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