Carl Lentz
speaker
537 appearances
7 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard May 2025
Carl Lentz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
That's right. belongings in two U-Hauls going like, what, how did I get here? Like, is this real life? And that's, that's why I've been caught.
So excited to be here, Minda. Thank you for having me.
Yeah, fair question. I think I would phrase that now a little bit differently. I think I would say the behavior and the patterns and the thinking of that part of me, I no longer recognize. Because I realized, I said that and I meant it at the time, I was trying to speak to how different life feels. But technically broken down, I am the same human being, the same person, same man.
But so much has changed where I look back on some of the things that I used to do and operate with, and I don't recognize that. So I think I am becoming a different person every day. And so now I look at that, and I don't even reject that guy anymore because that's a part of who I was, and it's made me who I am today.
So I've learned to look at that part of me with kindness and say, I don't do those things anymore. I don't think like that. Without you, I'm not here. And here, a place of health and peace. And that guy is still here, but he operates differently. So that's a more succinct way to say it. But yes, even your semantics around your own growth sometimes change.
I've said publicly, like, that's the funniest question you hear in the podcast world, because no one's ever asked it before. What would you say to your 16-year-old self? I would have hugged him and been like, you're going to be all right, bro. Because explaining to him the psyche behind addiction and recovery and patterns and sexual trauma, that 16-year-old would have been like, no thanks, bro.
He wouldn't have listened anyway. So I'm with you. I look back on those days and just the key is kindness in general, kindness to yourself, kindness to other people. And that's what I would give my 16-year-old self, a big hug and a kind glance. It may be an encouraging word, but advice about the stuff that you find out as an older person, I don't know if it even works.
I think what I would say about transparency now, I wasn't brave enough at the time to out myself and to come clean. So I was caught. And I say that just for someone who's watching who doesn't understand everybody's story. Now, between me and you, I feel like God rescued me and saved me. But for all intents and purposes, we can say I was caught.
And then on the other side of that, I had a choice, which is do I want to continue to live a life where there's hidden things about me Or do I want to start something fresh? And transparency to me now is about how much freedom do you want to have? So it's not, do I need it, do I not? I like a better question, which is how free do you wanna be?
Because anytime you're not transparent, there's gonna be stuff in your life that is disempowering the best parts of you. And as long as you can reckon with that, cool. For me, I was like, I've lived that life. I've lived a life that had compartments, hidden things, shadows, a lot of great things too, but that didn't work out so well for me.
So moving forward now, transparency, I can say like this, Minda, I used to think transparency was a really important thing. Now I think transparency is a life or death essential thing. That's how I would describe that change.
Because I'm not going to go through all this pain and not maximize it. So if one of the things coming out of this is telling other people, hey, by the way, you don't ever have to live. dishonest or in shadows or withholding, that's what I'm going to do. One of the beautiful redeeming parts of our story is that I do get to be able to use that as a front facing opening line of transparency.
You can check out my story. It's right there. You can read about it for false or not. It's there to see. And I can honestly tell you transparency is something that I believe to be vital for sure.
I think it comes down to, and this will be a thread in the transparency discussion, the better question is, what are you willing to accept? If you're not going to be transparent, what is that going to cost you? And if you can live with that, cool, but don't lie to yourself. So I've got something I need to share. If I don't share it, it will cost me this.
If I do share it, it's going to cost me that. What can I accept? So that's really what transparency comes down to is like, what do you want to accept? How much peace do you want? How much disempowered area in your life do you want to keep? And that's on you. So that's how I gauge it now. I'm like, okay, price tag of this honesty is going to be this. Yeah, I'm going to pay that.
Or no, I'm not going to pay that. Because there are times where I'm not going to be transparent with somebody. Because I've accepted the fact that if I do that, it makes me feel unsafe and I don't trust you. So I can accept withholding this part of me until I believe that's real. So I'm choosing that. But as long as I'm in control of it, I have the power.
If I don't, then my honesty or lack thereof is now dictating how I move. And I don't want to live a life like that.
As a leader, it takes two major things. It takes time and it takes faith. So it takes time to prove new habits, new thinking, new results. And then it takes faith from the people that are in your world to give you an opportunity to show it. Because neither of these two things you are owed when you break trust.
Let's just say, if I'm a leader in your life and I broke your trust, it's going to require for us to have a new chapter. I'm going to need time to prove my words are not just words, but I'm also going to need faith from you to give me an opportunity to even show it. If one of those two things isn't in play, it just leads to a really shaky outcome.
hesitant life towards somebody who's broken trust. That's pretty much in my personal world. If I do begin a relationship with somebody, I'm pretty clear on that. Like, hey, I'm moving forward. Just like I give you time and I give you faith to believe that you're going to be the best version of you. But for me, I'm not on a tryout for you.
Showing 341–360 of 537 · page 18 of 27
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