I asked Will how he was doing. He said “doing all right.” I didn’t let him stop there.
We sat down to record something different this week. No guest. Just me and Will, who you know as my co-host and the other half of this whole thing. I asked him how he was, and he gave me the answer every man gives. Doing all right. You know.
So I asked again. How are you, really? And he said something I wasn’t ready for. He said he’s never lived such a full life as he has these last few months.
Full, it turns out, is the whole spectrum at once. The woman he loves came home after 3 and a half months away, and it’s been a joy. At the same time his father is gravely ill, close enough to the end that Will talks about weeks. His brother got hurt badly enough to be down for a year or more. And Will has become the one holding all of it together, 3 hours of driving between his life in New York and his family, on the phone with hospitals, fighting a system that still asks you to fax. This was me refusing to let my brother carry that alone on camera.
Here’s life, here’s real life
Will described the moment it all landed as a switch flipping. One day everything’s cruising, the travel, the teaching, the show we’re building. The next it’s bang, here you go, here’s real life. And the strange mercy of it, he said, is how fast the bullshit evaporates. Everything that doesn’t matter just burns off, and you’re left holding only what does.
He went straight into fixer mode. His word is provider, or protector, or honestly just the guy. “I need to be the guy that gets shit done,” he said, the advocate, the one coordinating the calls, standing up for the people he loves against a healthcare system he’s pretty sure is a sick-care system. He lit up telling me about being told to fax something in 2026. “Who the fuck has a fax machine?” The frustration is real and I felt it come off him.
I know that mode. I lived in go-mode, fix-it-mode, admin-mode for a big chunk of my career, and I’m good at it, and it has a cost I’m slow to admit. Will said, “It’s not even about me anymore.” He and his older brother are carrying it together, and he described feeling like they’re kids again, back in the fort they built, stacking firewood in the basement, except the stakes now are a father’s life instead of a chore. His mantra through all of it is four words he repeats like a metronome. I’m doing the best I can.
When the sword comes out
Here’s where it got honest, and where I pushed him, because that’s my job as his friend and it’s the whole point of the show. Will teaches this stuff. He’s a yoga teacher, a meditation guy, a self-described compassion ambassador. And he told me his sword still comes out.
It comes out with the people closest to him, when something that’s obvious to him isn’t landing for someone else, and he feels the heat climb into his face. “I could just be an asshole,” he said. He plays the victim in his own head, don’t you know what I’m going through. Then he catches it, and he repairs it. He apologizes, to his mom, to his dad, to the stranger on the phone who was only doing their job. “I know you’re just doing your job. This is a really hard time for me, and I’m sorry I took some of it out on you.” He just wants to show up 10 percent better the next moment. Zen mastery can wait.
I pushed him on the line between regulating an emotion and suppressing it, because I’ll be honest, there are plenty of times I’m fully aware of what I’m feeling and I stuff it down anyway. Awareness alone doesn’t save you. Will’s answer was that the body is a house, and you can hoard a lot of trash in it. If you never open the windows, never let the steam out, it gets ugly. So he sweats it out in the gym, he breathes, he gets in the sun every morning, he sits. Not to feel perfect. To keep making decent decisions while the ground keeps moving.
People are beautiful
The moment Will teared up was about asking for help. He said everyone tells you to let them know what you need, and most of the time that’s where it stops. What undid him was the few who took action without being managed. His father got moved to a hospital an hour from the family, and Will texted a childhood friend, the kid from across the street he’d been close with since he was 6. “If you’re near there, could you stop by and see him?” The friend wrote back, “I’ll see what I can do.” 3 hours later: “I’m walking into the hospital now.” Will could barely get the story out. “People are f’ing beautiful, Jon.”
I told him what I’ll tell you. Asking for help gives people an opening, and your friends want to show up. It makes them feel good, it lets them pay back a little of what you’ve put into the world, and it leaves everybody better, the helper, the one being helped, and the dad who got a visitor on a lonely afternoon. Will almost didn’t ask. He’s glad he did.
A friend messaged us after the episode and named the thing better than I could. She said we showed how to sit through a hard conversation and push it forward, and that “caring about someone is not backing off,” which so often feels backwards. The real connection, she wrote, happens when you sit beside someone and help them push past the resistance, against you and against themselves. That’s the whole episode. Will’s dad is still slipping. Will is still doing the best he can, moment to moment, and the work now is just staying in the room...
What to do about it
Ask someone “how are you, really,” and don’t take the first answer. “Doing all right” is just the door. The room is behind it. Ask again, gently, and then stop talking. Most people have never once been asked a second time, and the second time is where the truth lives.
Let the steam out of the house. Will’s body-is-a-house rule: the pressure has to go somewhere, so give it a door. A hard sweaty workout, 10 real breaths, 10 minutes in the morning sun, a cold plunge, a walk. Pick one and do it today, before the pot boils over, not after.
When your sword comes out, repair fast. You will snap at someone you love when you’re stretched thin. Notice where it lives in your body, Will feels it in his face, name it, and circle back quickly: “I’m sorry, this is hard, and that wasn’t about you.” Aim for 10 percent better next time, not perfect.
Ask for help by naming one concrete thing. “Let me know if you need anything” dies in the group chat. “Can you stop by the hospital Thursday” gets a yes. Give one specific person one specific task this week, and let them have the gift of showing up. Reply and tell me the one ask you’re going to make.
Do the work now, before you need it. Will’s whole message was that the practice held because he’d built it before the storm. “This shit works,” he said, and he’s shocked he didn’t fall apart. Start one small practice today so it’s there when your bang comes. See where you stand first with our free Awareness Self-Assessment, about 5 minutes: focusnowtraining.com/assessment-page. Reply with the practice you’re starting, and I’ll build a follow-up from what comes back.
This week on Men Talking Mindfulness
No guest this week. I sat down one-on-one with my co-host and brother, Will Schneider, in the middle of the hardest stretch of his life, his father gravely ill and his brother badly hurt, and asked him to talk through how he’s showing up when everything is on fire at once. Will is a longtime yoga and meditation teacher, a Stanford compassion ambassador, and the other half of Focus Now Training and this show. He asked to keep the family details private, as he should, and shared the rest openly so the next person carrying something heavy knows they’re not alone. If you’re in your own version of this, reach out. We can’t always answer directly, but we’ll point you to real support where we can.
Watch on YouTube | Listen here
One more thing before the paywall…
Awareness to Action is our 12-week self-mastery course and community. It’s where you build the practice before you need it, the exact thing that kept Will standing when his world tilted, alongside a room of men doing the same work. Text A2A to 33777 or go to FocusNowTraining.com/A2A-course. On the fence? Reply with the word A2A and I’ll tell you straight whether it’s for you.
Until next time,
Jon Macaskill and Will Schneider
Focus Now Training and Men Talking Mindfulness
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