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Mindset & Resiliency

Michael Sartain – Moving Beyond The Stereotypes

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Talking points: relationships, evolutionary psychology, culture

You know it, I know it, and Michael Sartain knows it: there are a LOT of men out there facing extreme difficulty. I wanted to pick Michael’s brain on how to help men understand why this is, but from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, and the boots-on-ground experience of a fellow coach. I appreciate Michael’s ability to follow (and focus) the data without getting lost in reactionary antics. Listen in.

(00:00:00) – How Michael works with men

(00:13:13) – What makes evolutionary psychology such a charged subject?

(00:25:40) – Why risk is important for men

(00:31:36) – Strategies to boost your risk tolerance

(00:39:02) – The difficulty of modern male relationships, and staying neutral

(00:48:42) – Does the unwillingness to take risk can impact relationships?

(00:53:23) – On status, Bonnie Blue, and what most don’t get about the “bottom third” of men

Michael Sartain’s journey from a studious kid in Dallas, TX, to a leading expert in high-status networking and masculine self-improvement is nothing short of transformative. He grew up in contrasting environments; a comfortable family life, but a high school marked by gangs and poverty. Michael found refuge in academia, eventually earning a BBA from UT-Austin while nurturing a passion for diverse subjects like physics and psychology. The events of September 11, 2001, ignited his patriotic spirit, propelling him into the US Air Force as a KC135 navigator, rising to the rank of captain. It was here he honed leadership skills and experienced the profound impact of true accountability and integrity.

In 2019, he founded Men Of Action, a coaching community that has transformed the lives of over 2,000 men. Through his podcasts and public appearances, Michael continues to inspire, emphasizing leadership, social dynamics, and personal growth.

Connect with Michael:

-Website: https://www.moamentoring.com/

-Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelsartain/

-YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/MichaelSartain

-Twitter: https://x.com/michaelsartain

Tad Hargrave – How To Date (And Market) Beautifully

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Talking points: culture, marketing, relationships

I consider it an achievement to have Tad on the show. He’s a soulful and wise person who can cut through the BS quickly—and do it kindly, no less. We sat down to discuss the parallels in ethically presenting your case in both the business and dating realms. You’ll be surprised at how similar some aspects are!

(00:00:00) – How is dating an extension of marketing?

(00:13:24) – The meaning of “gauging” a potential partner, and what to look for

(00:19:57) – On sunk cost, grief, people pleasing, and our fear of risk

(00:27:17) – Is there a connection between fear of approach and polarization?

(00:34:43) – How is AI going to change how we market

(00:47:33) – What are the key implementations of ethical marketing?

Tad Hargrave is a hippy who developed a knack for marketing (and then learned to be a hippy again). Since 2001, he has been weaving together strands of ethical marketing, Waldorf School education, a history in the performing arts, local culture making, anti-globalization activism, an interest in his ancestral, traditional cultures, community building and supporting local economies into his work helping people create profitable businesses that are ethically grown while restoring the beauty of the marketplace.

Connect with Tad:

-Website: https://marketingforhippies.com/

-Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marketingforhippies/

-Substack: https://tadhargrave.substack.com/

45% Of Young Men Have Never Asked Someone Out – Why?

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Talking point: dating, relationships, risk

I recently came across some work by Alexander (aka @DatePsych), where he put together some fascinating data. Turns out 45% of men between 18-25 haven’t asked a woman out. Ever. What’s the deal? Well, here are two of my theories, and I’d love to hear yours.

Link to the study: https://datepsychology.com/risk-aversion-and-dating/

Transcript

So, Date Psychology came out with this new study that blew my mind. I thought this was really wild, and I’m going to talk about what I think is contributing to this, what’s causing this, and what we can do about it. I’m curious to hear your thoughts as well, but what they found was that 45% of young men between the ages of 18 and 25 had never, not once, approached a woman in public and asked her out.

Now, I don’t know what the sample size was. This could be one of those samples is like a thousand guys, but I think it’s still indicative of the larger problem that seems to be happening in the dating world.

Now, the interesting thing was that 75% of women of that same age range, 18 to 25, said that they expressed a desire to be approached by men. So you have 75% of women saying, actually, I would like to be approached. I’d like for men to come talk to me.

I’d like for men to come and ask me out. But then you have 45% of men who literally have never approached a woman and asked her out. So the probability of those women being approached, it’s one of those things where it’s likely the 5% of men, the 10% of men that are doing the majority of the approaching and that are the most comfortable with it.

Now, I’m of the generation where, yes, you could pick people up online. Social media existed, not when I was a teenager, but MSN chat, for those of you who are of my generation and my age, it existed. You could talk to people online. You could pick people up online. You could hit on people. All that kind of stuff happened.

But it’s still not really the way that most people in my generation, like when I started going to the bars when I was 18, that was the primary way that I met women. It was approaching women at the gym, approaching women at the coffee shop, approaching women at the bar, at the restaurant, at the grocery store. It was walking up to a woman and talking to her and striking out and being like, oh man, I can’t believe I said that stupid crap. What was that?

I remember a buddy of mine and I used to go to the bar. This is just an aside. But we used to go to the bar and we would choose the worst pickup lines possible to see if we could get a woman’s phone number using just like the corniest pickup lines.

And in some ways, it’s not that it was a game, it’s that we were challenging ourselves to get over the fear of rejection, the fear of failure, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and feeling embarrassed or feeling ashamed or being like, ugh, getting that ick inside where you’re like, man, I can’t believe I said that crap. And it was fun, but it also helped to develop confidence because we started to realize, like, there was so much less on the line than we thought. And I think one of the big things that I think has contributed, there’s a couple of things I’m going to say that I think are contributing to this.

And men, share your thoughts in the comments below if you’re on Spotify or YouTube. I want to hear what you have to say. Why do you think that less and less young men are approaching women and what can they do about it? So here’s my first thing.

I think that most young men’s tolerance for risk has been decimated. I think because of pandemic, I think because of spending way more time in the digital space and less time in real life in front of people. I think that men’s, young men’s especially, risk tolerance level has shrunk exponentially and it is damaging young men in a way that is really not good, both for a relational standpoint, a sex standpoint, a financial standpoint, a success standpoint, a confidence standpoint.

We as men need to go through trials, go through challenges and take risks in order to develop both confidence and competence. And so as a man, you have to face the rejection, as an example, of women in order to get a phone number, in order to get a date. And this is part of the dance that has to happen.

And I think what’s going on is that a lot of young men are just avoiding stepping into those spaces because of a number of reasons. They see all of this nonsense online about how bad women are. Maybe they’ve heard horror stories from their buddies who approach women and they get shut down or they get laughed at or mocked or maybe they get rejected in a way that’s not great.

But in my experience and most of the men that I talk to, the majority of the times women don’t reject in a mean or demeaning way. The hard part is feeling internally the rejection of the no. It’s feeling the like, oh, what does that mean about me? Am I not attractive enough? Am I not good looking enough? You have to start to face some of those insecurities when you go and approach a woman in real life.

When you try and hit somebody up on Tinder or an app like Instagram or whatever it is, there’s so much less on the line. There’s this big separation between you and the outcome, whereas in real life, it’s right there and it’s in your face and you can’t avoid it.

So I think that in part that risk tolerance has been diminished greatly and we as men have to encourage young men to take more risks. With my son, I encourage him all the time, take more risks. I help him define where the boundaries are. We have a big set of stairs and he likes to jump off the stairs and he jumped off the first stair. He’s three and a half. He jumped off the first stair. I’m like, great job. He jumps off the second stair. Great job.

He walks up to the third stair. Can I jump off of this one, dad? I’m like, do you feel comfortable with it? He’s like, uh, I said, try it out. So he jumps off that one. Then he goes up to the fourth stair and he looks at me and I’m like, do you think you can do that one? He’s like, no. He’s like, okay. What do you think would happen? I might hurt myself. Yeah, probably.

So we have to encourage young men. I’m encouraging you to take more risks than you are comfortable with, to put yourself out there and face the rejection. You have to be rejected countless times. It’s going to happen. You have to face the embarrassment and the insecurities and the failure that comes along with it and that that actually is an important part of the masculine equation. Your sense of manhood is either going to be reinforced or diminished in your ability and willingness to move towards risk or shrink from it.

It’s just a direct correlation. Men that are willing to start to develop risk as a skill set will be more competent, more confident, more capable, and more attractive to women. Because in some ways, a lot of women, maybe not all women, but a lot of women know that it takes a certain level of not only confidence, but like it takes a certain level of grit and determination to approach a woman in real life. And for some women, it’s uncomfortable for them as well.

So I think that’s the one big thing is risk. And I think the other thing is just the social narrative around relationships and the fact that men and women have gone very far apart. The political divide is pretty big. Women are more on the left and men are more on the right, especially in the younger generation. There’s been a big split.

And I think that ideologies between men and women have changed. And I think that because of some of the narratives within certain parts of political ideologies, men have the notion that women do not want to be approached. Men have the idea that women see that as a threat or dangerous or they’re disgusted by it or you are going to be seen as a misogynist if you approach them.

And that’s not the case. Any woman that I’ve ever talked to appreciates and respects a man that approaches them. Now, of course, like I said, there’s a right way to do it. Women do not approach the man that comes up and is greasy and slimy or has bad hygiene and that type of stuff. If he’s kind of creepy and following her around or giving her weird looks, that’s probably not going to go over well.

But if you’re a dude who’s just like, hey, listen, I’m not very good at this, but I think that you’re beautiful and I wanted to come talk to you and my name’s Connor. What’s your name? That type of stuff is super disarming. It’s honest. It’s transparent. You’re taking that step. And I would encourage any young man to just start to do this on a regular basis. Go into a coffee shop and just talk to the barista more than you normally would.

You don’t have to try and get their number, right? Talk to somebody in the coffee shop that’s a patron, that’s having coffee and working on something and just strike up a conversation. You have to start to deal with the discomfort that you feel inside of yourself in those social situations. And I think this is the last thing I’ll leave you with.

I think that we vastly underestimate the damage maybe isn’t the right word, but the impact that lacking in social skills and the rise of social anxiousness that has happened on the back of both the pandemic and the rise in using technology. And I think that’s really dramatically impacting a lot of young men who are more isolated, more lonely, and have less and less chances to just interact with people, period. To interact with other men or other women just in a regular social setting.

And so if you’re young men out here watching this, get more social. Get more social. Talk to women in public. Let it be awkward at first. That’s okay. Try not to be a creep.

Maybe don’t do what I did and choose the five worst pickup lines in human history and then try and go talk to women with them. Or maybe that suits your personality. Maybe you’re just a little goofy, a little ridiculous, and you can pull that off and it suits your character.

Try and approach women in a way that suits your character. If you’re a little nerdy, be a little nerdy. If you’re very observant, observe something about her. Notice something about her and approach her with that. Hey, I noticed you’re reading this book. Tell me what it’s about.

Hey, I noticed, you know, it looks like you just got your hair done. Looks great. You know, you’re carrying a yoga mat. Like what type of yoga do you like to do? Be observant. Make a comment about something that you’ve noticed about her. So really, the thing that I would say, if you are uncomfortable with this, that’s fine.

Do it anyway. If you don’t feel competent in it, that’s probably true because you’re not doing it. So where do you start? You start by trying to play to your own nature and your own character. If you’re shy, say that. Hey, I’m usually pretty shy and reserved, but I just wanted to come talk to you. Be honest and transparent about maybe it’s a little uncomfortable for you.

If you’re a little bit more charismatic, if you’re a funny jokester, if you, whatever it is, really try and embody some of your natural characteristics and bring them into the conversation when you are approaching a woman. All right. Share your thoughts.

Let me know why you think so many young men have been checking out of approaching women in real life and what you have found to work well. See you next time.

Ryan Michler – Brotherhood, Isolation, And Rising Above The Noise

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Talking points: friendship, masculinity, culture

Ryan Michler and I have been in the men’s work biz for a long time, and we’ve seen the changes—some good, some bad—in how men are talked about and marketed to by our culture and by the wellness and therapy industries. We dig into the necessity of male friendship in the face of growing isolationism, the upcoming Men’s Forge, and a whole lot more. Listen in, team.

(00:00:00) – Intro and why does it seem like men are having a harder time maintaining relationships?

(00:12:27) – On men needing social time and where modern therapy misses the mark

(00:17:56) – How are men contributing to their own isolation and loneliness?

(00:31:44) – On the importance of some confrontation in male friendships

(00:38:32) – Why men need brotherhood as well as challenge, and what to do if you want deeper friendships with other men

Ryan Michler is a husband, father, Iraqi Combat Veteran, and the Founder of Order of Man. Ryan grew up without a permanent father figure and has seen first-hand how a lack of strong, ambitious, self-sufficient men has impacted society today. He believes many of the world’s most complicated problems could be solved if men everywhere learned how to be better husbands, fathers, businessmen, and community leaders.

It has now become his life’s mission to help men across the planet step more fully into their roles as protectors, providers, and presiders over themselves, their families, their businesses, and their communities. You can find him blogging and podcasting at Order of Man where he is working to help men become all they were meant to be.

Connect with Ryan

-Join myself, Ryan Michler, Larry Hagner, and Matt Beaudreau on a mission to improve yourself as a man, husband, business owner, and community leader at the Men’s Forge. May 1-4, St. Louis, MO: https://orderofman.clickfunnels.com/uprising-landing-page1715263442491

-Website: https://www.orderofman.com/

-Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanmichler/

-Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanmichler

-Book: The Masculinity Manifesto: https://amzn.to/3jJcmiE

-Book: Sovereignty: https://amzn.to/3G6zwqQ

How To Develop Self-Worth As A Man

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Talking points: mindset

This is something I’ve seen a LOT of men battle, and with no success—and I include myself in that. This week, I want to reframe the idea of self-worth and give you a few insights that will likely change the game for you. Dig in.

(00:00:00) – Reframing self-worth, and why many men struggle with it

(00:04:27) – Reasons why self-worth gets damaged

(00:07:26) – You don’t build it by winning all the time; recognize effort instead. Here’s why it works

(00:12:00) – Release the beast from the basement

Transcript

How do you as a man develop self-worth? This is something that I have seen so many men struggle with, something that I struggled with for a very long time. And so today I’m going to be talking to you about what self-worth is, what infringes on it and actually inhibits your ability to have inherent self-worth and develop self-worth, and then what can you do specifically to begin to develop it. I’m going to lay those three things out.

There’s so much more that you can do to develop self-worth, but I’m going to give you some of the core tools and tenets that I think are very important. So let’s just start at the beginning. What is self-worth? Well, self-worth, by definition, is a kind of inner recognition of your life, your thoughts, your existence as holding inherent value independent of external approval or validation. External approval, validation, or accomplishment. 

Now that last part is pretty important because for the majority of men, the reason why you struggle with self-worth is that you have offloaded and outsourced that validation that is necessary to the external world, to society, to women, to parents, to other men, to friends, etc. And so there is no internal mechanism of self-recognition, of validating your own existence, your own value, and your own worth, and there’s a constant looking for other people to validate that value for you.

So self-worth is something that is internalized, okay? Something that is internalized. It’s the intersection for me, and I’m going to give you a redefinition of what it is. Self-worth is the intersection of having done hard shit to develop competency in areas that you give a shit about and genuinely liking who you are and being able to recognize both, okay? So self-worth, and I’m just going to break it down very simply.

Self-worth is your willingness to do hard things that you genuinely care about that are meaningful and liking who you are in the process and the ability to validate both. So you can validate, I do hard things. I do things that I really care about. I do things that are meaningful to me, whatever those might be. Maybe it’s woodworking. Maybe it’s volunteering.

Maybe it’s the work that you do as an accountant, as a real estate agent, and I like who I am while I am doing it. I like who I am as a father, as a husband. I can acknowledge the worth and the value that I bring into these relationships.

So self-worth is kind of that duality of I am able to recognize my skill in what I do and how I do it and how well I do it. My mastery of it or my, you know, the journey that I’m on to master it. And I’m also able to recognize how I show up in relationships.

So what I do and who I am relationally. Now, there’s a couple of things that really damage and impact self-worth. And this is very important for you to know. And it’s important for you to know because in order for you to develop self-worth, you are likely going to have to work through the things that damaged it. So maybe you don’t have a lot that you feel like you can celebrate yourself for. Maybe you don’t like how you operate in relationships.

This was a big one for me. How I operated in relationships wasn’t good. I didn’t honor my word. I wasn’t faithful. I was, you know, kind of slippery. And then how I operated in my life professionally was like mediocre, subpar. I didn’t feel very masterful. I didn’t feel very competent. And so it was very hard for me to celebrate myself.

Now, part of the reason for that as I discovered was that my sense of self-worth growing up was really damaged. And this is the case for a lot of men. A lot of you had your sense of self-worth or your value diminished and damaged when you were younger.

So there’s a couple of things I’m going to lay out. Number one, any type of trauma, whether it’s physical abuse, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, all of those types of traumas will and can damage your sense of self-worth. There’s many different reasons for this.

But one of the main reasons is that when you are young, you have a high level of omnipotence. You have a high level of ego. And so you think that you’re at the center of everything.

And anything that happens in your environment, you think that somehow you had something to do with it. So if you’re a kid and your parents are constantly arguing, you think that you have something to do with it. You don’t think it consciously.

But in an unconscious way, what you take on is, I’m causing this. Or I should be able to fix this. Or I should be able to solve this. Or what’s wrong with me that this keeps happening? This is very common in kids that experience divorce. Their parents get divorced. The big internal question is, what did I do to cause this? How am I responsible for this? Same thing if you experienced abuse, any type of verbal, emotional, etc.

The common trope for a lot of, for almost every single individual is, what was wrong with me that that was happening? How did I cause that? So kids take on the stuff that happens to them in their environment with their primary caretakers and around them in their primary caretaking system, your family, etc. So any type of trauma will do that. Any type of verbal abuse will do that.

Hypercriticism will do that. A lack or we’ll call it malnourishment of validation and recognition. Children need encouragement. There’s a lot of research and data that shows that children really need to be praised for their efforts specifically. Not necessarily coming first place. Not necessarily coming second or third.

But having their efforts praised really helps them to develop a robust sense of self-worth and self-value and capacity and ability, etc. So you may have grown up in an environment where nothing was ever good enough. Your parents were the classic perfectionists or they were constantly criticizing, right? You’d bring home a 95.

Where’s the other 5%? Or you only got love and validation when you performed well, right? You’d get an A-plus on a test. Boom, you’d get love and praise. You would do well in a sport. Boom, you’d get love and praise. But your love and praise was very conditional on how you operated. You didn’t receive any I love you’s, you’re a great kid just because.

And so children need that. They need to have love infused into them for no good reason whatsoever. And they also need to have their efforts praised in order for them to develop that sense of self-worth and confidence.

Now, why is this important? Why am I telling you this last part specifically? Because this is giving you a clue into what you are going to need to do. Oftentimes as men, what we think we need to do to develop self-worth is win all the time and then celebrate those wins. What likely needs to happen for you, and this is, there’s two parts I’m going to be talking to you about today, about how you can develop self-worth.

The one major thing is that you need to start to celebrate your efforts in a meaningful, continuous, consistent way. And your ability to continually reinforce and recognize your efforts, right? The alarm goes off. You said you’re going to get out of bed. You get your ass out of bed. Celebrate the effort for getting out of bed, not the outcome of getting out of bed. 

That is a big mindset shift. Because what happens for a lot of men who lack self-worth is they are chronic perfectionists or chronic procrastinators. So they’re never taking action because why bother? Or when they do take action, they shit on themselves because it’s not perfect. And both of those erode self-worth because no effort is being praised. Effort is seen as the enemy. An outcome is the god that they are praying to in some capacity. 

So hopefully that frame and context resonates with you. But the main point here is that you have to start to develop a really rigorous and meticulous system of recognizing your efforts in all areas of your life, physically, mentally, emotionally, in your health, in your finances, recognizing your effort in having the conversation with your wife or your girlfriend, not the outcome, right? It’s like, did it go perfect? Probably not. Recognize your effort in having the conversation that felt uncomfortable or confronting, right? Going to the gym. Maybe you haven’t been in weeks or months on end.

And you go to the gym. Praise your effort. Recognize your effort for doing so instead of, was the workout perfect? Did I do everything that I said I was going to do? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Recognize the effort. This isn’t about a participation trophy. This isn’t about any of that.

It’s that you start to develop a rigorous internal system of being able to validate and recognize when you are putting effort into something. That does a couple things. Number one, it starts to reinforce you have capability and capacity.

And number two, it starts to reinforce self-respect. When you can consistently put effort in, it reinforces self-respect. You start to like yourself more, even if the outcome isn’t always what you want it to be. And it de-weights or it de-indexes. That’s probably not a word. That’s probably not a way of saying it.

It downgrades the importance of the outcome, which we can oftentimes get fixated on. And you get fixated on outcomes because when you lack self-worth, those outcomes need to happen in order for you to feel like you might have value. So your worth and your value becomes externalized on the outcome, on the result.

Now, obviously, I’m not saying that those things don’t matter. Results do matter. Outcomes do matter.

Again, I’m saying that those things are important, but they are not the indicators of whether or not you have worth and value. They are independent of your worth and value. However, the man that lacks self-worth will have conflated those two things together.

Your worth and your value will be contingent on outcome and results. And for relationships, this is brutal. This is where anxious attachments go wild. And I’ll be doing a separate video on that. So start to recognize and validate your efforts that you put in in every single place in your life. Journal it.

Recognize yourself real time. I’m proud of myself that I put that effort in. I really love how much effort I put into that conversation, into that work project, into getting out of bed in the morning.

You know, it was a battle, but I did it. Really start to recognize yourself day in and day out and shift the culture in your inner dialogue. The second thing I’m going to say, and then we’ll wrap it up, is release the beast from the basement.

All of you have a kind of beast in the basement of your psyche, of your body, of your mind that is waiting to be let out, that is really designed to charge you towards something meaningful and that is meant to fight for your sense of value and worth. And that part of you, if you experience trauma or abuse or neglect or abandonment or hypercriticism or whatever it was that you experience that diminished your sense of self-worth, that thing got locked away. That hunger to pursue meaning, that vitality, that wants to pursue something hard, right? That wants to actively pursue hard things and do hard things.

That part of you got locked away and what replaced it was a voice of harshness or criticism or feebleness or meekness instead. And so you have to be willing to release a little bit of the beast from the basement that’s going to start to contend with that inner dialogue that is constantly shitting on you, putting you down, hypercriticizing you, judging you, telling you that you can’t do it, telling you that you’re not worth it. You know, when you look at your girlfriend, I want to have that conversation or take this to the next level.

I want to approach that woman and it’s like, you can’t do it. You’re not worthy of it. You have to find the fire inside of yourself to fight that conversation.

There has to be a bit of confrontation inside of you that says, I’m no longer going to stand for this. I am no longer going to speak to myself like this because this is the last thing I want to drive home. It is very common that when you lack self-worth, you are carrying on the legacy of what you experienced earlier on in life that diminished your self-worth, okay? So you become the legacy of the person who neglected you, abused you, abandoned you, criticized you, never gave you the love and affection that you needed, made you question your own self-worth.

We take on that commentary internally, that belief structure internally, and we have to be able to battle that a little bit. So you have to release the beast from the basement. Let me know your thoughts on this one.

Please don’t forget to man it forward and share this episode with somebody that you know needs it. Until next week.

Becoming A Man: The Story Of Perseus

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Talking points: mythology, masculinity, trauma

Myth isn’t just old story. It’s also a powerful way to frame the workings of the world, the mind, and everything in between. The story of Perseus is just one example of this, with insights on boyhood vs manhood, facing risk, and much more. Dig in.

(00:00:00) – Intro and the first lesson of the Perseus’ story

(00:06:09) – The second lesson

(00:09:36) – Lessons behind Perseus and Medusa

(00:16:09) – How the role of a mother and the initiation into manhood interact

Transcript

How do you become a man and how do you know when you’ve become one? This is one of the biggest things that I hear from men all the time. I’m 55 and I still feel like a kid, I still feel like a young man, I don’t know if I ever really crossed the threshold. Well, today we’re going to be talking about how do you actually step from boyhood into manhood and I’m not going to be giving you my personal advice or what I think you should do.

I’m actually going to be going through three lessons from the story of Perseus from one of the, I mean, I don’t know if there’s a most important character by any means necessary, but in terms of masculine development, in terms of stories that embody development from boyhood into manhood, Perseus certainly and his story and his life as a fictional character is one of the most important because there’s something unique about him, which is that he grew up without a father present in his life. And this is the case for a lot of you watching this. Now, maybe you had a father in your life.

There’s still going to be some very important lessons going to lay out in here. But the story of Perseus is certainly one that is helpful for the coming of age, the stepping into manhood for a young man or for a man who especially did not have a father in his life. So let’s just get straight into it.

Perseus’s mother was sequestered away by her father, by Perseus’s grandfather, because Perseus’s grandfather was given a kind of fortune of the future that told him that his grandson would kill him. And so he decided, the king decided that he would lock his daughter away where no man could get her. But that doesn’t mean that no god could get her.

So Zeus found her and her name is Danaeus and Zeus found her and love this idea, you know, there’s something about the sort of sequestered away virgin that shouldn’t be touched, that no man can have access to, that is sort of very appealing, especially to the gods. And so Zeus swoops down and goes to where no man can go. And he impregnates Danaeus and that creates Perseus.

And through a whole series of events, obviously, Danaeus’s father, Perseus’s grandfather, finds out that Perseus, you know, is in his mom’s belly and he schemes a way to get rid of Danaeus, to kill her essentially, to kill his own daughter, to try and sort of save his own life, which, spoiler alert, doesn’t happen through a series of events. I won’t give away what happens. But, you know, when you test fate, obviously you can’t really outsmart fate.

That’s sort of the thing, you know, that is repeated over and over again within myth. But he basically locks her in the trunk, not him personally, he gets somebody else to lock her in a trunk and basically throw her in the ocean. And anyway, she survives, Perseus is born and he is raised by a man named Dictys.

So Danaeus and Perseus, Perseus and his mother, end up sort of wandering through. There’s some gaps in the story and they come across a man named Dictys who is an older man that takes him under his ward. So first lesson here, OK, first lesson here, Perseus is born into masculine betrayal.

Perseus is born into masculine betrayal. He’s born into automatic masculine pain. His grandfather betrays him and tries to murder him.

His own real father, Zeus, doesn’t really have a part in his life. Even though his mother tells him who his father is, he obviously doesn’t believe that the god of all gods is his dad. I mean, that’s not something that most kids are going to believe.

So he’s born into a kind of masculine pain already. There’s betrayal that has happened already. And this is the case for many men.

Maybe your father was angry. Maybe he was distant. Maybe he had his own trauma and abuse from his own family system and structure that he never dealt with.

But most men are born into some type of masculine pain. And so I want you to think about what’s the masculine pain or what’s the pain generationally that is being passed down into me or that was passed down into me. There’s a great quote that I put in my book, Men’s Work, which if you haven’t grabbed a copy, you should definitely grab one.

It’s one of the most recommended books by men in the personal development space. But in the book, I put a quote from Nietzsche where he said, what is hidden in the father is revealed in the son. What is hidden in the father is revealed in the son.

There’s many different layers to that quote. And one of the layers is that the hidden pain that the father does not deal with is revealed in the son. Right.

So if your father never dealt with his own anger, very likely that that’s revealed in you. His short temper is yours to contend with. Or maybe his anger was completely hidden and he had no spine and he was sort of weak and meek.

And, you know, he let people walk all over him. Well, that will be revealed in you for you to contend with. And so the first lesson here of Perseus’ story, even before he’s born, is that he is going to have to contend with the generational pain of the men that have come before him, with the betrayal of the men that have been in his life.

And he’s going to have to choose whether he walks a similar path of betrayal, of not living with certain values, or whether he is going to take a different path of righteousness and nobility and values and honor and self-respect and, you know, familiar respect, etc. So contend with the masculine pain that you’ve been given. Contend with the pain that is in the male lineage of your life.

The next piece, and I’m going to skip around here through Perseus’ story, but the next big piece is that there is a king that is trying to court Perseus’ mother because Perseus’ mother is not with Dictys. They’re not together. Dictys is just a guy that they happen to live with.

And, you know, Dictys supports Perseus, which is very important. There’s a lesson in there that you should learn from the men who are just and good, who are good and just to you and your kin for no good reason. Right? The coaches in your life, the teachers in your life, the men in your life that are good to you and your family, you should learn valuable lessons from them.

They’re usually indirect, but do not feel the need to become them. This is very important. Perseus does not become like Dictys.

He takes some of the traits from Dictys, but he does not embody that man. And this is very common for a lot of men when their father figure is not present in their life, the father figure that is present in their life, a stepdad, a coach, etc., they glom on to that individual’s identity because of the vacancy of their own father, whether their father is just sort of absent minded. He’s not emotionally connected.

He’s not very loving. Or maybe he’s just gone altogether. He’s not present in any way, shape or form. Or their father is very violent or whatever. It’s very common for a young man who doesn’t have a proper father figure in his life to consolidate his identity too much around the man that is good to him. And that can be sort of pervasive and affect his life.

So learn from the men who are good and just to you and your kin, you and your family. But do not strive to just solely become like them. They are a part of your becoming, a part of your identity creation.

So look back at your past and kind of get a sense of who influenced me, who were men that were in my life growing up that had a positive influence on my life. Likely there is something very important that you need to have learned from them, that you need to discard from them in order to step more fully into your own sense of manhood. So there’s a king pursuing Perseus’s mother.

And this king only seems to come around when Dictys is not around. And Perseus is still a teenager. And for whatever reason, whether Perseus knows it or not, he is always interfering with this king’s ability to mack on his mom.

He’s like cock blocking the king in a big way. And so what ends up happening is that the king devises a plan to get Perseus away from his mother because Perseus loves sports and running. And, you know, he’s very athletic.

And so the king holds these games. And the intention of the game is to draw Perseus out and sort of trap him or to sort of draw him out and then go and pursue and court his mother while he’s busy. Perseus partakes in the games and after the games gets very drunk, the king gets him very, very drunk and through a series of events challenges Perseus to go and claim the head of Medusa.

Now, there’s something very important about this because, and there’s going to be two main lessons here that I’m going to close off with for this that I think are very important in terms of becoming your own man, stepping into manhood, stepping into mature masculinity and crossing the threshold between boyhood and manhood and having a more definite certainty that you have crossed into that territory. So a couple of things that are very important. Number one, the king not only tricks Perseus into claiming the head of Medusa, but Perseus doesn’t know what he’s signed up for.

He doesn’t know who or what Medusa is. He doesn’t know how dangerous that she is. He has simply heeded the call to an adventure that is incredibly risky.

And here’s the really important part. If he knew the risk, he likely wouldn’t have taken it. So this is the kind of naivete of a young man’s spirit, right? Of an adolescent masculinity.

Adolescent masculinity has a kind of bravado and boldness and naivete that they would take on something without even saying. Because in the story, Perseus is very cocky, right? He’s like, any challenge you give me, you put it before me and I’ll basically make it happen. And the king thinks about it for a moment and then obviously says, go and claim the head of Medusa.

And Perseus says, done. I have no idea what he signed up for. So here’s the first lesson, and I’m going to give you the second one, which is also very important.

The first lesson is use the trials that other men set before you as stepping stones to sharpen your own manhood and masculinity. Use the trials that other men set before you as a call to adventure, right? An initiation. And this is an initiation call, right? The very first step of any boy, any young man’s journey into adult manhood, into mature masculinity or mature manhood.

The very first step is a call to an initiation, a call to the unknown, a call into a territory and a terrain that he knows nothing about. And it’s usually terrifying and frightening. Or, you know, the young man is very sort of naive and has no idea what he’s setting himself up for.

But it’s oftentimes the trials that other men put before us. And that might be a business mentor. That might be a professor at a university.

It might even be a trial from a stepfather, you know, challenging you. I remember when I was a young man, I just graduated high school. And this is a good example of this.

I had no trajectory in life whatsoever. I had no clear path for myself whatsoever. I was completely lost. I was shit academically. I didn’t know what to do with myself. And my stepdad put a trial in front of me and basically said, you know, if you can’t find a job anywhere else, I will get you work.

With the caveat and the big asterisk, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. He said, I’ll get you a job in construction. Now, what I didn’t know was that that would take me into some of the hardest laboring jobs that I could possibly acquire.

So my very first few weeks were night shifts from 6 p.m. until 6 a.m. in central Alberta. And it was the middle of February and it was minus 45 outside. And that set me on a path of really questioning.

So here was my stepdad, obviously being supportive, but really putting a trial before me. Right. And that trial was something that was brutal and hard and made me question what I was doing with my life.

I don’t think he meant any of those things. I think he was just like, I’m going to get you a job and it’s going to be a bit of a hopefully it’s going to be a bit of a wake up call. So look at the trials that other men are putting before you.

Oftentimes there are grains of breadcrumbs. There are sort of breadcrumbs left along the way that other men are inviting you into that are meant to challenge you and push you and sharpen your edge, whether you know it or not. And so sometimes what you have to do is you have to lean in to the invitations that other men are putting before you that feel confronting and frightening.

They might even be disguised as opportunities, right? Like this challenge that the king puts before Perseus, it seems like an opportunity for him. He’s like, I’m going to prove myself. Here we go.

So there might even be an element of that, that there’s a challenge in your life right now that is meant to push you beyond the boundaries and the limits of how you see yourself as a man currently. OK, this is the last piece I’m going to give you. And then we’re to wrap up.

The last piece is that Perseus gets home to his mother and he tells his mother what has transpired. And he does it in an inadvertent way. He kind of says, you know, mom, what’s like, do you know what Medusa is? And she says, yeah, I know who Medusa is.

And he’s like, OK, well, who’s a Medusa? What’s a Medusa? And she explains what Medusa is and everything that’s involved in it and kind of lays out the challenge, right? She knows about the journey that could lie ahead, right? The danger that could lie ahead. And he says, oh, OK. And she says, why do you ask? And he says, because I’m going to go and take the head of Medusa.

And she, as any good mother would, knowing the danger and knowing that the likelihood of her son dying is astronomically high, she loses her mind. And she basically begs and pleads Perseus not to go. And she tries to convince Dictys to talk to him, to convince him not to go.

And she considers going to speak to the king, all those types of things. And Perseus stays sound and resolute in his decision to heed the call. Into this initiation journey that he’s about to embark on.

And he stays true to what he what he knows he needs to do in order to become his own man. And that is a very important part. In Iron John, Robert Bly talks about the boy stealing the key from under his mother’s pillow.

The main crux of this and the whole point of that is that in order to let out the wild man, you have to go steal the key from under your mother’s pillow. So the point here, the last and final lesson, and especially for those of you that grew up in a household with just your mom, right, doesn’t mean that she was a bad mom. She was probably exceptional.

Maybe she was great. There are lots and lots of phenomenal single mothers out there. And it’s a question of a woman cannot teach a boy how to become a man.

There are certain adventures, risks, journeys, challenges, trials that you actually need to go through on your own in order to internally understand that you’ve stepped into that place and that terrain of manhood, mature manhood and masculinity. So Perseus refuses to listen to his mom and decides that he’s going to go on his journey anyway. And in doing so, what he’s really doing is claiming his own sense of inner authority.

In doing so, he’s claiming his own sense of authority. He’s saying, my life is mine. My life is mine to decide.

My life is mine to direct. And I am going to create separation between myself and you. Now, this is very important because especially for a lot of men, they don’t create psychological separation between themselves and their mother.

Maybe that happens because their relationship is not good, which doesn’t necessarily create psychological separation. It might just be physical separation of, I’m not going to talk to you, mom. And so you might not talk to your mother.

But a lot of men don’t create psychological separation from their mother. And that psychological separation happens when you as a man make a decision to embark on something that is specifically for you to do that your mother likely disapproves of. You know, I’ve had clients that are like, you know, they’re very successful in their career, but they take up a DJing career.

Or they’re very successful in their career in real estate, but they, you know, on the side, they decide to like paint or race cars, you know, or do really dangerous rock climbing, right? Like free soloing rock climbing. And their mothers, you know, who are obviously worried for them and nurturing and always going to be that mom, protest. They protest against that.

And it’s the job of you as a son to not ignore the protest, right, to be compassionate of the protest, but to do what you know you need to do as a man regardless of the protesting. And that is a claiming of a part, taking a step more closely into or more deeply into your own manhood and your own masculine core. So leave your thoughts below.

Share your thoughts. I’d love to hear what you took away from this, how you’re going to integrate this into your own life. And what I would really encourage you to do is think about where in your life have these events taken place? And if not, what do you need to do now in order to take action on one of these events? Is there a trial being placed in front of you by a man in your life? Do you need to create psychological separation from your mother because there’s still too much closeness and enmeshment between the two of you? So start to look at which one of these are you needing to embrace and to embark on in order to take the next step in your own masculine maturity.

See you next time.

David Whyte – On Forgiveness, Fear, And Being Fully Human

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Talking points: masculinity, culture, gratitude, anger, poetry

I don’t typically get starstruck or awed in interviews, even though I’ve talked to many incredible people. But David? Well, he’s had an immense impact on my life, and so much of my work and way of thinking lives inspired by him. He joined me in Seattle and shared so much wisdom, beauty, and of course, poetry. Dig into this one.

(00:00:00) – What is the “conversational nature of reality”, why the unknown is so uncomfortable, and the fear of “descent”

(00:18:44) – How the need for control kills off meaning and purpose, and how real poetry and philosophy come from NOT knowing what to say

(00:25:53) – David reads “Blessing of the Morning Light”

(00:32:42) – How does a man start building a relationship to the unknown parts of himself, and David’s relationship with his father

(00:44:24) – The role of anger and the power of poetry

(00:56:16) – On forgiveness and male friendship

(01:31:57) – How do you properly thank someone who’s had a profound impact on you?

David Whyte is an internationally renowned poet and author, and a scintillating and moving speaker. Behind these talents lies a very physical attempt to give voice to the wellsprings of human identity, human striving and, most difficult of all, the possibilities for human happiness. He draws from hundreds of memorized poems, his own and those of other beloved poets such as Wordsworth, Emily Dickinson, Keats, Pablo Neruda, Fleur Adcock and the sonnets of Shakespeare. He is the author of ten books of poetry, three books of prose on the transformative nature of work; a widely-acclaimed, best-selling book of essays, and an extensive audio collection.

Connect with David

-Website: https://davidwhyte.com/

-Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidjwhyte/

-Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PoetDavidWhyte/

-YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@poetdavidwhyte

-SubStack: https://davidwhyte.substack.com/

A Man’s Guide To Being Naturally Attractive

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Talking points: mindset, attraction, relationships

I was surprised at the sheer volume of basic advice there is out there on being a more attractive man. This week, we’re going to go a little beyond “hit the gym” and “smoke less”. How do you build your attractiveness from the inside out AND stay authentically you? Listen in.

(00:00:00) – Be untameable—somewhat

(00:09:50) – Develop emotional sovereignty

(00:12:11) – Develop direction and discipline

(00:14:14) – Have some non-negotiables. Please.

(00:17:39) – Be unapologetically you. Note: this requires serious work on figuring out who you actually are

Transcript

All right team, welcome back to the ManTalks Show. Today we’re going to be talking about a man’s guide to being naturally attractive, whether you are single or you’re dating, maybe even married, whichever one. Don’t forget to man it forward, share this episode with somebody that you know needs to hear it or enjoy it.

All right, let’s get into it. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. I’ve had a lot of guys ask me about what creates attraction, and I’m not going to speak on women’s behalf necessarily, and I’m not going to talk to you about the normal crap, right? I think I’ve watched a whole bunch of videos in preparation for this, and it was almost mind-numbing how much of the crap out there is so basic.

It’s like, yes, do all the obvious things, you know, move out of your mom’s basement, stop vaping or smoking so much weed and jerking off after eating a bag of potato chips all the time. Go to the gym, you know, make some money, learn about money, like yes to all those basic things, but there’s more to attraction than just that, and that’s what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about what actually creates real attraction and some of the things are probably not what you think they are.

So let’s just start with number one, be untameable, be somewhat untameable. Now, this is a little bit of a different take on attraction, but when you look at something like A Billion Wicked Thoughts, which is a book that, you know, these sort of Google analytic nerds put together. 

Which by the way, there’s no hate on the nerds and the geeks. I love them. I’ve worked with many of them. I’m not one because my brain doesn’t work like that but shout out to all the geeks and the nerds out there. We love you. Thank you so much. I mean, at one point I worked for Best Buy, and they literally had something called Geek Squad, which I always loved. I was like, man, you guys are just owning it.

Anyway, be untameable, be somewhat untameable. Why is this important? When you look at something like A Billion Wicked Thoughts, the Google engineers, what they were looking at was a whole bunch of different data points for what people were searching for and they stumbled across this interesting piece around women’s desires, women’s fantasies. And when you look at a lot of women’s fantasies, whether it’s in a romance novel or what they’re searching for online or the dynamic that they’re looking for in porn, what you begin to find is that women are attracted to a kind of very powerful, sometimes monster-like, sometimes beast-like individual that they sort of tame over time.

And if you look at something like Fifty Shades of Grey, here’s this wildly successful billionaire playboy who’s incredibly powerful, who seems like nothing can reign him in. And of course, the woman in the book manages to domesticate him and tame him to a certain degree. And that creates the love arc.

You can look at Beauty and the Beast. There’s another one. Belle sort of tames this literally wild beast who turns into a prince. And you can look at so many of the female fantasies, romance novels. You can talk to women and really get a sense of like, what do you look for in a man? Or if you want to get an even better look at it, it’s like watch who those women are dating. And that will give you an even better sense than maybe what they’re telling you.

Because they might say, oh, I want this really nice, really caring, really compassionate guy. But then who they’re dating is this guy who, yeah, he’s kind. Yeah, he can be compassionate. But he also has this really edgy, kind of untameable part of him that she’s grappling with. And so this is a part that a lot of modern men have lost. If you don’t have challenge in your life, if you’re not taking risk in your life, if you’re very risk-averse, risk-avoidant, then you are probably very, very tame.

Now, I’m not saying that you should be wild and do all kinds of crazy stuff, but you probably need to develop this kind of wild beast-like part of you. And in the book Iron John, for those of you who have read it or heard of it by Robert Bly, he talks about how the importance of a young man and a man needing to what’s called bucket out the water to find the wild man in the depths of our being. And this is sort of symbolic for being able to go into your own psyche and develop a relationship with the wild man that is in you.

And so you can do that in a number of different ways. One, start to take some smart risks and start to do things that maybe go against your innate safety-oriented, protection-oriented, anti-risk-oriented identity. This is very, very powerful because what it signals is that you are capable of analyzing risk, assessing risk, and you’re able to mitigate some of the challenges that come along with risk.

And that’s attractive, right? A man that is able to face adversity, face risk, and sometimes is choosing risk consistently shows a sort of different level of status because it is confronting. It’s sometimes dangerous to choose the path that is risky. Entrepreneurs are taking a risk constantly because of the rates that businesses fail.

So these types of things are going to help you to start to develop this kind of untamable persona and nature within yourself. And again, it’s not even about being seen as somewhat untamable or having these untamable parts inside of you for attracting a woman. It’s actually because this helps to sharpen your own masculine edge.

This helps to develop your own level of manhood. This will help you to develop a deeper level of respect within yourself. And unfortunately, a lot of young men go about this through the phase of – I can’t remember exactly what it’s called, but it’s like young man syndrome or something like that – where the ages of 16 and 25 or 27, young men, it’s the place in life where we have the highest mortality rates, where we have the highest injury rates, where we have the highest rates of being jailed and committing crimes.

Because in that space, usually men are grappling with this part of themselves, right? And I went through this myself. I was street racing motorcycles. I was stunting motorcycles. I was running from the police on my motorcycle. I had like two-inch metal spikes, like a mohawk on my motorcycle helmet. I was getting into bar fights. I was taking risks with money. I was just taking risks in a lot of different ways. And I was very sort of wild.

And a lot of men in our modern culture, a lot of young men especially, have been so overly tamed and overly domesticated and afraid to take risks that they are so tame and so safe. And I’m not saying that you need to be unsafe or that you need to be specifically dangerous, but you need to have the capacity for that. Like a woman needs to feel in some ways – a buddy of mine, Trevor Bowman, has a great saying, which is, be dangerous but not a danger, right? So in this, it’s the notion that you have the capacity to be somewhat dangerous, that you can take care of yourself, that there’s kind of a wildness in you, that you have capacity for that, but that you have some type of control over that.

Now if you don’t have that and that’s not developed, then a whole bunch of stuff can happen. One, women might not be able to really feel attracted to you. They might feel like, oh, you’re a nice, safe guy, but I don’t really feel a spark or a charge with you.

You might hear statements like that. And you might also just not be putting yourself in situations where you’re going to be attracting women in the first place. Because men that have this kind of untameable part or connection to themselves – and I joke around with my wife all the time that there’s just parts of me that she will never change or tame.

And it’s this ongoing joke in our relationship of like, you’ll never fully domesticate me. That’s just a lost cause. It’s completely hopeless. And sometimes she’ll roll her eyes and she’ll chuckle. But she likes that part because no woman wants to feel like she’s in complete control of you. No woman wants to feel like she’s completely responsible for you.

A woman wants to be able to trust you. And when that happens, it puts her in a very mothering role. Like she has sort of taken over your emotional landscape. She can get you to do whatever she wants. And there’s never any real pushback. There’s never any real sovereignty or autonomy on your part.

So start to find ways to develop this untameable nature. And again, it’s not in every single way. But to have access to this part of like, you won’t tame this part.

This part of me is wild and it’s free and it’s mine. And it’s a part of me that I’ve connected to and that I’ve developed and I’ve fostered over the years. And so that might mean that you start going off-grid camping or you take on a sport that feels intense.

Maybe you start to do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or martial arts. I do Muay Thai a couple of times a week, which I absolutely love. And it’s a place for me to channel that kind of untameable wild beast that knows that he could head kick a six-foot-three dude just because.

Again, it’s not that I’m going to go put myself in a situation to do that, but it’s to know that I have access to that part inside of me because we as men, that’s part of our journey to reconcile with our own sense of power. So that’s number one. Number two, I’m going to go through these last ones a little bit faster.

Number two is develop emotional sovereignty. Develop emotional sovereignty. What does that mean? It means stop taking her emotions so personally.

Stop personalizing how she’s feeling constantly. This will create attraction. When you have some space and separation between how a woman that you’re dating or married to is feeling and how you’re responding, it doesn’t mean that you don’t take responsibility for some things.

It doesn’t mean that there’s no apologies. It simply means that you’re not personalizing everything. What happens for a lot of modern men is they’ve been told to partake women’s emotions.

And how they’ve interpreted that is that they’re responsible for how a woman’s feeling. This whole notion of happy wife, happy life. And so what a lot of men do is they take on, I’m responsible for how she’s feeling.

And so if she’s feeling sad or upset or angry, he gets all distraught and disheveled. And his whole rational thinking and his whole being gets turned towards “how do I fix this problem for her” versus “I trust her to be able to take care of herself and take care of herself emotionally and I don’t need to personalize how she’s feeling right now. I can listen. I can hear.” 

So be able to apologize. Be able to repair after a conflict. Be able to regulate your own nervous system and have some separation between who you are as a boyfriend, as a husband, as a partner. Have some separation between that and your partner’s emotional experience. This will be very attractive for a lot of women because you will be able to hold space.

The reason why, maybe you’ve heard that term, maybe you haven’t, it gets thrown around a lot in therapy speak. But the reason why a lot of women don’t feel like their male counterpart, their male partner can hold space is that he’s personalizing how she’s feeling. He’s taking responsibility for how she’s feeling.

Even if he doesn’t feel directly responsible for her grief or her sadness, what happens for a lot of you guys is that when your woman is feeling something that is unsavory, you take the responsibility of trying to fix it and that collapses any type of space. Number three, direction and discipline. Having a mission, having a direction in your life, having an upward aim that you are moving towards within your life.

Something you want to build, something you want to create, a trajectory in your career. Stagnation really kills attraction. Men underestimate how much stagnation kills attraction.

And for a lot of you that are out there, if you feel like you lack purpose, you feel like you lack a mission, you’re like, I’m not really too sure. Maybe you’re like, I’m 22, I’m still in university or college, I don’t really have that mission purpose focus right now. That’s okay.

Let your mission or your purpose be developing yourself into your highest or best self. That can be a really wonderful mission or direction that will really showcase that you are developing discipline. You are creating routines and habits.

You have the ability to set boundaries, to say no. You have the ability to prioritize yourself in a way that shows that you are working towards some higher aim. Women are drawn towards men who have momentum.

Women are drawn towards men that have momentum. And this is really part of, I mean, we could get into the conversation around hypergamy and status and all of that type of stuff, but really it’s showing that you are moving in an upward trajectory in some way, shape or form. And so if you don’t know what’s happening in your career, you don’t have a sense of like real big clarity around what you want to be doing with your life in terms of purpose or business or career, that’s okay.

Have an aim of what you are working on in yourself. It might be simple things like not drinking or getting yourself into shape or prioritizing learning about money and finances and that you are looking at saving money and investing in a really responsible way. All of that will show direction and show discipline.

Number four is have some non-negotiables. Please, dear Lord, have some non-negotiables. A lot of men out there do not have any non-negotiables about what they’re looking for specifically in a woman, and it’s almost become faux pas in some ways for men to have non-negotiables.

What I mean by this is, for example, having the non-negotiable that you won’t tolerate disrespect in a relationship, name-calling, character assassination, that those things are not welcome in a relationship, at least with you, and stating that fairly early on in the dating process. Look, if you’ve been with a partner for a number of years, maybe you’re married, and that has not been set into place, you can start to institute, hey, this is a non-negotiable for me. We’ve let this go for too long, and I really want this to be a part of our relationship.

The other thing in terms of non-negotiable that I would just say, one that for me, if I was dating, if I was single, just a non-negotiable for me is that the women that I would date have to like men. They have to see the inherent value in men and appreciate masculinity in men. I would not be interested in dating a lot of these women that are out there that are like, the world would be better without men.

Men are the problem. I want nothing to do with that type of woman because I respect women. I see women’s inherent value.

I want that respect to be reciprocated, not because I think I deserve it or I’m entitled to it or anything like that, but because of the simple fact that if you are a man or a woman and you hate the opposing sex, that is going to be carried into your relationship. At the end of the day, that is an unreconciled wound within you. No woman in her right mind would want to date a man who doesn’t like women, who dislikes women, who hates women, and who openly talks about that and says that women are the problem.

Why? Because she could be assured that she’s going to be the fundamental problem in the relationship. A non-negotiable for me, and what I would encourage you men to take on, is find women that see the value in men. There’s a lot of women out there right now, unfortunately, that are saying, the world would be better off with men.

Why do we even need men? I don’t need a man in my life. Men are just more of a hassle, yada, yada, yada. That to me is a big red flag.

For me, it’s a non-negotiable that women just like men, that they have an appreciation of men, of masculinity, of manhood, and what you can bring to the table and contribute to the relationship. Because if not, you will always be the fundamental problem. What I have seen time and time again is that when a woman has that mentality, that men are not necessary, aren’t needed, that she doesn’t need a man, in the relationship, he is always the problem.

He’s always the problem for like 90% of the issues that come up relationally, they stem from her unconscious wounding and irreconcilation with men in the masculine, because she was probably hurt at some point by a father figure, or a man in her life, or somebody that she dated, etc. And that’s on her to reconcile and heal, and it’s not on you to disprove that story. Next, last but not least, is being unapologetically you.

Being unapologetically you. A lot of talk about authenticity these days, but the truth is that you just own who you are. And, you know, at the end of the day, you are human beings looking to belong, right? Every single person is looking to belong.

And you kind of have to go against the grain of all this BS, pickup artist crap that infiltrated the internet for like a decade and told men, turn yourself into a pretzel of a man that you are not. Pretend to be this smooth-talking guy that has these specific tactics and sentences and phrases and way of being that can get a woman, but then inevitably you start to run the problem that none of those women really know who you are. And it might get you laid, but you never feel satiated or satisfied because you’re never really known in a relationship.

And so for me, the tactic that I unintentionally took for a long time that honestly worked really well for me is I was just unapologetically me. I was just me. Whether it was wild, whether it was, you know, kind of crude and lewd sometimes.

Sometimes my sense of humor is really off the cuff and kind of like over the line. I used to have like really sexual humor. Whether you are, you know, a nerd, if you’re just a big geek and you love computers and quantum physics, like own that.

If you’re a stock geek and you love finances, talk about that. Be honest about it. If you just love creatine and pushing weights, get into that.

Talk about that. Because the truth is you are going to want to be chosen for who you are and not who you’re pretending to be. I’m going to say that again.

You are going to want to be chosen for the man that you are and the man that you’re becoming and not the man that you are pretending to be. That facade is a recipe for disaster. So if you really want to be attractive, be unapologetically who you are rather than trying to pretzel yourself into some image in your marriage or in your relationship or in your dating life of a man that you think somebody is going to like.

It takes a tremendous amount of energy and you will always be disappointed on the other side of that. The other thing here, the very last point I want to make is that this requires that you start to figure out who the fuck you are as a man. This is predicated on the foundation of you starting to figure out who you actually are as a man.

And at the end of the day, if I could leave you with anything, is that that is arguably one of the single most attractive things to a woman is that you know who you are as a man. Your values, your morals, your ethics, your likes, your dislikes, what you’ll put up with, what you won’t. And it doesn’t mean that those things have to stay the same forever, but it just means that you’re very clear about what those things are so that she knows what she’s choosing. And that is half the battle and half the game. 

So comment below. Let me know what you would add to this and which one you are working on.Don’t forget to man it forward. And until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.

Jason Wilson – Becoming The Man The Moment Demands

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Talking points: masculinity, culture, race

It’s always a highlight of my life speaking with Jason. This man and his tireless work shaping comprehensive, authentic men is nothing short of inspiring. Deeply grateful to have sat down with him to dig into the nuances of his new book (out Jan 28!), the manosphere, Black America, and what modern men miss out on. Listen. To. This.

(00:00:00) – How Jason’s environment shaped his perception of manhood, and the challenges of hypermasculinity

(00:11:02) – Jason’s take on the idea that men need to build value because they don’t have any inherently

(00:17:40) – What do young men find appealing about the manosphere, in spite of the reactivity and misogyny?

(00:23:39) – Why men don’t share their emotions with women, and what Jason wishes more non-Black men knew about growing up in Black America

(00:35:09) – Do men need extreme hardship in order to have self-respect?

(00:42:11) – On Jason’s new book and being a Comprehensive Man

(00:50:25) – What aspect of a comprehensive man is missing the most in modern culture?

Jason Wilson is the director of the Cave of Adullam Transformational Training Academy and bestselling author of Cry Like a Man and Battle Cry. Since 2005, Jason has been mentoring boys and young men, teaching them how to rise above life’s inevitable challenges. His impactful work earned him the President’s Volunteer Service Award from President Obama, and acclaimed actor Laurence Fishburne executive produced the award-winning ESPN Films documentary about Jason’s work, titled The Cave of Adullam. He is a man of the Most High, a faithful husband to Nicole, and a devoted father to Alexis and Jason II.

Connect with Jason

-Website: https://mrjasonwilson.com/

-NEW Book: The Man The Moment Demands: https://mrjasonwilson.com/the-man-the-moment-demands/

-Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrjasonowilson

-Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mrjasonowilson/

-YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MrJasonOWilson

A Man’s Guide To Inner Child Work

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Talking points: psychology

You’ve probably seen this idea floating around social media for a while, and it’s a solid framework for healing. But what does it actually mean, how does it work, and is it worthwhile if you’re a man? This week, let’s talk about what inner child work entails.

(00:00:00) – “What’s hidden in the father is revealed in the son”, and what inner child work actually means

(00:10:10) – The main benefits of this kind of work, and where to start

(00:17:35) – Two useful journaling exercises, and how to “father yourself”

(00:24:23) – Next steps

Transcript

All right, team. Welcome back to the ManTalks Show. Connor Beaton here.

And today, this is actually a video that so many of you requested because I mentioned it in a previous video about disorganized attachment. I’m going to be doing a man’s guide to inner child work. What actually is that? Now, for the purpose of today’s conversation, I’m going to be talking and referring to this as fathering yourself, fathering the boy that exists inside of you.

And there’s a great quote by Friedrich Nietzsche who said that what is hidden in the father is revealed in the son. What’s hidden in the father is revealed in the son. And that quote is going to be important for some of the stuff that we’re going to talk about later on.

But one of the things I’ll just say right here is that it’s very common that the thing or the things that your father lacked are the things that the boy in you is actually needing for you as a man to contribute and give to him. So I’m going to say that again because it might sound a little like, what? But I want you to write this down. I’m going to give you a question in a second.

The boy in you, the things that your father lacked are the things that the boy in you, the younger version of you, the younger subconscious part of you is looking for from you. So as an example, if your father was a flaccid wet noodle that had zero connection to his anger, never stood up for himself, never had boundaries, the boy in you needs you to be somebody who is able to set boundaries, who’s able to say no, who’s able to develop a robust spine that can stand up for himself, that can stand up for that boy because otherwise that boy is going to feel like he has to do it all the time. So that’s just a bit of a context and container because sometimes inner child work doesn’t really land with a lot of men.

They’re like, I don’t know, but like inner child, is this really for me? So think about it as you are fathering your younger self. You’re fathering that boy inside of you. And so a great question that you can write down right now is, what was my father missing or what did I need from my father that my younger self is needing from me? What did I need from my father that my younger self was, is needing from me? And again, that can be compassion.

It can be discipline. It can be love. It can be empathy.

It can be a whole bunch of things. So what is inner child work? I’m going to go through a couple of different pieces. I’m going to talk about what inner child work is, why it’s relevant and important, and I’m going to give you some very specific exercises that you can deploy in order to begin to work on that younger self and kind of reclaim that boy, okay, and integrate him into your personality and integrate him into your psyche.

So the concept of the inner child refers to the childlike part of your subconscious mind that holds all of those emotional wounds, fears, unmet needs, the pain of neglect or abandonment or criticism that you’ve tried to either disconnect from or that you didn’t know how to deal with as a child, all right? So if you were an eight-year-old boy and your parents went through a really nasty divorce, that eight-year-old boy probably didn’t know how to deal with that. Seeing the yelling, seeing the screaming, not seeing dad or mom for sometimes weeks at a time, he didn’t really know what to do with that. And so it would have left a lot of question marks, especially if he wasn’t supported properly through that experience, and it will interrupt the way that you go through relationships as an adult.

So inner child work involves connecting to, beginning to understand, beginning to reconcile with the pain that that younger self felt. Because in all of you, there is your younger versions, right? They don’t disappear. Five-year-old you, hasn’t disappeared.

Still in there somewhere. 10-year-old you, hasn’t disappeared. Still in there somewhere, right? The angsty teenager that was listening to Metallica and punching holes in the wall, still in there, right? Still a part of you.

So part of this is about reconnecting to that much younger self and beginning to understand what did that younger version of me really need? Because for most of you, and this is why this is important, okay? This is why inner child work is important. What happens in relational conflict, right? So for example, my good friend and mentor, Dewey Freeman, has this great saying, we’re wounded in relationship, we have to heal in relationship. What that means is that in your adult relationships, the conflicts, the challenges that you go through in your marriage, in your relationship with your girlfriend or your boyfriend, those challenges are oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes those challenges are connected to a pain, an obstacle, a hurt that you felt early on in life, in one of your early attachments as a child.

Your relationship to your mom, your relationship to your dad. So another example on this front, if you keep getting into arguments with your partner and you think that they’re too harsh, they’re too critical, and then you really start to sit with it and you were a boy who was criticized a lot by his mom, you probably have a high level of sensitivity to that. And maybe as a boy, you never felt like you could stand up to her.

And so you didn’t develop the boundary and the skill to be able to stand up to your mom. And how that shows up in your adult relationships is you still don’t stand up to your partner and you develop a ton of resentment towards them. And you have a high level of sensitivity towards their disappointment, their frustrations.

If they want anything done differently, their criticisms, there’s just a high level of sensitivity to that. So being able to develop the skill of standing up to them, setting a boundary, being able to receive disappointment sometimes from your partner, which is absolutely necessary in relationships, is going to help you parent that younger self that comes online. Because a lot of the times, and this is the last thing I’ll say about this part and I’ll move into what do we actually do, a lot of the times you regress developmentally when you get into conflict with your partner.

So what do I mean by that? When you get into an argument that pokes at or hits on that pain from childhood, that feeling of abandonment, that feeling of neglect, that feeling of being hyper-criticized or never enough, when that part gets activated, right? Your partner says something that pokes at that, like, oh, I never feel like I’m enough. You regress developmentally. So you move from being that 28-year-old, 35-year-old, 55-year-old, 65-year-old man back down into that five-year-old boy, and you begin to respond from that five-year-old boy.

You become overly emotional. Maybe you start to attack their character. You start to pout and shut down, all sorts of things, right? So, but what happens is you regress developmentally.

And that’s because the pain is not from that 35-year-old self. It’s from that five-year-old version of you that needs somebody to look after him and that somebody is you. So why is it important? It’s important first and foremost for being able to heal trauma.

If you experienced trauma as a kid, right? Abuse, neglect, abandonment, all of those things can have a traumatic impact on a child. And that child, again, will live inside of you and will need a caretaker who is the adult version of you. Healing emotional wounds, being able to address some of that childhood hurt.

If you were bullied as a kid, if you had a lot of fear as a kid that wasn’t tended to, right? Let’s say you kept having like reoccurring nightmares, but your parents would like lock you in your room and no one really supported you as a kid with that fear or with the shame that you were dealing with. Inner child work can be incredibly helpful for improving your sense of self-esteem and your sense of self-worth. So a big thing that happens is when you are early on in life, this is where your sense of self-esteem is starting to develop.

Once you enter into being sort of five or six, you’re starting to develop this curiosity for how well can I do things, right? How well can I jump off of this? How well can I color? How well can I write? How well can I ride my bike? And what can happen is that in those formative years of development, your sense of self-worth can be really impacted again through criticism, through events that have happened in your environment. And that younger self will be holding on to that pain of I’m not worthy. I’m not good enough.

There’s something wrong with me. And again, it’s not the adult version of you. It’s not the 48 year old corporate executive or a construction worker that’s standing there like I’m such a piece of crap.

What’s wrong with me? It’s that younger self that had the wounding happen way back when. And so the importance of inner child work is that we work with when the wounding happened, okay? That’s really important. We work with where the wounding happened because we can talk about it conceptually as adults.

And as adults, we can intellectualize, rationalize our way around it. But when we can connect the pain of what that must’ve been like as a child who didn’t have all of these beautiful cognitive abilities to be able to rationalize like, oh, my dad said that because he was an asshole and his father beat him. Or my mom said that because she was an alcoholic and she was drunk all the time because of her trauma.

As a child, you just didn’t have that conceptually. So we need to work with where and when that hurt occurred. The next thing is that you are going to dramatically improve your relationships because when you are not responsible for the pain that your inner child is carrying, that younger version of you, it gets offloaded and outsourced onto your partner.

So very, very, very common that people who are in relationships where dysfunction is happening, what’s really going on, again, this isn’t every single time, but what happens quite a bit is that you project the hurt from that younger self onto your partner. Or you expect them to take care of it. You expect them to tend to you.

You expect them to, you know, nurture you and caretake you back into healing. So really important that as you do this inner child work, you can move more into a place of maturity. You will no longer be projecting that childlike expectation onto your partner, hoping that they’re going to save you.

They’re going to fix you. They’re going to constantly validate you and your experiences. You’ll actually have the tools and the skills to do that for yourself.

Because again, when you look at this from the frame of fathering yourself, it’s generally the pieces that you needed from your parents. So those are some of the real reasons. I mean, there’s, the other one is like, you’re going to, you’re going to be able to release some playfulness and some creativity that are often bound up in this.

Imagination is another really big one. I’ve noticed that when I work with people around doing really focused, intense inner child work, oftentimes what happens is that their imagination starts to come back online in a really beautiful way. Because usually imagination gets co-opted by the pain and the trauma that you experienced in childhood.

And what I mean by that is that when you experience a traumatic event as a kid, whether it’s a small one or a really big one, right? You’re getting bullied at school, criticized at home. You don’t feel like you fit in and belong. What that does is co-ops your imagination to look for all the ways that it might show up and happen again in your adult life.

Because trauma co-ops that energy in your imagination to try and make sure that it never happens again. And so your imagination turns into a kind of, I don’t want to say enemy, but it turns into this, this tool that is constantly imagining all of the ways that you might be hurt or betrayed again or abandoned again or abused again or neglected again. Instead of a tool for imagining positive outcomes, creative outcomes, positive possibilities, it gets co-opted for just imagining all of the crap that that might go wrong.

Okay. So now that we have what child work is, inner child work is, and why it’s so important and what can happen on the other side of that, I’m going to give you a couple different options for how you can begin to do this work. Now, some of this work, I really just strongly recommend doing with somebody that is skilled in it, right? Because there’s nothing like being led through it.

There’s some exercises that I can’t exactly give you via this video, but I’m going to give you some ideas that you can begin with. So number one is reconnecting to your inner child. Now you might, I don’t know if you can actually see this, but this is a picture that I have on my desk.

And this is a picture of me as a boy, sitting in a bucket, having a bath on the balcony after digging in the dirt endlessly. So what I want you to do is to find an ideal photo of your younger self and a photo that represents the deepest part of your younger self that you loved. 

So for me, I love this picture because I look so happy. I look free. There’s innocence there. It’s very, very playful. I’m like, sitting in a bucket. I got a bandaid on my knee. So I want you to go and find and just connect to a picture of your younger self.

So you might need to connect with your parents and get some photos and whatnot, but find a photo that really resonates with the highest version of your younger self, or that is sort of embodies the most beautiful or innocent or playful or loving or kind version of your younger self, where when you look at that picture, you’re like, oh, that kid wasn’t effed up. He wasn’t so upset. And just try and find a photo that you can connect with.

And maybe it’s not so much about that kid wasn’t effed up, but that kid was in a good space. And I really love and can connect to that child. So find a photo. And that’s step number one. 

Step number two is begin to reconnect to that younger self. So start to recall childhood memories. Reflect on some of your memories from your childhood, the good, the bad, the ugly, some of your most positive, fond memories. 

Now, for some of you that have either had trauma or just have had events where certain things unfolded that you don’t remember a lot of your childhood, this is where photos, talking to your family members, talking to your siblings, talking to your parents, talking to your aunts and uncles, those types of things are really going to help to inform and fill in. And the things that you’re really looking for are, what was I like? What was I going through? What was I questioning? What did I really enjoy doing? Who did I like being around? And if it works for you, you can close your eyes and kind of visualize it.

You can spend some time trying to just recall some of those memories from being a kid. And really just what you’re doing is building the foundation of the relationship with that younger self. Because for many of you that have never done anything like this, that younger version of you is probably going to feel so far away.

What he was like, what he did, what he enjoyed, who he liked being around, what he didn’t like, those types of things, they’re going to feel far away depending on how old you are. The next thing is that you can begin to sort of visualize that kid. And some people find it helpful to try and draw an image of them, to find a picture of them, to try and connect with family members about them.

And so just start to really get a sense of like, what was that inner child like? And then list out some of the characteristics of that kid. So what was that younger version like? Like for me, I was super playful, really high energy, kind of mischievous, didn’t mind getting into trouble, loved to be in nature. And so really try and get into outside of the memories, like what was that young boy actually like? Now, once you’ve got that foundation and you feel some type of connection with him, this is where you can start to go deeper.

So the next layer that you can start to work on is a bit of a dialogue with that younger self. And what I recommend is you can either journal, which is going to be much easier. Or if you have somebody that you can work with that does something like IFS, internal family systems, or parts work, or does like somatic processing, gestalt, attachment theory, attachment-based work, they can guide you through some inner child practices that can help you.

But this exercise is really helpful. So there’s two ways to do the journaling exercise with your inner child. Number one, I call it the pen pal. And the pen pal is that you write a full letter to that inner child. So it’s just from you as an adult. Hey, I’m 36. This is what’s going on in my life. This is how things are going. This is how things have unfolded.

Just kind of like everything that you want that younger self to know. What do you want that younger self to know? And then what do you want to know from that younger self? And then you’re going to set it aside and you’re going to leave it for however long, half a day, a day, two, three days, not too long though. Don’t like wait months.

And then you’re going to sit back down, pen and paper, and you’re going to read that letter back as if you were that younger self. And then you’re going to respond and you’re going to write a whole letter back to your adult self. And you just repeat this process as often as you want.

Usually I recommend that you do this for a month or two, and that will really give you a develop a much stronger bond with that younger version. And what you’re really exploring in this pen pal situation is what did they need? What did that younger self need? What do they need from you? What have they been disappointed in by you? What do they need you to develop more of in order for them to feel taken care of? What does that younger self want you to know about what it was like for them growing up that didn’t really ever get acknowledged by mom, by dad, by the people that they were surrounded by. And then you are trying to reinforce that child.

Here’s what I’m doing. Here’s the action I’m willing to take, acknowledging their experience, acknowledging that it was challenging for them, being able to reinforce what you’re working on as an adult to parent them and really work with them. And then the other option, if you don’t want to do pen pal, is that you just do like a straight up conversation.

So you can have a piece of paper and you ask a question and the inner child responds. And then you respond to that and you just have this back and forth dialogue. I really like the pen pal situation.

I think I’ve seen that work better than just the more dialogue oriented version. But that back and forth can also be helpful just depending on you and what works for you. So try both. Or if you feel a gut instinct towards one versus the other, then go for that. The next thing is about really reparenting. Now you’ve probably heard this word a lot.

I like to call it fathering yourself, right? Fathering yourself. That you are fathering that younger boy inside of you that needed attention, that needed validation, that needed whatever it was that you needed growing up. So fathering yourself really is about identifying what that younger version of you needed and then being able to create a system and a strategy to support that younger self.

Now some of this is going to be very clear and direct and some of it’s going to be much more vague and ambiguous. So for example, if what your younger self needed in his household was compassion, you are going to have to embark on the journey of starting to be more compassionate with yourself. That means setting boundaries with tearing a strip out of yourself whenever you get something wrong.

That means having more willingness to lean towards self-forgiveness and developing the compassion that that younger self just did not get within the household. So here’s what I want you to do. Step number one, identify and through that last exercise of the journaling, the pen pal or the dialogue, you should have a sense of what some of the things are that your younger self actually needed and is needing from you.

So step number one in the reparenting is what are the key or what are the core things that my younger self needed from my caretakers that he didn’t get? So what are those things specifically? Did he need compassion? Did he need validation? Did he need somebody to just play with him once in a while because he was freaking lonely? Like what did he actually need? Step number two is what emotional needs did he not get met? So what emotional needs? Did he not get compassion? Did he not get words of affirmation? Did he not get somebody that knew how to be firm with him and help him develop discipline? What was actually missing for him? And then step number three is beginning to deploy those behaviors and looking for opportunities in your adult relationships to build that, to develop those missing areas. So again, if your younger self needed a dad to stand up for him, where in your life are you not standing up for yourself that you can do so? Maybe you aren’t setting very good boundaries in your relationship. You just chronically say yes to everything.

You’re like this notorious people pleaser. That is a great place for you to begin to just, okay, I’m going to start saying no once a day. Just once a day I’m going to say an active no with no explanation. I’m not going to say why I’m doing this. I’m just going to say no. And so you start to parent yourself.

You start to father yourself by providing that younger version within you with the things that he needed in your life today. And that might also look like visualizing him in a conversation, right? If you’re in a relationship and there’s conflict and that younger self was terrified of conflict because conflict was loud and volatile or violent when you were growing up in your household, you can visualize when any type of conflict happens in your life, visualize taking that younger self, putting him behind the man in you. Because what can happen, again, when we go through ruptures in our adult relationships, what often happens is we regress.

We regress psychologically to that younger self and we become that boy who’s like, oh crap, I’m terrified of conflict. I don’t want to be here. I’m shutting down. Get me out of this situation. And so you can visualize having that boy standing behind you like nobody, like you’re good. I got this. I’m going to have this conversation. You don’t have to worry about it. And you start to connect to the more mature adult masculine energy within you that is protecting that younger self from the challenge and the conflict that’s unfolding in your life.

So you start to deploy the things that you know that that child needed younger in life. Lastly, well, there’s a couple more steps, but the next one is finding opportunities for playing creativity. So you can ask the question, what type of creative expression and play did my younger self need that he didn’t get? And this can be, you know, maybe you wanted to paint when you were younger.

Maybe you wanted to learn how to draw, um, sort of like realistic drawings. Maybe you wanted to learn an instrument or learn how to dance in a certain way, or I don’t know, like learn how to recite Shakespeare. I don’t know what it is for you, but connecting to that younger self and how he wanted to play and how he wanted to be creative and then beginning to give yourself time to do that.

So you might want to say, okay, younger me always wanted to learn how to play the guitar. So I’m going to buy a guitar and I’m going to schedule 30 to 30 minute blocks a week where I just start to learn the basics. And I connect with that younger self that I’m intentionally just going to play. It’s just about having fun. It’s not about becoming BB King or John Mayer. It is just about me having a little bit of joy in my life that allows me to be playful and feel youthful and feel creative.

And so you carve out specific time where you kind of just get to be that kid and you get to be a beginner at something, you know, as adults, we can get so rigid because the expectation is that when we embark on anything, we should be exceptional straight out the gates. And when you’re a kid, that’s, you know, hopefully you have the freedom to just suck at something, to just be really bad at something in the beginning. And as you take on this exercise of finding creative, playful time, you create a distraction-free, mindful space for play, which is very, very important, even as adults.

The very last piece is to really reflect as you go through this journey, try and keep a journal of how this progress is going, you know, try and see if you can listen for the voice of that younger self, that inner child that pops up sometime and is like, man, thank you so much for handling that conflict. Or that was great. Thank you for dealing with that. Or, you know, I really loved playing guitar today. That was so much fun. And just notice what that inner child is saying.

Does he need something different from you? Is he validating how you’re showing up? Does he appreciate how you’re standing up for him and for yourself? So keeping a journal as you go through this process to just refine and get a sense of, you know, how are you doing? How is that younger self responding? And then the last piece, honestly, is really about finding somebody that can help you work with this inner child, because the reality is, is that if you experienced a lot of heavy pain in your childhood, trauma, abuse, neglect, abandonment, it’s likely that as you get in touch with that younger self, you’re also going to get in touch with a lot of the really heavy emotions that that younger self had to feel, and that that younger self received, that he didn’t know how to deal with. And that can feel overwhelming for you, even as an adult, like, oh, I’m connecting with my inner child. But what I’m connecting with is this well of grief, or this really deep sense of loneliness, or a really big amount of fear in lacking trust towards relationships and other people.

And that can be challenging to deal with, to say the least. So having somebody that can guide you through certain exercises can be very, very, very helpful. Because again, and the last thing I’ll say is that the inner child work is really about acknowledging and healing that younger version of you that still exists within your emotional and psychological landscape.

And a big part of that is kind of signaling to him, to that younger version of you, that you have the capacity to be with whatever he’s experiencing—the frustration, the disappointment,  the hurt, and the pain—that you are willing to sit with him and feel those things that likely other people were not there for him with.

Adam Nisenson – Navigating And Healing From Infidelity

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Talking points: relationships, infidelity, betrayal

The damage from infidelity in a relationship can be complex, traumatic, and last far longer than you might think. What’s more, there aren’t a lot of men-specific resources out there. Fortunately Adam is changing that. If you or someone you know has experienced infidelity, strongly encourage you to share this one.

(00:00:00) – Why Adam wrote his book, and the stigmas men experience when they’re cheated on

(00:05:13) – How important is it that all parties see the part they may have played, and what NOT to do

(00:15:35) – What leads a woman to have an affair, what to do when you find out, and what happens to a man’s identity when betrayed

(00:26:10) – Navigating jealousy and grief

(00:40:27) – What’s possible in the reconciliation process?

(00:43:53) – On creating safety and repair after betrayal

Adam Nisenson, also known as the Betrayal Shrink, is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified Sex Addiction Therapist. He’s dedicated to helping men navigate the complex emotions and challenges of betrayal trauma. Adam understands firsthand what it’s like to be a betrayed partner, which gives him a unique perspective on how to support clients on their healing journey. He creates a safe and understanding space where clients can explore their feelings and work through their trauma with compassion and wisdom.

Adam graduated from Pacifica Graduate Institute with degrees in Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Clinical Counseling, and Depth Psychology. He’s committed to addressing important issues like betrayal, infidelity, sex addiction, and the life challenges that come with them. With Adam, the journey isn’t just about recovery; it’s about personal growth and rediscovery.

Connect with Adam

-Book: A Man’s Guide To Partner Betrayal: https://www.sanopress.com/books/mgtpb

-Website: https://betrayalshrink.com

-Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betrayalshrink

Anton Nootenboom – Serving Men’s Mental Health—One Step At A Time

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Talking points: masculinity, culture

Honored to have connected with the Barefoot Dutchman himself this week. In case you hadn’t heard, Anton Nootenboom recently finished walking over 3100 miles—barefoot—from LA to NYC to support men’s mental health. Yes. Barefoot. We dig into the why, the how, and Anton’s core philosophies. Listen in, team.

(00:00:00) – Intro, and what the mental and emotional strain was like

(00:15:39) – Why Anton wanted to raise awareness for men’s mental health

(00:22:04) – What are men struggling with the most these days, and what needs to change

(00:37:48) – The struggle of shifting perspectives on men’s culpability and responsibility, and what to say to younger guys

(00:44:12) – Why is it important for men to do hard things?

Anton Nootenboom is a military veteran with three tours in Afghanistan. He faced severe mental health challenges afterwards, including depression and suicidal thoughts. He found healing in barefoot walking and speaking out about his experiences. Today, his journey embodies his message: men should feel empowered to seek help and talk about mental health.

The #BraveMenTalk initiative, launched in partnership with Barebarics, emphasizes that one man dies by suicide every minute globally. Anton’s walk aimed to raise critical funds and encourage men to embrace a new type of bravery—one that fights against stigma and opens up pathways for support.

Connect with Anton:

-Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebarefoot_dutchman/

-TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@barefootdutchie

-Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anton.nootenboom.3

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