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shieldmon · 5 years

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You’re Not Home

Pairing: Peter Parker x Reader.

Summary: Peter Parker and you have been best friends for a long time, but now he is too focused on being MJ's boyfriend.

Words: 2.8k+

Warnings: Angst all the way, like too much angst, ignoring Far From Home identity reveal, one-sided love, language.

Author's Note: Yeah, I was listening to Keane’s new album, and the angst came to my mind. The gif is not mine, it is from @tomhollandnet, all the credits of the gif go to the owner. This is my first MCU fanfiction, plus English is not my first language.

You were Peter's best friend for a long time before he met Ned, after that, you were just his girl best friend, the kind of girl he asks for advice and a feminine point of view.

At some point, you fell in love with each other. Have you ever tried to be in a relationship? Of course, you tried, but Peter decided to be just friends for a time; he couldn't afford to lose you, even though your feelings were the same he was afraid to make you unhappy because of his newly acquired powers.

You respected his decision, and everything continued the same; you buried your feelings for him and put the "we are just friends" mask on. You even supported him and helped him with his crush on Liz Allen, and comforted him when... whatever happened between them took place.

Unfortunately for you, after that, your feelings for him became stronger and stronger; you were happy just seeing him and his cute curls at lunch, you two hang out all the time with or without Ned, you make him laugh and vice versa, you loved him with all your heart.

But Peter didn't feel the same for you.

Maybe your mistake was not being nerd enough to be part of the Decathlon Team, or maybe your mistake was taking for granted that Peter would love you the same because Michelle Jones took the place of the new crush of Peter Parker.

You can clearly remember how he asked you to become her friend, you didn't understand why, but you did it. You two got along really well, to be honest, but you didn't know that all of that was a part of Peter's plan to get closer to her too, sitting in the same table at lunch, going to together to the cinema with the excuse of a friend's night.

Silly of you, you didn't notice that until it was too late; you were over heels in love with him while he was in love with MJ.

When Thanos snapped his fingers, everyone had just arrived at MoMA, and you were looking for Peter after all the students got off the bus, Ned tried to make a stupid lie, and you were worried because you thought maybe the alien attack had disappeared him. The next thing you remember is the screams and the people vanishing away, you screamed Peter's name one last time before vanishing.

When you returned to life, you were so confused, you were pushed by a boy that saw you like you were a ghost.

You searched a familiar face among all the people, so when you found Ned, you hugged him tightly.

"Have you seen Peter?" you asked him after the hug.

Ned tried to answer you, but he closed his mouth and then nodded.

You continued your search for Peter, crying and screaming his name in despair when you couldn't find him anywhere at MoMA. It took you three days to found him and his aunt, they were sitting in the park watching Dr. Hulk's message to all the people, you screamed his name, and he looked at you, you ran towards each other at the same time, hugged and cried.

"I missed you, I was so worried for you, please, don't go away again," you begged when he buried his face in your shoulder.

You blipped away. Ned, MJ, and Peter did too. And now Tony Stark, Natasha Romanoff, and Steve Rogers were dead.

Peter had the most difficult time in his life after losing another father figure, and you were always by his side whenever he needed you. You loved him even more, but he loved MJ more because she was taking her blip much better than anyone else, she was sharp and honest with him, and it probably was what he wanted.

Eight months later, you were talking to Ned about a comic when Peter interrupted you both and talked about his plan to confess his feelings on the Europe Trip. You were confused at the beginning of his talk, you didn't know what "his plan" was, but your heart broke when he finished telling it.

You tried with all your strength to wear your mask "we are just friends" and make a comment about it after Ned's demotivating comment, but you excused yourself, you left them talking alone to go to the bathroom to cry. You felt like a fool, how could you not see that? When did that happen? You were about to cancel everything, pretend to have the flu and not go on the trip, but you knew maybe Peter would need you to reach his goal, so you couldn't leave him like that.

The trip was complete torture for you, seeing Peter trying to get close to MJ was not the problem, you understood that you were not his happiness and that you had to accept it, but being ignored by him was something that hurt you as nothing had ever done before. Besides, Ned had a relationship with Betty Brant now, so you were completely alone during the whole trip.

After Prague, Peter stayed with his german family and the rest of your class was going to make a flight home from London. MJ defended Peter from Brad before you could even open your mouth to do it, MJ was now closer to Ned.

But you didn't have time to worry about it when you found yourself running for your life along with Happy Hogan, Flash, Ned, Betty, and MJ. You saw how the monsters that attacked wherever your class, now blended into a giant monster. When everyone got off the bus, MJ grabbed your hand and made you run with them.

"It's not real! It's not real!" Ned kept saying while running.

"I look pretty real to me!" MJ and you shouted at him.

You stopped running when you saw that Mysterio appeared out of nowhere to save the day, you thought that finally, everything would be fine, but MJ grabbed your hand again and made you run with her and the couple, Flash following you.

"We are definitely not safe here!" she yelled.

After that, Happy Hogan found you and led you to a safe place, you all hid in the Crown Jewels Hall while being chased by a bunch of killer drones. After trying to fight them and survive because Spider-man managed to deactivate them, MJ ran out of the place.

You tried to follow her, but Happy and Ned stopped you saying it would be better to look for the rest of the class.

The whole class decided to stay in London that day, everybody needed a break, the flight home will be paid by Happy Hogan on behold of Stark Industries.

You saw Peter later that day, he rejoined the class trip again, he squeezed you and kissed your forehead, he told you that he was worried for you. You tried to be with him a little longer, but he left you to be with MJ. The next day, he was holding MJ's hand, and they were cuddling on the plane, so you didn't bother to approach him again.

Everything went downhill after that, he didn't even try to say goodbye to you at the airport, you texted him, and his answer was just a cold sorry. He wasn't talking to you at school, neither answering your messages, and you decided to step aside and sit alone at lunch, Ned tried to convince you to sit with them again, but you told him that you will wait until Peter came down from the clouds.

Peter canceled all the plans and rejected all the invitations, never answered your messages, and ignored all your calls. All his attention was now focused on MJ and his relationship.

However, you forgave each of those things, thinking that you would probably do the same if you were in a relationship with someone. You told yourself that, hopefully, one day he would remember that he had a best friend and that she needed him.

He always said that he would reward you all, that he only needed to spend more time with his girlfriend and then you would go out again together. To be honest with yourself, it never happened, but you were expecting that tonight was the exception.

Earlier that day he walked to your locker at the end of class and said he wanted to recover all the time lost with you, that you just have to put the place and he would not miss it for anything in the world.

"I'm sorry, I am really sorry, believe me, I will be there," he begged when you faced him with your head hanging low.

You hesitated for a few seconds, but you ended up talking to him, "Cinema, tonight, seven o'clock."

"After that, we will go to Delmar's and eat something. It's a plan."

Now you were there, your cellphone in your hand and his number already dialed, you just need to press the green button and call him. You are afraid of it, you are also tired of the voicemail.

But you press the number and then put your cellphone on speaker.

"Hello, this is Peter, I'm busy right now, leave a message!"

You sigh, "It's me, Y/N, again. I was wondering if you will come tonight, I hope you haven't forgotten about our cinema night," you say and smile sadly, "you don't have to bring anything, I already paid for our tickets... MJ is invited too, you can bring her if you want to, I will pay for an extra ticket in case you bring her."

You talk with a lump in your throat, "I miss you, please come."

You prepare yourself to take a quick shower after that, and coming out of it you wear comfortable jeans, a white blouse, and a hoodie that once belonged to Peter, the last thing you have from him.

You look one last time in the mirror, you put your wet hair on your shoulders, and you take something to put it in a ponytail when it dries. You leave your room with little jumps, and your mother gives you extra money and a hug because she knows this day is special for you, and then you leave your house to walk to the cinema with emotion running through your veins.

You start to think about the things you are going to do today, all the things you have to tell him, who cares if you can't have a relationship with? Who cares if he is with MJ? As long as Peter can stay by your side, you are happy.

You arrive at the cinema with a lot of free time because of how excited you are, you buy popcorn and nachos, you are not sure how many drinks you will have to buy, so you wait to see if Peter comes alone. You sit in a chair in the waiting room to wait for it, eating popcorn occasionally.

But he doesn't appear, it doesn't seem like he's about to arrive either. You check your phone to see the time and notes that the function started 15 minutes ago, check your phone to see if he hasn't sent any message, but he hasn't. You decide to wait for him, bitting your bottom lip and tapping hands.

He must be busy, May must be talking to him, he must be on the way, and we are going to enter to the next function, you keep repeating to yourself.

You wait for him for three hours in the cinema before walking to Delmar's to search for him. You enter the place and take a seat, the corners of your lips falling towards the floor.

The owner of the place looks at you, and you wave your hand at him before talking to him with a smile, "Hola, Mr. Delmar."

"Hola, Y/N, have you seen Peter lately?" he asks mischievously.

And your smile disappears, your heart clench and your eyes are filled with tears now.

He is not coming.

---

You arrive at school, you barely slept the day before, you are sure that you cried almost all night, and your eyes are red and sunken in addition to dark circles, the curious eyes that look at you make you walk faster to reach your locker so you can walk to your class as quickly as possible to hide.

But you didn't expect Peter Parker to be there, waiting for you. You look at him with fury in your eyes, turn around and run to the other side, trying to get out of the hallway as fast as you can.

"Y/N, wait!" He cries and chases you. You're slower than him, so it's easy for him to reach you in the yard outside of school and hold your hand, "Y/N, please let me explain."

"Don't fucking touch me, Parker!" you scream, freeing you from his grip.

Peter looks at you with his mouth open, "Please, let me explain, I really wanted to go, I promise."

"But what?" you ask, your eyes filled with tears.

"Michelle..." and he shuts up because of you punching throwing your backpack at him, "what was that for!?"

"You said you wouldn't miss it for the world, you said you want to recover the lost time, you promised me you would be there," you hissed, "you are a liar!"

"Let me explain to you!" he fumed, "I was about to be there, but Michelle needed me, so I went to her house, I swear to you that I was practically there!"

"You don't have a phone to tell me that, Peter?" you ask with your voice about to crack, "I waited for you like a stupid! I went to Delmar's to see if you were there!"

Peter feels ashamed, he tries to reply to that, but before he can start, continue talking, "This is not just for yesterday, Peter, you have been avoiding me since you are in your relationship with MJ; I have called you, text you, invited to eat, study and even build a Lego, I allowed you to take MJ, Ned and whoever you want to our meetings, but you don't listen to me!"

You can feel the tears running through your cheeks and your clean them furiously, trying to look strong in front of him.

"I'm sorry, Y/N, but you have to understand, I really want this relationship to work, I love her..."

"Enough!" you cried, "You can't change everything you have for that, Peter, okay? We've been friends for almost nine years! Have you ever thought about how I feel? You're pulling me away from you, and I don't... I don't know how to get close to you again!" you whined, savoring the salty taste of your tears, "I'm tired of this, Peter Parker; I'm tired of you and your precious relationship, and I'm tired of our friendship."

And Peter's heart skipped a beat before beating faster, "No, please, Y/N, don't do this to us..."

"To us, or to you?" You ask and look at the floor, "There is no us since you started dating MJ, Peter."

You can hear Peter's sobs, and you feel your heart break even more with each of them, "Well then, don't leave me, please don't do this to me."

"You have MJ, don't you?" you ask, a sad laugh coming out of your lips, "You only look for me when you want me to be here, you just want me to be here in case you need me, that's not friendship."

You take your backpack off the floor and walk back to school, with your back to your now ex-friend, "Please tell me you love me one last time," he pleads.

That's when you doubt, you have something about love to tell him, and this is probably your last chance to say it if everything goes as expected, so you look at him, the last tears run down your cheeks while holding his gaze.

"Do you remember when we dated when we were thirteen years old?" you ask him, and when he nods you continue, "When you and Liz broke up, I started to develop romantic feelings for you again, I tried so hard to buried and hide them, but I guess I will never would."

Peter tries to reach your hand, but you take a step behind, "I'm sorry..." he whispers.

"Don't be," you said and smiled, then you walk towards him and give him a short and innocent kiss on his lips, he receives it and treasures it, he knows he can't stop you anymore, he wants to give you what you love for one last time. "I love you, Pete, and I'm sorry if this causes you problems."

And then it's his turn to watch you drifting away from him.

#peter parker x reader #peter parker fanfiction #spiderman x reader #peter parker angst #peter parker oneshot #peter parker #peter parker x you #spiderman fanfiction #you're not home

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mst3kproject · 7 years

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106: The Crawling Hand

A movie in which a guy is brutally attacked while Surfin' Bird plays on the soundtrack. We can all strike that off our list of Shit We Never Thought We'd See.

As the film opens, astronaut Mel Lockhart (no relation to Gilderoy, but perhaps an ancestor of Brant) hasn't quite made it back to Earth. He gets blown up before he can complete the trip, but his severed arm somehow survives re-entry and washes up on a beach where it comes to the attention of a kid named Paul Lawrence. The arm is carrying some kind of alien organism that infects anything it touches with the desire to kill, and soon Paul Isn't Paul Anymore as the space bugs take over his mind. The arm, meanwhile, goes on a rather more limited rampage of its own, strangling Paul's landlady and knocking over her preserves. Cops and scientists argue over who's in charge of the investigation, and horror and comedy argue over who's in charge of the script.

I had forgotten, but Allison Hayes is in this, too. She plays Captain Lockhart’s girlfriend in a subplot that goes absolutely nowhere and she’s still more into it than she was in The Unearthly. I’m gonna assume that her boyfriend blowing up in space was what caused the nervous breakdown that landed her at John Carradine’s little home hospital. I told you guys the movies were coming together!

The bit about infectious alien bacteria in the summary isn't quite accurate. The two scientists, Dr. Curan and Dr. Weitzberg (whose name the movie has to take the trouble to spell for us), spend significant time expositing poetically to us about what's been happening to living tissue sent into space. Something about an Earth cell romancing a cosmic ray and giving birth to some vital force that evolves intelligence within minutes or hours, turning men into killers and rats into brooding supervillains. I don't know why they went with this labored explanation when 'angry space germs' is literally three words. Generally in movie exposition less is more, unless the 'more' is somehow vitally important to the plot – which here, it is not.

The Crawling Hand is a dumb movie, and it's not my favourite film or my favourite episode, but I've kind of been looking forward to writing about it because this is my chance to share my theory about Hand Movies. There are a surprising number of animate severed hands in movies. Attack of the The Eye Creatures had one, for instance, as did The Evil Dead 2, and everybody remembers the Addams family's pet hand, Thing. But hands also have movies of their own: in addition to The Crawling Hand there's The Beast with Five Fingers and The Hand, Severed Ties and that one short in Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. What can we take from this, besides the fact that I watch way too many movies? Well, I think that the Hand Movie is actually a sort of necessary partner of the Brain Movie.

We – or at least, those of us with an unhealthy love of awful old horror movies – have all seen a Brain Movie. Stuff like The Brain from Planet Arous or Donovan's Brain, and several movies simply called The Brain. Even things like It Conquered the World can be thought of as variations on the Brain Movie, because what the brain represents in movies like these is intellect unfettered by morality. Either because they have no emotions or simply no interest in the lesser beings still trapped in the flesh, these brains apply their intelligence to doing things normal humans could but know that we shouldn't.

There's a problem with being a disembodied brain, though. Humans are very proud of our brains, claiming they're the main thing that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom etc etc etc, but our brains wouldn't do us much good if we didn't also have hands. The thing humans do, to a degree no other creature does, is build shit. Our brains are vitally important in figuring out how to build shit, but it's our hands that do the actual work. We talk about finding 'intelligent life' in space but intelligence alone is not what we're looking for – dolphins are smart, but an alien SETI program would never find them. That's why dolphins need that alliance with the electricians, so there'll be somebody to build their warships for them. Our search for life in space is a search for fellow builders.

The lack of hands plagues the villains of brain movies. Gor from The Brain from Planet Arous needs a body in order to take over the world, so the poor thing is forced to possess John Agar's. Donovan's Brain uses its telepathic link with Dr. Cory to carry on shady business dealings. In It Conquered the World Beulah uses human slaves, either willing or unwilling, to do its bidding. A brain without hands is mere purpose without action – which brings us to the Hand Movie. If an isolated brain is purpose without action, then an isolated hand is action without purpose.

Sometimes evil hands in movies do have a purpose – The Beast with Five Fingers seems to be taking revenge on the people who wronged its owner in life, for instance, and Ash' possessed hand in The Evil Dead is being controlled by the movie's nameless evil force. Even in these cases, however, the hand itself is just a tool. It cannot be reasoned with, and killing it does not mean killing the controlling influence, which can find another tool and try again. The Crawling Hand isn't one of these, though. It is in fact a particularly pure example of the Hand Movie, because the titular crawling hand is animated by the alien bacteria and there is no purpose to its actions at all. It's not trying to rule the world, or to make money, or anything like that. It just kills people because it can, and there's no way to stop it from doing so except to either lock it up or destroy it.

If Brain Movies are about intellect without emotion, it's also possible to read Hand Movies as emotion without intellect. The emotion involved is usually anger, whether the vengeful rage of The Beast with Five Fingers or the undirected murderous instinct of The Crawling Hand. Whether the dichotomy is thought/action or reason/emotion, Hand Movies represent the partner of the Brain Movie, and the end result is the same whether it's the hand or the brain that has been isolated. Either is an incomplete, perverse entity that cannot contribute anything to the world. True creativity, true invention, and true humanity can only come from brain and hands working harmoniously together in one being.

This line of thought, that wholeness is essential to human-ness, is probably why we get things like bad guys with partially or even mostly-robotic bodies, like Darth Vader or that guy in Lois and Clark who wanted to transplant his head onto Superman's body – which I would much rather watch than bullshit like Me Before You, in which a man who has lost the use of his limbs cannot be convinced that life is still worth living even with Emilia Clarke. For the record, if I ever lose a major body part, I am definitely going the supervillain route. If I get to hang out with the cast of Game of Thrones while I do it, bonus!

But let's get back to The Crawling Hand. The movie presents this unreasoning incompleteness as something infectious, that can spread to humans and deprive us of our intellects, leaving only the purposeless rage of the hand. In the opening scene we briefly see the doomed astronaut begging for help. He is well on his way to hand-zombie-hood, periodically breaking off his sentences to chant, “kill, kill!”, but when he describes his situation he refers specifically to his problem being in his hand. It started there, 'making him do things', before moving on to the rest of his body. The fact that it started in his hand is in large part responsible for the mess he's now in, since with that appendage out of his control, he can't activate the spacecraft's self-destruct mechanism.

Maybe it's because of the alien influence that the hand survives to land on Earth and be picked up by Paul Lawrence (man there were a lot of Pauls on MST3K), who it infects in turn. Under the influence of the angry space germs, Paul too becomes little more than what the hand is: an undirected, purposeless killing machine. In this form he attacks people he knows, but there's no hint that this is because Paul himself is in any way resentful of them. The soda shop owner was a weirdo but Paul had no reason to want him dead, and Marta is explicitly somebody Paul loves. Zombie-Paul attacks them not because he is letting out anything he has suppressed, but simply because they are available. When he has a choice, he tries to make Marta leave his house, or decides to run away from home, in order to avoid harming her or anybody else.

Sadly, most of what's interesting about The Crawling Hand is the opportunity to examine the sub-genre it lies in and how it relates to other types of body-part movies. The movie itself spends way too much of its time on Paul and the scientists, and not nearly enough on what drew the audience in to see it, which is the unavoidably humourous image of a disembodied hand strangling people. Instead the film-makers use Zombie-Paul as the main villain, probably because they knew damn well the hand thing would make people laugh rather than scream. This was probably a mistake. The surf movie soundtrack, the crusty soda shop owner, and the scientists' clumsy improvised investigation are all clearly meant to be funny, and the movie as a whole would probably have worked better as an explicit horror-comedy about a murderous hand than it does trying to divide itself into discreet 'horror' and 'comedy' sections.

And yes, you can expect to see both The Brain from Planet Arous and The Beast with Five Fingers in the Episodes that Never Were section. I wouldn't miss them for the world!

#mst3k #reviews #the crawling hand #tw: suicide #paul isn't paul anymore #60s

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goodra-king · 5 years

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Transcript of How to Choose Your Life’s Purpose

Transcript of How to Choose Your Life’s Purpose written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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Transcript

John Jantsch: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Brant Menswar. He is a keynote speaker, award-winning musician, and author of the book, Rock ‘N’ Roll With It: Overcoming the Challenge of Change. So Brant, thanks for joining me.

Brant Menswar: Hey, thanks so much for having me, John.

John Jantsch: All right, so the question everybody wants to know, since I said in your intro, award-winning musician, how does a rock and roll musician become a speaker and author?

Brant Menswar: Well, when you realize you’re getting too old to tour the country 120, 150 dates a year, and you don’t want to give up the stage, you transition to the world of keynote speaking, and so that’s what it sort of was for me. It was just, 20 years in the music business, and not feeling or looking like I’m the 85-year-old that my inner self tells me that I am, I had to make that changeover to the speaking world, and it’s just been amazing since it’s all happened.

John Jantsch: So let me ask you this, if you … Because you’ve spent so much time on stages with big audiences, and you probably got used to that a little bit, I mean, a lot of people talk about speaking for the first time or first 20 times, just being scared to death, do you feel like that part was kind of gone for you?

Brant Menswar: Yeah, I never, even in the performing side on the band with Big Kettle Drum, I never really experienced fear in that way. I’ve always been … I would describe it more as anticipation, anxious. I want to be up on the platform, I want to be performing or speaking or whatever it is, so most of that stuff, for me, happens before I’m on the stage, but once I’m there, it’s probably the only area in my life that I’m 100% present in the moment.

John Jantsch: You know, when I first started speaking, I, a lot of times, suffered from … like a lot of people do. I’d never done it before and knew I needed to do it for my business. I remember sort of it felt like an overnight change, almost, that when I shifted my mindset to not being like, I’m up here performing, but I’m here to actually help these people that are here today, and some … it completely took away all the nerves for me.

Brant Menswar: Yeah, I completely agree with that, and for me it was the difference of, when I shifted from thinking I was trying to sell them something, to, I’m there to give them something. When I made that shift, you know, I’m not trying to sell them on how good the music is, I’m trying to give it away, and same with speaking. I’m not trying to sell them on anything for them to buy. I’m trying to give away this knowledge that I’ve acquired over the years, that I think might be helpful for them.

John Jantsch: You talk a lot about … It’s not in the title of your book, necessarily, but you talk a lot about purpose.

Brant Menswar: Yes.

John Jantsch: Obviously, it’s an important topic. Everyone’s looking for it. What the heck is it, really? I mean, seriously, there’s so many books on purpose, so many speakers talking about purpose, why aren’t we getting it?

Brant Menswar: Well, because they’re all wrong. That’s ultimately the easiest way for me to answer that question. Here’s the problem. You have someone like Simon Sinek come out with a book, Start With Why, and everybody jumps on the bandwagon, and it’s just not true. You don’t start with why, you start with what. You have to start with what are your non-negotiables. What are those core values, those five or six things that you cannot be moved from. If you do not do the work to define those things before you choose your why, then your why is going to be wrong 100% of the time.

Brant Menswar: So, for me, the reason that there’s so many books and it’s still really not having the transformation that it should have when you talk about purpose, is because we don’t really understand what purpose is. Actually, the phrase, I laugh all the time because the phrase “on purpose” I think is probably the most misused phrase in the English language, because in order to do something on purpose, you have to know what your purpose is.

Brant Menswar: I spend my life now on stages in front of thousands of people, asking people, “Raise your hand if you can tell me concisely in one or two sentences, what is your life purpose, why did you choose it, and how do you live it out every day,” and it’s a fraction of a fraction of a percent of people that actually raise their hand.

John Jantsch: Yeah, I think what … I’m going to defend those people that didn’t raise their hand, partly because it’s not cut and dried. It’s not black and white. It’s evolving, it’s moving. Even if you sat somebody down and said … I bet you, people have trouble listing out their non-negotiables, and that should be easy, right?

Brant Menswar: Oh, yeah.

John Jantsch: But the world makes it hard.

Brant Menswar: Yeah. Well, it’s not easy. I mean, that’s why we don’t do it. We don’t do it for a couple of reasons. Number one, it’s often painful because our core values are developed over the course of our lifetimes, and they rarely, rarely change outside of a catastrophic event. Most people don’t do the work to dig back through their history to figure out these things that matter most to them because it’s laden with experiences that were painful. Core values aren’t necessarily born out of happiness. They can be born out of some really painful experiences, and so people don’t want to do that.

Brant Menswar: The second reason is, the minute that you do define these things and say, “You know what? Here are the five things, the five principles, the five core values that are going to guide my decisions and I’m going to live my life by,” all of a sudden you have something to hold yourself accountable to, and we hate accountability. As a people, we want that radical freedom, right? We want the ‘Merica, and it’s just, it’s so difficult for us to stay committed to the things that matter most when we don’t know what they are.

Brant Menswar: That’s part of the reason that we never take the time to actually define what they are in our lives, because we don’t want to feel bad if we say health is one of my core values, and the alarm goes off at five o’clock in the morning, and I slap it down and say, “Not today, Satan.” Then, am I a liar, or am I lazy? We don’t want to be either one of those things, so rather than have to have that conversation with ourselves, we simply don’t define those values.

John Jantsch: Yeah, I think sometimes complacency or, you know, nothing’s really broken badly, is probably what leads people to that. But you made a really good point about how some of the people that have gotten the most on purpose have almost lost it all.

Brant Menswar: Yeah.

John Jantsch: I hate to say that we all need to go through that, but what … to what degree does sort of realizing, I’m not going to live forever, play a role in this?

Brant Menswar: Well, I think it definitely speeds up the desire. Let me say this, I feel like we all have an inherent desire to know what our purpose is, I think that’s sort of pre-wired within us, but I also know that unless some catastrophic event comes along, that you’re faced with mortality in some way, shape or form, it’s just, it’s too easy to make excuses.

Brant Menswar: For me, my son, my oldest son, when he was 14, was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer, and we spent 263 days living in the hospital with him battling, and that experience certainly puts into perspective the things that matter most to you and provides you with a different way to look at life. It wasn’t until I went through that that I really got serious about what purpose is and how do you actually engage it on a daily basis.

John Jantsch: I heard you actually talk about … because a lot of people talk about, you have to find your purpose. I’ve always said, generally speaking, purpose finds you, but you’ve actually even talked about it as, you actually have to choose your purpose. Unpack that for us.

Brant Menswar: Yeah. For me, we’ve been misled the majority of our lives in thinking that purpose is something you have to go out and find, but it’s in the defining of the core values that you can choose your purpose, so what’s useful for me. I have six core values that I live my life by, right. They’re creativity, hope, impact, empathy, family, and authenticity. I filter every decision I make in my life through those six things.

Brant Menswar: Now, my purpose? My purpose is actually to authentically … How I would describe it on a regular basis, for me, is to creatively impact people’s lives by authentically providing hope. That’s my purpose that I try to live out every day. Now, when you look at that, you’ll see four of my six core values activated in that purpose, and that, to me, is what’s missing.

Brant Menswar: That’s why there’s so much confusion around purpose, because purpose literally is the activation of your core values, so until you define what those are, it’s impossible for you to get to purpose. But once you do, you can speak them into existence, so you can program them into your day. You choose when and where they appear, and that is when you start to experience transformation, which is what purpose is all about.

John Jantsch: Well, I think that, in listening to you just there, I think the challenge really is the brutal honesty that it takes to actually define those core values. I mean, it’s really easy to come up with some sound-good core values. I mean, I’ll throw one out for you, not to challenge you on it, but authenticity, that’s one that everybody has, right, but so few people actually live it. But it sounds good. So how do we get past the sounds good exercise and get to what’s real?

Brant Menswar: Well, it takes work, right? The truth is that when I do … So I’ll do these workshops where I help people define their core values. It’s a five week program, that sometimes, when I’m hired, they give me an hour, which is just an impossible task, but we can at least start the conversation. And the conversation that we have to start is … Typically, what happens is I put the lowest hanging fruit I can, which is, “Here’s a list of 150 values, commonly held. Circle the ones that speak to you.” What I end up finding is that, if I’m in a room of a hundred people, 95 of them circle more than 30 words.

Brant Menswar: So the challenge is, and this is really to your question, separating what’s important from us from our non-negotiables is really hard work when you’ve got a lot of things that are important to you. That’s where the challenge lies, is it takes time, you have to prove that they’re real, and what I find most people do is they give me two or three that are honest and real, and they give me two or three that are aspirational values, they’re who they want to be, but they’re not who they are.

John Jantsch: Well, is there anything wrong with that, though? Can you sort of aspire to a non-negotiable that, maybe because of society or because of the way you were raised, didn’t develop early?

Brant Menswar: What I would say, I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with it, but it’s not reality, and so if you’re living your life based on something that’s false, there is no proof. Part of the thing for me is, once you give me or I help you define whatever those five are going to be, you spend two weeks on something that I call archeology, where you start digging through your day for proof.

Brant Menswar: If two or three of the things that you say are your non-negotiables don’t show up, then my guess is they’re not actual non-negotiables. They’re not one of your core values. They may be something that’s important, yes, but they’re definitely not these things that you are going to live your life by. What ends up happening is we either look, pick and choose a different value that is showing up, that didn’t make the list for whatever particular reason, or we do something that I love to call leveling up.

Brant Menswar: If somebody says to me, “Look, family is one my core values, faith is one of my core values, community is one of my core values.” Well, what ends up happening is, if you look at those things, you start to realize that maybe it’s something more like connection. Connection encompasses all of those things, whether it’s spiritually, physically, relationship-wise, so maybe we have to level up to get a larger umbrella so that you are encompassing more things.

Brant Menswar: It takes time. It takes weeks of doing that, and really, it takes a good four, five, six months before you can honestly say you own those values, and you know they’re real, and you have proof. No one needs to believe you when you have proof, and that’s the goal.

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John Jantsch: I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, and a lot of folks that, they’re trying to hustle and make their way and get this business thing going. It’s funny how,, in those moments they can sort of get pushed out of who they really are, and turn around and go, “What happened?”

Brant Menswar: Yeah. Sure.

John Jantsch: These are not bad people. These are people that have these core values, but in the moment, get pushed away from them. So how do we, in the heat of the moment, so to speak, how do we stop from screwing up?

Brant Menswar: Well, they lost the tug of war, right, at the center of those struggles, when, what you just described is a tug of war between our values and our feelings. Our feelings are monsters. They are incredibly powerful things that can change any scenario in a wrong direction so quickly that the only way to battle it is to truly define and own those five or six things that you know for sure are those non-negotiables, those core values.

Brant Menswar: For me, by defining what those things were, it made my life so much easier, because sometimes my emotions got in the way. Sometimes I’m all hot and bothered over the way somebody spoke to me, and to be able to sit there and go, “Is this impacting me creatively? Is it taking away my hope? Is it challenging my impact?” If it’s not doing any of the six things, if it’s not offending any of those six things, then I can let it go and not think about it. But when we don’t define those things, we can never put a finger on it, so it makes it really hard to let it go.

John Jantsch: Yeah, so then when the, I’m not really good enough, I’ll never make enough money, I’ll never be successful, when those thoughts come up, you’ve got something to push them away, don’t you?

Brant Menswar: It’s absolutely true, and there’s a lot of books out there about this imposter syndrome, and the negative self talk and self sabotage, and a lot of these books recommend you sort of pushing those away and ignoring those. Where I come from, that’s the worst thing you can do. You want to talk about giving that voice more power in your life, pretend it’s not there.

Brant Menswar: What I always say in those scenarios is, whenever I have a thought that’s really negative, that’s impacting me that way, I give that voice a seat on the bus, but that voice is never going to touch the wheel. I drive the bus, but I will happily give them a seat on the bus, and I’ll ask them one question, always, “What makes it okay for you to talk to me that way? What happened? There has to be a reason that you think it’s okay for you to talk to me that way.”

Brant Menswar: What I come to find out is, is that it’s buried in a lot of emotional garbage that should just be pushed aside, but at the center of whatever that negative thought is, is some real truth. I have to be able to get to that truth and accept it for what it is, thank them, give them that opportunity to share their voice, which actually takes their power away, and then say, “Go back and sit down in your seat in the back of the bus. Thank you very much. I’m going to continue to drive forward in the direction I want to go to.” But most of us simply hand the wheel over to that voice and say, “You steer for a while,” and before you know it, we’re really off path of where we want to go to in our lives.

John Jantsch: So, if I bring Brant into my life, is there the five step, here’s how we would choose purpose, we’re going to do step one, then step two? I’m not trying to over simplify it-

Brant Menswar: Sure.

John Jantsch: … but is there sort of a process?

Brant Menswar: Yes. Yeah, absolutely, and it’s a multifaceted process because some of us get there in different ways. To start the conversation looking at a list of words is fine, but it’s never going to be deep enough to really get to the truth. But it’s definitely a great place to start.

Brant Menswar: One of the things that I always encourage people to do is to make a list of their favorites. What’s your favorite song? What’s your favorite movie? What’s your favorite food? What’s your favorite smell? Because our favorites are clear indicators of some of those core values that we possess. They are our favorites because they’re scratching the itch of one or more of our core values. It’s an easy, fun way to get to some answers that you can start to dive deeper into.

John Jantsch: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. My favorite band, Big Kettle Drum, all day long, so-

Brant Menswar: Yes, baby.

John Jantsch: All right, so then how are we going to work on that stuff? Okay, so now I’ve got the list, I’ve got something that tells me something, but now it’s Monday morning again.

Brant Menswar: Yeah. So here’s the big difference, right, here’s the transformation, and this is where, honest to God, my life changed a year ago. I’ve been teaching this for a number of years, but I never really experienced the power of defining these things and owning them until I read an article, just about a year ago, that was on Gary Vaynerchuk. This was The New York Times, and the title of the article said, “Future Jets Owner, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

Brant Menswar: Well, if you’re familiar with Gary V. in any way, shape or form, you know that his life’s purpose is to own the New York Jets. That’s all he wants to do. Everything he does is in alignment with that goal. In the article, they interviewed Gary’s brother, and the journalist said, “I have to tell you, it’s a little strange talking to Gary because he just, he speaks about this like it’s going to happen. It’s like it’s a foregone conclusion. Gary will tell you he’s going to work till he’s 68, he’s going to make a couple of billion dollars, he’s going to buy the New York Jets, they’re going to go to eight Super Bowls, they’re going to win six, and he’s going to die, and then he … He has it all planned out.”

Brant Menswar: The funny thing for me was, the answer the brother gave is what changed everything for me. He said, “Of course, he’s going to speak it into existence.” When I read that, I found the missing link. You see, defining your values, proving that they’re real is one thing, but speaking them into existence is something else. So what happened was, we went from developing this archeology, where you start digging through your day, looking for proof that they’re real, into a programming of your values, literally speaking them into existence. What we do is we sit down with the people when they’re done, and we look at their calendar, and we look at their schedule for the day, and we say, “Where are you going to program these values to appear?”

Brant Menswar: So if I had a meeting with you, John, at two o’clock today, and I knew that you were going through something that was, maybe in your personal life, that was a little bit rough, well, empathy being one of my core values. If you looked at my calendar, you would see the word empathy written next to the appointment time, because I am going to speak that value into existence when I talk to you. So I start programming these values into my day so that they appear.

Brant Menswar: Since I’ve started doing that, my entire life has been accelerated at such a rate. I went from speaking pretty … at a decent clip, to an article coming out, naming me one of the top 10 motivational speakers in the country. I have no idea how I made that list, but I believe in my heart of hearts that it’s because I started speaking my values into existence. All of a sudden, my fees triple, I have a new book coming out, all these things happening because people are seeing these things that I say matter most.

Brant Menswar: I don’t have to do anything other than know that if I program them into my day, there’s no question as to whether or not people are going to have that experience with me, and the control freak in me absolutely loves that ability to speak those things into existence, because in reality, I never have to compromise.

John Jantsch: I love that idea, because calendar is something we all habitually do anyway, so-

Brant Menswar: That’s exactly right.

John Jantsch: … to actually then add that is not going to be too much of a stretch, maybe, for people. I love that.

Brant Menswar: Absolutely. Super powerful, and easy, and that’s the goal.

John Jantsch: So Brant, where can people find out more about you, and your work, and your books, and of course-

Brant Menswar: You bet.

John Jantsch: … Spotify is one of the places, right?

Brant Menswar: Yeah. For Big Kettle Drum, anywhere you grab music. We’ve got Spotify channels, we’ve got Pandora channels. We’ve done it long enough to have at least that level of success, where you can actually find us outside of our website. For me, personally, anything on the speaking side, anything on the values, purpose side, it’s all under brantsmenswar.com. That’s where you can find links to Rock ‘N’ Roll With It and the book.

Brant Menswar: But the new book right now is going to be called Black Sheep, and that comes out in October of next year. But I am incredibly excited about that book because it literally spells out exactly how to do the things you and I just spent the last 20 minutes talking about.

John Jantsch: Awesome. Well, Brant, it was great of you stop by, and I know I’m going to see you soon, but hopefully we’ll run into you out there on the road.

Brant Menswar: Love it. Thanks so much, John. Appreciate it.

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