When to Get Tougher, and When to Walk Away | Walk With Jon

There are two lessons available when something in your life keeps hurting. One is to get tougher. The other is to walk away. Most men only ever get coached on the first one.   WHAT THIS IS This is the first episode of something new we're calling Walk With Jon. No studio, no script, no guest, no editing. Just Jon Vroman on a walking trail near his house, thinking out loud. In his words: "What I don't want to do is stand at my desk anymore at my expensive microphone and try to record the highest quality show. I thought, if we were friends and on the phone and talking to each other, it would sound like this. You'd hear the wind in the background, the crunch of the rocks under my feet. It wouldn't be the highest quality audio, but it would be authentic. It would be real. You would be with me." So yes, the audio is rougher than what you're used to from us. That's the point. No edits, no stops, no re-records. His words again: "just mistakes, back steps, corrections throughout." In a world where you can't always tell what's real and what came out of a machine, these are his unfiltered thoughts as he walks. He also asks for two things up front. That you send feedback and tell him what you'd want him to think through out loud, because he's a verbal processor and this helps him as much as it helps you. And that you allow him to change his mind later, because that's what growth looks like.   WHAT HE'S THINKING ABOUT THIS MORNING He calls it the nut-kicking line. Picture standing in a line where you keep getting kicked, and a coach beside you saying the lesson is resilience. Toughen up. Build grit. Focus your attention somewhere else. Sometimes that's exactly right. But Jon's point is that there's a second lesson almost nobody coaches, which is that you're allowed to step out of the line. Learning to let go, to say no, to move on, is also a lesson. He works it through his own three ultramarathons, one of which he thinks genuinely hurt him, and then through marriages, business partners, employees, and kids of divorce who say they wish their parents had separated sooner. Both paths have beautiful stories. Both have regrets. As he puts it: "All of it's true." The question he lands on isn't which one is right. It's what you'd hear if you got quiet and honest enough to ask yourself.   IN THIS WALK: Why he's recording on a trail instead of at his desk, and what unfiltered is worth right now Why he reserves the right to change his mind, and why that's growth and not flip-flopping The nut kicking line, and the two very different lessons hiding inside it His 52-mile walk-run in 2006, doing it again in 2007, and the anniversary run ten years later that cost him Whether ultra-endurance events serve your body or only your mindset, and where David Goggins fits Ben Greenfield trading hard training for long walks, and what shifting seasons looks like Where this shows up for real: marriages, business partners, employees, and children of divorce Why he believes there are no bad decisions, only decisions, and that even the hard ones come with blessings It's okay to not be okay, and even indecision is a decision The Hoffman Institute method his friend David uses: asking your emotional body, mind, heart, and spirit separately, then integrating the answers Jon's four core values: truth, love, respect, responsibility Front Row Dads turning 10, and heading back to Philadelphia where it started in 2016 Jon reads every reply. If something here landed, or if you think he's wrong about it, tell him. He'd say the disagreement is as useful as the agreement, because it shows you what you actually believe. _________________________________________________________ Front Row Dads is a brotherhood of family men with businesses, not businessmen with families. Nearly a thousand men have come through the community in our first ten years. To learn more, go to frontrowdads.com.