A little over a year ago, at the age of 28, I was asked to speak at an event called “One Last Talk.” I would spend 15 minutes delivering (to 200 people) the message I would leave if I knew I only had 30 days to live.
A month before the event, the organizer arranged a speaker’s retreat where all the speakers met to present and refine our talks.
At the retreat I sat and watched everyone else give their talks. Then it was my turn.
As I stood up to begin my talk, tightness crept into my shoulders and chest. I had nothing to say, so I froze. 11 sets of eyes stared at me.
It felt like it went on forever.
Then I heard something that created a small crack in the seal that held the bottomless chasm of feelings I had been tucking away for over two decades. “It looks like you just want to cry, when was the last time you cried?”
I broke down and sobbed like a little boy. All the pressure drained out of me.
Thankfully, the event organizer had the foresight to organize a speaker’s retreat prior to the live event so I only collapsed into a raw, emotional heap of tears in front of 10 other speakers, not in front of 200 audience members.
I left the speaker’s retreat an emotional train wreck. The event itself was approaching in less than three weeks and I didn’t have the slightest semblance of a meaningful talk.
When I was first asked to speak at this event I thought to myself, “Awesome! A room full of 100 people and all I have to do is tell a story for 15 minutes, this is not going to be a problem.”
I’d been in the real estate investment and private finance business for over six years at that point and had given countless talks, many to rooms much larger than 200 people. I thought this talk was going to be no different, if anything it would be easier because I wasn’t selling anything.
I arrived at the speaker’s retreat telling myself all fired up. I had done a lot of personal growth in the past and thought I was excited to tell my story.
As I listened to the other speakers share their stories I began tossing more and more ideas around in my mind about what I was going to speak about.
I would hear a speaker share a story about how they went through some emotional pain, were able to face and accept it and come out the other side in a more joyful place and would think to myself, “Wow that was really vulnerable, I can really empathize with this person’s journey and I want to get to know them and help them. I like this person. What story can I tell about my life to sound that vulnerable?”
I wanted to sound like the other speakers. I wanted a story where I faced great pain head on, slogged my way through it and came out the other side with a much happier and more joyful life.
I wanted anyone else’s story but my own.
As I stood at the front of the room fighting as hard as I could against the urge to panic and make a mad dash out of the room I gradually became aware of why I wanted to tell anyone else’s story but my own.
I wasn’t feeling. I didn’t want to feel.
I didn’t want to feel because I didn’t want to face the pain. I couldn’t begin to imagine that happiness could exist on the other side of the massive crater of pain I was holding back.
That’s when the pain overwhelmed me.
The pain of pretending to be the perfect boyfriend, to love my business, to be joyful and full of happiness, to love myself and my life — when inside I was holding onto deep feelings of shame, anger, and sadness.
My emotional perception of my reality was much different than the one I projected to the outside world. I thought I was a horrible boyfriend because I had cheated on every girlfriend I ever had — including my current girlfriend.
I was working almost every day of the week on a business I hated because I had made it all about making money. I got addicted to quick fixes in an attempt to control the massive amount of pain I was feeling. I thought if I did more deals, made more money, had more sex, and partied harder that the pain would stop.
But these “solutions” never eased the deep underlying shame. They only made it worse. Standing in front of that room I realized I’d been lying to myself for as long as I could remember.
The sadness, shame, and pain were at first quietly suggesting, and then violently screaming at me to wake up and listen to myself.
In that room I finally realized I could tell the truth on myself. I did not have to push the pain back and hold it inside. I could choose to reveal the shame, pain, and sadness – first to myself, then to those closest to me, and finally to the rest of the world.
At first I was terrified to do this. I thought, “There is no happy ending to this, all I feel is shame, pain, sadness and despair. If I truthfully reveal these feelings I’m going to be alone. Who is going to want to be friends with me or love me?”
I thought I needed to be able to wrap my story in a bow in order to reveal myself to the world.
It sucked. I was in turmoil. I was ready to do anything to stop the pain. Finally, I reached out to a trusted friend and mentor for help. I revealed a tiny bit of the pain and shame of who I thought I really was.
It was terrifying to open up, but when I did an incredible thing happened.
I actually felt something. Yes, it was painful and I cried like a baby, but beneath the tears I was deeply relieved to feel.
Something shifted inside of me as I stood in front of the room that day, crying like a baby. I began giving myself permission to feel.
I began to accept my feelings and listen to what they are telling me. Through this I began to have compassion for myself, accept more of myself and allow more of myself into the world.
This is now a process I work on every day.. It’s a journey without an ending. While things in my life are by no means perfect today, by giving myself the permission to feel and telling the truth on myself, I have a greater sense of peace and purpose than I have ever felt before.
On the day of the event I felt the strong urge to vomit due to an anxious knot in my gut.
I was about to tell the truth on myself in front of 200 people and it scared the shit out of me more than any talk I had ever given.
I was feeling and my mind did not want me to feel, it wanted me to run as far away from that stage as I possibly could, curl up into a little ball and hide.
I decided not to trust my mind and trusted my feelings instead.
Rather than pushing the fear away – as I had in the past – I wanted to meet it head on, get to know it and accept it as a part of me.
I was terrified to share my truth with the audience and potentially not be loved. It was not the audience I was scared of. It was the thought of feeling intense pain, shame, sadness, and despair again.
My fear wanted me to make giving the talk all about me.
It wanted me to paint me in the most perfect light possible, better yet it wanted me to not give the talk at all. When I leaned into this fear, stood on that stage and shared my truth I realized sharing my truth is not about me at all.
It’s about the impact my story and my truth can have on others.
The outpouring of support and compassion from the audience stunned me. Several people reached out to me directly to share their stories of pain, shame, and despair and ask me for suggestions on what I thought they should do.
After speaking my truth and sharing my story I realized I was not alone.
As human beings we all feel pain and my pain – while uniquely viewed through the lens of my own story – feels no different than anyone else’s pain. When we open ourselves up to sharing our pain with others we find that we all experience intense feelings of pain, shame, and loneliness through the lens of our own individual stories.
I believe that every one of us is uniquely equipped to share our truth with the world, no matter how scary it may seem.
In the same light each one of us is uniquely equipped to feel compassion for the pain our fellow humans are suffering.
When we share our truth, we allow others and ourselves the opportunity to feel the intense emotions we’ve been hiding. Then these feelings begin to lose their individual significance in our minds.
Sharing our truth provides an opportunity to ourselves – and more importantly to others – to feel the pain holding us back, heal it, let it go and allow more truth to shine through and impact the world.
You do not need to be perfect to share your truth with the world. The world wants and needs you exactly as you are. Your imperfection is what the world wants, what the world needs to see. Share you exactly as you are.
_______

As the Managing Partner of Bluewater Investments, Chris Biasutti has been helping investors find quality alternative investments for the past six years. Chris is passionate about sharing a focus on “Wealth, Wisdom and Well-being” by educating investors how to identify, analyze and select alternative investment opportunities to fit not just their overall portfolio and investment objectives, but their lifestyle. 
Chris is in love with the ocean and travelling. He spent 2012 living on a remote island in the Philippines where he was certified as Divemaster. He can frequently be found diving under or sailing on top of the water off the coast of B.C. and in remote destinations around the world.

Mark Greene believes a monolithic view of male privilege will impede progress toward gender equality.

In an article titled Now that I have checked my male privilege , Jim Vaughn is engaging a watershed dialogue regarding gender equality. In order to buy into this dialogue from Vaughn’s perspective (and mine) you have to buy into two central ideas:

1. Male privilege is real and does a lot of damage in the world.
2. The concept of Male privilege is sometimes used in ways that can be rigid and polemical; used to silence or marginalize men in spaces promoting social justice and change.

Vaughn’s article begins with a simple confirmation of male privilege:

As a graduate student, I have been checking my male privilege for several years. As a man I am more likely to run governments and corporations due to my gender, and I have the privilege of not seeing much of that privilege.

Male privilege is a universal thing, at least as it manifests at the meta level. If you can’t see this playing out, you’re either socially blinded or willfully ignorant. Across America and the world, we see the brutal and wide spread oppression of women, primarily by men. When I write about gender I first acknowledge that the collective oppression of women is worse then that faced by men. This is my baseline. Then I proceed to talk about issues of oppression faced by men. The result is comments asking “why do you have to start by saying that?”
People can be highly reactive about gender. The oppression olympics it is sometimes called, the temptation to compare body counts and levels of threat and abuse. Recently I tweeted about gender violence.  An activist replied “We have to be explicit. ‘Gender’ violence is male violence.” The implication being that violence by women against men is so rare as to be irrelevant.

The widespread physical abuse of men by women, typically domestic partners, is anything but irrelevant. In the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey—2010 Summary Report, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention includes the following data:

Women’s rights activists rely on clear dramatic conceptual frames; frames like male privilege to drive change. These kinds of frames are effective tools for creating public awareness. But the frames we construct in opposing injustice are just that; constructed. As such, no matter how universally accepted a frame like male privilege may be, it must remain subject to deconstruction as well.
But frames like male privilege can become, for lack of a better word… privileged. In some spaces, male privilege has become the single over arching litmus test for whether or not a man is viewed as enlightened. Men are expected to admit that they, by definition, have a huge advantage in every single imaginable context.
But men don’t. In many contexts men continue to hold privilege. But in a growing number of contexts they do not.
Although men collectively maintain an advantage over women at the meta level, individually they are subject to widely varying levels of privilege in new and emerging contexts. Many of these contexts have been intentionally created in opposition to patriarchy. And they are operating as intended. Men have less privilege in these contexts, sometimes none.
For example, put a man in a gender studies classroom. Or a family court proceeding. Or employ a man as a nurse in a field that continues to be dominated by women. (One study showed that over 89 percent of the male nursing participants reported hearing anti-male remarks from faculty in the classroom.) Or put a man on the wrong side of the law, sitting across from a woman represented by a  discrimination & sexual harassment law firm.

I cite these examples not to say that the world is unfair to men. I cite them as examples of contexts in which male privilege is clearly eroding. What this indicates is that although male privilege may have been monolithic fifty years ago, it simply no longer is. It is splintering. Fragmenting. And justifiably so. There remains more work to be done.
Vaughn notes:

As Michel Foucault states, power in (post)modernity is constantly resisted and is not possessed by individuals…Men’s macro power has been rightfully resisted through bureaucratization from a strong feminist lobby, government programs for women and girls, and the like. Men’s power does not automatically translate into a privileged experience, there is some turbulence between the two.

Applying frames like monolithic male privilege is understandable when fighting clear cut instances of the oppression of women but it can become counter productive in the liminal spaces where change is evolving. As more wide ranging expressions of gender emerge, our monolithic view of male privilege must become more nuanced, because any monolithic or static frame that seeks to encompass something as miraculously complex as emerging gender roles cannot help but be under-developed. Applied over and over as a monolithic “fact”, binary views of male privilege will do the most damage in spaces where men are actively engaged in self reflection and social change.
Said another way, in the evolving world of gender and justice, declaring someone else’s privilege can be the new privilege. We all need to go carefully here. Or we risk calcifying an ever increasing set of counterproductive binary frames. This is the liberal infighting your mother told you about. It got Nixon  and Reagan elected. It is a bad thing.
Let me be clear. It’s not the erosion of unearned privilege that is problematic, but the pursuit of equality by putting men down that is problematic. It still maintains the system of oppression that is at the heart of our culture’s problems. It just flips the groups.

Privilege will eventually become gender neutral. Privilege has always existed somewhere on an intersectional continuum, changing contextually hour by hour depending on who we are with and where we are located, intellectually, socially, professionally, sexually, spiritually and so on. The participants are just wider ranging now.
_____
Men are moving into parenting, care giving, and other spaces once viewed as feminine. Men are increasingly expressing sexuality or gender in non-traditional ways. Men are becoming more empathetic and emotionally literate. Rebelling against gender norms is no simple task, and it can result in a lifetime of abusive pushback from patriarchal men and women. For the most gender radical of men, the risk of being assaulted or murdered still exists. The battle is by no means over. But real substantive and irreversible change is happening.
I realize that privilege is historical. That on one level, men have a debt to pay, an obligation to work towards gender equality. Men who seek to disengage from patriarchal male privilege have still benefitted from a lifetime of living in that patriarchal system. (And likely paid a painful cost as well.)

I do not suggest we remove the term male privilege from common use or even modify the frequency of its use, but men and women must go carefully. Emma C Williams states it eloquently in her article titled On Privilege and Being Human:

When the counsel to “check your privilege” is used as a bludgeon rather than a gentle reminder that we each have our own perspective on the world, it drives potential allies away from the people who need them the most. It also belies the very concept that empathy is even possible – and without empathy, we lose our humanity and each other.

No matter how significant male privilege is currently, it is no longer monolithic. Women are rightfully taking a share of power. Men are intentionally walking away from traditional manhood. Change is happening.
Perhaps going forward the solution is to hold universally accepted frames like male privilege more lightly, elevating a range of alternative frames to equal importance. By seeing others via a multitude of frames, we invite opportunities to contextually realign our thinking; to notice the gender performances that are emerging and to design the path forward to a place where masculinity is about equality, not the assumption of privilege; either by men or by women.
I understand there are many places where male privilege remains a brutal force for the oppression of women and girls. In such contexts, the relative niceties of holding concepts lightly are justifiably irrelevant. But in the spaces where working for gender change has created safety and the opportunity for dialogue across all kinds of barriers; gender, race, sexuality and otherwise, we must encourage more dialogue, more participation, more variability and more acceptance, not less.
Because there is no other way forward.
This article originally appeared on the Good Men Project.
Read More By Mark Green:
Why Traditional Manhood is Killing Us
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Episode: 041

If you try to do it all, you’ll just do it averagely well. Go big on fewer things.

Introduction:
Greg McKeown is the author of Essentialism and the CEO of THIS Inc., a leadership and strategy design agency located in Silicon Valley. Greg tells the audience that if you want to break through to the next level and contribute more to your life, you must go big on fewer things. If you say yes to everything, you will simply stretch yourself too thin and exhaust yourself.
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Listen to it on iTunes

Listen to it on Stitcher
 
Key Takeaways:
[2:55] Don’t forget ManTalks is hosting another event!
[4:25] What was Greg’s defining moment?
[7:00] Our failures lead to some of our biggest lessons.
[8:10] The only time we really learn is when we have expectation failure.
[9:05] True wealth is the ability to be present at any given moment.
[9:20] Don’t let a defining moment in your life pass you by.
[10:00] Are you just too busy living to think about life?
[10:30] Greg believes there’s only two kinds of people in this world – the people who are lost and the people who know they’re lost.
[10:50] To be in the second category requires humility, self-awareness, and courage.
[11:45] Don’t run on auto pilot.
[17:15] The first part of the book goes into the mindset of an essentialist.
[20:15] How can we accomplish more things that are important to us?
[21:05] An essentialist explores their options.
[21:55] An essentialist is very aware they have the ability to choose.
[26:45] Who really spends years working on a single masterpiece project?
[31:15] Our society is very achievement-based and we’ve been rewired to accomplish it all.
[32:00] What’s possible when you start practicing the principles of essentialism?
[34:05] If you say yes to everything, you cannot contribute to your highest ability.
[34:25] If you try to do it all, you’ll just do it averagely well.
[35:45] When given the choice, people will choose fewer things done better.
[38:50] What legacy would Greg like to leave behind in the world?
 

Music Credit:
J Parlange & Latenite Automatic (jesusparlange.com – lateniteautomatic.com)
Tweetables:
“The good times only teaches us a certain amount of lessons.”
“Success is a very poor teacher.”
“The only time we learn is when we experience expectation failure.”
 

Accepting the Emotional Roller Coaster

In the past month that I’ve been working on my book, which is launching today on Amazon, during the creative process I experienced many highs and lows, and I learned many lessons. But today I want to talk about controlling emotions.
This is perhaps the most important lesson I learned while writing this book because sanity is tied to our emotions. It’s as though emotions and sanity are running a three-legged race together. It’s our job to make sure we’re not dragged in the wrong direction.
Below I’ll discuss the 4 themes that will help you control the very thing that makes you you. Depending where I am in the creative process I’m either laughing or crying.
People often think the creative process looks like this:

This though is not a process, this is a single, beautiful, moment on the journey that the creative process will take you down.
This, is what the creative process looks like. (Credit to Derek Halpern, socialtriggers.com)

I haven’t yet met anyone who’s conquered this process. Every day Stephen King wakes up and faces a blank screen just as everyone else does.
The lows do not go away and neither do the highs. We cannot move the mountains, we just learn to traverse them better. These peaks and valleys happen over long periods of time as well as within an hour. They have their own macro and micro cycles.
As we go through these cycles it’s easy to fall back to wondering why we feel these intense emotions. “Why me?” we think, “No one is going to like my product. Why should I even keep going?”
Remember that these feelings are normal. It is hard to do in the moment but below are some tactics that will combat this situation and allow you to turn your mood around. All of these I learned first hand, and I learned the theory behind the emotional roller coaster through reading.
But to fully understand one must go through it and apply the practices.
Remember, in this situation we’re like mountain climbers. We start our journey, ascend the first mountain, embrace the feeling at the top, look at the next peak and perhaps get a little depressed, then we begin our descent.
The goal is to control the descent.
I always felt fantastic after finishing a chapter. Dopamine flooded over my brain and I felt proud that I had knocked out yet another chapter on my journey to a final product.
Then I would look at my outline and see the unwritten chapters and fall back to earth, remembering to put one foot in front of the other on my way to the next peak.
Rather than stumbling down the mountain uncontrollably and letting the fall keep us there we want to control our descent before moving to the next peak.
The first step is knowing this process exists.
By knowing we can anticipate the descents and accept the cyclical motion of the work. It may not feel good in the moment, but we know this is the nature of the work, and that the tides will change.
Throughout the writing of my book I made sure not to beat myself up if I didn’t hit a self-imposed deadline.
In the past I’ve had a bad habit of applying negative self talk if I didn’t complete something exactly as envisioned. Remember that you are your own ally during this process. I was doing myself no favors with this negative self-talk — but I thought it helped. By becoming our own ally we are more powerful than we could ever be while hosting a known enemy in our mind.
Once I hit my deadline 5 hours late — which sounds inconsequential to some of you — but to me it was a tangible failure. I had missed my deadline.
My goal was March 15th at 12am, but when midnight struck I still had a ways to go. I decided to finish during this session, staying up for another 5 hours to finishing the first draft.
I’d planned a reward for myself if I hit my deadline. A harsh Luke would have said “No, you didn’t make the deadline so no rewards.” I was tempted by that thought but remembered a wise friend who advised me to be easy on myself.
I finished my book and was happy to have completed it. I took Tuesday off, spent the day with my brothers and got lunch with a friend.
It felt great.
The second step is to put habits in place to control our day.
Implement a morning routine (Check out Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning) and set up timed breaks in your day where you go for walks. It’s really important to have structure and control during these times.
Without control and structure it can be easy to drift from task to task or distraction to distraction only to realize at the end of the day that we didn’t accomplish what we wanted to, which doesn’t help us navigate those valleys.
Here is what my schedule looked like during my creation process:

Daily walks were integral to my productivity. I now do this regularly – take walks because how well they work for me.
The third step is to feel what you are feeling.
As Mark Epstein says in The Trauma of Everyday Life, “When we stop distancing ourselves from the pain in the world, our own or others, we create the possibility of a new experience, one that often surprises because of how much joy, connection, or relief it yields. Destruction may continue, but humanity shines through.”
Learning to embrace emotions is daunting. Most of us, men specifically, are taught to hide our emotions. Therefore many of us try to keep the emotions at bay for as long as possible until they eventually seep through the cracks.
Stop resisting.
This has been a lengthy process for me and it doesn’t happen overnight. I started by talking to a confidante to whom I could express my deep-seated fears and traumas. I urge you to do the same. For me I started with my mom and it has slowly progressed now to a couple of individuals whom I share more private feelings with.
I can clearly remember one night sitting with my mother a couple of years back looking out the window at a thunderstorm, crying.
I told her how I was scared of burning out in business. I was too wrapped up in everything around me to come to a proper conclusion — but the conclusion didn’t matter.
What mattered was that I was finally expressing these feelings. This cleared up some of the fog enveloping my brain. This eventually allowed me to come to my own conclusion on how to solve my burnout problem — learn to respect the ebb and flow.
This was one of the first times I can recall sharing something innately a part of me as a young adult and it’s been a beautiful journey ever since.
During your creative process ask a friend or a family member if you can call them occasionally just to vent. Express to them what you are going through and that it would be valuable and meaningful to talk openly.
Damming the emotions is unhealthy.
Remember that nature always wins. We build walls but nature laughs and knocks them down like Hurricane Sandy did to New York City. Just when we think we are comfortable in our nice NYC loft apartment nature rolls through and reminds us that clean water is not a guarantee.
The same applies to the dams we build. After a while the water will find a crack, break the infrastructure, and knock down our dam causing a giant mess in the process.
This doesn’t have to happen.
Are you in the middle of the creative process and feel like the work is beating you up? Thrash in your bed and scream into your pillow. Be 4 years old again when there was no judgement. No one has to know. And when you do tell people that you cried because you were feeling beaten you may be surprised to see their reactions. Typically people like when others lead first, they will most likely respect you for sharing.
Once you have navigated and felt the feelings that you should be feeling you may feel brighter. Every time I finish sobbing I emerge feeling refreshed. Embrace that feeling too and use it to ascend your next mountain.
The fourth step of this process is a way to pull yourself out of a hole by utilizing a breathing technique.
One day while writing the first draft I had a really hard time bringing myself to do anything. I was in one of the valleys and it was rather paralyzing. I started freaking out about everything. “What if no one cares about my book?” “I have so much to do and I can’t bring myself to do anything.” 
I started having an anxiety attack.
Thankfully I had the wherewithal to step outside and drop everything I was doing to just breathe and meditate. It completely turned me around and felt magical to have that type of control over my anatomy, it was empowering.
The breathing technique I used is called the Wim Hof method. To listen to instruction straight from Wim Hof go here.
After charging your body with oxygen you will not need to breathe immediately, you may be able to hold your breath longer than 2 minutes.
When your anatomy is reminding you that you need fresh oxygen take a big inhale and hold for 10 seconds and then let go.
The excess oxygen stimulates the brain stem including our pineal gland and our amygdala which control hormones that regulate our body.
The list of hormones and functions include but are not limited to:
1) Regulatory sex hormones
2) Melatonin production
3) Seratonin production
4) Adrenaline production
I repeated this technique 3 times and sat in the sun for about 30 minutes focusing on my breath.
It was like someone changed my inner circuitry. I was happy, smiling, and chatty. I had effectively pulled myself out of a bad hole just by focusing on my breath. 
Learning to navigate the mountains is fundamental but it is also important to have control over ourselves in times of chaos.
The first 3 steps focus on the long term and the process of controlling our emotions throughout the peaks and valleys of the creative process. But this 4th step can pull you out of a hole on demand. If you are really feeling down I highly recommend putting this into practice.
As a rule, emotions don’t go away. They are here for the long run and it’s important to learn to embrace that and understand how to control them.
To quote the Dalai Lama, “…it will become obvious that most disturbances are stimulated not by external causes but by such internal events as the arising of disturbing emotions. The best antidote to these sources of disruption will come about through enhancing our ability to handle these emotions ourselves.”
The mountains are here. The peaks are yours to ascend and the valleys are yours to cross. If we learn to do it in a controlled manner it can be a beautiful thing.
Read More By Luke Harris-Gallahue on the ManTalks Blog:
Why I Invite Micro-Dose Suffering Into My Life

This one’s for all of you long-term relationship folks!

While I usually tend to write about how to turn a good relationship into a great relationship (through things like connection exercises, date nights, sexual communication, romantic gestures, overall prioritization, and increasing depth in your communication) today I’m going to talk about something equally as important.

What do you do if your relationship is struggling? What actions can you take when your partner seems more and more emotionally grating to you? Essentially, how do you save a struggling relationship?

Here are six of the highest leverage things that I walk my clients through when they come to me with a question regarding their struggling relationship.

Whether you’ve been dating your partner for three months or three decades, there’s something in this list for everyone.

1. Ask yourself these three questions

Self-reflection is sexy.

On some level, you know that relationships take two people (at the very least) to work well. Whatever problems you’re ruminating on your mind… or whatever things you’re telling yourself are all about them… it’s quite likely that those thoughts are simply inventions in your mind. Your mind’s purpose is to look for drama. If you live exclusively in your mind you will be reduced to fear, anxiety, and worry 24/7. So the following three questions will ground you in reality a bit more firmly.

If you’ve noticed your relationship running off the rails lately, ask yourself these questions with total honesty.

– What do I love about them?

– What have I always loved about them?

– How do they make me a better person?

These three questions lead to a beautiful, overarching reminder of “Oh right! I actually love them like crazy and there’s a LOT of good stuff here that I’m taking for granted. And not only do I love things about them, but I love what they bring to my life.”

If you really can’t think of a single answer for any of them then you might need to read this article.

2. Cultivate depth in your communication and let them in further

If you’re suffering from relationship resentment then it’s quite likely that the depth of your collective communication has been tragically truncated. Three rounds of alliteration in one sentence anyone? I know. I’m amazing.

It happens so, so, so frequently that a client comes to me and says “About a year ago this thing started to bother me in my life, but I didn’t want to bother my partner with it so I kept it to myself… and for the last ten months we’ve been struggling FOR SOME STRANGE REASON!?”

Well, you don’t need a masters degree in relationship psychology to assume that it’s more than a coincidence that your relationship started to suffer when you started keeping your big, scary secrets from your partner.

No matter how naturally intuitive someone is, we can all detect when our partners are withholding information from us.

If you’re afraid to tell your partner something (that you don’t like your job any more, that you don’t feel sexually desirable, that you miss how much you used to touch each other in a non-sexual way, etc.) and it’s weighing heavily on your mind, then your best bet is to TELL THEM. I wrote about this phenomenon recently in my article The One Practice That Saves More Relationships Than Anything Else.

So set aside some time. Tell them you have something to tell them. Tell them you’re afraid to say it. Tell them that you want to tell them about it because you love them so much and you want to get it off of your mind so that you can feel closer to them again.

And if you don’t have any big scary secrets that you’re holding on to, but you would still like to go deeper in your communication with your partner… check out my article 10 Questions To Ask To Go Deep In Your Relationship. There’s some real gems in that piece.

3. Practice the habit of ‘Gratitude Immersion’

So much of your intimate relationship is lost or won in the battle field between your ears. Aka your mind.

Every seed that you plant in your life produces a result. A good seed produces a beneficial result, and a poisonous seed poisons the field.

In your relationship, you can either plant seeds of gratitude or seeds of resentment.

You plant seeds of resentment by score keeping. Keeping track of every time that you did something nice, noble, or awesome for them… while actively ignoring or minimizing the things that your partner did for you.

You plant seeds of gratitude by cultivating the pause between noticing something that your partner did and sitting with it. Don’t just notice “Oh look, they did the dishes.” Really sit with the noticing, acknowledging, and gratitude of the moment. You could stretch that dishes example into, “Wow. My partner loves me so much that they took the time to do their dishes and mine. They know I hate fruit flies and so they did this as an act of love to keep me feeling safe, clean, and loved. They probably even did this because they knew I had a busy night coming up and they didn’t want me to be late for my plans. They love me so much. I am so lucky to be with such a loving, thoughtful partner.”

Gratitude immersion is the ultimate antidote to taking your partner for granted. Do this and you will eradicate a score keeping mindset within a matter of days.

4. Accept them entirely and acknowledge that you can only change yourself

I tend to attract a certain kind of reader/client to my work. A sometimes-anxious, high-achieving, semi-perfectionistic, hyper-intentional kind of person (just like me! Law of attraction whaaaaaat!?).

And one of the most common questions that clients come to me with is “Is my partner the right one for me? Because I’ve noticed some things about them that I don’t love but I’m not sure if I’m being too picky.”

And, when they frame it in that way, the answer, nine times out of ten, is “Yes, you’re being too picky. They sound like a fantastic person, and those tiny details don’t necessarily warrant the severing of the relationship.”

The antidote to this anxious mindset that might be sabotaging your relationships from the inside out? Accept them entirely and acknowledge that you can only change yourself.

Yes we can influence other people’s behaviours… but really, the only sustainable way to do this without being a jerk is to lead by example. Aka do the thing that you want to have more of in your life (go to the gym, read, eat cleaner, etc.) and then see if your partner joins you in that way of behaving of their own free will.

Believe me, it’s much easier to just start going to the gym yourself and asking your partner if they want to join you every 5-10 times then to give them a gym pass as a birthday present (seriously… don’t do that… unless they’ve explicitly asked for it).

So whatever the thing is that you wish they did more of, just do it yourself. If they join you in that activity/behaviour/way of being… great! If not, well, at least you already have more of that thing in your life because you’re doing it on your own.

5. Plan a sex date

Sex is integral to a thriving relationship. By sex I don’t necessarily just mean penetrative intercourse. Sex can mean a billion different things to a billion different people.

Sex is often the first thing to go when a relationship starts struggling… which is unfortunate. I like to think of sex as your body’s way of communicating. If you stopped verbally talking to your partner for three weeks, you would expect that it would be highly likely that your sense of connection would diminish. It’s the same way with sex. Sex is another form of communication, and can be just as important to your relationship as going deep in your conversations.

Good, connected sex can offer breakthroughs in your relationship… in your collective ability to communicate with each other… in your collective desire to want to work through a major emotional roadblock that you both might be experiencing.

So put it in the calendar. Plan an extended sex date. Do some spoiling sessions.

Phones off. No TV. Hire a babysitter for your kids or pets. Get all of your distractions out of the way.

Make love, in whatever way makes the most sense to the both of you. And you don’t have to wait for all of your communication to be at 100% before you can have deeply fulfilling sex. Often you need to sexually connect first, and then communicate afterwards.

6. Clear out old resentments

In the course of most relationships, little things tend to build up over time.

Maybe they did or said something that hurt you months ago. Maybe they forgot a special date or anniversary. Maybe they unknowingly embarrassed you when you were out with your friends.

Whatever resentments you might be holding on to, it’s time to move past them in order for your relationship to be able to go to it’s next layer of depth.

First, do your forgiveness work to remove the majority of the emotional charge surrounding the event on your side. For a lot of people, this is easier said than done. Ask yourself “How could what they did have been coming from a place of love? How could I have misunderstood what happened? How could I look at that event in a different way that would assume the best of them?”

By putting that initial wedge of doubt in there that makes you question whether or not you know the full story (hint: you don’t… you only know your interpretation of that event) makes you a lot more receptive to whatever your partner has to say about it.

Once you’ve done all of the work that you’re able to do on your side, bring it to your partner and invite a dialogue around that thing that still hurts for you. Tell them “Hey, I know that it was a little while ago, but I’ve been thinking about something that still feels a little bit unresolved for me. I’m doing my best not to hold it against you, and I’d love to hear your side of things regarding _____. The story I’m telling myself about it is that (this happened) and (that happened). Can you tell me what was happening in that situation on your side?”

It could be difficult to air your metaphorical old dirty laundry, but it might just be one of the most freeing things that you’ve ever done for yourself and your relationship.

Make Your Relationship A Priority

Your relationship slid down the priority list. I get it. You get it. Your significant other gets it.

You started the relationship, guns a blazin’, and you promised that you’d put each other above anything else in your lives. And then you allowed time to erode that promise. More accurately, you allowed your decisions to erode that promise.

First it was your career. And then your health. And then friends, family, kids, pets, Netflix, or any other number of things. Whatever got in the way, you allowed it to get in the way.

Now it’s time to take your relationship back into your own hands and declare “I care about my relationship. I want it to work as well as it used to in the beginning. In fact, I want it to be significantly better than it was in the beginning.”

And that’s amazing. Good for you. You deserve to have a thriving love relationship in your life. It all starts with your intention (and is carried out in your actions).

If you need any help in your process you can check out some of my books on intentional relationships here, or you can reach out and work with me directly by clicking here.

Read More By [and about] Jordan Gray on the ManTalks blog:

7 Things All Men Need In a Relationship

I Believe in Loving Like You Give a Shit

Man of the Week

__________

I’m at W*’s bachelor party and sharing one of my all time favorite memories about a drunken night out in Montreal. W* and a few of the other boys at the party were involved with the story. I figured that since it meant so much to me, they must remember it too.
But when I finished telling the story, something weird happened. Everyone looked at me confused. No one else remembered it. I should have been embarrassed that this moment, which meant so much to me, was completely forgettable to everyone else, but actually, it was hysterical.

***

Bachelor parties call up images of endless rounds of shots, lap dances, and belligerence.
While there is a time and a place for that, if a bachelor party is defined by debauchery, you’re shortchanging the bachelor and all of the attendees of an event that could be unforgettable.
Over the past five years, I’ve thrown numerous bachelor parties for my boys (yes, I’m like the male version of “27 Dresses”). I’ve learned that a well done bachelor party is much more than just a group of guys getting drunk in honor of the groom.
Instead, it’s a small work of art that – when done well – will be remembered in vivid detail by the groom for the rest of his life.
What follows is a guide for the Best Man on how to throw an amazing bachelor party.

Implement the “Grown Ass Man” Rule

There should be one and only one rule that pervades a real man’s bachelor party, and that is the, “Grown Ass Man Rule.” Simply put, everyone should assume that he (and all the other boys) are Grown Ass Men. That means that each guy will take care of themselves, monitor their own behavior, figure out what to do if they get separated from the pack, and ask for help when they need it.
Not only is this respectful to all of the attendees, it also takes serious pressure off of you, the best man, by politely declaring that you will not be baby sitting anyone.
I explicitly state this rule a day or two ahead of time to help set clear boundaries and expectations for behavior.

Build the Party With the Bachelor in Mind

As you begin to organize the party, think of what would delight your bachelor. If he loves to play pool, make sure you hit up a pool hall. If he’s the quiet type, resist the temptation to turn him into a spectacle while you’re in public. If he has a soft spot for rare scotches, find the nearest scotch bar, and make a reservation.
Tailoring the party to the bachelor’s unique disposition and preferences is an easy way to make an emotional impact. If you’re feeling ambitious you can make it your goal to create a bachelor party that is even more fun for the bachelor than the wedding itself.

Ask the Bachelor Who He Wants There and Then Get as Many to Show up as Possible

Send out a survey to the list the bachelor gives you, asking which dates and locations work best. Schedule the party at the time and place that allows as many men as possible to attend. While choosing an exotic location and working from there is tempting, keep in mind that people are always more important than places. It’s easy to have fun in a shitty location with great people.
Get the Dad Involved
Bachelor parties are one of the few male coming-of-age rituals still observed. Because of that, you can create magic for both the bachelor and his father by getting the Dad involved.
In most cases, I wouldn’t advise having the Dad present, at least not for the entire party, but I would create an opportunity to have his presence felt. Here are a few ideas:

• See if the Dad would like to pick up the tab for dinner, a round of drinks, or a bottle of the bachelor’s favorite spirit.
• Ask the Dad to write a letter or film a video and give it to the bachelor during the party. Encourage him to be vulnerable, honest, and playful in the message to his son.
• Invite the Dad to contribute a dare to the dare list (more on creating a dare list in a moment…).

Hold Space During the Party to Just Chill

When putting together a bachelor party, there is a tendency to fill every second with activity.
Resist that urge.
Instead, leave dead space in your plans. You’ll be surprised by how fun lounging around, having a few drinks, and shooting the shit with a cool group of guys is.
In fact, the story I started this article with, which was my personal favorite moment of W*’s bachelor party, only occurred because we had space scheduled just to chill.
These often become the memorable moments.

Create a Dare List for the Bachelor to Tackle Throughout the Party

To keep the party interesting – and to keep the bachelor at the center of everyone’s attention – I suggest creating a dare list that consists of challenges for the bachelor to complete throughout the party.
Reach out ahead of time to the guys attending the party, and ask each of them to come up with one dare for the bachelor. Tell them to keep in mind that the dare should make the bachelor leave his comfort zone, without being impossible.
One of my personal favorites from W*’s bachelor party:
“Every time W* orders a meal, he must stand up and high five the waiter.”
You can make the game even more engaging for everyone by adding the following elements:

• A way for the bachelor to opt out of the dare
• A way for the bachelor to reverse the dare by going above and beyond and enabling him to assign dares to the other guys in the group (if you do this, keep it a secret until everyone has arrived)
• A reward for the bachelor if he successfully completes all of the dares without opting out

So an example of a fully formed dare would be:
“Every time W* orders a meal, he must stand up and high five the waiter.
Cost of opting out: W* must pay for dinner on Saturday night.
After two successful high fives, W* is off the hook. However, if W* gets every meal on Friday and Saturday, and the first drink order on Saturday night, he may assign a shot to S* [the guy who created the dare], and S* must high five the bartender when he orders for the rest of the party.”
If your bachelor is emotionally mature enough, it’s nice to have a dare that includes him sharing his favorite memory of each member of the bachelor party.
The real goal is to be creative and playful as you create challenges for the bachelor.

Get Organized Ahead of Time

Too often bachelor parties consist of a group of guys showing up and then winging it. Spur of the moment decision-making, especially with large groups, often results in lazy, lowest-common-denominator style decisions.
Instead, do a bit of work ahead of time to make the experience smooth and engaging for everyone. Most of the bachelor parties I’ve planned began on a Friday after work, and ended mid-morning on Sunday. I’ll assume that the one you’re planning follows a similar format, but if not, you can adapt:

• Declare a clear meeting spot for Friday night. If you are renting an AirBNB have everyone arrive there. Be sure to have beer, liquor and cigars on hand for people as they arrive.

• Friday night’s dinner and activities should be simple since people are arriving throughout the evening. I default to ordering a pizza and playing poker.

• Saturday during the day, have one main activity. For W*’s bachelor party, we played soccer golf, but other activities to consider include: lazer tag, pitch and putt, batting cages, a video game tournament, floating a river, archery, hitting a local casino, go karts, a barcade, or bowling. If you choose a competitive activity, consider placing a light weight bet on the outcome to make it more engaging for the boys.

• Saturday evening, the whole party goes out to a nice restaurant (be sure to make reservations ahead of time).

• Saturday night, bar crawl. I suggest starting at a nice bar, and slowly working down from fancy bars to dive bars.

• Sunday, for many people will be a travel day. I suggest an easy activity in the morning (breakfast, coffee, a round of cards, etc) and then declaring a hard stop time for the bachelor party.

Simplify Finances by Putting Everything on Your Credit Card and Divvy up the Total Later

If you’re rolling with a ten person bachelor party, it’s annoying to split the check ten times everywhere you go. Instead, put everything on your credit card, and then use cash, paypal, venmo for reimbursment.
This is easier for everyone involved (especially the waiters, waitresses, and bartenders). And of course, if you and the attendees can afford it, don’t let the bachelor pay for anything.

Create an Opportunity for the Guys to Raise Toasts and Share Memories with the Bachelor

A nice way to create a moment that the bachelor will remember forever, is to ask the attendees of the party to individually toast the bachelor or share one of their favorite memories of him.
Not all guys have the emotional capacity or willingness to do this. That’s fine. Vulnerability and honesty take courage. However, many of the guys will relish the opportunity to say, “I love you” without having to say, “I love you.”
Tell the guys ahead of time that there will be an opportunity to share stories and raise toasts, but there’s no pressure whatsoever to do this. If you’d like as many of the men as possible to participate, you should lead by example and go first. While this is easier for people after a few drinks just make sure it’s done before the bachelor is so drunk that he might forget.

***

The standard bachelor party is little more than everyone getting drunk in honor of the groom. Nothing wrong with that, but with a bit of effort you can create an event enjoyed by all of the attendees and more importantly, remembered by the bachelor for the rest of his life.
Read More By Jason Connell
Finding Your Deep Gifts in a Shallow World
Maslow Got it Wrong: What I Learned From Feeding the Homeless on My Birthday
How Should a Man Be at 30?

Episode: 040

There are 20 essential leadership habits that make a powerful and successful leader.

Introduction:
Brad Lomenick is a strategic advisor and leadership consultant. He has written two books on the subject of leadership, The Catalyst Leader and, his latest book, H3 Leadership. Brad discusses the three big Hs that every leader needs in order to inspire and propel them to the next level. He also not only talks about why millennials are different but offers some compelling advice to anyone who is just beginning their career or journey.
 

Listen to it on iTunes

Listen to it on Stitcher
 

 
Key Takeaways:
[0:35] Thank you to our sponsor Vancity Buzz.
[2:45] What was Brad’s defining moment as a man?
[6:30] So many aspects of Brad’s story have been built on the shoulders of other people who have
helped him.
[6:40] What does Brad currently do?
[8:00] Brad wants to impact the next generation.
[9:10] Brad focuses on building strong leaders.
[12:40] What is the secret sauce to creating a movement?
[16:45] As soon as you’re feeling big, you need to go back to the same thinking you had when you
first started.
[17:15] How do you influence a millennial?
[18:55] Millennials believe they can change the world. They are incredibly positive.
[19:25] Millennials have such high expectations that reality can throw them off guard.
[20:00] Go find something right now, even if it’s not your life calling, and go crush it.
[20:15] Be the best you can be with what you’re doing today.
[22:45] Millennials are the generation with options.
[23:45] It doesn’t matter how old you are now, it matters what you can do and what you know.
[24:30] Brad talks about his latest book, H3 Leadership.
[26:30] If you feel like you’re a humble leader, then you’re probably not.
[30:30] Every team knows their leader’s flaws.
[31:20] You have to lead with your true self.
[32:20] Always stay hungry.
[34:55] Great leaders are often the most curious.
[37:25] What is hustle?
[40:45] You have to create a bit of margin in your life in order for you to hustle at the right times.
[42:25] Generosity has to be part of your hustle.
[43:30] One of the most difficult lessons for leaders is to let go.
[44:40] Your job is to replace yourself.
[46:50] Brad talks about the young influencers list.
[48:45] Brad currently loves what Caitlin Crosby is doing.
[51:10] What legacy does Brad wish to leave behind?
 

Music Credit:
J Parlange & Latenite Automatic (jesusparlange.com – lateniteautomatic.com)
Quotes:
“Everyone is a leader, everyone has influence.”
“I believe 100% in the current young generation. There’s so much about them that’s positive.”
“Go find something right now, even if it’s not your life calling, and go crush it.”
“I want a leader who is real every time compared to a leader who is right.”
 

I see a beautiful boy’s beautiful world through the eyes of my son. He’s 9. Old enough to process complexity but still a child.
Yet, the world wants him to grow up… in that traditional way.
A way that would leave him emotionally bereft, a hardened manchild, which perhaps explains why we have so many emotionally crippled manchild men over 30.
Cynicism and ‘tough guy’ posturing aren’t natural for 9-year-olds.
But I’ve seen it in many.
Girls have their own set of pressure and false programming. Boys receive one message over and over, “Don’t show weakness. Ever. Under any circumstance.”
“Boys don’t cry,” the world says. But that’s not true. Boys cry rivers of tears. They just learn to hide it young. By the time most boys have become men they’ve lost the capacity to feel fully.
Many men can’t cry. Even if we wanted to. We’ve lost the capacity.
Too much joy and you’re a dork. Show compassion to another human and you’re soft.
What feelings are boys allowed to feel?
Anger of course. That’s manly and expected, which might explain why it’s mostly boys and men who get into fights, commit violent crimes, crash cars, and commit suicide.
Boys are discouraged from showing pro-social emotions that connect and bring us together.
My son is on his own journey. I can’t shelter him from hardship, but there are a few things I want him to know.
I want him to know he never has to ‘man up.’
Because that term is just a thin veneer over, “never show any weakness.” Every man, from Brock Lesnar to Stephen Hawking knows deep down that we aren’t impervious to struggle. We’re not all powerful.
We’re made of flesh and blood and we hurt from time to time. “Manning up” should mean being honest and courageous, even if that means feeling weak for a moment or two.
That’s what I want for my son.
I want my son to know that boys can do anything.
Boys can have meaningful relationships. Boys can be a force for good. Boys don’t have to be society’s problem.
Boys can be friendly and connected, loving and kind, while still retaining masculine strength and direction.
These qualities aren’t conflicting.
I want my son to know that that caring equals strength.
Compassion is the ultimate strength. But compassion for others is impossible without compassion for oneself. We have a culture of misguided boys that become self self-loathing men who are incapable of compassion for themselves or others.
Boys are taught that caring is weakness, but it’s the ultimate strength.
Show me a man who cares only about himself and I’ll show you a brittle man.
I want my son to know he’s not a danger to society.
Boys can channel their enormous power, focus, energy, and drive towards positive and healthy ends.
Too many boys grow up thinking their only power comes from rabble-rousing and stirring up havoc.
The world needs healthy masculine energy now more than ever. I want my son to know that.
I want my son to know that he can understand women.
Show me a man who says, “I can’t understand women,” and I’ll show you a man who isn’t trying.
I want my son to know he can understand women because he can understand people.
I want my son to think of women as allies, not incomprehensible creatures with incomprehensible needs.
I want my son to know the most incredible expression of strength is love.
Because his heart is more powerful than anyone else I know, and I know that by loving others he is fully self expressed.
I want my son to know that not only is there no shame in that. On the contrary, it’s a point of pride now and forever.
I want him to know that he never has to mute his ability to love and that anyone who tells him otherwise has simply muted his own.
I want my son to know his future doesn’t have to look a certain way.
Because I know his future is more incredible than I can imagine.
I want my son to know he never has to stop daydreaming.
Because daydreaming is what geniuses and little boys do [and that’s pretty much the same thing anyways].
I want my son to know the pursuit of more for the sake of more will not make him more.
I want him to know that he’s complete as he is. I want him to pursue his wildest childlike dreams because what the fuck else is there to this life?
I want my son to know I will always love him.
Even when he pisses me off. Even when we disagree… especially when we disagree.
Read More By Zander Robertson on the ManTalks Blog:
There’s Nothing Left to Do But Die
The 5 Key Steps to Editing Your Life Story
__________________________________________________________________
Zander Robertson is editor-in-chief of the Mantalks blog. He’s ghostwritten more than 20 books for major publishing houses and self publishers. Zander believes that the world turns on powerful, raw, and true stories. Visit his website to learn more. 
Email him at [email protected] to pitch your article idea for ManTalks.
 
 
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