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Bryce Giron Mathern: Welcome to the Man for Real Podcast. We are here to celebrate men as well as talk about how all men can do better and lead our world to a healthier place. Get ready to get real. Hello everyone. Welcome to the podcast. Today I’m honored to have Steve Saporin on to talk about his journey from trauma to a more fulfilling, peaceful life that he is living today. Steve Saporin, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. I appreciate being here. Yeah, it’s great to have you. I’d like to start maybe with your journey as a man, as kind of, you know, things that have happened to you that kind of led you to this point to kind of this discovery of your kind of neuro journey and maybe give us a sense of like what has kind of brought you to where you’re at today. Just so people could get to know you. Great. Thanks so much for that. question. You know, I had a significant life change about a year ago where I quit a 30-year career in finance to talk about my experience of this journey. And I look at it now like I had four major blessings in my youth. And most people would characterize three of them as tr you know, very traumatic childhood abuse. And one was having a really loving and caring mother that really infused that in me. And we can talk about it later, but you know, as you reject some of the difficult things, you’re often rejecting the good things. and so the story is grew up in a home with significant domestic abuse. My father was a World War Two veteran, landed on Normandy Beach, didn’t have any of the wonderful services that we have. was traumatized, violent, alcoholic. And I lived in a very violent home for most of my life. And that, you know, my mother took those blows and she exhibited all the things of someone under dramatic stress, including multiple cancers and lupus and Epstein’s bar. And I kind of watched her waste away where she died relatively young in my early twenties. And she was that really loving piece to me. And then I I, you know, at this point I feel like my spiritual path was just to engage in these traumas and and be able to be where I’m at now. So walking out into my neighborhood, I lived on a street with a church, I was targeted there for sexual abuse, long-term sexual abuse, where I was told I was gonna be killed if I spoke, developed a really intense stutter from that time, you know, five or six years old until nearly graduating high school, to the point where. Every syllable was stuttered on, especially when I was young, very, very big part of my life. And I was also told I was gonna be killed if I didn’t I mean, excuse me, my parents were gonna be killed if I didn’t come back. So I have this experience of a young kid kind of lying to my family and pretending to go out to play and getting abused. And then just randomly, first time I ever spent the night at a friend’s house to do a sleepover. I was left in a car. This is nineteen seventy five when my sister went into seven eleven and a man running up the street committed a mass murder. And I witnessed it and he ran right in front of my car and pointed a gun right at me and we locked eyes. And it it wasn’t until I started researching my story to talk about it a bit that I realized that I’m very likely here because I’m white. He only killed black people that day. I lived outside of D C. So anyway, you can imagine that sets your nervous system up in a certain way. And most of the things I’m describing happened before seven and the time where your brain is really developing. And people who’ve had those experiences, they go in a lot of different ways, but two of them often are heavy addiction. And if they make it to a certain point, people with those experiences are really good entrepreneurs. So I kind of was I did both of those things really well. First time I was ever blackout drunk, I was five years old. I was orienting around substances from a very early age, getting kicked out of school, DUI, you know, the whole thing. And ⁓ you know, I graduated college and I read a book about money management and a guy doing it a certain way that I thought I could fit into my life. And so by the time I was 30, I was managing hundreds of millions of dollars, getting a lot of accolades for my outside work in the world. You know, a lot of people shocked given who I was when I was growing up that I was doing that. And my mother passed away during that time. And somebody who was already, you know, pretty much a very addicted person became a full-on drug addict. So I was a crack addict for, you know, probably longer than a decade, four or five nights a week just doing it. Really just this whole pattern of behavior developed that I was unable to be in the present moment at all. I oriented around the future. As I’ve done more work on myself and my body and my spiritual path and really reflecting on who I was from the moment I woke up in the morning until I went to bed, there was a constant desire not to be in the present moment. And so I I fulfilled that with all kinds of things. Work, shopping, sex, tra you know, whatever it was, don’t be here now. And ⁓ You know, married a beautiful, very charismatic woman with a similarish background. We had two kids and our marriage devolved, you know, ten or eleven years ago. And as that happened, and people tend to do, you you reach for things. So I joined a men’s group ten years ago. Not really a joiner, just somebody who was just at their wit’s end. And that really was a turning point in my life. I live in Boulder, Colorado. I had just moved. The here then. It’s a place with a lot of really good therapists and just wise, cool, kind people. And that group slowly over time taught me how to be vulnerable for the first time in front of men, get feedback that vulnerability was actually a positive trait, not one that I was, you know, I was trying to avoid it my entire life. About five years ago, I’ve learned what trauma was and that I had it. And so I started going after it in a way that I I mean I do have a focused part of me that can get some things done. And I engaged some of the my approaches to business to kind of attacking my trauma. And I just did it all, you know, from flying to the Naval Academy to get stellic ganglion blocks to working with somatic therapy, psychedelic therapy, men’s group, just whatever it was, I was doing it. And especially through psychedelics, you know, what really seemed to happen was psychedelics gave me these moments of real insight and identity change that really helped me to say, ⁓ this is who I am now. And then fortunate enough to change behaviors quickly after them. And and things were moving. And last year, what happened, I would say, like, you know, anybody in 2025 in January who’d known me you know, for a long time would have outwardly known things are going in a good direction for Steve, right? He hasn’t drank for four years, he’s lost fifty pounds, he’s just generally kind of more stable and present. But the somatic experience of my life was maybe a bit muted, but the still the same dynamic. And, you know, I was never intending to be a drug addict at 10 a.m. in the morning. You know, what what would happen was I would have these sensations and they would build and I’d be distracting all day. And then, you know, at three o’clock I would say, Well, I probably won’t be doing it, but I really would know I would be. And by six or nine PM, I you know, I’d just give it in. And I’d learned how to deal with that with yoga instead of cracking, you know, kind of more po positive ways of being. But that dynamic still remained where And it was really part of a story of being broken and you know, feeling like there was something wrong with me from the way that I was born. I didn’t know myself before I was being abused, really. So this is just how I was. And what happened in early last year is is I believe my nervous system regulated to an appropriate nervous system. Like I get dysregulated when the time is right. I can regulate, I move up and down. And that was a very That was a very emotional thing for me. Yeah. Yeah. Just take a moment. That’s that’s amazing. You know, to to feel that and to have the realization that I wasn’t inherently wrong. And one thing that was very valuable for that was neurofeedback, and we could talk about that. But at that point, took me a couple of weeks, but basically I never felt I had the opportunity to have a purpose in my life. You know, my purpose was just not to negatively impact the people around me, you know, in my vicinity, because of given who I was and all that, and and when this happened, I just decided there’s probably millions of people, especially men, who’ve had these kinds of circumstances. And I’m blessed in the fact that although I’ve had a lot of shame and feeling, you know, unworthy. I don’t have a particular shame about, you know, a 60-year-old man abusing me as a kid. Like I can talk about that. And I know communicating my story has been helpful to people that have had those experiences. So I decided to try to figure it out. So I started a podcast called The Neuros Journey. And for me, you know, a big part of what I think healing is is courage and love. And you know, given what I told you being silenced as a kid, it would have never occurred to me to speak publicly all the time and make that my career. But as that emerged, it felt like a nice closing of that circle, right? Not only am I going to have the courage to say, no, I can communicate. I’m gonna try to do it for something that’s very loving, not only to myself, but to other people. And so I started a podcast. I’m doing that, I’m writing a book. Just generally trying to figure out how to be of service in some way. And just kind of feeling my way through it. And now I’m here on the f on the side with you. That’s the basic story, brother. Wow. Wow. That’s amazing. I mean, it’s hard to hear on one hand and it’s also really powerful to hear like what you’ve been through. I just feel a lot of don’t know. I feel a lot of empathy and care for what you went through. I can really feel that in my body right now. Yeah. That’s a lot. I can’t even imagine. Can’t even imagine. Well, thank you. And it’s an interesting thing to orient around because I feel like part of my spiritual path, which is really deepened, you know. And so most of what we’ve talked about is sort of my trauma history and overcoming it. And what I thought was I was gonna be Steve without trauma. But what’s emerged is a very different person. And as I’ve gotten more space from it, spirituality has helped me really look at and I appreciate the empathy for sure. And I have it for people. And I mostly have empathy for the little version of me. I also orient around this is it couldn’t have happened any other way. Much of what I respect about myself is related to how I have dealt with things that you know require courage and resilience. And so, you know, no one can get to this place till they can. But I really do look at them as blessings now. Yeah. Wow. One thing that strikes me about, you know, your story too is just how you know I see this in my work a lot. It’s just people have gone through really difficult things and it feels so normal to them. Feels so normal. You know, like it’s like they don’t actually notice that it’s a thing until they’re just telling people and they’re telling people and then they’re they’re even hearing their words and like, ⁓ yeah, that’s that’s kind of a lot, actually. But it’s so Interesting how from such an early age you were experiencing this abuse and this trauma and that just became your way of experiencing the world. One of the things that I’m curious about for you is, you know, you started to feel this capacity for your nervous system to, I want to say, kind of drop into a more regulated place. And obviously it’s not perfect, it’s up and down, and it’s like like all of us. I wonder like Do you have a sense of like how your nervous system was operating before you were able to get to that place? Do you have a sense of that? Well, I mean, it was definitely operating on a fear survival based kind of paradigm. And it was undermining me in quite a lot of ways. I’ll give you an example just in the therapy realm, right? You know, couples counseling. So you go to couples counseling, couples counselor makes a very reasonable request of me, right? Listen to what she has to say, like, you know, kind of repeat it back so she understands she’s heard. Hey, and then I’m, you know, I’m a pretty cool cat. Of course I’ll do that. You know, I would do that. Nobody really trapped in enough to kind of explore whether that was physiologically an option for me. But really what I started to understand in hindsight after many years after that was that wasn’t a request that I could truly honor. Because what would happen is if I’m getting to a point where somebody’s reflecting to me behaviors that are difficult for them, my behaviors especially, you know, all kinds of stories start to come into me and just hijack my nervous system. Things that they aren’t even saying. I don’t love you anymore. I’m gonna leave you. Like all these things are, you know, they’re coming on because, you know, I did have The woman who protected me and loved me most, you know, she left the world early and she gave her life up for me. And so I had that in my dynamic. And so what would happen was in those circumstances, I would deflect, I would blow up, I would blame, I would do any one of many things that was in my skill set then to not hear that and not abide by my agreement. And then I would feel a bunch of shame. Like, why can’t I just do this thing? Like I, you know, and then it spiraled right into all these like self-negative talks. And I don’t know, but I’m sure my partner was looking at me like this cat’ll never be able to do it. And so that’s, you know, a thing now that I can do. And if, you know, and I’m of course, like we talk about, I get dysregulated and there’s all kinds of times I don’t act cool. I have an ability to say I’m sorry in a way that I never could before. I think, and I don’t hear people talk about this much, but I think the trauma that I experienced really made it difficult for me to lay and I’m sorry out there. And and really mean it because if I’m saying I’m sorry, what I was really saying is I am broken in some way. And it wasn’t a mistake that I made, but I knew without kind of being able to articulate it in the way that I can articulate it now that like I couldn’t do what I was said. So if I had to say I’m sorry for last night, I had to say I’m sorry for me as a person. Right. And so nobody really gave me this framework of like, well, you know, that’s kind of not in a I think there could have been opportunity for us to come together around it. Right. Hey, if if we both understood, we could have said, ⁓ that’s what was happening. ⁓ I’m sorry for and all these things. So that nervous system from everywhere, from you know, planning every minute of a vacation so nothing pops up, you know, to whatever it was, it was operating and I was very close to survival mode at almost all times. And I really it also took a lot of nuance out of me, right? Because my emotional system seemed binary, superactivated or not. And when it was not, I was just like, thank God, you know. I can relax a minute here. So when, you know, learning feelings and ⁓ I mean, I just had like by, you know, mad or sad, like there wasn’t much in there. So that it’s just opened up a whole new world of experience to me. And one thing I would say is man, I’ll just bring it in and the cultural programming that we get To subdue what I consider the most beautiful part of human existence, which is actually feeling. When I was walking in, I told you about the murder that I witnessed, mass murder, when I was being taken from my car to the 7-Eleven just to calm things down. As a six-year-old boy, what I was saying to myself was, do not cry. Do not go in there and cry. Don’t cry. I mean, I just witnessed many people murdered and a gun point at me. And somehow programming gotten to me at six years old that I could not cry in front of the clerk in seven eleven. Yeah. You know, so it’s really been that’s why I’m doing this and why I just feel so blessed and so much love for people now because I I’m in a completely different existence than I had. You know, I I live in a completely different manner than I did for fifty some years of my life now. And really, although it’s been building to it, it’s really only been a year and a half that this change has happened. Mm-hmm. Well, one of the things I’m curious about, it sounds, you know, you’ve done a lot of different things, it sounds like, over these years to to kind of get you to this place. One of the things that’s really stood out to me was this being a part of a men’s group. And I thought you spoke really eloquently about it. You know, I think we’ve had some other guests on the podcast around men’s groups But I just wanted to kind of get a little bit more of that experience for you because I think one of the things that I think has been really transformative in my own life is my ability to feel and receive love from other men. I was really I don’t know if it was hard exactly, but it was it was almost like I could let a little bit of it in, but there was like a limit. It was like pretty minimal. And now it’s pretty there’s a lot of openness there to to really give and receive love from men. And I don’t know. There’s something I think is really transformative about that that I I kind of wanted to to get your point of view on and what that was like for you. Yeah, I mean, I couldn’t be more in favor of men’s groups, whether or not you’ve had the experiences that I had. I mean, given our society and culture and what’s happening out there, and I’m sure many of the people listening to this know the stats of loneliness and all the things. You know, I had it’s an interesting the difference between men would show love. You know, given who I was, I was very outward. I developed a lot of friends that had some sort of similar background. And we showed each other love kind of through aggression, right? You know, we would tease each other or say things to each other in a way that n if anyone else said it to we would fight them, right? And it was this sort of like, and we wouldn’t say I love you, but like. You know, it was a very different kind of way. So I felt like growing up I had a community of bros, but I you know, we just we didn’t have the tools or the way to really do it. And then I met the men’s group and what was so great about it is one, these were different kinds of people that I, you know, I was drawn to the energy that I was putting out there, right? So I’m putting out this addicted, really inauthentic fronting energy. I have everything under control and I look good, man, on the outside. I mean, I had money, I had beautiful partners, I mean I had all the things when really I was very sad inside and and I had a lot going on. And the men’s group over a 10 year period, it’s just as we’ve all grown together, So many benefits. One, just the brotherhood of just knowing like they have my back, right? 100%. We’ve all gotten wiser and seen each other through a lot of light circumstances. So, you know, it’ll be our 10 year anniversary this summer. They can reflect to me, they can see my change and my path. They know my patterns well enough to say to me something that might be confrontational, but it’s very wise. Like, You’re doing this again, dude. Like, you know, like this is how you undermine yourself. Like, do you remember four years ago when you were doing it and you’re doing it now? But they’re doing it in a loving way that we all have each other. So I’m getting a lot of wisdom from them for sure. We’re also laughing about a bunch of dumb dude stuff, you know? It’s like fun. You know, they made my son graduated high school and members of my men’s group were here to celebrate it, you know, that kind of thing. So It’s really been a transformative experience. And yeah, I think there’s some level of, you know, a lot of men have competition amongst their friends or whatever. You know, there’s friendship, but there’s competition there. And this over time just like eliminates those kinds of things. And it’s just like these guys are there for me. I mean, I was just recently at a psychedelic experience. I’ve never done ayahuasca before. It’s very it it can be very intense. And I what I noticed, and I think this is a great practice for life was to ground me. I got I just got grateful for my partner Leah. She’s so amazing. My kids. But when you got after my nuclear family, my men’s group was next. Even before my brother and sister and and and things like it just that they are there for me. And as a man To accept help is not an easy thing often. And you just get all these little opportunities to practice these things. And then over time, all of a sudden you look back and I think every one of us has changed dramatically. And we had a really good facilitator to start it. So we had a year of an intensive, and I highly recommend that. You know, if you can find somebody that’s good, can hold a container, can teach you. You know, after a year of doing it weekly and we did weekends together and all that, ten smart guys can keep it going, right? You know, I don’t know if we’d have pulled it off like the way that it was, but I just can’t recommend it more highly. And even if you have friends that you golf with or you watch, if you’re not having these kinds of deep conversations where they really know you, you can just start to see a different level of communicating with other humans. And then that becomes the the level at which you crave. I mean, I’m funny, like you and I can sit around and laugh and joke and I can do that whole thing and it’s interesting to me to a point. But now I’ve just like I meet people and and we start talking and I get deep with them quickly. And because of that I develop friendships with people quickly. You know, it’s hard. We’re you know, I’m fifty seven years old. There’s not a lot of time, right? But now with all the skills a men’s group has helped me gain, if I happen to sit next to you on a plane and we’re talking for three hours, you know, and it’s reciprocated on the other end, you can feel like you got a lifelong friend after that because you’ve disclosed things, you’ve gone through the ups and downs and all that thing. So It’s transformed my life. It’s something that I I feel very aligned with and I can’t recommend it more highly. Yeah, you know, I think one of the things, yeah, you’re talking about the loneliness and men having friends and stuff, but it it seems like one of the things that’s just been like a primal need for like thousands of years is men coming together and, you know, protecting the tribe or Going on the hunt, whatever it was. And it just seems like today we’ve really lost that. We’ve lost that deep male connection. I I don’t know if it’s all over the world, but I just speak for the United States. There’s a lot of discomfort around male connection and things like that. And yeah, I think the men’s group and some of these things that are happening today are bringing it back. But I I’m yeah, I really appreciate how transformative that was for you. Cause it is it’s been transformative. You have been in men’s groups as well. Well, so I’m curious also about, you know, there’s this move into you know, ⁓ let’s see if I get the story straight. It’s like there’s been just more regulation over the last year, two years. Is that sound about I mean it sounds like it it’s been a journey? Yeah, it’s been really going on for about five years, but it would You know, it’s funny, like I remember there was a friend of mine reading a book in college and it looked interesting and I asked him what it was about and he’s like, It’s about this guy who was instantly enlightened. And I was like, ⁓ well that’s exactly what I want. So I got the book. Of course he meditated for five hours a day for seventeen years before his instant enlightenment. Now I’m not saying that I put that kind of work in, but I feel like my curve was kind of like I had a jump. And so there was like a regulation event as part of a long term thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I wonder, you know, I think that’s one of the things to point out is like this is someone’s listening to this right now and they are just starting, it’s a journey. It’s not gonna be ⁓ it’s not an easy road by any means. It’s really hard. But I think the other thing is just ⁓ listening to you, Steve, it’s like, wow, you did it. I mean, you know, it’s it’s not over by any means, but you did it. Like you’re You’ve able to reach this level where I think I I’m gonna point this out by myself of like I feel this like level of ease in my life right now. It’s like I just go into the world and you know, before for so much of my twenties, thirties and forties, it was just like I was performing, I was trying to be good enough, I was trying to be likable, I was, you know, doing all the things. And now I just don’t care. It’s not not caring in the sense of like, I don’t want to make anybody uncomfortable. But if somebody just actively doesn’t like me, I’m like, ⁓ okay. I there’s just not as much activation in my body of like I feel some kind of responsibility or I just feel so much ease in just like being with people. It’s so freeing in a way that I I d I didn’t know existed until maybe the last seven, eight years, I think it’s been for me just feeling that consistently. Yeah. Well, I’m so happy for you, you know, and I would call it for me, I I orient around the world peace. Maybe it’s a similar meaning and a couple of things and I want to get back to the peace thing. But you know, for the people on the journey, like look, there were so many parts of me. And this is one of the things I just want to communicate. If you have things that you think are part of you that you just can’t change, I know that you can change them. You know, like like you can shift up a nervousness. If you have things that you regret that feel like part of you. And no, it will not happen easily or quickly. But what I did notice is, you know, as I built the skill of vulnerability in a men’s group where I could tell my people like that, okay, well, these are the things that happen to me. This is how I understand my dynamic. I have a nervous system that kind of gets out of control. People in your life will give you a lot of slack. You know, if you say like, you know, I am working on something that is difficult and that’s why this is I just think it’s so horrible what happens to young boys where we’re told not to feel, we’re told not to express our emotions, it’s very difficult. I mean all these things are challenging, but this is where you gin up your internal courage. To like this to me is real manliness, right? You know, pecs and guns and all that kind of that we’re seeing out in the world. Like go with inside and take the courage to deal with what happened to you. And you’re not gonna be perfect at first, and you’re never gonna be perfect. But people will help you along the way. And you know, to your point about the ease, I think, you know, this orientation around happiness and all of these these states of being that you cannot continually attain. I think it’s more like ease or peace is what we’re going for, right? Because, you know, you can be in the midst of a difficult situation. I mean, you’re gonna have people you love die. We all are. You know, we’re all gonna get sick. You know, are we happy during that? Well that’s not really an appropriate time to be happy, right? Your friend died. But you could have a sense of peace and a sense of ease about it because you’ve cultivated that. And I think that’s what we’re all going for, right? And that can definitely work. And all these things work is synergistically. You mentioned how I did a lot of things. And I did do a lot of things. And I think what I didn’t have was a roadmap, you know, of well, yes, I’m going to do this thing. This thing isn’t going to take care of all of it. I’m doing it as a piece of this puzzle that would have helped me because I think I stopped and started a lot of. things because I I wanted the Hail Mary pass, right? I wanted to walk into your office and have you work with me for six months and just be healed. Well that given my circumstance, probably what you had to offer was going to give me some very great tools for a slice of it. And I need to go over, you know, yeah. That’s what I didn’t have happen. But I I just want to put out there for all the men, there’s been a lot of stuff heaped on us. You know, I certainly understand the concept of Privilege and patriarchy, but there’s a flip side to it. And I don’t think the patriarchy was for us in a way that, you know, I think it was for a small group of men to exploit us. Having us not have any feelings and work on the shop floor and not say anything or march into battle and not make a bunch of noise about it. That helped some people, but it didn’t help all men. And it certainly doesn’t help us get through these very difficult things. And so we have that. Sort of experience piled on the natural human experience of we all, you know, have our light covered in some way, man or woman as a kid. And so men have a lot to deal with. And I think that if you can orient around but what being a real man is, I don’t know that I love that term, but it’s that I’m gonna make the choice to go inside and have the courage to deal with what’s mine so that I can be. What I need to be for the people I love. And, you know, I did a lot of things that were perceived as risky and all that, either on the out of control side or the entrepreneurial side. But those things were just that was my thing. Like I could do business. It wasn’t that scary for me. The things that we talked about here and sitting with abuse and that kind of stuff, that was scary for me, even though that stuff wasn’t happening. You know, I’m a pretty powerful dude. Nobody’s abusing me now, you know? And so That is what we can give our children, right? Like what can I teach my son about being a man? It’s like that you can be resilient, that you can go inside enough to have your weather system that you put out into the world positively affect people, right? You know, what I put out into the world, my energetic field was threatening to people, I’m sure. Even though I was a good dude and all that. And I really orient around now, like I want if I meet you out on the street, like I want you to feel good when you walk away from me. You might not even know why. You know? And that that is a practice of daily practices because we’re continually, you know, you don’t just like heal all this stuff because things are coming at you every day. You’re work. So it’s like, ⁓ how do I be a man? I’m courageous. I work for my family. And that might mean sitting on a chair and being silent. But like those are the things that, you know, the way I orient around it, that we could have a conversation about masculinity, that we could bring women in on it and not talk about toxic masculinity, but talk about this is what we’re being. We we understand if you like abuse people and you did those things that you have to atone for that. But we could also have a lot of empathy for the plight really of men. And in our society, and we can say, Yeah, we’ve been blessed. I mean, if you wanna talk about money, if you wanna talk about net worth is the meaning of light, then yes, white men have it made. But but you know, I don’t I’ve been through that net worth game and that’s not the meaning of happiness. I know millions of not millions, I know a lot of very rich finance guys who feel empty. And so we can talk about as men do doing something different, and that’s gonna mean treating people differently, but being courageous and I feel a kind of confidence and a kind of respect for myself in doing this work that I never felt in making millions of dollars or, you know, having a hot girlfriend or any of those things, you know, like it’s it’s a different thing. And so I just want that conversation to be had between men our age, between men in their 20s and 30s, you know, like let’s redefine what’s happening now in this time period of upheaval and take all the good because I really feel like I’ve taken the good from my previous life and I I incorporate that into who I am now. Let’s take the good of what’s happened in society and let’s make the turn. Let’s be the generation that people look back on and say, yeah, we are the ones that started to make the change. Like we are the ones that started to treat people differently. We are the ones that did things. And let’s have our great grandkids look back and say that was a magical time. Doesn’t feel like a magical time, right? But but I’m sure like if you take yourself out of The news, right? The people that you interact with. I mean, don’t you feel like it’s a pretty good time? Yeah. No, I think that’s a great point. I think I do, like, I feel incredibly lucky, very blessed in the men that I have in my life. And so it’s it’s interesting because the in the anecdotal my life is like, ⁓ I have so many incredible people, men, friends. I’m an incredible wife, incredible sons. I feel so fortunate. And then I look out into the world and it seems like there’s all these this chaos and destruction and toxicity and I’m not sure where to f sort of land in all of that because it’s like I hear all this stuff and there’s even statistical analysis and all this stuff and blah blah blah. But it’s like I am actually more optimistic than probably the the average person, maybe maybe more like you in that. I think what’s happening right now is on the one hand, there is this very visible toxicity. I don’t want to call it toxic masculinity. I don’t like those two words together, but there’s a toxic way of being in the world that men, a lot of young men, are engaging in. And underneath that, there’s an undercurrent of men who in my work, and I think I see more and more, who are feeling that hollowness, who are feeling that lifelessness of like, I did it. You know, I I got the cars, I got. House, I got the wife, I got the kids, and I’m miserable. And they are saying this is not the way. And I think all those young kids are being kind of pulled in with this flashiness of money and cars and sex and attractive women and stuff, but it’s never gonna fill them up. It’s never gonna fill them up. And on some level, I think we all know that. I mean, this is like the story, this is this is the thing that’s gone on for thousands of years of believing that I can fill up that internal need from something external that just never works. You know, what really matters is the same stuff of people caring and being compassionate and helping and loving each other. That’s the only thing that ever really matters. And we can’t you can’t circumnavigate that with fucking AI bots and technology and any of that shit. It still comes back to I need people and people need me. And I think that there’s an undercurrent that’s also there that’s sort of slowly bubbling up of saying we don’t want this world. Where there’s less connection and less humanity and less of all the good things that we really want. But all we hear about is the thing that is so much more visible, which is this other side of it that seems like it’s kind of trying to keep us apart, disconnect us. Yeah, you know, well, that’s I’m sure why we’re both on this show to get some of that good stuff out. And there’s a term that I like for what I am hopeful is happening now. I believe it’s from addiction work. It’s called Extinction Burst. Right. And I know that I had that in my addiction. Like I would often have to just have this like I’d just have to bend her out before I could stop, you know. And I I was very addictive person, but I could always get to the edge and pull back. And I’m hoping that’s what’s happening with this kind of the masculinity and just the the aggression that we’re seeing out there. And I’m also reminded of this story of a man, I believe his name is James Piccolini. I’ll I’ll research this after. But he was a young person, immigrant parent, who was as a teenager sort of recruited into the white supremacist movement. And he rose up in it and he became like a leader of it. And he became a lot cooler and kind of, you know, changed his life around. And I heard him on a podcast and He was talking about, and this is one of the things that I feel blessed with, because he’s like, you know, and he’s at that point, I think he got hundreds of men to just give up that life and move into something else. And they asked him what, you know, what’s what’s your magic? And he’s like, Well, first of all, I can hear what they have to say. You know, and so like I can hear someone’s been abused, someone’s this, that, I can hear it. I know, and I can be like, I know what that’s like, brother. But he could hear these horrible things they were saying, not freak out, not have to challenge them, just let it be. And he’s like, There is no magic to it. I asked them what was not going right in their life. ⁓ I don’t think that I you know, I don’t have health insurance and my wife needs a surgery. I don’t have a job. And he’s like, I would get them health insurance or I’ll get them a job. And you know what? They didn’t want to be white supremacists. And I think, like, you know, with that younger generation, because I have a son that just graduated high school, you know, super smart. He’s got every advantage. But, you know, between everything they’re saying about AI is going to take every job and this and that, it’s like, let well, let’s listen to the thing and say, like, what is there to do? And I do think that we can be persuasive. I mean, people can talk. Movements happen, things happen, you know? And that’s why I think like redefining masculinity in a way that doesn’t and of course provide. I mean, provision is a part of it. And I think it will always be. But you know, if we’re looking to a world where men and women basically make the same amount of money for the same work done, and this is a place where women can step up. Overwhelmingly, women marry men that make more money, right? So if you want men to have their act together emotionally and you want equal pay, well then you’re gonna have to marry some guys that make less money than you. Right? You know, like because you’re going to value other things. Right? You know, and so maybe you’re just more talented at business and he’s better at handling it down, then you’re gonna have to give that a chance. So there is and I, you know, the stats on a lot of things. It’s it, you know, women are part of this, they reinforce a lot of the patriarchy. So it’s it’s not a con you know, it’s not an attack thing. It’s a let’s see where we’re going, let’s talk about it, let’s get to where we wanna be. But, you know, let’s also, you know, we can acknowledge we’re a couple white men and we’re privileged. Yeah. And I don’t know your story, but I know I’ve been through some things. And, you know, like my whole life did not feel privileged, you know. And even when I got those things, it was like, man. And I, you know, I like what you’re saying about I just wrote something about the difference between emptiness and darkness, right? I think what we’re going for is there’s a darkness. It’s not an emptiness because you can shuffle shit into it for your entire life. And it I have friends that are billionaires, literally, who like there is no number like of external validation that you can get to fill that void because it’s infinite. But we can work to turn on our light. And that can that illuminates that darkness. And That’s what we’re here to do. I mean, that’s our spiritual path. That’s why I believe life is difficult on purpose. You know, like we don’t want a life where I mean, you know, the Buddha’s dad tried to make that happen for him, you know, like the perfect thing with all you know, all that. That’s not the human reality. Our human reality is to have some difficult things and face it. And so let’s just do it and but we can do it together. I wonder I get curious about that. You talked a little bit about your spiritual life. I’m curious, like right now in your life, how does it inform your growth and development currently? Yeah, it’s an interesting thing. I mean, it’s really up for me because I feel like I sort of told myself for a long time when my youngest goes to college, which is what’s happening, I can pay more attention to it. But really what it has been is, you know, I have chosen that my purpose in life is to cultivate and emanate a loving presence and energy that is felt by people. And then as an adjunct to what I’m trying to do in the world is to continually deepen my wisdom and clarify my thoughts and words and in writing so that I can help other people remember who they are. And so the spiritual path for me is gotten more deep. And it’s also, I think, more of a respect for myself, right? So now I’m meditating twice a day for forty-five minutes. I’m going on retreating and doing things. I was gonna you know, I I’m I’m in it. But like really what I’m also telling myself in that, you know, is if you’re still Steve, like something good’s gonna happen, right? Like something good is going to emerge. What you are is good. What you are is worthy. These are not things I thought about myself for a very long time. So just to say like I trust myself to be silent because what’s gonna come out of there is gonna be good, you know, and it might not be easy, it might not not be pleasant, but it comes from a place that is eternal and loving. So that that is, you know, what I’ve I’ve really tried. I mean, even in the past, you know, couple weeks, you know, I started this whole thing of getting my word out there. And I have to say I came from a place of being insecure about it. My speaking and needing some outside validation. And I think, you know, where I am and what I’ve done and how long I’ve been doing it, I mean, I’m happy with it. But if I look at it, I say I offloaded some of it to somebody else to tell me what my voice should be or how it should look or what it should do. And really what I’ve come to is my spiritual practice is the base from which everything emanates. And I want my content or the words that I say to reflect who I am. And if they do that well, then that’s a win. And yeah, I’d love for millions of people to look at them. That’s not happening now. But I I’m not gonna worry about like changing the way I think or stealing braces because his looks cool. And I kind of believe that. So I’ll kind of do that one too. You know, like there’s a lot of that when you’re be and so Yeah, I think it’s just there’s a point at which you start to believe that you’re part of something. And not only are you part of it, but that you’re creating it, right? Like so, like what I have is worthy. And I’m not I’m not painting the Mona Lee or the dude talking on the internet or whatever. But but you know, that’s that’s just where I’ve come to it. And you know, it’s a place that I’m very comfortable with. And like we talked about, you said ease, I said peace. But that’s what it is. And so I was working. I mean, even this morning I have a mentor and I was like, man, I’m having fear this morning. He’s like, good. That’s a good thing to feel. Like go sit on the cushion and feel it a little bit. And I’ve actually had a great day. Let the fears dissipated. I’ve gotten into my thing, but that’s just a normal state of life. And so I, you know, I believe I don’t think I could have had a deep spiritual practice like this when my nervous system was the other way, because honestly sitting still for that long wasn’t comfortable. You know, it just wasn’t so you know, acknowledge where you’re at. And meditation can help, of course, and meditation’s like the thing. But you know, like as things move along, you know, for me, neurofeedback, really powerful tool because it, you know, with the brainwave function of my brain was Change basically by computerized dog training is the best way I can say it. But you know, as my function of my brain moved closer to a normal quote unquote way, that all the things that I was trying to do in my life became easier. And so it’s just like you just keep working it, but it’s out there for you. It’s your God-given right and You gotta I mean you claim you can claim it right now, but unfortunately or fortunately, I think the human life is about earning it. And you gotta earn it a little bit. And it, you know, again to get into masculinity, that’s a very masculine thing to me. You know, I had bad things happen to me. What I’m going to provide for my people is a example of resilience and love and courage and I will let that be my legacy. I mean, you know, like, yeah, I might leave you some real estate, but like what I was told is like give them money, right? You know like ’cause I came from very poor parents and we were immigrants and and that kind of thing. And but I think, you know, love, courage, resilience, like if that can be my legacy and and everybody can engender that. You don’t have to be rich. Yeah. And in fact, oftentimes in less less affluent communities, that’s exhibited more. You know, ⁓ are you familiar with Lisa Miller’s work, The Awakened Brain? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it’s an interesting thing. She did they were doing this study of basically of your 15 year olds in affluent suburbs and their levels of anxiety and whatnot and these kinds of things. And so they needed a control group. So they got a control group in socio economic areas that were just more challenged, which they thought were going to be worse. And it turned out they did not have the same levels of anxiety or depression as the affluent areas. And as the you know, Lisa’s work, Dr. Miller’s work, was more towards figuring out, well, what was the difference? And so the first breakthrough she had was on a self reported scale, if you just say spirituality. Defined as anything you want it to be, religion, just that it’s a five out of five to me importance. If you say that at 15, at 25, you have a 75% reduction in the incidence of anxiety, depression. If you come from a family like mine where you’re more likely to have those things, that number rises to 90%. There is no medicine, there is no treatment that does that. And then she got more money to study it. And what they found is people who actually have spirituality in their life, that’s why she calls it the awakened brain, is their brain function is greater in in different areas. So they’re more open to the experience of life because In spirituality, you have to say a little bit, whether you believe in Jesus or whatever it is, like I’m opening myself up to something I don’t exactly see or touch or whatever, right? That creates a a broader use of your brain structure. So, you know, going back to your point, spirituality is something that we can encourage in ourselves. It changes the function of your brain, it makes you healthier. You can do it in any way that fits in any tradition. You know, there’s nothing you don’t have to do it my way. You just have to do it. And I don’t think that there’s any more important thing that anyone can do for their own health, the health of the planet for their people than engage in a spiritual practice. Wow, maybe that’s a good place to end. I’m curious if you wanted to say any last words to the men out there that might be listening. If anything you wanted to say last, just to sort of sum up what you’re Trying to bring to the world. Yeah. I mean, I would just say that I love you so much and like I understand the journey and, you know, kind of the shame involved sometimes for even asking for help. And that we’re all in this together. You can get where you want to be. You deserve that life. You deserve more than you have if you’re not comfortable with it. And if you’re interested in this kind of thing, I have a podcast. It’s called The Neuros Journey. And you can find it on all the spots. We talk about things like this. And yeah, I’m just I have so much like respect and love and admiration that go through the things that a lot of men go through. And I want you to not have that emptiness in your life. And I know that there’s a light switch that you have that’s right inside. to turn that emptiness, which is really darkness, and illuminate it. And you have it in you, brother. So just make it happen. Well, thank you, Steve. That’s a really beautiful message. And I really appreciate you being here today. Yeah, thanks so much. This was an awesome comment conversation. I appreciate it so much. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening today. Please take a moment to like and follow so we can continue to change the world by changing ourselves. Have a wonderful day.

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain small errors.

Bryce Giron Mathern: Welcome to the Man for Real Podcast. We are here to celebrate men as well as talk about how all men can do better and lead our world to a healthier place. Get ready to get real. Hello everyone. Thanks for being here today. I’m talking today with Jason Lang, founder of Evolutionary Men. Jason leads groups of men throughout the Colorado area. And today we’re gonna be talking about the power of men coming together to support each other. Jason Lang, welcome to the podcast. So pumped to be here. Thank you. You’re bringing the juice today. I’m appreciating that. So as I start with a lot of my people that I interview and guests on here, I just wanted to get a sense of you and your journey as a man and kind of how that’s unfolded for you. You’ve kind of moved in this place of being a man, a leader of men. Kind of maybe some of how that’s come about. And so yeah, just maybe jump in wherever it won’t feels important to start. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think for Like a lot of people, it starts at home. It starts when I was a kid. So yeah, I was raised outside Chicago in the suburbs, kind of lower middle class, born in 1980, and really had pretty much all of my basic security needs met, right? We had stable housing, we had food, we got to do, you know, some fun adventures and stuff. And I think like a lot of kids, I didn’t really kind of realize things were a little different until I started getting out of my family and house. So for me, it all kind of coalesced when I became a teenager. I’m heterosexual in my case. So I started to get really interested in women during puberty. And that was where I just felt off, right? I just I couldn’t talk to women. I’d get super up in my head and really anxious. If I got physically, if I got close to them, I would kind of get like sweaty and tight and Simultaneously, you know, I was a bit of a computer nerd. I was a little bit more in my head, kind of lived in video games and computers. First year of high school, I kind of met my first guy friends, started to get to know them, and just noticed they related to each other differently. They would horse around, like literal horseplay. They would touch each other. And so I’m feeling all this pain, not being able to connect with women at all. I start seeing my friends begin to do it. I’m feeling Really tight and often anxious in my body. And then I start to notice, you know, the men in my life are acting differently than I do. And then, you know, I often tell this story. I had this experience when I was like maybe a junior in high school. And my friends and I were in like an environmental club for high school or something. So we went to a Sierra student coalition kind of summer camp out in Virginia. And so my one friend’s dad was going to like drive us all out in the minivan. And, you know, I didn’t quite connect the dots on this. At the time, but later it was like so obvious in retrospect. So they come to my house to pick me up, and my mom walks me down to the curb because you’re kind of just supposed to do that. It was the first time I was really leaving home for seven days. And right before I get in the car, like we hug and it’s super awkward. It just feels really weird. And then I get in the car and I just kind of mentally note, like, that was weird. And then I go on my way. And then my pain just continued right through high school, through college. I didn’t even kiss a girl until I was in college, didn’t have sex till my mid to late twenties, and was just really suffering. I was really numbed out, addicted to porn, was drinking a lot at the time, and essentially by the end of college, kind of had the sense like I need help. I don’t know how to do this. There’s gotta be a better way to be. And that kind of kicked off my journey, brought ⁓ out to Colorado for the first time and got me into like a transformational world. And then it all really kind of all the dots started to connect. When I got into my first men’s groups and my first somatic therapy. And my first deep experience was was with one of my mentors. And I had been seeing a talk therapist for like a year because my company paid for it. But I was, you know, pretty mental. I was pretty sophisticated and good at kind of sharing just enough to feel like we were doing something, but not really moving the ball. Yeah. And then I’m in this men’s circle with this kind of guy who leads far more deep somatic stuff. And within 10 minutes, I’m on my back, my arms are literally shooting up in the air, and I’m saying, Hold me, hold me. And I’m crying like a two-year-old, just bawling. Yeah. And I got up from that and I was like, What was that? Like, I have no idea what that was. And, you know, started to put the pieces together. And then where it connects back to this high school story is that was the first time, as far as my memory could go back, I could remember touching my mom or being touched by her. So, you know, I know it happened when I was quite young, but basically kind of toddler years on, there was just no physical touch in my house, let alone emotional touch. And so lo and behold, you know, with the benefit of work, I realized, ⁓ my God, I’ve been walking around all these years, and there’s this screaming two-year-old who’s desperately scared and wants to be touched, trying to relate to all these women. And It’s not exactly the sexiest energy for a woman to, you know, feel in a man’s nervous system. And so that really just kind of kickstarted my whole journey. And I was all in on body-based stuff and going into men’s groups in particular and learning just to share, to be seen, to talk, to touch, to be in connection. And that really has never stopped, right? The journey just keeps going. But it was in Colorado in my twenties I got into my first men’s group. And that really changed my life. Just kind of more. probably than anything else, any of the plant medicines or therapies. There was just something about the consistency of showing up in a group with nowhere to hide, right? Because they just knew me, they loved me, knew what I was up to, they knew my games. And it really propelled my life forward. So much so that my first group in Colorado was part of what motivated me to move out to LA and pursue a career in filmmaking and like just go for it. Cause they were like, man, if you want to do it, that’s the place to do it. Not here. Right. And I got out there and I kind of went for it and I dropped off the face of men’s groups and men’s works and it didn’t go so well. I was out there for like two or three years, like totally overweight from crafty food, not taking care of myself. And I just realized like, this is a structure I need to thrive. Like I don’t do well without it. And so I got inspired, met some guys, started a new group out there, and that really propelled me forward in some substantial ways. And then Really, just the transition to this was I just wouldn’t shut up about it. Like I was in authentic relating communities and stuff. I was just my men’s group. I was doing this my men’s group. I love my men. So all these guys, you know, started asking me, Can I come? Could we come to your group? And it was just eight of us at the time. And we met in one of our members, he was a therapist. So we met in his office and it was, you know, it couldn’t fit more than eight guys. So I was like, no, we’re a closed group, like, can’t do it. But it just inspired me that I was like, okay, well, this has been so meaningful for me. And at the time I’d actually moved more into like tech coding work and was like self-taught and could kind of do it. And it just stressed me out so much. Like sitting at a computer, being in my head, I would get done with that and I would just feel so awful. And then I started to notice I would spend two hours with men in circle and I would get done. And I’d be like, this energy, right? Like I came in with. I was fuck yeah, let’s do this. I love life. I got energy. I was like, wouldn’t that be an interesting if I could get Paid to do the thing that brought me energy rather than extracted it from me. Yeah. And so I just started leading men’s groups off of meetup.com in my living room in LA in 2017, just like twice a month. Drop in groups. LA was amazing because such a huge range of men ended up showing up and I got to know men and learn about facilitation. And then I was like, I like this. So I went out and got some training and kind of pivoted. And it’s been a A long eight, nine years since then, but it seems to finally be coalescing into okay, I think I could do this for a living. This is great. Wow. Okay. Okay. Well, there’s a lot there. I I really appreciate your clarity. Obviously, you’ve had to have a lot of thought to be in the position you are and gone through a lot. I’m curious, like so there was this moment in that men’s group, that like awakening of like, whoa, I’ve got this two year old in there that’s needed some love. How is that like so you went through a lot of They did some somatic work, somatic psychotherapy, we’re in men’s groups. I just kinda wonder about like how that shows up in your life now. You know, now you’ve sort of figured out how to be with women and some some degree, you know, like that’s worked itself out, it’s I imagine. I’m just curious how it’s been for you now. Is that sort of sort of healing some of those family wounds? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I have two kids now, so the great the great joy is getting to do that pretty differently. And we have lots of touch and lots of cuddling and Lots of closeness and huge emotions constantly being expressed in the in the best ways. So that’s been deeply healing for me. And ⁓ I have a son now who’s sixteen months old. And so that in particular is really just seeing him and getting to re-experience life as a young boy again is just magical. And then yeah, with my wife, you know, it’s been a a powerful thing to to really center touch and closeness since since we met, you know. That was something I was much more aware of and you know. Even maybe a relationship to before her hadn’t fully disentangled my just touch needs from sexual needs. They often got smashed together, like I think they do with a lot of men. And by the time I got to her, I was much more clear that hey, sometimes can you just lay on top of me? Like I just the pressure, just the feeling, it’s just so good. It just does something for me, right? And like my body can’t quite get enough. So I’m I’m much more conscious of it and. I’m conscious of it in the sense that that part of me still lives inside me, right? Coming from a household of neglect in a sense, I can get so focused on work or trying to take care of my family that it’s easy for me to not be present for my family. And, you know, much less these days. But you know, a couple of years ago, there’d be times I would realize, ⁓ my God, I’m doing the thing my parents do. I haven’t even touched my wife in two days, just to like walk up to her and like say hi. I would just like go into this autopilot, which was kind of a slightly different version of of that, but it still lives in me. And I have to be really conscious of how quickly I can go to no touch in a sense, because it’s kind of was my baseline for so long. Yeah. And I can survive there, but I have to like really consciously kind of bring myself back. I mean, luckily with kids now, it’s pretty hard to not. They’re just all over me all the time. ⁓ yeah. But I do have to put that attention on my intimate relationship of like, ⁓ yeah, I like I need this, she needs this. And sometimes I’ll just forget if I’m left to my own devices until it like builds up. And then I’m like, ooh, we’re not in a good plate. ⁓ no wonder why. I literally haven’t approached my wife and gotten close to her in like two days. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think the thing that really grabs my attention there is that autopilot or that sort of zombie mode, or just like I’m just shut down. I’m just kind of in like some kind of industrious state where I’m just like getting shit done. I I know that so well in my own life. I think that’s where I you know in my work with men, it’s like they really want to connect. And then but they there’s also like, you know, a lot of pressure, a lot of static around like their identity as a provider, as a you know, taking care of their families together, their lives. And they get sort of lost in that energy of just like work, work, work, work, work, work, do, do, do, do, do do, do, do. So I don’t know, it’s it’s interesting to me. How the struggle I feel in even in my own life, that tension of like being present, being engaged, being close, touching all those affection, all those things. And also this like real intense energy that says, You gotta fix the fence. You gotta, you know, mow the lawn. What are you doing? Come on, you know, that’s so it’s like that’s very real for me too. And so it’s just like it’s and I think it’s like sometimes I think it’s like the tension point is like either, you know, you’re not being a man unless you’re like Doing these provider things or the other side of it, which is like you’re not being a good man if you’re not connecting with your family. And I think the thing that I’m finding is that it’s always a tension point. It never gets worked out exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I would totally agree. And I mean, part of where my life’s been moving is, you know, a principle really of if all my work, if all my hard, industrious work isn’t creating more opportunities to spend time with my family, yeah, I’m not on I’m not actually on track. Right. Right. Because I can feel the part of me that wants to scale, scale, get bigger to hire people. Totally. And then, you know, luckily because of the work I do, I work with a lot of those guys. Right. And they’re like, ⁓ it’s not so glamorous. No. Right. I am busy all the time and I have so much money, it’s stressful. What do I do with it? You know, managing it, all that kind of stuff. So I’m kind of settling into this groove, you know, for me as my my kids are are six and about fifteen months old of like Man, I got this short window, right? You yeah, I know your kids are a little older. Like every man I know that has older kids, they’re like, dude, it goes fast. Like it goes so fast. And so I I feel blessed because of having wise men around me. Like, okay, yeah, the these are the days to make the most of. So work as hard as I can and got to prioritize the time with the kids, right? Because it, you know, you wake up and suddenly they’re a different kid. It’s like, wow, you’re not the little child anymore. But that tension, you know, I think it’s really real and it’s a big burden, you know, a lot of men carry and around the providership. And sometimes I think some of the work I do with men is just the mistake we make of, ⁓ I’m gonna do all of that so I can achieve a certain amount of something, so then I can spend time with my family. Right. And we run out of time. It almost never comes that way. It’s like, you know, it makes me think of the the whole idea of. You gotta take the mini retirements. Like, ⁓ you know, you could save it all up for when you’re eighty and can barely move. Or yeah, can you can you take three, four weeks a year and actually travel and enjoy? And there’s a way I’m trying to like make my family life a little bit like that instead of waiting for the the dream on the horizon of ⁓ I’ll just have all the systems in place and the money will be rolling in. It’ll be so easy to spend time with them and it’s probably never gonna be that way. So start spending time now. You gotta do it right now. Yeah, no, I think that’s Very true. And it’s a struggle for me because I I think I feel like it’s like yeah, just that tension point I guess I’m describing, but it’s like, wow, I feel so there’s just a way that my providing this, providing element is so intertwined with my sense of like being a good man. And so like when I’m doing the things that are doing that, and the thing is it’s like it’s always like this question of like a little bit more. I can make a little bit more. I could make a little bit more. That’s like such an illusion. It’s like such a it’s just I I think how our systems work. It’s like, ⁓ yeah, but you can have little bit more, a little bit more. And I think like that’s the thing that allures me into this sense of like, yeah, that if I just do this and this and this and then I’ll have a little bit more, that’ll make it better. And it’s just not a little bit more time with my kids is gonna be way more satisfying in the long run. Yeah, right. I I mean it is such a slippery slope and it’s that that kind of fantasy of once I X, then I’ll finally why and There’s just no guarantee it’s ever gonna come. Right. That’s the other thing too, right? Especially as we hit middle age and beyond. Like there’s just no guarantees. So the I guess the truth I’ve had to set a lot is, man, I just gotta I gotta find a way to do both. Yeah. Right. To kind of keep growing and providing, take care of myself and be with my family. And that that’s a challenge for a lot of guys. And I feel lucky because I’m so well supported by incredible men in my life. And then, you know, as I imagine you see, there’s a lot of guys who aren’t. And so they’re, you know, carrying that burden of the whole family system and trying to do it. And they got nowhere to go to to be held in a sense. And that is, I think, one of the real big challenges in this day and age. Yeah, I know. I think I totally agree. I think I think it’s getting worse. I think it’s really getting worse. The loneliness factor. And men, I see this with men, you know, they they have a family or they’re married and then that marriage ends, then they’re seeing their kids half time and they they have no They have nothing else in their life. They have no friends. They have no community. They have colleagues, but it’s all within that context of work and it’s not really any, there’s no depth to it. And they are just like lost. They are lost and terrified. So yeah, I think it is a really, really deep struggle today. I’m curious to maybe talk. So, you know, you’re talking about this as we’re going, but just like a little bit more about your work in evolutionary men and what that is like for you. Like what what do you like trying to do with men. Like, you know, I mean obviously depends on the person. But like do you have like some general principles, some general ideas of what you bring in your work with men? Yeah. I mean, I would say ⁓ my mission statement and my organization have kind of summed it into every man should be in a men’s group. So it’s about getting men into men’s groups. Like as I look at the whole world and all the different ways to support and serve, you know, love and consciousness, I’m like, that’s the leverage point I think I could have the most impact on. That could really change things fast, right? What happens when men get together in small groups of six to twelve men who care about them and track them? That’s it. And I’m a pretty big fan of peer-led groups. So I’m more and more getting inspired to teach men how to lead and start their groups and kind of decentralize the model just because that’s what I was lucky to kind of find in myself. And there’s a certain type of ownership that comes from like, we’re not paying anyone for this group. This this is ours. Right. It doesn’t need to be here. No one can take it away from us. And, you know, some guys aren’t actually up for that because it also creates a lot of responsibility for, you know, really participating. But I’ve been very, very inspired to just launch those types of groups and really, you know, I do some private coaching. I do it. I enjoy it. But groups are just my favorite place. That that’s my favorite place to work with men. I see men, in my opinion, grow faster there. So everything I do now is basically a version of some kind of men’s group. It’s it’s like men’s group for dating and relationship, men’s group for deep shadow work, men’s group just to experience a men’s group, men’s group to learn how to run men’s groups. So that’s kind of where I’m just putting all of my weight in essence in that that’s certainly what changed me and where, you know, I think a lot of men are falling through the cracks, like you said, in that, you know, there was this. Stat you maybe know that blew me away when I saw it last year and just totally reformatted my even my judgments of men. And it was, it was up in Canada, right? And they it was like a retrospective on men who committed suicide. And it was something like 80% of the men had actually reached out in the year before for some kind of mental health support. So it wasn’t this story of they never reached out or da-da-da-da. They did, there was just something about what was there. That didn’t quite move the needle for them. And just my totally, you know, unresearched bias and judgment is community. Like they’re missing community and belonging in being part of something. And I see this as guys get, you know, brought into groups. Two things I say that most men I know crave and that a group can provide are a sense of purpose and belonging. My purpose meaning it really matters if I’m there. Right. People notice when I’m not there. My gift, my wisdom, my insight, my experience can be the thing that really changes one of my brothers’ lives in a moment. If I just slow him down or look him in the eye or whatever that might be. And so there’s deep purpose there. And then there’s that sense of belonging. Like I’m part of something. We are something. Right. And I think without that, men get sick mentally, emotionally, physically, and get really, really lost. So You know, I’m just fired up to get guys into groups in any way possible. Yeah. I think the thing, and I think you’re kind of speaking to this, like I think that belonging thing is really huge. And especially for kids who grew up in families where they didn’t feel like they did belong. You know? Yes. I see that a lot. Belonging is kind of one of those things that I feel like it’s getting more attention today. But I think in my early part of my practice, it was something that just kept coming up. And I didn’t, it wasn’t something I knew about or like studied in my you know, therapy training or anything like that. But it was like, wow, it’s like, what’s it like to grow up in a family and feel like an outsider the whole time? You know? Yeah. So that that’s like this wound, right? And then and then so you bring that into the world. And, you know, as men, we’re also trained to some degree around being self reliant and taking care of ourselves. And so those two things kind of hit and you’re it’s almost unfamiliar to feel like you belong. It’s like that’s not a thing you’re looking for because you’re just like, that’s not normal. And what’s normal is I don’t belong. So I think like what you’re talking about is really important because I think men I in my experience in men’s group, and I haven’t I’m running one right now, but what I see is this like spark that starts to help these guys. They come in and they’re a little bit like, you know, deer in the headlights of like, Okay, here we are. I’m a guy, you’re guys. What are we doing here? Let’s we talk about sports. Is that that’s that’s easy? Yeah. And suddenly it goes deep. And then they’re like, ⁓ shit. Okay. I don’t really know how to talk about this. ⁓ but then over time there’s this like settling and they just like they just I can feel it. They start to feel like they belong in this and they matter. You know, people start calling each other out, you know, in gentle, reasonable ways, but they start calling each other out and it’s like, ⁓ you’re calling me out because I matter to you. And that’s like a big shift. And I think even for a lot of men, you know, in a way. I think some for some of them they feel like they matter in their, you know, in their primary relationships, maybe with their kids, but it’s different when a man you matter to a man. There’s something about it that’s very fundamentally different. And I’m just sort of spouting off here, but I just wonder if you could speak to that. Like what’s so different about a men’s group? Cause I know I I know I know what I think. I’m really curious because this is your jam. So I’m curious what you think. Yeah, it’s the you know, part of it I think is just the unique texture of masculine love. And so our our culture, we talk a lot about love kind of more in the feminine motherly way, but there is a unique nutrient and texture to the masculine version of it, which is I don’t need shit from you. Right. Like literally, I don’t need anything from you, like your kids or your family, or I just care about you. Like that’s that’s often it. It’s just like I don’t need anything from you and I care about you. And it actually hurts to see you suffer. And you’ve told me what you care about and what you love. And when I see you not living up to that, I want to let you know. And I I actually think, you know, there’s a deep I call it the spinach in the teeth, the the thing you were saying. There’s like a deep craving a lot of men have. They don’t realize till they get it that moment of, you know, Terry Real calls it the care frontation. Like, I love you so much. I’m gonna call you forward around this thing. Yeah. Dude, you got spinach in your teeth. You look like an Asshole. And you’re like, ⁓ real. But then you’re like, ⁓ my God, I’ve been walking around like this all day. No one told me, but you did. You care about me. I feel loved, actually. That you were willing to give me that challenging feedback and help me stay aligned to who I want to be. And I think men just some of them don’t even know what they’re missing until they experience it. And then it’s like, you know, I think, like you said, they settle and then it’s like a battery gets plugged back in. Yeah. And they’re like, wait a second. Yeah. I’ve been running on fumes for three decades. And it turns out there’s this like well of love and support that really the the group, deepest groups I lead, that’s all it becomes. It’s just loving presence. Just yeah, we’re here, we love you, we’re present with you. What’s going on? And it’s just like men come back alive with wow, there’s guys here that care about me. They’re not really needing anything from. From me in the same way my co-workers do, or my kids do, or even my beloved wife does, right? She wants a certain type of me there. Guys in group are like, dude, I get it. Right? Yeah, just be depressed today. Like it’s okay. Be be angry today. Like, I don’t mind. Like we have so, in my experience, we have so much space for each other because we know what it’s like to be there, right? It’s just that unique thing. And there’s something so relaxing I’ve seen in guys and freeing about when they really enter into that space. Particularly once they drop below the kind of typical masculine competition man box size. And it’s like, ⁓ shit, like I can actually be real here and these guys aren’t going to attack me. Or the one that really a lot of my guys struggle with is, ⁓ yeah, I d I don’t want to share my sadness or my fear or my grief or my anger, you know, or my shame. Cause I don’t want to burden you with that. I don’t want to burden you with that. Why would you guys want to, you know, And then when they have the experience, right? This is the thing I tell guys, like be sitting in circle. Some other man will be having just like a deep process, doing some work, just owning his truth, feeling something deeply. And then afterwards, they’re like, ⁓ my God, thank you so much for being so real and so vulnerable. And like that was so amazing to witness. And then it’s like, well, you realize that’s how other people experience you when you’re sharing your stuff. And they’re like, wait, what? It’s like, yeah, no, like when you get real, it’s a gift to everyone. And Seeing that light bulb go off is just one of my favorite moments in a group where guys go from that like, ⁓ I can’t share this. I don’t want to burden the guys to, ⁓ my God, this happened to me today. And then other guys are like, this happened to me today. And it actually vitalizes the group. It connects everyone. It makes it makes it feel alive. Yeah. No, I love the way of describing it. I remember in one of my men’s groups, I was I was the so-called leader, but I didn’t lead from any sort of like, you know, objective. Therapy person. I was like taking notes. How are you guys doing today? I was just part of the group, right? It was just a group member. So we would check in and I would just start talking. I’d be like, Well, you know, this and that. And I’d just like, yeah, it’s my things going on with my family and this and that. And I’d just be really fine, authentic, just talking about my experience. And I remember one time this guy, he was pretty new to the group, he just said, Wow, if you can say all that, it just makes me feel like I can say it too. And I was like, Yeah. Bingo. So it is. It’s like it’s almost like permission. Cause I think guys want to do this. But there’s like there’s this sh sort of, I don’t know what to call, like a some sort of blocking or or shield or something that says it’s not safe. These guys are gonna have a hard time with it. They’re gonna feel burdened. They’re gonna shame you. They’re gonna like make fun of you. And I’m sure a lot of guys have had that experience. But actually, you know, especially now as we’re getting older and more mature, I feel like it’s not like that. Like guys just want to feel that. They want to feel that. Like, yeah, I really want hear how you’re doing. Yeah. I think there’s such a hunger for men. And then when they I say this all the time, once a man gets into an environment where the structure and agreements help him feel safe and he gets that permission, turns out men have plenty of feelings to share and say. Like once they get into that, it’s just a lot of times they don’t feel it. And you know, where where I’ll often teach my guys then that kind of hooks in some of the masculine stuff in a good way is that even beyond permission. It’s an act of leadership because every time you come forward, just like you were doing at the beginning of those groups, you make it easier for every other man to. Yeah. And so you’re actually serving your brothers by leading with vulnerability and transparency and realness and rawness. So you might think, ⁓ I’m being so selfish taking all this time right now, but often I see it all the time in groups. Like, I wasn’t going to share this. But then I heard you share and you talked about it. And yeah, now I feel like I can share it. So my God, here’s the actual thing happening. And the chain that, you know, starts to happen in a group over time is incredible because it just keeps deepening and deepening and deepening. Yeah. It’s also, I remember in this group, we would often focus kind of on one person a week. Yeah. We would kind of go around everyone share. And then I would just kind of like be tuning into everybody and I’d be like, Like to know a little bit about what’s going on with you. And it was interesting because there was never a point where the guys were like, Well, I didn’t get to share today. What about me? It was just like everyone was like, Yeah, what’s going on with you, dude? We want to be here for you. And it was just like so beautiful. I was like, and it wasn’t even like a part of the principles or the ideas of the group. It wasn’t like, okay, we’re going to focus on more that it just naturally kind of happened. But it was also so cool that everyone was like, Yeah. Like the whole group could kind of feel it, like this guy’s going through it. He checked in. He needs something tonight. He’s kind of maybe a little choked up. He’s struggling and he needs us tonight. And it was like everyone was like, We’re here, man. We’re here. And it would just like the, you know, like we didn’t actually get out of our seats or do anything, but we just like energy would just coalesce around this person and be like, We’re here for you, man. We’re here for you. It was just incredible. I love that. And I I see that too. And sometimes I even have guys tell me, you know, occasionally they are going through stuff. And actually one of the great gifts of the group is Man, sometimes it’s nice for an hour or two to just put my attention on someone else and just not have to think about all my stuff. Because it’s not going anywhere. It’ll be there. And there’s this like sometimes freedom and liberation from just, yeah, you need it tonight. And I’m here for it. And that in itself can be energizing for some men instead of just kind of staying in their own muck, you know, like so many of us. I certainly do sometimes, just ruminating on my things. Then it’s like, ⁓ my God, I’m so with this person. And then I come out of and I’m like, ⁓ that was blissful, actually, to just totally be present with my brother, who was, yeah, very much in it tonight and and needed us. Yeah. I’m curious, like for you and your in your work, like what happens for men where the group doesn’t work? Like they struggle and they have to drop out, or they just they go a couple of times, maybe they even go for a while and they’re just like, can’t do this. I don’t know. You know, because often for me they would drop. And say, I can’t, you know, they just make some reason, like, I can’t come. I’m not the right time. It’s too much money, whatever. And I just wonder if you have a more deeper insight into like what happens for those men when they just are like, I can’t do it. Can’t do it. Yeah. Some guys are, you know, honestly just scared away by depth. Yeah. In my experience. Like they just they’re like, Man, I’m just not ready to go there and do that yet. And there’s fear about what would happen if I went there, right? That happens sometimes. Related to that, but a little deeper, something I’ve honestly seen, which sounds a little woo-woo, is sometimes in some of the really deep groups I create in particular, the guys are just not ready to receive that much love. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like this is here, it’s freely offered. You don’t have to do anything to receive it. Like, can be such a short circuit for some guys of like, I’ve never received before in my life, and like. And an accelerator at the same time I’ve seen too is when guys really start to let support in, their lives change. Yeah. Like that that, you know, you don’t stay in the stuck of relationship or the job you hate or the thing that sometimes, you know, I’ve been there honestly myself that it’s just so I like, you know, I’m kind of I get to complain about it. I don’t like this thing. I don’t like this thing. I don’t like this thing. In a group over time, you know, that doesn’t last as long. When I’m just being flooded with love, all my excuses often go out the door. Or they’re what’s the worst that’s gonna happen? What are you gonna fail? And I’m like, yeah, and then I’ll live on the street. And they’re No, you’re not gonna live on the street. You’re gonna live with one of us. And I’m like, crap, I have no more excuses. Right. Like, that’s confronting, you know, in that same kind of care way. So sometimes I just see guys who they just haven’t quite maybe scaffolded enough to learn how to receive support and love without any strings attached. What do you mean when you say scaffold? That’s kind of I like that word, but I’m curious. I don’t know if a lot of my students know what that means. Just that, you know, like someone like me, I wasn’t particularly wired for reception of touch, of goodwill, of emotions, of presence. And so other people I know just like, yeah, bring it. And I had to like like I was going to the gym, like, okay, you’re gonna you know, I used to get this all the time. Someone would compliment me and I would just like you know, like so many men just batted away. I was like, ⁓ no, Like you don’t know, you don’t understand. I didn’t really do great. And I had to actually build my capacity, you know, to to stand, take a deep breath and say, Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. I received that. I’ve worked really hard. And it’s like now I can take that in and actually let it in my body. But it took took a certain amount of reps, right? And for some guys, you know, they just need some time. And sometimes if a group goes a little deeper than their natural rate, it can just be a little too much for the system sometimes, is in my experience. And I try to let those guys know, you know, it’s totally okay. And you might find another container or another group that just aligns better with you. So don’t give up on the whole thing. Just, you know, find a good fit. Yeah. I can so relate to that receptivity or that opening up to like I it took me so long. I think it this you’re describing of like when someone would compliment me. I was so un it made me so uncomfortable. So uncomfortable. I would jump all around trying to deflect. And now, you know, and I worked on it for probably my 30s. And now it’s like I just like fully receive it. ⁓ my God, thank you. That feels so good to hear that. Appreciate it. And then there’s this another level that I’m finding in my relationship with my wife where it’s like she loves me so much that sometimes I’m just like, like. There’s like another level of like, ugh, it’s poking at some stuff in there that’s really soft, like really raw. And I’m like, ⁓ thanks, baby. But God, that’s really intense. And so I think what ends up happening is there’s some part of me that like almost like narrates this story of like, she doesn’t really care about me. She’s just, yeah, she cares about our kids and our dog, but not really me, you know. So I’m not that important. There’s this thing that goes on to protect me from the intensity of her love. And that’s just like, Sometimes it seems so ridiculous, but I think it’s real. I think I really feel that it’s just like so intense. I think it’s very real, ⁓ particularly for men, you know. ⁓ And it’s that it’s that real capacity of wow, if I really let that in. You know, I see this in a lot of guys I work with, particularly who kind of stay with it for a while. You know, at first they come in and it’s all the challenges of life, and this is hard, and this is hard. And then there’s often a threshold moment where the biggest challenge in life becomes. How good can I let it get? Yeah. Like, how can I can I really let the love in from my spouse, from my kids, or my pride about what I’m creating in the world? I think some of that’s just tied to because man, if I ever let that in and it goes away though, right? I could I could I live? And you know, that’s kind of the the vulnerability of it of yeah, to fully let it in and to know it could go at any moment. Yeah. For all kinds of reasons. Yeah. But as you’re describing, I can almost feel the vulnerability of like, ugh. Yeah, it’s it’s interesting because it’s like, you know, I think about this with my wife. Like we’ve, you know, we’ve been together for twelve years, way past any relationship I’ve ever had. And like we were watching this movie a couple of weeks ago. And in the movie, the movie was kind of this strange almost kid horror movie, which is ended up not being so appropriate for my kids. But what was interesting about it was it was about this family and their mom had died. The mom had died. And they don’t get into the details of what happened. It’s just that she had passed and you knew that. And the way that the daughter was dealing with it and the way the son was dealing with it, the way dad was dealing with it. And it ended up becoming really a movie about grief. But I remember just like sitting there and I just started crying a little bit because I was like, the thought of losing this person feels so scary. And I imagine on some level, like as you’re describing it, that there’s some way in which I try to protect that by almost like keeping her a little bit away. So I have to fully feel how much I really deeply am connected and care for this person. Cause then I don’t have to feel the grief, which is all bullshit because even no matter what, I’m gonna feel it all anyway. So it’s like it’s like stupid. It doesn’t it doesn’t really help you. That’s right. That’s the kind of I just fallacy in a sense we fall for and that, you know, the the beauty of it, and I’m by no means a master of system, you know, I have my moments and I’m practicing those moments, you know, whether it’s a minute or two to just be like, ⁓ my fucking God. This, you know, my kids are like chasing each other, my wife’s over here, the dog’s barking, and I’m like, this is as good as it gets. Like, I mean, like if I really feel into this moment, this is an amazing moment and let it in. And I think it’s, you know, a great practice for men. You know, a lot of men’s work through the ages has been deeply tied to practices around death and being connected to dying. Because I think, right, there’s a direct correlation to the more ephemeral. We allow ourselves to realize it all is, it’s just gonna go right through your hands. You can’t hold on to any of it. Yep. Yeah. The more that kind of demands a certain presence. Yeah. Right. Because it’s like, ⁓ my God. Yeah. Like I I’m assuming I have all kinds of assumptions that there’ll always be another. Right. And I’m I’m not quite there yet, but I’m getting close where you know, I’ve very tall daughter. She’s only six, but I’m like, wow, it it’s getting hard for me to hold you, like to hold you. And I know that day, right, is gonna come where it’s like the last time I just kind of picked up my little girl. Yeah. When that day is, I don’t know. But like when I’m holding her now, I’m like, ⁓ my God, this is gonna be gone soon. Like, rah. When I allow myself to feel that grief of it’s not gonna be here forever. And it takes a certain capacity, you know, to go there that some days I’m not up for, other days I am. But as a practice to move towards that, I think you’re right. And sometimes it’s just too much. And we have to kind of titrate and close down a little bit and just yeah, that’s gonna be that’s gonna be a lot when that does happen, which it will for all of us, you know, people we care about the most. Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree. I think that’s it. That’s like I think for some of the men I work with, that capacity to face these things is so hard. And on so many levels, they’re just, you know, and I don’t want to blame our culture, but there’s a way in which It seems like so unfair for men to be forced into these situations when they’ve been trained to be out of them in so many ways. Yeah. You know, which we all know about. But I think I think the thing that is really inspiring as I’m talking to you is this sense of like, I don’t know, like you s I think the thing that really caught me was that sense of how good can it get? How good can it get? I think that’s really a beautiful idea that I’m still sort of digesting right now. Like, yeah, like just the love, the the masculine love and being able to really receive that from other men. I’m curious. One of the things that comes up for me a lot and this is probably true in my own life is like this struggle for men and not not just in men’s groups, but just in life to formulate friendships, male friendships. And I wonder even in the in their groups, if that one of the things that comes up with some of my clients, I’m trying to like encourage and help them get out and meet other people, meet other men, because they they they’re showing up there very lonely and very alone. Mm-hmm. But I wonder about that sort of you talked about this earlier about that that sort of way in which men have a struggle to distinguish between love and physical love and sex. Like it’s almost like they don’t they don’t have they’re not two separate things. And so when men get close, there’s a way that that can feel a little unnerving and and almost they don’t know how to not sexualize it because they their only way of feeling loved is in a sexual context. And so I wonder if that comes up in your groups sometimes. Cause it has come up with some of my clients where I’m like trying to get them to meet guys and then they’re like, Yeah, I asked him. But then I was like so awkward because I was like, I want them to think I was like hitting on him or something. And I’m like, Yeah. Why wouldn’t you think it’s very real? It’s very real in our culture. So real. Yeah. I mean, you know, our our culture has changed a lot and there’s still strong homophobia in it, right? That gets layered in and then smashed together with, you know, all the features of the man box that do kind of through culture push into men like do it alone, be tough, don’t be vulnerable, don’t share. Men are competition. And, you know, some of it’s very real. Sometimes, yes, men are are threats, right? There are a lot of guys I work with in groups who men were the source of their deepest wounding. Bullying, fathers, whatever that might be. So just coming into a room with nine other male bodies already has them high on alert. Yeah. These are are real wounds that that some men carry. But then we also smash that into, yeah, our culture doesn’t teach men how to connect, right? Yeah, for for most guys, and you know, there’s a way we kind of make fun of it sometimes in media of like, you know, the guy who high school was as good as it got from and he never stops talking about those stories and those are his best friends forever or college. And I think part of what that ties into is that’s for a lot of men where their deepest relationships are formed. Yeah. And they never have an opportunity to do that again. And often what creates that is it’s a time. Where you have, how did I used to say this? It’s like you get to hang out and do nothing with each other. Yeah. Right. You have, you just have time to muck around, to mess up and explore and just waste time with each other. It’s a time often of a lot of mistakes being made. You’re learning new stuff, you’re dating, or there’s this, or you get fired from a job. And there’s a lot of bonding that happens in that. And then men get launched out of school and you know, they get on the escalator. ⁓ my God, I got to get the job now to get the house, to get the wife, to get the kids and do the thing. And the first thing that drops is that space to kind of explore and invest in those relationships. And then on top of that, most men just don’t have the tools or training to share their inner world. Yeah. Right. To go under the surface and actually talk about things. So, you know, I work with a lot of guys who. They actually do have male friends. We went out to the bars or we did our weekend. Yeah. But then they come home and they still feel lonely. And I had a guy who just did a ski trip. It’s like his closest friends from growing up, but they just don’t talk about things. Yeah. Right. There’s maybe, ⁓ you’re having a hard time right now, huh? And then it’s just boom. It’s just offlined. And that’s, I think, the default culture for a lot of men. And so I think what’s great about a men’s group is it allows us to to pierce under that. And so right now I got two kids. I’m entrepreneur. My wife’s an entrepreneur. Very busy. I have eight other guys here in my group in Colorado right now that I meet with. I could not see them all one on one as frequently as I do. Like it’s just not part of my life schedule right now. But twice a month, I get to spend very four very efficient hours catching up with these men and like building that rapport and even those little moments. And then, you know, we do the one on ones. When we can, but it becomes a very valuable way to keep growing those. And then, you know, we’ll go off for a weekend once or twice a year and it really deepens. So that yeah, that it’s a big challenge for guys. And a lot of the structures we used to meet other men in are just evaporating, right? They’re just going away. And so I think groups are, you know, fill this potentially huge hole for where do I go? And, you know, one of the reasons I moved back to Colorado was because my group was like, dude, you got a spot here if you want to come back. And you know, I’m I’m 45, I got two kids. The idea of moving somewhere where we had to start completely over with community. I was like, I I just I don’t have it in me. I barely have time to leave the house as is. And so getting to be in a circle like this, our community is my group’s community. Their spouses, their kids, it becomes in a way our extended family, right? We do the birthday parties, we do the thing, we do the Christmas party, we’re singing carols. Like it’s it’s a beautiful, like one of the highlights for me is having that layer. That’s kind of powered by those deep connections we make and learning to kind of go under the surface. You know, that’s last thing I’ll say around this, right? Is I think a lot of men historically, and again, you know, I’m talking kind of population level here, but men would bond going off and doing hard shit. War, building something, you name it, exploring, going to get some hunting. Like these, these were the things we would do. We’d go away, do something hard. And then we’d bond. And you know, there’s there’s some research around vasopressin and male receptors, and like we’re we’re kind of wired for it in some sense. And as the outer world, for at least those of us, you know, in places like this in the states, you know, first world, as the outer world becomes less dangerous, there’s less opportunities to do that. Yeah. What’s great about a men’s group is it’s the same energy. It’s just the unknown, challenging territory is the inner life. Yeah. Right? It’s when we turn that inside. ⁓ my God, this thing I inherited from my dad. I realize he got from his dad, and it’s a chain in my body, or this two-year-old, or this thing I keep doing with my kid and their thing. And those challenges become deeply meaningful to move through in community. And it bonds us, right? Yeah. Like it was certainly, I could speak for myself. It bonds me to my other men that they have witnessed me through some of the hardest moments of my life. And I through them. It’s a different kind of relationship because they see under the hood. Yeah. Right. They don’t see the social media. They see the, ⁓ my God, snot was coming out of my face. And I was a puddle of just collapse because I didn’t know what to do in my life. Yeah. But then I moved through it with their help. And that’s an incredible thing to get to experience, I think, with other guys and that that sense of facing the challenge and facing the unknown. It just it becomes in the interpersonal world in so many ways. And a group can really bond over that. Yeah. ⁓ I love all that. I love all that. As I’m sitting here, Jason, listening to you, I just wanted to reflect back. Like as I came into this, I was a little tired. I long day at work. And it’s just it’s interesting. Just even here we’re, you know, we’re in two different places. We’re doing this online. But just to be here with you is is just I feel this vitalization of my body of like, wow. It feels so good. It’s almost like what you’re saying. I am actually experiencing some of it in my in my life right now, in this or in this moment right now. And so I just I you know it’s like I’m kind of like double clicking on this of like, the shit works, guys. Who’s ever whoever’s out there listening right now? This shit works. Find a men’s group, get in and do it. It does. It really does. It’s real thing. And you know, guys, and there’s a stereotype, or are we gonna be drumming and crying and sometimes, yeah, but not all the time. What I tell guys is Honest to God, if no other reason, even if you’re just coming from that simple masculine place, you’re going to become more effective in life when you have a good group. Yeah. Because you’ll have a place to metabolize your pain, be held, be supported, slowed down, people to help you get clear around what’s really important for you. And it’s meaningful in that sense. It’s not just like a, ⁓ it’s like a support group kind of thing. It can change your life and the very real behaviors. You make, you know, in that, you know, I’ll tell a story about one of one of my guys. I think he’d be fine sharing it. There was a time he was like really struggling with something and he was the more withdrawn kind kind of guy, right? Always on the I don’t know if I’m gonna stay in the group, but kinda just used to being my own thing. He wasn’t fully in. And there was a time in his relationship, he was really in a dark place and he was like very lost. And he decided not to come to group. And one of the men noticed and, you know, just kind of messaged his partner and And they were like, Yeah, you know, he’s out there, he’s hurting right now, and I don’t know what to do. The group fucking got in the van, drove around town, found him, grabbed him, pulled him in, brought him to group, sat him down, and he just burst. Right. Just burst from the love. And from that moment on, he was in. I mean, he was in like, ⁓ I’m going to the grave now. Like, I wanted to do my thing, and you guys didn’t let me. And that It’s like a battery we get to plug into, right? Like I said, that love, that presence, that fuck, dude, you don’t have to do it all alone. None of us are perfect. We’re all struggling. Instead of pretending and putting on that kind of masculine Instagram face, it’s like, now just go under that. It’s hard. I fucked up this week. I want to do this, but I’m not doing it. I set this goal. I failed it. So much energy, just getting real, even just gets liberated in that process. So I’m so with you. Yeah. So I’ll put this in the show notes. I’ll put your website, evolutionary.men. That’s right. Yep. Okay. Yeah. So groups, there’s also some private. If they wanted to see you in private or something like some private coaching is possible in there as well. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Private coaching. I can point you towards men’s groups. You don’t even have to work with me. Just you know, I’m pretty plugged in at this point. You and I are share some networks and I’ll help you find something near you. It’s real and it works. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Jason. I think that’s a good place to end. I just wanted to thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure to see you again. It’s been such a long time and just to listen to you and to hear about your experiences and what you’re bringing to the world. I just want to thank you for everything you’re doing out there. Thank you so much for having me and the deep service I know you do to so, so many men. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for listening today. Please take a moment to like and follow so we can continue to change the world by changing ourselves. Have a wonderful day.

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain small errors.

Bryce Giron Mathern: Welcome to the Man for Real podcast. We are here to celebrate men as well as talk about how all men can do better and lead our world to a healthier place. Get ready to get real. Hey everybody. Thanks for being here today. It’s good to have you. Today I’m talking to Ty Humphreys. I’m to talk to him about his journey and his upbringing, some of his religious backgrounds, and to just get into some of the struggles that he’s had. It’s led him to be developer… ⁓ organization called whole man.org. He’s going to be here today to help us understand how we can work through suffering. Ty Humphries. Welcome to the podcast. Bryce, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it’s great to see you, man. It’s good to spend time with you. So I’d just like to start with a general sense of you and your journey of manhood, how that’s gone for you. Some of the highlights, some of the maybe some of the lowlights, just some things that have happened that have impacted your life. and led you to this point. So, you know, our listeners can get a sense of you. I know a little bit about you. I don’t know a lot about you. I know a little bit about you. And so I’m just curious if that feels good. can start to start there. Absolutely. Yeah. I’ll try and pick through the last 40, 41 plus years and give you a quick synopsis. I was born in San Diego, California to two loving parents. Grew up with two siblings, I’m the oldest of three. And we were a, what I would call a pretty religious family. Although I didn’t really know that growing up. thought, I thought we were pretty, for lack of a better term, normal. Yeah, just, just normal, I guess. Church every Sunday, usually also on Wednesdays. Yeah, so grew up in the Christian religion. Nondenominational is what it was called. And… Looking back on those young years and even all the way up until only probably three or four years ago, that religion had a major effect on my life, both positive and what might be referred to as negative. When I was 10 years old, we moved to Colorado Springs. My parents both worked at Focus on the Family, which may give some context as well, which… It does. Yeah. Yeah. For people who don’t know, Focus of the Family is a pretty conservative Christian organization in Colorado Springs. Yes. And that’s an interesting thing to me, again, growing up totally normal and something that my family was very proud of. My parents were very proud of. And, you know, that’s something that I’m working through and kind of getting new perspectives on as I step into my own power and my own consciousness and kind of sort through. what all of that actually means to me now. So 10 years old, moved from San Diego to Colorado Springs. So I would say that Colorado is kind of where I spent most of my more cognizant developmental years. High school, played football, played hockey, had some really formative experiences there just in the sports world with coaches and kind of getting what I would call a stereotypical American masculine. perspective of what a man should be and is. And yeah, that really formed a lot of my perceptions for later years. would you describe that? How would you describe that? Like, you know, I played football too, so I have sense of what you’re talking about, but I’m just curious, in your words, how would you describe that sort of typical American masculine idea? Yeah, I would say that it was a total deletion. of emotions. was a grooming to be willing to suffer without any kind of openness or communication about what was going on. Any type of what would have been called whining or emotional expression would have been shamed. And I just learned like, ⁓ okay, that’s, that’s not what a man is. And so that’s not what I’m going to do. And that perspective was, that was reaffirmed. in many other places in my life. In my family, that was kind of the norm as well. Even though both of my parents were psychologists and counselors, emotions still were not a safe place, which is pretty intriguing for me to recognize. Do they ever talk about them? Do they ever talk about emotions? mean, just that’s like their orientation. Yeah, it’s interesting. We would have family meetings and I think that was their attempt at talking about emotions, but it was all so intellectual. It was all so structured and contained. There was no availability for just raw emotion in my experience. I think perhaps my brother and sister have a different experience from the little bit that I’ve gotten to talk to them about their experience of their childhood, but… And part of my recognition there is that I was the firstborn. And I think there’s, I think there’s something to that. I see a pattern even in my firstborn where parents’ fears seem to be transferred to the firstborn more heavily than the latter, which to me only makes logical sense. First time you have a child and you’re like, ⁓ my. Gosh, this thing is totally dependent on me. have no idea what to do. I’ve never done this. And beyond that, I was deeply wounded by my own parents. So I don’t want to do that. And now all of that fear I feel like is without real intention is very easily transferred, especially to a first born. Yeah. Yeah. So you want me to keep kind of going through. Yeah. So I get really curious about, so there’s the sports thing. I get curious about how. the religious upbringing impacted your sense of yourself as a man or even just as a human being, obviously, maybe more specifically, like how that informed you is like, I’m a person, I’m a man. And then there’s this whole kind of dogmatic system that you’re being inculturated into. And then you have to come out of that and it makes some sense of it. And I’m just curious, like what that was like for you. Yeah, that’s a deep question and to me it’s one of the, the answer to that question is one of the most foundational healing points for my whole journey to this point. To be told when you are, I mean, as early as you can understand language that there’s a place called hell and if you don’t do things right, if you don’t say the right prayer, if you don’t behave the right way, it’s very possible that you could spend. eternity in a place of horrific torture. You and I, as full-grown adult men with fully developed brains, we can, we have ways to rationalize through that and kind of protect ourselves from that. But a small child, that is, I honestly don’t think that we can really understand the effect of that. And that has been a big part of my awakening and emergence. is exploring that more and considering how that really affected me. And some of the ways that I can clearly see, it seems like such a foundational deep stab at my value. And it’s so interesting because what I was always told was, oh no, you are infinitely valuable. You’re so valuable. Look at what Jesus did for you. He died for you. Yeah. And yet the underlying premise is he had to die for me. I’m that horrible. I’m that evil that he had to die for me. And if he didn’t, I would absolutely be going to hell. And, and then on top of that, if I didn’t say the right thing or believe the right thing, even though he died for me, I’m still going to go to hell. And the effects of that on, on my brain. were just so detrimental. spent, what I recognize is I became someone who traded my authenticity for acceptability. And it seems to me, looking back on it, so obvious why. For that seed to be so deeply rooted at such a young age, it’s like, oh, fuck, I better do things right here and I better comply. with what’s going on here. And then to add on all the other realities of life, the sorrows and the traumas and the fears, all of that, I just started to build this story. Like this place is not safe and I need to fall in line and I need to do what other people tell me to do. I am not inherently valuable. What makes me valuable is this God, this religion, this savior. this death of him and my compliance with that. And so I became the ultimate nice guy, people pleaser, completely non-existent as a separate entity. And the suffering that that created is something that I still process on a daily basis. And I love that I get to process it. And There’s a part of me that loves that I got to experience that suffering so deeply because no one can ever take that away from me. And I went there deeply. I based my life on these beliefs and they ended me in a place where I was contemplating more and more suicide. I didn’t want to be here anymore. I hated my life. I had a failing marriage. My children. didn’t want to be around me, didn’t respect me. I felt totally at a loss for how to connect with them and how to love them. Even though these things, my marriage and my fatherhood were so deeply important to me and things that I just longed to succeed at, it was like I could not figure it out. I could not connect with these people who were so precious to me. And it came to the point where about three and a half years ago, probably closer to four now, my wife just said, and it’s wild to look at the progression of it because for the whole 12 years leading up to that, she kept communicating like something’s wrong here. Like I’m not getting what I need. I don’t feel connected. I don’t feel loved. Like you’re mean and you’re, and yet I had built this religious structure around me where I could go. to church on Sunday and Wednesday, get a couple good handshakes, look a couple people in the eyes and say the right things and get the confirmation, ⁓ no, Ty’s a great guy. Everybody loves him. Everybody thinks he’s so amazing. And my bias was to listen to them over this crazy woman in my life, the only one in my life who was like, dude, something’s wrong. You’re messed up, dude. And yet I had all these other sources that were confirming, no, I’m a good guy. Everything’s good. Everything’s all right. And eventually 12 years into our marriage, things just came to a head. was infidelity and not to mention the infidelity that was going on all throughout through my porn addiction. And it came to the point where the word divorce actually came up as a real possibility. And what I experienced in that moment was a recognition that this facade that I had built was about to come crashing down and everyone was going to see who I really was. And that scared the shit out of me. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It just, it’s interesting to hear this story. I definitely have a lot of clients with a similar story. I just wonder, like, it was like, almost like there’s this way in which in relationship or in, I know, I guess it’s not inevitable, but there’s some way in which something keeps poking at us that eventually we have to change. We have to change. We cannot continue. And it always comes back to this sense of like, it’s so much suffering not to be who we really are. So much suffering. And that keeps poking us until we have to, we collapse, we give up, and then we have to start to rebuild to be that. who we really are, or are we just, you know, I mean, unfortunately I think a lot of people, you know, they end their lives because they can’t be who they really are. I’m not a lot, but there’s a percentage of people that go that route, but it’s, it’s really, it’s so tragic. It’s so tragic. Yeah. Yeah. Man. I love the way you put that. And I feel that so deeply in my soul that I think a way that I would put it is whatever you want to call it. My term for what I used to call God is GRUS and it stands for good God, reality, universe, unity, source and spirit. And for me, Gruss just never gave up. Gruss will not give me satisfaction in anything other than the most beautiful, true, real version of me. And that is one of the new beliefs that I cling to and that I love because it It changes everything. It actually, makes it, it turns those negative things, those things that I used to feel like things that were against me. now see those things as so unbelievably for me. They are my opportunity to grow and remember and be who I actually am because I spent a lifetime building up shit that was not me. And now I’m in this process of. Just slowly peeling all that away and actually seeing who I am and my greatest opportunity there is those moments where it’s like, ⁓ shoot, I’m really sad right now. And I’m really angry right now. I’m really scared right now. Or I’m really joyous right now. And all those pieces that I never had access to before, because I didn’t allow myself to access those things. And now those things are. reminding me and giving me the opportunity to dig in. If I’m scared, well, why am I scared? It used to be, I avoided fear like the plague. Now I see fear as one of my greatest opportunities and teachers. it’s just life is a 180 degrees from what it was. And I love being here now. Good to hear. I’m so glad. So I’m curious. This was, said, kind of really that came to head about four years ago. And so that was really a tipping point where things had to change. And then kind of where are we at today? Or maybe you’d kind of catch us up a little bit of where things are now. You bet. Where am I at today as far as my relationship with my wife, my kids, just kind of all of it or. Yeah. Maybe, maybe there’s something in the middle there that It’s important. I don’t want to rush you through it. I’m just curious, like you’re sort of seeing like, wow, I’ve really made these big shifts in terms of how I’m relating to myself and how I’m seeing the world. And it feels like really transformative, but kind of what I’m curious about that path for the last few years that has sort of led you to this place. Yeah. I love the opportunity to kind of remember because it started for me. I moved out of the house. I lived in my van for. About three months. And right at that moment, I had had a book on my reading list for some time before that, a book by Jaco Willink called Extreme Ownership. And that was the perfect book for me to read in that moment, apparently. And what I learned from Jaco’s experience in battle, and I don’t condone war, battle, any of that. I’ve become very different from who I was when I read the book. And yet it’s so cool to see how perfect it was for me in the moment, because I would say that I was kind of a warmongering type person. And so this battle scarred hero writing this book about extreme ownership and getting to read that in my moment of crisis was so precious because what I realized in reading that book was that my reality is my responsibility. And if I’m the problem, I’m also the solution. And Jaco talks about if anything went wrong on his battlefield, he owned it. He owned, even if someone else made a mistake, he found a way to take ownership to say, Hey, I could have communicated better. And that for me in that moment was such a revelation, such a breath of fresh air, because I had externalized my power in every possible way. I had externalized my value in every possible way. I was completely dependent on everything and everyone around me. And what I gained in reading that book was the recognition that I’m powerful and I can create whatever I want. And it started for me with ownership for recognizing that I had created an environment where my wife was so disconnected. so desperate, so ⁓ heartbroken that she wanted nothing to do with me and she was so hurt and confused and that she was seeking love in other places. And I now look on that with such gratitude that she tried so hard for so long to communicate and to give me the opportunity to change And eventually it came to the point where it’s like, I’m done, man. I’ve got to find love somewhere. And as painful as that was, I now look on that with such gratitude and as one of the greatest gifts that I’ve ever received in my lifetime. And I will, I will spend the rest of my life thanking her for her courage and her power and her consistency and her love for me in all of that. So it started for me with ownership. And then it’s so beautiful to look back and to just recognize all these, what I would now call baby steps. And yet in the moment they felt like Mount Everest. Sure. Yeah, but they were massive, know, like scary. And one of the next big steps was joining a men’s group and getting the protection of powerful men who had done their work to be able to provide a safe place, to be able to provide a protected place for me to develop my own safety, my own internal safety. And it was a place where I could come out and say, I’m addicted to pornography. I am a kleptomaniac. I was stealing things left and right. My wife despises me. My kids don’t want to connect. Like the utter failure of my life. And to be held in that space by those men, not soothed, not like, ⁓ it’s okay, Ty, but so powerfully held and challenged and loved to say, it doesn’t have to be this way. And there is a path and there are steps that you can take to create what you want. And it’s, I’ve been on that path for the last four years ever since, and I love. My life, I love this path. Wow. That’s great. So I wanted to just double click on one part. It’s like, you know, that, way in which men can provide that clarity where it’s not, it’s not an avoidance or discounting, but it’s, it’s going right into it, right into it. Like, yep, this sucks. And what now you got to do something about it. think that’s it’s so beautiful about men’s groups is that there’s an accountability, but it’s not an accountability from shame or judgment or criticism. It’s an, it’s an accountability of like, we’re here, we’re on your side and you can do this. You got to change though. You can’t keep being like this. And then you start to make those short Mount Everest changes or it feels like Mount Everest changes, then slowly but surely you start to make the steps towards something new. So I just, really appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the tiny little language shifts there that I really felt from these men too, is it’s what you said is accurate. You’ve got to change if you want to stay here and be among us. And there’s another sense in which a big part of my journey and my healing is that I don’t have to change. I actually could stay that way. I could stay the same person who was totally disconnected, totally addicted to all these things that were leading me to despair and death. And nothing would change about my inherent and innate value. And that to me is such a powerful truth because what that does is it actually deletes any shame. And now rather than this pressurized container that I have to become someone different or I’m just fucked. or I’m going to hell or I’m unvaluable now, it creates a whole different mindset, which is I get to change and I want to change and I love changing and I love becoming me. No pressure. I don’t have to, but I get to look at what old me created and be like, dude, I don’t like that. It becomes almost logical at that point. And as men being so logically minded, it’s like, ⁓ shoot, yeah. When I believed this, this was the result and I don’t like the result. So I’m not going to believe that anymore. Okay. So this all sort of come out of these last four years. And so where are you now? I’m curious, like in terms of your life, your kids, your wife, how’s that all shifted for you? Oh man. It’s 180 degrees from where it was. My wife and I are deeply. deeply connected, the conversations that I get to have with her on a daily basis now just blow my mind. So, so deeply intimate. Every day is an adventure. And don’t hear me say that there’s not still major, major struggles and major difficulties and major differences. The difference now is that, like I said earlier, the mindset is that those are for me. And so what that does is It opens my mind up to a creative mindset now. And now when I experienced those, like I said, those emotions, those traumas, the fears, the sorrows, even the joys and the pleasures, my mind now is able and not, not immediately. I’m still, I’m still learning to, to get there more quickly. And yet I get there way more quickly than I did at the beginning of this journey, that those things are for me. They are my greatest opportunity, greatest gift. And so I alchemize things that in my previous marriage, and when I say previous, I mean my marriage to the same woman, but previous to my awakening. Those things just went down in the history books as, well, that’s just another withdrawal from the account of love that will never be accounted for or fixed. just became. a part of the fabric of our relationship. Whereas now those major disagreements and pains and sorrows, we alchemize those within oftentimes hours, sometimes a day, maybe two days, but those things become little, I don’t know, maybe carns. I don’t know if you know the term carn, like when you’re hiking, little signposts or, or remembrances that we can look to and be like, Holy cow. Yeah. felt like, you know what carn is? Can you explain what it is? Yeah. carn is like a, like when you’re out hiking, it’s a trail marker that people put up to indicate where the trail is. It’s basically a stack of rocks. Yeah. Sometimes it could be like having a memorial element to it. Like sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I love that. I love that image of just these carns on your life that help you in your journey. And they’re each little ones that Dictate the journey. think that’s really beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. It’s fun, man. It’s fun to be able to look at those and, see, Oh my gosh. I just turned what even in that moment, even like a couple of days ago, I had an experience like this where old old me kind of took the wheel and I felt this deep despair. Like, am I ever going to get what I want in this marriage? And just like deep, deep despair. And yet. the past four years of me training myself, deleting the shame, constantly conversing with powerful people, all of that training, all of that input and that like soaking in this new beauty and this new belief system and all of that kind of just activated. I was scared out of my mind and yet it just kind of activated into a point where it was like my body intuitively knew like you need to be vulnerable right now. You need to share what you’re feeling. That was totally off the table before. I couldn’t say I’m scared right now or I’m really hurt right. That was gone. That was not an option before. And it’s still very scary for me to do that. And yet in this moment, a couple of days ago, that training just took over and I did it. And within literally within 20 minutes, we were so connected. We were so in love. We were so like, it’s just like, whoa, man. I love this. Yeah. Yeah. I want to just give some really appreciating what you’re saying about like this movement from, I think you said externalizing your value, externalizing yourself into like everyone else gets to dictate you. You’re who you are because of everyone else. Like my value is because you love me. My value is because I did a good job and you think I did a good job to this way of like feeling like ownership of your life, this empowerment. I feel like that’s a very common experience I have in my work is that, you know, there’s a way in which the externalization is, it can be like, like a sense of identity. Like I’m not valuable unless you love me, but it’s also often in the form of blame. Like I can’t do who I want to be in because you were holding me back. And I think that this, this idea of ownership is so critical for men to say, I am going to create, I’m going to lead. I’m going to take. find my fierce masculinity and I’m going to take over and make this the way I need it to be. And I’m going to fully empower or I want to say fully embrace my wife’s struggles and complaints and issues and own it, just own it. Cause I think that’s what ends up happening. And I mean, I definitely do this too, is we’re so afraid to sit in the vulnerability of being seen as messing up. And it’s like small things. forgot the butter off or I really messed up. You know, like I did something terribly hurtful. We can’t sit in that. And so we blame, we shame ourselves. We shame other people. There’s all these defensive mechanisms that we use to get out of it. But once you can start to, and it’s not perfect, you don’t do it a hundred percent, you know, is all that obviously, but once you start to realize that I can own all of it, I can just take it all in and use it and use the word alchemize, which for me means It’s all coming in and it’s helping me turn all of this despair and shame and stuff into like this gold of growth. Yes. And I think that’s really what’s happening is that we have to really have that almost, I think, I don’t know if it has to be this way, but there’s almost like a breakdown and then was sort of awakening. And it’s like, then it’s like, really, I’m going to empower myself. And that’s really what I see with so many men that have, I think in many ways parallel your journey. is that I’m gonna do this. know, it’s a lot of my work is to help men to see like, you’re the one that’s gonna do this. I’m not here with your wife. I’m not gonna change your wife. I’m gonna get your wife to be better. I’m not gonna get your kids to be better. I’m not gonna get your parents to be better. You’re the one and you’re the only one. But in taking responsibility for our lives, it just, changes the whole game. Yeah. And what a lie it was to ever believe anything other than that. And it’s intriguing to me. Like where does that lie start for different people? For me, it started with hell and the religion and someone else scaring me so much that it was like, Oh, I can’t trust myself. Oh, I’m not, I don’t have innate value. I don’t know what’s going on here. And yeah, it’s intriguing to me to recognize though, that there’s so many people, so many men. probably women too, who didn’t necessarily have the religious background and yet still have that same feeling. It makes me think that maybe there’s a biological mandate there happening where it’s like, we’re always looking for the tiger. We’re always looking for what’s going to kill us. And it feels like we’re moving past that. It feels like there’s a big move happening where we’re going to overcome that. mean like we’re always looking for reasons why Like to be afraid, to be scared of our circumstances or where we’re at. And then that fear leads us to want to attach to systems that aren’t always the healthiest systems. Like a religious system or something. Yeah. And to me it’s rampant. It’s not just Christianity. It’s not just Islam. It’s Republicanism. It’s Democratism. capitalism, it’s like, these are all to me, religions that we all attach ourselves to, to protect ourselves. Sure. Yeah. No, think it’s actually kind of hard to be fully engaged with our fundamental truth, like our real sense of ourself. I think it’s actually quite uncomfortable, least maybe the journey there. I find it actually quite beautiful and humbling to be in that space at this point, but I think it’s scary for people. so people are looking for some kind of structured thing that will give them the answers to everything. And all of these things are some sort of answer to that. But it’s always a hollow answer. It never really sort of fulfills what we’re looking for. so, you know, the thing I was saying earlier is that I think there’s just this constant kind of itch, sometimes an itch, sometimes it’s like a scream that’s telling us you’re not being who you really are. Keep going. You’re not who you really are. And sometimes it’s really painful. You know, there’s substance abuse and all kinds of other things that we do to kind of fake it. But inevitably there’s a pull in our sort of human life towards that sense of growth and becoming our fullest self and that we can’t get away from. I really don’t think we can get away from that. Yeah. Which is beautiful. It’s baked in. It’s like, it’s beautiful that it’s baked into the whole evolutionary process. ⁓ I love it. It gives me so much hope to recognize that there’s another sense for me. Part of my old belief too, was that time was limited. And so if I didn’t get it figured out in this next 90 years, again, I’m fucked. Yeah. Either I’m going to heaven or I’m going to hell. And I don’t believe that anymore. You know, like the amount of suffering that I accumulate on this earth, I think goes with me wherever I go next. And all it is, it’s like suffering. don’t see good and evil anymore. I see everything leading to bliss and beauty and even the suffering that I am massed in my own experience in this lifetime, this go around or however, whatever you think about it. mean, I’ve already just in one lifetime, I’ve alchemized that suffering into this whole new paradigm where I live in bliss far more than I did before. And so. When I extrapolate that into eternity and more, more time beyond when my body is going to be here. It’s like, dude, even if you suffer a whole lifetime, I’m okay. Like I don’t want you to, and I’m here to be a light and to like do whatever I can to help you jump off of that suffering cycle. And yet if you spend a whole life suffering here, that’s okay. You’re going to be fine. It’s okay. We have this limited perspective of what’s going on here. And that to me is part of what scares the shit out of us is like, I only got 90 years. ⁓ my God. And talk about pressure and pressure then leads to fear and fear leads to a closed mind and a closed mind can’t think about how to actually create what we want. And so that’s one of those beliefs where I’m just like, that belief doesn’t lead me where I want to go. So I’m fucking done with it. Yeah. I’m curious. Like. One of the things that I think is challenging for people who either didn’t have any kind of religious spiritual development, you know, just lived a very secular life or people who’ve come out of that world and have decided that that’s not their right way. Like one of the things I think is hard is like finding some kind of North star in your life that allows you to kind of know where you’re going. Yeah. I think about like religion and even some spiritual traditions, it’s like it gives you some sense of like, this is what you need to do. And I think it’s hard for people to be in the world and have a little bit more of an amorphous, like I’m just going to be me. And I think that’s what’s hard. And so as much as we’re sort of here talking about the challenges of religion, I think what it does provide often is a sense of here’s your North star. And I those North stars can be somewhat distorted as we’re talking about today. But I think in the loss of that, you know, in our more, I think increasingly secularized world, it really makes it hard for people to feel some kind of grounded connection to the sacred. And that is a huge loss. And so then in the absence of that, I’m just curious, like, I don’t think you’ve, sounds to me like you’ve created or not necessarily created, but you’ve maintained the good elements of that. Well, maybe letting go some of the shameful, painful elements of your upbringing. I’m just curious if you could talk a little bit about. how that’s been for you of maintaining some kind of North star in your life. Yeah, I love that. I’ve been thinking about this more lately. A big part of the process of healing and growth for me, one of the mile markers or the indicators that I am healed is when I can go back to my abuser with completely open arms and complete love and just, and I wouldn’t say that I’m fully there yet. And yet I’m on that path and that love is growing. so part of that process for me is recognizing the beauty in my upbringing and recognizing how valuable it really was and how it actually made me who I am today, who is this person who is so much more blissful and so much more excited about life. And maybe I wouldn’t be here today had I not gone through the goods and the bads. of my upbringing and of my religion, former religion. And so the way that I’ve contextualized that in my life is I see religion as a foothold. If we’re to take the analogy of like climbing El Capitan and this sheer rock face, envision that as our life. And as I’m climbing this daunting, unbelievably massive, challenging endeavor. Religion to me is, it’s a foothold and it’s something that, that I was able to grasp onto that gave me some beautiful truths and some opportunity to feel and to explore and to actually experience, ⁓ okay. Here’s Christianity. Like I’m doing it. I’m actually here and I’m holding onto it and I’m believing it and I’m acting. based on those beliefs. And I think what I recognize though is that religion is always only ever that. Religion is not the end goal because religion is by its very nature limited. And I don’t believe that I am limited. I don’t believe that you are limited. I believe that we are eternal, infinite beings. And so I got the opportunity to experience Christianity and now it’s like when I was young, it was a handhold. When I got a little bit older, it was a foothold as I moved up and now I’m moving on to something different and I’m not even standing on it. Does that mean that I don’t love Jesus Christ and the message and so many of the stories and so many beautiful things from the Bible and so many of the amazing experiences that I’ve had and the amazing things that Christianity has produced in this world? Absolutely not. I love those things. But my life is no longer based on those things. I’ve climbed beyond it. And that’s also to say that like, I have new religions now in a sense, and they are religions of my own making. And my hope and my desire is that those now are my handhold. And in a couple years, they will be my foothold. And I will progress past those things eventually. That’s kind of the way that I contextualize that stuff now. Yeah, that makes sense. Do you feel like you have beyond sort of the kind of the growth element of your life? Like it sounds like that’s kind of what you’re saying. Like you’re going to keep growing. You’re going to discover new ideas and new things. You’re going to keep growing, which is beautiful. I wonder if there’s like a way in which you have some kind of essential philosophy or way of seeing the world that really kind of keeps you grounded or in line with, you your turn of divine essence. think you’re talking about the sense of divine essence and like, that’s where, you know, know, truth resides. Cause you know, I think it’s kind of easy to be in that in some ways, but there’s also times where I like what you’re saying about suffering and the challenges of life being a way to continue to use that. to grow, but I think for a lot of people, it’s those times where we need some kind of grounded sense of ourselves, you know, whether it’s a religion or spiritual tradition, whatever it is, it’s like when I’m really suffering, I need that. I need something to feel. need that toe hold. So I just wonder for you, if there’s like a real sense of like, this is the thing that I really can depend on in those challenging times. Man, I mean, there’s so many different things that come to mind. It’s hard to pinpoint right now. And that may be part of the indication that like, I’m actualized or realized or I’m not done growing. But for me, I would say that bliss is kind of a central theme. have a belief that bliss is my natural state. It is what I’m created for and why I’m here and it’s my birthright. It’s who I actually am. And so. If ever I’m outside of bliss, and that’s where other pieces, other answers to your question kind of come in. Now I have this thing, okay, bliss is who I really am. Anytime that I’m outside of bliss, anytime that I’m experiencing stress or fear or anger or trauma, any of these things that all those are to me now, and this is another belief that plays into that whole system for me, all those are opportunities. And along with that, there’s so many pieces to this kind of, for lack of a better word, religion that I’m building for myself that I use in those moments where I don’t feel grounded. I mean, one of the things that I am discovering is what I call superpowers. We were told by Hollywood that superpowers are what Superman has. He can fly, he can laser beam people, he can, you all these crazy things. And yet what I’m realizing in my life is that. I am full of superpowers. And the definition of a superpower to me now is it’s available to me in every moment that I’ve ever existed or ever will exist. It’s available to everyone in every moment. Maybe that’s the full definition. It’s things like vulnerability. It’s things like breath. It’s things like curiosity and courage and creativity. Like these things are available to me in every moment that I’ve ever existed and yet they were unknown to me and unavailable to me. And now they are available to me and I get to pull them out and use them in those moments where I don’t feel grounded, where I feel scared. And the effect is it’s 180 degrees from where I was before. Wow. Yeah. That’s great. Well, Ty, I just want to take a moment to thank you. I wanted to ask Before we end though, is there a place where people can find you? Yeah, I am. I’ve got a website, wholeman.org. wholeman.org, okay. Yeah. And then I’m on Instagram and Facebook, Instagram. I just actually changed my name and I didn’t even tell you, Bryce, it’s weird. And, but I now refer to myself as Cowl. And so my Instagram page is Cowl I am. If anyone’s interested. Okay. Cowl I am. Is it C-O-W-L? ⁓ no, it’s actually C-C-O-W-L. C-C-O-W-L. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Okay. Well, thank you so much for being here today. It’s been such a pleasure to connect with you and spend time with you. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you. Sometimes connect on WhatsApp for just brief texting, but it’s just really great to see you in person. I appreciate you being on the show today. Right. Thanks. Thanks for having me. I love your presence, man. love your gentleness. feel connected to you and I love you. I love you too, man. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you for listening today. Please take a moment to like and follow so we can continue to change the world by changing ourselves. Have a wonderful day.