MRTS Interview Spotlight - Travis Murray - Forged Not Finished/Daily Choices That Shape A Man

If you’ve ever thought “I’m not enough,” you’re not alone and you’re not done. We sit down with Travis Murray, host of Man in Progress Forging Manhood, for an honest talk about what it really takes to rebuild as a man when life has hit hard and the old ways aren’t working anymore. 

We dig into values-based living and why most men can name “good values” but still feel stuck. Travis explains how doing real values work goes deeper than surface answers and becomes a practical tool for decision-making, discipline, and men’s mental health. We also talk about living with honor at home: shutting off work mode, putting the phone down, and choosing presence with your wife and kids over comfort and distraction. 

Fatherhood and stepfatherhood take center stage as we unpack boundaries, unity in the home, and the truth that children mirror the adults around them. Travis introduces “shadow values,” the priorities we don’t want to admit but that show up in our habits, from scrolling to avoiding hard conversations. The message is clear: you’re being forged, and getting help through mentors, coaching, counseling, therapy, and community is strength, not weakness. 

If this conversation hits home, subscribe, share it with a brother who needs it, and leave a review so more men can find a space that pushes them toward growth.

Transcript

Welcome And Why This Space

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Welcome to the men's round table full of the chair. Men's round table to be touched up in the live. Real man, real faith with a tool to the live pointed at the table with a storm of the chair. Welcome to the men's round table, full of the chair.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Welcome back to the men's interview spotlight. I'm your host, Mr. U. Thanks for joining us. If you're watching us for the very, very first time, wherever you are and how are you getting this? Thanks for making us part of your week. We're live on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube, and across all audio and social media platforms. You can find one of the show, all uh all four of our shows, actually. You can find us. This is important for us because we have a men's roundtables series podcast that we do every Thursday at 7 p.m. EST. Not a shameless plug. I want you to know that we're having conversations with men across the country and around the world to save space to talk about men's issues. So this show is just a one-on-one version of that round table. Our guest today is going to be the host of Man in Progress, Forging Manhood. We got Travis Murray in-house with us today. Travis, how are you, man? Good to see you, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

I'm fantastic. It's good to see you as well. Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Uh, pleasure is mine, man. Pleasure my. I want to get into our work. We have uh a limited amount of time. Our format has changed a bit, so we got like a short amount of time, but I want to get into some uh discussion with you. Real quick, tell us where you're from and why you're doing what you're doing, man, and then we get into some questions for you.

Travis Story And Values Wake Up

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Yeah, of course. So I'm from the Midwest, just enjoying my time out here. Just, you know, I uh I actually originally grew up in Utah on the West Coast there, and uh and just really have you know moved out to this Midwestern town just because you know, life brings you places. And in that in that process, I uh you know, I started doing some work on myself just personally. I had read a bunch of books in sales, I was trying to increase my career and and get you know to that next level, if you will. And in the process, I started reading more books on helping myself, helping my mindset, doing that. And, you know, I got a coach, and that coach told me about, he asked me what my values were. And it was just kind of like surface level stuff that I was trying to bring to him. I was just like, you know, family, loyalty, courage, you know, just the basics. And he asked me a deeper question. He said, No, what do you really truly value though? And I was like, I don't know how to answer that question. So I went and did the research and I put in the time, I put in the effort. I spent hours, weeks, months just looking at values, how they actually line up, how they work within the brain, and how they push people into the directions they're supposed to go. And in the process, I learned a lot about myself and I thought that that message could actually be delivered to people and they could use it the same way. I mean, I've changed my life around quite a bit. Um, I I started a new business, uh, which is you know, podcasting and that. Um, I'm just wanted me to coach them. So I started a coaching business, and things are just looking up for me, and it's all around the work I did with my values. I've lost, you know, almost 20 pounds in weight. You know, I'm I'm just going, I guess, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Awesome, man. Congrats, man. Thank you. That's good stuff. I love, I love hearing everything you said about, you know, your new clients uh through the

Rebuilding After Distance And Addiction

SPEAKER_01 3:45

work with your podcast and your uh weight loss journey. I mean, all that stuff is wonderful, man. I love all of that stuff. You got you got a you got a deep story, man. A lot has has gone on with you in regards to you mentioned stuff about uh custody struggles and and not being close to your children. Something I can relate to. I got three daughters that I really I hardly ever see, if at all. So I totally get that part. But in this season, maybe you can agree with this, that the rebuilding yourself part is really important because when they do return and they likely will, uh what are they gonna come back to? What are they gonna see? The old person that they were happy to get away from, or they were uh or they were kind of what they remembered, or the new person who's not just evolving but growing himself. So I love I love your struggle, man. I love I love your uh approach to the struggle, man.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Yeah, it took me some time to rebuild after that, like moving away from my family like that, um, with my with my now wife and and her kids has been, you know, kind of a blessing in itself because I've been able to spend that time and my kids have gotten to know what they've missed from me in that sense. And, you know, it was a struggle. I I've battled addiction for the first early years of my 20s, and you know, getting across that hump into this now, you know, fatherly figure, if you will, and being that person for the people around me has been a blessing that I I don't think I could have asked for or deserved.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Definitely.

What Forging Manhood Means

SPEAKER_01 5:20

When you now I love the name of your podcast. I want to kind of bring that out to the front. No, you talk about forging manhood. I know that you and I share the understanding that the man is not finished. I think most men know that, but I think the the struggles that a lot of men we talk talk to in a round table or we talk to in spots like spotlight like this, is that they don't know how to continue to finish. They don't know how to be forged, they just do the stuff that they've been doing and thinking, you know what? Hey, I'm a good person. This is enough. So forged manhood.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

What's that mean to you, Travis? Yeah, so you know, I came up with the title just because in my own life, I have said the words, I'm not enough, I'm too broken, you know, I'm I'm late to start this, you know, I'm I'm behind every other man in my in my age area. You know, I've I've I've thought that myself. And so when I really thought about it and started doing the values work, like there's so much knowledge in the world today that I don't have it. I wasn't taught it. You know, most men don't have it. And so they are in this era where they believe that they are not enough. And that's the biggest key driver there. You know, men's suicide rates are through the roof, you know, men who go to counseling, that number is so small, it's it's ridiculous, you know. And in that sense, I thought about it and I'm like, to be a man is to constantly be learning, learning stuff that you can pass on to other people, the people in your community, or if you're a father, your children, or if you're planning to be a father, you know, in that sense as well. So you're always learning. So you're always being forged because we are not, you know, a computer. We are not AI. We are being built. We are being built in our minds, we are being built in our bodies, and we are constantly, constantly, you know, taking that heat from the world around us. And we can either turn that into something that's brittle and you know weak, or we can turn that something into strong, usable tools for society to to reflect, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

One of the things that I think a lot of conversations that we have with men is seem to kind of go back into the same consistent uh rabbit hole, if you will, about you know, not just living reactively, but uh making a a daily choice, having a daily discipline, which I'm a I'm a firm believer of, and life that's aligned with the values that we say

Living With Honor At Home

SPEAKER_01 8:00

we have. Tell us if you can what it, you know, what does living with honor look like for you in everyday life? Because a lot of men they think, you know, I'm I'm the breadwinner. I was one of those. I have to be honest about that. I brought the bread home, I brought home the bacon, so to speak. And I feel like, you know what, as it pertains to my responsibilities, I did the most important one. Everything else is optional, it's negotiable. I did that part. So I'm I'm good. What does living with honor look like in everyday life, in your opinion, in practice?

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Yeah, living with honor every day is not just about going and getting the bread and bringing it home. That's part of your of your daily duties, if you will, but it's not the whole, it's not the whole scenario. If if you went to, if you woke up, went to work, came home and went to sleep, sure, it would seem like that was all that you do. But if you have a family, a wife, kids, you know, you you wake up a father and a husband, you go to work to earn money for the family so that they can live a more comfortable life that you're trying to set up for them. You come home and you're a father and a husband all the way up through the night, even like I lightly sleep just to make sure that, you know, I'm the security system for my home. You know what I mean? And so, so I'm constantly living in that way. And so what that means for me is always checking yourself, right? Check yourself at the door before you walk in. Turn off work mode and go into father husband mode and go inside the house and and live by your values. When your kids want to hang out, put your phone down. You don't need it. Hang out with your kids. That bond you build with your children is going to be more meaningful than any of the 37 TikTok videos you scroll in that hour.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

No question. I love it, I love it, man. I also love the the uh the contribution that your wife brings to this conversation. And I think men that are watching and listening, which is primarily all our entire audience. What is your uh what what was kind of the agreement that you and your wife had to kind of build a foundation

A Shared Mission With His Wife

SPEAKER_01 10:10

that you talked so much about and why does that matter so much for you?

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Yeah, so we had this conversation, like we're in the process of trying to figure out how to actually get this thing up and going, but we've had this conversation, and one, I I've always had this, if you will, message from a higher power. And and that message is to start with the children. You build children up, you build them in the way that they're supposed to be built with the things that they love doing. And so my wife asked me, you know, what's my ultimate goal? And I and I told her. And that goal is to build a school that allows children to be raised through a process of taking what they love and then teaching them the other things. So if you're, you know, artistic and you love the arts, whether it be graphic design or if you like painting and drawing and that sort of thing, you know, we teach children about, you know, computers through art. We teach children about history through art. We, you know, and we we take that because it's something that they love and they're always going to, you know, strive to find and do what they love. That's just what children do. So if they like math and science, okay, then we teach them art, history, and all that stuff through the process of math and science. And we when we build these children up through the things that they love doing, instead of trying to put them on a conveyor belt and send them through a machine where we say, okay, this person's a slow learner, this person's a fast learner. And that's just not the way our society should work. And so I told my wife this and I and I gave her in great detail what I want to do. And she was like, I think that coalines with something I want to do. And I was like, Well, what is that? And she told me how she wants to help the families who are struggling, families who one have lost their children due to situations like alcohol or drug abuse or things like that, or just abuse in the home, if you will. And you know, the children obviously need to be in different placement and and whatnot. So we'll find families that can watch the children in that in that interim, that temporary state, like a foster situation, if you will. Okay. Okay. And we work on the parents and we work on the children, and then we bring them back together. That's what we want to do. We don't we know that the parents and children of the same biological situation, or if you've adopted that situation as well, they belong with with those parents. And our our goal is to make everyone whole in the way that's best for you know the children and the parents.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

No, I love that, man. That that's that's really what we need right now. I love the unionwork on the same page, but and the and the true dreams, if you will, that you have, it just aligns. So that's a beautiful thing. I hope that the men that are listening and watching live or on the replay, they get that important point right there. That's really important. A lot of men that we talk to, sometimes they capitulate to what their wife wants. Sometimes vice versa. The wife capitulates to what the husband wants. And it turns like something I've seen out of the 1800s as opposed to what it should be right now. You know, uh, agreement and alignment. So I love hearing this.

Stepfatherhood Boundaries And Real Influence

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Uh, you talk a lot about fatherhood and stepfatherhood changing the way you see you see yourself as a man. Boy, can I wax poetic on that one. Uh, we got three grown daughters now, six grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. We haven't seen any of the great-grandchildren yet. But that stepfatherhood and that fatherhood thing is was a real struggle for me because that word step, I found it so offensive. I felt like it was me, you know, almost like a backup baseball, a backup first baseman or something. I'm like, no, I can hit. Yeah. I don't I don't I don't even beat somebody's back. I'm I'm I'm I'm a starter on somebody's team. So me and why I came to agreement that you know what, I'm a starter on this team. I'm not a backup, I'm not a replacement for somebody who was better and just couldn't uh finish the course. I was a starter, and once we agreed on that, game-changing impact in our household. I was a starter and nobody can take my spot. So tell me how fatherhood or stepfatherhood or both changed the way you see yourself as a man.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

Yeah, so you know, it was it was difficult as a as a weekend dad, you know, you you live five days a week and you're like, okay, I'm a single parent, or in that sense, I'm a bachelor, I can, I can go do whatever I want. And then on the weekends, you get these kids and you're like, okay, now I've got to step up and be a parent, you know, and you have to switch modes and do all that stuff. But when you actually live in the home, like when I became a stepfather, constantly there with the children, you know, in that sense, we read, we read books, we we saw, you know, the post and we followed people who told us how to parent these kids. And there was there was advice out there that is like, as a stepparent, don't involve yourself in the parenting of the of the stepkids. And it's like that was it, it started to when we did that, we tried it, and it started to pull this rift between my wife and I and what the kids were allowed to get away with and the rules and boundaries that I set in place for myself and people around me. And it just started to create this gap. And we were like, okay, we need to bring that back together. Well, how do we do that? Well, one, the kids have their father, and that's okay. As long as he's being good, as long as he's holding to his values and teaching them the right things, he will always be there. But then there's also a father in the home, a father figure in the home, and he needs to act like a father. All right. So he he teaches, he molds, he guides in the same direction. And all of the people involved, all the parents involved, need to understand that, you know, this is our rules, this is what we set, and this is what we agree on, and we live by those things, you know, to a degree in separate households. And, you know, that changed me because as that person who was a bachelor and a parent, a weekend parent to a full-time parent, I had to understand that the things that I do as a man, regardless of what I believe they're going to do, they reflect onto the children. And the children mirror that. They are learning how to work in society, they are learning how to talk to other people in society based on the people that they are around. You know, you've heard the old adage, birds of a feather flock together. If you're, if you, if you are friends with three druggies, you're the fourth, right? And that's just that's kind of how it works. So you need to you need to upgrade your friends in order to be better. If you find people who are real estate investors, three real estate investors, and you join them in your friend group, you'll become the fourth real estate investor. You know, that's just kind of how it works. You start to learn with the people around you. So if you think that you are not an impression on your children just because you're a step parent, you're wrong. You are a huge impression on those children, and you need to live your life values aligned in order to teach them the things that they need to learn to operate in society as a whole.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Thank you for sharing that, brother. I wanted to ask you a really quick question. I'm gonna ask you to do a favor for me after that.

Shadow Values You Avoid Admitting

SPEAKER_01 17:35

So, real quick, what are shadow values? You mentioned that a few times. What is that briefly?

SPEAKER_02 17:40

Yeah, so I kind of coined this. There's these aspirational values and shadow values, right? Aspirational values are the values when I ask you, hey, what do you value? And you say, you know, like like I did, family, courage, loyalty, you know, it's the things I strive to value. But then there are these shadow values, these values that you don't want to admit nor see. So you you they're just hidden in your shadow. It's the things when you when you get off of work, the first thing that you want to do to spend your time, right? If you're a person who likes to ride his motorcycle and you get on your hog and you take off, right? Well, you value your alone time more than you value your family in that sense. If you want to sit on the couch and watch TV, and when your son walks in and says, Hey, dad, let me show you this thing, and you're like, hold on, not right now. I'm I'm in the middle of something. You know, you're valuing your comfort over your family bond. So those are your shadow values. And when you realize what they are and how you can address them, you can start pushing yourself toward your aspirational values. And so the shadow values are those things we don't want to admit we have, but we do. Like I valued comfort and food over a lot of the other duties I should have had as a parent, and I gained a bunch of weight. I mean, I'll I'll be honest, I I at one point in my life I got up to 320 pounds and I I my wheezing, I started having asthma stuff. It was horrible. And you know, I've been in the in the process of trying to to lose that weight, you know, and I'm down to to 283 this morning, and I'm I'm you know, I'm I'm kicking weight in the in the ass and saying, get out of here, you know what I mean?

Get Help And Keep Getting Forged

SPEAKER_01 19:20

That's good stuff, man. First off, thanks for being here, Travis. You uh it was enlightening to say the least, man. I I love to have a conversation with people like you who see manhood and fatherhood the way that you do, man. So I'm excited about the prospect of staying connected. Already subscribed to your YouTube channel, man. So I'm number 66. Happy to be a part of what you're doing in the journey, man. You and your wife, man. Um I help however I can. Before we get out of here, I love you to do me a favor. Speak to the males in our audience today, husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons, whatever's on your heart, man, share that and let folks know where they can find you in your work, then we'll close the show out.

SPEAKER_02 20:00

Go ahead. Yeah, absolutely. All right, for those listening, like you know, like I've said in this in this live, you're not behind, you're not broken, right? You're being forged constantly. You have to put in the work. That's just how it works. That's how blacksmiths did it back in the day. They hammered the tools, they hammered the heat. You know, that's up to you to make that decision and then live life in that way. Get help. Don't think that getting help is a weakness. You have friends, mentors, counselors, coaches, therapists. There are so many ways out there for you to get the help that you may want or need. Do it. You know, I battled addiction, I came out of it, you can too. I battled fatherhood in a way that I didn't know I was going to, and I'm coming out on top of that as well. I know that you can too. So take the time, use the resources available to you. I'm a resource, I have a lot of free content. You know, Mr. U, you have an amazing platform. You know, check him out, do that stuff. If you want to find me, you can find me on YouTube at Travis Murray slash Man in Progress, or you can find my podcast, Man in Progress Forging Manhood, on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube, or most other platforms as well.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Thank you very much for doing this. And you got an incredible journey, man. And just know that I know a time's gonna come because I've already seen it. A time's gonna come where you're gonna probably feel like you know what? I'm solo watching, I don't feel like I got time here. I want to be a part of what you're doing, I want you to be part of what I'm doing. So we're gonna talk off there, but have an idea. I want to win your way. But thanks again for being a part of this conversation, man, and for giving us some of some of your time, man. I know it's valuable. So I appreciate you, brother.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure to be on. You're an amazing host and a great podcaster.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

Thanks for your time, man, and thanks for the compliment. I appreciate that. So you guys that are watching.

Final Thanks And Sign Off

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Listening, thanks for making us part of your week. That's Travis Murray. He's the host of the Fortunate Manhood Podcast and a whole bunch of other things that he's doing, man. So definitely follow him wherever he is. Uh, find out information in the show notes. This is the men's interview spotlight. That's Travis Murray, Mr. U. Have a great day.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Men's Round Table series. Step inside. Real men, real faith where the truths collide. Voices at the table where the stories get shared. Welcome to the men's round table. Pull up a chair.