It Just Is... the Podcast

This is the finale. And it is the most personal thing I have ever recorded. A while back I sat down and wrote a letter to my son David. Not a letter catching him up on life. Not a funny story about my grandson Remy. Something he could keep. Fold up and put in his wallet or his Bible. Read again when things get hard. It is everything I believe it means to be a man, written from a father to a son, b...

We have leadership backwards. We picture the guy at the head of the table. The boss. The one barking orders and making the calls. The man everyone serves. Then there is Jesus, on the night before he died, getting down on the floor to wash the dirt off the feet of twelve men. Including the one who was about to betray him and the one who was about to deny he ever knew him. The most powerful man who...

When men hear the word protection, they picture the wrong thing. They picture the guy who will throw a punch for his family. The action-movie version. The "nobody messes with mine" version. And sure, that has its place. But it is the smallest, easiest part of what protection actually means. Real protection is daily. It is unsexy. It is showing up safe, present, and consistent when nobody is watchi...

I teach something called radical responsibility. It is the thing that separates men who change from men who stay stuck. And it starts with understanding the difference between blame and ownership. Blame says "this is my fault and I am terrible." Responsibility says "this is mine to own and I am going to handle it." God told me I was my own worst nightmare. Not because everything was my fault. It w...

I built my entire identity on output. How many couples I helped. How many books I wrote. How many stages I stood on. And when all of that got taken away, I had nothing left. Because I had built my sense of self on performance, and when the performance ended, so did my understanding of who I was. Then God told me, in a grove of Aspen trees on the most profound day of my life, three words that almos...

For years I stood on stages and taught people how to fix their marriages while mine was falling apart behind the curtain. "I'm fine." "Everything's great." "Our marriage is wonderful." Those were not white lies. Those were load-bearing walls in a building that was rotting from the inside. This episode is about the quiet lies men tell. Not the dramatic ones. The ones that sound like humility. The o...

A few years ago, three teenagers in masks tried to grab me on a street in Lebanon. I put the big one down. When men interrogated me about why I was there, I told them the truth. When I walked into a Hezbollah camp by accident and had an AK-47 pointed at my head, I smiled and said hi. A year before that, I could not even speak up in my own marriage. This is the first episode of a new series called...

On a cold April morning in Castle Rock, Colorado, I told God I thought I might be ready to help people again. I was living in a converted school bus on twenty acres. I had lost my marriage, my ministry platform, my home, and most of what I thought defined me. I was not sure I had anything left to offer anyone. Within the hour, my phone rang. A woman I barely knew, sobbing before she said a single...

I have a PhD in psychology and thirty years of clinical experience. I have read more books on relationships than most bookstores stock. I could explain attachment theory, nervous system regulation, and conflict patterns in my sleep. And I could not fix my own marriage. I could not stop my own destructive patterns. I could not change my own life no matter how much I understood about it. In this epi...

I was driving home from a failed mediation in September 2019 when I told God I was going to stay drunk until all of this went away. I meant every word. Months later, when I finally started sobering up and went right back to complaining about her, the Holy Spirit showed up and said something to me that was not gentle. At all. This is the episode where we talk about the things you are most ashamed o...

There is a voice in your head that has been lying to you your whole life. You probably do not even know it is there. You think it is just you. You think it is just the truth. But it is not. It is a recording that got installed a long time ago by something painful, and it has been playing in the background ever since, running your relationships, your work, your whole life. Mine said "you are not en...

The morning before my son's wedding, I woke up with a fist around my heart and concrete in my gut. Nothing bad had happened yet. Nobody had said anything. Nobody had done anything. But my body already knew who was going to be in that room. And it was preparing for war before my conscious mind even opened its eyes. In this episode I talk about the thing most people never connect: that your chronic...

I once drove forty miles on a Texas highway with absolutely no memory of doing it. Both hands on the wheel. Car between the lines. Somehow alive. And I had no idea it had happened until I came back to consciousness in a neighborhood I did not recognize. That story, and what caused it, is where this episode starts. Because it turns out your body has been keeping a very detailed record of everything...

I was a psychologist with a PhD, thirty years of experience, and a marriage that was falling apart while I taught other people how to fix theirs. Fun times. In this episode I tell you about the afternoon I sat in a rental car in a Colorado Springs parking lot, sobbing into my phone for three hours, and finally stumbled into the one question that changed everything. It was not the question I had be...

Dr. Michael Smalley is back. After five years of silence, a marriage ending, a school bus in Colorado, an accidental walk into a Hezbollah camp in Lebanon, and four months in Ethiopia that he did not see coming, he turned the microphone back on. This is the episode where Michael explains where he went, why he went quiet, and why he is genuinely different from the man who stopped podcasting five ye...

An uncensored conversation with one of my best friends about the morning I decided to end my life in November 2019. Instead of suicide, I chose to call Casey McKown and Seth Johnson. Today, you get to hear Casey's side of that morning. This episode is explicit because of the nature of our conversation and a couple of words. ------------ Are you a fan of the It Just Is Podcast? Do you want to take...

Welcome to the It Just Is podcast, I’m your host, Michael Smalley. Today I have another special update from my missionary friend currently living and discipling in Southern Lebanon. Please remember, as you hear his voice, that he is currently surrounded by Hezbollah. I lived one floor above him in Southern Lebanon, the risk is real. One of the key leaders of Hezbollah lives across the street! You...

On today’s podcast, I share about the time I daydreamed walked straight into the middle of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in Beirut. ------------ Are you a fan of the It Just Is Podcast? Do you want to take your personal growth to the next level? Become a Member now and support the show at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com  and get live daily coaching with me!

Welcome to the It Just Is podcast, I’m your host, Michael Smalley. Today we're diving into a topic that affects us all at some point in our lives: the false comfort of self-pity. ------------ Are you a fan of the It Just Is Podcast? Do you want to take your personal growth to the next level? Become a Member now and support the show at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com  and get live daily coach...

A little something to make you smile this Thanksgiving! ------------ Are you a fan of the It Just Is Podcast? Do you want to take your personal growth to the next level? Become a Member now and support the show at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com  and get live daily coaching with me!

I go through my daily routine and unpack exactly why I do what I do each day. And I share more about my most recent traumatic events with the best dog in the world, Olive! ------------ Are you a fan of the It Just Is Podcast? Do you want to take your personal growth to the next level? Become a Member now and support the show at https://www.smalleyinstitute.com  and get live daily coaching wit...

Step Twelve - Share. Experiencing a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we carry this message to others struggling with signature sins and keep living these principles in everything we do. Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. Stoop down and reach o...

Welcome to the It Just Is podcast, I’m your host, Michael Smalley. The one-word summary for Step Eleven - Pursue. Step Eleven: Ask God to show me how to live and pursue His will. "Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house...

Step Ten - Accept I’m human and will screw up. Repair it immediately. These are all warning markers—danger!—in our history books, written down so that we don’t repeat their mistakes. Our positions in the story are parallel—they at the beginning, we at the end—and we are just as capable of messing it up as they were. Don’t be so naive and self-confident. You’re not exempt. You could fall flat on yo...

Step Nine - Repair any harm I can without hurting anyone else. This is how I want you to conduct yourself in these matters. If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your offering, leave immediately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God. Matthew 5...