Why Moving 800 Miles Didn't Fix His Life Crisis with Jake Kennington

Jake [00:00:00] I firmly believe it's not selfish to work on yourself. I think it is of self-interest, but I think it's one of the most important things you can do, not only to show up with your highest potential to what you can do in a day and all those tasks that we have and responsibilities, but also so that we can best serve the people that we love.

Hector Fellas, what's going on? I hope this episode finds you well, and I hope this episode leaves you better than when it found you. Today's episode is with Jake Kennington, and he is an engineer. He is a children's book author, he's a coach and just a good solid guy who has some great insights for guys who are trying to put it all together.

Hector He's a father, he's a husband, a business owner, and someone who, similar to a lot of you guys out there, is navigating life and trying to do it while being a great guy and a great father, all those roles, right? To really play his role as well. And that's what I think that this episode is really about, is how to

Hector [00:01:00] be a great man.

Hector So enough of me, y'all, let's get into today's episode with Jake Kennington.

Hector Jake, welcome to the Modern Masculinity Podcast. It's great to have you here.

Jake Hey, Hector. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be on the show and chat for a bit.

Hector I always ask our guests to take us into their world and share a little bit of the muck that they're working through today as a man. I shared before we hopped on that I've got a sick kid who, before we're recording this, fell asleep on the couch.

Hector The little guy was hacking away over the weekend. And so it's been an interesting journey. What sort of challenges or obstacles do you find yourself still navigating as a man today?

Jake Yeah, I loved hearing about your kids. I also have kids of my own. I've been married for 15 years and we've got four little ones.

Jake [00:02:00] We've got two older boys that are eight and 11 years old, and then two little girls that are two and four. And so as you can imagine, and all your listeners can imagine, if you've got kids at home, we're just busy and there's sick things going on. We just got over some sicknesses.

Jake There's the holidays, there's sports. My oldest son just did a science fair project, which was, all these things are super fun, but they're time consuming and trying to show up to be a dad. So although it's great and I love doing it, it's a lot of work and a lot of burden on my shoulders sometimes.

Jake So that's probably the biggest muck that I'm going through, just the excitement of being a father and a dad and a husband as good as I can. I also work a full-time job as a structural engineer. Then I own a business as well. And so trying to balance those two things, or those three things, right?

Jake Family and two jobs can be quite difficult at times. But life is good. I can't complain. And we're all happy here and healthy.

Hector [00:03:00] Yeah, I remind myself of that often. Aside from this cold, prior to this we were running on a few months of perfect attendance. My son brought his December perfect attendance home on Monday, and then he missed school on Tuesday, or vice versa.

Hector But I'm impressed and grateful that it took this long for the school year for them to get sick. But it can be a lot. And I think that that is sort of the theme of this podcast is that doing one of those things that you mentioned is its own challenge, being a great dad, being a great husband or partner, having a business, having a job, trying to keep your understanding.

Hector All of those in their own are their own worthy foe and it seems like we have aspirations of putting it all together for ourselves, which I don't think there's been too many models of that before, or things that people that we can look to to say like, oh, they had it all figured out.

Hector 'Cause it seems like the people who we thought had it all figured out, maybe didn't actually.

Jake Yeah, totally. There's a lot of balls to juggle, a lot of things to do, and I try to not come off too negative there. I try to view all those things as challenges and great things that I have in my life.

Jake [00:04:00] I wouldn't ask for anything different. I'm at a good spot and I enjoy my business and my career as an engineer. I love my kids and my wife. And so although there are things to be dealt with, they're exciting and the future's bright.

Hector Yeah, I think one of the things that we've talked about is going up the ladders of manhood.

Hector Big life events tend to be the catalyst for those things, whether it's having a kid or starting a business or getting married or whatever it may be. And that this is what we asked for, this is what we wanted. And I think that so many times we end up getting exactly what we wanted.

Hector And in that moment, can we choose to be grateful or to sort of damn it? And I'm like you and try and remember that, but I think it can be a challenge sometimes when you're in the middle of it to remind yourself like, no, these are the good old days. I just don't know it yet.

Jake Yeah, totally. It reminded me of an experience I have with my own family and my kids over 11 years ago now, 'cause my son's 11.

Jake [00:05:00] I wrote a children's book, and I wrote it for my unborn son. My wife was pregnant at the time and I wanted to pass on some life lessons, things that I learned from my own experience that I could teach him and distill it into this book.

Jake So I wrote it for him, self-published it. It was a passion project, a family project for a while. We kept it within the family. We never put it up on Amazon or anything like that. And eventually we did, like 10 years later, almost two years ago now. We self-published it on Amazon.

Jake But the premise of the story was about this ladder or different experience in life of becoming a man step by step. And the story was about us having our first child. How our life was gonna be turned upside down completely. We knew that from the outside looking in, but we'd never gone through that experience.

Jake [00:06:00] And again, I wrote that book about that going from just the two of us to having a kid, but it was written from the perspective of our dog. And so his life was great with us, right? Just the three of us. And then all of a sudden there's this kid that kind of took over all our time and attention and he got kind of kicked to the curb.

Jake Long story short is, he gained another friend, a fourth member of the family and somebody that loves him dearly. And so I think we know what we're signing up for to an extent before we get to that next ladder or that next step. But a lot of it's unknown, right? It's a little scary and you don't really know what you're signing up for until you get there.

Jake And that could be fatherhood, that could be getting married, that could be starting a business, that could be your career. I signed up to be an engineer when I was in college. I had no idea what that meant in reality, what responsibilities I was gonna have and how that was all gonna pan out.

Jake And so we have to have a little bit of faith when we make those decisions and just trust that we're headed in the right direction and course correct as we go.

Hector [00:07:00] Yeah. One of the things that I'm wrestling with as a dad and a father, and most of the listeners know this, but to catch you up, I'm what I call like a solo dad because I'm not technically a single dad. They still see their mom occasionally, but most of the time it's all on me.

Hector And that is a unique opportunity and also the biggest challenge of my life, because if I just had to be a stay at home dad, cool. That's one thing. There's a funny meme on X going around where guys are saying like, the stay at home part is actually the easiest part.

Hector The difference is, when you have to do both, when you have to be the caretaker and the provider at the same time, that's an interesting challenge. And don't get me wrong, stay-at-home moms, they have their own unique challenges and their mental load to bear and deal with. I'm not downplaying any of that.

Hector [00:08:00] But recently I've realized that I am growing up with my kids, right? You hear that sometimes where like, when you have a young parent, it's like, I was growing up. And I see all these things where I'm forcing myself to have to learn on the fly because of the situations.

Hector And there's also so many things that I'm not wanting to pass down either, in terms of my mindset or poor habits or whatever it is. My candy addiction. All those sorts of things.

Hector For me, growing up, it was one thing if you're just responsible for yourself, but where all of a sudden your choices are making clear impacts on other human beings. I think it's an interesting responsibility that forces you to wake up and grow up a lot faster.

Jake Yeah. I've had that same experience. My four-year-old daughter asked me yesterday, "Dad, what are you gonna do when you grow up?" And I just thought it was so funny.

Jake [00:09:00] I'd heard that phraseology before, but it came from her mouth. I don't know where she heard that or why she thought that. But at four years old, and I turn 40 next month, she goes, "Dad, what are you gonna do when you grow up?" And I really thought about it for a while.

Jake It's almost like sky's the limit. There's the things I've done in the past, professionally and also within my family, and hobbies that I've had, and those are all great. I don't want to burn any of that down or start over per se, but I can build on top of that and do whatever it is that I want to do.

Jake So I love that idea that we kind of grow up with our kids and I think looking back as well at our own parents, that gives me a lot of empathy for my own parents.

Jake As a kid, you idolize your parents and you put them on a pedestal and you look at them as like they have life figured out. And then you become a parent and you're like, oh, they were just treading water, trying to stay afloat. They were trying to figure it out as they went, and they grew up with us and we're growing up with our kids.

Jake And so it's a pattern that repeats itself. But I think we learn a lot from being parents and being fathers, and I'm super grateful for that experience.

Hector [00:10:00] Yeah. My son, it's like we're going through this interesting phase because you have that phase where you are his superhero, and then all of a sudden he beats you at tetherball one time.

Hector You weren't totally sandbagging, but he beats you that one time. And he laughed and I was like, man, okay. This is an interesting experience because internally we see all of our flaws.

Hector There's that imposter syndrome that people deal with, self-worth. We know ourselves the most, right? And so we don't oftentimes give ourselves enough credit or the same credit that other people do. And I think that that same thing can happen as a parent.

Hector Our kids sort of have this idolized view of us. And I think that that's fantastic. And I also see it sometimes and I'm like, it highlights the deficits. It shows me where I'm not fully superhero and actually flawed.

Hector Which is scary because I think reconciling those two things where we're fully responsible for these human beings and we are flawed individuals. For me, I go through moments of worry and doubt. Am I capable of pulling this off? And faith kicks in, but sometimes it takes a while.

Jake Yeah. As your kids get older, I've had this experience. It's not a fun one, but talking about your kids shedding light on what you do as a parent and you're under a microscope.

Jake [00:11:00] The worst feeling is when your kid does something that's not great and you realize that it is something that they learned from you. The other day, one of my sons was yelling at his sister and did something to her that was kind of rude or mean, and the way he did it kind of mimicked how I am sometimes.

Jake I'm not always that way. I feel like I'm pretty easy going and pretty joyful and happy and nice to my kids. But we do model some of those imperfections sometimes and they pick up on those things.

Jake And so it made me think I've got to be better at modeling the kind of person that I want them to become and just be a little more aware of how I show up with my kids.

Jake Me and my wife are going to take a weekend trip next weekend. It's just one night. We're going to go without the kids. We don't do this very often.

Jake We're going to go to dinner and all the fun things. Maybe go see a show or something. But we're also going to spend time talking about our kids and our family and what we're doing right, and then maybe some things that we can improve on.

Jake And so yeah, we're all a work in progress, but kids definitely shine a light on those areas that we need more improvement.

Hector [00:13:00] Well, I think for me, I'm grateful that they provide that. Recently they went up and spent some time with their mom. My routine went out the window. I was sleeping in and slobbing out. And it was okay.

Hector I had to give myself some grace because I don't really get a whole lot of opportunity to just not have any responsibility. And so I took that time to recover.

Hector And I also realized how much structure and how honest they keep me, and how in line. Because I want to exemplify or be an example of certain habits or values, that when they're not there, I'm like, oh man, I need to keep myself accountable now.

Hector Which is a different level of accountability than having someone else, even if it's your kids, looking over your shoulder. I eat much, much less candy when they're home than when they're not.

Hector Talk to me about your ideas. You sort of work with men in some capacity. Talk to me about the idea of, we call it integrated masculinity, which is sort of putting it all together, right?

Hector How do you put it all together? How do you have it all? How do you be joyful and stronger? How do you be with your emotions and still have sovereignty?

Hector When it comes to that idea, what are your thoughts around how men can better do that?

Jake Yeah, that's a great question. Let me go back just a little bit and I'll share a little bit more about my background.

Jake [00:15:00] Back in 2010, 11, 12, I was studying civil engineering back in California where I grew. I leaned that way because I'm a left-brained person. I like the maths and the sciences, and so that seemed like a logical fit for me.

Jake And for the last 15 years, it's been great. I graduated college, I got married shortly after that. We had kids shortly after that. Took a job for over a decade in California.

Jake And then at some point, I realized that I needed to change things up. A lot of people go through an experience like this and they go, I want more. I don't know if what I'm doing is quite right. I want something different. I want something new. But they don't know what that is.

Jake And that was my experience. So my poor wife and my kids, I moved my family, our dog from the children's book, my four kids and my wife, 800 miles from California to Utah. And took a job as a structural engineer in Salt Lake City.

Jake And that job was everything I wanted. It was more responsibility. I was around a lot more engineers. I came from a small firm of 20 people and went to a firm of about 60 people.

Jake [00:16:00] So I got to see different perspectives and work on different types of jobs, and I got that different itch scratched.

Jake And in doing that, I realized that's not actually what I wanted. I want something completely different.

Jake And so I think what happens, particularly with fathers and families and growing a family, is that we change and life changes and therefore our priorities change. I'm forever grateful for my roots in college and engineering and all these other things.

Jake I in no way feel like I've been duped or tricked or like I got to the top of this mountain and I was like, this isn't what I thought it was gonna be. It's exactly what I thought it was gonna be. The problem is I changed and my priorities changed, and so I started asking myself like, what do I want to do for the next 10, 20, 30 years professionally?

Jake But also personally, how do I want to spend my time? How do I want to craft a life that's best for me?

Jake And that led me to start a company called Actively Human. And I think this ties into the question that you just asked, Hector, which was how do we put all this together, all these balls that we're trying to juggle?

Jake What I would say in the long term, I think most strategies are good short term. You come up with anything short term: going to the gym, whatever it is, that's like, I'm gonna do this and it's crazy and I'm just gonna juggle 50 balls at the same time and I'm gonna make it work.

Jake [00:17:00] The problem is a lot of times long term, that doesn't work out. And so the way I explain it to clients that I work with, which happened to be probably about 90% men, I don't specifically only work with men, but maybe 'cause I am a man, I don't know. Maybe I just attract that.

Jake I work with a lot of engineers, technical professionals, people that are established in their careers, and they just happen to be men.

Jake And so what I teach them and share with them is how do we put it all together? How are we in this for the long haul? For the long term, I use a framework called REDAC, R-E-D-A-C, and that stands for redefine, realign, and reconnect.

Jake It's really simple. It's only three words, and I did that on purpose because simple is memorable and implementable.

Jake The first one, redefine, is redefine success. And the reason I spend a lot of time with my clients on this is because if I asked you, Hector, and myself and eight other people, if we ask 10 people, what does success mean, you probably get 10 pretty different answers.

Jake It's a weird word that doesn't really have a great definition and it's very dependent on the person. The irony is if you ask those same 10 people, including you and myself, a couple years from now, that definition might change.

Jake There's a great philosopher named Heraclitus that lived over 2000 years ago, and he has a quote that's often quoted and I love. He said something to the effect that no man steps in the same river twice. First, not the same river, and it's not the same man.

Jake [00:19:00] So life is the river, right? It's always changing and moving. And then we're the man, right? And so no matter if you step in that same river, you're different as life progresses.

Jake And so we constantly have to be asking ourselves like, what does success mean for me in this phase of life?

Jake So I spend a lot of time with my clients going over that and really getting clear on what success means.

Jake And then the second part of the framework is realign. So it's decide how you want to show up in the world and then take action: realign with what matters most.

Hector Yeah. The redefine part is important, at least for me because I think that sometimes it's redefining the external one. And then I've found that I've had to redefine or readjust my perspectives, my outlook, how I am looking at the situation.

Hector [00:20:00] And going back to what I was saying before, that oftentimes when I'm sitting, if I'm ever complaining or if we ever go into that victim state that oftentimes I realize that this is what I wanted, or if not wanted, this is what I created. And so I'm responsible sort of for this.

Hector It gives me a little more agency as opposed to I have found myself falling into, not bouts of helplessness, but on that spectrum where you're like, man, this is not what I wanted. This is not what I signed up for. Or like, I didn't deserve this, or this isn't fair. All those sorts of thoughts that just become less helpful. They take away that agency.

Hector If you're able to redefine the situation, then at least in my experience, it gives you back a little more of that sovereignty. I've tried to be a control freak and so I don't like to use the word control, but it gives you that sovereignty back to have a choice or have agency.

Jake Sure, I would use the word autonomy. And so by defining what success means for you, you're choosing. You're being intentional, at least with the definition. I know it's just words on a page at some point, or words that roll off the tongue. And so those have to be followed by action. So that's the realign part.

Jake But yeah, I agree with you. I think most of us, including myself, kind of follow the status quo. We do what our parents did. We go to college 'cause everybody went to college.

Jake And I'm a big believer in college and following your parents doing good things that other people are doing around you. The beef is when you do it simply because everybody else is doing it.

Jake And so you have to get clear on what do I want life to be for me? And so my experience four or five, six years ago was really frustrating 'cause I got clear on what I wanted from life, but I wasn't taking action on those things.

Jake [00:22:00] I wasn't in alignment with my core values and the things that I really valued in life, which is time with my family, potentially building a business and all these other things.

Jake And again, no knock on corporate America or being an engineer or anything like that. It's just that my priorities had changed, but I was still living a previous version of my own life.

Jake And so when people get clear on what they want from life, then they've gotta go take the actions and implement those things. And then the last thing in my framework, which I think caught me personally by surprise, but also catches a lot of my clients by surprise, I talk about how redefine is kind of like the strategy or the head part of the process.

Jake And then the realign is the actions or the tactics or the hands, like what you do. The reconnect, which stands for reconnect with the people you care about most, is pretty much a byproduct or the results of what happens when you do the first two.

Jake You reconnect with your family members, your loved ones, neighbors, coworkers, whoever it may be, even yourself in this process because now you're living in alignment with the person that you want to be.

Jake And just to give a quick example, about a year ago, I was struggling with this a little bit, being like, well, how do I show up the way that I want to show up? What's important to me? And am I spending time on that?

Jake I developed a really short morning routine. It wasn't anything too lengthy, but it involved reading, writing, and running.

Jake Those three things, very simple. Not a lot of time in each one of those things, but just something I could do before the kids went to school. And then I'd take my kids to school and then I'd come home and start the real work of my job.

Jake [00:23:00] And several months went by and my wife made this comment unsolicited. I didn't ask for feedback. But she walked by one day and she goes, "Man, when you do that stuff in the morning, when you work on yourself with read, write, and run, you're a much nicer person to be around."

Jake So for me, I think oftentimes what I struggle with is taking time to work on myself, whatever that looks like. We tend to feel a little selfish. We feel like, oh, well I don't have time for this. I've gotta help my kids and my wife, or I have all these other responsibilities.

Jake I firmly believe it's not selfish to work on yourself. I think it is of self-interest, but I think it's one of the most important things you can do, not only to show up with your highest potential to what you can do in a day and all those tasks that we have and responsibilities, but also so that we can best serve the people that we love.

Jake And so I'm a firm believer of having some sort of simple morning routine to slide the important stuff first and let the urgent stuff come later in the day.

Hector [00:25:00] Yeah. I forget how critical that is for my sanity. I was fortunate enough to, one of my earliest mentors or coaches in college, business coaches was Hal Elrod. He wrote the book called The Miracle Morning.

Hector I'm so grateful to have that because I can feel it, I can feel when I don't do, for me it's breath work and some meditation. If I don't get that, I am much shorter with the kids.

Hector My temper is noticeably different and there is a real tangible difference in my ability to deal with stress.

Hector Kids are that mirror and they create that, but I think that whether someone is dealing with kids or with a partner or a business, the ability to be with your emotions and to have a stronger resilience is so important for guys.

Hector If they're not doing that, that's something to take away today and to take a stand on and make some habits that enact that.

Jake And again, it's an interesting byproduct of working on yourself. You show up better for others. Like you said, your temper's shorter. You are just more at ease, more calm, less reactive, and more proactive.

Jake And so, again, I think it's a surprise for myself and my own journey, but also with my clients, that when they redefine success and take action to realign with what's most important, a byproduct of this process is that they connect on a deeper level with the people that they care about most.

Jake And what I've learned in my almost 40 years on this earth is that I've been around a lot of different people in a lot of different settings, both professionally and geographically and around the world.

Jake [00:27:00] I was keeping track of some things that I've been through in my life. I've lived in 25 different apartments or homes. I've lived in 14 different cities in my life, in two different countries. I lived in South America for two years as a missionary.

Jake I've had over 40 roommates. That doesn't include my current family or my five siblings growing up, or my parents. That's just college roommates and other places in the world that I've lived.

Jake And I've had 22 jobs. Some of those were for a summer. Some of those were for a decade. And the reason I share all that is because I've been around a lot of different people in a lot of different settings, both professionally and geographically and around the world.

Jake And my observation about people is that they want two things primarily. They want to be engaged in whatever work they're doing. They want a challenge. They want to be growing and improving in that work.

Jake And the second thing is we all want human connection. We all want deep, meaningful relationships with people that we care about.

Jake And so those are the things that I focus on in my own program because even though I have four kids and a wife and career and all these things, several years ago I felt like I was on an island. I felt like I was alone going through my own struggles.

Jake And I didn't feel connected. I didn't feel engaged. In fact, I felt the opposite. I felt disengaged.

Jake And so I started working on myself. And in that process, I started this company, Actively Human. And now I help people pay it forward and help them through this difficult time.

Jake Sometimes it's a little existential. On paper, externally, if you looked at me several years ago, you'd go, you have a job, you have a career, you have a paycheck, you're paying the bills. Your family's happy and healthy.

Jake What's the big deal? What's the problem?

Jake And so it can feel a little existential, which makes it even feel more alone.

Jake But for me it was this misalignment with like, okay, now I have these new priorities and I'm not living that way. And so slowly but surely I started to make those adjustments.

Jake And now I help other people do that through Actively Human. I've been doing it for the last two years or so, working one-on-one with clients.

Jake [00:29:00] And I'm happy to launch a group coaching program in March of this year, just two months from now. And so any of your listeners that are interested in maybe going a little bit deeper, they can definitely reach out to me on LinkedIn or email. We'll put a bunch of stuff in the show notes hopefully.

Jake But I'd love to reach out to any of your listeners that might be interested in working together.

Hector Yeah. We'll link that up as well. I've got a couple of last questions for you.

Hector For guys who are in that spot, who they feel like they're on an island, is sort of the way that you put it, what are some of the steps that you found are helpful in moving to a place like where you talked about, where you're feeling connected and thriving?

Jake Yeah. There's a lot of ways to do it. The first one would be, work on yourself. There's a lot of ways to do that. As far as listening to podcasts, reading books, I'm assuming that's kind of the go-to that most people do.

Jake I'm gonna hit the gym and work on my physical appearance and my physical health. Those are all great things. That's kind of where I started.

Jake But one of the more key things and important things that I've found is that human connection, one of those things that I've observed about people, myself as well, that we need and want, takes work. It doesn't just show up at your doorstep.

Jake You have to be vulnerable and reach out and connect with other people.

Jake And my simple equation for human connection that I teach in my one-on-one coaching and also in my upcoming cohort is really simple.

Jake How do we connect with people? There are more than one way to do this, but one simple way to do this is create something of value and share it with other people.

Jake Now my wife, she likes to bake, so she would bake all the time and she'd take cookies or whatever it may be to the neighbor or a friend or something like that. That's her way of creating something and sharing it with people.

Jake [00:31:00] I told you, I wrote a children's book, shared that with my kids, and I learned the lesson that we kind of hoarded that for our family. And that was probably more to do with my limiting beliefs of like, well, what if nobody wants this or likes this, or whatever.

Jake And 10 years later after I wrote it, we gave it out to the public and it's impacted hundreds of people's lives.

Jake And so I was missing that link of like, I created something, but I wasn't sharing it with other people.

Jake And so I think the result of that is that when we create something of value, whether it's cookies or a book or a business or whatever it may be, and then we turn around and try to share that with other people, we build that human connection.

Jake That's my simple recipe for that.

Hector My last question for you, Jake, is, in your opinion, what is the definition of modern masculinity?

Jake This is a loaded question. I'm sure you've got various answers from different people you've had on the show.

Jake I was thinking about this before we jumped on, and there's a lot of ways this can go, but I wanted to share a quote from, I believe it's attributed to Albert Einstein.

Jake He said this, and I think it's very fitting for what is modern masculinity, at least in my view.

Jake [00:32:00] He said, "Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value. He is considered successful in our day, who gets more out of life than he puts in, but a man of value will give more than he receives."

Jake And so the last couple years I've tried to live by that, I've tried to definitely work on myself and listen to the different shows and read the books and do all that stuff and kind of build myself up. But I'm trying to give more than I receive now.

Jake And that shows up in my family, that shows up in engineering, that shows up in my business.

Jake But when we're a little more outside of our own head and look outward a little bit more, from a perspective of how can I serve and how can I help, I think it automatically helps our own wellbeing, but makes great impact on other people.

Jake So I would say modern masculinity is much more outward focused and service and loving others.