Mindset & Resiliency

A Man’s Guide To Divorce

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Talking points: relationships, marriage

Not an easy topic for anyone, but there ARE things you can do that can help things go more smoothly. Whether you chose it or it got chosen for you, I’ve laid out what you need to ask yourself and how you should proceed. Listen in.

(00:00:00) – Intro, and the best question to ask yourself first

(00:07:18) – How do you know when it’s time to go, and midlife changes

(00:16:12) – Divorcing in anger, and the first thing I say to men who have decided

(00:20:26) – Get a good lawyer, but YOU should focus on the ethics, and more questions to answer

(00:25:17) – Get support and perspective, and what to do if kids are involved

If You Hate Setting Goals, Do This Instead

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Talking points: new year, goals, mindset

Goals don’t always work, especially when the end result requires a more flexible approach, like having a healthier internal dialogue or more intimacy in your relationship. This week, let’s dig into a different approach: non-linear goal setting.

(00:00:00) – Why step-by-step goals may not work, and how to have an aim

(00:06:07) – Let go of the idea that paint-by-numbers is always the way to go, and embrace experimentation

(00:10:424) – Learn how to read the data from your own body

(00:15:16) – Be honest about what is and isn’t working, and pay attention to the unforeseen

(00:19:50) – Maintain your connection to your aim energetically

Transcript

All right, team, welcome back to the Man Talk Show. Connor Beaton here. Today I’m going to be talking about what to do if you don’t like setting goals.

Now I will admit first and foremost, like straight out the gates, I really don’t like goal setting. I’ve never been. I’ve tried it so many times.

I have tried to set goals. I have tried to have smart goals and a linear trajectory towards very specific outcomes. For me, I just hate it.

I just do not like it. It doesn’t work for me. It feels constricting. I feel caged in. It feels boring. It doesn’t feel adventurous or exciting. I never stick to it. I almost never stick to it. I will, however, I will set some targets.

We can call those goals. You can call them whatever you want, but how I approach this is very, very different. I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of people that traditional goal setting and goal acquisition just does not work for them.

I’m going to be sharing with you what I use and how I go about actually achieving and accomplishing things in a way that is very, very different. Goal setting is traditionally something that is very linear. You create a goal and then you create a work back plan to attain or reach that goal.

That’s what smart goals are, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. You can kind of map out every single part of the journey of reaching that goal. For some things, like for example, if you’re wanting to put on 10 pounds of muscle mass, there is a very specific trajectory and pathway.

That’s your goal, putting on 10 pounds of muscle mass. There’s a very specific pathway to get there. You can chart that out and it can be very linear.

Same thing with losing 10 pounds. If you wanted to lose 10 pounds, there’s a very specific trajectory and pathway that is linear in order for you to get there. You probably have to go into a calorie deficit and calorie count and blah, blah, blah, blah.

There are some things where having a more linear pathway to a goal can be helpful, but there are many things in life where that’s not realistic. If your goal is to have an exceptional relationship that is deep and rich in intimacy, well, there’s likely not a very specific linear pathway that’s going to get you and your partner there. Another example is finding a deep and meaningful sense of purpose.

There’s no linear pathway that’s going to lead you to that goal or that outcome. There are some goals or targets, I call them aims, there are some aims that we have in life that require a nonlinear approach to reaching that target, that aim, or that destination. And so today I’m going to share with you some of the things that I have found to be incredibly helpful for reaching those types of goals, because for me, those are the things that are really interesting, right? When you talk about personal development or self-help, a lot of these things are, they’re kind of vague, they’re kind of nebulous.

And if you think about, oh, I want to have a better relationship to myself or I want to improve my inner dialogue, well, there are certain steps that you can take for that aim and that goal, but there’s so many unknown variables. It is much more vague, it’s much more nebulous. It’s not like, okay, do step one, do step two, do step three, do step four, and then you’ll reach your goal and your destination of having a much better internal dialogue and conversation.

Yes, there are steps that you can take that are tactical, that might be a little bit linear, but there’s a lot of fluidity and flexibility that needs to enter into that conversation. So traditional goal setting, very linear. What we’re going to be talking about today, nontraditional, more fluid, nonlinear goal setting.

So I like to approach this, I’m going to use a couple of different analogies. I like to approach this more along the lines of a tracking and hunting style of orientation. So I might set a goal or an aim for myself and we can just, we’ll set a couple of examples, right? So I want to have a better relationship, but I want to have better communication with my wife, or I want to have a better internal dialogue.

I want to be able to speak to myself in a healthier way. So there’s the aim or the target, right? Or I want to find a deeper sense of purpose in my life. There’s the aim or the target.

Now, how I’m going to go about that is through a process of hunting, of learning to track for clues and evidence that I’m moving in the right direction towards that aim or that pathway. I’m going to give you six things that I have found to be incredibly helpful when it comes to reaching these types of nonlinear goals that we often have in our life. So step number one is design your aim, create your aim, write down your aim.

What is the aim that you would like to work towards? And try and make it somewhat specific. Make sure it’s not so vague, right? Like maybe I want to have more purpose in life is too broad and too vague. Maybe you need to narrow it down.

I want to have more fulfillment and meaning in my work, right? I want to have more fulfillment and meaning in my work. Or I want to feel a deeper sense of purpose in my career, in my work, however you want to frame that. So have an aim that’s not so broad and so vague, but that’s not so minuscule and concise.

Because again, if it’s really, really a tight, constricted, traditional goal, then that’s something that you could create a linear process towards. We’re talking about the things that feel more nebulous to reach and attain, right? I want to feel better about myself. I want to like myself more.

I want to be able to appreciate myself. I want to be able to forgive my partner. I want to be able to let go of resentment.

These types of things that can sometimes feel nebulous and vague in terms of how we get there. So that’s number one, have the aim, have the target that you’re working towards. Number two, let go of the idea that there is a linear step-by-step process or way to reach it.

One of the biggest hurdles that most people face when it comes to nonlinear goals, nonlinear aims, is that they are still approaching these goals and these aims in life from a linear fashion. You can spend a tremendous amount of time, and you’ve probably done this, right? 

I know I did this for a long time. I want to feel better about myself.I want to like myself more. I remember I had a goal. I was just like, I want to stop hating myself.

That was literally a goal of mine for a long time, and I was stuck because I was in this place of there has to be a step-by-step process that I can go through that’s going to help me get to that target. But it wasn’t until I let go of needing this linear process, this step-by-step process that needed to unfold, that I could start to find the more fluid, more natural process that was required in order for me to reach that target and that goal. Step number three is embrace testing and experimentation.

Embrace testing and experimentation. So one of the beautiful things about nonlinear goals or nonlinear aims is that it requires you to approach reaching the target in a very different way. I like to think about this like chess, right? We can use chess.

We can use hunting, tracking. I’ll just bounce around from analogies and metaphors. When you start playing chess, and I’m not very good at chess at all, but I’ve started to learn how to play it.

When you start to play chess, it is a process of experimentation where you are setting up certain moves, certain frames. There’s certain openings that you can use, but you’re experimenting, right? If I do this, how does the other person respond? If I move the pawn, how does the other person respond? If I use my bishop, how does the other person respond? You know, if I pigeon them in, if I start to pinch in on them, on their king or on their queen this way, how do they respond? And it’s kind of a process of experimentation where you’re making a move and you’re getting feedback. You’re making a move and you’re getting feedback, making a move and getting feedback.

And in a nonlinear goal, this is really the process that you want to use. You want to experiment. When I do this, what’s the result that happens? It’s less about getting the right outcome and it is more about noticing the information and the data that comes back in response.

So for example, if you’re trying to improve communication in your relationship, there’s a wonderful space for trying out and experimenting with different things, right? If I use more direct language, what happens? Does my partner respond really well or do they respond negatively? If I use more simple language, do they respond really well or do they respond negatively? If I use more open-ended questions, do they respond negatively or do they respond positively? And so in this process, you’re experimenting and this is where the tracking comes in. I remember I interviewed this guy named Boyd Vardy, a great interview by the way. If you ever want, go back and check that out on the podcast.

I’ll put the link in the show notes on YouTube. But Boyd works on a game reserve in South Africa and we were talking about this process of tracking down a leopard, which are very evasive. It’s very hard to track leopards because it’s not like lions who just sort of like walk along the ground.

Leopards will go up in trees for a period of time and that can wipe out their tracks. They can move through bushes. That can be hard to track.

There’s many different things that leopards do that make it hard to track them. So you can kind of be on the trail of a leopard for a period of time and then all of a sudden the trail just vanishes and you’re like, where did this thing go? There’s literally a paw print and now they’re not there. Where did this thing possibly go? So tracking things like purpose, tracking things like personal development, tracking things like progress within your relationship, all of these things, because they are much more fluid, you are really trying to get a sense of what does the track look like? What is the progress feel like? And this is really an important part of the equation.

Then this brings me to the fourth point, which is you need to start to learn how to read the data from your body. So linear goals are very much driven by rational data. You set a goal.

I want to lose five pounds. You set out a very specific strict structure of what you are going to eat. You cut out all the things that you are not going to eat and you start to go down this linear path and you just follow this very specific structure and you can see very clearly your weight reducing and away you go.

It’s a very rational, linear process. However, when you are setting a nonlinear goal, like I want to improve communication in my relationship, you are looking for signs of improvement that are more felt than they are rational. They are more felt than they are rational, which means that you are trying to tune into your gut.

You’re trying to tune into your intuition. You’re trying to tune into a sense of self, that self voice, that authentic voice of like, okay, I said that and I noticed that she responded really, really well and really positively. I could feel that in my body.

I could feel that there was much more ease and peace. There wasn’t resistance. There wasn’t animosity coming back at me.

Okay, that really worked. That’s a pathway I can take. So you start to have to learn how to track by using a deeper felt sense, listening to your gut, listening to your inner voice, listening to your intuition, whatever word works for you, but you are listening to a deeper sense of data.

And the important thing here is that your body has a tremendous amount of data that it is constantly pushing up to the brain, right? Emotions, sensory, tactile information that it’s constantly sending up to the brain. And a lot of this is the fluid, unconscious information of existence, which is incredibly important when it comes to a nonlinear goal, right? How do you know that you’re living with purpose? Well, it’s not something that you, maybe you can rationally explain some of it, right? I can, I have a tremendous amount of purpose in my life. I’m very fortunate in the sense that what I do for my work brings me a deep amount of joy and fulfillment and purpose and meaning in life.

And I could rationally explain to you why that is, but what’s more true and how I know that I’m living with purpose is more a felt experience. It is a knowing in my body that I don’t need to necessarily rationally explain or lay out for people in a, in a logical way. It’s something that I know internally that is unequivocal that doesn’t need to be debated.

So this is something that a lot of men struggle with because we have as men, you as a man have been trained to over-index your rational mind. And you’ve been trained that how you reach a goal or a target is simply by creating linear steps that are going to lead you towards that goal or that target. And again, you know, if you wanted to improve in archery, if you wanted to get better at shooting guns, if you wanted to, whatever it is, development skill set like that, there are linear steps that you can take and a linear progression that you can take that will get you to that target.

But with the things that we’re talking about, these nonlinear goals, you have to listen to a different subset of data. So you have to start to feel into your body. Like, did that go right? Did that not go right? What was that like internally? Did I feel a negative charge? Did I feel a positive charge? Oh, that did go well.

Okay, cool. And in doing this, you start to develop a very robust connection to a deeper sense of knowing to your gut and that type of intelligence. And I know that this might sound woo-woo to some people.

I know that for some guys are listening to this and they’re like, what is this dude on about? I know that for some guys, it’s just like, I don’t care about those goals at all. But for those of you that do get what I’m saying and do care about what I’m saying, you start to develop a deeper level of trust in yourself because men need to know how to go out and reach a goal and a target in a linear fashion. But we also need to know how to go out and reach a goal or a target in a nonlinear fashion.

We also need to be able to listen to the information in our bodies, in our gut to be able to tune into like, oh, that was not, that didn’t really work. It didn’t really get the response that I wanted. Let me try this.

And there’s a deeper conversation that happens inside of you. So learning how to track from your gut, using your body as a kind of detective that is helping you to track down your aim, track down the purpose, track down the deeper connection or communication or intimacy in your relationship. Next is be honest about what’s working and what’s not.

Be honest about what’s working and what’s not. This is where the rational mind can come into play, right? You can listen to your gut. You can tune into the information of like, oh, that didn’t really feel like it was working or I tried that out and it kind of sucked.

I went and did some public speaking and my whole body was just like, no, this isn’t really for me. I felt awkward and really start to receive feedback from other people and tune into is this working or is this not working? And this is a bit of an interesting part of the equation because you get to this point where you’re tracking down your purpose or whatever the aim is, right? Whatever your nonlinear goal is and you’re tracking down your aim and you might have to try things a few times in order to really get a deep understanding of like, oh, yeah, that’s not working or this really is functioning. So for example, when I started Man Talks, we had events, public facing events where men would come out and speak and they were open to everybody and we’d have hundreds and hundreds of people at these events all over North America.

I had them in cities like Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, New York, Miami, LA, like they were all over the place. And it got to this place where I was building up the company and organization. It was growing and scaling rapidly.

But in my gut, even though the events were growing, I could feel that it was not necessarily the right path to be going down. One, the events were hard to monetize and consistently make money off of. They were hard to market.

But two, I started to notice that men were needing a lot deeper support and they were wanting more in-depth conversations than what were being provided at the events. And I kept hearing that. I kept hearing that.

So I was honest about what was working and what was not. What was working was the events were doing great and they were scaling, but what was not working was it wasn’t having the depth of impact on the men that were coming out that I really wanted my organization to have. And that’s when I shifted and opened up some men’s groups and some one-on-one and a whole bunch of other things.

So be honest about what’s working and what’s not. Last piece, pay attention to the unknown and the unforeseen. Pay attention to the unknown and the unforeseen.

And part of this is pay attention to synchronicities. Carl Jung talks about this extensively, the power and the potency of synchronicities. But just pay attention to unforeseen, unknown circumstances.

These can be very valuable clues towards what you are tracking. So often, because we are so conditioned to think in a linear, rational fashion, whenever something comes in that’s unforeseen or unknown, we see it almost automatically. We see it as a hurdle or an obstacle or it’s like, oh, this is something bad.

It’s not good. But the unforeseen and the unknown can be extremely, extremely valuable information that can give you another clue that can lead you towards the aim, that can lead you towards the non-linear goal. So a good question that I like to ask myself is, what might this unforeseen situation or circumstance be trying to teach me, be trying to tell me? If this unknown circumstance wasn’t a problem, what might it mean? What truth might it hold? So those are some questions that I usually try and ask myself when I’m trying to build something within my company or something happens within my relationship that’s unknown or unforeseen, and I have to try and take a step back to say, okay, rather than seeing this as just a block or an obstacle of reaching my target, how might it be maybe setting me on a separate course? Because remember, in the tracking analogy, there are a lot of unforeseen circumstances that happen.

You might be hot on the track of a leopard and all of a sudden a storm comes in and wipes it all out entirely. And you have to kind of be able to take a step back and say, okay, what might this be trying to show me or teach me? Now, maybe there’s just nothing in it, right? Maybe it’s just like, it’s a storm. Not everything has to mean something.

And it’s just causing chaos, right? It’s just pure chaos and havoc. But it also might be there to help you refine your ability and your competency in tracking and staying connected to the energetic tether of moving towards that aim. And this is the last piece that is really, really important when it comes to reaching our aims, especially our nonlinear goals, is we have to be willing to maintain some type of a tether and connection to the aim energetically.

We have to be open to and start to learn how to create a tether to, am I moving in the right direction or is this pulling me further away? Do I feel stretched further away? Is the signal, right? You can kind of think of it as like an energetic signal. Is the signal that I’m moving closer? I remember the other day I was playing hot, cold with my son, right? I hid something. I hid one of his toys and he’s running around the house and I’m saying, you know, cold, cold, cold.

And, you know, that meant that he had to, he was far away from it. And then he started to get closer and he’s like, hot, hot, hot. Okay.

Boiling hot. And that’s kind of how it works with nonlinear aims and goals is that you have to start to attune your mind and your body towards, is this moving me closer energetically? Can I feel and tell that I’m moving closer towards better communication, deeper intimacy, less conflict in my relationship or marriage? Am I moving closer towards more meaning and purpose in my work? Or is it getting stretched thinner and I feel further and further and further away? Now, the caveat to this part is that at the very beginning, it’s going to be a very faint signal. So it’s going to be hard to even know if you’re in the vicinity of that thing or not.

And as you experiment, this is tying back into point number three, as you experiment, you will get a sense of whether it’s moving you closer towards your target or your aim, or if it’s moving you further and further away. So share your thoughts below. Don’t forget to man it forward and share this with somebody that you know could enjoy it.

Until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.

Best Of ManTalks 2024

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Talking points: trauma, culture, attachment, masculinity

Maybe you’re new (or new-ish) to the podcast. Maybe you’re gunning for new insights so you kick off 2025 right. Either way, we here at ManTalks have got your back. In this episode, you’ll find extended clips from 2024’s top interviews, from the veteran perspectives of Michael Meade to the attachment expertise of Sarah Baldwin. Happy New Year, team.

(00:00:00) – Peter Levine on the symptoms of trauma and using active imagination

(00:19:41) – Michael Meade on the importance of myth, and AI’s possible effects on humanity

(00:31:48) – Sarah Baldwin on anxious and avoidant attachment, and the goals for healing each

(00:47:22) – Owen Marcus on co-regulation and importance of genuine connection for men

10 Things To Stop Doing In 2025

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Talking points: mindset, new year new you

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions. So instead of adding another thing to do, be, or try to your list, why not take something away? These ten things come from my own experience as well as helping high-performing men in multiple fields. Listen in.

(00:00:00) – Stop self-deprecating, and start taking “clean accountability”

(00:04:16) – Stop blaming women for all your problems

(00:07:40) – Stop consuming mindless content. Switch it for content that supports your mission

(00:09:35) – If you are ignoring your finances, stooooop. Educate yourself

(00:13:36) – Stop outsourcing your validation, and stop overworking

(00:19:10) – Stop living without structure, and value rest

(00:24:27) – Let go of resentment, and stop rejecting support

Transcript

All right, men, welcome back to the ManTalks Show. Today, we’re gonna be talking about the 10 things that you need to stop doing in 2025. Now, this is a list of things that have dramatically changed my own life and have changed the lives of the men that I have worked with.

I’m very fortunate in the sense that the clients that I get to work with are men that run hedge funds, that are Wall Street traders, they’re some of the best in their industry, athletes, professional athletes from the NFL and NHL, rappers, musicians, heavy metal guitarists and drummers, guys that are real estate moguls and entrepreneurs in the tech world. I really get to work with some of the elite top performing men. And what I’ve noticed is that all of these men at some point have to stop doing these behaviors that are in this list.

And rather than doing some, you know, New Year’s, new you BS resolution that never works, that nobody ever follows through on, that I personally just legitimately dislike, I think it’s garbage. These are the things that you can start to call out and cut out of your life that are going to make a dramatic, dramatic difference. So number one, let’s just dive straight into it.

And if you enjoy this, please don’t forget to man it forward. Share this with somebody in your life that you know will enjoy it, goes a long way to growing the channel, but it also just goes a long way to supporting the men that are in your life. So don’t forget to man it forward, subscribe to the channel and let’s dive in.

So number one, I can’t say this any other way. Stop shitting on yourself. Stop shitting on yourself.

Stop brutally just like destroying yourself verbally in your head, punishing yourself every single time that you get something wrong, shaming yourself anytime that you don’t live up to the unrealistic expectations that you have set for yourself. Stop self-flagellating and self-punishing every single time something goes wrong. Start taking what I call clean accountability.

This means no shaming yourself. No shaming yourself when things go wrong, when you have made a messed up, when you have made a bad decision. I say this because I’ve noticed a trend in a lot of men that I’ve worked with over the last decade and in myself.

I used to beat the crap out of myself verbally in my head whenever I did anything wrong. Whenever I didn’t meet some unrealistic expectation I had set for myself, I would lace into myself. What’s wrong with you? You’re such a POS.

How could you do that? Nobody else would get this wrong. You’re so stupid. And I would just berate myself.

And in some ways, I was trying to do that to leverage shame to try and propel me forward, to get better results. Now this is a catch-22 because for some men, you might be one of the men like me where shame was crippling me. And that self-punishment, that self-deprecation was the thing standing in my way.

Now there are men who are in a very different camp where they leverage that self-deprecation. They leverage their shame. They leverage what I call dark motivation.

They punish themselves and whip themselves verbally, psychologically, and emotionally in order to try and get results. And it works for a period of time. And this is the catch.

All of the men that I have ever worked with that have used shame to motivate themselves, at some point, that mechanism of shame-based motivation will start to work against them. They’ll start to not be able to perform. They’ll get depressed.

They will just genuinely loathe and hate themselves. They’ll destroy relationships and push people away because they don’t see that they’re worthy. A whole bunch of things can happen.

So this year in 2025, start to take clean accountability. This means no shaming, no judgment of yourself. Just yeah, that was the wrong choice.

That was a bad decision. That wasn’t a smart decision for me to make in my life. And take ownership over it.

And use that as a mechanism to propel you forward. Use that clean accountability as a mechanism to help you change. Number two, stop blaming women for all of your problems.

I’ve been on YouTube not for very long. I haven’t been on YouTube for a super long time, but I’ve been working with men for over a decade. And what I’ve noticed on YouTube is that there is a very large subset of men who are convinced that every single problem in their life is the result of a woman’s.

And there’s a large subset of women who believe the same thing about men. It’s like the patriarchy is the sole problem with everything in existence today. And every issue can be traced back to men.

So I get it. I get that maybe you are a man who has been screwed over by a woman. Maybe you were betrayed.

Maybe you were cheated on. Maybe you were hurt by a woman. Maybe she divorced you and took half of everything that you earned and own.

Maybe she won’t let you access your kids. I get that there are genuinely women out there who are brutal to men. And maybe you’ve been on the receiving end of that.

That still does not warrant and justify seeing women as the enemy writ large for every single problem in your life or every single problem for men in the world. And so this is really about taking your own level of potency and power back. Because whenever we villainize the opposing sex and we say that they are responsible for all of our woes, all of our problems, we move into a victimhood position.

So you are not a victim to women. Now, you may have been victimized by women, abused by women physically, taken advantage of women by physically. I’m not negating that.

I’m sorry if that happened to you. That’s terrible. That sucks.

So I’m not saying that that’s not a real thing. And I do not ever want to downplay that that’s a very real thing that a lot of men experience. And for the most part, that’s not what a lot of men are going through.

What a lot of men are going through is they’re pissed at women. They see women as the problem. They’re angry.

They don’t think that they can get the women that they want. And so they’re projecting a tremendous amount of vitriol and resentment and hostility towards women and acting like the victim to women. I can’t get the job that I want because of women.

I can’t make enough money for women. I’ll never be able to make women happy. And women become this sort of embodiment of a man’s perfectionism, a man’s relationship with his own perfectionism, that he can never get it right with his own perfectionism because he can never meet his own expectations.

And for some men, they project that out onto women. I can never make you happy. I can never get it right with you.

You’re always going to betray me. And what it does is create not just a victim orientation within your mind and your mindset, but it allows you to stay lonely and isolated and disconnected from women because you just see them as one way. You just see women as a problem or as dysfunctional or as all entitled, and you never actually meet the woman that’s in front of you because you’re just interacting with the perception that you hold of women that’s being projected onto her.

So stop blaming women for all your problems and start to get to know the women that are actually in your life that you meet, whether it’s at the coffee shop or the gym or the grocery store or at the yoga studio, wherever it is that you go, at work. Start to genuinely get to know them and get to know that individual woman rather than projecting your animosity and vitriol towards women at large onto every single woman that you meet. Number three, stop tuning in to calorie-less content.

Stop tuning into terrible content. Stop tuning into the thirst traps. Delete your OnlyFans account if you have one.

Unfollow all the women on Instagram or TikTok that you follow that you know are just a waste of time that are just getting your attention for free, getting your follow and all your likes and all your comments and all your time and attention and your imagination is going towards them. Stop wasting your time on content that is not nourishing your mind, that’s not helping you to develop into the man, the leader, the husband, the partner, the father that you ultimately want to be. Start to consume valuable content that is designed specifically for the sole purpose of supporting you on the mission that you are on.

Whatever that mission is, maybe you want to make a million dollars next year. Maybe you just want to enter into the workforce and get a good job. Maybe you want to start a business.

Maybe you want to have an extraordinary relationship or a really great sex life or whatever it is. Maybe you want to be an extraordinary father. Start to consume the type of content that is going to help you reach your goal and attack your mission.

So really hone in on this. That might mean that you have to unfollow people. Might mean that you have to go off of social media for a while.

But really take a look at the content. Maybe you’re only listening to certain podcasts and you need to broaden your podcast listening. Maybe there’s some books that you actually need to read and not just consume content but actually dive back into some books.

So stop consuming calorie-less content and start consuming content that is going to support you in reaching your goals. Number four, stop ignoring your finances. I cannot tell you how many men I have worked with over the years who use avoidance as their main tool and tactic when it comes to their finances.

You ask them how things are going financially. How much do you have saved? Where’s your debt at? How much is your monthly burn? And they’re not able to give you any information. And I used to be like this.

I felt insecure about money. I was terribly broke. I was in debt.

I was like the ramen noodle dude. I used to make this. Oh man, I’m going to get so much flack for this if you’re watching this or listening to this.

But in university, I was so broke that I would make stir fry with lunch meat. And so because I didn’t have enough money to buy real chicken breasts or I didn’t have enough money to buy steaks and that type of meat, I would just buy turkey lunch meat. And so I would make this stir fry.

I remember dating this woman in university, and I made it for her one time. And she was like, what is this? Like, are you okay? Do you need help? Do I need to send you help? But part of that was that I was just in complete avoidance of my money situation. I did not want to look at it at all because I was broke.

I was in debt. I didn’t know how to save money. I didn’t know how to invest money.

I didn’t know what the hell an ETF fund was or a Roth IRA or a tax-free savings account. I didn’t know what any of those things were. And so it was just overwhelming.

And so I used avoidance as a tool and tactic for my finances. So start to educate yourself in 2025 about money, about how to save, how to invest, how to earn more money, maybe how to have passive income, whatever that is. Just start to level up your relationship to money so that you’re not avoiding some of the hard parts.

You should be able to get to a point where you are running your personal finances like a business, where you have a P&L statement for your personal finances on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. So you can see the breakdown of how much money is coming in, where is that money going to, how much money is being saved, where is it being invested, and how are those investments doing? That’s the basic breakdown for finances that no one taught me, that I wish someone had sat down, one of my parents. My mom was a banker.

She probably could have done that at some point. But somebody had sat me down and said, here’s how money works and operates. Here’s the basics of it.

And we’re going to help you to learn how to invest. And that just never happened. But it’s one of the things that has radically changed my life.

When I prioritized my finances, I started earning more. I started not just earning and making more, but I started to save more. I paid off my debt pretty quickly.

So I got entirely debt-free, which felt amazing, even though I made some sacrifices along the way. I remember at one point, I don’t remember, I think it was like 2014, I was going to invest, it was like $10,000 into Tesla. And I didn’t do it because at the time, I didn’t know anything about stock trading.

I thought it would be a good idea to buy Tesla stock. I think it was at like $20 at the time or something ridiculous like that, or like $42. But I had all of this credit card debt.

And I’d been carrying that credit card debt for a long time. And I just made a decision to pay down the credit card debt because I was on a mission. I had a goal, get rid of my debt.

Because it wasn’t good debt, right? It wasn’t like, I wasn’t leveraging to buy stocks and making more revenue off of the stocks than I was on the cost to borrow the money. It wasn’t good debt. It was like 20% on a credit card that had like $25,000 on it.

It was not good. So I decided to pay off all my debt. Now, in hindsight, I wish I had bought the Tesla stock, but I succeeded in my mission to pay off the debt.

And I’m really glad that I didn’t gamble because I didn’t know anything. I probably would have lost money. I would have been like the only dude that lost money on that stock.

So stop ignoring your finances. Focus on them for 2025. Number five is stop seeking validation from women, from external sources.

Now, I call this stop outsourcing validation and start insourcing validation. So what a lot of guys do, because we’re very external, is they outsource validation, outsource the reinforcement of their own self-worth. I’m not sure if I’m worthy.

I’m not sure if I’m good enough. I’m not sure if I’m smart enough. I’m not sure if I’m attractive enough.

And what they do is they try and deploy this mechanism of getting feedback from people at work, from friends, from family members, from people that they, whatever, see at the gym, from their girlfriends, from their wives, from their partners. And they try and get validation to fill up their internal lack of, I don’t feel good enough. Now, if there’s one thing that you can do, if this one really hits home with you, if there’s one thing that you can really start doing in 2025, it is to build a rigorous mechanism of self-appreciation and self-recognition.

If you can start to give yourself recognition and appreciation for the things that you are doing, that you are doing well, if you can acknowledge like, oh, I got up this morning and I executed on my morning routine and I’m like, really good job, and you can start to build the habit of reinforcing all the things that you do well and all of the parts of yourself that are valuable innately and inherently, you won’t need to externalize and outsource all of that validation. So stop outsourcing that validation and start insourcing that self-recognition and appreciation. The next piece is stop overworking, okay? This is number six.

Stop overworking. I see so many men killing themselves, really burning themselves out in order to make a living and they just really struggle to prioritize any type of time for themselves. And I think it’s challenging because hustle culture within a modern society really glorifies the pathway that leads to burnout.

Hustle culture in itself is really just a recipe for the end destination is going to be burnout. That’s really what it is. Now, there are some people who love working really hard, who love just going 1,000 miles an hour, and that’s okay.

There’s nothing wrong with that. I love working hard. I really, really do.

I love working hard. I love building my business. And I have had to learn to rest.

I’ve had to learn to pull back on the reins sometimes and not take on more than I can do naturally. And this isn’t about balance. This isn’t about work-life balance.

I think a lot of that stuff is nonsense. But this is about being able to design your life in a way that matches your priorities and your values. So if you have a value of family and friendship or community, travel and adventure, but your entire year is basically just working 80 to 90 hours a week, and you don’t travel and you don’t see friends and you don’t see family, then your life isn’t matching your priorities and your values.

It’s not matching what brings you joy, what fulfills you, and you are just pouring all of this work and effort into something that maybe you enjoy or maybe you don’t at all, but you’re missing out on living a more aligned and more congruent life. And for a lot of men, this is easy. Because for most men, it’s easier to just be doing than it is to be being.

And what do I mean by that? A lot of us men find that our worth and our value is tied or tethered to how much we can do. So we have this perception that a lot of guys have, it’s like, the more that I do, the more valuable or worthy I will be in the eyes of other people or the more valuable and worthy I will feel within myself. Now, obviously, there’s an argument to be made that if you build something in the world that that can be very rewarding and fulfilling.

It can bring you value financially. It can bring you status, can bring you a whole bunch of things. But at the end of the day, if you don’t know how to just be with yourself, if you don’t know how to just like who you are without having to cut through the task list every single day, you’re going to struggle to find any level of fulfillment.

You actually have to enjoy who you are innately. And so part of this letting go of overworking, which by the way, burnout doesn’t actually allow you to be very productive. It doesn’t allow you, when you’re burnt out, you can’t perform very well.

You can’t provide for your family very well or even yourself very well. And you can’t contribute in the way that you want. And so the overworking, knowing where your limits are, it’s like, what is that? There’s a gambling ad back in Canada.

I don’t know if it’s still up, but they used to say, know your limit and play within it. And that was sort of the notion of like, know when to pull your chips off the table. And I think the same is true when it comes to working and really hustling.

Know when and know where your limits are and then play within those limits so that you don’t bet the house and come out broke on the other side, because that’s not going to be of service to you or anyone in your life. Number seven, stop living without structure. My gosh, I see so many men whose lives are, they call it free.

It’s like, I have so much freedom in my life. No, you just have no structure whatsoever. And you’re floundering around wondering why you have no direction, no path, and no purpose in your life.

We have no effing structure. If you do not have structure and order in your life, it’s going to be very, very challenging for you to feel like you have any type of direction. And I don’t care if you’re a really creative person, like I’m a fairly creative person, but structure is still one of those things that has supported my life in exponential ways.

So as an example, I organize my days to have themes. So there are certain days that I create content. There are certain days that I have business meetings.

There are certain days that I see clients, right? So like, for example, Fridays are my client days. They’re stacked with clients. That’s when I see the majority of my clients.

Wednesdays, I run groups. Tuesdays, I create content. Guess what day it is? Tuesdays, I create content and do podcast interviews, right? So start to create structure in your life.

You can organize things so that you have a bit of a routine so that your body and your mind can settle into knowing what it’s doing. And this is especially true if you are a creative, if you are a solopreneur or an entrepreneur, and you kind of wear a bunch of different hats. It’s very important to organize and structure your life in a way that is going to allow you to not have to what I call hat switch or brain switch, right? To go from a business meeting into an interview into a client meeting, that’s going to require very different parts of your brain.

And that’s going to burn you out quicker. It’s going to tax your mind and your body faster. So by developing structure in your life, and this applies to morning routines, nighttime routines, right? I have a very good morning routine.

There’s a lot of flow and flexibility in it. But there’s very specific things that happen every single day. I have a nice nighttime routine that allows me to wind down and go to bed because I have a ton of energy.

And I’m one of those guys that has a harder time falling asleep because my brain is super active. I’m thinking about my company, my business, clients, what I want to be doing. I’m thinking about my kids, my family, the task list, everything that needs to be done.

I have a hard time going to sleep. And so I have a wind down structure or routine that helps me to wind down. So start to build structure out and start simple, right? Maybe you start with a morning routine.

Maybe you start with shifting things in your workflow so that you have a little bit more structure. Maybe you bring this into your relationship and you start to build some structure within your relationship. You have a date night that you start to adhere to and you have some fun with it.

So start to build some structure. Number eight. I touched on this before, so this one will be short.

Stop disregarding rest. Stop disregarding rest. Burnout doesn’t make you more of a man.

Overworking, driving yourself into the ground doesn’t make you more of a man. If you want to be more effective, you likely need to learn how to rest. Now, you might be one of the guys that’s watching this and you’re like, actually, all I do is rest and I never get my ass off the couch.

Likely, you’re not really resting. You’re distracting. Real rest is not sitting there watching Netflix or zombie scrolling through TikTok or Instagram or whatever social media platform that you have.

Real rest is undistracted solo time. Time in solitude. That can be time in nature.

That can be meditation or breathwork or journaling. There’s a bunch of different ways to do it, but start to prioritize rest. And this can also include starting to really prioritize your sleep.

So now that I have two kids and a business that I’m running, I really hone in on making sure that I’m getting at least seven hours of sleep because otherwise I’m cranky. And sometimes that doesn’t happen just because of life, but I really try and prioritize making sure that I get a certain set amount of sleep so that I am functioning optimally for my business, for my clients, for my team members, for my kids, for my wife. Without that, if I do not prioritize rest, then I am going to bring that frustration into almost every single avenue of my life.

I’m going to make poor decisions. I’m not going to be as present with people. And what I’ve noticed for myself, and maybe this is the same for you, the less rest that I have, the more susceptible I am to those pseudo rest mechanisms, to zombie style scrolling through Instagram or whatever it is.

And so that’s usually the way that it works for most guys. So start to prioritize rest and making sure that you’re dialing in at the very least your sleep, but also prioritizing having some restful periods and learning what rest looks like. Like for me, going for a hike and going for a walk in nature by myself is incredibly rewarding and I feel very fueled after that.

So you need to find your own version of that. Number nine, two more. Number nine, stop holding on to resentment.

Cannot tell you how many men that I’ve worked with over the years whose lives are just riddled with resentment. They’re carrying around a bitterness and an anger in their hearts and their minds that is poisoning the waters of their purpose, of their intimacy, of their relationship. And it has become a kind of protection mechanism that ensures that they stay in this place of dissatisfaction.

And so often men who are more committed to the resentment that they’re carrying than the resolution of that resentment, there’s a part of them that doesn’t feel worthy and deserving of what it is that they actually want, whether it’s deep intimacy or connection or a great sex life or meaningful purpose or a good working environment or good working relationship. There’s this part of them that’s like, I’m actually not worthy of that or that’s not possible. And so I’m just going to hold on to this resentment.

But learning to forgive, learning to actually resolve the resentment is an incredibly powerful tool for you as a man. Because men have such a tendency and proclivity towards resentment, towards letting resentment build and then letting resentment become a sort of normative way of being. It just becomes this thing that they operate from, having resentment towards women at large, having resentment towards their wife or their girlfriend or their partner that they just will not let go of.

And the more that I’ve worked with men, the more that I’ve found that a lot of men just do not know how to forgive. And so they either skip straight to it and they’re like, yeah, yeah, whatever, I forgive it. It’s no big deal.

But they don’t actually let themselves feel the impact of what happened from the betrayal or whatever it was. Or they just let resentment become a huge part of their personality and their identity. And they carry it around and they allow it to pop out in these passive aggressive or aggressive ways in their relationship.

So this year, if this one really hits home with you, prioritize doing whatever you can to learn how to forgive, how to forgive yourself and how to forgive the people that have maybe betrayed you or hurt you and to forgive the people that maybe you’ve carried resentment towards. And there’s a bunch of different ways to do that. I’m happy to do a separate video on that if that would support you.

Last but not least, stop rejecting help and support. Stop rejecting help and support. I mean, listen, I run, I don’t know if you know this, but I run something called the Man Talks Alliance.

And in the alliance, there are several hundred men. And what I have seen time and time again is that whenever a man’s life is starting to go south or he’s struggling, we have this natural predisposition towards isolation. It’s not ingrained in us to reach out and call a buddy or ask a friend for help or ask a friend for support and advice.

We have this natural baked in predisposition towards trying to figure that out by ourselves or convincing ourselves that if we don’t solve it all on our own, that if we need help from other people, that there’s something even more wrong with us, that we’re fundamentally broken. And one of the things I can tell you unequivocally is that your life will be exponentially better by surrounding yourself with other men that you trust and rely on to support you and give you feedback and guidance when your life starts to fragment, fall apart, when things start to get tough, whether that’s financially or relationally. So pick up the phone.

If you do not have men in your life like this, find some. Make it your absolute mission. I can tell you that my life is what it is today because I have continued to seek out and surround other exceptional and extraordinary men that can mentor me, that can give me feedback, that are peers and equals, that I trust their opinion, I trust their perspective, I trust them to see things in a way that maybe I don’t see or I trust them to point out things in my life that I might be missing and to really hold my feet to the fire.

And this has served me in a way that I cannot even describe to you. So if you want, you can go check out Mantox.com. The Alliance is on there. Doors will be opening in January.

That is a phenomenal place to start, but there’s many programs out there like that. So if you’re looking for a good place, go find a group, go find a community. It doesn’t have to be mine or Mantox.

There are tons that are out there, but you will absolutely benefit from having men who are invested in your life, invested in your success, invested in supporting you to move through the obstacles and the challenges that you will naturally and innately face. So that’s it for today. Those are the 10 things I hope that you start to tackle in 2025.

And let me know which one you are going to be tackling or if there’s a different one that you are working on, cutting out for 2025. And as always, do not forget to man it forward. Share this episode with somebody in your life that you know will enjoy it or could use it.

Till next time, Connor Beaton signing off.

Roy Baumeister – The Psychology Of Male Willpower

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Talking points: men, psychology, culture

Roy Baumeister is a mighty pillar in the world of psychology, with groundbreaking work on willpower, self-control, negativity bias, and much more. I had the honor of chatting with him about all of these things in the context of men. How do we develop robust self-esteem? Is it work breaking free of isolation? Are there unique social pressures? This is chock full, team.

(00:00:00) – On how men need to prove themselves, and the different social pressures between men and women

(00:07:59) – Roy on risk-taking in men and women

(00:14:01) – Roy’s most cited work, why we fixate more on the bad things, and men’s self-destructive behavior

(00:27:48) – Strategies you can use to replace unhealthy coping mechanisms

(00:34:09) – How important is it for men to have robust and diverse social circles?

(00:45:10) – What is “ego depletion”?

(00:52:21) – The effect of porn on self-control, and wisdom for men struggling with self-esteem

David Sutcliffe – Polarization, Patterns, And The Real Andrew Tate

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Talking points: culture, masculinity, the shadow

This was one of those wide-ranging convos that made me lose track of time. David and I cover a ton in this as you’ll see from the timestamps, with some great info on “core energetics”, personality types, and more. Dig in.

(00:00:00) – How David approached interviewing such a polarizing figure, and do all men have such a rigid mask?

(00:09:04) – How do you support men in a way that allows them to actually open up?

(00:15:40) – Is it all just an act, and killing your shadow versus integrating

(00:22:35) – What is core energetics and the five personality “patterns”?

(00:31:10) – Which pattern best describes American culture, and what do you think we need to do?

(00:37:14) – Do we HAVE to play the polarization game to get anywhere?

(00:44:54) – What David would say to men who are hiding opinions that might get them in trouble

(00:58:01) – What is the “lower self”?

(01:07:22) – Advice for men who actively resist their own emotions

David Sutcliffe is a Somatic Therapist, a Certified Core Energetics Practitioner with over 15 years experience. He has a private practice out of Austin, Texas, and holds workshops across the United States and Canada. He is also a trained hypnotherapist, a mindset expert, and has extensive experience with meditation, yoga, shamanism, physical fitness, nutrition, and wellness. A former actor, he is well known for his roles in the popular TV series Gilmore Girls and Private Practice, and movies Under The Tuscan Sun and Happy Endings.

Connect with David

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

-YouTube: https://bit.ly/3ZJ1KD4

-Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidsutcliffe33/

Why You’re Afraid Of Women

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Talking points: relationships, masculinity, psychology, culture

I touched on this topic in a previous episode and hoo boy, the comments. So let’s talk about it, because there are a lot of historical, psychological, and mythic examples to look at. What’s more, there are ways of working on this if it rings true.

(00:00:00) – What I mean by being afraid of women, and theories from evolutionary psychology

(00:06:41) – The perspective of analytical psychology, and the “anima and animus”

(00:15:29) – Lastly, the perspective of existential psychology, and how a man creates identity

(00:19:22) – So what do you do with this info?

Alex Grendi – The Journey To Real Confidence In The Bedroom

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Talking points: relationships, communication, sex, masculinity

Whether we want to admit it or not, there are always times where things in the bedroom just don’t work out. Alex is out there helping men deal with their most common challenges, and de-stigmatizing communication about it. I appreciate the simple yet solid advice he brings to the table; lots of good stuff in here. Listen in.

(00:00:00) – How a man’s ability to perform affects how he sees himself, and working with sexual shame

(00:11:33) – Dealing with common sexual challenges for men

(00:20:40) – On balancing emotional vulnerability with “holding your frame”

(00:26:29) – What contributes to ejaculation issues?

(00:32:13) – On embarrassment around sexual dialogue, and how porn alters our expectations of ourselves

(00:40:16) – The importance of connecting to breath

(00:47:35) – How can a partner help a man who’s struggling with PE or ED?

Alex Grendi, a former professional soccer player, is now a men’s coach specializing in helping individuals overcome performance anxiety, such as premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction, to build confidence and enhance relationships. Drawing on personal experience and training, he developed the “Superior Lovers” program, combining best practices to deliver transformative results in just three months. His mission is to empower men to embrace their authentic selves, deepen connections, and find fulfillment in their lives and relationships.

Connect with Alex

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

-YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Alex.Grendi

-Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alex.grendi/

***

This Black Friday, why bother getting more stuff when you could work on yourself? All ManTalks courses are currently 20% off, and save even more when you bundle all 3. Check out: https://mantalks.com/blackfriday/

Pick up my book, Men’s Work: A Practical Guide To Face Your Darkness, End Self-Sabotage, And Find Freedom: https://mantalks.com/mens-work-book/

Heard about attachment but don’t know where to start? Try the FREE Ultimate Guide To Attachment

Check out some other free resources: How To Quit Porn | Anger Meditation | How To Lead In Your Relationship

Build brotherhood with a powerful group of like-minded men from around the world. Check out The Alliance. 

Enjoy the podcast? If so, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Podchaser. It helps us get into the ears of new listeners, expand the ManTalks…

Alex Petkas – Want To Reignite Your Inner Hero? Start Here

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Talking points: history, mythology, archetypes, culture

I’ve recently been asked to dig more into the deeper stuff, and who better to delve into the history of the ancients than Alex Petkas. We dig into how important history and story can be, how modern society has watered down the hero archetype, and who we can learn from in ancient history to re-inspire us. This is great ep to dig into if you’re searching for actual heroes, not just what you see on TV.

(00:00:00) – What was the role of the “hero” in ancient history, and is it important for a healthy society? 

(00:12:40) – What happens when you kill off the hero in you, and the balanced masculinity of Odysseus

(00:22:47) – How to restore a more generative hero archetype, and how we’ve made heroes one-dimensional

(00:30:41) – What Plutarch can teach men 

(00:40:59) – Ancient heroes men can learn from, or who the hell is Eumenes of Chardia?

(00:55:14) – The power of narrative

Alex Petkas is writer, entrepreneur, and founder of The Cost of Glory,  a bridge for the virtues of ancient heroes and the modern world’s demands. With a PhD in Classics from Princeton University, Alex has transcended traditional academic boundaries to bring the power of ancient wisdom into contemporary leadership. Recognizing that figures like Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and Cato were not just intellectual giants but also formidable leaders and entrepreneurs, he blends their timeless insights with modern leadership needs, offering actionable strategies that resonate with today’s leaders. Alex challenges the modern disregard for classical education, championing its vital role in moral and intellectual development. His mission is to reignite the heroic spark within men, empowering them to tackle contemporary challenges with unmatched courage and clarity.

Connect with Alex

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

-The Authoritative Speakers Guide: https://costofglory.kit.com/gift

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

***

This Black Friday, why bother getting more stuff when you could work on yourself? All ManTalks courses are currently 20% off, and save even more when you bundle all 3. Check out: https://mantalks.com/blackfriday/

Pick up my book, Men’s Work: A Practical Guide To Face Your Darkness, End Self-Sabotage, And Find Freedom: https://mantalks.com/mens-work-book/

Heard about attachment but don’t know where to start? Try the FREE Ultimate Guide To Attachment

Check out some other free resources: How To Quit Porn | Anger Meditation | How To Lead In Your Relationship

Build brotherhood with a powerful group of like-minded men from around the world. Check out The Alliance. 

Enjoy the podcast? If so, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts,<a…

3 Mental Health Issues Men Struggle With More Than Women

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Talking points: psychology, depression,

These are 3 conditions you may have never heard of before, but based on my experience working with men for 10+ years, they’ve got a significant presence. They’re also under-discussed.

(00:00:00) – Dysthymia, aka low-key depression

(00:04:25) – Alexithymia, when you can’t describe emotions

(00:07:06) – Derealization, when nothing feels real

Further Reading

-Dysthymia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysthymia

-Alexithymia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia

-Derealization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derealization

***

Pick up my book, Men’s Work: A Practical Guide To Face Your Darkness, End Self-Sabotage, And Find Freedom: https://mantalks.com/mens-work-book/

Heard about attachment but don’t know where to start? Try the FREE Ultimate Guide To Attachment

Check out some other free resources: How To Quit Porn | Anger Meditation | How To Lead In Your Relationship

Build brotherhood with a powerful group of like-minded men from around the world. Check out The Alliance.

Enjoy the podcast? If so, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Podchaser. It helps us get into the ears of new listeners, expand the ManTalks Community, and help others find the tools and training they’re looking for.

Transcript

All right, man, welcome back to the ManTalks Show. Connor Beaton here. And today we’re gonna be talking about three mental health issues that men generally struggle with more than women.

Now, I don’t have a peer reviewed research paper to back this up. This is based off of 10,000, 15,000 plus hours of working with men over the last decade. And so we’re gonna dive in because I find that these three things are things that men are struggling with that oftentimes either go, we can call it undiagnosed or unrecognized within men. And I’m gonna try and speak to how you can move through each one of these.

So the first one that I want to talk about is dysthymia. This is a persistent mild form of depression. It’s kind of like a low-grade depression that doesn’t really lift. And it’s not so bad that it’s debilitating. I kind of call it functional depression. It’s like a guy is always a little sad. He’s kind of got like a little bit of cloud of Eeyore around him, but he still does life. He’s still social. He’s still out doing things. You still go to the gym a couple times a week or you still function, right? It’s kind of like a low-grade functioning alcoholic. You’re not full-blown. You’re not missing work. You’re not so bad that people are questioning you about whether or not you should have that next Jack Daniels. It’s just kind of like low-grade.

And the reason why I bring this one up and share it first is that this is the experience that many men have that doesn’t get addressed in therapy often. And this is the experience that many men have because they feel a kind of uselessness in their life. They’re like, I don’t really feel like I have much going for me. I don’t really feel like I have direction. I don’t really feel like I have really solid connections. And so there’s kind of like this consistent and persistent low-grade sadness and cloud and loneliness that they live inside of and they can’t really shake.

It’s like I think it was Linus from Snoopy, right? The one with the blanket and had like the cloud around him and he was sort of like always following him around. That was more like traditional depression, but this is kind of like a low-grade depression. Now there’s a couple of ways to deal with this consistent and persistent low-grade depression.

Number one, working out and meditation. In the UK, they prescribe meditation for depression. It has been clinically shown to be as effective, if not more effective, than a lot of SSRIs that are on the market. Working out, same thing. It has been clinically shown to improve your self-perception, your sense of self-worth. It can really help to restore some of the challenges that you’re feeling internally.

So for a lot of men that are struggling with dysthymia, what I’ve noticed is that oftentimes they are very inconsistent. The low-grade depression is the main consistent thing that they have in their life. They’re not consistently working out. They’re not consistently meditating. They’re not consistently doing breath work. They don’t have a very sort of robust or rigorous quality of ritual or routine in their life.

And usually when we are lacking that type of rigorous routine, something will take its place. And this is usually what takes its place. Now that can also be contributed by unhealed, undealt with childhood trauma, abuse, abandonment, neglect, those types of things. So I don’t want to discredit those things. They can absolutely contribute to dysthymia. But for a lot of men, what I’ve noticed is that they are lacking in this daily ritual of meeting their edge, of pushing themselves in some way, shape, or form that feels good.

It’s like doing a hard thing that feels good, doing a hard thing that leaves you respecting yourself a little bit more on a consistent, regular basis. So that’s dysthymia. That’s how I would suggest starting to address it. Obviously, working with a therapist or a psychologist or a really skilled coach can also serve you.

The next one, alexithymia. Alexithymia is the inability to describe or even recognize and acknowledge your own emotions. Now I’ve worked with men that have a little bit of a spectrum on this one. So I’ve noticed that there’s varying degrees of alexithymia. Some men, they struggle to acknowledge or recognize any emotion that isn’t anger. Other men can recognize anger and happiness and sadness, and that’s the three emotions that they can recognize. And other men are just completely disconnected whatsoever. There’s just almost no ability to recognize, articulate, or even describe what you feel.

So there’s kind of an awareness sometimes of like, yeah, I think I feel happy or yeah, I think I feel sad, but there’s no ability to describe what that’s like from a physiological standpoint. So being able to say, oh yeah, when I get sad, I feel like something’s squeezing in my diaphragm and all of a sudden it’s like a tube of toothpaste being squeezed and all of a sudden tears are coming out of my eyes. Or yeah, when I get angry, it feels like this big ball of fire, like the sun gets turned on in my chest and all of a sudden all of this energy is emanating, you know, down to my belly, out my arms, up into my head.

Usually most men, when they really sit with it, they can articulate what they’re feeling and where that feeling, that emotion is coming from. They can describe some of the thoughts that coincide with it, some of the sensations that coincide with it. And so alexithymia can be challenging because you don’t have access to the personal data of what you are feeling.

However, you will be acting and responding oftentimes from that emotion. So this is kind of the tricky thing with alexithymia. For a lot of guys, they’re unaware of what they’re feeling, they’re not able to describe what they’re feeling.

But if you’re in a conversation with them and they start to get a little agitated or a little elevated or a little closed down, they will respond from that anger or that grief or whatever it is, but they won’t be able to describe or understand it. So if you are somebody that struggles or thinks that you struggle with alexithymia, I would really encourage you to work with a professional. They will be able to help you slow down your process, connect to the body, be able to put some, sometimes some language around it.

But sometimes what I’ve found in working with men that have alexithymia is that it’s almost not necessary to get into the verbal of it. It’s more necessary to just connect the sensation of what you are feeling in your body. The last piece is derealization.

Oh, and alexithymia and derealization that I’m about to talk about are both oftentimes a byproduct of trauma, of PTSD, of having some pretty sometimes severe, not always severe, but sometimes severe adverse events that have happened in your life, whether that was acute or ongoing. So derealization is a feeling that your surroundings or your experience aren’t real. And this can be very jarring.

This can be very disconcerting and men that have severe depression or severe anxiety can have derealization. Oftentimes guys that have done a lot of drugs and maybe had a couple bad experiences will experience derealization and it can be wildly, wildly, wildly unnerving. It can really be a brutal experience.

And what I’ve found is that generally speaking, more men than women seem to struggle with derealization. My opinion on that is that we struggle, men struggle with derealization more than women because men, we as men are conditioned to disconnect from our emotions more and derealization is the ultimate disconnection. It’s like a form of disassociation, except you’re not checking out from your consciousness per se.

You’re not disconnecting from a conversation. It’s that reality itself kind of becomes two dimensional, opaque, flat, and you find yourself really questioning whether what you’re seeing, thinking, hearing, experiencing is real. And that can be brutal.

If you struggle with this, please reach out to somebody that knows how to work with it and go work with them immediately. Generally, again, this is a by-product of some type of PTSD, some type of trauma that has happened that is unresolved and the psyche is trying to work it out. Derealization is also something that can happen when your physical and emotional body is having such an intense experience that it’s almost like it tries to eject you, like your awareness or your consciousness, out of that moment.

You might be having such crippling and overwhelming anxiety, and hopefully you don’t mind me talking about this because for some people, even just listening to it can be activating, so I want to be mindful of that, but you might be experiencing really intense anxiety and when that’s not attended to, or I don’t want to say dealt with, but when it’s not attended to properly, what can happen is it can build to the point where derealization starts to take place. And so it can be a very extreme form of anxiety and of PTSD. So if you’re struggling with derealization, a couple of things can help.

If you are in a relationship, having a conversation with somebody that is in on the game of what’s happening inside of you, and generally what I found for a lot of guys is that when that derealization starts to happen, it’s usually because some really big amount of grief underneath the surface is trying to come up, almost like a water pressure, where you see those geysers that shoot water way up into the sky. Derealization is almost like there’s this pressure building underneath the surface of the psyche that a man’s not aware of, and all of this grief is building pressure and building pressure and building pressure, and it’s trying to come out, but it doesn’t have a vent out. And so what’s happening is he’s experiencing anxiety, anxiousness, worry, panic, frustration, paranoia, that kind of stuff, but he doesn’t realize that underneath that is this massive pressure of grief that’s trying to emerge.

And when you start to tell somebody what you’re experiencing and you let them in on the game, hey, I’m experiencing this, what can happen is that the dam can break. And if you trust and respect and feel safe with that person, then the grief has a place to come out. Very common in men that I’ve worked with that have had trauma in their childhood, have some form of PTSD, whether it’s from being in the military, that when they’re experiencing depersonalization or derealization, that grief has needed a place to come out, but he hasn’t allowed it to.

And so the psyche or the mind’s only way to deal with it is by checking out so fully and completely that it’s almost like you exit from reality, that you try and exit from the three-dimensional plane in which you exist. So talk to somebody, tell them what’s going on inside of you, share what you’re experiencing, and let yourself maybe start to feel and connect to what’s underneath the surface. For a lot of men that I’ve worked with, when that derealization happens and then they communicate to somebody that they trust, whether it’s a therapist, a psychologist, a coach, a wife, girlfriend, a best friend, a partner, a husband, a boyfriend, et cetera, and all of that emotion can come up, then the whole thing can settle back in.

So hopefully that gives you some context–I’m watching as a whole herd of turkeys, wild turkeys walk past in my backyard. I wish I could show them to you–But hopefully that lands with you. These three things are really big things that a lot of men deal with that I don’t think our modern therapeutic industry are supporting men with. If you’re one of the men that struggles with these things and you want to learn more about any of them or you follow me on Instagram, please send me a message, comment, and let me know how I can support you.

If there’s one of these that you want me to go deeper into, give you more tools and resources on, I would love to do so. All right, until next time, thank you very much for tuning in. Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel.

Don’t forget to man it forward to somebody that you know might need to hear this. Until next time, Connor Beaton signing off.

The One Skill That Can Save A Relationship

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Talking points: relationships

We all know how a couple handles conflict can be the difference between love that’s thriving and resilient and something that is…well, the exact opposite: leading through conflict. Listen in for five aspects of the that don’t get talked about often enough, in my opinion.

(00:00:00) – Intro, and a practical definition of conflict

(00:03:14) – Address your conflict kryptonite

(00:05:59) – Ownership over blame

(00:07:57) – Stop seeing conflict as a path to disconnection, and have conflict “agreements” 

(00:10:44) – Breathe, ground, assess

(00:13:30) – The best question to ask

***

Pick up my book, Men’s Work: A Practical Guide To Face Your Darkness, End Self-Sabotage, And Find Freedom: https://mantalks.com/mens-work-book/

Heard about attachment but don’t know where to start? Try the FREE Ultimate Guide To Attachment

Check out some other free resources: How To Quit Porn | Anger Meditation | How To Lead In Your Relationship

Build brotherhood with a powerful group of like-minded men from around the world. Check out The Alliance. 

Enjoy the podcast? If so, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Podchaser. It helps us get into the ears of new listeners, expand the ManTalks Community, and help others find the tools and training they’re looking for. And don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify

For more episodes, visit us at ManTalks.com | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

5 Signs Of A Securely Attached Relationship

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Talking points: attachment, tactics, mindset

Let’s admit we all want a relationship that’s balanced and has minimal conflict and insecurity. I’ve talked about what anxious and avoidant couples do, but how do securely attached couples navigate? Here are five things to model.

(00:00:00) – Intro, and a quick recap on the main attachment styles
(00:07:30) – What do securely attached people in relationships do? Number one: healthy conflict  and resolution building
(00:10:45) – Number two: they operate from a place of trust
(00:12:40) – Number three: they can self-regulate and work towards healthy de-escalation
(00:16:54) – Number four: they have a healthy balance of independence and togetherness
(00:19:45) – Number five: they create, maintain, and repair connection
(00:25:04) – If you’re not sure which one to start with, start here

***
This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Get matched quickly with a therapist who can help you through the tough times and help you learn more about the best version of you yet. Visit BetterHelp.com/mantalks today to get 10% off your first month.

Pick up my book, Men’s Work: A Practical Guide To Face Your Darkness, End Self-Sabotage, And Find Freedom: https://mantalks.com/mens-work-book/

Check out some free resources: How To Quit Porn | Anger Meditation | How To Lead In Your Relationship

Build brotherhood with a powerful group of like-minded men from around the world. Check out The Alliance.

Enjoy the podcast? If so, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Podchaser. It helps us get into the ears of new listeners, expand the ManTalks Community, and help others find the tools and training they’re looking for. And don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify

For more episodes, visit us at ManTalks.com | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Transcript

What are the signs of a securely attached person in a relationship? How do you know if you are securely attached? How do you know if you are engaging in this behavior, and what do you actually need to do in order to create a securely attached relationship or to be more securely attached in your relationship? I’m going to go through the five main things. I’m going to have some action for you to take at the end of this video, so make sure you stay tuned to that. You can always skip ahead, but you’re going to actually need to tune into most of the content here in order to understand the action that you’re going to take at the end.

But before I begin, I want to just give a quick recap. What is an anxious, an avoidant, a disorganized, and a securely attached person? So, I’m going to give you my definition. I have tried to distill these down into the most simple definitions possible for you to hold. So you might want to write these down or just try and remember them if you have a good memory. So here we go. An anxious person.

An anxious person’s experience internally is as follows: I am not okay unless you’re okay. I’m not okay unless you’re okay. So I need to know, are you all right? Are you angry? Are you angry with me? Is it safe to engage with you? Another way of saying this is my nervous system depends on you. My nervous system is not okay. My body, my sense of safety, my sense of independence, my individuality is dependent on you, on you being all right.

If you’re all right, then I have a chance to be all right. This is why anxious people will over-text, over-communicate, constantly check in, those types of things. An avoided person is the inverse of this.

So an avoided person sounds something like, I’m only okay when I do it myself. Or I can’t rely on others to be okay, only I can do that. Or I don’t need you to be okay. And so that is a version of my nervous system rejects you. My nervous system doesn’t need you. There’s a rejection of co-regulation; there’s a rejection of real deep, lasting, and prolonged connection.

This is why a lot of truly avoidant people will sometimes even get with a secure person and that secure person will find themselves getting a bit anxious. You keep pulling away. Or we start to get into a deep relationship or deep intimacy, or we have great sex, and all of a sudden you pull away.

Or things will be going well for a couple of days, and then all of a sudden you pick a fight and you disappear for 72 hours, right? That is an avoidant behavior. My nervous system rejects you, and it can only withstand so much connection before I need space because I have learned to provide safety, security, individuality, independence in a very siloed way. The last one is disorganized attachment.

There’s different forms of disorganized, but I’ve just distilled this down to I need you to be okay in order for me to be okay, then I don’t, and then I’m afraid I can never be okay on my own. So it’s a bit of a combination of the other two. It sort of oscillates back and forth between the anxious.

Sometimes, I need to know that you’re okay in order for me to feel safe. Sometimes I’m going to reject you and don’t care about what you need or don’t need or the boundaries that you’re setting. I don’t care about those things in order for me to be all right. It’s a bit of both of them, and that’s because as a disorganized, my nervous system is on high alert, right? Your nervous system is on high alert as a disorganized and you struggle both to self-regulate and to trust that another person can help you co-regulate.

So what’s a secure? A secure person sounds something like this. I can regulate myself. I’m okay when you’re not okay and I allow you to help me be okay when I’m not okay from time to time.

So notice the secure does three things. I can regulate myself. I’m okay to help myself be okay. When things are stressful, when life is taxing, I know what to do in order to turn down the alarm system in my body. I know what to do to support myself without going off the rails and needing to drink or smoke weed or watch porn. I have good mechanisms to regulate myself and be all right in solitude, in crisis, in conflict, those types of things.

So I can regulate myself. I’m okay on my own. I’m also okay when you’re not okay. This is a big thing that anxious attached people struggle with. As soon as their partner is upset, they’re not all right. They get sucked in immediately.

So I’m okay with myself. I’m okay when you’re not okay. And when I’m not okay, I’m also okay with you supporting me in finding my way back to an okay place, right? So when I’m stressed out, when I’m pissed off at my whatever, at my boss, or when I’ve had a really stressful day because of some client situation in my business, I can have a conversation with you and you can be in a good place and help me get back to a good place. I also trust you to do that.

So those are the three signals of a secure person. I’m all right with me. I’m okay when you’re not all right, right? When you’re upset, I don’t need to personalize it. When you’re sad, when you’re angry, even if you might be angry with me, I don’t need to take that on in such a big way that I need to storm out of the room and close down and stonewall and shut down or become passive aggressive or judgmental. I can also allow you to contribute to me when I’m taxed, when I’m stressed, when I’m just done or overwhelmed, or whatever it is.

So those are the signs of a securely attached person. Now, what are the five things that securely attached people do?

Number one, and arguably the most important because it can be the most challenging, is you both engage in healthy conflict and confined resolutions. You both engage in healthy conflict and confined resolutions. Now the reason why this is so important to engage in healthy conflict and to find resolutions is that this is the number one sign of a healthy relationship. In my opinion, one of the number one signs is that the two of you can navigate through conflict. It’s one of the hardest things because it puts you into direct contact with your nervous system.

How do you as an individual operate and engage when you’re stressed, when you’re overwhelmed, when you feel personally attacked, when you feel like the other person is disappointed with you, when you maybe feel a little bit embarrassed or you’re angry, right, and you start to get frustrated. Your nervous system comes online, and you have to deal with that inside of yourself. And so really healthy couples will resolve conflict within 24 to 72 hours.

Now obviously most relationships have some things that don’t have resolution in the immediacy because they’re more foundational and they take longer periods of time to sort through and sort of chew on and deal with. But when that reoccurring conflict comes up, the two of you are able to find your way back to one another within 24 to 72 hours, ideally 24 to 48 hours. Most avoidance, most anxious people, this cycle will play out for days or weeks at a time, right, where a conflict will happen and one person stonewalls for five or six days or a week until that conflict is just sort of gone or avoided.

This is pretty key because conflict in many ways, conflict’s got a bad rap in our culture, but conflict is how you as an individual and you as a couple sort through the relational issues, discrepancies, you know, differences within maybe values or how you communicate or differences in desires. And so this is an integral part of any relationship. A really great relationship is not conflict free. I think that is a garbage narrative that is spewed out online and that is really detrimental to a lot of people individually and relationally.

What we want is the ability and the capacity to have healthy conflict and the majority of you that are watching this video have likely not seen good examples of that in your life. It’s probably one of the main reasons why you’re watching this video in the first place: because you grew up in an environment where conflict was hostile. It was avoided. One person engaged with it, and the other person shut down or got walked all over and that’s what you view. So you’ve repeated that pattern or you have gone in the complete opposite direction, right? There’s no conflict in my household, and now in my adult relationships, I create a lot of conflict for some reason.

So engaging in healthy conflict is the number one thing. Number two, the second thing that securely attached people do is they operate from the place of it is safe for me to trust you and it is safe for me to trust me. I can trust myself. I trust myself. I trust myself not to text bomb the crap out of you. I trust myself not to blow up and become so volatile in a conflict or an argument that I damage the trust in the relationship.

I trust myself to make good decisions that honor the sanctity of our relationship and I trust you to do all of those same things, right? It’s okay for me to tell you the truth. It’s okay for me to be honest, to express my desires, to express my wants and needs even when they’re hard, even when I’m not sure that you will approve of them or fully accept them, but I trust that it’s okay for me to voice those things. I can take what you’ve said and communicate it to me at face value. I don’t have to relentlessly question it. I don’t have to constantly be on high alert that you might be withholding something from me. That’s a securely attached person and dynamic.

I trust that it’s safe to trust you and I know that it’s safe to trust me. Again, not all the, not a hundred percent of the time, obviously there are some situations where people miss communicating something and it erodes the trust a little bit or they make a bad decision or there is a period of time where the relationship is sorting out for the first couple of years what the real rules of engagement are, what allows the relationship to function in a very healthy way. Those things will be tested over time, but as a general rule, secure people trust the other person and trust themselves in order to communicate what’s necessary.

The third thing that securely attached people do is I can regulate myself so I can calm myself. I can ground myself. I have tools and resources to navigate through my own emotional intensity when I get angry, when I get disappointed, when I’m upset with you as my partner, but I also allow you to contribute to helping to regulate me.

This is healthy de-escalation, healthy de-escalation. I trust myself to be able to regulate, but I also trust that we can co-regulate together. This is part of the conflict thing. For many people, as an example, for avoidance, co-regulation is a non-starter, doesn’t exist in most avoidance lives. The reason for that is because of the environment that an avoidant grew up in. It wasn’t safe for them to trust another person and so they had to do a lot of stuff on their own, or they were abused or abandoned or neglected or really hurt by someone.

They learned that it wasn’t okay to trust another person to help them be all right internally and they had to over-index self-reliance. I can’t trust anybody else to help guide me through this and so I literally have to do all this on my own. This is why, generally speaking, more men are avoidant than women.Now that’s not an absolute. There are many avoidant women that I’ve worked with and there’s many avoidant women I’ve seen in the comments section of my YouTube videos and my Instagram content, but generally speaking more men will be avoidant and more women will be anxious. Just as a general rule, it’s not an absolute.

But this is very important because each person in the relationship needs to know how to de-escalate their systems without checking out, without attacking the other person, without damaging or diminishing the relationship, without villainizing the other person as the entirety of the problem, without stonewalling and emotionally shutting down entirely and disconnecting from the other person emotionally. So you have to develop the tools and the skillset to be able to say, all right, that conversation was hard. That sucked.

I didn’t enjoy that. I disagreed with what you said, or things got heated. I took things personally, and to be able to have some self-accountability of the part that you played in the disconnection and that requires an internal de-escalation emotionally to be able to sift through your own anger, to be able to self-reflect and see your own contribution to the conflict or the problem, but not even just relationally, that you have the tools and the ability to regulate yourself when things outside of the relationship are causing you stress and duress, right? When finances are rough, when your parents are being a pain in your neck, when people at work are acting like complete clowns and it’s stressing the crap out of you because you can’t get your deadline met because you work with somebody that is perceivably incompetent.

Those types of things, you have to be able to trust yourself to be able to regulate, to de-escalate and then when you are maybe overwhelmed or taxed, that you can trust the other person to support you through that process, that you will open up, you’ll talk to them. You’ll talk about some of the things that are challenging in your life right now. You trust them to maybe have some good insight or feedback or that they just listen to you, right? And sometimes that means you communicate, hey, here’s what I really need.

When I’m dysregulated, and that might be too clinical of a word to use in your relationship, but you might want to say, you know, when I’m overwhelmed, when I’m really stressed out, when I’m really on edge, here’s specifically what I could use from you. What doesn’t help is telling me everything that I should do. Don’t try and solve my problem in the moment.

What I really could use from you is X, Y and Z. I would just love for you to listen to me, ask a couple questions, hear me out and sometimes tell me that that’s shitty. Sometimes tell me that that’s pretty hard, but that you have faith and trust that I will be able to figure it out. Like those, whatever it is for you, I don’t know what it is for you.

Maybe some of that resonated, maybe some of that didn’t. The fourth thing that securely attached people do is that they have a healthy balance of independence and togetherness. a healthy balance of independence and togetherness. Because at the core of the avoidant and anxious dance is anxious people will over rely on togetherness.

Remember, I need you to be okay in order for me to be okay. That’s dependence. I need you in order for me to be okay. And independence is the avoidant. I don’t need you. I don’t need you in my life. I don’t need you to be in order for me to be okay. I don’t need you in order for me to be happy. I don’t need you at all.

And that over indexing on independence doesn’t allow for relationship to fully blossom, doesn’t allow for trust, safety, security, deep intimacy, revealing, all of those things to really flourish in the relationship. So there’s a healthy balance of, I enjoy my own independence, going off with my friends, enjoying time with my buddies, whatever it is for you, right? Watching the football game, going racing, shooting guns, whatever your hobby is, going and doing photography, doing yoga. I enjoy solo time, solitude time, time with my own friends.

I have my own life outside of you in this relationship. But then I also contribute and actively curate the togetherness of our relationship. So I invest time and effort and energy into making sure that you and I spend time together.

And both people do that, right? So in an ideal relationship, secure, both people are secure and they are both contributing to the togetherness in the relationship. Finding hobbies, having shared interests, creating shared experiences and memories. I remember this great quote where somebody said, your job as a parent is to make memories for your children.

And I think that in some ways that is true for us as partners in a relationship, that of our job is to help curate these moments of connection and intimacy and love and experiences that you want to have with your person. I think about my relationship with my wife and that’s something that I’m always aiming for and that she’s always aiming for with me, is that we are looking for opportunities to create experiences for one another and that builds this togetherness. But we are also very independent people outside of that, with a very robust life outside of our relationship.

So finding that balance because with the avoidant, there’ll be a lack of togetherness. With the anxious, there will be an over-reliance on togetherness. And with the disorganized, it’ll be a back and forth, right? It’ll be like, I don’t need you, I need you 100% right now and it’ll kind of oscillate and it’ll be confusing for the other person.

So working on that balance of independent time, my own life and togetherness. And the last thing, very, very simple, I tried to break this one down to be very simple because I want it to be kind of tactical. I create, maintain and repair connection. I create, maintain and repair connection. So securely attached people do this constantly throughout the day. They create connection with their partner.

They maintain that connection with their partner when they’re together and they repair that connection with their partner when things have gone astray, right? Maybe you go on a business trip and you’re gone for a couple of days and things are really crazy busy and you come back and you haven’t really talked to your partner in a few days and they’ve been at home with the kids for a couple of days on their own. You can see that they’re stressed out and you make a concerted effort to create connection with them or maybe to repair the connection because they might be frustrated and having like a little bit of resentment of like, you got to go on the road and have a great dinner at this steakhouse and you come home and I’ve just been with the kids locked up in this house for a couple of days or whatever it is in your relational dynamic. So we all do things that break connection and this is part of the conflict.

We all do things that break connection and so one of the things that I found to be very helpful for people is to start to look at how do I individually break connection with my partner? What do I do? Do I stonewall? Do I shut down? Do they text me and I don’t text back? What complaints do they have about me that maybe are valid and true and can I repair those things, right? I remember when my wife and I were first dating, I was in Vancouver. She was in New York. She would go to bed before me and one of the things that she really appreciated was if I just sent her a text before I went to bed, right? Just like, good night.

I’ll talk to you in the morning. She would wake up before me, right? She’d wake up at six o’clock in the morning, New York time, which is like 3, 3.30 in the morning in Vancouver time and so we had this thing where I just text her before bed. She’d text me when she woke up and it was just this connection when we were apart.

It’s super simple, right? Just a super simple contact point and I would remember that when I didn’t text her at night, that was upsetting for her because we had this routine. We had this thing that was maintaining the connection between us when we were apart because when we were together, that wasn’t an issue, right? We didn’t need to do that. So it’s those types of things that you want to build and maintain into your relationship so you can think about how do I want to create connection with my partner? What can I do? Is there a certain look? Is there a certain energy? Is there a certain comment or gesture or a certain way that they like to be touched? Is there a certain gesture that I can do for them to take care of them that’s going to create connection or maintain it or repair it? Sometimes the easiest way to repair connection with any type of partner when it’s been broken is to say, hey, I realized that we had a pretty big disagreement and I think we both contributed to that and I would like to initiate a repair with you.

I’d like to repair with you. Are you open to that? And if you’re not, then let me know when you are. And that simple approach of I’d like to repair with you, let me know when you’re ready can be incredibly powerful for you taking the initiative.

And secure people will do this. They might not have a very scripted thing like I just said, but secure people will have a form of, you know what? That argument didn’t feel good or what happened there. That sucked. I was in the wrong. Let’s make this better, right? And it might be being goofy and playful. My wife does a very good job of this, right? When she’s been in the wrong, it’s usually this very playful, you know, sort of like a little silly engagement because I’m usually a little more like surly and like a bear when I’ve been upset.

And so that like playful silliness is almost this gesture that tells me like, oh, you’re wanting to repair right now. And sometimes I’ll even say to her, if I’m really like, are you trying to repair right now? Is that what you’re trying to do? And she’s like, yeah. Or she’ll come to me and say, you know, I’m sorry. I really want to make things right with you. Are you open to talking right now?

So those types of things, we have to start to bake into the everyday of our relationship because again, those are the things that you didn’t get. If you are an anxious, if you are an avoidant, if you are a disorganized, you didn’t get somebody that was consistently creating connection with you. Hey, do you want to spend time together? Hey, I’d love to talk to you right now. Hey, I’d love to play this board game or go on this hike. Or what are you working on? Tell me about your day at school. You didn’t get those things. Or what you got was a very overbearing, hypercritical type of creating connection. And then maybe some of you got no maintaining connection whatsoever.

Or what you got was a hyper invasive type of maintaining connection where the person was always there and in your business and, you know, trying to, you know, a parent trying to get into your private life and you’re like, get away from me. Or you had somebody that just didn’t repair at all. There was no repairing connection.

So these are the types of things that you have to start to build. Really secure people do these things exceptionally well. If you are not too sure where to start, start with this one. Really look at what can I do to create, maintain, and repair connection when it’s broken, when there’s disconnection that’s happened, or just how do I want to bring more aliveness into the connection with my partner? So the action. This is the action. If you are in a relationship, send this video to your partner or sit down and watch it with them.

The whole thing. See what resonated with them and choose just one action, whether it’s maintaining, creating, repairing connection, regulating the self, finding that balance between independence and togetherness, whatever, whichever pillar, whichever sign you wanted to really focus in on, choose one and commit to three to four weeks of taking action on that one thing. Hey, I want to commit to a month of repairing connection every single time there’s been some argument or some conflict that has disconnected us.

I really want to get present to what I do to create disconnection. As an avoidant, this is super important, and as an anxious, it’s super important. Also, really starting to look at how do I create connection with you? So pick one of the signs, focus in on it for a month, make a plan together and commit to checking in once a week.

How is it going? How are we doing on developing safety and trusting one another and trusting ourselves? How is this actually going? You have to open the lines of communication. So you might want to set, you know, 30 minutes on a Sunday night after the kids go to bed in order to have this dialogue, right? So pick one, take action on it, spend at least 30 days. Please try and give it 30 days to take action on this with your partner.

And as always, man it forward. Share this with somebody that you know will enjoy it, that could use it and need it. And do not forget to subscribe to whatever channel you are tuning in on.

Until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.

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