a good indicator.

Speaker 1: 7:10

Yeah, that also kind of absolves of any consequences. If we believe in kind of happens, then we don't have to take responsibility for any of our actions.

Speaker 2: 7:17

So and you know that's an interesting question because I I'm lucky that I don't know if I'm lucky or that's just the way I am. I tend to ask a lot of questions, right, and I, until about a year and a half ago, I did not go to church, like I could count on one hand the amount of time that I've been to church in my whole life prior to a year and a half ago, and now it's every Sunday we have, we meet on Wednesdays to do to do Bible studies, and I'm not the type to go to church If I'm going to invest that much time. I have questions. I read a lot. I like I'm concentrating right now on just on reading books from Lee Strobles, from CS Lewis, and I'm reading a lot of man, what's his?

Speaker 2: 8:00

name Lee, not Lee Tim Keller, oh yeah, and and I'm the type to go to church with questions, right, I wait for the pastor afterwards and what do you think about this and what do you think about that? And no, I think you're wrong. I think this is what it means, like I have no problems challenging people and getting challenged, but I think this is this belongs to me, though Like you need to question what you're being told. But fate is everything. You need to be able to take things that you don't understand. That you know. I like to say that way. I us, as human beings, we're playing checkers and God's playing chess. Right, he understands the long game. We have no clue. We were just supposed to do our part. Do it with faith, knowing that you might never understand what your actual real full length role was, but just to do what you're being told to do and shutting the hell up. Yes, sometimes that's sometimes. That's what you need to do. You just need to shut the hell up and do what you're being told.

Speaker 1: 9:03

I had guys like you at my congregation at the center and kept me at the church asking me all kinds of questions.

Speaker 2: 9:07

No, and that's me I'm. I'm always like that because I'm a bit. You know, I come from a Buddhist background. Okay, so I wasn't to Buddhism for years, years, years. Like I probably wasn't to it for a good 10 years, and you know, it's recent, like it's it's really a few years ago. My buddy started suggesting I read the Bible. He's a Christian, but he recommended I start reading and I did, and over since we've been traveling the US, it's really been more and more and more and more, and especially recently that's all I'm reading about right now and I come to realize that, you know, buddhism is simple, buddhism is selfish. It's all about me finding illumination, me being enlightened. And then you look at Christianity. Christianity is probably the hardest religion out there, because God expects a ton from you, like if you accept to be a believer in Jesus Christ, if you believe that God exists, if you believe that you're supposed to be more like Jesus.

Speaker 2: 10:12

It makes life a lot more. It does not make life easy. It means that you're full, that by default you're a sinner. By default you're full of flaws, by default. There's nothing you can do to redeem yourself except to accept the fact that you are full of flaws and you're a sinner. Somebody else died for your sins, so you don't need to pay it back somehow, but you need to repent. So it needs to be, it needs to be real.

Speaker 2: 10:37

You can't just say, hey, I've done wrong my whole life, but now I believe. And it's not true. That's not what it means, but it's Christianity stuff. That's why I have a lot of questions. Right, yeah, I'm a philosopher at the same time and I think theology, psychology and philosophy they all interconnect. Which is why, right now, I spend more time reading about the Bible than I do reading the Bible, Because I like to understand what people believe. Then I'll reread it again and I'll say you know what? Okay, now I okay. Yeah, I see what he's saying. Right, Like, I see what he's saying, I disagree with what he's saying, so it's yeah. Guys like me are either a very good thing or a nightmare for pastors.

Speaker 1: 11:24

No, you were a good thing. I love to be questioned. I love to because it made me, made me think too, because you can easily sleepwalk through your faith unless you have to sit there and really think about difficult things. And so you know you just can't not ever go deeper than that. So it's always fun to me, like I like to always joke, I like to take a text and unpack it and look at it from historical, Look at it from doctrine, look at it from theology, because it is so much there that if you missed the history part of what, what did the people of that time here in that text? It's not just taken and transporting in 2022 or 2024, but it's like what did they hear? What does that mean for us today?

Speaker 2: 12:09

And I think there's a lot of context that needs to be explained to right. Right, like there's a lot of words, like I was just listening to a video earlier. There were three women talking about Christianity, about gospel, about the gospel, and they were they're all Christians, but they were saying one of them was saying that she was studied. She studied the gospel for a long time and there was a specific passage that was referring to women.

Speaker 2: 12:32

It's in Genesis, but I can't remember the exact, the actual verse, but it was saying that God created us to serve men like sorry, created women to serve men. That's how the translation is in the Bible. But then she started studying the Jewish texts, when it was still haven't been translated and it's not the same thing. It's not saying that women are supposed to be subservient to men. They're supposed to serve men, but in a way where they help us achieve something that we can't achieve by ourselves. So it's very interesting because it needs to be put into context, because if you read it, you're like what the hell did you just say I'm supposed to be a slave to my man? That's not quite what he what's written there, right?

Speaker 1: 13:18

Yeah, it's like the word that the whole wife submit to your husbands that Paul talked about. He's not actually saying that women are less than men. As a matter of fact, as you look at the context, that Paul is actually lifting up women because women were second class citizens and he's like look, love your wife as you love yourself, in other words, elevate up to the level where you are, and that submits just means that you are both in this together and you compliment each other. Is what Paul was actually saying. So if you look at it and goes to admit and you think in dog and do what I tell you to do and shut up, it's not exactly what Paul's saying.

Speaker 2: 13:56

You know it's interesting because there's a lot of Christian men that talk about this and they're always trying to elevate women. They're always telling the new. You know there's three waves of feminism. The first two were just we. The first is we want to vote. The second, we want to be equal to men when it comes to the workplace. And the third is trying to replace a perceived patriarchy by a matriarchy Right.

Speaker 2: 14:18

So the women today are being liked to by being told that they can act like men, like concentrate on your career, don't care about kids, don't live in your masculine energy. And then they wonder why they're twice to four times more depressed in their thirties and forties compared to women with children. So there's but there's a lot of men that are coming out now on the Christian side to say, listen, we're not saying that you can't do those things, but this is not what you were supposed to do. You were supposed to be a mother, you were supposed to give children, you were supposed to be a caregiver. You're so, and you know it only makes sense if you look at the way women and men are and I say this as a joke, to a lot of podcasts I've been on. But can you imagine, as a man, carrying something inside your body for nine months, having it destroyed your whole outside? You're all inside out and still love it when it came out, not wanting to kill it, right? Of course not Every man out there is like I would strangle that kid, but yet you look at a mother and she'll see this as one of the best experiences she'll never have. She'll ever have in her life. Why she was meant to do. She was meant to do this, but it's not a sub job. That's the big lie, right, it's like women believe nowadays that being a mother is a sub job, yet nobody else can do it. Every single man, every single woman comes from a woman. There's only two things that can create life God and women. Right, there's not one man out there that can create good, that can create life just yet. So it's very interesting that women are seeing their role as a sub par, and I'm a happy, at least that I see Christian men coming out and calling their lies to say hold on here. We're not saying you're supposed to be attached to the fridge and to the oven and just taking care of children, but we're saying that that's what you're supposed to be doing. That's what you were meant to do. We can't do it as well as you can.

Speaker 2: 16:13

This is why a nucleus family look at whatever statistics you want Nucleus family is the best way to raise children and, like it or not, 90% of you know. I was looking at the statistics from a new book and it turns out that about a third of boys right now are raised without their fathers in the house Wow. And 90% of single parents are women and they're doing a terrible job. Like a woman as a single parent is terrible. The 10% of men that are single parents do a suit. They do a lot better at raising children that women do and, like it or not, it's a fact. Yet we're lying to them to say that they're able to raise a boy, for example, by themselves. But how can a woman teach a boy how to become a man? It's not possible.

Speaker 1: 17:00

Right, exactly.

Speaker 2: 17:01

In the same way as a man cannot teach a daughter how to become a woman, but he needs to put women he believes in around her to teach her. Same is true right. So it's interesting how all of this is explained in the Bible. All of this has been known for years, but today we don't want to believe it because somehow we've come to believe the lies that women are lesser because they take care of children. It's absolutely insanity to me.

Speaker 1: 17:30

You know, I think the other aspect of that too, along that same line, is we have devalued the family in general. We don't understand that having a child is not about losing something. Because I keep hearing now this new trend is you know, look at us, we're too single, we're too married people who can do what we want to do. We can travel, we can do all that because we don't have any kids. But you also are very selfish when you don't have kids. You don't understand sacrifice. You don't understand what it's like to love something outside of yourself like you. Would your child or your wife and children help you to learn to be less selfish?

Speaker 2: 18:10

You know, I think there's a fallacy into that. I just can't believe. I just can't remember what it was, what it was called. I posted about this recently. I just can't remember what that trend is called. But I'm 41. I don't have any kids. It's by choice, because I never met a woman that until my partner, until my girlfriend right now, I never met a woman that her deep rooted values aligned with mine.

Speaker 2: 18:34

I knew that if I had kids with that, with a woman that I've been with before, it would have been a big problem. I would have ended up in jail for murder because I wouldn't have been able like I did not want to go down. I did not want to go down that road, but I've always wanted some. I just knew that you need to have the proper partner to do it, because I come from a broken down family and I know the impact that it has on the kid Exactly, and so I sacrifice not to get some. But now I do, now I want some. This is something we want. This is something that we want this year is just that, that understanding that we don't want kids at all, that my life is going to be better without it. You're insane. You're absolutely insane. You're probably just too young to understand too, right? I think there's a lot of that too. There's a lot of ignorance in that, in those type of those type of trends, right?

Speaker 1: 19:30

And if you think about the long term of that, if that becomes a worldwide trend, we humanity is gone.

Speaker 2: 19:40

Because but it might not be that bad of a thing, because a lot of the people that say if you listen to those videos, like the trend that we're talking about here, if you listen to some of the videos, they are some of the most selfish people I've ever heard. Right Like the way they speak. They're so selfish. So at one point I'm like maybe it's not that bad of an idea that you don't have kids.

Speaker 1: 20:00

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 20:00

You know, we used to live in a world when the world was harder, when men did not protect everything, when men did not build a society to protect everything around it. People did not live as long as we do today. People that did not know how to survive did not survive. So the ignorant or I have better terms for them, but let's say the ignorant people did not have children because they wouldn't have been able to do so, they couldn't take care of them, they didn't know what it took to do it. But now everybody's surviving. It's not very complicated for people to have kids today. Right, everybody's going to. The government is going to take care of you if you can't afford it.

Speaker 1: 20:41

Right, so we talked about, so it's yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2: 20:45

Yep, sorry, Go for it. No, no, no, go for it.

Speaker 1: 20:48

Well, we were talking about the trend in the feminist movement. I think the other trend that I want to talk to you a little bit about, too is what's happened to masculinity in our culture. It's almost like it's under under this new kind of assault, where we're not even sure what it means to be masculine anymore. So if you were trying to define that for people who have lost, lost idea, but masculine, how would you define it?

Speaker 2: 21:15

Well, I'm writing my second book exactly on that right now. So there are. There are five virtues of a good man. A man needs to have courage, a man needs to be a protector, he needs to be a provider, he needs to have temperance and he needs to have faith. And those are, of course, you can have a lot more than that. There's a lot of skills that are attached to those, but there's a massive difference between virtues and skills. Right, you can have a thousand skills, but there's not a lot of virtues in life Like those are deep rooted belief that you have that define who you are as a person. Skill is just a talent that you've developed, right, or could be a natural one. It could be something you develop, but virtues are something you're going to have to work extremely hard and you're going to live your life by.

Speaker 2: 21:58

And I've done a lot of studies and I, you know, I come from a broken down family. My dad left when I was 14 years old and I can look at the past 27 years and those are the qualities that I've built over the years, like it was done over a long time because I didn't really have anybody to teach me. It's always something like I had to find people to teach me portions of them. Like, oh, you know, I learned courage through learning martial arts. But in order to learn martial arts, I had to be bullied first, to realize that I was a coward. So and it took me years to deal with that to say you know what you can be a victim all your life or you can choose to do something about it. If you choose to do something about it, that means you need to know how to fight. That means that you need to go in a gym where there's a bunch of killers that are going to punch you and kick you and submit you, and you know what you're going to hurt, you're going to bleed, you're going to do this, you're going to do that, and these you know. Those are all the realizations that I've had over the years, and it's missing today, like we don't have any one.

Speaker 2: 23:01

Like I said earlier, the third of our boys are raised without fathers in the household, and so that means that one out of three boy does not have somebody to teach him what it is to be a man Right, and that number is growing. That number is just getting, is just growing and growing, and growing and growing and we're losing all our rights of passages. Like about the only right of passage that we still had was the Boy Scouts, and I'm not saying that it was a great one, but I'm saying that at least it was something that was reserved for boys, where boys could be around mature men. That would teach them skills, that would teach them values, that would teach them all the benefits of being around other boys, being around other men, being able to be boys.

Speaker 2: 23:49

You know the old expression boys will be boys, yeah, but not today. Boys will be girls. Right, like when boys act like boys, now they're being reprimanded for doing so and not being like little girls, and this is problematic. You look at society. What? Name me one right of passage that's still here in in North America?

Speaker 2: 24:13

I can't think of one Boy Scouts was about the only one, and now women, girls, are in Boy Scouts. So there's no place for boys today that is well known where they can be around other boys, around other men, and develop what it is, learn what it is to be a man. That we always need boys and men. Boys and men today always need to be careful about the amount of masculinity they put out there. It's a very interesting concept to to understand or to to realize, because, when you think about it, this is a brutal example, but it's absolutely true that I was watching a video the other day and the guy was on a podcast with a bunch of younger women that was saying that men weren't needed, that they don't need men, this and that. And the guy looked at her and he's like, ok, you know what? Do you realize that the only reason you have rights is that we allow you to have rights? Because, as a woman, you do not have, you do not have the physical need to force people into submission. So, technically, men allow women to be free? Why? Because we're supposed to serve our family, we're supposed to build a society where we're free. We're free I'll put it in air quotes as free as we can, but this is the role of a man. But it blows my mind that women today look at men and say we don't need you.

Speaker 2: 25:36

Yet If something, if something happens to you, you need help. Who do you call a police officer? Ninety three percent of them are men. Firefighter above 90 percent of them are men. Military above eighty five to 90 percent of them are men. If you look at construction workers, if you look at the 20, the 20 most dangerous jobs right now, 95 percent of the people that do them are men. Not because women can do it, because women don't want to, because it is not something that appeals to women, because you know what Men are bigger, we're stronger, we're faster, we have more muscle mass or bone densities. Higher, we take more risks. We're ready to do more because it is into us to help. It isn't to us to protect, it isn't to us to serve our family, to serve our community, to serve God. In the same way as it is into women to bear children, to take care of the children, because they can teach them things that men can't Like.

Speaker 2: 26:36

If you look at emotional intelligence, this is taught by women. Women need to teach emotional intelligence to their children. It does not come from men. It comes from feminine energy. Yet study shows that women will not be a good mother if they do not feel secure in their environment. Who makes them feel secure? Men? I'm 215 pounds. My girlfriend is 110 pounds. Guess who protects who? Right, no, no, but seriously.

Speaker 2: 27:06

But this is the thing, right? We live in a world that women are being told since they're little girls and I'm not just saying women are saying that to girls, fathers are saying that. So our fathers of women right now are not even real men and they're telling their daughters you can do whatever you want in life, you don't need a man. Eh, you know what? First, you're wrong because she needed a masculine man and you weren't there. That's why all those lies are being fed to them is because you're not a real man yourself.

Speaker 2: 27:38

But at the same time, they're being told that everywhere that women can do whatever it is that they want without ever relying on a man. And you know, one of my buddies calls it the aquarium effect. We all, we all the little fishies in the tank. And this is the society. But most people don't realize that there's a lot of people around that tank that are making sure the water pH is perfect, that you have enough water, that you have food, that you're not dying of overheat, that the temperature in the room is great, like there's so many things that are taken care of in the background, behind the curtains, that women don't have to deal with on a day to day base. So they're, so they're born in a world that's so far detached from the real world that they they're capable of saying you know what? We don't need men.

Speaker 1: 28:28

So, in your opinion, how does society get back to I would say we're talking about as societies out of balance. We used to have balance where we understood our roles and we respected those roles, because all those roles were important. No role was more important than the other, but we needed those two roles to work together. We needed the men to provide a certain thing, we need women to provide a nurture, we need them to provide emotional intelligence. We needed men to be protectors. So now the society's kind of flipped upside down. How do we begin to get the next generation, even this generation, to really appreciate their God given role in the world?

Speaker 2: 29:09

You know, it's a great question, because one thing that I know for sure through coaching, through my life, is nobody changes unless you hit rock bottom. Nobody changes until the pain of continuing what you're doing right now is too much to bear. When you realize, as Einstein described it, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. So once you realize that the pain of doing the same thing over and over again is no longer bearable, that you are completely insane trying to always do the same thing, then you're ready to change. So it's unfortunate what I'm going to say there, but our society will probably need to collapse in order for people to go back to a time where they're going to understand that there are roles, there are gender roles, there are things that are associated with your sex, because we live in a capitalist world, in a capitalist society where we have socialists with a thousand dollar iPhone with they go, they drink a six dollar coffee from Starbucks every day that have a three thousand dollar laptop, that's a Mac, and they're telling us that, oh, we should be more socialist. This is how disconnected they actually are from the real world. Can you really teach them something? I don't think so. I don't think there's any amount of information that I can provide them, that I can try to drill into them, that will be enough to convince them that that's what they need to do, that they have roles and you know what being a man sucks. Being a man is very hard. You have expectations to be selfless. You're supposed to do what needs to get done, what it needs to get done, however you feel about it, because that's what's expected of you, that's what God wants from you. But that means you're accountable. That means you have responsibilities. That means that you can't be lazy. That means you can't be a coward. So there's a lot of things that entails. Just like Christianity is demanding. You know what being a man is very demanding too, right? So how do you go back to teaching that? I don't know that you can. I don't know that for them, you know. I think that there are people that can be helped. There are people that will eventually get to a point that they are okay. There's something that needs to change. Something's not going well. Something needs to change.

Speaker 2: 31:42

One of the things that my second book that I'm writing right now is is going to be for is for single mothers. I'm using my story to tell them listen, this is what it is to be raised by a single mother. This is what I've done, and I'm going to talk about my drug addiction. I'm going to talk about the fact that I was a drug dealer, all the the the, the thief that I was, all the bad things that I've done when I was younger. To say listen until I picked myself up. This is what happened, but you know, some of my friends ended up in jail. Some of my friend ended up dying. I was lucky, but do you does that? Is that what you want for your son? No, well, except that you can't do it yourself. So I know there's a, there's an education that needs to be done on that level, but are those women ever going to listen unless there's something really happening right now where their son is already going on the wrong path and they're like, ooh, they're panicking now I don't know what to do?

Speaker 1: 32:43

I'm you, would hope that you don't have to get to that point, because at that point your son is going down the wrong path. It might be too late for that son, so it might be, it might not be.

Speaker 2: 32:53

I'm hoping that you know. I'm hoping that guys like me can show them what I understand. This is why I say I'm not your typical Christian, because I'm not a goody-to-shoe Christian that's grew up in the Bible Belt in the US I come from. I swear a lot. I say what needs to get said. I don't care that you agree with me or not. I'm not here to tiptoe around your feelings. If my words hurt your feeling, guess what it's your problem. If your life sucks, guess what it's your fault. But at the same time, if you have the power to destroy your life, guess what. You have the power to make it good too. You just need to have guidance, and I think that that's all we can do. I don't think that there's much more that we can do, except for me, for example, to create the best content that I can do, to reach as many people that I can do in order for them to see me as a guide, to take my life experience and to say you know what? Okay, I get it If he went through this and I've been through this too but he's been out of it. Now he's doing a lot better. Now he's helping others. Well, maybe I should copy a bit of what he did. Maybe all I need is some steps that I can put one after the other, just little steps that you can take one after the other, and then it's going to bring you to something. Or you know some of the great.

Speaker 2: 34:14

Look at coaches. Look at any coach, especially, I like to use sports coach or martial art coaches. Most of the coaches out there are not there to really teach you about sports. They use a share value, a share passion. Let's say basketball.

Speaker 2: 34:30

I grew up playing basketball. Let's say that a good basketball coach is going to use basketball to teach me life lessons, but he's going to do it into a context of basketball, because I'm too young to understand, or I'm too ignorant at that point to understand. If he would sit me down and say, hey, bro, you need to stop doing this, you need to stop doing this, you need to be more disciplined, you need to help more around the house, I wouldn't understand, I wouldn't be paying attention. But if you show it to me by using something that I love basketball I will start to understand. And this is all we can do. Right Is, try to find ways to communicate with those young men, how to communicate with those single mothers to say this is the reality, I feel you, I understand you, I know where you are, I've been there, but there's a way out, and this how you can do it.

Speaker 1: 35:19

So if you had a message for a young man, young female right now, who may be teenagers, who are just starting out on life, what message do you have for them today?

Speaker 2: 35:30

I can't really talk to girls because I'm not like. I don't know what it is to be a young girl. I don't know what it is and no matter what people say out there, there's no man out there that understands what it is to be a woman. You can do whatever you want to your body. It won't make you a woman, bro. I'm just gonna say it right now.

Speaker 1: 35:50

But you just mess up a YouTube feed on that one.

Speaker 2: 35:54

No, I didn't name names. I did not name names.

Speaker 2: 35:57

Believe me, I talk about this every day. I know how to get around it. But all to say, that, when it comes to, when it comes to young men find people to emulate, because this is the this is, and it's a double-edged sword, because I made the mistake when I was younger. I'm a big fan of rap, and not the type of rap they listen to today. Like we're talking about the Wu Tang, the Tupac, the notorious BIG mob deep. We're talking about the guys that grew up in the ghetto, that were poor, that made millions To me. I was looking at this and I'm like, oh bro, that's what I want. Like those guys are amazing and this is the thing. If you don't show those young men good role models, they will find themselves, they will look for them, they will find them. And this is what I did, right, I looked in all the wrong places because I didn't have somebody to tell me this is wrong. This is right.

Speaker 2: 36:49

And if you're a young boy, if you're a single mother, that's up to you to do so. If you're a single mother, it's up to you to find your accept the fact that you cannot teach him how to become a man. You can't, it's not in your power to do so, but accept. But your responsibility as a single man, as a single mother, is to find men that he can tailor himself after, men that do possess the virtues of courage, protection, providing temperance and faith, and make sure that they interact with each other. And you know, the best advice that I can give to a young man is start martial arts. If you're a single mother, you have a son, put him in martial arts. Find him An MMA school, a Muay Thai school, a boxing school. Take one of those schools. It doesn't even matter the type of martial arts you go after. I would suggest there's a few that I would suggest because they translate more in a protection situation later on in life. Like you can learn that might as well learn skills that are going to be useful in the future. But the first thing I would suggest is put them in martial art. If you don't know where, hit me up, find me on social media, text me, I'll find you a school. I don't care where you are in the world, I'll find you. I know hundreds of gym owners. I'll find you somebody somewhere that can help you.

Speaker 2: 38:08

But the point in the matter is that martial arts will not only give your son courage, self-understanding, discipline. It will show him how to become a protector. It will surround him by men. Most of MMA, most of Muay Thai coaches, most of martial art coaches that I know are great men or just literally good men that want to help young men. And not only that, but the maths.

Speaker 2: 38:33

You know men when, when you're training martial art, you'll interact with people that wash floors, like you're. You're going to interact with CEOs of massive companies. You never know who the hell you're dealing with. You never know who it is that you're training with, and in 20 years of experience, I've always seen respect. I've always seen it. There's people out there that want to teach you, not only the coach, but students. You're going to find people to help you.

Speaker 2: 38:59

So just surround your son by good men, surround him by masculinity, surround them in a place where he can exert this energy, because he's not a little girl. Boys should be playing outside every day. They should be burning hours of energy every day. I'm 41 years old man and I still go to the gym four to six times a week, not only because it's good for me, but it's good for this, it's good for my mind, or else I go crazy Like I have a lot of energy, even at my age, and you know what I need to spend it, and I've understood that a long time ago. It's been more than 20 years, but this again is not even, is not even taught to our children anymore, especially our boys. So martial art will develop your son in a way that you can't even comprehend right now.

Speaker 1: 39:46

Wow, that's a good advice, so I love to know. I appreciate that.

Speaker 2: 39:50

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:51

No, it really is.

Speaker 2: 39:52

I've thought about it before.

Speaker 1: 39:55

So I'm curious what are you excited about in this season of your life?

Speaker 2: 40:01

What am I? You know, life over the past year have been interesting because I completely gave myself to God, Like I quit my corporate job. We left Canada and we've been traveling the US and Mexico ever since. We've been going from state to state with no real reason to go there outside of what I'm being told to do. It's been extremely expensive. We've we've spent a boatload of money.

Speaker 2: 40:32

It's been extremely hard because it's a lot of stress, because I started a business at the same time and starting a business when you're trying to figure out what you're supposed to do, probably not the best of timing. But all to say that it's been a very stressful time, like the past few months especially have been extremely hard on my girlfriend and I. But one thing that I know is that pain and suffering are the two best teachers, and just read the Bible. It will show you. God always puts pain and suffering on the path of the people that he believes in, the people that he knows are supposed to do something. He will make you hurt because unfortunately we're a bit stupid, especially men, we, I know for myself I need to get smack in the back of the head every nine, then I need to lose everything in order to realize what actually matters in my life. And this is the path that I've been on over the past few months, and it's getting better, but there's still a lot of learning to do.

Speaker 2: 41:32

And am I excited about it? Am I tired of it? Am I hope? Can I not wait for it to be done? Yes, yes and yes, but I'm trying. You know, happiness is a state of mind, is not a destination. It's something. You can decide to be pissed off right now, or you can decide to be happy right now. This is 100% on you. That's your choice, and you know, I always keep in mind a story that I heard years ago where a man was asking God for patience and God looked at him and said you know what? I can't give you patience, but one thing that I can do is put you in situations that will force you to become patient. To become patient, sorry, and this is what the past few months have been, and I got a feeling that the next couple of months are going to be a bit of the same. But yeah, I'm excited about being a hurting. I've embraced pain a long time ago and I'm excited to see what comes out of it.

Speaker 1: 42:33

So if I, if I pick this up right from you, what I'm hearing is be careful, what you ask God for, Not necessarily because I didn't really ask for this. He volunteered it for you.

Speaker 2: 42:48

I don't think it was a volunteering either. I think I was. You know, this is the thing Once you start being self aware. In my early 20s I stopped everything that I did. I went back to school, I stopped doing drugs, I did a complete 180. And you know, I started becoming accountable and I'm not saying I'm perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I started becoming more and more accountable, more and more aware of what goes on around me. And now it's to a point that I just have faith. It's to a point that I just something speaks to me. I know how to talk to God, I know how to listen to Him and I know what I'm supposed to do. I don't understand the goal, I don't understand where this is going to take me, but I understand that I'm supposed to be doing exactly what I'm doing right now. There's no doubt in my mind. It's 100% what I'm supposed to be doing.

Speaker 2: 43:41

But I didn't ask for this. I could have stayed a sales engineer and make $300,000, $400,000 a year and just buy more houses and just sit and just pack a bank account, continue investing the way I was doing, and it would have been easy. But what's the number one regret of the dying, living a life others expected and not the one you wanted to live, and I want to live the life that God wants me to live. So that means sacrifice, that means not knowing what's going to happen, that means having a lot of faith, and this is all I have today, is really the faith that I'm doing the right thing, because that's what I'm being told to do. But it comes with the consequences of not having an easy life.

Speaker 1: 44:32

Right, so I love to ask my guest this question. Eco, this has been a great conversation, but as you think about all the things that the path that God has led you on, what do you want your legacy to be?

Speaker 2: 44:46

I don't know, I don't have a legacy path. You know, there was something in Egyptian mythology that really resonated with me and I've carried this in my mind for probably 10, 15 years now. They believed that when they die, they will face God, and God would take their heart and put it on a scale, and on the other side of the scale there would be a feather. And if their heart was lighter than a feather, they would be admitted into heaven. And I'm a big fan of philosophy, I love psychology, so I like to break down things and try to understand what it means. So basically, I broke it down to this If you do more good than bad, you will be able to go to hell.

Speaker 2: 45:31

You won't go to hell. You'll be able if you love God, if you understand that you're supposed to serve, if you understand that you're supposed to put the needs of others before your own. You do more good than you do bad, and for the bad that you do, you repent. You'll get into heaven. So I think that my legacy on earth, as much as you know. The only thing that I hope is that I can leave this place, that the planet was a better place with me in it than without me.

Speaker 1: 46:01

I like it. Yeah, that whole part of faith is, you know, leads us to do the things that God wants us to do, and the results of those good things are based on the faith that we have. I like that.

Speaker 2: 46:14

And they don't belong to me either. No, so the effort belongs to me, the faith belongs to me. This is something I need to make sure that I do, no matter how I feel. This is 100% on me, because God can have all the expectations in the world. If I choose to sit on my bum and watch Netflix day in, day out, well, guess what? My destiny is not going to happen and we'll have to wait for another time to somebody to pick up the slack, right, right, but if you have the courage. That's why my five virtues are so important to me, because they are. You know, faith is not the fifth virtue, because it's the least important To me. Faith wraps everything together. But you know, and I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna ask you, as a pastor what do you think comes first, courage or faith?

Speaker 1: 47:08

I think faith comes first. I think courage comes out of faith.

Speaker 2: 47:14

Or, you know, 100 years ago, I would have agreed with you because men were courageous right, because men had the courage. You know, you read some CS Lewis and you, if you put into context that he was, he wrote a lot of his books during the first and second World War.

Speaker 1: 47:30

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 47:31

He wrote he was on the radio talking to young men that were at war. He did not need to explain to them that they needed to be courageous. Right, they were at war already. Those guys were courageous. That was, men 100 years ago were courageous, but this is not the case of today. Look around you, can you? Can you say that the average man is courageous or the average man's a coward? Be honest.

Speaker 1: 47:55

Yeah, it's hard to find courage.

Speaker 2: 47:59

And look in America right now, where a white Christian male like me is pointed the finger all the time, like, if you believe in Christ and you're unfortunately, if you're Christian, you're not going to be liked very much in today's society, right? So it takes courage to even be Christian nowadays. So this is why, like I had this conversation with pastors before and I don't I still don't know In my heart I think that you need courage in order to have faith. But yeah, it's again, I love philosophy.

Speaker 1: 48:34

Yeah, I get you. So, Nico, for those who are listening and want to hear more of the things you're working on and doing, where can they find your podcast and where can they find you on social media?

Speaker 2: 48:47

Just go to my website, NicoLagincom. All my stuff is there. There's all the links in the world are right off of there.

Speaker 1: 48:53

Yeah, I wrote to you so I got some nice blog posts there, got good content, so I encourage people to look you up and follow what you're doing. I appreciate it Well, Nico. Thanks so much for just really diving in and having this engaging conversation. Blessings on the work you're doing, and when's your book do out?

Speaker 2: 49:15

I would say, man, I've written a book already and I always think it takes less time than it actually is. So some, I would say, somewhere in the next three months, okay, because I've written a lot of it already. But it's just to put it, to reorganize it in a way that it makes sense. It does take time.

Speaker 1: 49:34

So so we look at what you have a name for us to look for it.

Speaker 2: 49:42

I'm battling a few ones. It's always the biggest pain is to find out.

Speaker 1: 49:45

I know, I know the today, but I don't want to.

Speaker 2: 49:48

I don't want to. I don't want to give them out, because those I don't. I don't own copyrights on it and I spent a lot of time thinking about it, so I don't want somebody to steal it.

Speaker 1: 49:58

So when it comes out, we can find on your website, though I take it right.

Speaker 2: 50:01

Yeah, absolutely, Absolutely Alright. So I'll run a lot of ads on it. I'll advertise it everywhere. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 50:07

So give us that website one more time.

Speaker 2: 50:11

Nico laggincom.

Speaker 1: 50:14

Well, thanks again, Nico, and have a blessed new year. Thanks for being on the show. I really appreciate the conversation.

Speaker 2: 50:21

Absolutely. Thanks for having me on brother.