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Bryce: 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 everyone, it’s great to be here with you all today. I’m excited to share this wonderful conversation with Morgan Rich, who wrote the book The Invitation Beyond. It was a wonderful conversation that I think you’ll really enjoy. Morgan Rich. Welcome to the podcast.

Morgan: my friend, good to be here. Thanks for all the all the good energy you put into the world and just appreciate your good minute.

Bryce: Thanks, man. I appreciate it. So I’d like to start with a little bit about you, a little bit about your journey. You know, I’ve read through your book. Shall we we’ll be talking about some of those pieces as we go. So I highly recommend I’ll put it in the show notes as well. I’m curious, kind of like kind of how maybe you got here. There’s a little bit of that in the book, but there’s like some stories and stuff, but maybe a little bit more about you and how you kind of come to some of these realizations over the last Two decades.

Morgan: Yeah. Yeah, thanks. I think the place I would would start, just what’s what’s sort of relevant and up for me these days is I read an article recently about the lost boys. About the lost boys. And I you know, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about lost boys ’cause I I was a lost boy. Maybe I maybe I still am in some ways. You know, there’s certainly a part of a lost boy inside of me who’s who’s searching. But I think what I’ve been as I’ve been sort of thinking about it, I have a particular flavor of lost of lost boyness, which is to say that that I grew up upper middle class in Chicago, went to private schools, had everything I needed, summer camps in the summers, played ice hockey. You know, from outward appearances, everything was and I I would not have been a lost boy. In fact, even as I think about it, the teacher conferences and the school thought I was doing fine. But inside I was I was really confused and really struggling. Like school did not work for me. And I had a dream I was an I am an athlete, so I play ice hockey and like didn’t go and Had a dream to play in the Olympics back when I was a teenager. I I still have a dream to play in the Olympics. Let’s be let’s be honest about it. You know, I’ve moments where I think, like, I think I think maybe, I think just maybe I could be the first fifty-six year old dude to make it. Yeah, just that ambition. So I went away to boarding school when I was fifteen and and pretty fat shortly after that, the dream kind of died. And it was hard because it was so much of my identity because I wasn’t a school guy. I wasn’t an I wasn’t an academic intellectual guy. So that was sort of the first huge big loss. Of going for something and realizing like, ⁓ shit, like I that identity of being hockey guy isn’t who I am. And I got plunged in, you know, away at boarding school. Got it. There was some loneliness in there. So then continue through high school, all kinds of good stories in there. My dad died my first year of college. So just as I’m transitioning out of high school into college, my dad dies and I end up a number of different schools. But the fru line of it is that here I am. young guy in a lot of grief with something trying to come alive at me that is not normal that I couldn’t name at that point, feeling again like a lost boy, you know, feeling like I don’t fit here. And I don’t know what’s going on with me, but I don’t fit into this. And there were some very clear messages that came, which was, can you just please comply, play by the rules and do what you’re supposed to do? And I couldn’t. Both I couldn’t because I wasn’t good at it, but I also couldn’t because there was something in me that was just saying, like, I that’s not that world of the old boys network, of selling out who I am and what I care about, just to fit in and just to be successful in that model that we see, you know, high school, private school, boarding school, you know, northeast college, off into, you know, finance or whatever it might be. And then everything’s grand because I’m making a whole bunch of money and I have the right cars and the right house and. I it was like that’s not my story. But I was groomed for that. And I was in an environment where that’s where everyone else was being groomed for. But I was something else was going on inside of me that I was trying to figure out and didn’t really have role models for, didn’t have anyone I could go to and say, What is this all about? And this doesn’t seem like this is what I’m up to. And there were some really big stories about being laughed at. When I wrote about friendship and love in a classroom, about being, you know, running for student body president and being undercut by the by the frat boys that were just saying, like, you’re supposed to be doing it a certain way, and you aren’t. So we are gonna crush you. And I was in that. It was hard. And so that really, in many ways, Bryce was the was the genesis of my work with men, because I needed someone to come find me. I needed someone who had been through the darkness, who was a respected elder, who wasn’t full of shit and wasn’t pretending and wasn’t just talking the game of, you know, but I needed someone who had integrity and depth and and initiation and something that I couldn’t bring words to back then, but now see as I was trying to I was fighting a fight of trying to stay alive in my soul and in a place that had no interest in soul or healthfulness or real masculinity in my from what I currently see. So that’s where it started. You know, I mean that was that’s really the genesis of my desire to be to work with men is to be the guy that I needed back then. And really didn’t find until I was in my late thirties when I read a story about Michael Mead and his resisting Vietnam, the Vietnam War and really ended up in in a place of, you know, he was in solitary confinement.

Bryce: Yeah.

Morgan: On a hunger strike, not, you know, and a general came to him and said, Soldier, are you do you want to die in this cell? And he said, I would rather die. Like, yes, I would rather die here in this cell, connected to whatever limited sense of self that I have inside of me, that I would go out there and play a game of killing other people who I don’t know for reasons I don’t understand. ⁓ And that resonated with me, resonates with me so like there was some like. I had my own version of that, which wasn’t you know, solitary confinement in the military and all that. But it was in private school fighting a fight of feeling like I was all alone, naked, with no one there to to support me.

Bryce: Wow. What’s interesting about what you’re talking about to me is how there was like I’m sure there were lots of different moments, but I’m it seems like there was this thread of like clarity in you of like who you were and who you weren’t. Like, you know, like to be able to push against the culture, the rules, the society, you have to be really clear, I think. And that’s what’s impresses me about you is like, wow, you really pushed back and said, No, I’m not gonna do it this way. Yeah. And I I didn’t quite have the same sort of grooming that you had, but there was elements of that in my life as well. But I just I’m just curious about like what was it that was so clear to you inside of you that was like, I can’t do it this way.

Morgan: I’ll say it impresses me about me also, I have to say. And to really answer your question, honestly, I don’t know. Like I I don’t I there wasn’t some my experience of me at that time of my life was that I was really lost. Like that I was really hurting, that I was really confused. I didn’t have some guiding light that was like, Okay, here’s you know, here’s what I’m trying to do. Mostly I was just scrambling to try to stay alive and just knowing f there was just something in me, you know My dad my dad founded the Chicago Bulls and he was the president of Young Presidents Organization back in the late 60s, which was like a who’s who of all the, you know, really, really successful dudes in the world. When I was born, he was sort of at the pinnacle of what might be called success in the world. But the dad that I knew from that point forward was mostly destitute. Like he went from having quote unquote everything to living in a one-room boarding house. with me with a bathroom down the hallway. And so he there was something in him that realized like that life, that what we’ve defined as success, I think he had some big questions about it. I don’t really know because I I just didn’t we didn’t talk about it. But right before he died, you know, he was he had a brain tumor and he was he was really sick. And I it was pretty clear he was dazed from death, although I didn’t really know. And I I took his hands and I just said, like please dad. Take whatever you need for me. Like take the energy you need, take the life force you need, take the strength you need. I was a big, strong hockey player, good shape, all this kind of stuff. I’m just like, please, please, please, like take what you need to stay alive. And I think what happened was something got it like boomeranged on me, where he gave me something. And he gave me something that I didn’t like feel or know, but it was part of the the answer to your question. Which is to say something in me woke up that said there’s a deeper life here that I think he was searching for, that I think he knew, that he didn’t finish his journey particularly. And so he sort of passed it along to me because all of a sudden, like after he died, I just decided I wasn’t I wasn’t a big drinker substance user before that. But I I just I was clear like I’m not I’m not medicating his death. I’m not I was listening to one of your podcasts where the man who lost three of his closest friends, you know, and went down the road of addiction and alcoholism, you know. For whatever reason I didn’t do that. I I can’t explain what exactly why that happened. Alcoholism is all over my family. I just knew that wasn’t a path. And I was somehow willing and able to sit in the pain, incredible pain, like my own rite of passage, which I never would have named it as such, of grief and darkness. Listening to something, some clarity, some knowing, some something that was guiding me.

Bryce: Wow. It’s just ⁓ I mean, not that your dad was able to do that consciously, but there’s such a gift. Such an incredible gift to say, I’m out. Here’s this final bit of wisdom. Figure this out for yourself. That’s kind of incredible. And I think you I was thinking that as you before you said it of like, you know, for so many of us, we never got that moment of like, You’re a man now. You know, like you’ve gone through this passage and you’re welcome into the men of community of men. And it sounds like in a way, this energetic passing, if you want to describe it, was a moment of you being like welcomed into manhood on some level and your dad saying, Wake up, there’s something different out there for you.

Morgan: Yeah, I described his death as one of the biggest gifts of my life and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. It was so I was in so much pain. And and I wish I and again, like the reason that I do the work that I do and care you know, do this is because I wish that had been visible. It would have made things really different to me. He didn’t say anything in that hand moment. Like I didn’t I wasn’t Conscious of any shift. It just happened. And then, you know, it wasn’t there was nothing in me before that. It wasn’t like all of a sudden I was full of, you know, like I had a lot of integrity, I had a lot of hard work. I had had this whole death of my dream in in hockey, having to go from being one of the most talented kids at my little tiny school in Chicago to the least talented kid at this big boarding school. And having to fight my ass off to make the team, which I barely did, and then fight my ass off to get on the ice. And for some reason there was something in me that engaged, you know. And I wish I was able to say, like, here’s what

Bryce: It’s

Morgan: just was in me and it’s always been in me. And then it was galvanized by the, you know, that moment, like you’re saying, there was an initiation that happened there. It just wasn’t visible. And I think we need to, as men, elder men, start to make the initiations more visible and start to speak into this place. Because otherwise we have guys wandering around uninitiated or initiated on their own, like I was. But that is, it’s beautiful. Like I’m so proud of myself and feel great about it. And man, was it, you know, like I feel like what the way I say it is like I I wish I had had happened sooner and then I had gotten in different trouble. You know. I feel like I’m sort of tired of this trouble of not being initiated. Like let’s get initiated and then get into trouble. Cause like that could be way more fucking interesting than whatever we’re doing now, just walking around as lost boys fucking things up.

Bryce: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No

Morgan: Like the world needs us to get in different trouble.

Bryce: Right, right. Yeah, I know I think I’m I mean we could talk about this specific issue of initiation for the several podcasts, I imagine. It’s a big deal. And especially today and it has been maybe ever. What I get curious about the other piece that really struck out to me is when you were talking about your ability to stay in the discomfort. Yeah. You know, like your dad passes your I mean, it sounds like you guys were starting To like maybe find more intimacy and connection. I’m not sure if that was accurate, but something was happening and then and then he’s gone. And you get you get sort of the rug pulled out from underneath you’re like, nope, you don’t get to have that. It’s just like huge loss, huge pain. And then you said, I didn’t medicate, I just stayed in the discomfort. That is remarkable too. And I think like for me and my work, so much of what I try to do is teach my clients how to stay in the discomfort. Just to sit in it. And they are like, what? Why would I do that? Which I understand, but it’s also like it’s transformative in its own way. And that’s what people don’t understand. So I’m I’m curious because you were doing this at such a young age, you know, like that’s what’s remarkable. It’s like people can do it, but they usually have to have quite a bit of life experience. And you were able to sit in it. I’m not asking if you have an answer to why you were able to do that, because I I’m sure you don’t. But I just think that that came up in the book a lot too, was this capacity for discomfort.

Morgan: Yeah. No, I mean, I and thank you for like hanging out with people there because I feel like it’s it’s an incredible gift. And I feel like it is so like I mean, I always say we gotta go towards the discomfort, not away from it. Everything that we want love, intimacy, meaning, purpose is towards the discomfort, not away from it. I mean, it just is so obvious. And yet I think one of the failures of our education system, one of the failures of a lot of different embarrassed systems is that we don’t what I say is like create have help. provide the infrastructure, the foundational pieces to be able to hang in that discomfort. What I can say is is is is I I think about it a lot as you do. How do we help men? How do we help people learn to be uncomfortable, to learn to hang in there and when it gets really shaky, then know that I’ve got myself. And I don’t I don’t know where it came in me. It just was there in some certain way. And, you know, I was an athlete, so I had that going for me. Good athlete.

Bryce: Yeah.

Morgan: I go away to boarding school, you know, back in the eighties. I’m fourteen. I just I’m like s on the edge of making the hockey team. I make this huge decision to leave the school I’ve been at for eleven years to go pursue this dream. The dream is like riding on it on an edge of I don’t know if I’m gonna make the team the the J V team, the varsity B team. Like I’m I’m like barely there. And I’m scared shitless because everything I my whole identity is just on the edge. Mm-hmm. And again, someone said, like, hey, let’s read it high. And I tried it and it didn’t work. So again, there was a part of me that just knew I didn’t want to go on a substance abuse route for whatever reason. But I’m also sitting in my dorm room. And back in that day, like there weren’t video games. There wasn’t easy access to porn. I didn’t have a phone that was distracting me. I had the radio. So basically I just had to sit there and feel. And I for some reason I had the capacity to be able to do it. without all the distractions of this day. So I have a lot of compassion and to stay present today in the discomfort, I would say is more too we’ve we’ve we’ve upped the ante in terms of the challenge of it because there’s so such easy access to distraction and and bailing out.

Bryce: Yeah, that’s well said. Yeah, I I totally agree. I think it is so much harder for younger men to to learn these capacities because of so much distraction. Okay, so at this point, been doing this for a while, I guess one of the things I get curious about is this question of like discomfort, but also this way in which you describe in the book of I’m not sure I’m gonna quite describe it right, but like there’s a way in which you’re highly aware of your energetic Influence on people. And specifically, one of the things that stood out to me in the book, obviously changing topics here a little bit, but I really enjoyed the way you described how you could show up with more feminine energy and hold space for it and connect to it with a way that was really safe for this feminine being. I’m sure it was almost always a woman. But that was really fascinating to me because I think one of the things that If we were to talk about initiation, one of the things we don’t teach young men is how to be with young women. They just figured out sort of hodgepodge awkwardly, confusingly, for both the girl and the boy and the and the young man and the young woman. And I think what was really striking about your book was how you have been able to learn how to hold that energy. Both, you know, like there’s sexual energy, there’s attraction, all these things that are happening. And for many people and I think even, you know, older men, it’s really hard to contain that in a way that doesn’t come across as dangerous or confrontational on some level. So that was one of the things I really wanted to s ask you about, of like what that’s like for you and how you do that.

Morgan: Yeah, thank you. Well, and thank you for really reading the book and bringing your curiosity and your, you know, particular version of how you bring yourself to the world into it. And no one’s asked me that question. It’s a beautiful question. I feel sort of honored to feel seen. I feel seen in that way, which is really emotional and and touching and touching for me. So thank you for that.

Bryce: Yeah.

Morgan: To me, the foundation of all of the discomfort and that to give, you know, almost all of what I teach and just what I’ve dissected through my own journey is this idea of I’ve got me. Is this place of when I sit in my meditation every day, I connect in with the man I know myself to be. I connect in with what it feels like to be myself and that I don’t need if everything crumbles around me, I’m gonna be okay. Because I’ve got I can come right back to my quiet place. I can come back to the flowers and the birds and my see sacred space and be okay and just breathe and know that I can do this breath. I can do this breath. I can just be right here. And so I don’t need the validation of any external things. I don’t need a job to tell me that I’m Worthy. I don’t need a certain amount of money to tell me that I’m successful. I don’t need a car, close it, or to indicating. I don’t need people to be able to say, like, wow, you’re really awesome. You’re really great. All this kind of thing. Cause I’ve got it here. ⁓ And so that’s like the foundation of all the discomfort and all the ability to be present. Cause I’m not looking for someone to fill some hole in me that is not full. Mm-hmm. So from that place, like that’s a really sweet place because then I’m able to be really present with people. And that’s really my first book, which is about the idea of if you know yourself and you trust yourself, like when I really know myself and I trust it, then I’m able to listen. I’m able to then empathize. I’m able to then be present with someone else because I’m not looking for anything. I’m not trying to, you know, brag about what college I went to or what grades I got or how cool I am or anything. I’m just able to be really present and be with them. And in that place.

Bryce: Yes.

Morgan: is a beautiful receptivity and an openness. And I think this is where the feminine comes in, which is I’m then able to be one, just my own feminine energy of being able to be, you know, intuitive and caring, deeply caring. And I’m able to then just listen and hold women, you know, the feminine, in a way that is not trying to get anything. Like I don’t I don’t need to prove myself. I don’t need their approval I don’t need approval from them. So it all that weird tension of, you know, ⁓ if I just, you know, fuck her, then I’m gonna be like, you know, I’m gonna be able to brag to my friends, or I’m gonna get some status, or I’m gonna feel good about myself, or whatever it is. It just, it’s like not, it just doesn’t like that’s not the game. You know, the game is is to be with this human being, just like I’m with every human being as much as I can, that man I know myself to be, of I care about you and I want you to breathe your full beauty potential into this world. Whatever I can do to be a service of that, I am ready for that.

Bryce: Wow. I’m really appreciating that. It’s it’s interesting. I think one of the things that comes up for me a lot in my own personal development is well, I guess two things. One is this sense of humility, and the other is this sense of service. And so for me, the way you’re describing it is the humility of knowing myself in a way that I don’t need anything else. I’ve got it all right here. Like it’s never gonna the external’s never gonna make this any different. It’s it’s like a sugar high. If I I don’t know, if I won the lottery or something, it’d be a moment. But it but it doesn’t actually change anything in here. And so it’s this sense of clarity or like completeness that I find in myself. And then I think the other piece of that is that, you know, delving into my purpose is that I have to be of service. I have to be of service. Like that’s my that’s what I am. If I’m not doing my work, ’cause I think like even if I had, you know, enough resources, I didn’t have to get paid or something like that, I’d still do this because this is this is my gift, right? I have to do this. So I think what’s interesting about what you’re saying is like when we show up in that sense of completeness, I don’t have to get anything from you. I’m just ready to take anything. I’m just being here of service to you in every moment. So like what you’re saying with a woman who, you know, you’re finding attractive, she’s finding you attractive. You can feel that energy and like the chemistry and all that stuff, but you’re not there to get something. You’re there to just be of service. And I think what you’re describing, which I really appreciate, is the desire to help everyone become their fullest self. You know, it’s like it’s kind of like ⁓ the idea of the bodhisattva, right? From Buddhist texts. It’s like we are here to help people become their fullest self. And we’ll stay behind for hundreds, thousands of years until everyone gets to be to reach that fullest self. So I don’t know. I just I’m really sort of double clicking on that as like an idea for anyone listening of like That is the work is for you to be manifest in yourself your full self. And then when you get there, and I I feel this in myself, not that I’m there. I mean, there’s no there. I’m always yeah, trying to get to grow and improve and evolve and stuff. I’m not, yeah, there’s no ending. But I feel at this point in my life, what I am really appreciating is my clarity that what I want around me is the ability to help others reach their fullest self. And in that is my own journey. ‘Cause as I’m helping others, they’re helping me and all that stuff. It’s reciprocal in that way. But I th I don’t know, I just think that’s a really powerful way of living is to live in that space of s of humility and service. So I just wanted to

Morgan: No, thank you. And you as well. I love, you know, the humility and services, yeah, same for me. A huge, huge value. And you it’s and it’s interesting, you know, with the women in my life and in the stories in the book. I mean, one of the interesting stories is about breaking open. And the interesting story about that one was it had started where we were at a dance at a festival and, you know, like she felt like I grabbed her ass. And I don’t think that I did, but she was, you know, like we got into this, like right away there was this confrontation. And I felt, you know, like I like went and checked in, was like, okay, am I running something? Did I do that on purpose? Is that you know, I just checked in and I went back and just said, Hey, I I really apologize. Like not at all my intention. And she was still really mad. And I just said, Hey, you know, if there’s anything I can do to to help, you know, bring that up, you know, heal me know. And we didn’t talk for many, many, many months and then reconnected. We just both happened to be in, you know, in Bend Oregon at one point. And I don’t even remember how the connection happened, but it started with me again acknowledging and apologizing and just saying, Hey, you know, I know that you felt like I violated your space and grabbed you. And I, you know, I care about that. It matters to me. You know, as far as I can feel, it was not my intention. And I feel that you I can feel that you have different different sense of it. Really listen to her talk about it. And what happened through that was once that we cleaned that up, which took a while, and you talk about sitting in discomfort. Like there’s a huge amount of discomfort right there of, you know, humility and checking in with myself and feeling like, am I, you know, running energy that I don’t intend to be running, like really paying attention. And then also taking you know, taking my own sovereign space of saying, like, I really don’t think so. And I get it that it impacted someone. But after that, we had some safe and ability that she felt like, you know, I’m not trying to get anything. And I was able just to hold a really beautiful space where she then was able to open and the chapter in the book is called Breaking Open. And what she was able to share was just some really vulnerable, beautiful things about her own journey. And she there’s just a moment where she where she just said, you know, I’m I just feel like I want to cry and like fall into your arms and just be held and just feel sorry for myself and just be held by the masculine. And we sort of started, and of course, for me it was really healing in that way to hold someone in that way. But pretty soon after that, she pulled back and she said, Wait a second, I actually don’t want to break down. Again, been doing that my whole life. This feels like a moment of breaking open, of breaking into new territory, of new terrain. And so then we both sort of sat there like, whoa, okay, that’s really we didn’t didn’t see that coming and really interesting. And so then we were again in the unknown, a different kind of discomfort, a really deep, intimate discomfort where we had established a boundary that we aren’t going down the sexual road. So how do we play this? And we didn’t, we didn’t have any kind of playbook. And so we just, you know, did that. And it became this ch another chapter in the book, which was to me, that was a beautiful moment for me of feeling like I want her and I want the feminine and all the women in my life and my beautiful partner. Like I feel like my like I want Hadley to be the most beautiful expression of herself in this world, to be held by the masculine in a way she has never been held by the masculine that is safe. That is sovereign, that is grounded, that is protective, that is there, that is, like I say, escorting her into the arena. I want her to be able to bring her incredible beauty and gifts and goddess energy to the world. And that feels to me like my role as a sovereign man is to uplift her and and like you said, be of service to everyone.

Bryce: Yeah. Wow. I’m appreciating that. I’m sort of noticing like, is this a capacity that men find they can only discover this later in life? I just was wondering this. I like, you know, because I’m fifty-four, you’re fifty six, and we’re sort of at this maybe somewhat similar place. I just wonder about like, you know, people in their thirties or forties. I find one of the challenges that a lot of people ha a lot of my clients, I guess, speaks more specifically. have is around all these things you’re talking about. Like, how do I show up in this relationship and create safety and intimacy and all these things that I want, but I also I want to have sex. I want to get close. I want this person to come towards me. I want to go towards them. Like there is this wanting that exists. And so I think one of the things I’m taking away from you, which is maybe obvious to me, but not to a lot of the people I work with, is that in a ⁓ Sort of presence of it without like when to me, like presence is like a there’s a lack of agenda, right? Like when I’m really truly present, I don’t have an agenda. And I think it’s that that my wife can feel a more safety. Yeah. And I don’t think I’m like coming in and having this like real big, like intended thing, I’m not gonna come out with an agenda. I’m just sitting there in full presence and I’m just like, I’m here and I love you. And you know, there’s moments where just that is a real like turn on for her to feel like. Wow, you feel so safe to me because you’re so present. And so it’s interesting how a lot of men are grasping for this thing, but it’s actually in the sort of pulling back that actually creates more of the turn on for the feminine to feel the safety. Cause the safety is what I think women are l so desperately longing for, is that sense of safety. Yes. Cause in my work with couples, I’ll describe this to the masculine person, the man usually, and I’ll say, this is. what she’s longing for and I’ll describe it. And then he’ll say to her, like, is that what you want? And she’s just like, ⁓ my God. Yes. Yes. I never even knew I wanted it until right now. And that is desperately what I want. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And so I’m always struck by that of like this sense of safety and groundedness and presence. And it’s it’s not super complicated. At least I don’t think it is. Maybe we’re using some esoteric language that’s a little hard to understand. I think it’s easy to just to think about

Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Bryce: But it’s really fucking hard to do. Yeah. Because you’re managing so many other details. Yeah.

Morgan: Yeah. And there’s I talk to my young guys about sometimes because I just say, you know, like that is presence is so incredibly powerful. And what I found is that in that place, that’s where women open to more intimacy, to more depth, to the sex that, you know, to that intimate, beautiful sexual sharing of space. Then we’re in this incredible relationship connection, whatever it might be, that’s, you know, but that’s not the intention. And it sometimes goes there and sometimes doesn’t. But like you’re saying with your wife, you know, like it’s an incredible turn up. I mean, that’s like having just like that’s where that’s incredible turn on. And it’s not a game. It isn’t like, yeah, let’s really learn to be present so then we can get more, you know, no, that’s that ⁓ that does not work. And that’s like ick and no and no. And I I think what I I wanna believe in my heart, and I do believe is that it’s not just the fifty some year old dudes. I feel like I was ready for this when I was eighteen. It was in me. I I look at some of the young guys that I work with and I feel it in them. You know, one of the guys in my group, he’s just this insecure, kind of maybe clumsy a little bit, but like really caring dude who has it in him. Like he is right there, you know, and he’s twenty, so he’s a little bit like, How do we do this intimacy thing? Like I don’t really know. But the heart is there, you know. So it’s like the twenty year old version. Of it. And I just, I feel like it’s not something we learn when we’re 50. I think it’s in us and we’ve been trained out of it. I think it’s part of the lost boy thing that we have learned to be macho and fearful, not fearful and you know, not weak. And that that sensitive, beautiful place, maybe not in all men, but in a lot of them. If we were able to do that initiation piece, if we were as adult men really able to cultivate that and have it. be more ubiquitous in the culture where we have a healthy sexuality, which we do not have from either side in this culture at all. You know, it’s very, very warped and weird. Yeah. So messages are are really challenging. Again, it’s almost like the phones and the distraction thing of we’re so confused about what intimacy, connection, love is. But I wanna believe that it’s in there. And if we can rabit earlier again, then we can start to you know, I struggle with the same thing of like, how do I get more of my clients there? And I just keep believing that it’s there and and trying to figure out like, okay, how do we pave the how do we illuminate the path here?

Bryce: Yeah. Yeah. Well I’m curious, you know, so for you in your work, what’s some of the things that you’re finding helpful for the men you coach in terms of helping them find more of that? I don’t know, like it’s like you’re talking about a lot of things, but I think maybe starting with just presence, ability to be present.

Morgan: way I do it for myself and then the way I offer it to people and and of course it looks different for everyone as we as we know, but to me it’s sort of a daily practice. You know, it really starts with that place of sitting quietly with myself, of the way I say it, and this happened when my after my dad died, like my friends were was the lake, was the trees, was the moon, was the wind, was the natural world that cycles, and I would sit there and watch the leaves change and die. And I would, you know, watch the birds and you know do their thing and the flowers come and go. And so it starts with the daily practice and the and the sitting and just learning like here I am and I can be with myself. I can really just learn how to be with myself. And it starts in that simple, conceptually simple but challenging space of presence, of just learning to be present. And then what I do is I start to turn up the volume and I like to say the texture of the adversity of the discomfort. So I go sit somewhere that’s not my home space and feel like what is it like to do this in a park? You know, where there’s people around or there’s different birds or there’s different, you know, so I’m I’m just changing it up. And can I stay present there? Can I stay with myself there? And then I go in and I get into some cold water, or you’re gonna do a, you know, cold I use cold showers, but not in the way that we have this whole like, you know, manosphere. biohacking, cold plunge kind of thing, for me it’s really, really different. It’s about increasing sensation that is uncomfortable and using the small movement of just making the shower a little bit colder, a little bit colder to the point where you aren’t like trying to flex and be like, I like, I’m in the cold water. Like, no, like can we be in the cold water and just allow it to be a little bit uncomfortable? And again, stay present, keep my nervous system calm. I’m training myself to be in the discomfort. I’m training myself to be present even when things start to get a little bit wonky. And the idea of the cold is and this is what we you know what I do in my groups. I talk to you guys like establish your program. I mean, if it’s breath work, if you want to like do breath retention, that’s, you know, great. If you want to go to a yoga class and go and feel what it feels like to be in that, you know, in that kind of situation where your where your body is uncomfortable and you learn how to breathe and calm, great. But we’ve gotta reestablish the infrastructure of being uncomfortable, of training ourselves for those moments. So that then when we have to have the conversation with our partner or our friend or whoever it might be, then we have some we know that we can be in the like, ⁓ shit, this is like really scary. This is really there’s like a lot of sensation happening here. And I’m okay. Like it’s okay. It’s okay. I can do this. I can do this breath. I can do this feeling. I got myself.

Bryce: ⁓ yeah, I love that distinction between that sort of like trying to grip through it versus like learning how to like just settle into your body and feel the same the discomfort at the same time. Or it’s like letting go of that initial sort of like it it’s cold. It’s kinda hard to control that. But then eventually as you stay with it, it can start to feel that settling.

Morgan: Yes, exactly. That’s exactly right, Brash. And because it’s my commitment to myself. And there’s all kinds of stories about this in the book, is I’m going to get into the cold water. And that like freaking my system out isn’t helping. Like if my I’m all amped up and my cells are all tense. Then when I get into a moment of discomfort in the world, like that that’s not the energy that I want when I’m in an intimate moment. Yeah, yeah. I want to be really present and calm. And so getting in the water and just going, like, okay, I’m going to have one moment where I just all like I and I literally say to my nervous system, okay, nervous system, it’s okay. It’s okay. Just sensation. Okay. All my cells, all the cells, it’s okay. Like here we are. This is just sensation. This is just a different texture. Okay, muscular system. Like calm down. And I like scan my body and all the systems and kind of just have them all say, We got that. That’s okay. Like we’re all okay right now. We got this. Like this is life. Feel what it feels like and stop. thinking that it’s uncomfortable and making up all kinds of shit in your head about what’s actually happening and just feel the water. Just feel what it feels like. Cause really what I’ve noticed is that a hot shower is actually equally as uncomfortable. It’s just that I’m used to it. And I’ve have a story in my head that that’s good and comfortable and relaxing. And the cold is uncomfortable and shitty and horrible. But that’s there it’s just a sensation. And so that to me is the is like the the training ground.

Bryce: Yeah, I like that. I’m just trying to fill it into my own experience of like how do I respond to because I’ve been actually trying to take cold showers. It’s hard for me to fully get into the shower. Like I kinda kinda hover in the shower and take on some my head’s cold, my arms I’m trying to get fully into the shower. Yeah, it is it is interesting because you’re right. It is a story. The story is like, this is gonna kinda suck. Like that’s the story. And then I get in and then it’s just confirmation bias. Yeah, this kind of sucks. But really that Doesn’t really suck. It’s just you’re right. It’s just sensations, cold sensation on my body and arms, whatever. And there’s a moment ⁓ actually this morning, there was a moment where it f settled just a little bit and I was like, Yeah. ⁓ I I got more of my body fully in and I was like, ⁓ Mm-hmm. That was interesting. I could feel that.

Morgan: Yeah. And then there’s a really crucial piece in here. So layering on the training is the way that you tell your story about it. Cause there’s a thread in what you’re saying is you aren’t doing it well enough or you aren’t doing it right or you’re not good at it. And like, ⁓ if I was just stronger, better something, then I would be able to get my whole body in and do all this kind of stuff. So starting to notice like that, that that’s the dialogue. Instead of it being like, How fucking awesome. Here I am pushing my edge. It’s uncomfortable, but I care about myself enough to like be in this like mildly cold water. And like, is it as cold as it could be or should be or like no? But here I am, like being courageous, learning to push my system, learning to do this because it matters and I care about it. You know? And so here I am, like doing this great thing that is making a difference for me. So starting to really learn, really learn how to narrate your story in a way that is. Wildly generous and caring. We do this in the groups all the time. Men tell stories. And I’m just like, wait a second. We got to tell the story different. Like, how can you say that in a way that holds yourself as, you know, you just really messed up the conversation with your wife? Like you messed it up. But you had the conversation. And most people don’t have the conversation. And so the only way you’re going to learn how to have the conversation is by doing it. And so give yourself credit for stepping in and taking a risk and loving her enough to actually try it. Right. And so it is this like creative, really significant process of learning the narration of my own journey and being so kind to myself. And not like being, you know, full of shit, yeah, but looking at it in a way of saying, like, okay, I’m not really very good at that, but I’m right here learning it and I’m willing to keep trying and Way better than avoiding it. I’ve been avoiding it for 40 years. And so here I am actually trying it. Like that’s awesome. Like I’m proud of myself.

Bryce: Yeah, I love that. It’s reminding me yesterday I was helping my I have two boys and they were playing the piano and they’re trying to play this song and they would mess up. They would get the wrong thing and they would be like they would do it once and they’d be like, okay, and they would try again and then they’d get really frustrated, like, ⁓ damn. It’s almost like I don’t know what the story was, but it was probably something like, I can’t do this right. This is too hard. I just something like that. And I was just like, ⁓ yeah, you’re this is hard. This is hard and you made a mistake. And that’s okay. This is how you learn. I was trying to give them an o another story. But I I love that idea of like really being conscious of the n of the narration. Cause it’s we’re it’s not even really I mean, there’s a story, but it’s like we’re just constantly narrating our lives all the time. And so being very intentional about that narration, I I don’t think I am that intentional. I think I catch certain stories, but really it’s a constant narration that I’m either creating or I’m sort of just letting my unconscious just run. Yeah. That’s a beautiful

Morgan: Yeah, I mean I’m pretty ruthless with myself right now around like I’ve beaten myself up for a long, long, long time. You know, in those days when I was sitting by myself, I wasn’t like, yeah, like wait to be in the darkness, my friend. I was like, ⁓ my God, like I’m so broken and so lost. And I wasn’t, that’s the that’s the thing. I wasn’t, I was right on target with like all the good energy of the universe. Right. I was in this loving, caring, beautiful place of doing an initiation, of being in the dark, of courageously stepping and feeling and not drinking and not getting lost in all the bullshit of what happens in our educational system or wherever, you know, like I I didn’t but that was not the story that I I like that I was telling myself. So, you know, it’s just it made a huge difference.

Bryce: Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. I wonder though, there is this kind of part of me that comes up that is like, you already said this, like it’s not just feeding yourself bullshit, but there’s this like sometimes I find men who are in this place of like positive toxicity where it’s like everything is supposed to be positive and then it’s like they never will look at the negative or what’s going wrong. They’re like, Yeah, so it’s fine, it’s fine, everything’s fine. So it’s like, how do you work towards the authenticity of it or the The integrity of it of like being really real and honest because sometimes you fucking do stupid shit or really mean shit. And so then it’s like being honest about that and then also supporting you with the narration of that as well.

Morgan: Yeah, it’s a really good question. There is something really interesting in there, isn’t there, of finding the authentic, of of like not bullshitting ourselves, of not of of having it be ⁓ you know, being able to see the mess that is there. Or the vulnerability or the addiction or the meanness or the whatever it is. And that feels it f I guess it feels as I’m feeling into it, you know.

Bryce: Yeah.

Morgan: like a little bit different than the, you know, this the narration of it. Cause there’s the noticing the story that comes to mind and have all these funny stories. The story that comes to mind is I was standing at my sink one day doing dishes and I noticed that I like clenching my asshole really like really tight. Like I was super tense and I was like, you know, tight. And then I started giving myself a hard time for it. And I was like, okay, interesting. I wonder how long in my life I’ve been standing at the sink unaware that I was doing that. But like today for some reason I noticed it for the first time. And it’s not I wasn’t like proud of it. I wasn’t like, ⁓ yeah, that’s a real swarm fuzzy. Like it’s great that I’m, you know, all tense and uptight. And so instead of telling the story like, ⁓ my God, like what a loser you are for like being so tense all these years and all this time. I found a way to be like, ⁓ my God, it’s amazing that I actually just saw that. Like what a what a what an amazing day today is that I actually realized how uptight I am when I’m doing the dishes. And now I get to do something about it. So to me it’s it’s you know it’s in the same way of it’s not about not pretending I have a drinking problem or I you you know you’re you’re you know again your former guest who is drinking you know it’s not saying like ⁓ my drinking’s fine everything’s great I can you know just make it all good and I’ll just kick kick the can down the road and everything’ll be groovy. I think that it’s it’s the noticing of this actually isn’t a habit. This is not a pattern that is serving me or my wife or any of my life. And it’s okay. You know, it’s okay. Like it’s not great. It’s not like it’s not something I’m proud of. It’s not a big giant or fuzzy or it’s not a you know habit that’s actually useful for me. And it is okay. It is okay. And now it’s time to do something about it. And so here I am noticing it and ready to do something about it.

Bryce: Yeah. No, that’s great. So it’s like there’s a way of noticing holding yourself accountable, but also understanding, I think, the journey that’s gotten you to that moment. You know, like seeing the whole story. Because I think in the moment we’re just like beating ourselves up because I didn’t know this or I hadn’t figured this out, or I said this terrible thing, or I did this action. I’m hurting these people, I’m making people uncomfortable, but we’re not really giving ourselves

Morgan: hurting these people.

Bryce: any of the credit that have led to that moment that you could actually even notice that you’re doing that. You know, like like for me, it’s like noticing in a moment, say my privilege as a man. Like being able to notice that and say, wow, I missed that. And so when I get that reflection that I’m missing it, I’m I can be really hard on myself. ⁓ my God, you’re right, right. I can’t believe I did I didn’t see that. But it’s actually the fact that I have people around me that can reflect that back to me, as well as I’m willing to see it. And own it. Whereas I think for a long time I just was like, What? I don’t do that, you know? And now I’m in a different place where I’m starting to be able to hold those things that are uncomfortable to hold for sure.

Morgan: Yeah. And like the adversity is really important. Like it’s we have to go towards the hard things. You know, we have to see the addiction. We have to see that how we’re hurting people. We have to see where we’re not showing up for our kids. Like those are really important to take responsibility and accountability for. Yeah. And to be willing and wanting to do something about it. Like that really matters. That really matters. And we can have compassion for ourselves to understand that we didn’t get the whatever. Like for whatever reason. We didn’t get the initiation or the male guidance or the elders or the fathers or whatever, whatever it is. Here I am ready to do it differently, right? Or here I am getting ready to get ready. You know? That feels like meaningful movement.

Bryce: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Well, Morgan, I just wanted to say thank you. I’m imagining we should try to do this again. I think there’s so much more really amazing wisdom points out of your book that I would love to spend more time talking to. But I’m appreciating that we got this time together. I we just wanted to tell all our listeners today that, you know, if you are interested, I’ll send the information about Morgan and his book and also your website for

Morgan: Yeah, really sweet.

Bryce: coaching and that sort of thing as well. But thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate being with you. It’s been a real pleasure.

Morgan: Yeah, same Bryce. And thank you just again, thank you for your heart and care. And I’m I do, I feel like there’s so many different directions we can go and the commitment to men and just good energy in the world. And I hope you have a great trip as you’re wandering off the going on an adventure and yeah, many blessings.

Bryce: Thank you so much. Thanks. 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. 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. Hi everyone, welcome to the podcast and thank you for listening today. Today I’m talking with Jeff Nuziard, a veteran, researcher, and founder of RegenMax Protocol that helps men with erectile dysfunction. Jeff has come onto this podcast to talk about his own journey with ED and the power of connection and intimacy in partnership. Jeff Newsyard, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I’m grateful. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for being here. So I’d like to just start like how a lot of my guests start with just a sense of your journey and kind of how you came to the place you are right now. And then we can sort of dive in from there. Sure. I’d love to tell my story. You know, i it’s amazing what people do out of desperation and out of survival. And and that’s the case with me. I literally at age forty, my whole life was reinvented in the matter of the next twelve months. I went through a divorce, ⁓ seventeen year marriage, had three amazing children, continued raising, my youngest one on myself by myself. And you know, there’s a lot of distractions going on. So it was it was easy for me to blame my sexual dysfunction at that time on the distractions. You know, it’s the divorce. It’s the stress, it’s whatever. And then as things started mellowing out and and my life was smoothing out, I noticed, you know, hey, it’s not getting any better. And I had a great sex life when we were married and I’m very active sexually in my mind, but my body was like, hey, I’m not I don’t want to cooperate anymore. And it was devastating at forty years old. That’s very devastating because in our culture, even though it’s happening younger than that now, I had patient today come in my office at thirty two and not get an erection at thirty two. I’ve had twenty somethings come in with major sexual dysfunction issues. The discussion I hope we have today is going to be broad, but I will say I understand. There’s so much on the internet now and on TV about take this pill. If you’re suffering from rectile dysfunction, take this pill, take this pill. It’s become very common and people just are looking for the get fixed quick schemes and scams. And and that wasn’t what I was about. I’m I’m a very anti pharmaceutical kind of guy. I don’t like surgeries. I don’t honestly, I don’t like doctors. I don’t like Western medicine, I’ll put it that way. And so I was very much into the I know our bodies are designed to regenerate. And so I I’ve got to figure this out. I sold everything and pretty much just dove into 24-7 research and development. So I gotta figure out how to fix this without pills or surgery. So I did. The first thing I started was looking at hormone optimization and what is that really what is hormone replacement? What is HRT? What’s TRT? What does that mean? Started with that. And the more I started digging into that, realized how much people don’t know about it and how much I didn’t know either, but how much general practitioners of doctors don’t know about it and don’t understand it. They go to a weekend course and they think they have enough knowledge to be able to manage somebody’s hormones and that’s not accurate. And I’m finding now that we’re in practice, I’m finding a lot of patients’ hormones totally screwed up. But that was the start of it. I got my hormones leveled out and optimized pretty well. At twenty-seven, my testosterone level was eleven eighty-five natural, just my level. And at forty was three ⁓ five. So I mean it had dropped really bad. And in my case, it was a hereditary thing. It was purely genetics. But there’s a lot of that’s a whole nother podcast. We can talk about hormone deficiency for hours on that. But for me, it was a mental and emotional roller coaster because I felt like I was forced to turn in my man card now. I’m not even worthy to be a man. I can’t perform. You know, as a man, you gotta rise to the occasion and perform. As a woman, you can hide it. Although women are going through the same problems, they have vaginal dysfunction in a lot of areas, not just being able to get an erection. So it took 15 years, 15 long years of figuring out, first of all, what the cause is. And and blood flow is not the cause of erectile dysfunction. Contrary to what everybody’s talking on the internet and what you see on TV and all these Weekend warrior commercials of have sex this weekend with no problems. Blood flow, blood flow. It’s not blood flow is not the problem. And once I figured that out, I was able to then go to the next step, okay? How do I repair that? And then blood flow does get crippled and handicapped because of the problem is the sponge. And that’s a whole long conversation, but I’m happy to touch on a little bit. But when the sponge goes bad, The veins respond and send less blood in. So eventually the veins do develop atrophy and and send a lot less blood in. What’s the sponge? The sponge in the center of the penis, you have two tubes, one on each side called the corpus cavernosum. And inside there are two sponges, one on each side. And those sponges expand and relax and absorb the blood that’s coming in. And when they get full enough, it triggers a muscle behind the scrotum called the bobospongiosis. And that muscle locks down. And it keeps the blood inside the sponge until orgasm. Then that muscle relaxes, the blood flows back out. So the veins, you’re like, hey, Mr. Sponge, you’re not absorbing all the blood we’re sending in. It’s called the venous leak. Blood goes in and it flows right back out. The first symptom of erectile dysfunction is I can get erect, but I can’t keep it erect. And that’s the problem. Your sponge, you’ve got the blood flow in. You’re so blood flow there, that proves the point. Blood flow is not the cause. And that’s why Cialis and Viagra, they work until they done it. And it’s not that they stop working, it’s the sponge is not absorbing. Every man that tells me I can’t get an erection with cialis, they tell me, well, it does get a little bit firmer, but it doesn’t get an erection. Well, yeah, it gets firmer because blood’s flowing in, but there’s no sponge to absorb it. So it’s flowing right back out. So we have to fix the sponge. And that all starts with new spongy tissue and collagen. We have to fix all that. So I developed a way to fix that. And then our bodies do it’s called angiogenesis. We create, which is basically your body making new blood vessels. And we do that every day. We break blood vessels walking. If you walk your ten thousand steps a day, you’re gonna break some blood vessels. That just that’s what our bodies do. And then your body creates new ones to replace the broken ones. So we can replace the blood vessels in the penis, we can replace the spongy tissue and remodel the collagen and thicken it up. That’s the problem. And that’s what has to be repaired. And no drug is gonna fix it. A drug will mask it, override it, and give you temporary relief, but it will never fix the problem. Actually, you will continue to get worse to where eventually the pills just won’t work. 90% of the patients say we’ve been on Cialis for five years and it’s worked great. Now I don’t. Because the sponge is continuing to degenerate. Wow. Okay. So this took 15 years to develop this procedure and this process. Wow. Okay. It wasn’t that took 15 years. I kind of figured it out in about four or five years, but it was figuring out how the heck do I safely fix this now? That’s the problem. Because I mean, shoot. You can use lasers and things like that and burn the heck out of your penis if you want. I mean, and I won’t admit or deny, I probably did that once or twice, trying to figure this out. But it was figuring out how to safely repair without being invasive, no surgery, no pills, and how to safely regenerate. You know, our bodies are designed to be totally regenerative. That’s what I use a simple example all the time. You cut your hand and you put a bandage on it. Well, it’s not that your hand glues back together. It’s that your body creates new epithelial cells and it mends the cut. And it grows the skin back together. So it’s regenerating the cut skin and new skin fills in. It’s the same thing. When you lift weights, you tear your muscles, your body regenerates new muscle tissue to fill in those tears. It doesn’t glue the tears back together. So I’m like, if I can create enough damage, if you will, intentional damage inside the tissue, then I can then the body will respond and create new sponge tissue. And if I can remodel the collagen by getting it hot enough, your body will remodel the college. It always does. I mean, that’s just kind of how it works. So you’re able to do those kind of things and and it’s a series of treatments. This is a regenerative process. This isn’t a get fixed overnight thing. It’s not going to happen quickly because we’re regenerating the tissue. I say quickly, but I mean what’s quick. You know, people in today’s society, they want results yesterday. On average we’re seeing three to five treatments. We’re seeing guys going, hey man, things are changing really well. By the sixth to the eighth treatment, they’re like, wow. I’m waking up with erections again. I can have sex with my wife again. This is great. So it’s a year-long process, but again, I liken it to the gym. When you go to the gym and you see your body begin to change, that’s not the time to quit. That’s the time to dig in and keep going and finish the race. So by doing this over a year, what my research at the end of the 15 years when I kinda when I figured it and said, okay, this is what I gotta do. Then I went into a clinical study and I got 250 volunteers to come in and be treated. And no cost and to let’s just try this. And out of the 250, we had 97% get success. 97%. How do you measure success? Is it like well, the great question? We measure success by penetrable erection, sustaining it until orgasm. Okay. So basically until you want to have your orgasm. And that’s another thing it says is also repairs damaged nerve tissue. A lot of guys complain of early ejaculation, premature ejaculation. This repairs those the damaged nerves. Or guys complain of, you know, I can get a wreck, but I can’t have an orgasm anymore. Damaged nerves. So we’re able to fix all that through the same process. It’s the exact same process. So yeah, I go back to the gym. It’s like sending your penis to the gym for a year. And next thing you know, you’re good. And I got guys in their eighties that are doing absolutely great with no issues whatsoever and are doing great. You know, and I got one guy, eighty-four years old, having sex with his wife four days a week. Didn’t have sex for 20 years because he couldn’t. So it works great. You know, a cool thing about the study is it was 250 patients, 97%. Since then, you know, we’re on the retail side. Now we have an actual clinic that’s doing it. And we also licensed this patent to other practitioners around the country, other physicians, what have you. Over thirty two hundred patients have gone through the program now. Over thirty two hundred. And our success rate has dropped point two percent. Went from ninety seven point two to ninety seven with over thirty two hundred patients. So I’m I’m very happy with the success rate of that. But biggest thing it did for me, I felt like a man again. Yeah. It totally got my emotion confidence back. It was like, you know, I can chew on bullets. I’m good. I’m good. Yeah, I’d like to talk a little bit about that. So you’ve been it’s kind of this challenge, you know, you suddenly this you’re faced with this deficiency or this like problem in your body. And then you went on this search to figure it out, which is quite inspiring. But just curious about like yeah, the emotional challenges of it. Cause you you kind of came out of this divorce. Was this a part of that divorce? Did it have something to do with the divorce? You know, depends on who you ask. Okay. She says no, but I’ll just say that she got pregnant by somebody else. Wow. Okay. I was not able to take care of my wife. You know? And she kept saying, It’s not your fault, it’s not you. This is on me. But I also know what I know. I could take care of her in other ways, but it wasn’t right. You know what I’m saying? So yeah, I was a lot of guilt, a lot of shame, incredible amount of embarrassment. Didn’t want to talk about it to anybody. That’s part of what drove me so hard to fix this and to say there’s gotta be a way. I’m not living my life like this. I’m 40 years old. I mean, that’s young. I’m 60 now and I love being 60. I’m extreme I’m way more healthier at 60 than I was at 40, but my body is completely different and changed. I weigh the exact same weight that I weighed my senior year in high school. And I’m in great shape. Blood sugar is great, cholesterol is great, I check my blood all the time. I have no sexual dysfunction of any kind. Everything’s great. It was changed lifestyle changes for sure. You know, I mean, I brought a lot of that on myself. Most of it I did on myself. And so I take responsibility complete for the divorce, 100%. You know, I I wasn’t being who I was supposed to be in the bedroom, and then not being there mentally or emotionally because I was completely checked out and worried about my penis working and not worried about my marriage working. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So that’s that’s a I find that really interesting. I had to kind of double click on that. Like, so you know, this whole thing is happening. Obviously, it gets in your head. Obviously, you’re thinking about obviously it’s there’s a lot of shame and stuff. I mean, I wonder about like, you know, just your ability to talk to your wife about it and find new ways to sort of support each other. I mean, you’re sort of saying that. Yeah, you could support her in other ways, but was she kind of in a place of like, that’s not enough or Again, she says no, but yes. She w I hundred I she had checked out. I mean she she was looking for that physical she needed it. She was at a time in her life when she was she was on fire, man. What do you call it? Hotter than a June bribe. You know? I mean, it was like she needed it. And what and and and I was checking out because I was embarrassed. And I I didn’t know how to have the conversation, first of all. That’s kind of the the biggest problem. Is I I didn’t it was so embarrassing and humiliating that I I felt so unmasculine. And you’re talking to a guy, you know I served in the military. I was in Desert Storm. I did my time. I mean, I’m a very manly man. I was a competitive athlete in college and and after college. I I competed in a semi pro level and was a very competitive athlete and very physical. And now I’m questioning do I need to put a skirt on and change my tamp on or not? I mean, I didn’t know what I that’s probably the wrong thing to say with all the gender identity stuff going on today. But I was totally confused. Well, who am I? What is going on in my body? I am worthless. And the way I was right culturally You know, you gotta take care of home and and I couldn’t. And so and I just didn’t know how to have the conversation. I did not know how to have that conversation. Looking back and dealing with all the patients I deal with today, yeah, I would have done it totally different. And I that’s how we we teach at the clinic, you know, you you gotta have the conversation. Can you say more about the conversation? ‘Cause this is a part that I think is really interesting because it’s it’s not even obviously there is physical stuff that men go through, but I think the problem This is just as I’m thinking about right now, is the lack of the conversation, is the lack of transparency, is the lack of like learning how to understand each other, both men and the woman coming together and saying, Hey, this is a problem. How are we gonna s how are we gonna work together to make this work for us? You know, I’ve never heard it said more perfectly than you just said it. It is such a problem. And the problem is communication. The problem is not your penis don’t work. Or Her vagina’s dry or it hurts when she has sex. Those are physical things that every one of those things now I know can be fixed. And physiologically they can be fixed and should be fixed. And you need to take those measures, whatever that costs, or need to do to fix those things. But here’s the problem. When you don’t have the conversation, the other party assumes and makes stories up in their head that are not true. They’re the furthest thing from the truth, but in their mentality, that’s reality. It’s their perspective, their perception. And although it seems real to them, that’s not the it’s not reality. In her mind, I was checked out. She thought I was out having an affair. She thought I was out cheating. She thought I was out doing another thing. Wow. When okay. There was a first thing from the shrewd. Okay. But in my I was embarrassed and I could not say, Listen, it’s not you. But that’s the first place women go. It’s me. I’m not sexy enough. I don’t turn him on anymore. I’ve maybe I’ve gained some weight, or maybe I’m not I don’t dress hot enough. I don’t put makeup on during the day anymore. I and you know, there’s a lot of problems there. A lot of women need to take responsibility for themselves too. And when you were dating that guy and you got married to that guy, you looked dressed to the nines all the time and you looked hot and you turned him on and he wanted to be around you. There’s a reason for that. And you shouldn’t abandon those reasons. But you gotta be able to have those conversations. And just because she’s now a stay-at-home mom or because she stays at home or whatever she does and She’s not taking care of herself. That’s her pro that’s a problem you need to discuss with her and have that conversation. Yeah. And when you have problems with yourself performing, you need to be able to have that conversation. I want you to understand this lack of a performance has nothing to do with you. I don’t know what’s going on in my body. My mind is doing one thing and my body’s doing another. And I don’t know what to do and I need help. I need to go find out the answer here. And I didn’t do that. And nor did I have any place to really go to do that. Well, I’m curious because I think what you’re talking about is a such a fundamental struggle for a lot of men. And not just around, you know, sexual dysfunction or any sort, but just generally, men struggle with shame. Shame is like so hard for men to deal with. So what they do is they avoid it. They shut down, they don’t talk about it. And so then all these things, like you said, get really convoluted. You know, nobody’s talking about it. So then people fill in the blanks, and as a result, those blanks get filled in incorrectly. There’s all this misunderstanding and then And they can lead to something like divorce when really, you know, and I mean I’m sure there was more than just having a conversation, but that conversation could have saved, potentially saved your marriage, I would imagine. 100%. If I wouldn’t have been living in fear, ego, and shame and could have had the conversation of what I just said, there’s something going on physically and I don’t know what to do or where to go. I don’t even who to talk to. I don’t even know where to go. Yeah. Help me walk through. I want you to it’s not you. You know what? Yes, it didn’t happen overnight. It took a year, two years, whatever. And she really believed I was outscrewing the world and which is why I wasn’t interested in touching her. Yeah. And it wasn’t that I wasn’t interested. I couldn’t. I didn’t, you know, and I my ego was like, Well, yeah, okay, you’re gonna have oral sex with her and then she’s gonna want more and you’re not gonna be able to do anything. So why do why get started? You know, you start then you I start making up stories in my mind of what’s how it’s gonna play out. And it that doesn’t mean it’s gonna play out that way, but in my mind it damn sure was gonna play out that way. And it didn’t, you know, without a conversation, we don’t have the facts. And you gotta deal with reality, not perception. Perception isn’t always accurate. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that’s so important. I guess it’s it’s interesting as we’re talking about this, you know, like one of the things that I get curious about for you. Well actually I’ll just I’ll share a little bit about myself. Like I think one of the things that I’ve learned after twelve years of being my wife is is just how important it is to focus more on our emotional connection than it is to focus on my performance. Like I think, I think as a as a man, I don’t know if I was taught this, but somewhere down the line, I don’t remember being taught this, but done somewhere down line I believed, you know, that if she didn’t have an orgasm, and I’m not talking about my wife, I’m just talking about women in general, there was something wrong with me. I didn’t I I failed. I failed. And I think there’s still some of that in there. But what I what I find that’s so So much more satisfying about my relationship with my wife is just we just feel this really depth we have a really deep connection. And the sex kind of flows out of the connection rather than the sex making the connection. That’s how it’s supposed to work. Yeah. That’s how it’s supposed to work. Our culture is the complete opposite. This hookup culture, one night stand culture, our culture teaches us that performance is everything. And what you’re saying is right. The great performance comes out of the great emotional connection. And when you can be that’s why it’s called intimacy. When you can and intimacy is not sex. When you can have intimate conversation and get on an emotional, intimate level, the sex will happen out of that instead of let me go hook up and then we can we’ll get emotional through that. No, it it’s that’s backwards and it’s not sustainable. So there is a lot of undue pressure put on men to perform instead of engage. I have so many men patients who, well, how are things going? Well, I’m waking up with erections. What how’s the sex? I don’t know where I’m afraid to engage. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What do mean? I mean, it’s working now. But how do I know? Well, you’re waking up with an erection. You weren’t. Now you are. Physiologically, we’ve repaired the damage. Now you have to engage. And they’re scared to death because they don’t have the emotional connection. Well, say say a little bit more about. So a guy comes in, he Goes through protocol for a year, gets it all fixed. He knows it’s fixed. But he hasn’t been having intercourse with his partner for who knows how long. Mm-hmm. And so now he’s he’s still afraid that he’s gonna try to do it and he’s not gonna have it happen. And so he just but I’m c I’m I g what I’m curious about is like this guy, why isn’t he like his wife knows he’s gone through the protocol, I’m assuming. Some of ⁓ do, some of them don’t. Okay. Okay. That’s probably true. But it’s just I’m getting curious, like, what is this guy? He’s wanting to get better so he can do this. And then he’s still it’s almost like he has this boundary or this like this thing that he has to get over emotionally of like. So you said he doesn’t have the emotional connection. I’m curious if if you could say more about that. What do you mean he doesn’t have the emotional connection? He’s got an emotional block, so he’s disconnected himself from his wife. Yeah. You know, I got guys tell ⁓ I can masturbate, no problem. Well, hello. Then we fixed you. We did our job. I need you now if you’re if you can engage with your wife, I need you to we need to talk to a therapist together. Yeah, I need to put you in contact with therapists because you’ve got an emotional wall that’s keeping you from being connected to your wife. And whether it’s fear of failure or fear that you’re she’s gonna say something and make you feel bad about yourself. I mean there’s so many women, because you don’t have the conversation who don’t understand this, that they say things that hurt you hurt a man’s heart to to the bone and don’t they don’t mean to, but it does. And so there’s things like that that happen that get in the way. Of you being able to engage again mentally and emotionally to where the physical part happens. Yeah. I think this is the narrative I’ve created. So see if this, since you’re really in this world, see if it fits your narrative to some degree. I have a sense that there’s a massive gap between men and women in the sexual realm. And the gap is women want to connect emotionally, and their bodies are a part of that. You know, there’s physicality, but their their focus is on this emotional connection. Like what I think my wife gets most excited about or most satisfied is is that she feels incredibly close to me, to my heart, not to my body. You know. I mean, that’s that’s part of it. It’s it’s it’s hard to separate it all out, but that’s really what they want. And men are so focused on the outcome of the experience. And the gap is like so huge because I there’s lots of there’s times where, you know, we just Kind of mess around. We don’t even have intercourse and it’s amazing. It’s amazing. And it’s not because of the physicality, it’s because of I just feel so loved and she feels so loved and we feel so connected and it just feels amazing. You know, our bodies are excited and there’s all that part of it. But it’s it’s that that’s what really is it’s about what it’s about for her. And it’s become more and more about it for me. And I just think like men are so distorted in their belief that if I don’t perform She’s gonna leave me, she’s gonna abandon me, she’s gonna be disappointed, she’s gonna think I’m a loser. And if you f if they focused on the heart component, most of these women would come away being like, That was amazing. And they’d be like, Well, you didn’t have an orgasm. And they’d be like, Well, yeah, that’s fine. I don’t, you know. I mean, I’m sure there are women out there that are a little bit more focused on the outcome and the they want to get their orgasm and stuff like that. I get that. But it’s all in balance because yeah, the next time they probably would have that. Yeah. You know, I mean, it doesn’t have to be every time. Right. Yeah. Well anyway, I just think in this gap is like a lot of miscommunication, a lot of sadness, a lot of a lot of lost opportunities for people to have really enjoyable experiences with each other because one person is shut down because he can’t perform. The other person is like, what the hell’s going on? Why aren’t you interested in me? And sort of kind of like as you’re describing in your marriage, this big disconnect. It’s just so so so sad. Yeah, it is. It is. And here’s what people understand too. The physical degeneration of the penile tissue, it’s like any other muscle in your body. If you don’t have you ever had a broken arm or anything broken in a cast, and they take that cast off, your arm’s like half the size of what it was because it’s not being used, right? So all those that muscle in your arm become atrophic. And and it’s the same thing. So when you get into this emotional disconnect with your spouse or your partner, whatever, and you’re not engaging, that muscle’s not working. And it’s developing atrophy. The veins are developing atrophy. In our 20s, we averaged 20 erections in a 24 hour period. Most of those are when you’re asleep in your most relaxed state. But at the same time, that’s a lot of expansion and contraction back and forth, back and forth. So that’s a lot of exercising. Well, when you are disconnected emotionally from your spouse and you’re not engaging in the the physical side, atrophies div is setting in. And degeneration is happening because you’re not exercising anymore. So it’s a catch twenty two. You know, and in my case, it was the other way. It was physically I wasn’t working and it caused me emotionally to withdraw and back up. I find that to be the polar opposite in a lot of my patients today. They emotionally back out because of careers, whatever, and physical degeneration starts taking place. I see. Yeah. So is it is that what happens then to the sponges? Is that over time the sponges start to decay or not decay, but they atrophy because of lack of use? ⁓ wow, that’s that’s fascinating. So is that is that really what you would say is not the only cause, obviously, but one of the primary causes of ED is this? Yeah, that’s that’s what’s called age related ED, but there’s also mental, there’s a psychological form of ED, which we’ve already touched on some of it. which is really an emotional ED, but mentally you’re in fear and you’re afraid you can’t perform, so you won’t. I mean, once you go there in your head, you’re done. You’re not gonna perform. But the other side of it is which is happening in our society more than ever in the history of our country, literally, is porn addiction. Yeah. You know, we walk around with endless volumes of pornography in our pocket on our phones. All the time. Anybody can pull a phone out today and find any video of any disgusting, far reaching, and I shouldn’t even say disgusting, I mean but whatever you want to find vid sexually, you can find a video on. And in a matter of seconds, with no proof of age, no nothing. And so with that ready available library of pornography, we have destimulated our brains. And so it’s just like You know, the heroin addict didn’t start on a heroin. You know, it’s probably started off with weed or probably started off with something small. And then it wasn’t enough. And so then they added more. And then it wasn’t enough. So you had more. It’s the same thing. You know, when you start down the pornography road, it’s not reality. It’s a complete fantasyland. And so it takes more oxytocin to come from your brain to stimulate and get you turned on. So because you’re burning it all out. So now you have to watch. kinkier porn and more of it and to get there. Mm-hmm. And and before long, if if you don’t watch it at all, you there’s no way. And then that doesn’t do anything because it just destimulates you. Yeah. The good news about that addiction is or that E D, it’s the cheapest, easiest form to fix. And that is a a fast of porn. No no porn for ninety days. Your brain will reset. Your brain will reset and you will produce the right amount of oxytocin and you’ll go back to getting stimulated with very little. Okay. And so do you get guys coming in with and you know after they tell you how much porn they’ve been doing for last like fifteen, twenty years, you’re like most of the younger guys are in that problem. The older guys the older guys they have you know, ⁓ most the older guys are guys that just hadn’t been active, got a divorce five years ago and now all of a sudden they got a girlfriend or something and things are different or Yeah. They just haven’t been using it. Got it. Well, so I’d like to get back. I’m curious You know, having gone through this journey of like discovering this protocol and helping thousands of men now, I’m curious for you, like what’s it like for you in terms of your, I guess I want to say like way of prioritizing your sexual experience now versus like maybe it was when you were forty? ⁓ totally different. Yeah. What a what a great question. Man. I wish everybody asked me that question because completely different. Not only did I go through a transformation mentally of fixing the figuring out this problem physically. I went through figuring out this problem mentally and emotionally and talking about the things we’ve talked about so far, about the connection, about the emotional connection, things like all that was never a big deal to me. You know, you have sex because I mean that’s just what you do. And you kind of go by the cultural way of, you know, everybody’s doing it. Go have sex. Make love not war or all the cliches, whatever you want to say. And that became The thing, the goal, the the way you do it is you gotta perform, you gotta perform. All that changed in my mind and I now I understand sex is eighty-five percent mental. And you cannot I have way better sex at sixty than I did at twenty, at thirty, at for sure at forty, ’cause I couldn’t even do it at forty. But now my wife and I are completely different. As you said, w maybe we maybe we’re not having intercourse today, but we’re sure spending a lot of time Holding hands, touching, loving, heart to heart conversations. Maybe it’s just a walk in a dang park. But it’s such a satisfaction that we do go to bed and it’s like, ⁓ things just happen because it’s a connection of that’s what I we want because of the connection we’ve done. I never understood that at 40. I I had no concept of that at 40 at all. So the physical side, yes, is important and it’s it’s inevitable. It’s not about If it’s when it’s going to happen to every man. It’s not the end of the world and it is fixable. But first and foremost, it will delay happening if you’re emotionally and mentally healthy with your relationship. It will delay that hell that physical part from going from degenerating. Yeah. So it sounds like here’s what I hear you saying is that, you know, if you reprioritize the emotional connection with your partner. as being more of the focus. And that includes touching, holding hands, talking, working through stuff, dealing with your relational issues, all that kind of stuff. Yes. The sexual, physical intimacy will sort of come out of that in a more natural, satisfying way. That will lead you to have more sex, most likely, which will keep your sponges, I don’t know if that’s the right word healthy. ⁓ that’s exactly right. Okay. Keep your sponges intact and working so they won’t atrophy, which means that you’ll have More sexual function for longer periods of time and you’ll just have a way better sex the whole time. Way better. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and there’s there is another physical aspect of it. We do stop producing testosterone physically in about our 20s, anywhere, somewhere in our 20s, about two percent a year. So once your testosterone has dropped down to a certain level, that’s when the collagen starts degenerating. Testosterone is like the oil of an engine. Can I my motor, can I go start my truck and drive On three quarters of a tank of oil. Yeah, I could. And I could be just fine. But if I drive it for very long, that oil is gonna get really thin because it’s not enough to keep it cool and break down and become a problem. I darn sure you’re gonna struggle at a half tank oil. And if I have no oil, I’m not going very far at all. So it doesn’t the oil doesn’t have to be completely full, but it it’s healthier if it does. So as your testosterone comes down, that’s the oil of your body’s engine. And you have to keep that level right and optimal. And in doing so, that’s what you do physically to keep it intact. And then what you just said about the emotional side is exactly true. It will keep you healthier and keep those, you know, it’s funny to me, something as simple as this. This is the difference in sex in our society today. As men, we think, I want to have sex. I need to get hard. And so, okay, it’s starting to move just because I said I want to have sex. So I’m going to go ahead and engage with my wife. What if We flip that script and we just go engage with our wife and get lost in the moment of how much I love her. I promise you, your brain will send the chemicals and stimulation will take place. Yeah. But we think we have to be ready and be assured we’re gonna be erect and it’s gonna be ready to go. When she when she’s ready, I’m ready. Yeah. You gotta jump that cliff, jump off that cliff and embrace and Be in the moment, embrace the moment, embrace the smells, the sounds, the touch, the sensations, the everything. Embrace be in the moment. Stimulation will take place in the brain, which will then take place in the body. But we have it backwards. We think, I think I want to go have sex with my wife. So I better get hard first and then I’ll go find her. Yeah, no, I think I think that that’s really the challenge for men is like trusting their bodies, but also just reprioritizing. Like my focus, I think in many ways My focus today is really on my connection with my wife. And that means not so much, you know, from like nine o’clock to ten o’clock at night. It means every day, all day. You know it’s like it’s like I send your text, I miss you, I love you, I’m thinking about you, I come home, I give her a hug, I’m wrapping my arms around her, I’m telling you she looks beautiful, I’m creating that connection. And not because I want to get laid that night. I do it because it feels great. It feels great to her, feels great to me. But then what comes out of that is we’re both by the the time we get to bed, we’re both like super excited to be close to each other. And sometimes it gets you know, we move towards, you know, physical intimacy or or intercourse. Sometimes we don’t. But it’s just like we’re in this state of depth of connection and enjoyment and pleasure. And that is where that’s why I’m a happily married man. Yeah, well exactly. Yeah. Enough said. Yeah. I mean, that’s that’s exactly right. I think the thing about it is I sometimes feel like men don’t evolve out of their like seventeen year old mindset. It’s like they never get they never get to like this this greater place. And I wonder sometimes if erectile dysfunction is almost like a signal to of like, dude, you gotta grow up. Like you can’t keep having sex this way. Like you need to get more into your heart. You need to like, you know, it’s gonna be better. But I feel like the 17-year-old mindset is just like, I’m, you know, I’m super excited. I’m gonna grab my wife. I’m gonna have sex. And there’s no prep. There’s no like, you know, and then there’s the whole thing of like, you know, women need like a long time to get to that space because just biologically. And men, you know, we need like, you know, 45 seconds. And so it’s like understanding those things. And that the once again, there’s a gap there just biologically as well as emotionally. And men just don’t ever really get that until maybe there’s some kind of really catastrophe in their physiological capacity. And then they have to evolve and change. But they’re gonna have to eventually anyway, because you as you said, you know, this stuff isn’t gonna last forever. But what I think is interesting, I read this book, I’m switching topics here a little bit, but I s read this book this a couple of years ago, and it said that people in their sixties, seventies, and eighties actually have the most satisfying sex. A factual statement. I hear it from my patients all the time. Sex is better now at 80 than it was at 60, better at 60 than it was at 40, and so on and so on. And I hear it all. the time. And I will tell you, in my case, at 60 years old right now, I’m having the best sex of my life. Yeah. And it’s amazing. Why are you having the best sex of your life? Because I’m connected to something. It it’s got meaning. It’s not just it’s not just a physical thing. It’s not, you know, just an orgasm. You know, when you’re young, teenager to 20, you know, or through our 20s, you know, the old adage, you know, the when the wind Blows your hard and ready to go. I and it’s true. You have your hormones are raging, things are racing, your body’s going through a lot of changes. And so it doesn’t take but a split second for you to be ready, armed, and dangerous to go have sex. But that’s because your body’s going through changes. When as you have miles with your spouse, it’s not that you’re bored, it’s that you quit the effort because now it takes effort where it didn’t at twenty-one when you met her. Or twenty two when you met her, it didn’t take any effort, you know, boom, boom, boom, we’re ready to go. So now it’s like you said, it’s an ongoing all day thing. And people say, Well, I’m too tired for that. I got my job, I got ⁓ work, I got the well, do you wanna be married or you wanna be right? You know, I mean it’s comes down to you gotta invest in relationship. And the best sex is out of the emotional heart to heart connection, not a physical thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I sometimes wonder though, like, you know Men often connect through their physicality. Women connect through their emotional world. And that’s almost sometimes I wonder if it’s a cultural thing, you know, like a nurture thing versus a nature thing. But it it does seem like there’s something about that that feels so continuous. But I don’t know. I mean this is a bigger question because it’s like how do we get men into their hearts just in general so they can enjoy their lives better. You wanna know why I love what you just said so much is because that’s exactly right. Men Get a physical connection and women get emotional connection. I understand that. So how do we get there? How do I get the wife to pay attention to the physical so I could be pay attention to the emotional? Well, how about you be the leader? How about you take the lead and you be the first to take care of the emotion on her end? She will respond and take care of the physical on your end. But if you expect her to take care of the physical, she’s thinking about kids, she’s thinking about the house, she’s thinking about 15 other things. Sex is not the first thing on her mind. It might be on yours. So take the lead and take care of her emotion. She will respond, and which then you will respond physically. I love that, Jeff. I think that’s the if people take away one point, that’s the point that we should take away from this. I wonder if you could say more about that though. Like when you say take care of the emotional. I think we’ve been talking about it, but I just want to curious, what do you do to take care of the emotional for your partner these days? It’s the little things for me, for us. I have an absolutely amazing wife for me. She is literally the perfect yin to the yang, the perfect connection. It’s it’s a great situation. So for her, it’s the little things opening doors. It’s she don’t pick up one thing. She doesn’t need for anything. And I’m not talking about materialistically, I’m talking about emotionally and mentally. I will do for her before I think about me, and her she will respond physically to me. And so I know that. And so. Even what here’s a great example of that. Like you said, the text, the I love you is the coming home and hugging when you walk in the door and just having TV off and just how was your day? Tell me what you did. I’m interested. Not I want you to tell me yours so I can tell you mine. Not I’m telling I want to spend time with you so you’ll spend time with me. Be genuinely interested. And then what happens is then I come home and I’m very happy to I am very genuinely happy to see her all the time. I’ll sit down and I just want to just sit there and I don’t even want to talk now. I’m talked out. I want to kind of just let my brain relax. And she’ll come up and sit next to me, just very softly, just lean against me and rub my leg. And next thing you know, physical’s happening, but that wasn’t the plan. That wasn’t the thought. She was responding because I had filled her emotional need. She was safe. She felt protected. She felt safe and she felt there was security in the relationship. So she can Be free to respond however she felt to respond. Wasn’t that I was asking or demanding. Matter of fact, that was the first thing for my mind at that moment. Didn’t take me long to change tracks, because it doesn’t take long for men to change tracks. But if you want them to respond to you physically, you need to be the one to be the leader and step out first and respond to them emotionally. Yes. And that isn’t a that isn’t a Hallmark card. That isn’t a a saying. It’s an action. It’s a doing. It’s a living your life appropriately. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, I love that. I love I often say that to the people I work with. It’s like you have to lead your wife into connection. That’s your job. And it’s not her job. And if you’re n if there’s a disconnection in the relationship, then you are not doing your taking responsibility. You have to take responsibility. Well, Jeff, I think that’s actually I feel like we’ve really nailed it. I feel like this is a pretty good place to to end. I wanted to just circle back though and just maybe give a sense to the listeners of like You know, where they can find more information, obviously website. But I just wonder, is the protocol something you can get anywhere? Do you have to go somewhere? You have to go to a doctor’s office that has a license to do the patent. Okay. Okay. And they could be all over the country. Yeah, we have right now we have 20 licenses and we’re constantly looking for more doctors. So if there’s a physician or nurse practitioner that’s in practice for him or herself that wants to do this patented protocol, we have a licensing division of that. That just deals with licensing and training and we get you trained up on the marketing aspect of every every part of it. But yeah, to get the regenmax protocol done, it must be a licensed provider to do that. Wow. Okay. It sounds like you’ve I mean it it sounds like pretty good odds. This is like a physical issue. Yeah, th th there’s always going to be a physical part and we can ninety-seven percent fix that physical part. I can’t always fix the emotional mental part. Yeah. But I have some great therapists that we refer you to. That do a great job. Okay. Well, Jeff, I really want to thank you for your time. It was really wonderful to talk to you. I appreciate it. I’m really excited about you know what you’re doing and and I’m I’m really impressed. Like you found a problem, you’ve figured it out. It took you a long time to do it, but you just had dogged determination to make a difference. And now you’re making a difference in so many people’s lives. So I want to thank you for that. It’s been very rewarding and I appreciate you bringing me on. Any chance I get to talk about it. I know that somebody’s listening to this right now going, Wow, I I needed that. And whether you come see us in Texas or you see it somebody wherever you’re at, the point is it’s not the end of the world. Yeah. We can fix the physical part. You need to take the lead and fix the emotional part. Yeah. All right. Thank you so much, Jeff. Thank you so much for your time. I’m grateful. 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. It’s great to have you here on the podcast. It means a lot to me. Today I’m talking with Dion Elliott Jensen, who is the author of Conscious Footsteps, an Intense Unraveling. Dion has an amazing story that I hope resonates with everyone listening. Dion Elliott Jensen. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Bryce. Appreciate it. Welcome here from ⁓ the other side of the world. Dion is in Australia at he’s about sixteen hours ahead of us right now. So thank you so much for tuning in today. I really appreciate you being here. And I just wanted to start with a little bit about your journey. And, you know, I’ve read your book and so I have a a a sense of it, just to give some context to our listeners about, you know, your life and how it’s kind of led you to this point. Sure. Well let me say nothing good has happened overnight. So even though I’m 16 hours in advance, this there’s nothing to worry about. My journey, I’m a man in his mid-40s. I’ve grown up and and been in Australia all of my life. And I was a parent at a very early age from 20. And then I went into the corporate world and really thought and made that my identity. From there I’ve had a range of of wonderful experiences that have been really enjoyable from the outset or difficult from the outset and ended up being enjoyable, but they run the full gamut from loss to creation to ego death to transformation. And it’s really brought and shaped who I am now. And I couldn’t be prouder of it. Yeah, that’s wonderful. Maybe I’m curious a little bit about, you know, some of that transformational moments. You know, some of the things that really shifted you out of this is who I am to whoa, that’s not who I am. This is more of who I am. Some of the things that really kind of tipped you away or moved you out of that way of experiencing yourself or believing this is who I am. Curious about that. Well firstly I love the way you phrase the question because I’m a big believer in it’s not about necessarily searching for who you are or understanding who you are. It’s also about understanding who you’re not. And those can be, albeit polarizing, they’re still two very, very important lessons. And for me in discovering who I am, a lot of that came from experiencing who I’m not. And it was just the converse of that. that began to enable me to understand authentically what my identity is. I should also say, and I I I hear this from a lot of people, that tibbing point was not something that was elective. That catalyst point wasn’t an elective experience where I thought, I’m about to transform now or let me go and find out who I am. It was really brought to me like a thunderclap from the unexpected. So it started with being fired from a job that I allowed my identity to be built around and scaffolded by. And once I’d lost that job and that was ripped away from me, I’ve been on an incredibly difficult but incredibly rewarding journey that’s really brought me to where I am now. And I wouldn’t change it for the world. Yeah. I mean I think that’s kind of the thing about transformation is it’s it sounds like a cool word, transformation, but it’s actually usually quite painful. So when you lost this job, And you were suddenly faced with, ⁓ my God, like this sort of house of cards kind of crumbled. What really like sort of emerged for you at that point or started to emerge? Well, what started to emer when when I lost my job, I lost my identity. So I honestly felt like I had died. I built my entire persona and identity around what I did for a living. The majority or the vast majority of my relationships apart from close family were built around what I did. And when I was no longer of use to people, a lot of those relationships fell away. So you’re also left wondering not only from the external but from the internal, what is my value? Who am I? And because I had outsourced that to a third party, I was left completely empty. And my second chapter in the book is probably one of my favorites, which is I am who I am, not what I do. And I see it in a lot of men and a lot of women as well. And it’s not necessarily just in the corporate world, but we apply A veneer to ourselves based on what we do, and that’s how we walk through life. I’m a doctor, I’m a lawyer, I’m a mother, I’m a father, or I’m whatever label you attach. But that’s essentially a mask. And then when we interact with each other, we don’t spend any time understanding who we really are beneath that mask. And when you think about it more practically, you go and meet someone for the first time. As soon as that moment becomes really awkward beyond the initial hellos, it’s ⁓ Bryce, tell me what you do. Because that’s the only way I’ve got to kind of build a set of talking points and then I apply all of this bias to it and that’s how I’ll interact with you. But we also were doing that to ourselves when we are wearing that mask. So back to your back to your question, how I felt, I was just empty. I was a shell of a person. I had no identity, which you could also argue was a great thing. You’ve got a clean canvas to build from. But for someone that had spent so long scaffolding their identity around what they did, it was a really, really difficult time. To go on that journey of understanding who I was. Yeah. Okay. So maybe give a sense of like, you know, I’m struck was struck in the book about just this capacity of I think it one way to describe it is like being more in your essential self or your who you really are. You know, you talk a lot about truth, speaking truth. Yes. Yeah. I’m curious, like, what was it that kind of helped you discover that? And I know it wasn’t like a moment. hundreds of moments over a long period of time. But I’m just curious, like I think for a lot of people in in my work too, it’s like people have a a sense or an inkling of like, I’m not really me. I don’t know what me is. And then I don’t know how to get to me. So I’m curious for you in this journey, what was it that helped or what was it that like allowed you to get more and more closer to your truth? Well, firstly I think the antithesis of truth is fear. And we we harbor a lot of fear. I harbored an incredible amount of fear. And when I talk about truth, I also talk about your authentic self. And I think your authentic self is the person that we always know is there, but we choose to edit that person for external consumption. And a lot of that external consumption of what we present is based on fear. And when I talk about fear, there’s a lot of fear. There’s a fear of lack. It takes so many forms. Lack, not being good enough, fear of failure. Kind of the list is endless. And I went through a lot of anxiety and also depression. And at the root of that was fear. So I really wanted to understand what fear meant to me. And I hope this definition can kind of hopefully free some others or at least give them a a point of pause and reflection on whether or not it’s doing for them. But fear or peace or the absence of peace is where we are looking at our memories from the past and we’re applying them to scenarios that could appear in the future. And what we’re essentially missing is the present moment because we’re either reflecting or we are projecting. And that’s essentially what I was doing. For me, if I give some more grounded examples of what I was doing in that process, it was a lot of fear of not being accepted. I was posing as a different person. I wasn’t living in my authentic energy. I came out during that process. I was very happily married, in a heterosexual relationship with children. I loved my wife. I still have a a love for her now, even though we’re not married, but I wasn’t my truly authentic self. And it wasn’t until I acknowledged all of the aspects of meat, all of these fragments that were out there in the world, and I gathered them all up and I brought them back into me and stopped being ashamed or having a fear of them that I was then able to live as my authentic self because I didn’t have a fear of showing those externally anymore. Mm-hmm. I got from the book that there was almost, you know, I’m and I know it was like it’s just a very, you know, minimal explanation of your journey and all that, but I almost got the sense from the the book that there were these moments that happened that forced you to transform. Like, you know, that acknowledgement to your wife that, you know, maybe you’d like to check out some men. And suddenly it was like, ⁓ shit, I can’t put that back. And she was like, What? And suddenly it was out there and you couldn’t you couldn’t stop it. And so then you had to face it. And there was like this it was just like this interesting moment of how we something, some little bit of the truth leaks out and then it’s like, okay. And then it becomes like a tsunami of truth. So okay, I have to face it completely now. So I thought that was really fascinating. Yeah, thank you. And that’s where I see that myself as really fortunate when I spoke about some incredibly difficult journey that I would never change. But these catalyst moments, I couldn’t have asked for them. To be given to me in a better way. So the jog loss, which just came out of the blue, was wonderful in the long run because it kicked off this journey. The coming out process was never intended. And why I say I was really fortunate in the coming out process that it was my ex-wife’s strength as an individual and who has such a strong sense of self that I was willing to bring that coming out sentence back in and say, no, no, I’m I’m I’m happy to stay here. But she was really the one that pushed and said, no, if this is in you, this is this is something that really you need to live. So I’m just incredibly lucky that it happened that way. And I love that I can look back on it and see it with the lens of fortune and luck, as opposed to this happened to me and it was imposed upon me. As I said, I’m I’m I’m just really lucky it happened the way that it did. And not everyone is going to have, you know, that experience where there’s either a catalyst or there will always be a catalyst point, but they may not have a a willing participant to help them. Yeah. Uncover who they are. It sounds like there was encourage it. Like in a way the positivity was that there was it was still relatively safe. There wasn’t this judgment and control and, you know, degrading of you or or beating you up for this way. But more like your wife was able to say, I’m going to honor this truth in you. Yes. And even though this is gonna hurt us in our marriage and our co-parenting and all these things, I see this as I’m gonna hold this for it, which is an incredible gift, really. It is. It is. And kind of to surmise it, she didn’t come from a place of fear. ⁓ wow. Yeah. She like an alien or something? How did she do that? Like what’s her secret? Maybe we should have her on the podcast. We we we should. Yeah. It was and who knows where she gathered that internal internal strength from. But ultimately her reaction is where she didn’t project a possible negative scenario of the future, which as I was saying before is the definition of peace or the converse, the the definition of fear. So yeah, I’m gonna talk it up to my lottery win. Yeah. I feel that way about my wife too. I’m the lucky one, let me tell you. I’m the lucky one. Well, that’s beautiful. I wanted to sort of talk a little bit about kind of shift to some of the other things you said about love. There was a lot in there about truth. I thought there was also a lot of in there about love, a couple of your chapters or the the walks as you said in the thing. Isn’t that an Australian thing like walks or walkabout? You know, walk about definitely this, yeah. I was thinking that I just realized that now I was like, ⁓ yeah, that’s a that’s a thing. You know, we’re gonna we’re gonna walk for a walk. It might be like, you know, 12 days or something. I just was struck by this idea of purpose. Like purpose for me is always around it. I guess I want to say, kind of pulled into like mission, right? Mission is like what I do, purpose is like the thing that I have to give to the world. You know, that’s kind of how I understand it. But one of the challenges I think around finding purpose is that it gets so con kind of clouded by this thing of like, well, how am I going to do it? How am I to do it? And I love this idea of your purpose, life’s purpose is to love. Like that’s it. That’s it. And I I thought that was like and I I’ve heard that before, but ⁓ no, something when I read it, I was like, ⁓ God, that makes it so much easier in a way. I mean, it doesn’t like solve my, you know, financial challenges or my chronic disease or something like that. But it just makes it like, I’m here to love. That’s it. So I just wanted you to just if you have thoughts about that, I just really appreciated that reflection in the book. Yeah, of course. Well I think a lot of the a lot of the times that we initially hear about mission and purpose tends to be in a corporate sense. They’re the first times we really come across those terms. And then some corporates will either layer in vision on top of that as well. So you’ve got these three statements That carry this weight of grandiose expectation where it’s meant to solve the world, where my belief around purpose is more resonance and alignment. So when you find your purpose, it should just feel safe. It should feel easy. It should feel simple and it should resonate with you through the good and the bad. And you should feel a sense of alignment. And we all, whether we we all feel whether or not we have resonance or alignment with our purpose. Whether we choose to acknowledge and act upon a resonance or a lack thereof is probably where the problem lies. So for me, when I talk about the purpose of life is to love or the purpose of love, firstly, the biggest challenge there is the definition of what love is. And I think it can get really misconstrued, particularly in modern culture, where love carries this weight of expectation. It carries a weight of it being returned. So you should never give it. unless you know you’re going to get it back. It carries a sexual bias in the majority of majority of cases it is difficult to show depending on gender dynamics. So men find it difficult to show love to men because they are afraid of what they believe it ca what light it casts them in. Women are afraid to show love to a man. man is afraid to show love to a woman outside of a relationship context as well. So we’ve got this really blurred definition, almost a commercialized definition of what love is. Whereas for me, what love is is almost the hum of the universe. It is the only core and organic emotion that we feel. I write in the book about when a baby is born, that sense of love for their parent or their caregiver or who gave birth to them. is innate. Every other emotion that we teach a human beyond love is a taught emotion. And whether it’s greed, fear, hate, deceit, all of those things are are not innate. The only one we have that we can confidently argue is love. And for me, that’s why the purpose of life is to love. That’s what we’re born with. And it’s about practically how that turns up in the day-to-day that I think is really important because there is a danger of saying the purpose of life is love and it just becomes this esoteric concept that no one really understands how to live. But it’s very easy to live in alignment with love by simply allowing it to pour out from you. The first way that I would say practically to ground it is you cannot love with an expectation of it being returned. So there’s there’s another chapter in the book. called Love is a one-way street. And that was a really painful journey for me to go on where I always had that traditional concept of love that when you show it, you should expect it to be returned. If it can’t be returned to you, you wouldn’t show it outwardly. But what I came to learn is I find the most amount of peace and resonance and alignment within myself where I just comfortably show love and I don’t have that expectation of it coming back. I just do it because that’s how I feel. And rather than stifling that emotion, I allow it to come out. So some practical examples of that. When I’m with a friend and I say goodbye to them, I always now say, I love you. And often before I would hold that back because how’s that going to make the other person feel? What’s their definition of love? Whereas I know when I just say it truly to them, they know I’m not coming on to them or I’m not expecting something to come back from them. I’m just telling them that I love them and I’ve appreciated the interaction. It could be as simple as Withholding your frustrations when you’ve had a really terrible day when you’re dealing with the kids. Kids throw their throw their dinner at the wall. It’s really difficult to hold back your frustrations when they do that. But it’s an act of love just to allow it to be. You can counsel your child and say, That’s not how we’re meant to behave. But holding back that emotion of frustration is a way to show love. Holding a door open for someone. All simple practical things that can be displayed on a day-to-day basis, although the one percenters are incremental. If you could create a mental picture, if if you constantly acted in that way throughout your day, those one percenters would really add up. And who would your energy be or how would your energy appear as an individual if you were just constantly doing that with no expectation of it coming back to you? I know when I picture that, I feel a real sense of peace and I feel a sense of alignment. It takes them getting used to because you’re like, Well, I did something for you. Why aren’t you doing something for me? But if you can push past that barrier, I think you can reasonably see that it would be a wonderful existence. Then the more that we do that, if you can imagine that just growing exponentially, where you have families, villages, tribes, troop groups of people, communities all acting in that way, the world would be a tremendous place. And I think would overcome a hell of a lot of the problems that we currently experience. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. That’s beautiful. I guess what I wonder about is for you, it’s kind of I have like two thoughts here. Like one is this sense of like living your life in this state of, you know, continually expressing love in all the different ways you described. I think what I wonder comes up for people who are listening to this is like the impracticalness of that. You know, like the impracticalness of like Almost like sometimes it could be almost is it sometimes inauthentic to do that? Like I guess I guess what you’re saying is it’s you’re doing an out of authenticity, out of your truth always. It’s not it’s not something made up. But I wonder about like, you know, there’s that idea of love as being purpose. And then I really appreciate this idea you had of like being on a spiritual path had always meant to you that I have to live this like, you know very austere life where I I have nothing and I I can’t, you know, have beautiful things or enjoy my life in any sort of material sense. And I think actually what resonated with me is how I think a lot of people who are curious or seekers in some way are actually afraid of almost tipping too far into this like spiritual journey, like too much loss of their ego because then they’re gonna like wake up one day and they’re gonna be living in like a cardboard box or something. And they they actually think that’s I mean, I think that they actually fear that. And so I I really appreciated your way of describing the spiritual path of like, and I still love beautiful things. And I still love like luxurious travel and I like these things. And they can still exist in the confines of a spiritually dedicated human being whose purpose is to love. So I I guess what I’m saying is like there’s this sense of like purpose is love. And then the fear of like what? I’m just gonna be like, I don’t know, I I’m not gonna have anything if I live like that. You know, if I if that’s my purpose, then I’ll just I’ll just I’ll just lose everything. And I think you’re right. But I think everyone is afraid of the outcome of not being sort of focused and purposely oriented towards these other kinds of things that they think will then get them to some kind of, I don’t know, material nirvana or something, you know. Yes, you’re right. And we have to face that we live in a material world. And it’s also a beautiful material world, no matter kind of irrespective of what flects your boat in the material world, it could be, you know, a really great restaurant, it could be a beautiful car, a lovely home, great travel. Those things aren’t irrelevant. In fact, they’re they’re still very important. But it’s what grip do those have on you? And how does the grip that those things have on you augment your behavior and whether or not they take you away from living in your authentic self or they bring you further towards it? And you’re right, fear. Fear is something that takes you definitely away from living your authentic self. But again, we do need to acknowledge that we live within an environment of a cohort of people that aren’t on a spiritual path. But that shouldn’t dictate whether or not we are. And it’s about integrating those behaviors without losing sight of the fact that you’ve got passions or wants or needs in this material world that still need to still need to be fulfilled. The few things I would say on that. A lot of the behaviors that we hold true at the moment are simply stories that we’ve been told of the past, ⁓ in the past. Those stories can come from religion, they can come from politicians, they can come from families, they can come from education bodies. The first thing when you feel a lack of resonance, because remember that feeling of love is simply a feeling of alignment and resonance with your with your authentic self and your and your purpose. Whenever you feel that lack of resonance, it’s important to Gently challenge why. We don’t need to throw out the current system, but we need to acknowledge why we believe what we currently believe. And it could be just a matter of beginning to unlearn some of those held beliefs. And those beliefs, as I said, could come from anywhere. As you begin to unlearn or firstly challenge those and then unlearn them, it becomes easier to stand in that, stand in that purpose of love. Then when you look at a lot of corporates, we all have jobs again to to be able to provide for the lifestyles and for our families. And again, I’m not purporting at all that we throw all of that away. But it’s about turning up to those roles as your authentic self. There are so many books, Bryce, written on authentic leadership. And there are all these 10 step plans to being a more authentic leader. Ultimately, what people are crying out for and what people really want to follow is people that are authentic and enable them or give them permission to live as their authentic selves and to come up into the corporate world and turn up as who they are while still achieving a corporate objective. And again, it’s not about what that corporate objective is or what that mission statement for that corporation is, whether you believe in it is important, but it’s also about turning up within that institution as your authentic self. Now maybe very difficult for a man to hear or a woman, it doesn’t matter who they are, to turn up and be more loving at work. Because again, it’s how does that land at work? But It is not stifling the emotions that we have, whether it’s in a one-on-one. You might feel something for that person you’re having in a one-on-one, but you might push it back down because you’re afraid of how it may seem or how it may come across or how it is counter to the culture that exists. And again, I’m not being impractical and saying these are sexual things because that’s not what love is. Love is that true, innate emotion of peace and alignment. But it’s about feeling that with a person and of course. in an appropriate sense, revealing that. So everyone feels safe to be within their authentic selves. Yeah. I love that. I think the challenge is is that like for me, R like I’m I feel incredibly fortunate because I’m surrounded by people that generally for the most part can receive the love that I want to give and well, not always give it back, but there’s, you know, there’s like a reciprocity there. And but I imagine people living in other communities or other settings, it would be very difficult because I just I just wonder if it would be safe. Like I just curious for you, having sort of, you know, gone through this transformation and then you’re still in this world, however you want to call it or define it, and then you’re trying to live this authentic experience and purpose yourself around love, is it hard at times for you to sort of step into that vulnerable place and express that? Yes, it can be uncomfortable, definitely, to experience it. Do you need to be vulnerable? Yes, of course you need to be you need to be vulnerable. Should it ever be dangerous? I would hope that it’s not dangerous because again, it’s it’s not love in the traditional sense of what everyone perceives or the vast proportion of of the population is perceiving love to be. So it’s not the biggest shift of what it’s not is it’s not sexual. And I think that’s where love gets caught. Love gets caught in it is sexual relationship based. But love exists with beyond the confines of a physical relationship as in a as in a sexual relationship. And yes, you would you would be extremely cautious, you’d be extremely vulnerable, and it would be very dangerous if that was your definition of love. And that’s how you brought it, obviously, to the workplace or to to any interaction where it was unwanted. So I think the most important point for me to get across around love is the definition of it. And that definition of love is about that innate feeling and peace and resonance that everyone feels in their heart. And that’s what you’re trying to bring across. Think of it more as an energetic emotion and a a feeling of of peace rather than a rather than something that’s there to build a relationship, so to speak. Or the feeling that you would feel when you have an attraction to somebody. They’re two very, very different, different emotions. Others may also call it intuition. And again, it’s the labeling where we can really get caught up with this. Intuition also speaks to us in a loving way. It guides us on how to how to behave. It gives us advice or that gut feeling. Again, that’s a better definition of what I’m referring to when I talk about love as opposed to something that is relationship based. Mm. Yeah, I think I mean, I’m on your side on this for sure. Like I really believe that people are desperate for the thing you’re talking about. This like authentic love. And I also think that it’s really uncomfortable for people to fully engage in that in a way that is safe for everyone. You know? That’s where I think it gets tricky for people is like, okay, yeah, you l I said you love me. I don’t know what to do with that. It gets really I mean, you know, and then if it’s like a woman, it’s almost like you’ve evolved outside of the what the culture can hold, you know, you’re you’re past that edge and the culture I just wonder about like people being able to do that. And saying all that, I think you’re right. I think you’re right. Like I think you that’s what we all want. And it’s unfortunate if we can’t generally as a culture, as a society, as a as a human species, contain that in a really beautiful way, like the way you’re describing it. Yeah, I agree. And thank you. I think that the biggest the biggest challenge is to come to that realization that it doesn’t need to be returned to you. And once you’ve reached that point where there’s not an expectation of love being returned, then it’s about practicing the output expressions of that. Yeah. In small ways and allowing them to build. Yeah. There’s a quote in the book that I’m gonna just say here This is the sacred dance of souls, not to possess, but to witness, not to cling, but to cherish, not to measure by time, but by truth. And the context of the quote was in this sense of like we often think of friendships as being value based on the amount of time we’ve spent with someone. And I thought that was a really wonderful idea. But it sort of speaks to this idea of like, can we meet someone for the first time and find this depth of connection and really almost like in a way, based on your definition, fall in love. You know, because we’re really both willing to open ourselves and be really real and authentic and clear with each other and share our truths. And in that sense, I feel like I do that all the time. Like, and I’m very fortunate because I can meet people and just say, wow, I’m I’m so curious. I want to know more. And there’s a depth. And then it’s like, I think in a way, you’re right. Like I think in a way I follow in love with those people. Fall isn’t maybe the right word, but I I feel love. I don’t know. You feel love. You experience it. Exactly. Exactly right. And I think it’s about reframing those connections as experience and not having that expectation of permanence on them. Viewing every interaction as valuable, even if it’s brief. The chapter or the the walk in the book is stay for a minute, a month or a lifetime, because duration is, you know, a really poor measure of depth. Yeah. But If we look at everything kind of through that mirror concept that I that I talk about is every person is reflecting something back to you in yourself. Sometimes it’s positive and it’s your light, you know, it’s your love, it’s your joy, it’s your alignment. And sometimes those people are reflecting your shadow. They’re showing you your insecurities, they’re showing you your fear, they’re showing you your ego. But they don’t just come into our lives. They are there, I believe, to also reveal us kind of to ourselves. You know, a difficult colleague is going to show you your triggers. A partner might show you where you’re constantly seeking validation. You know, a friend might help you see what kind of authenticity feels like because friendships are really beautiful. They don’t have a lot of those expectations that romantic partnerships have. And that’s where you’ve got that ability to kind of say, you know, why did this happen to me? Or what’s it here to show me? It just helps you move from that passive state of experience to more of a conscious one and allows you to create More ownership over that experience. Yeah, I love that. That’s great. Well, so many questions, so many thoughts here. I guess one of the things that comes up is this sense of like your relationship to your sense of manhood. And you know, going from being in a marriage, children, the sort of this is what society expects of men, and then shifting out of that. in becoming, you know, in a relationship with another man. I’m just curious like how that shifted for you, or if there was a shift, you know, I’m not even assuming there was. I’m just wondering like, you know, for so many men, there’s this real question, I think, of like, especially some of the younger men I work with, it’s like, what does it mean to be a man? You know, and I’m sure it’s different, a little bit different in Australia than it is in the United States, different cultures, different histories. But I’m just curious like for you what that was like, that sort of sense of I’m a man, I’m married, I have kids. ⁓ I’m a now I’m a a gay man with a partner, another man, I have kids, I have an ex-wife, and like how that all sort of settled for you, or I’m sure it’s not settled completely, but just just what that was like for you. Yeah, it’s been quite an interesting kind of journey and reflection as well. There’s a concept here in Australia and judging by I don’t know if you’ve seen Louis Threw’s new. documentary on Netflix could man a sphere. But there is I did. I just watched it actually, yeah. You just watched it, yeah. There’s this very strong concept here, which now after watching that makes me believe it’s it’s wider than just Australia of toxic masculinity. And toxic masculinity has really begun to shape a proportion of of the younger generation now because they are being told that to be a man you need to behave and act in a certain way. Mm-hmm. My definition of a strong man is a male that understands his purpose and can live authentically. That’s my definition of a man. Let’s also have my definition of a woman as well. I don’t think a the behavior of a a male or a female should should differ in any way. We don’t necessarily, from my belief standpoint, don’t have a series of roles that are gender based that we need to conform to. My journey as a man though, I wasn’t fortunate enough to have a relationship with my father. So A lot of my initial beliefs around manhood came from wanting I guess what I didn’t have. So it was wanting to create a stable family unit where I was the provider and I was the stability and the rock in that relationship. And I wanted the family unit to rely on me. And that was my definition. If I was doing that well, I was being a good man. How that has transformed, it’s taken me quite a while to separate the idea of masculinity and that provider role. And I still have this really lovely blend now. My ex-wife and I co-parent, we’ve got the kids kind of half half the time each. So I get this blend of a gay relationship and also a gay relationship with children 50% of the time. So we’ve got a really great family dynamic where almost all of it’s incorporated. If I look at my emotional state as a man now, I feel really comfortable in almost a duality where sometimes I am seen as the stronger one or the more dominant. Sometimes I’m more passive emotionally within the relationship. But what it’s really great about it is it gives a space for it to be both. And you don’t need to be one all the time. You get to to shift and shuffle in between the two based on what you’re Your need state may be at any point in time. I still have the wonderful experience of parenthood where I’m probably the best way to put it is the softer rock for them, the more present rock, I think for the girls, where because my emotional needs are being met, I’m in a better, more authentic space to meet their emotional needs in a more dynamic fashion rather than a very defined as a father fashion you should. just do this so I can react more to how they are. I have a lot more peace and a lot more patience when I’m interacting with them. But to kind of circle back to your original question of what is the definition of a man, yeah, I strongly believe the definition of a person is someone that is calm and comfortable in their authentic self and gets to live by that every day. Yeah, that’s beautiful. What I wonder about from all that is like, what do you do? To keep yourself in that space? Like is it something that you have found that seems kind of continuously stable, or is it something that you have to work on on like a daily basis? It is it was something I used to have to work on more regularly. I think anything anything we do rec we should be constantly changing and growing. But that also doesn’t mean you can’t slip and fall back into old habits or old thought patterns. And I would be lying if I said that never happened. It it happens, it happens regularly sometimes, depending on whatever I’m dealing with. So that should also be something that the listeners take away is that you’re never a finished product. You never reach a point and it’s like a you you cross a finish line in a race and you’re like, I’m done now, the the race is over. It’s a a constant practice and a constant learning of new things, a constant realization of more of your authentic self, a constant realization of Who you’re not as well. But I also think that’s the fun. Yeah. It should be something that we embrace. Yeah, it’s it’s like that sense of like, you know, I sometimes get this with my clients. They come in and they want me to take them to happy land where everything’s easy and simple and they don’t have to struggle. And it’s just ⁓ and I always say, ⁓ I can’t really help you with that. But it is it is this like longing for ease or just I don’t have to try so hard. And it’s like that’s not how this works. That’s not it’s it’s like struggle is baked in, suffering is somewhat baked in, pain, all those things are baked in. And it’s not baked in because it sucks. It’s baked in for our evolution. It’s baked in for our growth. And I think that was the thing that really has helped me recognize all these things are happening for me, not against me. Exactly. It’s all helping me become, as you say, you know, my authentic self, my truest self. I think that is what is so beautiful about the human experience. Yeah, I agree. I mean if everything was revealed to us all at once, we wouldn’t appreciate it at its granular level. Yeah. What would you do then? You’d just be like, I’m just gonna sit and be happy all the time. Like it sounds so boring. How boring. Well Dean, I think that’s a great place to end. Could you give a little plug for your book? I’ll put it in the show notes. Sure. The book is called Conscious Footsteps. You can buy it on Amazon or at consciousfootsteps.com. Alright, I’ll put that in the show notes. Deanna was such a great time to be with you. Thank you so much for calling in from the Down Under. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks, Bros. Thanks for having me. 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. Welcome everyone to Man for Real. Thanks for being here. I’m talking today with Given Doss, the author of Who You Are Is How You Parent. Given is a family therapist in the Denver area that specializes in working with adolescents. Today we’re talking about the challenges of young men and the importance of vulnerability. Stevon Das, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Great to be here. Thanks for the invitation. So I’d just like to start by getting a sense of you and kind of your journey as a man and kind of what you’ve gone through, kind of to lead you to the work you do and to the life that you live. I’m just very curious about some of how that’s like some of the things that have sort of brought you to this point. Great. Thank you. Well, the first thing that’s important to know about me is that I struggled a lot when I was a teenager. I was very unhappy with who I was. I felt lost and I survived, I would say, my early teenage years until I was in my early twenties because I was deeply insecure about who I was. And no one in my life I grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin in the nineties, eighties and nineties, forty-eight. And no one in my life really got me. And that no one really saw, except for my mom. She could see that I was struggling, but had no idea on how to kind of like get in there as a young man, as a boy. And I was deeply insecure. And so I smoked lots of weed. I drank a lot. I did lots of risky behaviors. I was stealing from people and things. I was a good student and the teachers liked me. And I got decent grades. So I I wasn’t on anybody’s radar. And Inside, I can still remember how lonely I felt. Like no one really got me. I felt so alone. And my dad, you know, was he did listen, I had great parents. They did, they did the best they could. They had a lot of heart and they cared a lot, but they just were ill-equipped to help somebody like me who was so resistant to sharing about how I felt. I had no idea how to. My dad didn’t talk about his feelings, even though he had a big heart. He cared a lot. He didn’t talk about his feelings. And I was just lost for years. I had good friends and I leveraged my ability to be funny and self-deprecating in order to gain popularity in school. And I had I wasn’t smart, but I was a decent student. So I did okay. And I kind of just like made my way through adolescence and into college, just being pretty lost. And the the thing that started to save me, it didn’t ultimately save me, but the thing that started to just open up my heart a bit in a meaningful way was the wilderness. I became really passionate about spending time in the wilderness. I moved from Wisconsin out West and ⁓ I just started to get cracked open a little bit by the wilderness and spending time out there. And then I discovered rock climbing. And I I’ve been a high performance rock climber for about 25 years. And when I discovered those passions, something started to open up for me and I felt a little bit more free and not as dependent on drugs and alcohol. I also fell in love with a woman for the first time. And realized I didn’t have to be high or drunk in order to feel connection with people. And so that helped me feel less alone. And I started just to come into myself a little bit more, but that nothing had really been solved in terms of finding myself until a few years later when I started graduate school in Boulder, Colorado. So I’m a trained therapist and in graduate school, I was in Boulder and I was doing very risky things, rock climbing. Like I was, if you’ve seen the movie Free Solo, I was doing that kind of stuff, not to that degree or that. High difficulty, but those kinds of practices that were really risky because I was searching for something. I mean, I was addicted, you know, I have the personality of an addict. And I spent a lot of those years just punishing myself on rock walls and pushing myself to my own limits and, you know, dating people and looking for love and just searching passionately, but in a gripped kind of way, like just needing to just be filled from the inside. And while I felt a little bit more connected to myself, the key to my entire life was that I didn’t know how to be vulnerable. And I didn’t know how to I didn’t even know that. I didn’t know that was a thing. You know, when I was growing up in high school, it’s like no one was vulnerable, you know, like men weren’t vulnerable. And and interestingly enough, I had like my closest friends were girls. And that’s still the case now. I feel the most comfortable with like women because they’re just naturally relational, I think, generally in a certain way. And I feel it’s it’s easier for me. But I didn’t know how to be vulnerable. And so I while I wasn’t like addicted to drugs and alcohol and I wasn’t as lonely as I once was in my teenage years, when I was in my twenties, I just kind of got addicted to something else that was maybe healthier and was really like fitness in the wilderness. And I would injure myself and I would feel some respite from that inner kind of darkness on the top of a cliff or a rock wall or something. And then it would, you know, eventually come back and I just would feel kind of anxious and depressed, even though I had like all these things in my life. And there was one defining moment that was really amazing. I was doing this therapy training, this gestalt therapy training in Boulder at that time. And I was one of the leaders of the student group. It was a cohort where we do therapy with each other and people would rotate being a clinician and a participant and a clinician and a client. We’d practice with each other. And I remember I was a leader of the participant group. We had this weekend and I felt like I had a responsibility as a leader to kind of show up and like lead the newer participants and Have a certain role there, and I felt like I did a pretty good job. At the end of the weekend, the lead trainer called me into his office and I was like, like I wonder if he wants to talk about me, you know, having a more permanent role there or doing something, having more responsibility or something. And it was the complete opposite. I went into his his office and he told me that how I had showed up that weekend was completely inappropriate, that I had I walked around so arrogant and pompous, and that I had hurt actually a lot of people, a lot of the newer students in the group two had already quit, and a few more were having conversations with the lead instructors about how they wanted to quit because of how unpleasant it was. I mean, inspired it and it really, when I look back on this, I I had a certain presence that was very unpleasant. I talked down to people. And again, like it was, it was such an it was a frushing moment. And I just broke into tears. And he was talking to me and he was, I could tell he was seeing if I was being accountable or not or if I was I was just falling into a victimhood in that moment. And I felt, I mean, I just felt absolutely crushed, embarrassed, humiliated, of course, but also devastated that I had thought that I was contributing and helping and I’d hurt people. And it was just terrible. And I told him how sorry I was and that I’m willing to do anything I need to do in order to make it better. And he was, you know, considering removing me, kicking me out of the group because of how destructive I had been. Long story short, I had a long conversation with him and he accepted, you know of my accountability and I was very sincere in it. The next weekend that we had, I think it was a couple weeks later, I went in and ⁓ in front of the group of like 50 people, I shared a sincere apology and how and an accountability around it and how I had acted and how it wasn’t my intent, but it didn’t really matter. And that I was really open and I was committed to doing something better. And that moment just broke apart a certain amount of defense mechanism that I had had my entire life. protection and that I had really learned as a man. Like that’s how you be a man. You be confident. You know, you don’t show weakness. It was so subconscious. You know, even I was even like, you know, I was in therapy school. So we were like, you know, being vulnerable and connecting with each other and all of that. But it was so subconscious and it came out as I felt the pressure of being a leader. Like I had to show up and be strong and like tell people what to do and like, you know, be confident in all that BS that I think we’re taught as men. And it was a deeply humbling moment. And what was Beautiful about that. And I’ve retained this ability and you know, practice it now. That was probably 20 years ago, that there is such a power that comes with that vulnerability and that humility. I’ll never forget it, you know? And so now anytime I notice myself being in some ⁓ like a like a stressful role where I’m in some kind of a leadership, I notice myself practicing humility and vulnerability when I feel that temptation to be strong, quote unquote. And how important it is for me to because what I really want to do is have is is share and help people, as many people as I can, young people, families, which is the main thing that I do. And I’m a practicing monk. So I just I want to help as many people as I can. And I just, whenever I practice that, that surrender into vulnerability and humility, I have so much influence and I’m able to actually fulfill upon the mission that I have, which is just helping people as much as offering anything that I can, anything that I’ve learned, any way that I am. to help people in any way that they need. And it’s just so I mean, it feels good, of course, but it’s also very effective. You know, people people really gravitate towards someone who is humble, who’s open, who’s vulnerable. And I’m not perfect at it by any means. But it’s a wonderful practice. And gosh, I wish I would have had somebody in my life, you know, when I was younger that that lived that way. Not even like said that stuff or taught it, but like was a living example of that. And I was I was doing some research and preparing for this podcast and just doing some journaling and thinking about some things. And I I’m realizing that I have become the person that I needed, right? As a teenager. That’s that’s something that I’ve again like subconsciously, but I’m I’m realizing like, ⁓ I needed someone like this. ⁓ and it’s that’s why in some ways it’s so satisfying living practicing living the life that I am, because I needed someone like this in my life. And so if I can just have a moment with some of the young men that I work with where I can show up in a way that I would have liked to have shown up and how insecure I was and how protected I was and how arrogant I was, and especially with like kind of the manosphere that exists, quote unquote, you know, out there in the world right now, to just give young men an example of like how much there’s so much freedom in this way of living. I mean, you know this, Bryce, you know, it’s something you practice. There’s so much freedom. Yes. It’s it’s like quite glorious, you know, to, you know, to let the guard down and just practice being in that way as a man. Wow. I was like, On pins and needles, when you said that the thing was about being vulnerable, that just like lit me up. I was like, ⁓ yes, yes. There’s so many things I want to say. I’ve got like 12 thoughts going through my head right now. Yeah, you know, I think I think all that you’re saying is I, you know, can’t emphasize it enough because it’s all so true. And yet it’s so hard. It’s so hard to be vulnerable. It’s so scary. It’s so it’s like opening up to that is so scary. I mean, you know, I work primarily with men. Do you work with couples and women sometimes too? But I I just find that like it’s almost like the word I use is this grandiosity of this protected grandiosity. Look at me. Look at how great I am. Look at how much money I make. Look at how much this thing. And that to me, that actually defines so much of what the manosphere is about. You know, it’s all about show and external validation, but it is so unfulfilling. That’s the deeper problem. It’s so unfulfilling. And so it’s like it’s just a false reality. It’s like it’s it’s paper thin. Yeah. Totally. I stumbled upon this term that I hadn’t heard before. Maybe you have. It’s called the performance paradox. Someone wrote a book on it a few years ago and I heard it applied to teenagers because I was doing some research into like how to define the struggle that so many young men as teenagers are struggling with. And obviously everyone is customized to each person. But there’s performance paradox that with social media, the more that we all really portray a certain view or look of ourselves that’s kind of perfect, the further away from ourselves we get. Right. The paradox is like the more that I show myself as a certain way, the further I am from from my authentic self, like that. I have the warts and, you know, the weaknesses and the whatever, how I look and like the, you know, I’m not looking perfect. My lights, whatever it is. So that it was really interesting to me to stumble upon that. That that’s something I think that is so hard. And to to your point, the difficulty, and I don’t know. I It doesn’t feel as hard for me anymore to be vulnerable. And I’m curious if it does for you or if it’s more that you see that. I I know that it is for people to be vulnerable because without practicing it, it’s such a stepping, you know, off the ledge, right? What’s gonna happen? I’m gonna get made fun of. I’m gonna get judged. You know, people won’t like me. Romantic partners won’t be attracted to me, right? It’s that paragraph that seems so true. No, I mean, at age fifty-four now, it just it’s so much more fundamental to who I am. But, you know, say 10, 15 years ago, it was definitely still diceier for me to do that sort of thing. I can remember, it’s I’m just remembering this moment when I was in a a men’s group that I was running. And we would just kind of start out and we’d go around and we’d share stuff. And I just started sharing. I was like, ⁓ you this is going on my life, dah, dah, dah. And this guy who was kind of new to the group, he looked at me and he was like, wow. He’s like, you just made me feel so much more okay to share myself by sharing that. And that struck me of like, you know, because I think in some ways like you’re describing like when you open up and you show your vulnerability, you have more influence because people gravitate to that. They’re like, ⁓ that feels so good to feel your openness. And then I feel my openness, you know. I actually in my work, I often will be kind of I do some self disclosure, not as a way to kind of get my own therapy going, but more just to say I get it. I know exactly what you’re going through. And I was sort of struck by your Your journey of of how much that must be helpful for you having gone through this in your work with adolescents, you know, just like, ⁓ yeah, I did all these things too. I’m not like sitting up here being the like all wise therapist. I know exactly what this is like for you. So what enough what that’s like for you and and your work. Well, it’s again, it’s it’s so liberating because I don’t have anything to hide. And ⁓ while my journey of struggle is completely independent of everyone else’s, I found again through in in my work of I think it’s like 20, 20 plus years of working mostly with just with teenagers and families, especially in crisis, that one of the fascinating things about struggle is that it has us know our own depth in a way that we most people people who don’t struggle or who who aren’t connected to their own struggle. Sometimes, and I would say even often, aren’t connected to themselves because they don’t have to be. It’s very interesting. It’s like struggle makes us connected to ourselves through the pathway of suffering, you know, of pain. Right. But the God, one of the amazing benefits. And I wouldn’t change a thing about my life in terms of like what I went through, even though it was very painful for many years, because I was forced to look at myself and to come into relationship with myself. And there’s a certain depth now. That I have in terms of who I know myself to be. And I’m always, you know, kind of revisiting different topics like you do, I’m sure, as well, Bryce. But there’s that intimate connection that I have to myself that struggle provided for me. I mean, I think that’s actually like one of the main, maybe the the preeminent gift of struggle is that it gets us connected to ourselves, even when we don’t want to be. You know, it doesn’t ask permission. So we’re just like, ⁓ my God. Now I have to look at myself. So that’s something that I often talk about with the. young men that I that I speak will, it’s like, well, at least you’re getting to know yourself, you know, in a certain way. And if you can make your if you can keep going through it and keep in, you know, accepting different parts of yourself and like keep landing on your sword and being okay with it and just continuing to let the layers shed and become open and take accountability and be like, you know, I messed up. You know, forgive yourself and create more understanding for other people and just let that let your heart open up. That’s the gift that struggle can really give us. And it provides a certain level of maturity, a certain level of depth that I think is just makes life so much more satisfying. It certainly makes relationships so much more satisfying, you know, when we get that, when we get connected to ourselves. And it’s amazing because that struggle, it that’s a struggle brings. I mean, yeah, of course, there’s the there’s the really painful, uncomfortable parts of it, but it really ushers us into, it can usher us into a very new, completely new relationship with ourselves. That people who, you know, and I see people all the time that don’t really get don’t need to go to therapy or don’t doing transformation. Completely fine. It’s all good. And I sort of like wonder about like, is their life is their life meaningful? I it might be. It might be totally fine. It might be good for them, which is fantastic. And I know that people who have gone young people who have gone through struggle or at any age really, the gift that’s available sort of somewhere along that path is that, ⁓ my God, you get to know yourself. What a gift. You know, you get to and that I’ve also just been discovering the Like the anatomy of connection, like what does that actually mean? And I think that when I am connected to myself or I’m really connected to somebody else, I mean they’ve let me into their world, that there’s a spark of life there. And I don’t know how to define that, but it you know, it sometimes it comes across it gets expressed as hope, sometimes it’s relief, sometimes it’s love. But that’s something so unique that, and I think that’s actually how I’d define one way that I would define God is that in that moment of connection when we feel that like, You know, I’m like seen or I’m understood. It’s like there is life. That is the moment where life is born or expressed in a way. So anyway, all that to say, it’s I think, you know, if people can not embrace struggle, but if if people can embrace that struggle has something to bring us that’s so helpful that we can’t actually get anywhere else. I think there’s something that with that framing can really help. It’s helped me anyway. Yeah. You know, one of the things that you’re talking, I I get a sense of through my work is this hunger for depth. Hunger for depth. Like there’s this sense of like you’re kind of asking that question of people who, you know, they go through their lives, they live their lives, they’re kind of this is fine. There’s not a lot of maybe introspection or, you know, effort to explore deeper truths or something like that. I think they maybe they have depth on some level. I don’t know. But I just don’t think your life can be essentially meaningful if you don’t have a sort of continuing element of depth in your life. And I I I tend to think of it like I talk to my couples about how, you know, they’re in this like difficult period and they’re struggling. And I’m like, you know, what’s happening here is you’re you’re calling for more depth. You guys have to grow. And that means you have to get more vulnerable with each other. You have to open up more to each other and all the shit’s coming up. You know, all the hard stuff and the traumas and but I just think that there’s this call and and I don’t even know depth is the right word. Maybe it’s transformation, maybe it’s something else. But to me it always feels like I have to get deeper. I have to get deeper. I have to open to more of myself, more of myself. Like in my relationship with my wife, it’s like, okay, this is hard. I gotta go even deeper. You know, ⁓ I thought we were really get the deepest part. Nope, there’s a whole nother thing down there. I got to go further down. And so I just feel like that’s what I see in my clients is like things just feel so unsatisfying because there’s such a lack of depth. And it’s like the gateway to that depth. I think that’s also true from my experience and the people that I work with is that the gateway is that risk of being vulnerable, right? With someone else. And that vulnerability, I also made this kind of discovery a few years ago that I think the reason that especially probably everybody, but young people in particular, the reason that they have such a hard time being accountable is that accountability has an ingredient of vulnerability. In order for me to say, I did this, it means there’s that I’ve got to open up and you might be like, you’re right, you did that. You really effed up, you know? And I hate you or like you you’re a bad person, right? That you did that. Like there’s that moment where and I think that so many young people don’t take accountability because they’re afraid of being vulnerable. Like I don’t think it’s actually about being in whatever it seems like on the surface, like being denied or being a victim, or it’s like someone else’s fault. Like that’s easy. I think that’s low-hanging fruit of. What’s happening with again with young people, but I think everybody when they’re in that denial or victimhood or whatever it is that it’s not my fault or it’s their fault or it’s that thing out there that did this to me, that it’s it’s fundamentally ⁓ resistance to being vulnerable because they’re just so scared, right? And it’s so it is, it is so scary to be open and to be vulnerable. And I think it’s very scary to actually take accountability because you could take accountability and someone could be like, that’s right, you know, you do suck. And that it w you were wrong and it was your fault. And there’s, as you see in clients and with couples all the time, I see this in families, that sometimes a parent or a young person, even the young young adult or a teenager, will take accountability and then the other person won’t match it. And ⁓ my God, what a terrible moment that is. Yeah. It’s just one of the worst moments you can see in a relationship, right? Where someone says, I’m really sorry I did this. And they’re like, That’s right, you should be. You know, you really hurt that person. They just kind of layer it on and it’s like that vulnerability just gets crushed. And then they learn, well. I shouldn’t be vulnerable. You know, it’s better actually making it about someone or something else than it is about than it is taking accountability. So they associate accountability, they associate accountability with being hurt. So why take accountability? It’s much easier to make it about somebody else. And again, whether that’s as someone in an intimate relationship, a romantic relationship or a family or any relationship. But I think that’s it’s so important. One of my missions is to educate parents so that struggling people can feel better, essentially. And if parents, you know, know, for example, that like accountability takes vulnerability, I think they’ll they’ll create a certain level of vulnerability in their family environment that makes vulnerability more welcome, right? And create a certain leadership in families that makes that vulnerability more welcome. And so, and again, like you said, you know, in with your relationship with your wife, and for me, I’ve a small community of very close friends where we share everything. And fortunately we’re all practicing kind of the same thing. So when some of us are, you know, make a mistake, which I do, or I hurt someone or I say something kind of judgy, when they say it, it’s like, I still I mean, I still have it. Like, you know, I’m forty-eight and I still have that moment or like, ooh, I don’t wanna say I’m sorry. You know, like I I really wanna say something else, but take a deep breath and just like, man, I’m really sorry. You know, I I really wish I I regret that. I wish I wouldn’t have said it. And I think it was because I was feeling X, Y, or Z, insecure, defensive and for whatever reason. And then the healing that happens in that moment is just so profound. You know, it’s so profound. Well, I don’t know about your clients, but I Do that all the time. I I struggle with accountability. My wife calls me on something. I’m like, ⁓ d I what did I do that? I didn’t, I don’t think I did that. Really? No, I that was you actually. Yeah. So I can relate to that one very clearly. Sure. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, yeah. So I’m curious about your work, a little bit more about your work with adolescents. I’m sure you work with boys and girls and young men, young women. Just about like how that process goes for you in terms of like, you know, you’ve already said some really important things about accountability, about how parents show up. And I just wonder about like, I guess maybe what I’m trying to get to is like, I’m curious about your take a little bit about what’s going on for young men today in terms of their struggle. I mean, you’re seeing it at this like really at the ground level. Young boys, adolescent boys who are Struggling in school, struggling with behavior issues, you know, parents are calling you and saying, ⁓ my God. And then you’re also dealing with the family and all that stuff. I know you’ve been at this for a while. So I just get curious about your take on all of these things. Cause there’s definitely this question of what’s happening for men in general, but also young men too. Yeah. I think the pressure to be something, to be performative, to look a certain way, to be a certain way, I think it increases with every passing day in our society. With the prevalence of social media. I mean, the social media can be great. I d I don’t like I’m not I don’t dog on social media because if you look for the right things and you follow the kind of right things that are like quote unquote healthy things, it can be extremely helpful. And this prevalence that you and I didn’t have of everything is advertised. Everything that happens is public, right? As soon as everyone has a phone and all they do is hit a button and then it becomes public, whatever’s happening. So the potential to be embarrassed. To have a weakness amplified and to eventually be crushed by something is so there is so much more pressure to avoid that moment that it’s so compelling for young men to be something that they’re not, fundamentally, to be a certain thing that they believe is important to other people. And unfortunately, I I just see more and more that that brings them further and further away from themselves. And I think The the only thing that brings them back to themselves are relationships, are good, solid relationships. That relationship could be a friend, it could be a mentor, it could be a therapist, it could be a parent, could be a sibling, it could be anybody. And I see that there is a there is a constant tug at young men to be something that they fundamentally aren’t. Yeah. You know, it’s just, it’s like for me, that. My journey was about avoiding insecurity. And another thing that I sort of discovered is that the most secure people are not actually void of insecurities. They’re just familiar with their insecurities. Right. It’s like the more, the more that I’m aware of what I am insecure about or what my weaknesses are, the more magically, the more secure I become. Why? Because I’m not hiding anything. Right. It’s like that MM and Nine Mile or whatever that was, right? That amazing ending that movie was just like the other rapper had like nothing to say because he just was like, this is it. This is me. And I think the more that we can, I don’t love the term model because modeling also has that superficial quality to it. The more that we can be secure, meaning we can be trans practice being transparent about what we are insecure about, what my weaknesses are, the more young men will see men out there and be like, ⁓ that’s actually like cool. You know, like he seems pretty chill and happy. You know, and I kind of like the vibe that, you know, it’s kind of putting out there versus, you know, the Manosphere thing over there, right? Even though that one’s more compelling in a way and it preys upon, you know, our ego where you don’t have to put anything on the line other than like working out, whatever, you know, the can make your body a certain way, but like feeling a certain way. The more that we can become that, not model it, but the more that we can become that. And it’s so interesting because it’s not about being perfect. It’s not about Like not making mistakes and parenting and relationships. It’s actually the opposite of that. It’s about becoming aware of how we make mistakes or our insecurities or our weaknesses. And then just becoming familiar with it and making it okay to talk about. Not broadcasting it, obviously, because you don’t want to like make the child the parent, but being like just less and less to hide, right? Just like not hiding. And also at the same time, again, as caregivers, as leaders like you are and like I am, leaders for young people. The more that we can one, be that practice being that transparent about weaknesses, about mistakes, and thereby becoming more secure in ourselves. And number two, make ourselves available for meeting them where they’re at, not expecting them to do the same thing that we’ve done, like not expecting them to live that way, just being a certain way, and then letting them be however the hell they are, you know, just However, they are, as may maybe they have no idea that they’re insecure. It’s I don’t think it’s our role to actually tell them that or to to to reflect that. It’s just to like be there with them. And then the magic of what happens in that connection is that as we’re just with them, how we are, they gravitate towards health, right? Their version of that, right? Their version of becoming comfortable with their own weaknesses, comfortable with their own ability to make mistakes and thereby take accountability. Right. So there’s the more that we can. Me a certain way. And that’s the whole presence of my book, Who You Are is How You Parent, is that the more that we can become who we want to be, who a good person is in our in our definition, what a good secure parent, person, leader is, the more that we can become that, the more influence that we have. And the more that young people want to gravitate towards their own version of that. It sounds like too than in gravitating towards more of that authentic experience. It’s like once I like sort of the saying, it’s like then they can start to find their own authentic self in that too. Yeah. And their own path towards that. Who knows what it looks like? Who knows how they’re gonna talk to their friends or how they’re gonna be at school or what they’re gonna say when they’re out with their friends? Like who knows what they’re gonna say or how they’re gonna find their way or how they even define authenticity, right? Or how they define themselves. I mean, it’s they’re just you know, they’re they are building a plane as they’re flying it and they’re learning how to build a plane as they’re flying it actually. So who knows? And we don’t I I don’t know. We don’t know exactly like what their pathway is or who they ultimately are as people. It’s for them to discover and define. But the more that we can just become that again, secure person that’s in their life that’s connected to them through that process, man, what a reservoir we provide for them. Yeah. You know, one thing that’s coming up for me as I was remembering the story. There’s this guy, his name is Eugene Jenlin. He was this sort of created this thing called focusing. Have you ever heard of it? Anyway, he was doing this session and in the middle of the session, he was talking about this thing that was coming up for him, like, ⁓ he was touching into this like issue or ⁓ emotion or something. And somebody was talking to him about it. And he’s like, ⁓ yeah. Yeah, it’s very familiar. I’ve been working on that for about thirty years. And I was just like, Wow, thirty years. Well, what was interesting about it was like this guy’s like, you know. He was in like his seventies, maybe, you know, he was like this kind of guru who had created the system and he had been working on himself and helping people for generations. And he acknowledged like some of this stuff just never completely gets worked out, you know? It never gets worked out. And then what was there was it’s okay. You know, I think what one of the things that I’ve no as you’re talking is just like this deep acceptance of our just. normal humanness, like we’re scared, we’re insecure. And that’s okay. And that’s okay. And that’s the big shift. That’s been the big shift for me. Is not getting myself to some kind of happy land where everything’s worked out, but the acceptance of it’s not going to get worked out and I can be okay with where I’m at right now in this moment. Yes. Yeah. It reminds me of this story that I talk about in the book. It was another defining moment in my adolescence. I was a senior in high school and one of the things I was good at was tennis. I didn’t love it, but it was something that I was good at. And again, I was very performative at that time and I wanted to be successful and achieve, you know, very like masculine thing. And I remember practicing all summer to make the varsity team and make this certain roster in the varsity team. All summer I practiced into the fall. And then we had tryouts in the winter. And so for five months, and it I practiced kind of as hard as I could at that time. Looking back, I was like I could have done lot more. But for me, I like really tried. I was trying to be really good. Went in. Me and my buddy who had been practicing all summer and through the fall went in and we played these two, this other doubles team in tennis, who were just natural athletes. They were these two soccer guys. They they lettered in every sport, you know, they’re three season athletes. And we go in there and we play and they just crush us. They just crush us easily. And they didn’t even practice. They were just so good. And I was devastated. And instead of going up to the net to shake hands at the end of the match, I chucked my racket in the air and screamed an expletive. And the whole inside stadium, tennis court stadium inside, because it was wintertime, went totally silent. My racket echoed across the walls. And my coach yelled at me, Jay, what are you doing? And it was just like very awkward and silent. And I just walked out to my car, grabbed my bag, walked out to my car and drove home. And I didn’t smoke weed that night, which I usually would have, but I didn’t for some reason. And walked past my parents and they clearly saw that I was upset. And my mom had, I think at that point, like given up. knocking on my door because I would always get so angry whenever she tried to talk to me when I was upset. And I sat in my room and I something came up in me that I needed to say sorry to my coach. Was I was just I was so angry and so upset, but I felt like I I just I just did him wrong, you know, and I embarrassed him probably. And so I called him and as I called him and he answered and as soon as I heard his voice, I just I went silent and I just started choking back tears. And I wasn’t I was trying to hide that I was crying because I was embarrassed about it. And there was the silence there. And he said two words that I’ll never forget. It’s okay. And I just broke open. I just started weeping uncontrollably on the phone. You know, I was 17 and I’d I don’t even know if I’d cried at that point in years since I was a child. And I just broke open completely. I’m just weeping and sobbing on the phone. I’m embarrassed because I’m crying, but I couldn’t hold it back anymore. I felt devastated that I had been revealed for like the fraud and the you know, the terrible athlete that I was, that I’ve been trying to hide that and trying to be, you know, a success, but I was actually just a failure. And I was just completely broken. And I’m just sobbing on the phone with him for like five or ten minutes. And he just kept saying it. It’s okay. And it just, I just couldn’t stop sobbing every time he said it. And it was so revealing of how that’s what I needed in my life, you know, is someone just to figuratively or literally say that to me, no matter what happened. You know, whether it was good or you know, especially when it was bad, when things were bad, like it’s okay, right? It’s okay. It’s okay. And you know, which is really the message was like, you’re okay. You know, and that’s really how to penetrate, is like, you’re okay, you’re okay. And I finally squeaked out an apology and said, I’m so sorry. And he’s like, It’s okay. It’s and he he really meant it. You know, his heart was in it, he could feel connected to me. And I mean, this amazing man who was just a a varsity tennis coach in Green Bay, Wisconsin, like really it altered something inside of me. And I hung up the phone and I went back and had played a fine season and just, you know, it was fine. And it really was okay. It was a devastating moment. But it was amazing to be connected to someone in that just completely raw, vulnerable state. Again, I think if like we can, as people, just be there for young people who are struggling in that way. And again, you don’t even have to s we don’t even have to say those words. It’s okay because it comes becomes kind of cliched. But the more that we can just be with them and be with that like, It’s okay and you’re okay. Well, not being patronizing or condescending, but just being there with our hearts and like we’ve talked about, being vulnerable, open, present, you know, secure in our own insecurity, you know, living from that place of like, I’m okay, you know, you’re okay, this is okay. ⁓ man, what a devastating moment. I mean, if he if he had any training and started going into it of like, you must feel so devastated. I mean, I just would have like the layers of the protection would have just fallen away from me, right? And they even did just. Those two words that he kept saying over and over again. And so I d I remember that. And, you know, again, when like people are just protecting and just to for them to remind that ultimately we want people to say that for themselves, young people, I’m okay. You know, not like as a, you know, chanting it, but just to feel that I’m okay. Cause that’s the antidote to shame, right? If I can say I’m okay, then it’s very difficult for shame to exist inside of us because that shame, you know, it thrives in the darkness. So the more that we can be that, that we can be that for the people that we’re connected with, we just become so powerful, you know? Yeah, that’s so good. I really appreciate all that. I think the thing that I would you were starting talking about modeling, and I agree, that’s kind of a weird word, but I think the thing that’s really powerful is the reflection. And it’s not even a reflection of words, it’s a reflection of I’m here, I care. And in that is the words is the sort of sense of you’re okay. You’re okay. Cause I’m not going anywhere. I could hold this for you. You were devastated. I get it. I think that’s one of the things I think is interesting is how, you know, as you know, I’ll just be gendered here. It’s like as men, you know, when we’re in that masculine energy, one of the challenges that men have is that ability to hold space. And what I mean by that is I’m just gonna be here, I’m just gonna listen. I’m not gonna shut down. I’m not gonna get grandiose or big or intense. I’m not gonna try to fix anything. I’m just gonna be here. And for a lot of my clients, that’s really difficult. That’s really difficult to just sit there. Yeah. Cause it feels like, well, what am I doing? And I’m like, it’s hard to get them to understand until they get it. Like they’ve actually had the experience of like, this is so helpful. And sometimes when I’m w working with couples, I’ll say that to the guy. I’m like, you just have to sit there. And she’ll just be like, ⁓ my God. I feel so much better. And he’s like, I didn’t even do anything. I’m like, you have no idea how much you just did right there. You just held it. You just held it. She wants, she desperately wants you just to hold it for her. And that’s just such a powerful moment for the couple to be and the guy’s like, okay, just sit here and I just listen. Yeah, that’s all you gotta do. It’s it’s kind of so fundamental. And in some ways I feel like it’s easier. You don’t have to think about anything. You just have to just breathe and listen and care. That’s it. Breathe, listen, and care. And they’re like, I think I can do that. Great. This is gonna get so much better then. It’s like that doing is being, right? The doing is the being, right? It’s just if I could just be there. Like you said, what what was it? Listen and care. What was the first one? Listen, breathe. Breathe and care. Listen, breathe and care. Yeah. I I usually use the the breath as like their object. So they don’t they’re they’re trying to like figure something just notice your breath, stay there, care about your wife, and listen. Okay, okay, here we go. ⁓ Right. And then like if you could actually understand, I mean what a bonus is, right? Like that’s probably the the next tier of learning is like if I can then understand what they’re what they’re going through via like just being curious. Cause this is the big thing that that I work with parents around is forget about doing something about whatever the conflict is, forget about solving it, forget about your agenda around how this is gonna impact their life or what they’re gonna do tomorrow or They’re gonna to school or what’s gonna happen next month. It’s like forget about all of that because all of that becomes obstacles to them feeling understood, which is the ultimate goal. And that the way to, I think the only way, there are probably maybe some other nuances in this, but the only way to feel understood is through curiosity. And curiosity can’t exist with agendas or judgments or ideas about the future for now. And that’s that that paradox of acceptance, right? Is that if I if I can just practice accepting this person in this moment, then they get to shift. But if I resist how they’re being in that moment, like I don’t like that they’re being whatever, frustrated or angry or sad or giving up or whatever it is, if I resist that they’re that way, then they’re more they feel more compelled to continue being that way. Yeah. And it’s it’s you know, that that’s where that power struggle, the inception of the power struggle right gets ignited. And so the more that we can practice being curious and like not being thrown off by some wild thing that what a teenager is saying, or, you know, in your case, probably the husband just like. Practicing understanding. I mean, how deeply satisfying that must be. It’s like, so wait, you’re feeling upset because of some of what I did yesterday, even though I didn’t mean that. And she’s like, Yes. They’re like, he’s like, ⁓ okay. And they’re like, ⁓ my God, how come you have to? It’s just a glorious moment, right? To just have someone be patient and curious enough and to set aside and like again, just that innocence of curiosity, how healing that is. It’s so healing. People can set aside their own like selfish desires in a way. And again, I have them myself and I have to practice this every time I’m talking with somebody that, you know, there’s a crisis happening. It’s just forget about like what we’re gonna do tomorrow or tonight and just focus on really understanding. Because as soon as people feel understood, there’s just that, ⁓ my god. All right. You know, because the understanding then leads to connection. And that’s when and when connection happened, that’s when that relief or that ignition of life can occur. It’s so beautiful. So I like that. I like that. The breathe. Listen and care. Yeah. That’s great. I’d like to just jive in a little bit around your book. I just wanted to let all the listeners know that they should get this book, even if they’re not a parent, because the ideas in here are so fundamental to, you know, human relationship, in my opinion. But I think it’s maybe magnified in the parental child relationship. You know, I think a lot of my I’m thinking about a couple of specific clients, but it’s like there’s this sense of The woundedness is nobody really wanted to understand me. Nobody wanted to care about what was going on inside me. I had all this sh I had a house. I had a clothes, I had food, I went to school, I did my homework, but no the parents never were like interested in my internal world, like what was happening for me. And there’s this sense of like, ⁓ well, I guess if nobody cares, then one, it becomes very undeveloped on one hand, but the other part of it is. Nobody’s going to care about that. So why would I ever share about that? Why would I ever be vulnerable? Why ever express my feelings? Nobody’s gonna care. And so I loved how your book really starts with this idea of understanding. Like that’s the fundamental basis. And you said so many other art very articulate things I can’t recall off the top of my head. But I just I just wanted to to let everyone listening like, go get this book, especially if you’re a parent of adolescence, but even if you’re just starting as a parent, because start this stuff now. You know, listening to your kids, understanding them, it’s just so fundamental. Or it should be fundamental, unfortunately. That’s not the way I was parented, unfortunately. Or mo most of us I had very well meaning parents too, but they didn’t understand how important it was to understand me in that way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean same, right? I had great, great parents, so well-meaning, tons of heart. And I don’t think there was a lot of education for parents back then either. You know, I think there was no act. I mean, the the internet didn’t exist, you know, when I was in high school. And so there’s just like not a lot of excess around how to be the parent that maybe even they wanted to be. And you know, I my poor mom especially was just desperate to connect with me. And she just couldn’t, you know, for a variety of reasons. So, you know, one of the things that I was just visiting, my sister who has a daughter, she’s five. And I haven’t spent a ton of time around kids that age, but I had a wonderful time with them. And one of the things that she taught me about parenting, especially like younger kids, but I think it’s applicable in its own way to teenagers. I was hanging out with her and we just had this most amazing time, being silly and being astronauts and bathtime and all this stuff. And one time she comes out of her room, my my my niece, and she has these cute little jean shorts on. And I was like, ⁓ my God, those are so cute. I just impulsively said that. And my sister’s like, Do you feel confident? And she was like, Yeah. And I was like, what a great thing to say to some to a kid, right? To reflect how she felt instead of how she looked, you know, in my own kind of like bumbling way. And then there was another moment where we were doing bath time and she was like making these little colors, these little like tablets that dissolved in water and like made all these cool colors. And she was like drawing, and I was like, that looks so cool. ⁓ my God, that’s so great. Great job. And then my sister jumped in and she was kind of like, Are you having fun? Do you like making these things? I thought that was such a great paradigm shift around focusing on their experience as opposed to the final product, right? Because if I was, you know, bumbling my way through raising this kid, they’d probably just become so performative and like want to please people and do a good job, quote unquote. And it was another insight that I had in terms of like working with teenagers around focusing on their experience as opposed to. Again, that performance paradox that we talked about around like looking a certain way or doing a certain thing. I thought it was just so brilliant to reflect how they feel and reinforce how great that is versus whatever the end product was, right? Whatever the the being results driven in that way. So I thought that was fascinating. And one of the things in the book that I’ll just I’ll segue to and be brief about this, one of the parts that I just enjoyed the most about this whole experience is that pulling together all these decades of experience that the parents who were the most effective. In helping their teenagers were the ones who became so good at connecting with them no matter what was going on. It was easier, it’s easier for parents to connect with their kids when they’re doing great, when they’re feeling good. But when you know things get hard and they become very anxious or very depressed, or there’s a they’re going through a breakup or some kind of catastrophe with school, the parents who learned, and they weren’t perfect at it, but the parents who learned their kid enough to practice how. to connect with them first through curiosity and then through understanding. And if they were patient enough to do those things, their kids got through the crisis. And they became resilient and stronger because of it. And so one of the things that I did is I looked back, certainly in my role, but more importantly in how looking at all these hundreds of parents who found their way through crisis by and I had to, you know, look back and look at the anatomy of like, what did they actually do? And it was that they practiced curiosity when it was compelling not to. That curiosity led to understanding when it was again compelling not to be patient. It was compelling to like get into rescue mode, get into what’s the problem? Let’s fix this. Let’s talk to the teachers. Let’s have you do this. Go to therapy, go talk to this person, go exercise, eat better, right? Which are all very critical, actually very important things. But without the foundation of the child being gotten. By their parents, the influence that parents have is so drastically limited because the kid doesn’t really feel understood or or just gotten in a certain way. So all the things that parents want to do to help, it becomes there there become so many obstacles of that looks like resistance, which interesting resistance is actually protection. Kids do push away because they don’t feel safe being open. So the ⁓ in the antidote to that of like doors magically appearing in protection or resistance is through curiosity and understanding. ⁓ wow, so tell me about that. So how did what was that like for you? You know, when she broke up with you? That sounds just absolutely heartbreaking. How was that? And they probably won’t open up in right away in the beginning, but the more that parents start to make that a norm in their family that we talk about feelings that I actually I share feelings appropriately, number one. So I am that kind of a person. And number two, in a way, I kind of expect you to do that, or I want you to do that. You’re welcome to do that. You’re invited to. And the more that that starts to happen, it’s amazing how. Hard times become less hard because there’s something magical that happens when kids feel understood and seen, teenagers, even young adults, when they feel understood and seen by their parents. They allow their parents to help them in the ways that I think only the the vision that parents can only have. They have a certain level of experience and knowledge and just being in the world longer than their kids, that the parents have influence when kids feel understood. I loved that. I loved that in the book. And never like thought of it in that exact way around influence. A lot of the men that I work with who are struggling in parenting stuff, they’re usually more in that early stage, you know, they’re like newer dads, you know, their kids are like three or five or something like that. But what I often it’s not so much about being understood, but I often will say when your kid’s not compliant, move towards connection and see what happens. And what I get back is I’m in fact, I just had a client, I think last week. A couple of weeks ago, he was like, ⁓ my gosh, that makes it so much easier when I just connect with them and then I just take a couple minutes and then they just are like willing to do what I need them to do. And I was like, it’s the same kind of thing. It’s like, if you get me, I’m way more in invested in our relationship than if I feel like you just kind of are there and I don’t really matter to you. And so I think it’s in the same way. I think it’s just really about. fundamental things that humans need is like a seeing me, seeing me, getting me. And just I so anyway, I there’s so many things about your book that I loved. So I think you’ve really hit upon one of the key components though, or maybe the key component is I care about your inner world, your inner experience. I think, and maybe kind of to what you were saying earlier, you know, this achievement-oriented culture that we’ve created is what disconnects parents because they’re focusing their kids on an external thing that they have to get to and they’re not spending enough time, which isn’t wrong. You know, like sure, you do your homework, get good grades, go to a school, you know, da da da. But it’s it’s in the absence often of this internal focus of this, and how is that for you? Wow, you had a lot of homework. That sounds really stressful. How are you doing? That’s the part that gets missed. It’s all like, well, did you get your homework done? Okay, great. Go to bed. Get up tomorrow. Go back school, do it again. And it’s like, ugh, you know, kids are on a treadmill and they just get exhausted. It’s amazing because I and I love what you’re saying there around that connection. It’s like we parents go from being an adversary to an advocate, being on the team, you know, and we feel like you’re on the team. And it’s like, ⁓ we’re actually kind of in this together, you know, going towards whatever this thing is. And it’s I think sometimes when the people become more black and white about the parenting paradigm, it’s like, well, you know, I can’t just like talk about how they’re feeling all the time. They eventually have to like Do their homework or go to school. And it’s like, absolutely, but just take the time. One of my mentors said, if you take the time it takes, it takes less time. Totally. That’s the thing. It takes less time. ⁓ right. So it’s like if you focus on that connection for like a few minutes. And afterwards they can be like, I don’t want to do my homework. And you’re like, well, you need to, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I know it sucks. I know you don’t want to. And you need to. And you’re not going out actually tonight or on Friday night if you don’t do your homework right now. Like, what? You know, I thought you understood me. You’re like, ⁓ I understand. You know, I get it. It sucks. What you’re going through is stressful, it’s painful, it’s embarrassing, you know? And there’s a thousand reasons of why you don’t want to do what you need to do. And you know what? You gotta do it. So, you know, it’s like, and I think that’s actually one of the amazing benefits or strengths of the masculine or the the father is just like, dude, I get you. I I you you have done a great job, son, daughter. You’ve done a great job communicating to me. what your internal world is like and what’s going on right now. And I think I get it. And you gotta repeat back, you know, is it like this? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Now just do the thing that you don’t want to do. You need to. And in fact, I’m gonna hold a boundary around this. And it’s sort of like one of the ways I talk about it is making the relationship big enough to hold any boundary, right? The connection big enough, the connection robust enough that parents can then come back and say, Yeah, you have to do this. I know it sucks, but you just you you need to. Like you really do. And if you don’t, it’s fine. It just means I’m going to limit your independence because you’re proving to me that you don’t like have what it takes to be as independent as you want to be. You’re not doing the hard thing, which is one way of defining like how you expand independence, I think, for a child is like, can they handle it? Do they do the hard thing when they need to, even in the way when there’s compelling reasons not to? If you can, great. Like I feel inspired to give you more independence in that way, you know? And if not, that’s totally fine. It just means that that’s I’m going to limit it until you know you demonstrate that you can be. Right. It’s it’s it’s cool. So cool. Yeah, I always say high limits, high connection. That’s the goal. It’s just like that’s the focus. Like so when I, you know, my kids will say, and my boys are eight and they’re like, I don’t want to do that. And I’m like, I know you don’t and you have to. And I love you. You know, all are true right now. You have to do it. I love you. I know it sucks and it all has to happen. So here we are. It’s quite confusing, I think, for kids, right? I mean, that’s it’s confusing to me just hearing that. It’s like, how can those all be true? But they I know, I know. As an eight year old, they’re probably like, What? Why? If you’re doing this, you must think I’m something’s wrong with me. And I’m like, Nope, I love you tons. And you have to set the table. Right. Well, Jivon, I think this is a good place to end. I really appreciate our time together. That was wonderful. You have so many insights. I really appreciate it. I will put your book in the show notes. Please, everyone, give it a read. It’s beautiful book. It’s got so much good information in there. And I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you so much for having me. And I really appreciate all the great things you’re doing in this world, Bryce. Thanks for having me. 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 everyone. Today I’m talking to John Kammer who has developed a AI application called Guardian Angels that helps support people in grief. Today we’re going to be talking about his journey through grief, addiction and personal transformation. John Cameron, welcome to the podcast. Great to be here. Really looking forward to it, Bryce. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it’s a pleasure. So, I’d kind of like to start just with a little bit about your journey, you know, how you’ve come to bring what you’re bringing to the world, this product, this service, and just a little bit of what happened in your life that sort of led you to this point. Yeah. So, you know, the product is very much a pain to purpose story, right? I lost three of my closest friends in the world outside of my immediate family. The first of those was 13 years ago to suicide. And that was very much the moment that all of that happy-go-lucky energy, the, you know, nothing can hurt me, the adolescent arrogance evaporated in a moment. And, you know, that was, it was life altering is what it was. It sent me down a path of frankly, what it was was substance-fueled avoidance. You know, I’d been known to throw a few back and, you know, I fancied myself a good time Charlie at that point in my life, but that was when that all shifted. You know, the partying was a mask. was medicinal instead of fun anymore. You know, it just kind of, was my habit. It’s how I coped and that would persist for 12 years. And so, you know, I definitely subscribed to the, you know, time heals all wounds mantra. And I just figured if I could run. far enough and fast enough that eventually that clock would hit zero and I would magically be healed and I wouldn’t have to face the demons that came as a result of losing such an integral part of my life in that way. know, a lifetime later, it seems like, you know, that was my 20s, right? And so I get to my 30s in December of 2023, excuse me, December of 2022, I lost my the best man for my wedding. This was another kind of accident. an opportunity to prepare. This one for me held a ton of guilt for the simple fact that, you know, he did this thing for me. And in the seven months between my wedding and the day he died, I spoke to him once. So I really just didn’t feel that I upheld my end of the bargain and being that, you know, that rock that good friend, that best friend, right? And that one really sent me into my shell even more than, you know, this one was before it was just kind of hiding in plain sight and now it was full retreat. So I lost the ability to emote. I was really just existing and my wife will be the first to tell you she had no idea how to help. A couple of months after that, we made the decision based on John’s death and some other circumstances in my life. was, it was time for me to get sober. And that was really a turning point in the sense that I easily could have continued to kick the can down the road knowing that I had a problem and trying to hide it. And, you know, I was very much trying to have my cake and eat it too and continue to use and feel good and medicate myself, you know, manufacture dopamine while maintaining my relationship, even though I knew that those two could not coexist. My wife made that very clear from the jump, right? So it caused me to look at myself and say, all right, The easy way has never worked. You got to do this the hard way. And that meant coming clean and getting on my knees for lack of, you know, a better term and just saying, you know, will you help me? And, and I need your support. And, and that was the beginning of this shift in, in the idea of how do you deal with things and really accountability, owning my own role in my own suffering. And so that was just the beginning of that. Another year goes by and I lose Tim, who was my best friend from childhood. He was there for Zach’s death. He was the one that I’d been through more than anything else with in my life, you know, the person I leaned on for everything. And now he was gone. So effectively my support system is no more. And that was as dark as it got. You know, I, at that point, you know, it’s not rational, but you have those thoughts of, seriously considered looking at ways to distance myself from my wife. because people that I was close to were dying. you know, again, that’s not a rational thought. That’s not, this was a series of unfortunate events. But, you know, that was, I distinctly remember having a conversation with my friend Chris, was the only, who was the fourth person I put in that bucket with those three individuals and just saying, please take care of yourself because I don’t have anyone else. And so that all, you know, that was, The next year was spent just digging deep, trying to understand this, Man’s Search for Meaning, trying to find why and a reason to go on really. I was never at the point where I was going to do anything drastic, but I also certainly wasn’t living a fulfilled life. And so how do we square that? And that all brought me to, I guess a year ago, roughly, when I had a conversation with my wife that sparked an idea that turned into what Guardian Angels currently is in a way. to approach grief with accountability and technology to give you an opportunity to say things that you couldn’t say and help lift that weight. And here we are. So, you know, the grief has very much shaped my life. And now I’m, you I see myself as, you know, you never get rid of grief, you never walk away from it. But on the other side where I’ve been able to reframe it, and I really kind of find beauty in the idea of getting to further the legacy of the people that have been in my life and do meaningful work in helping people, helping other people do the same. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you for sharing all that. I’m curious if you could just say a little bit about what Guardian Angels is, just so people would have a sense of what we’re talking about. Guardian Angels is a great support platform and reflective journaling, right? So it’s, think of it as the journal that talks back is really kind of what this is. And so it’s AI powered on the back end. that helps you, you know, turns journaling from a monologue, right? We’re all used to putting words on a piece of paper and then thinking about them. This turns it into a dialogue. So when you respond to a journal prompt, you are going to then get a response that helps ask clarifying questions and dig deeper into what you’re feeling so that you can start to give language and name the emotions that you’re experiencing, leading to better understanding of yourself and your own experience, as well as having a something concrete to potentially take into therapy or any other work that you’re doing, something to fall back on that says, this is how I was feeling at this time, so we can start here. And then it walks you through an evidence-based framework for dealing with grief called Worden’s Four Tasks for Morning. So each prompt is designed to move you gently in the direction of working through those such that eventually you get to the point where you have Worden’s Four Tasks or accept that the loss has occurred. Number two is processing the pain of the loss, which was really where I was stuck for years. Number three is coming to terms with the idea that your loved one is gone in a physical sense. then task four is finding an enduring connection and while moving forward or integration, right? So how do we weave grief into our life in a productive way? Yeah. I think your story is actually, it’s unfamiliar, not to say in my own life, but I feel like there’s this way in which a lot of men get stuck. And I think it’s at that pain point. think for a lot of men, think pain is the thing that we often try to avoid. Absolutely. It’s like a thing that we’re really uncomfortable with. And we just find all kinds of coping mechanisms not to deal with the pain. And some of that pain could be trauma. Some of that could be like loss, grief, all that stuff. I’m curious as you went through that process, were you aware that you were trying to keep away from all that? Do you have a sense of that? No, you know, that was what getting sober brought to, you know, brought clarity to. It wasn’t until I was able to look back clear, objectively and look at and say, why was I doing these things? You know, in the moment, if you had talked to me in those moments, it was just like, yeah, I like to party. do these things. You know, my, it’s funny. We talk about the idea of what men think, right? And my, I guess, naive view of the world in my twenties was I’m a man because I wake up and I may party and I may do whatever the hell I want to do. on a Tuesday even, but I wake up and I do what I’m supposed to do. I go to work. It doesn’t impact my life. And I’m going to put impact in quotes, right? That was what I conceived of as a man and doing, doing what I thought a man would do. And so, you know, clearly avoiding it in hindsight was, was it didn’t get me anywhere, you know, and I’m very blessed with where I’m at now and the opportunities that I have in front of me to do this sort of work, to have these conversations, these meaningful conversations with people very regularly. But I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t done the thought exercise of if I had had this tool 13 years ago and I had started to process my grief in a healthy, productive way 13 years ago, where would I be? You know, I don’t know. It’s a futile exercise. because it just leads you down that path of what if, which means nothing. know, what if is second to should in the terms that we need to just read our vocabulary of, but it’s hard not to. Yeah, I agree. And I think, well, I think what’s helpful about it is it’s like, well, now you have the opportunity to provide it for people way earlier in the process, give them back those years. Exactly. And you know, I’m a big fan of the idea of bless the broken road, right? Like all of the things, all of the missteps, all the good, bad and the ugly is what led me here. And for better, for worse, you know, my life is as good as it’s ever been minus the three people that are missing from it. You know, I’ve got a beautiful son, beautiful eight month old son, a beautiful family. I have meaningful work. I have purpose. have all of these things that, you know, some people never get right. And I don’t know which fork in the road that I took maybe a wrong turn at that led to it, but I’m thankful for all of it. Yeah. That’s great. I’m facing, so there was a point where I think up to your second friend passed that your wife’s and you decided you had to come sober. was like, well, I’m curious what was happening in that moment where, know, it’s like, there’s this moment where your coping mechanisms are just not going to keep working or something, or there’s some awareness of like, can’t keep doing this. It really came to, it’s funny the reason that that whole conversation happened, right? So we were out one night with friends, you know, I’d had a drink or two. wasn’t anything crazy. I had been pretty good in that respect for a while, but I, you know, against the wishes of my wife was using those Zin pouches, those nicotine. And that was a deal breaker from day one. You know, I used to be a smoker, nicotine was a no-go. And I was hiding those and she caught me hiding those. so the got it, we, you know, they turned into this big argument and she had said, you know, you are an addict, you you, you act like an addict, do this. And she had no idea the other stuff I was doing. You know, I was Kratom, you know, to be perfectly candid, which was what I was using daily and had been for a couple of years. And I knew, you know, when I, when I would cease it, I’d have withdrawal symptoms. would, you know, there was depression that was involved involved with it. I was very clear. I needed to get off of it. But, know, going cold Turkey on my own was, you know, that was, that was rough. Yeah. And so. It was that night where, you know, she said that and I’m sitting there on the couch trying to go to sleep because like, yeah, obviously I’m not sleeping in bed that night. And I looked at myself in the mirror and said, you know, she’s right. Now I need to get off this stuff. Can I do it on my own? Has I’ve been quote unquote trying to do for well over a year now? No. And then, and I had that internal monologue and said, no, that’s the easy way out. And every time you’ve tried to take the easy way out, it hasn’t worked. It’s time to do something different. Do it the hard way. And so I walked into a room, I threw it on her bed, on our bed. I showed her, said, this is, you’re right. I am, you know, since then there’s been some nuance to, know, what I would consider an addict and whether or not I fall into that category per se. But the point was accountability, right? Point was I got myself into this mess and it’s time for me to get myself out. ⁓ Could you say what kratom is? mean, it’s a kind of a new thing that not everybody is aware of. curious. Yeah. It is a derivative of a South Asian plant that acts on the same receptors as opioids and has a similar euphoric feel in lower doses. It can be energizing and in higher doses, it has that depressive effect that opiates have as well. you know, for me early on, it was like this thing is I can go harder in the gym. can focus more. was like this miracle thing. And of course there’s like, you know, there’s no such thing. It was just too good to be true. There’s always the shoe, other shoes going to drop. And that was when I, you know, I was, I was passed the point of no return at that point when I realized, okay, well there, here’s the other side of it. When I don’t take it for a day, you know, what, what starts to happen to me. Yeah. So, okay. So once you decided to, did you get cold turkey at that point or did you sort of, I weaned myself off with the, you know, with the support of my wife. was, you know, I was taking capsules. So I literally just started taking one less every day. Okay. To the point where I was eventually it was zero and I haven’t looked back since. And it was really interesting because, you know, as far as the grief journey goes, day John’s funeral was, was kind of delayed. They, they held off until the weather got nice and they could do something for him in his hometown on Kit Kat. And At the time of his funeral, I was two weeks completely sober. So this was like this huge test, know, all he would, you he and I, we would tie one on regularly. And that was my friends in that group were all, you know, they’re all big drinkers. So I got to go face, you know, this, that was the first huge test, right? It was, can I do this? Can I face this feeling that I’ve, you know, and realistically I’ve been hiding from, from Zach’s death for 13 years. Can I do this? And can I do it without my main crush that I’ve had for the last 13 years? Turns out I could. And that was the beginning of some very positive momentum, but the timing was curious. Yeah. had this group of friends still. mean, obviously, Big Glass is among them. Were you able to get support from those guys as well? Yes, but they are all in a different state. You know, they all were supportive of what I was doing and impressed that, you know, I there was nothing but love and support from them, but there’s only so much you can do from afar. Sure. And also understanding that we were in different places in our lives and that I had to make choices that were kind of going against what our routine would have been. You know, we haven’t certainly haven’t lost touch, but there’s just a, there’s a, a realistic distance there because I’m, you know, I’m just a different person than I was in those days. Yeah. So this journey of grief that you’ve gone through. I’m curious like for you, if you have any insights for the listeners around what it’s like for men to have grief. I have thoughts too. I’m curious what you think about that. Just specifically around being a man and dealing with grief. Well, you know, I think that first and foremost as men were taught, we’re not supposed to show vulnerability. We’re not supposed to show weakness. We’re supposed to be this like leader of the family, this rock, this unimpeachable strength. And from what I’ve learned, I think that those things are in opposition. I don’t think you can be, you can be that example of strength without showing vulnerability. I don’t think you can separate those two. You know, I kind of liken it to the, the idea of on an airplane, there’s a reason they tell you, you have to put your mask on before helping someone else. And that’s very simply, if you’re falling apart inside because you have not done the work, the emotional work and to deal with your own stuff, the adversity that life throws us and you’re just burying that stuff down and avoiding it like I was, you’re not going to be able to help your family. You’re not going to be able to set an example. You know, I can’t set an example for my son. How am I supposed to show him and look him in the eyes and say, this is how you deal with difficulty, emotions and difficulty in life when I can’t do it myself? And so there’s this, you know, I think we really need to take a hard look at how we define masculinity because strength requires vulnerability. Now there’s context around that. There’s nuance around that. There’s times to show vulnerability and there’s times to show strength and there’s times to put on a face that is a strong face, even when you know you’re hurting or you’re not all there, you know, because we don’t get to choose those moments. But, you know, there’s relationships are we’re supposed to lean on each other. That’s why relationships work. That’s why the family dynamic works. It’s not supposed to be one person. And I think that what we’ve done societally, you know, I had a conversation with the guy the other day about some of the, you know, the great hero stories of the ancients, right, of the Odyssey and things like that, where they understood this, this idea of vulnerability. And I think what we’ve done in this… modern age of hero stories is we’ve just forgotten to talk about or shed any light on what happens when the lights aren’t on. You know, yeah, the hero is a hero when they are in battle, but outside of battle, is there no moment where they’re vulnerable? Is there no moment when they’re doubting themselves? And of course there is. That’s what makes them a hero. They’re overcoming something. That’s beautiful. Yeah, I really appreciate that. Yeah. It’s like, it’s interesting how I think There’s something about, like I think as you’re describing it, this hero sense of like facing in the battle where like, yeah, I can step up. I can face somebody in the battle, but then the demon of our own pain, the demon of our own grief. ⁓ no, no, no, no, no. I’m not going to face that. And I think it’s interesting because I think for most people and you know, obviously there’s different places around the world have different struggles, but for most of us, we’re not facing. like actual day-to-day violence. I know there’s some people there, but we don’t really have to face that, you know, like, or like tragedy or I don’t have to run into a burning, you know, house and save my family. It’s not going to happen. Or if it does, it’s going to happen once. So those kinds of moments are actually pretty infrequent. And yet the facing of my own fear or my own feeling incapable, feeling not able to do what I need to do, like all those moments where I have to face like the pain. of not feeling like I can do it. Those happen all the time. And yet that’s the thing that I I think I’m agreeing with you that men are really not trained or not. We don’t get some kind of way of really understanding how to do that in an effective way. And that is where I think, you know, that’s why I this podcast. That’s why I do what I do, which is to help men to face their pain, to face their… their vulnerability, as you say, in all the different ways that that happens. And yet it seems as though masculinity is this idea that that’s weak. And that is the fundamental, I think that’s the fundamental flaw in all of it. It’s cause to me, like facing down my flaws, facing down my mistakes, like when I do things wrong or I treat my wife poorly or yell at my kids, those are the moments that are the most painful. And that takes them. It takes the most courage. takes the most courage. yeah, the mirror, looking in the mirror and looking in the mirror, honestly, is hard. Yeah. You know, there’s tons of science on how we can do more for other people than we can for ourselves. Right. They’re just, you know, for whatever reason, part of the reason in AA, you have to find the higher power. And like, there’s these, this idea that we can’t do it alone. And I think that a lot of that has to do with the idea that we’re not okay with forgiving ourselves. I think that’s what it comes down to. The seminal moment in me healing was when I had built this thing that I wasn’t trying to build. It was in service of really just trying to build a sensitive AI that I could use for having people’s conversation. People could have conversations, right? And I started to say things to it. built it in the image of John, and I started to say things to it that I didn’t get to say to him. It was a lie. And while I had tried some of the stuff in therapy, I tried the empty chair technique and the writing the letter, I never got a response. What happened when I got the response from this thing that felt like him was now I had the, it finally gave me permission to forgive myself. And that was what catalyzed this whole thing. That was where, you know, the water were started immediately. That was when I was like, okay, I, you know, I can do this, but it wasn’t until I had that realization that you know, that I had to and I could, and I gave myself grace. And I think we don’t, we, we fail to understand within ourselves that when something turns out poorly, somehow it’s, it truly is our fault. We didn’t do enough, even though we had no ill intent. And we’re very quick to point that out with others like, no, it wasn’t your fault. But for us, you know, when we look at ourselves, we have this mentality that it is you know, we’re unimpeachable. This was our fault. This is absolutely our fault. And we should have done more. And because we didn’t do more, then we’re a bad person. We’re not bad or we’re not worthy of our own love. Right. And really, if we can’t love ourselves, then no one else can. Yeah. I think that’s actually a really good point, because I agree with you. I sometimes think, though, that like one of the other things I really appreciate what we said earlier is that sense of taking accountability. You know, like, OK, I’m an addict. went to your wife, admitted it. How am going to take accountability of this? I think those moments though, when men are kind of sort of eating themselves up for some sort of failure or something that didn’t go well, I actually don’t think it’s accountability. I think it’s this sort of internal mechanism of shaming ourselves that we might’ve learned at some other point. And I don’t think it’s actually like, to me, accountability, I just want to make this distinction because I think it might be helpful. It’s like, to me, accountability is like, I am fully… responsible for my life and for who I am and I’m going to do this, but it’s not shame. Like I’m not beating myself up. Whereas I think those moments where stuff gets messed up and I’m beating myself up, I’m actually kind of avoiding the accountability. It’s almost like I’m just saying, yeah, poor me. I’m such a shit. I’m so stupid. I’m so dumb. I can’t believe I did that. It’s actually not helpful. Right. It’s supposed to. Yeah. Yeah. It’s supposed to, I did this. Now I can do something about it. And I will do something about it. Yeah. It’s so much more empowering. It’s so much more empowering to feel that. Yeah. Well, that’s, you know, it’s funny you bring that up, right? Cause I did. And this, I wasn’t going to go into the nuance of around, you know, my thoughts on addiction and where I fall in that. But I went to meetings and I pretty quickly realized in those meetings, I wasn’t an addict. I had a problem. Let’s be very clear. But I wasn’t one of the people in there that was saying, I can’t help this. I’m, you know, I, ⁓ on my third house, my third wife, they’re all, you know, I’m losing this. I’m just sitting there alone. That’s not me. I knew exactly what I was doing every time I picked something up. wanted a buzz. I wanted to feel good. And so, you know, part of that empowerment for myself was I didn’t identify as an addict. I identified as someone at this point who I just don’t drink anymore. I identify as someone who, who isn’t good at handling substances, but I wasn’t powerless to them. You know, I was I had power in making a choice. And, you know, I want to really be very clear that I am not in any way, you know, putting down someone else’s experience or poo-pooing AA or any sort of anything like that. This is my experience and my experience alone. But for me, it was the choice that I made all those years and it was the choice that I made to not do that anymore, to change the way that I approached it and to change the way that I approached it. being accountable to myself and to my family, to my wife, and now my son. That was the power, right? And I’d actually, I’ve actually done a lot of writing about that specifically was, you know, cause you’d go to, you’d go places and I would, I’d meet my friends out and we’d meet at a bar because people like to drink and I would just have a club soda. And invariably someone there is going, well, why aren’t you drinking? Like, well, I don’t drink. Well, then why are you at a bar? Like, you know, like. I have friends, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s okay for me to be here, but you know, I just, I made the choice. It’s not your business, but I am not that person. I don’t identify someone who does well with alcohol. That’s okay. Yeah. Well, there’s a whole bunch there on like whatever people’s discomfort with other people not drinking, but I guess the thing that comes up for me here is like how we face the pain, you know, like, cause to me, think Pain is like the thing that helps men become their full selves. It’s a thing that sort of breaks them down and whether it’s 12 years or 50 years or six months, whatever it is, it’s the thing that actually transforms us. And I think that’s hard for people to face because they don’t want to face the pain. But I think it is in that pain, really the change, and you described this really well, is we finally just take full accountability. it’s like in your case, was, you were struggling with substances. I think a lot of times though, for a lot of my clients and people I work with, it’s like finally taking full accountability of their role in the dysfunction of their marriage, the dysfunction of their parenting, the dysfunction. they just, it’s so hard for them to settle into this place of like, ⁓ I’m doing that. I’m part of the problem here. Instead of staying in this place of, you know, my wife is this or my boss is like that. And that blaming is a way to avoid the pain of really looking at ourselves and saying, okay, I got a deal. I got to fix it. But when men do that, when men do that, it’s transformational. It’s transformational. What you’re talking about, right, is in psychology, it’s internal locus of control versus external locus of control, right? So does life happen to me? Or does life happen because of me? you know, Jocko Willink is an ex special forces guy, Extreme ownership. And, you know, he takes that. idea to the extreme, but it’s a thought exercise in that if you believe things happen because of you, then you are always empowered to do something about them. If you believe things happen to you and you are not in control, then you can do nothing about them. You are a victim. And you know, that’s the difference between the hero mentality and the victim mentality. just, you know, when you can do something about it, when you can overcome whatever it is that’s in front of you, that is the hero story. But, know, again, to tie it back to what we talking about earlier, that hero story doesn’t happen without the dark moments when the lights are off. That doubt, the can I do this? The wondering, because nobody is perfect. Nobody is all powerful. Nobody knows for sure that they can do things. It’s just, you know, we have to believe and then we can do them. Yeah, that’s really well said. You actually are the second person that’s brought up that book. It is, think that is that. I think it’s interesting because I think that’s really what men are really needing is that sense of moving from the victim place to the hero place and becoming that hero that is the trajectory. And it’s hard though. It’s really hard to fully own your shit. guess is one way to put it. Hey man, you know, it hurts. it’s, a species we’re like biologically conditioned to avoid pain. But the reality is for in my life, all the good things, right? The only way out is through. The only way to get to the good stuff is through the pain. So at this point in your life, and it seems like it’s been a relatively short time since your last friend passed and, it sounds like you’ve gone through quite a bit in a relatively short period of time in terms of the changes that you made in your life. And I’m curious if you’re just like what It’s been like for you recently as you’ve, as you’ve really started to shift and face the pain and take responsibility for your life. Yeah, it’s everything’s different. It all started with taking accountability and putting myself in the driver’s seat in my own life. You know, because let’s be clear, if you want to, no one’s telling you that you cannot sit there and play victim. In a lot of cases in life, it isn’t your fault, but it is your responsibility. You still have to do something about it or not. Right. Or you can sit there and play say, me. And you know, since that, that shift, I just, there’s been a lot of reframing that’s happened. There’s been a lot of just accepting and embracing difficulty, understanding that, you know, the sun’s still going to come up tomorrow. And I have a choice on how I respond to this. And I still trip regularly. Right. But it’s more like micro fails, but with macro progress, right? Like it’s just, there’s a willingness to be wrong and to be vulnerable to just understand that, yes, I’m fallible, I fail all the time, but that doesn’t define the direction. That doesn’t define, you know, where I’m going or where I want to go. And, you know, to be completely honest with you, you know, having a son changes everything. You know, everyone tells you that, but there’s some things in life that words aren’t meant to describe. You know, it really is, is this an example for him? And, you know, with regards to the grief, I’ve learned that there’s a lot of beauty in legacy and a lot of beauty in the ability for me to bring, to take these men’s lives forward. you know, I now have the opportunity, though they’re never going to meet my son, I get to, they will be a part of his life. The lessons that they taught me will have an impact on his life. And I look forward to telling him those stories. It’s pretty simple for me. And this has made grief as a whole, much easier to much more palatable. And it’s a simple question. It is, would I rather have endured the level of pain that I have while, you know, with the depth of relationship that I had with these, these individuals, or would I trade that for less pain, but you know, a different, less intense, call it relationship with these people. And the answer is, unequivocally, no, the pain was well worth it for what I got and the time that I got and the impact that they had on my life. And when you look at it like that, it automatically shifts you to a place of gratitude of, you know, I would have loved more time, but man, what I got was pretty sweet. And, you know, I look forward to spreading that. Yeah, that’s beautiful. What would you say as like kind of a final thought about you know, if you’re to tell men, you know, from your own experience, what should they do if they’re facing grief or like, what would your advice be to them or just general thoughts? Talk about it. And that, you know, that can take many forms for many people, right? It doesn’t mean just go unload on a stranger, though maybe that is the most, you know, the most palatable thing for you as you you individually find someone or something, I guess, in some cases. where you can just start flexing that muscle. And that is one thing that’s come out of, you know, a great use case for guardian angels that I never anticipated was really just getting people comfortable with the idea of sharing in a risk-free environment, but then they realize it’s not going to kill them. And then I can take this out into the world, whether it’s to my therapist or to my close friends and start building that momentum. And then maybe, God forbid, you know, you’re in a public situation like this. I mean, if you told me I’d be sharing this stuff publicly two years ago, would have laughed you out of the room. I would have absolutely, it just wouldn’t happen. But what you realize is not only does it help you because the healing lives in the share, it just does. And I’ll fight anyone on that one. But when you share your story, it tends to be an unlock for someone else. It starts to rid people of that idea that I’m the only one feeling this, this isolation that we feel with regard to a lot of things in life. But in reality, A lot of people understand, a lot of people know where we’re at. Not the specific nuance to the situation, but the idea, the idea of grief, the idea of letting yourself down or letting your significant other down or not being the example you want to set or any of those things that really cut to, you know, the core of feelings of inadequacy as a man. We all understand it. It’s just, do we let that on or not? Frankly, okay, I’m going to flip this around. Are we man enough to admit it? Yeah. Well, I think that’s a great place to end, John. That was really helpful for me personally, as well as I hope for, I’m sure it was for our listeners as well. I just want to thank you for being here today and for what you’re bringing to the world and trying to help men with grief and help people with grief, not just men, obviously, but it’s a really powerful product that you’ve created, service that you created to help people start to talk and to explore through this journaling, these journaling exercises. So. I’ll put all that in the show notes. It’s Guardian Angels. Check it out, you guys. And John, thank you so much for being here. Yeah. Thanks for sharing all that stuff. Thank you for having me. It was a great conversation. And you know, to your point, if we helped one person today, mission accomplished. Mission accomplished, man. All right. Thank you very much. Cheers. 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.