Jacob Urban is the founder of the Jackson Hole Outdoor Leadership Institute, and he has an inspiring and multifaceted career in the outdoor industry. Jacob started out in Pennsylvania, but he set out to find his own path as soon as he was an adult. That path led him to study audio and video production in Florida, and then to Vermont, where he studied recreation resource management and began to build a career in the outdoors. After 15 years in Vermont, Jacob made the decision to move to Jackson Hole, where he took on a variety of roles and responsibilities, including teaching at Central Wyoming College, working on Search and Rescue, and founding the Jackson Hole Outdoor Leadership Institute.

Despite these achievements, Jacob has also faced challenges, including addiction, debt, taking on too many roles and not implementing enough self care. He shares his story of how he took a step back to focus on rebuilding himself and taking care of his mental and physical health in order to thrive. Through finding his tribe and overcoming obstacles, Jacob has transformed himself into the person he wanted to become.

In their conversation, Jacob and Stephan also explore the importance of disconnecting from technology, connecting with nature, and understanding the ways in which we are all connected as humans. 

Learn more about Jacob and Jackson Hole Outdoor Leadership Institute at AvalancheAndWildMedTraining.com

This week's episode is supported in part by Teton County Solid Waste and Recycling reminding you to reduce, reuse, recycle, and compost. Avoid single-use products whenever possible, and remember to bring your reusable bags with you while shopping. More at RoadtoZeroWasteJH.org or at @RoadToZeroWaste.JH on Instagram

Support also comes from The Jackson Hole Marketplace. The Deli at Jackson Hole Marketplace offers ready-made soups, sandwiches, breakfast burritos, and hot lunch specials. More at JHMarketplace.com

Want to be a guest on The Jackson Hole Connection? Email us at connect@thejacksonholeconnection.com. Marketing and editing support by Michael Moeri (michaelmoeri.com,@thatsamoeri)

You are tuned into the Jackson hole, connection, sharing, fascinating stories of people connected to Jackson Hole.

I am truly grateful for each of you for tuning in today and support for this podcast comes from:

Each week I like to share quotes.

That I find out and about reading books, talking to other people.

In today's episode, I'll begin with the quote of Be patient and understanding life is too short to be vengeful or malicious.

And that comes from Phillips Brooks.

I know that I've learned recently and people have been telling me this for a long time, that have a little patience and.

Everything in time while you exercise that patience comes.

And folks, you are listening to episode number 222, and today's guest is Jacob Urban, the founder of Jackson Hole Outdoor Leadership Institute.

Jacob is a person with a story.

The story is for Jacob to share and for you to absorb.

I'm not gonna give it up in this introduction.

Why?

Why is that?

Well, the why is because it's for you to determine what you'll learn from it.

not how I'm gonna lead you into this conversation because I learned a lot about myself while speaking to Jacob and learning about him.

But I will share one quote with you from Jacob that he has during the interview, and I think you'll enjoy this and get a sense of.

Jacob might talk about, and the quote is, when you slow down and take care of yourself, the universe takes care of you.

Jacob.

Thank you for joining me here today at the Jackson Hole Connection.

Delighted to have you here today.

thanks for having me, Stefan.

I appreciate you having me on board today.

You're

welcome.

And now that you are on board, we get to have a little ride together.

And this is all about you.

We're gonna make this little time period about you, Jacob, to where you get to share your story.

You have a fascinating one, and you're very open.

I, I'd love for you to start off with sharing with us where were you born and raised, and then how did you land here in the world of Jackson

Hole?

So, I was born and raised in a town far, far away from Jackson Hole on so many different levels.

It's not even funny.

I was born in Braddock, Pennsylvania, which was a steel town suburb of Pittsburgh, the youngest of six.

And thankfully, my folks got me outta Braddock quite early and actually got the rest of our family outta Braddock early in my life.

And, It was basically a declining steel town, with an extremely high crime rate.

And, so my folks moved us up to a rural, environment about, out about an hour outside of the city, in a town called Lier.

And, yeah, just kind of, Idyllic, small quaint little town with not much happening, where it was a lot safer for me to grow up, but I never really fit in.

so yeah, that's, that's where it kind of all began.

Why would you say you never fit in?

I.

nobody really enjoyed doing the things that I wanted to do, and so I found myself in a situation doing things that other people like to do in an effort to be able to have friends.

Mm-hmm.

, um, It's just a function of growing up.

you know, you don't know any better and you don't have too many, you don't think you have many choices in life and you get surrounded by people that you're told to love.

but that doesn't mean that they necessarily support your.

Best interest, even though it's their intention.

as I often joke, my parents loved me a lot.

they had very good intentions.

Some of that didn't, some of those lessons didn't work out for me.

It took me years to figure out what they meant.

and that was kind of a classic situation for me growing up, which was as I got surrounded by people that loved me.

But when I told them what I wanted to do, they were like, ah, no, that's not right.

That's not gonna work.

and so at the age of 17, after I graduated high school, I picked up and left my home immediately.

And as I joke with my family today, they're like, why'd you leave so quick?

And it was like, well, I had to get away from everybody's opinion about what I wanted to do, and I had to figure out what it is that I was supposed to be

doing.

where'd you go

when you were seven?

So I ended up, I ended up for a short period of time in South Florida.

got a degree in audio and video production.

despite having a tremendously long background in music and the industry, I found myself not fitting in again.

Ended up moving to Northern Vermont.

And ended up going back to school for, recreation resource management and really found my tribe, really found my stride, and, ultimately started to find a lot of support in my, In my goals and objectives in the outdoor industry and really got my feet under me.

I started teaching, outdoor education for Northern Vermont University, formerly known as Lindon State College.

started ski patrolling, started mountain guiding, and started, really started my career in the out doors, where I spent 15 years there in Vermont.

Ended up in a, my marriage, actually, my, I should say my failed marriage actually brought me here.

and that was actually one of the benefits, like one of the things that I'm really grateful about that relationship is, is that it bumped me onto the next piece of my path, that I didn't know was waiting for me.

And so, 17, 18 years ago, my now ex-wife and I moved to Jackson Hole and, and we started a new life and I thought I hit my stride when I was going into Vermont, but the pace picked up significantly once I got here.

Is that because there's so much for the outdoors, or was there something that changed in your life?

The easiest way to explain it was I had been, for the previous 15 years, I had been gaining a skillset that I didn't recognize, had as much value as it did, and shortly after I got here, We got settled in pretty quickly.

we found some housing, started caretaking.

I started teaching for Central Wyoming College.

I.

Interviewed for Teton County Search and Rescue.

Within six months of being here, ultimately got declined that position only to be brought onto the team in their next next class cycle.

and then also started, started the Jackson Hole Outdoor Leadership Institute.

The business that I founded, own and operate currently.

And, and life picked up.

I involved myself in the avalanche community, which I had been working, working towards for some time.

had very much stepped into kind of that role as, as an outdoor educator, more mountain guiding, and then, After a very short period of time and coming on to search and rescue, I found myself appointed to a leadership position after our helicopter went down and, and killed one of our team members.

and uh, yeah, that was kind of the catalyst.

There was a little bit of a tragedy there.

There's not a little bit of a tragedy.

It was a great tragedy when we lost Ray on the team.

and it.

It opened up a significant opportunity for me in order to be able to step into a very large leadership role for the county

and great opportunity That opened up for you, but How did you wrestle with that knowing that.

To that opportunity opened up because of a friend and teammates passing.

Yeah, it's, this is such an amazing question for me because I had a tremendous amount of guilt when I stepped into it because I was feeling a lot of the trauma that the team was collectively enduring.

Although I was a relatively new member and, I actually felt bad about how I was impacted greatly by it, on an an emotional level and.

Ultimately that, feeling caused me to kind of dig into the role as deeply as I possibly could.

I really, I really committed myself to serve the community after that happened.

And I was arguably put in a position where we were trying to rectify our sins from the past.

We had to bring the team up.

We had to increase the, the training we had to increase the professionalism.

we found out in a hurry that we were good.

We just didn't have a really good infrastructure of.

Of support behind it.

There was a lot of, there was a lot of things that got exposed when the helicopter went down.

And so while it was a privilege for me, I still felt a lot of the trauma.

And at the same time I took on kind of the mistakes that the team made in the past and kinda made a commitment to try to rectify those moving forward.

I basically set myself up for maybe the most difficult job I could have ever walked into.

Hmm.

I'm, I can't imagine, but I, I'm sure it was.

yeah.

I can only see that now, you know, 13 years later, or 10, or, well, it's 10 years since, 10 since the helicopter went down.

but I can only, I can only see that now that I'm away from it.

I couldn't, I couldn't see the undue stress that I put myself under the, the expectations that were only the expectations I created for myself.

Mm-hmm.

. Stephan Abrams: And how long did you remain on the search and rescue team?

I was on the team for a total of nine years.

Mm-hmm.

and six of those, just over six of those were in leadership.

And what caused you to step away from the leadership and, and the team?

It's fascinating because, my world started to fall apart.

I talk about search and rescue as a culmination of many things.

For me, it was the culmination of all of the skills that I had developed.

It was the culmination of my career.

and it was also the conclusion of that chapter in my life as well.

The stress eventually got to me.

I was doing far too many things for everybody else except myself.

And I was finding myself on, you know, 80 rescues a year when we were averaging a hundred.

I was training the team, I was teaching for a college.

I was teaching for a private institution.

I basically had too many hats.

I had too many roles, and I was serving all of those organizations incredibly well.

And then my marriage fell apart, and then my capacity to manage the team became impacted and.

The easiest way to explain it is, is that I lost everything.

I had to step away from search and rescue.

I stepped away from all of my work and I also had to acknowledge the fact that I had an addiction issue that had been running my life for about 30 years, and I had not recognized it.

And so I broke.

That's how I joke about it today.

I broke and I had to take a step away in order to figure out what it was that was important to me.

Did you, was that a mental or a physical break or both?

Jacob?

So

physically I had many kind of like reoccurring injuries, emotionally, I turned into what I referred to as a leaker.

I cried at the drop of a hat and I cried for about two years.

And as I Jo, as I would joke with folks, you know, I'm a leaker and I have to let you know that I'm a leaker because if I let you know that I'll leak less.

And it may seem like I'm leaking for no good reason, but there are plenty of good reasons that I'm still trying to figure out, as to why this is happening.

And so that it, it, while it was devastating, I, I'm I.

Lost everything.

I was a quarter of a million dollars in debt.

I lost my home, I lost my marriage, I lost the team.

I was in the process of losing my business.

I lost my primary source of income and I literally had to take about a year and a half to two years and just take care of myself, and really find out what was important to me.

I'm very grateful for you sharing, your, your struggle and, how you broke.

Not everybody is willing to share this information openly.

They hide from

it.

Yeah.

You know, it's fascinating because I spent 45 years of my life hiding.

and then it took me two years to recognize I was hiding.

And then I would say the last five years I've been finding this really cool kid that I left behind 52 years ago.

that's,

yeah.

What was, your, a.

Ooh.

It was, it was, so, it all stems from not fitting in mm-hmm.

and then I would do things in order to fit in.

And so, you know, early on in life that was, you know, drinking underage and smoking weed.

my brother taught me how to do cocaine at a very early age.

and.

I was kind of taught this technique where it was like, Hey, you know, if you can manage these things and get up and go to work in the morning, everything's fine.

And so there I was 45 years later and it, I had a drinking problem, I had a cocaine problem.

I had, I had relationship problems.

I.

Had, the, the fascinating thing was, is that this, it was a repeat relationship with everything that I lost.

So whether it was my marriage, whether it was search and rescue, whether it was teaching for university, private organizations, et cetera, I wasn't doing it for me.

I was doing it in order to be able to please other people in order to make myself fit in well and, and then one day I got extremely angry.

And it was because I was giving all of my time away to everybody.

and it took me, it took me a while to figure that out.

I had to get space.

and know, and it, it's funny because like I was broke and when I say I was broke, like I didn't have money.

I was broken.

And then all the systems that I was working in, I broke them so that I couldn't work at 'em anymore.

And so I didn't have anything for a couple of years.

And so, Once I started to kind of find myself and get back into my groove, you know, I quit drinking, I quit, I quit doing drugs, I've been doing cocaine, , and uh, that was pretty, that was pretty good.

That was a pretty good start, you know, and it was fascinating because I quit drinking a year later on my anniversary, the individual that I quit drinking with, he said to me we had to quit doing blow.

And I was like, that's actually a really good idea.

and we did that.

And a year later the emotional piece was, it wasn't fixed, but it was beginning to heal.

And then one year later I was completely out of debt.

my health was in really good order and things started to flow again.

I was fascinated by when you slow down and take care of yourself, the universe takes care of you.

Jacob, I've heard that statement.

When you slow down and take care of yourself, the universe takes care of you.

I've heard in many different ways, but it, it essentially, it's the same message that, when you, when you do slow down, you can see the clarity of, of what is around.

And, and for you, I'm, I'm curious to know, I hear the part that you stopped drinking and stopped, you know, hitting the cocaine.

so you were clean, during that two year period that you said you started doing stuff for yourself.

Do you wanna share.

What are some things that you were, what did you do for yourself?

How did you realize, hey, this is, this is for me.

I'm not doing this for somebody else.

So,

all right.

I'm gonna try to keep it together while I talk about this, cuz this is, I had a couple of, I had a couple of outdoor objectives and I was always, Very extremely goal, or I've always been extremely goal oriented in the out outdoors.

And I had, I had been working in the Tetons leading wilderness trips up in the Jedi Smith wilderness, and I'd been taking students across the range and we'd been doing it over a 10 day period.

And I did that for 10 years and.

Somewhere along the line is walking the range from Grassy Lake Road down to Teton Pass.

It dawned on me, I was like, wow, we do this over 10 days.

You know, this would be a really fun like four day trip with friends.

You know, like, and, and then somewhere along the line I started having this pipe dream where I was like, you know, I could probably do that in two days.

And then I was like, Hmm, you know, I actually.

I actually thought one day I was like, I think I can get across the range in a single push unsupported.

And so oddly enough, I took up that objective where I was like, okay, I'm gonna traverse the range.

I'm gonna do it in a single push unsupported solo.

And then I made one caveat, which was is you're not allowed to suffer.

Because I was really good at suffering.

I was really good at taking the pain on and.

What I realized in the process, because over the course of three years, I attempted the, I started training and I was in good condition for it, but I started to take it very serious, and over the course of three years, I attempted it four times.

I failed the first three times, and every time I failed, it was because of the nagging injury.

And I started to find out that.

The more space I gave myself and the less punishment that I delivered, and then the more time I gave myself to heal,

even though I would fail, I knew in the back of my mind I was getting closer to the end.

And so, Out of all the things I did, it was like I picked up a yoga practice.

I started meditating.

I started journaling.

I sold a bunch of equipment and bought a pair of, of running shoes instead, and started really just focusing on me and started working on my diet incessantly and then I took on this objective and I had.

No idea consciously what I was doing, but subconsciously I had taken on the goal of healing, doing something that I wanted to do.

And I didn't give a shit what anybody thought about it.

I didn't care if they didn't think I could do it.

I didn't care if they thought it was stupid.

And then I only started sharing it with people that would support me.

And my friend group changed significantly.

and so it, it was literally like this portal that I went through in 2020.

When I crossed the range in about 25 hours, by myself, solo,

and it wasn't the event,

it was everything the event taught me in the lead up.

And then the better, the better result that came out of it was, okay, now what can you do that you know you can take care of yourself?

And that's everything that changed my life.

it put me back in the contr.

It put me back in the, in the seat of control.

It helped me realize that my choices are mine.

And that if I didn't wanna do something, I shouldn't do it, even if somebody wanted me to do it.

and then I started to be able to focus on the most important things, which was.

Focusing on the details of life that get me exactly what I want.

I became more efficient at everything that I did.

I quit working on things that didn't matter.

Mm-hmm.

And I really started focusing on the things that would produce value and meaning to me.

and as that occurred, as I started to do those things, I'm completely blown away what unfolded in my life.

my business has grown in so many different ways.

I have a whole new group of friends, that actually support me with really good behaviors, and then they call me out when I'm not being a good human being.

I never really had that accountability before with my friends.

They really liked it when I was not taking care of myself because then they didn't have to take care of themselves.

Mm.

and so my friends changed, my work changed, my mental health changed, my physical capabilities changed, and at the end of it I just found ease.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying work isn't hard because the holy cow, the works harder than it's ever been, but it's easy to do it because I wanna do it and I'm doing it for me.

Good man.

Proud.

Thank you.

That's, thank you.

Not that you need me to say that.

I mean but it's beautiful to hear that you have found friends that support you for you to be the best person who you can be and not friends who encourage you to be somebody that in that supports them to have bad behavior.

It's the thing I'm fascinated by is that how long my, how long in my life I'd been doing it, and, and how well it worked up to a point.

And, and then one day, that whole system, it was like, okay, if you wanna, if you want the things that you want in life, things need to change.

And here's why.

because you have this very bad habit of serving others before you serve yourself.

And then you leave yourself with nothing.

I'm a philosophies here

person.

Yeah, yeah,

please.

For you to take care of anyone, you have to take care of yourself first and when people are bad, it catches up to them and they mm-hmm.

crash, but the goodness lifts everybody up and brings so, so much more positive.

Just energy and life to everyone else, and there are good times and bad times, even when you are good.

Mm-hmm.

. However, when the good is what survives and thrive.

Indeed, I could, I couldn't agree more.

I joke about it teaching pre-hospital medicine today because I literally started.

As all of this was going on, I started diving into the curriculums that I was teaching, and I'm amazed at how much the curriculums taught me when I started paying attention to 'em in a scene survey, in a scene size up, who's number one you are?

Who's number two, the person beside you and who's number three?

The person that's injured laying on the ground.

And I don't think we take that to heart because in regular, in regular everyday life, which is, is we're like, oh, we're okay, but we're not as good as we could be.

and therefore we try to help people and ultimately the help that we're trying to give them is what we're supposed to do for ourself.

That's why it often becomes misaligned.

We actually project our own needs onto other people.

Where it's like, I needed help.

So what did I do?

I was trying to help everybody else with all of their problems because I didn't wanna deal with mine.

you know, and so today, today I have a lot of fun with it and being able to teach the curriculum and kind of tie my own mental health into everybody else's.

because the more I share, the more people see themself in it.

And then they're able to see their own blind spots that they can't see.

that's what I really feel like my role is turned into these days is to, is to pretty much help people understand that my successes are because of thousands of failures and embracing them to learn more about yourself so that you can actually achieve what it is that you're trying to become.

and I shouldn't say achieve it because you already are that thing.

You're just not letting yourself be it.

yeah.

Well said Jacob.

Very, very well said.

We're gonna take a break to get a word from one of our sponsors and then we're gonna come back and talk to you more because you have a lot to teach us.

Excellent.

Sounds great.

Jacob, welcome back.

Thank you.

Just shared your strength and willpower and desire to improve your life cuz you saw so much more that you're capable of.

And.

You are reaching and accomplishing some goals.

As you said, you've learned a lot from failure.

We, we do have to ha allow ourselves to fail to try something.

We might do it successfully, we might fail.

but as long as we learn from that, that's important.

in the pre-show, we talked about assumption of risk.

The power of our choice.

Yeah, and I'd love for you to expand on that for people to hear, for the people who are sitting in and listening.

it's interesting because during this whole process one of the things that shifted in me is understanding what risk management is and then what the acceptance of risk is, and specifically what I believe the acceptance of risk to be is the capacity to self-express.

For a lot of us that work in the, that are in the outdoor industry, we express ourselves through the risks that we engage with in the outdoors.

they literally help us identify who we are.

And I find it interesting because, You know, as a collective, people don't necessarily look at physical risk taking to be a, a healthy objective.

And I joke about it all the time where I'm like, well, so it's, it's a healthier objective to take risks with money.

That's a fabricated form of paper that has suggested meaning that you've implied on it.

And they go, yes.

And I go, well, that's exactly what I'm doing, which is, is I'm fabricating a meaning into and in an experience that I'm pulling out of it.

And, and so there's no metaphor in life for me.

It's all the same thing.

and so I find it funny that we're willing to take risks in one part of our life, but not in the other.

and then at a certain point in our lives, we believe that security is healthier for us than taking risks.

And I, and so as I've gotten older, I find myself taking more financial risks than I ever have in an effort to gain something more for myself and the people around me.

I find myself taking more physical risks in the out doors.

Because they show me the out doors is this like amazing mirror where it reflects back at you.

And so when you engage with it, it reflects back to you, your condition.

Are you in good enough shape?

Are you able to control your breathing?

Can you control your mind?

And.

It ti it shows us whether we have great excellence, whether we're mediocre or where we com and where we completely lack in personal development.

And I've watched that over the years.

It's fascinating because teaching outdoor education, I've watched students completely melt down and, and I'm like, that's interesting because you're melting down in the place that can take the most care of you if you allow it to, meaning the out outdoors.

But we get so fearful of the unknown.

That we choose the security of the same repetitive thing over and over again, thinking that we're making choices and thinking that we control the outcome when we're only making the same decision over and over again.

And when you start making different decisions, the risk is, is making the wrong decision and having some type of a loss.

and so for me, the assumption of risk is really about failing without life-threatening consequences so that I can get back up again, and it's the getting back up over and over and over.

That.

Oh, true.

Yeah.

that's the confidence.

That's the confidence.

confidence is not succeeding.

Confidence is failing and getting back up and trying again.

and the more you get up, the easier it

becomes

cuz you train yourself to do it.

And then you calm your nervous system down from the fear of the unknown, where you're like, oh, it doesn't matter.

And then as I joke with folks, you know, it's like my mental health was in such a state where it's like I considered ending all of this.

And it's like when you come face-to-face with your own mortality, you start to wake up, you start to live.

And you start to realize that you can't waste time.

And that's the only thing we have.

That's the only thing we make in this existence.

We make time for ourselves.

We make time for other people, and we make time for the things that we want.

And the more distinctive, the more conscious we are of the fact that we're making choices for everything that we have and accept the fact that our choices brought, brought us to everything that we have or don't have or don't want.

Now we have the capacity to make different choices and change those things.

it's like if you keep blaming other people for the things that you don't have, you're missing the source of lack, and it's you,

you know, I, I want to challenge you on one thing though.

Mm-hmm.

, I agree with everything that you have said, and I like your perspective of time, but I don't feel that we, we create time.

We all have the same amount of time available to us.

It's how we use that time, how we each use the time each second, which adds up to the minutes and the hours.

It's not made, we don't make it.

It's just how we, allocate it and use it.

I would, I agree, I agree with that.

But as I often, as I often show folks in, in, in retreats, uhhuh, , and.

Which is as time is a construct of perception.

Okay.

And so I'll do retreats with folks where I take electronics away and Awesome.

We focus on food, we focus on community living.

we focus on sharing.

We focus on the practice of lifestyle and the one thing that everyone says to me, and we actually focus on work part of the workday as well, where it's like we incorporate, we incorporate work into our, into our days too, and everybody says the same thing to me.

They're like, I can't believe how long the days are.

And it's because you're not distracted.

By the electronics, which makes you believe that time is limited.

And see, and that's why I believe that time is a construct and because it's limitless, meaning there's been nothing but time.

The question is, is how do you choose to use it, much like you're saying.

And then when you are using it properly, it actually goes incredibly slow.

I remember being a kid growing up in the seventies, being bored.

Do you know how slow the time goes when you're bored?

Mm-hmm.

. Stephan Abrams: Yeah.

People, you're punished and you have to just sit in the chair.

. Jacob Urban: Yeah, exactly.

And people, and people aren't bored anymore.

They're distracted and then they don't think they have enough time.

I'm too busy to do this.

I'm too busy to do that.

I'm like, look at the, look at the, look at the evaluation of how much you use your phone and your computer through the week, and then specifically, look what you use it for and then identify whether any of those things are actually producing what you want out of life.

And then decide if you wanna keep spending your time on it or not.

Media and soc social media and just like the news in general, I joke about it with folks, which may be the biggest vacuum of time because it's stories that are not happening to you, and then they make you worry about things that are not happening to you.

That's what the news does.

It tells us stories about things that we can't experience, and then we have opinions about things we haven't personally experienced.

And it's like, well, where'd you learn that?

Oh, through this.

Well, is that true?

Yes, this source is true.

Well, in that individual's perception, it's true.

I joke about it all the time.

People tell me about things that are going on socially or like environmentally or this and that, and I'm like, where'd you f?

Where'd you find that out?

And they're like, oh, like, here's this article.

And I'm, and they're like, you ought to read it.

And I'm like, no, I'm not gonna read it.

I'm gonna go out and experience the world because I keep having different experiences with people.

Hmm.

I have different experiences with our environment.

The people I run into are genuinely, genuinely kind.

They're loving, they're accepting.

I love the diversity in our country.

It's amazing, and I chuckle about it because every the, the media will tell you that there's these race riots and all these things going on.

But it's funny when I keep traveling and I travel all over the world and I keep interacting with people, they all just want to know your story and figure out how their story connects with yours.

oh, sure.

Jacob.

And, and I think the more, the more time, if we like, if there's anything that we could do in this existence, it's interacting with other people in real time and interacting with people that don't believe what you believe.

Because that's how you challenge your own belief structure and either fortify it to have it become more, have more meaning or change it and align it more closely to your values.

But you don't get that when you talk to somebody that agrees with everything you say.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

No, I think, I think it's a shame.

I think it's a shame that we don't travel as if we're gonna travel.

I wish I, I, I wish my experience is that the more I travel outside of the country, the more I understand this country better.

and the more I travel outside of the country, the more I understand who I am.

and I primarily like to put myself in places where I don't speak the language so I can feel helpless and.

It's really amazing how compassionate people are when you try, when you just put yourself out there and you acknowledge the fact that you're embarrassed because you can't speak the language as well as you would like.

And then have to depend on people.

That's the other piece of it, you know?

Cause it's like, as a kid, we used to have to depend on one another.

Today we depend on our phone.

Today we depend on our computer, we depend on our work.

and we depend on generating money in order to be able to take care of ourselves.

And I laugh about it.

I'm like, I'm like, that's funny.

We don't have to make money.

They make enough of that . Hmm.

. Like they give that away for free.

And, and so what's your value?

Is your value in money or is your value in people?

and that's the piece of it.

Like, for me, value is this funny thing.

Meaning the more meaning the more value I create, and then the more financial stability that comes from that.

But it doesn't come by trying to make money.

It arguably for me, it comes for making more time for myself and then understanding more specifically what I need to work on.

which is generally me, like just trying to be a better human being.

Trying to not be reactive, trying to respond appropriately, being in control of my emotions and, And not blaming anybody else for anything that happens to me.

They might have co-created it with me, but I allowed that to happen.

And I think that's the biggest piece.

You know, it's like we like to blame people for other problems when at the end of the day, we only create our own.

And, that's, and the only thing we can

do, take responsibility and push it off versus.

Yeah.

Really realizing that, yeah, that was my responsibility.

Yeah.

Doing the hard work of recognizing that we have to change.

I, I joke about it in my peer group because everybody around me is anywhere from like 20 to 30 years younger than me.

And folks say to me all the time, they're like, fr like, old friends will be like, you know, they're like, do you have any friends your own age?

And I'm like, not really.

Hmm.

They're like, why?

And I'm like, they.

How the world is now.

I help them understand how we got here and that's how we're able to change our universe.

That's how we're able to change our construct.

And then we recognize how to work together.

like.

And then they separate us by generations, meaning they make us feel, and when I say them, the powers that be, they make us feel as though the younger people are doing something wrong.

And the older generation had it right, and the younger generation trying to create change, the older generation is steeped, you know, is antiquated and not willing to change.

And the reality of it is, is that nobody's having a conversation.

The kids aren't talking to the adults.

the adults aren't talking to the kids.

The generations are not trickling down through one another in order to realize we're all dealing with the same problem.

Who are we?

Who are we?

Who am I?

And once we start to find ourself, we realize that we're connected to everybody else.

But but the more you watch the news, the more you listen to the media.

The more they focus on the division.

And the reality of it is, is we've never been divided.

That's just a, that's just a construct that arguably makes a lot of money for big corporations.

Now

you teach and or take people on, outdoor excursions mm-hmm.

in leadership.

Yeah.

And I'm gonna, What's the time period that you take them out, out in the woods?

The great outdoors.

So it depends.

When I'm teaching wilderness courses, those can be up to two weeks.

Mm-hmm.

if I'm teaching a wilderness EMT course, those are classroom based, but I'm with people for 35 days during those time periods.

And then, you know, We have other courses that are 10 days and then all the way to, you know, and every ratio between that, all the way down to one day, or just a few hours.

and today I teach one curriculum, which is, let me help you learn more about you.

I, I say it all the time about the Jackson Hole Outdoor Leadership Institute.

Join us at the Jackson Hole Outdoor Leadership Institute, where we help you learn more about you.

That's, that's fabulous.

Yeah.

Everybody's worried about everybody else's stuff, but if you focus on yourself, you then understand everybody.

Mm-hmm.

It's a little paradigm trick that the universe plays on us, which is is it's like, ah, there's a lot of distractions in this world to take us away from who we are or who we'd like to become.

So true.

Jacob, I am so honored that you have shared so much of you today, and I am.

Just blown away of your openness and sincerity, of what you have shared.

Thank you,

Stephanie.

I can't thank you enough for, having me, having me on board.

I appreciate the opportunity to share.

my only, if I had any hope or expectation, it's that others can find themself in my story and they can realize that we're all just spinning around doing the same thing, having the same problems around different circumstances.

And, so thank you for giving me the opportunity to share.

I appreciate

You're welcome.

You're welcome.

Jacob, how can people reach out to you and

connect with you?

they can connect with me a bunch of different ways.

They can, they can, reach out to the Jackson Hole Outdoor Leadership Institute.

and, they can find us at, j h o l i.net.

that's the, that's the simplest way you can find me on Instagram at Jacob underscore underscore Urban.

you can find me on Facebook as well.

At the end of the day, I love it when you find me in the community.

if it's lunchtime, you can normally find me at the healthy being juicery in town.

and, and if not, you can always jump into one of our classes and you can, help me understand who you are better and we can learn about each other.

Excellent.

thank you so much, Jacob.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

You be well.

You too.

Take care buddy.

To learn more about Jacob Urban and Jackson Hole Outdoor Leadership Institute, visit the Jackson hole connection.com, episode number 222.

Thank you everybody for getting out there and sharing this podcast.

and thank you to my wife Laura, my boys Lewis and William, and of course to Michael Morrie, who does all of the editing, organizing of this podcast and marketing.