Forging Through Fire EP:2

Healing begins in fire. Just as raw steel requires intense heat before it can be shaped into something strong and useful, men must confront their deepest wounds before true transformation can occur.

In this deeply moving episode, we guide you through a powerful exercise in emotional vulnerability - identifying and confronting the negative messages that have shaped your self-perception. Whether from parents, partners, or your own internal voice, these words have become the raw material of your identity. But what if they could be reshaped?

Through guided reflection, you'll revisit pivotal moments when these limiting beliefs took root. We share the inspiring story of Viktor Frankl, who discovered in the horrors of Auschwitz that even when everything is taken, one freedom remains: choosing what kind of man you'll become in response to suffering.

The heart of our journey involves learning to strike these painful memories with compassion rather than judgment. Each declaration of self-forgiveness becomes a hammer blow, reshaping your relationship with past mistakes and perceived inadequacies. "I am not what they said. I am who I choose to become."

This isn't merely a discussion about healing—it's an active workshop in forging manhood through courage, vulnerability, and deliberate choice. You'll walk away with practical tools for continuing this transformative work and a profound understanding that you weren't made to live in the fire forever. You were made to be shaped by it.

Ready to step into the forge? This is where real strength begins.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to the Forge
• 1:21 Confronting Painful Memories
• 7:56 The Story of Viktor Frankl
• 9:54 Heating the Metal of Your Story
• 11:11 Striking with Compassion and Forgiveness
• 15:13 Your Assignment: Continue the Work

Transcript

TRAVIS MURRAY: 0:00

Welcome to man in Progress, forging Manhood. I'm your host, travis Murray. So take a breath, step into the forge. Let's build something that lasts. Steel isn't born strong. It's born raw, dirty, crooked, unready. And to become something worthy, it must endure heat, hammer and time. Same goes for man. You don't just become, you get broken, bent and reforged.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 0:25

This podcast isn't about giving you answers. It's about handing you a hammer and walking with you as you figure out what needs forged. This is where it starts the fire, Not the kind that burns you to ash, but the kind that makes you malleable, that gets into your chest and melts the parts you've kept locked up for too long. If you're going to forge something real, you've got to take the heat. So here's what we're going to do together.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 0:53

I want you to write down the things you've been told and the things you've told yourself that are negative, the ones that sting, the ones that echo in quiet rooms, the ones you've memorized like a curse you didn't ask for. Write it in your phone, write it in a journal Hell, if you don't have one, pause this and go get one, because this is the part where we stop stuffing it down and start staring it in the face All right. So let's write down those things that have been told to us, things like I'm not enough, you're weak, you're lazy, you don't follow through, you're a bad communicator, you're not a good father, you're not a good husband, you never finish what you start. You ruin everything good, you'll never be who you say you want to be. Do some of those sound familiar? Parents, friends, other family? Yeah, me too. Some of them came from other people, some from family, some from old partners, some from the voice in your own damn head that never shuts up.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 1:55

But hear me, this isn't about self-pity. This isn't about beating yourself up. This is about heat, because nothing changes until it gets hot. You can't shape cold steel, and you can't shape a man who's too afraid to look at the fire. This is the part where your heart and your mind start to soften Not in weakness, though, but in readiness. This is where the forge begins, and, yeah, it's uncomfortable, but that, that discomfort, that's the flame and that tells you you're ready. So, like I said before, write it. Write it raw, don't clean it up for Instagram. Be honest, because only honest metal bends the right way under pressure. Okay, this is the heat, and you're not running from it. This time You're stepping into it because you're not broken. Let me repeat that you are not broken, you're just being prepared. Okay, you've written it down those wounds. Okay, you've written it down those words, those wounds.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 3:01

Now, if you're in a safe place, not driving, not lifting weights, not being distracted, right, I want you to do something you may have never done. I want you to do something you might not have done in years and I want you to close your eyes and try to remember not just the words that were said to you, but the moments. Now we're going to go back into those earliest memories that you can find. You're safe, everything is okay, you're in a safe place.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 3:33

When did you first feel that thing? Who said it? Where were you? What did the air smell like? Was it daytime? Was someone yelling it at you or just coldly, quietly, saying it to your face? Don't protect them.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 3:49

This isn't about blame. We're not building enemies. We're remembering the weight. That is all. Because here is the most valuable truth Most men avoid healing, and healing doesn't start in your head. It starts in your chest, where the lumps build. That lump, that's the impact point, that's where the hammer's going to land, but not yet Right now we're just feeling it.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 4:19

Go to the next one, go to the next phrase and open up another memory. Maybe it wasn't spoken, maybe it was implied in silence, in absence, in the way someone walked out and never looked back. Does that ring true? Now think of the one you said to yourself. You know the one, the thing you whisper. Now think of the one you said to yourself. You know the one, the thing you whisper when no one's around, the one that hits harder than anything anyone else ever said. Where were you when you thought? Where were you when that thought came in? What did you feel? Was it shame, anger, was it regret? Now I want you to give it a number. I want you to give each one a number, actually actually on a scale of one to ten, ten being the one that crushed you the most and one, the one that still shows up in quiet moments, uninvited.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 5:12

This might feel heavy, and that's okay. This is the work, this is the fire. You're not collapsing, you're softening, you're becoming forge ready. The fire is still going. It roars inside you, more so now, and I bet you can feel it on your chest, on your skin, in your breath. You feel it Good, that's what we need. This isn't punishment, this is just preparation. Slowly open your eyes, take a breath, look around. You see that. Do you really see it? You're safe. You made it through and feel how that fire settles Just a little as your nervous system comes back online. That feeling started to slip away, and that's okay. That's what's supposed to happen.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 5:58

You weren't made to live in the fire forever. You're made to be shaped by it. Let me repeat that. You weren't made to live in the fire forever. You're made to be shaped by it. You just did something most men never do you went inward and you didn't run. That takes strength, that takes guts. So if no one's told you this lately, great job. What you just felt, those memories, those words, those regrets, those are the raw material.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 6:29

This process, this fire, is about identifying the moments that shaped you up until now. And now, with that heat still warm in your chest, we go back and look again and we do this method over and over again. We go back to the same moments, the same memories, but this time we ask a new question what do you wish you had done better? Not to shame yourself. We repeat that You're not doing this to shame yourself, but to start shaping the man you could have been into, the one you're becoming now. I know it may not make a lot of sense, but we'll get there. Just keep following along.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 7:09

Go back through each moment you wrote down and, next to each one, write what you wish you had done in those moments, the thing that would be better, right? We're not going to go back and look with anger. We're not going to go back and look with anger. We're not going to go back and look with regret. We're going to go back and say, maybe it's. I wish I'd walked away instead of yelling. I wish I'd told someone what I was feeling. I wish I'd stood up for myself. Or maybe it's just I wish I had known I was worth more. Write it down Again. You're not doing it for them, you're doing this for you. Okay, while you do that, we're going to take a little story break.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 7:49

A man forged by fire. So let me tell you a story about a man who lived through fire like this and turn it into something that changed the world. Okay, his name was Victor Frankel. He was a psychiatrist. A husband was Viktor Frankl. He was a psychiatrist, a husband, a thinker and then a prisoner, a prisoner in Auschwitz, yeah, they stripped him of everything His clothes, his name, his wife, his family. He was nothing but a number, but inside, something burned Every day. He watched people break, some gave in, some gave up, but Frankl, he asked himself a different question what kind of man do I want to be? Even here in Auschwitz, he realized something no one could take from him His choice, the choice to find meaning, to find love, to find dignity, even in the darkest places, the darkest period of his life. And when he got out, he wrote the book Man's Search for Meaning, and it's helped millions of people survive their own fires, not because he was perfect, but because he remembered who he wanted to be, even when everything else was burning.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 9:08

You done, writing it down, because you're doing the same work right now. You're standing in the heat. You're writing it down, you're taking ownership of your fire. You're not broken, you're becoming shapeable. And now we can get ready for the hammer. We're not ready to strike yet, not even close. Right now we need heat. So how do we get heat? We reach for the bellows, that thing in your chest, that ache in your gut, and we breathe life into this fire. Look at your list. Look at that 10,.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 9:41

The memory that hit the hardest, the moment that still makes your chest tighten. That is the one we want. That's the coal, that's the core, that is a big part of who you believe you are right now. Now I want you to sit with it, not just the words, but I want you to sit with the aftershock. How did you take that news? Did you freeze, did you lash out? Did you shut down and swear to never feel again? I know some of you did, but here we are, doing the work because we want to be better. Ask yourself what did you lose in that moment? Your confidence, your trust, your ability to look in the mirror without shame. Who did it hurt you? Someone you love, a version of you that never got to fully exist. That's a big one. Next question why did it hurt so much? Was it because it was true, or because it was never true, but you believed it anyway.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 10:40

Feel the fire. These are the bellows. This is the breath that rises, the heat. Let it burn. Let it rise, not to punish you. This fire is to prepare you. We need that metal glowing red, because what's coming next takes courage. All right, now we pull it from the fire. We take that memory, the one you've been holding, that wound you're stirred. That wound you've stirred up. It's glowing red now. That means it's soft, malleable and ready. So take a breath and grip the hammer and strike. How do we strike? It's quite simple. Our hammer is full of compassion. So we say it out loud, or in your chest if you're in a place where you can't say it out loud, but you need to say it.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 11:22

I made a mistake. I believed a lie. I let someone else's words define me. I abandoned myself trying to earn love. I hurt someone I cared about. I didn't show up the way I needed to. I gave up too soon. I hid when I should have stood tall. You know the words that you need to say to forgive yourself for that thing, for that memory, for that event that took place, whatever it was. Name it, call it out of hiding, because this, this, is your first real strike. And now I want you to say something with me. Mistakes are part of the process. They don't define me, they shape me, they remind me I'm alive and they teach me how to rebuild.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 12:06

Here we go again, louder in your soul. This time, really feel the words. I love myself, I forgive myself, I'm still here and I will make it through. This isn't just a pep talk. This is reclamation. This is a man under fire, under weight, under pressure, choosing to stay, choosing to not stay broken. Let that old shame burn off like slag, let the judgment melt, let the lie turn to smoke. You struck the iron and you lived through it. That matters because before we shape who you're becoming, who we're becoming, we must forgive who we. That is an important strike of the hammer.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 12:54

And now you've made the first strike. You've named the pain, you've said what you needed to be said. Now we go again For every wound on that list. We strike, we speak, we shape. This is important and it takes time. What comes after this is going to be difficult, so we must make it through.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 13:15

We look at the next thing. We wrote down, the voice in your head, that moment, that person's words. Read it, feel it and say this that was a moment, not a verdict. That was pain, not prophecy. I am not what they said. I am who I choose to become. It is my choice. It is my choice. It is my choice. Say it with me. It is my choice.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 13:44

I am not a loser. I am not broken. I am not lazy. I am not a bad father. I am not too emotional. I am not weak. I am enough and I'm learning what that really means. Keep going. Next one Read it, feel it, strike again.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 14:05

I made a mistake, but I am not a mistake. I fell short, but I am not a failure. I didn't know better, but now I do. I choose growth. I didn't know better, but now I do. I choose growth over guilt. You want to learn? Say it. You want to help yourself? Say it. Say I want to learn how to be better. I want to learn how to be a better man. I want to grow. I want to forgive myself. I want to love deeper. I want to lead with truth. And you can and you will, because right now, in this moment, you're in the forge. This is not where you burn, this is where you bend, this is where you become.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 14:48

So go down your list One by one. You strike, you speak, you heal. This is how we teach ourselves. This is how we teach ourselves. This is how we teach ourselves what love really sounds like. This is how we teach the heart to believe what the mind has long forgotten. You are shaping yourself, you are taking your own advice, you are not broken, you are not too late, you are enough and we're going to learn how to live like it. Alright, listen close, because this is your work now. This is not busy work, this is not journaling for the sake of it. This is soul work, heart work, mind work. We've taken the raw metal of your story, we've heated it, we've struck it once hard and honest. Now it's time to shape it, to fold it. Your homework, if you choose to accept it, if you've got the guts, if you've got the metal to keep going, is this Take each of those memories, those moments you wrote down, those moments you wrote down, go back to them, one by one, and this time, let the bellows breathe, let the fire roar like it's supposed to.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 15:56

I want you to feel it fully, completely. I want you to feel the heat that burn. I want you to feel that anger that you had before and I want you to. Then, when it's hot, when the lump rises in your chest again, I want you to pull it from the fire and I want you to strike it with kindness, strike it with forgiveness. Not for them, this is all for you, no one else, but they will benefit from you becoming the man you're supposed to be. So say it out loud or whisper it if you have to. I forgive you, I forgive myself. That moment doesn't define me anymore.

TRAVIS MURRAY: 16:32

Here's a little trick. Here's how we know it's working. When you go back to that memory later, it doesn't sting or it stings less. That's the sign you're shaping it. You just need to continue. That is how we fold the metal, that is how we add strength to the soul. And we are going to learn, we are going to practice. This is the beginning. This is just the beginning, and when you've done that with each one, when you've struck every piece, you wrote down with love and grace and truth. Then come back. Come back here to the Forge, to episode three. Let's continue this journey, because we're just getting started and what's coming, what's coming next, is going to shape the man you'll become. Welcome to the forge, men. We're not here to play strong, we're here to become it.