Purpose & Direction

Men’s Work Sessions – Four Stories, Four Strengths, Four Struggles

Talking points: trauma, validation, mindset, relationships

Recently, I put out a call on Instagram: who wants to join me for a short, recorded Q&A. We had a TON of respondents, but I wanted to highlight four in particular that I feel are unique, but at the same time offer a window into what so many men endure.

These are everyday men from completely different walks of life, all different ages, but united in a single fact: they’re doing the work. I’m deeply grateful to each of them for agreeing to be on the show.

(00:00:00) – The story of S, six years sober, who struggles with people pleasing and feeling stuck

(00:16:04) – C’s struggle with internal validation and the relationship with his father

(00:35:15) – D’s working on feeling worthy, but his relationships have never felt safe or trustworthy

(00:56:47) – P wrestles with some of the contradictions in the self-help space and past trauma

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Connect with David

-Website: https://davidwhyte.com/

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

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

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

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

The Impact Of Demonizing Men

Talking points: culture, masculinity

Broad-brushing things doesn’t help us progress. Broad-brushing people is even worse. Young men are facing what feels to them a hostile landscape, and it’s causing some serious issues. Listen in.

(00:00:00) – The abusive relationship analogy

(00:05:36) – Porn DOES contribute

(00:08:16) – The new narrative

(00:11:03) – Is there a more positive vision for men and masculinity? And a message to guys who are struggling

Transcript

Why are men in such decline?

Why are so many young men checking out of work, more men living at home than ever before, you know, less young men are having sex than ever before, going to college, like less young men are going to college than ever before. Why is this happening?

I think there’s many reasons. I’ve talked about a few of them before, but the one that I don’t think has gotten enough attention is the decades-long campaign of demonizing men and speaking to men and about men as the fundamental problem with every issue in existence, basically. And I’m going to use a relationship analogy, okay?

Imagine that you’re dating somebody and that person starts to tell you that you are a problem, that you’re causing them harm, that you’re damaging them, that you’re a problem in the relationship, that any type of dysfunction that happens in the relationship is your fault, and then it gets worse, right? They start to say they don’t need you, they don’t want you, they actually would be better off without you, the world at large would be better off without you, that you’re a piece of garbage, that, you know, that so many of the issues that they face in life are because of you.

You would either move into a very defensive and attack-oriented stance and position, or you would just start to slink out of that relationship. You’d either, hopefully, you’d exit that relationship entirely, you’d be like, why the hell am I here? Or you would just, you would check out, right? You would literally just check out of that relationship and be like, why in the hell am I in this relationship with you?

But we have made it commonplace, culture, society, has let it become commonplace to make blanket statements about men as being the fundamental systemic problem with society. I mean, imagine the lack of ingenuity and intellectual honesty that you’d have to deploy in order to just blame an entire sex for all of the problems and completely remove any type of personal responsibility for your part in the equation, right? Telling men that they’re not needed, they’re not wanted, that they’re all rapists, that they’re pieces of garbage, that, you know, they’re all narcissists, that they’re all, you know, violent, that they’re all terrible, that society would be better off without you.

What we’re experiencing now in this mass checkout within our society and this massive shift, I mean, I’ve been watching post-election in America as this whole conversation around how men determined this election and how it was misogynistic and all of this sort of intellectual rigmarole that has unfolded in so many political commentators and just individuals, again, blaming men for what happened.

And I think what you’re seeing is the consequences of blaming men for absolutely everything, demonizing men for absolutely everything for decades. And when you do that, there will be consequences. Men will check out, men will start to go into decline as they have. They’ll stop showing up into college spaces because, I mean, let’s face it, I probably wouldn’t want to go to college if I was a 19-year-old kid in today’s world, especially if I was a 19-year-old conservative kid. Like, I would not want to go to a college space, you know.

And even if I was, and I mean, I was very liberal as an early, I got a music degree, you know, but if I was 19 or 20 again, and I was looking at going back to college or going to college, I mean, I’d have some real reservations about whether or not I was welcome on that college campus, whether I would be wanted in that space. And we as human beings are creatures of belonging, and we don’t generally want to go into spaces and places where we do not feel like we belong or that we have to fight for a sense of belonging. And, you know, places like college campuses have always meant to be, they’ve always been a little bit more liberal-leaning, but they’ve always meant to be a place for discourse of difference.

And we’ve lost any type of capacity to disagree without being highly disagreeable. We’ve lost any capacity to disagree with somebody and say, you know what? I don’t agree with what you’re saying, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to try and annihilate you and de-person you online and get you completely canceled. But this has been the modality that we’ve taken. And so many men have been inundated with the conversation that you’re the problem, you’re contributing to the issue, society would be better off without you, or society would be better off if you just acted more like a woman. If you just showed up more like a woman, then you would be, you know, then you’d be accepted. And then men in relationships hear the same thing, right? I don’t need you, I don’t need you around, I’m better off without you, or I’m, you know, whatever it is, I’m a strong, independent woman, I don’t need you. And then that man ends up checking out of that relationship in some capacity because relationships are reciprocal, right? Relationships are meant to be a reciprocal thing. But if you show up in a relationship with somebody and they’re saying, I actually don’t need you to contribute anything to me, then the question starts to manifest of, well, then why am I in a relationship with you? Because I thought we were contributing to one another for one another’s betterment.

So, obviously, there’s many different reasons that we could give why men are struggling, right? I mean, you give men access to porn, you give young, horny men access to pornography, oftentimes way earlier than they can handle. I mean, the fact that there’s no age restrictions on pornography and any 12-year-old boy can go online and watch and see more naked women than literally any man in the span of human history pre-internet saw in his entire life is just insane. You know, that has a very damaging detrimental effect to a young man’s psyche, to a young boy’s psyche, because it skews his sense of what should be accessible. And porn is low-risk, right? Something like pornography is low-risk. There’s no real risk of rejection, but in the real world, the stakes are very, very high.

And so we’ve created conditions for young men where everything’s kind of anti-risk, right? We have helicopter parenting, we’ve got very low-risk sexual gratification acquisition, so you can just go online and watch a whole bunch of porn and get sexually gratified, but you don’t actually have to work for it at all. Whereas in the real world, you have to go and work, you have to go get rejected. There is a high level of risk to approaching a woman, talking to her and asking for her phone number. There’s a very high risk that she’s gonna say no or I’m in a relationship or some form of rejection will happen.

So when you couple telling men for a very long time, you’re the fundamental problem with pretty much everything in existence right now, and you’re not needed, and you couple that with giving them environments that are not conducive for sharpening and helping to develop certain masculine qualities, like being risk smart, being able to take risks, having the resiliency to take risks, those are, generally speaking, things that men thrive off of.

There’s a period of time in a man’s life where he will take a tremendous amount of risks, and some of them are stupid. You know, I mean, some of the risks that I took when I was a young man were absolutely, I mean, just dumb, they were just plain dumb. But those stupid risks that I took helped to inform and helped to rein in my risk-taking ability or a skill, right? Taking a risk is a skill set, and if you as a young man haven’t had the opportunity to take real risks, to develop that skill, then you’re gonna feel less capable within the world and within society.

But the main piece here that I really wanna drive home is we are creating a narrative where it’s become socially acceptable to hate on men in a way that we would never allow with women. We would never, ever allow individuals on any side of the political spectrum to just point blank say women are the fundamental problem and to spew hatred around women. I mean, misandry has become so commonplace and so socially acceptable that I literally have young men reaching out to me saying things like, I grew up in a household where my mom just hated men, and she told me how bad men were, and she told me how she hoped I never became like my father or any of the men that I was around, and so I never really had any kind of role model or idea of what type of man I should be because it just seemed like she just hated men all the time.

And so this type of blatant misandry has become so commonplace that a lot of men don’t even, it’s not even that they don’t even know how to become a good man, it’s that they don’t even want to take the risk to do that because it seems like there’s no winning, there’s no possibility that you could ever develop yourself into a man that society and culture is going to approve of.

And that’s problematic, right, that’s problematic. I mean, on the one hand with women, what we’re saying right now is you do whatever it is that you want. We’re sort of giving women, again, this sort of like blank check of go be whoever and whatever you want. We’re not gonna put any labels on it, we’re not gonna define anything. If you never want to have kids and stay single and work a job for the rest of your life and have five cats, like cool, power to you. There’s some hate around the quote unquote trad wife, right, if you want to be a traditional wife and stay at home and raise kids, there seems to be some commentary around that. But for the most part, it’s like ladies go off and do whatever you want. But for men, there is this huge movement constantly telling men, you need to do this, you need to act like this, you can’t do these things, you can’t say that things, this is misogynist. I mean, everything’s misogynistic now. To the point where if you’re a man who cares about being in shape, you’re a misogynist somehow because you want to keep your body in shape. I mean, it’s gotten to the point where it’s so ridiculous that I think the average man looks out on social media and looks out on the content and the conversation around masculinity and just kind of throws his hands up and is like, I’ll be back when y’all are done with this bullshit. Like, I’ll check back into society when you start to like end this nonsense because this is crazy.

And so I think to wrap this up, what I really want to drive home is that we need a more positive vision for men and masculinity. You know, if you’re somebody out there, if you’re a man that’s trying to work on himself or if you’re a single mom trying to raise a son, you need to have a positive vision for men and masculinity. And we need to eradicate this absolute bullshit garbage notion that we can tell men that the world is better off without them. Men already kill themselves way more than women do. And they do that in part, if you look into the data and the research, which Richard Reeves has talked about a lot, they do that in part because they feel useless, right? A man’s ability to contribute to family, to friends, to society, to culture is incredibly important to him. And when we take that away and we say, you’re not wanted, you’re not needed, I’m going to reject the opportunities for you to develop the skills to contribute, to provide, to add value for your life and the people around you, then men will fundamentally suffer.

And we see this happening. And so we need to create more positive visions, role models, opportunities for men to step into. Second, guys, if you are somebody that is struggling personally and you’ve got caught up in this rhetoric of all men bad, all men the problem, world would be better off without men, and you’re not really too sure where to start, start to pursue some type of adventure IRL, in real life. Get off of online forums. Get off of the online conversations. Pursue adventure in real life. Like go hike in the woods. Go camp. Go touch grass. Go sleep under the stars. Plan a solo trip somewhere that seems wild. Like, you know, motorcycle through Thailand. Backpack through Italy. I don’t know what it is for you. Go pursue some adventure in real life.

Maybe that just means that you go to the local bar and you talk to a woman. You know, and that’s the adventure that you pursue just to see what happens, just to see how it goes. Start to pursue some real adventure in your life so that you have some aliveness. I mean, I think I read through a lot of the comments of men that are struggling, whether they’re young or they’re old, and my gosh, does it sound bleak. You know, I think for a lot of the men that are out there, it just feels and sounds bleak. And how you combat when you feel bleak and hopeless in life is by saying yes to adventure. I mean, this is the whole point of most of what Homer wrote about in the Odyssey and the Iliad, right? It’s like we have to say yes to adventure. Otherwise, stagnation and mediocrity and a kind of bleak, mundane cover just starts to come over our psyche and our hearts and our souls. So say yes to adventure.

And then lastly, as I was talking about before, start to take risks. We need to encourage young men and men in general to take some risks, to start to fail, and to start to develop the ability to know how to take risks, to get better at saying yes, this is a smart risk that I can take. But if we don’t allow them to fail and stumble and get things wrong, if you never allow yourself as a man to develop the skill of being able to have some discernment around what a good risk is and what a terrible, shitty risk is, you will suffer as a man because there is some type of correlation, and maybe I should do another video on this, there’s some type of correlation between you having a very deep level of self-respect as a man and your ability and your competency in being able to take risks because risks take you on a very specific adventure.

So take some risks today, tomorrow, this week. Let that be your mission for a little while. And for the love of all that is holy, can we all stop feeding into this narrative that men are just point blank the problem to everything and that the world would be better off without men? The world would literally collapse in a matter of hours if men just disappeared. Everything would fall apart immediately because men are necessary and so are women.

So anyway, I’d love to hear why you think men are in decline. I’d love to hear your take and your thoughts on this conversation, specifically about the demonization of men over the last few decades. And don’t forget to man it forward. Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel. Until next week, Connor Beaton, signing off.

A Man’s Guide To Being Naturally Attractive

Talking points: mindset, attraction, relationships

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

(00:00:00) – Be untameable—somewhat

(00:09:50) – Develop emotional sovereignty

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

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

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

Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Man’s Guide To Divorce

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

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

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

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.

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

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/

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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…

A Man’s Guide To Helping Your Anxious Partner

talking points: anxiety, psychology, relationships

If you’ve ever been with someone who struggles with anxiety, this one’s for you. A lot of men lean heavily into trying to fix things, even making it their entire mission. Here are some alternative steps that respect responsibility, autonomy, and help strengthen the relationship.

(00:00:00) – Intro, my working definition of anxiety, and the many places it comes from

(00:05:42) – Signs of anxiety in your partner

(00:10:47) – So what do you do? On reinforcement and co-regulation

(00:14:59) – Attune to her signs, and physical touch

(00:17:36) – How to balance leaning into discomfort with backing off

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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

Transcript

All right team, welcome back to the ManTalks Show, Connor Beaton here. And today, I’m going to be talking to you about how to help your partner when they are anxious. So if your girlfriend or your wife is somebody that struggles with anxiety and you’re not really too sure what to do, whether they have an anxious attachment, whether they just struggle with anxiety in general, we are going to be talking about what anxiety is, the signs that your partner might be anxious, and the signs that oftentimes we miss, and then what to do specifically.

Now what I want you to know up front is that just because she’s anxious, just because your partner is anxious, it doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with her or you or the relationship. And it doesn’t mean that there is something for you specifically to fix. What happens for a lot of men, especially the nice guys or the guys that find their worth and their value in sort of providing solutions within a relationship, is that they can get caught in this loop that every single time that your partner gets anxious or has some anxiety, that your rational brain turns on and is like, okay, let me figure out how to solve this problem.

And that can create more anxiousness in your partner. It can cause them to feel like there’s something wrong with them, perpetuate the anxiety. It can frustrate the crap out of you because you are very likely not able to solve their anxiety or fix it indefinitely, and so it can create all types of challenges.

So what is anxiety? Well, the anxiety that I’m talking about and the way they’re going to be talking about is an excess of energy in the body, right? So neurologically, when you look at the brain and you look at the different centers of the brain and the neurons that are firing in different centers of the brain when you are having anxiety is very similar to the parts of the brain that are firing when you are having excitement. So the anxiety that I’m talking about is an elevated state within the body, an elevated energetic state and an elevated alarm state in the body. So it might be an excess of thoughts, might be an excess of unwanted physical sensations, it might be an excess of emotions that feel a little wild or uncontrollable, and it’s generally an excess of future-based realities, future-based worrying.

Now that worrying–just to sort of hone in on that one piece for a moment–very common for people with anxiety to be experiencing something in the present that they are worried is not going to go away, right? It’s like, oh no, I feel anxious. Is this ever going to go away? Am I going to have to deal with this all day now? Is this going to be around until I go to bed? And that can spiral up the anxiety. So that’s the anxiousness that I’m talking about.

Generally speaking, when people have anxiety, depending on the severity of it, and this is all to contextualize it for you because maybe you and your partner have never really talked about how they experience their anxiety, which I would encourage you to do if they are comfortable with it. But generally speaking, you can think about anxiety as the sensation that things are starting to move very quickly, and move very quickly energetically either within, so your emotions are starting to go fast, your thoughts are starting to go fast. For a lot of people, their breath and their heart rate start to elevate when they have more anxiousness and more anxiety in their body.

And so that state, that physiological state or the mental state that they can find themselves in often sets off the alarm system in their body and they want to escape from it. It’s like, get me the heck away from this. I don’t want to feel this way. How do I get rid of what I’m feeling right now? So the anxiety can be caused by a number of different things. It can be from past trauma, right? It could be remnants of, like, a PTSD type of situation. It can be because that individual is lacking some self-worth and it manifests in their relationship as anxiousness.

It can be because of past betrayals from you or previous partners and a host of other causes. So there’s many different things that can contribute to anxiety for that person. Knowing some of their triggers can be helpful, but to be honest, anxiety can, you know, set in at strange times.

You know, it’s like when you were a young man, oh boy, this is going to be an analogy. Here we go. It’s like when you were a young guy and you would be in random places when you’re going through puberty and all of a sudden you’d be getting, you’d get a boner and there’d be no reason for it, right? You’re like, you’re on the school bus on your way to school, and all of a sudden you have an erection. You’re like, what is this doing here? Like, why do I have this right now, you know, or just strange situations where you all of a sudden have an erection.

That’s what anxiety is like for a lot of people. That’s a terrible analogy because erections are great and anxiety for a lot of people is not so great, but that’s what it’s like. It can just happen at certain moments when you’re least expecting it with no real prompting, you know, with no real external or internal trigger.

Now, again, it can be helpful for that individual to start to identify what they know some of their triggers are. You know, for some people, it’s going to be certain social situations. For other people, it’s going to be certain conversations within the relationship. I mean, we just go down the rabbit hole, but those can be helpful. I’m going to give you the signs now. Okay, let’s talk about the signs.

I’m going to talk about women specifically. These, some of these are going to cross the border into how men display their anxiety, but let’s talk about how to know when your partner is anxious. A good sign is that she may not want to be social on a regular basis or that there are certain social situations that she does not want to be in because those situations might cause her to feel anxiousness.

I remember I was with a friend recently, one of my wife’s friends, and we were out in a public setting, lots of people around, and we were walking and I noticed immediately that as more and more people started to come around us in this social setting, she, her whole body language started to change, and I just went and put a hand on her shoulder and I said, how are you doing? She’s like, man, I feel so anxious right now. I was like, yeah, I can tell. So certain social environments might cause her to feel anxious.

Different moods and swings, you might notice that she’s easily irritated or constantly overthinking. Those can be a manifestation of anxiousness and anxiety in certain people. Constantly checking in on you and the relationship like, oh, are you okay? Is everything all right? Are you all right? That can be a really, really strong sign of that anxiety that manifests in your relationship where she might just text you and check in on you or constantly checking in on you. Again, it’s not a personal thing. You don’t need to personalize it. It is a manifestation and a byproduct of her anxiety.

Negative self-talk, you might notice that sometimes she self-deprecates or puts herself down and you’re like, where does that come from? That can also be a part of the anxiety. Another big one that I see very common in a lot of professionals is hyper busy and overworked. So some people will, instead of dealing with their anxiety directly, they are constantly busy.

This is the person that’s working super, super hard, comes home, needs to be cleaning, needs to be busy, doing busy work, kind of like doing nothing all the time, but doing something all the time, and can’t seem to sit still and just find calmness and peace. That is a very big sign that they have anxiousness and anxiety in their body, and they don’t really know what to do with it, and so they’re trying to busy it out. Last one is this kind of paranoid, I hear a lot of guys say this, my partner, my girlfriend, my wife, she’s paranoid.

She’s paranoid that I’m going to betray her, I’m going to do something, or I’m not telling the truth, and it’s like, I’m telling her exactly how I feel and what I think, but she just doesn’t believe me. That can be another sign of anxiety. It’s not to excuse any behavior that might ensue from that, like digging through your phone constantly, or invading some of your privacy, or whatever that looks like, but that paranoia sometimes can come from that anxiousness of, is he going to betray me? Is he lying? Am I safe? Because remember, anxiety is an excess of energy that is generally coming from the experience of lacking safety.

I am unsafe in some way, and what that can do is cause your partner to try and over-rely on you, try and over-index on ensuring that there’s safety within the relationship, that it’s solid, looking for different cues. She might also be very hyper-vigilant in noticing any subtle changes in you, so if you’re tired or if you’re stressed out and overwhelmed in a certain way. I’ve seen this a lot in couples that I’ve worked with where the guy’s like, I just can’t catch a break.

She just is so hyper-vigilant and hyper-tuned into what I’m feeling and thinking and going through that if I’m ever off, she’s like lasered in on it, and it’s almost like it’s not okay for me to not be okay. That is a very common theme. I’m going to get into what to do next, but that’s a very common theme that can cause some frustration in a relationship.

Whenever you are not okay, you’re stressed, you’re overwhelmed, you’re maybe a little disconnected or withdrawn, that’s going to activate the crap out of her anxiety, and this is why a lot of anxious-attached people get in relationship with avoidant-attached people and why it’s so hard for that dynamic to end. Oftentimes when an anxious and avoidant come together, it is a recipe for a disaster in the relationship, but it’s also a recipe for a very hard ending because they almost never want to let go because there’s something about it, that dynamic, that activates the avoidance and activates the anxiousness, and it can be intoxicating in some ways and really, really frustrating in other ways. What do you do? What do you do? How do you support your partner when they are anxious? A couple of different things.

If she’s worried about the relationship, asking questions, are we okay? Are you all right? Are you thinking about it? I don’t even know. I don’t want to give some examples and then get in shit for this, but do you think about other women? Are you sure you want to be with me? Do you think about leaving me? Those types of worries and insecurities that can come up from an anxiousness, there’s nothing wrong with reaffirming your commitment, reassuring that you love her, and reinforcing that you want to be in the relationship. Sometimes that is the prescription that’s necessary.

Now, what I want to put as a caveat, an asterisk in here, is it’s not your responsibility to do that all the time in the relationship. So you need to have a conversation with your partner, with your anxious partner, when their anxiousness is not hyperactivated, and say, hey, listen, I love you. I love reinforcing that I want to be with you.

I’m happy to reassure you in moments when maybe worry and concern happens, but I really would love for you to start working on reassuring yourself and looking for the clues and the cues that tell you that I really want to be here. Can you start to do that? So get her buy-in and commitment so that the reassurance and the reaffirmation that you want to be in the relationship, that the relationship is stable and okay, doesn’t rest solely on your shoulders.

And this is what a lot of men do. They see a mission. They’re like, oh, I can reinforce that I want to be with you. And then that becomes all-consuming.

So get her buy-in to have her start to look for the cues and the clues that the relationship’s okay, it’s stable, you love her, you want to be in the dynamic, and that will help her move into a more secure, less anxious space. Number two, begin to help co-regulate. Now there’s a number of different ways that you can do this.

I’m going to give you a couple of them because this is one of the biggest things that you can do with your partner. When she’s not anxious, ask the question, based on what you know about yourself and your anxiety, what do you know or think would help you when you’re anxious? So what can I actually do to support you? She might have some ideas. She might have no idea at all.

Either one is okay, but exploring this as a couple can be incredibly helpful because she might say, you know what, I just need you to put your arm around me, or I just need you to give me some words and remind me that I’m okay. You know, those types of things. The next thing that you can do to help co-regulate is have some code words to lessen the possible embarrassment of when she’s feeling anxious.

So I’m going to use an example. In my marriage, this isn’t about anxiety, but it’s about being hangry. My wife, when we first started dating, she’d get hungry when we were traveling. I remember we were in Paris once and we were exploring the city, and I could just see her getting more and more and more crunchy. And I was like, what is going on? She’s like, I’m so hungry right now. And if we don’t get food, I’m going to tear somebody’s head off.

And I was like, oh, okay. And so we created code words, lemonade, pink lemonade, and Arnold Palmer. And it was like degrees of hanger. And so she would say, I’m lemonade right now. And I was like, oh, okay, we got to find food. So if you put some language to this, it can be very helpful, especially if your partner is somebody that struggles with social anxiety.

They might not want to just come out and say, hey, I’m feeling anxious right now. That might feel overwhelming, confronting, et cetera. And so if you have a little bit of playfulness around it and you have this shared language and she can come to you and say, hey, lemonade.

And that’s the signal of like, oh, she’s got a little bit of anxiety. It’s like, okay, well, here’s what I can do. I can put my arm around you and et cetera. You can have some mechanisms to then co-regulate together during that space. So have code words that can lessen the possible embarrassment. And next, begin to attune to the possible signs that she might be struggling.

Changes in breath, changes in body posture and body language, changes in communication and the way that she’s engaging with you or other people. There are patterns, right? People that have anxiety, they have very specific patterns of expressing that anxiety through their body, through their breath, through their language, how they begin to maybe start to shut down or pull away or close off. And so start to attune yourself to the external signs that you see that she might be experiencing anxiety because then you can check in.

Hey, how are you doing? How are you feeling today? That can be helpful under certain circumstances. But what I will say is please do not over-ask your anxious partner how they are doing. Because what that does is cause them to then self-reflect.

And for some people, they’re going to start to worry like, oh, am I okay? And like, why is he asking? So start to tune into the signs for yourself and you can be preemptive. If you notice like, oh, she’s doing that thing where she’s starting to close off and she seems like a little squirrely and she’s like frantically cleaning something, that’s the sign. Okay, that’s the sign.

I’m going to go in. I’m going to give her a big bear hug and get her to take a couple breaths with me. Next, physical touch, physical co-regulation, okay? For some people, when I’ve worked with couples, they’ve found that helping your partner get some of that energy out, that excess energy, like, hey, I’m going to hold your hands.

Let’s jump up and down. Let’s stomp our feet right now. I’ll shake your shoulders a little bit playfully, right? Not aggressively. We’re not trying to like shake the baby. That’s a very dark joke. But playfully, all of this is playfully. Bear hug, a little bit of a squeeze. What I do with my wife is I’ll wrap my arms around her. I’m not giving her a tight squeeze and hug, but I’ll give her enough of a hug that I’m like, I’ve got you. I could pick you up right now. I’m holding you. And then I’ll say, take a couple breaths with me. And I’ll lead that like deep inhale, nice long exhale. And I’ll just say, soften into me. I got you.

And guiding your partner through that in that way can be very helpful for her, even if she’s not really aware that she’s anxious. And even if she’s not anxious, sometimes it’s just nice to have this baseline that you’ve created in your relationship of regulation, that you are leading the charge of regulation in the dynamic. The last thing I’m going to say is about not going along with the anxiousness, but sometimes with anxiety, people will want to change plans.

They’ll want to cancel things. They’ll want to shift behaviors. They won’t want to engage with things that they have agreed to engage with.

And generally speaking, I like to use the 80-20 rule. So if you are the non-anxious partner, it can be very beneficial to be a stand for moving into the places and spaces that might be anxiousness inducing or that your partner, not actively anxious inducing, not like trying to jump out of an airplane or anything like that, but in the places and spaces, the conversations where that person knows they’re probably going to feel a little bit of anxiousness. And so if you are the stand for moving into that space, that can be very helpful.

The 80-20 rule comes into a lot of the times people with anxiety are going to want to back out. They’re going to want to change plans. They’re not going to want to do, especially if it’s somebody that has social anxiety.

And what you can do is be really grounded and somewhat firm in saying, no, we’re going to go do this. And so 20% of the time, you might need to shift. You might need to alter things.

You might need to stay put and just breathe and support them. 80% of the time, you can support your partner in facing, leaning into the anxiousness, right? As the saying goes, the only way out is through. The only way through the anxiety is to face it and not hate it.

People with anxiety generally hate their anxiety. And they really loathe when it comes up, whether it’s just with you in a sexual encounter, or it’s in a conversation with you, or it’s in a social setting. Generally speaking, when their anxiety comes up, it’s like, oh, here’s this thing.

I hate this part of me. And that can cause them to start to collapse. So if you can support them in facing the anxiety by having some of those hard conversations, engaging in the places and spaces that might be anxious, and support them in a kind of exposure therapy, again, you are not their therapist.

It’s not your responsibility to fix them. It’s not your responsibility to do this for them. But it can be your responsibility to hold the frame that this is where we are going to move.

And usually that is best if it comes from a place of, I trust you, and I see you as somebody that can face this. I see you as somebody that can make it through this experience. Not just your anxiety as a whole, but this maybe anxious-inducing situation.

So those are my rules of engagement, the things that I have found to work really, really well for couples. Let me know which one really landed for you. Definitely man it forward.

Send this to somebody, and probably listen to this if you’re in a relationship with somebody that has anxiousness, if they are comfortable with listening to it. Send it to them and say, hey, what about this really resonated? Maybe there’s a bunch of stuff that I disliked 90% of what he said, but that 10% really hit. Great. Take that 10%. So share this with your partner. And as always, this is Connor Beaton signing off.

See you next week.

John Lee – Iron John’s Legacy, Robert Bly, And Early Men’s Work

Talking points: masculinity, culture, mythopoetics, Robert Bly, Iron John

Maybe you’ve heard it said that there are lots of “olders”, but barely any elders. John Lee is one of the latter, in my opinion. A critical player in men’s movements of the 90s and close friends with Robert Bly, John is a wealth of knowledge, insight, and honest talk—and no stranger to deep work. Listen in, team.

(00:00:00) – Intro, and what brought John to where he is today

(00:06:23) – The impact Robert Bly had on the mythopoetic men’s movement, and what that was

(00:20:36) – Why Iron John is still relevant

(00:31:41) – Are men struggling with different things now compared to the start of the mythopoetic men’s movement?

(00:38:58) – The dark father archetype, and the difference between Robert Bly and Jordan Peterson

(00:43:20) – What can the study of myth do for the average man, and how the manosphere falls short

John Lee is a pioneer in the fields of self-help, anger, codependency, creativity, recovery, relationships, and men’s issues. In the mental health field, he is considered the therapist’s therapist and regularly trains and mentors therapists on how to work with clients and how to work on themselves. He has taught his techniques and theories to thousands of individuals, couples, families, groups, corporations, and therapists all over the world. After 35 years of touring nationally and internationally, John Lee calls Austin, Texas his home.

Connect with John

-Website: https://johnleebooks.com/

-Seminar; From Hero To Elder: https://wakingheartschoolofwisdom.com/events/from_hero_to_elder/

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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 | <a…

Dr. Warren Farrell – What’s Weighing Down Young Men?

Talking points: culture, masculinity, relationships

Warren’s been a consistent and committed voice for men for decades now, an it’s been far too long since we’ve talked, so when I wanted to get some insight on how things have changed—or not—he was the obvious choice! We cover the complexity of what “makes” a man, get into politics, and some solid practical advice for couples. Enjoy and dig in.

(00:00:00) – What’s happening to young men in today’s culture
(00:09:47) – Warren’s take on why there seems to be negation or dismantling of biological underpinnings of maleness 
(00:17:53) – Is there really a difference between men and women, and Warren on listening first, solving second
(00:26:08) – Why do we see a gender divide in politics?
(00:36:06) – What Warren would say to men in their 20s and 30s
(00:41:54) – On Warren’s book Role Mate To Soul Mate, and what makes falling in love easy but sustaining love difficult
(00:52:27) – Advice if you feel like you’re always walking on eggshells with your partner

Warren Farrell, PhD, has been chosen by the Financial Times of London as one of the world’s top 100 thought leaders. His books are published in 19 languages. They include The New York Times bestseller Why Men Are the Way They Are, and the international bestseller The Myth of Male Power. Dr. Farrell presented the findings of The Boy Crisis (2018) worldwide, from the White House to the Norwegian Parliament. It was a catalyst for bipartisan legislation for father involvement in Florida.
Dr. Farrell’s most recent book, Role Mate to Soul Mate: The Seven Secrets to Lifelong Love (2024), is based on his teaching couples’ communication for the past 30 years to more than a thousand couples and psychologists. Warren has been a pioneer in both the women’s movement (elected three times to the Board of the National Organization for Women in NYC) and the men’s movement (called by GQ “The Martin Luther King of the men’s movement”). He advocates for a “Gender Liberation Movement, freeing both sexes from the rigid roles of the past.” His life journey is the subject of a forthcoming documentary.

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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
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