Order of Man - CONNOR BEATON ｜ Acquainted with Our Anger

00:00:00.220 Anger issues are something a lot of us as men deal with, probably more than we'd like

00:00:04.700 to admit, and while most of us are pretty good at disguising our anger and frustration

00:00:09.500 and maybe even resentment, all too often it's lying just under the surface, ready to expose

00:00:14.640 itself to some unexpecting victim, usually the ones that we love most.

00:00:20.040 I'm joined by my friend today, Connor Beaton, author of his newest book, Men's Work, A Practical

00:00:24.840 Guide to Face Your Darkness, End Self-Sabotage, and Find Freedom.

00:00:29.000 Today we discuss what he calls dysregulated or erratic behavior and how to rein it in,

00:00:35.400 overcoming the shadow of our fathers, the danger of self-abusive relationships, and why and

00:00:41.620 how we need to become acquainted with our anger.

00:00:44.940 You're a man of action.

00:00:46.440 You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears, and boldly chart your own path.

00:00:50.760 When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.

00:00:54.780 You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong.

00:01:00.160 This is your life.

00:01:01.200 This is who you are.

00:01:02.600 This is who you will become.

00:01:04.320 At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.

00:01:09.540 Gentlemen, what is going on today?

00:01:11.180 My name is Ryan Michler.

00:01:12.540 I'm your host.

00:01:13.220 I'm also the founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement, which has become a global movement

00:01:19.560 to equip men with the tools and resources, and specifically with this podcast, the conversations

00:01:25.900 that guys need to thrive.

00:01:28.260 I think we've had so much success with the movement and podcast because we recognize that

00:01:36.640 for a long time, we were instructed in a way to go at it alone, and we know inherently

00:01:45.720 because of the way that we are made that men aren't made to do life alone.

00:01:52.100 We're meant to be shoulder to shoulder with other men, and that's the work that we're doing

00:01:56.640 here with Order of Man by banding men together digitally through some of our programs and

00:02:01.700 courses, and then, of course, in person through our events and teaching you how to build your

00:02:06.220 own bands of brothers within your communities and neighborhoods.

00:02:09.460 So I'm glad you're here, whether you've been with us for a long time, eight years, or maybe

00:02:13.620 just, you know, the past two or three minutes, and this is your first introduction to what

00:02:18.220 we're doing here.

00:02:18.960 I'm glad you're here.

00:02:19.720 I'm glad you're banded with us, and we've got a lot of work to do.

00:02:22.700 All right, guys.

00:02:23.140 I've got a great conversation today with a friend of mine, somebody I've known for a

00:02:27.580 long time, and you're going to hear we actually talk about a few things that we don't necessarily

00:02:32.040 see eye to eye on, although our goal is very similar, very much aligned with the work that

00:02:38.280 we want to do for men and for communities and for the world.

00:02:41.820 His name is Connor Beaton.

00:02:43.280 He's a coach, a teacher, a speaker, and he is helping men from all over the world get familiar

00:02:49.840 with their darker shadow.

00:02:52.240 We talk about that in the podcast and basically improve every facet of their lives.

00:02:56.440 He's also the founder of Man Talks, which exists to be of service to men like we're

00:03:00.840 doing here.

00:03:01.540 It's a place for training.

00:03:03.460 Men can get the resources needed to develop their leadership inside and outside of the

00:03:07.680 home.

00:03:08.040 And in his latest book, it's called Men's Work, A Practical Guide to Face Your Darkness

00:03:12.520 End Self-Sabotage and Find Freedom.

00:03:15.860 Connor has dedicated his life to helping men become more familiar with themselves and also

00:03:21.940 live a life of fulfillment and purpose.

00:03:24.700 Enjoy this one, guys.

00:03:27.100 Connor, what is up, my friend?

00:03:28.520 Great to see you again.

00:03:29.720 Yes, sir.

00:03:30.220 Good to be back and good to see you as well.

00:03:32.800 I enjoy our conversations because although you and I are in the same space, we're both trying

00:03:39.780 to serve men and help men recapture their masculinity, I think we generally come at it from a different

00:03:46.940 angle.

00:03:47.960 And I don't always see it the same way as you, but I'm open and receptive to it, which is

00:03:53.760 actually something I can't say has always been the case.

00:03:57.320 There's a couple of terms that you use that I used to cringe over.

00:04:04.100 And I'll tell you what those terms are here in a minute.

00:04:06.760 And now I'm kind of like, no, that actually makes sense now that I hear the context and

00:04:13.660 we've had a lot more conversations.

00:04:15.420 So the two words, Men's Work, which is the title of your book.

00:04:20.040 So I've cringed at that phrase for a while, not just from you.

00:04:25.200 And then the other one is shadow work or something along those lines.

00:04:29.860 And I want to dive into that today because the more I experienced some things in my own

00:04:35.440 personal life, the more I see that you're right and the more value I get from the message

00:04:40.700 that you share.

00:04:42.460 I appreciate that, man.

00:04:43.380 I appreciate that deeply.

00:04:44.740 That's I get it.

00:04:46.260 I mean, I honestly grappled with calling my book Men's Work for a number of reasons, mostly

00:04:53.860 because in some ways it encompasses a kind of genre or whatever you want to call it, a

00:04:59.940 movement or, you know, a kind of a type of work.

00:05:04.080 But also it's a little cliche.

00:05:07.460 So I definitely had some hesitation.

00:05:10.820 Well, what specifically was the hesitation?

00:05:12.920 Do you feel like it had a negative connotation or it would be misunderstood or was there something

00:05:18.540 else that you were worried about there?

00:05:19.840 Yeah, honestly, a little bit of both.

00:05:22.340 I think first off, I think any time that.

00:05:28.320 How do I want to say this?

00:05:29.700 Men men don't generally want advice unless we're in crisis.

00:05:33.000 Like, I don't want another man telling me what to do or how I should be living unless

00:05:37.660 I'm like in full crisis mode, you know, or I'm just like, I can't like my my stuff's

00:05:42.940 a mess and I don't know what to do.

00:05:44.400 And then I want another man that I trust and respect to sort of step in and say, like,

00:05:47.520 okay, get your head on straight, pick yourself up.

00:05:50.060 This is the direction that you should move in.

00:05:52.020 So I hesitate calling it men's work because I didn't want men to think that the book was

00:05:56.520 going to be about me telling them how they should live their lives.

00:05:58.840 That was number one, because I don't know how another man should live his life.

00:06:04.420 You know, that that's for him to discern and decide.

00:06:06.800 So that that was that was one of the first pieces that I was a little concerned about.

00:06:12.600 The second piece is that there is this kind of whatever you want to call it, this move

00:06:19.200 online on Instagram, on YouTube, on whatever of men doing some form of work, whether it's

00:06:27.520 a therapeutic style of work, whether it's a rekindling and reconnecting with their own

00:06:35.000 masculine core type of work.

00:06:37.500 But there's men doing some form of work to better themselves.

00:06:41.320 And I hesitated because I, I didn't want to.

00:06:46.880 Own a genre, right.

00:06:48.540 To sort of like claim this, this sort of like space or this term as my own, because there's

00:06:54.280 many different types of it.

00:06:55.600 You know, there's men that are doing work that is much more spiritual.

00:06:58.460 There's men that are doing work that, you know, is reconnecting them to land and hunting.

00:07:03.460 Um, so it can come under many different umbrellas and I didn't want to sort of try and claim

00:07:10.080 it as my own.

00:07:11.020 But there also is this big push for men to quote unquote, do the work.

00:07:16.420 And that's predominantly coming from women.

00:07:19.240 But I think that a lot of men are starting to ask the question, what's the work that I

00:07:26.400 need to do to better myself as a man?

00:07:28.620 What's the work that I need to do to better myself as a husband, as a father, as a leader,

00:07:33.240 you know, as a lover, whatever that looks like.

00:07:35.640 And so I wanted to give something practical and tactical that could guide them on that

00:07:41.460 path.

00:07:41.980 If that's what they were looking to do.

00:07:44.460 Yeah.

00:07:44.900 And work is such a great, it's not the word itself, but the meaning behind it.

00:07:49.960 I think men are attracted to work, right?

00:07:52.400 We're attracted to toil, we're attracted to labor, we're attracted to exerting our will

00:07:58.000 against something towards something meaningful.

00:08:01.320 And that's what work is.

00:08:02.940 I guess the negative connotation for me in the past, and again, I'm more open and receptive

00:08:08.420 to this, especially your messaging than I have been in the past, is that I just imagined

00:08:13.420 that it's this, you know, therapeutic session, sitting down with some PhD and talking about

00:08:21.600 your feelings or a bunch of dudes sitting together.

00:08:24.500 We were talking about Costa Rica and Hawaii earlier, a bunch of dudes sitting together

00:08:29.240 in this like hippie, like feeling a commune or, or Airbnb, like holding hands, wearing weird

00:08:40.340 shit, uh, you know, singing Kumbaya about how great each other are.

00:08:45.300 And, and I, it was like repulsive to me.

00:08:48.060 And I know that's not your message.

00:08:50.520 So I don't want to, I don't want guys to feel that way, but that's just how it came across.

00:08:55.320 Cause I saw a lot of that in the past.

00:08:57.680 Well, I get it, man.

00:08:58.840 And I think you nailed the, the other thing that I didn't articulate, which was my concern,

00:09:04.780 which is that that does exist, that exists out there, you know?

00:09:08.380 And I mean, I've heard stories of guys, you know, go on to, to a weekend or something like

00:09:14.460 that and having those types of experiences.

00:09:16.800 And, you know, the work that I put forward is always from the space of how do you turn

00:09:24.860 towards yourself as a man and learn and sort of plumb the depths of who you actually are

00:09:31.020 to understand yourself more effectively so that you can get the most out of yourself so

00:09:35.700 that you can direct yourself towards your greatest aims so that you can lead your family more

00:09:41.560 effectively.

00:09:42.680 And we are often the thing standing in our own way.

00:09:46.700 And that's, that's the real truth for the majority of men within our modern cultures,

00:09:52.460 that we are the ones standing in our own way.

00:09:55.840 And men's work is, I think my, my definition of it is supposed to be a path that we can walk.

00:10:03.960 And again, there's many different versions of it, but a path that we can walk to reconnect

00:10:08.660 to who we are at our core and, and, and what we are, what, what's possible within us, you

00:10:16.400 know, what we're capable of.

00:10:17.680 And I think that that's something that's very appealing.

00:10:19.580 The more that I've worked with men over the past decade from all over the world, it's like,

00:10:23.360 we want to see what we're capable of physically, mentally, sexually, emotionally, financially,

00:10:27.840 and that there's merit in that there's merit in that pursuit.

00:10:32.100 You know, when a man tells me, I don't feel, I feel like I don't have a purpose in life.

00:10:35.720 First off, I'm like, dude, I've been there.

00:10:37.720 And second off, I say, yeah, welcome to the club.

00:10:42.060 I understand.

00:10:43.300 And second, you know, maybe there's merit in just the simple pursuit of trying to see

00:10:49.420 what you're capable of in one department, whether that's your body, whether that's your

00:10:53.460 mind, whether that's your relationship, whether that's your business or your finances, but

00:10:57.920 there's merit in that.

00:10:58.720 And so for me, you know, I wanted to try and set some context for what men's work could

00:11:04.040 be and take it out of, you know, I think in mainstream media, it's kind of been used

00:11:10.160 in association with like hug parties, you know, and these guys getting together and just

00:11:16.300 laying around and holding one another and stuff like that.

00:11:19.240 And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:11:20.540 That's, you know, I mean, I'll hug my buddies.

00:11:22.880 Don't get me wrong, but I'm certainly not sitting around doing that.

00:11:27.480 And that's not what I'm advocating for.

00:11:28.620 So I appreciate your, your honesty and your perspective, because that makes a ton of sense.

00:11:33.920 Yeah.

00:11:34.020 I think one, one thing I've seen a lot too, is that guys in our space will use these terms

00:11:40.740 like, you know, tapping into your masculine core or your masculine energy.

00:11:46.520 And I, in my mind, I'm like, what, like, what does that even mean?

00:11:50.400 Like, what, like, I kind of get what you're saying.

00:11:53.980 You know, I, I, I think I agree with people who say that, but also I don't know what they're

00:11:58.460 explaining because they're using platitudes that really don't have any meaning.

00:12:02.280 And I would love to ask you when you're talking about, cause you, you, you brought up tapping

00:12:06.920 back in there, into their masculinity.

00:12:08.620 What is it specifically that you mean by that?

00:12:13.800 I mean, tapping into the principles and values that you attribute to masculinity and letting,

00:12:20.740 letting your life be a representation of those principles and values.

00:12:26.780 And if you're able to live and I would, you know, some people would use the word embody,

00:12:32.560 but I would just say, if you're able to live those principles as often as humanly possible

00:12:37.980 and move yourself towards living those principles and values as frequently as you can, that, that,

00:12:44.940 again, that's a worthy endeavor, but that's a reconnection to your masculine core because

00:12:49.380 our masculine core for me, all that that means.

00:12:52.320 And I think, I love the way you defined it on my show.

00:12:54.900 You said, you know, masculinity is amoral, right?

00:12:57.460 It's neither good nor bad, but I think at our masculine core, we crave certain things,

00:13:03.620 right?

00:13:04.140 Leadership is one of them.

00:13:06.000 Freedom, I think is another big component of that.

00:13:09.320 And so I think as we tune into these principles and values and we start to live them, that that

00:13:15.300 is a kind of ignition of our masculine core.

00:13:17.520 I also think that there's emotions that are sometimes connected to those things, right?

00:13:23.100 We can see anger oftentimes gets associated with masculinity, but it's usually in a, in

00:13:30.920 a way that is disrespectful or villainized.

00:13:35.220 And I don't think necessarily think that anger is necessarily a bad thing.

00:13:38.240 I think that assertiveness and non-compliance is actually a very beneficial thing for a man

00:13:44.960 to cultivate and hone.

00:13:46.920 And I, and I talk about those things, you know, the value of non-compliance and that if

00:13:52.620 you look historically and anthropologically throughout cultures, you know, cross cultures throughout

00:13:59.600 the history of, of our human species, men who have been non-compliant have oftentimes stood

00:14:08.340 on, I wouldn't want to say the right side of history, but they have certainly helped to

00:14:14.240 reconcile things within culture.

00:14:17.040 And I think we're in one of those inflection points, not to get too off topic, but I think

00:14:21.420 we're in one of those inflection points where we need to connect to that sense of assertiveness.

00:14:26.080 We need to connect to that sense of non-compliance and that that is actually becoming a much

00:14:31.180 more valuable asset, um, that is necessary for men to connect to in a time where I think

00:14:39.980 the modern narrative is trying to disconnect you as a man from that assertiveness and from

00:14:46.820 that non-compliance and from some of these core tenants and values that we've traditionally

00:14:52.460 held as men.

00:14:53.380 And the last thing I'll say, and I'll close here is I think that that's a by-product of

00:14:57.440 us living for generations with non-initiated men, with men who haven't been initiated into

00:15:06.520 manhood.

00:15:07.160 So there's been this drought of initiation.

00:15:10.240 And I think that men like yourself are out there in the world providing initiatory spaces,

00:15:17.020 you know, for your sons, for, for the up and coming generations.

00:15:20.880 And so I think that that's, yeah, I'll just, maybe I'll pause there.

00:15:24.900 Cause I said a few things that I'll tie into that.

00:15:27.520 Yeah.

00:15:27.600 I think when it comes to non-compliance, I'm just thinking through this.

00:15:31.580 I would agree that that is a masculine characteristic.

00:15:35.660 I would say what makes it manly is the righteous application of it, right?

00:15:41.100 If I, for example, I could be a non-compliant individual and try to put people under my thumb

00:15:46.540 and victimize and villainize or not villainize, but victimize other people.

00:15:50.500 I would say that might be a masculine characteristic, but it certainly wouldn't be righteous.

00:15:56.180 But if you were to stand up to, well, COVID restrictions are a great example of that in

00:16:03.800 my mind.

00:16:04.220 That's it.

00:16:04.700 That's an infringement upon freedoms of people.

00:16:06.820 And you're standing up against that.

00:16:09.200 I would say that's a manly characteristic because you're doing it in the service of other

00:16:13.280 people.

00:16:13.740 But I don't know that there are certain, I don't know that there are emotions that I

00:16:20.140 would consider masculine.

00:16:23.320 Like for anger is one you said, I don't know if that's a masculine emotion.

00:16:27.560 I think the way that we respond to it could be certainly because I think men are probably

00:16:32.100 more prone to act physically due to anger.

00:16:37.740 Whereas women might be more conniving, I guess I'm just speaking off the cuff here.

00:16:43.440 There's a good word.

00:16:43.980 There's a good.

00:16:44.540 Okay.

00:16:44.740 Well, let's just say this.

00:16:45.860 I think maybe it's not so much a masculine emotion as it is a more socially acceptable

00:16:52.480 emotion for men to feel express and convey.

00:16:56.160 And I think that historically that's been the case, right?

00:16:59.520 It's like, if you look at the access point to a man's inner world, oftentimes anger is

00:17:06.300 the vault for him to really get into his inner workings, whether that's his psyche or his

00:17:11.420 body, uh, or just, just his inner world.

00:17:14.480 Anger is oftentimes the sort of vault door that he has to be able to crack through to understand

00:17:19.540 the rest of his internal landscape.

00:17:21.800 And whether that's a masculine emotion, maybe not, I think it's maybe it's more socially

00:17:27.300 acceptable for men.

00:17:28.780 Um, but I certainly think that it's relevant and important for men to be able to explore

00:17:32.780 because there's merit.

00:17:34.840 Look, if maybe I'll just say this, if you're disconnected from your anger as a man, the

00:17:40.700 chances of you creating real order and structure in your life are, are slim to none.

00:17:45.280 And if your anger is out of control in your life, the chances of you having real intimacy

00:17:51.760 and closeness in your life are slim to none.

00:17:54.780 So we as men have a very specific and peculiar relationship to our anger that I think is valuable

00:18:00.720 for us to explore at some point in our lives.

00:18:04.460 Yeah.

00:18:05.000 I want to unpack that because I've actually experienced that in my life relatively recently,

00:18:09.260 where I've realized that there's a lot of pent up anger and frustration in my life.

00:18:14.020 Maybe that's why I've been resonating with your messaging so deeply lately that I have

00:18:18.660 subdued for decades and, and realizing that I have an unhealthy relationship with it.

00:18:25.540 And then usually manifests itself as impatience, um, yelling, raising my voice, you know, being

00:18:32.120 frustrated and contentious, you know, never, I would say not physical because I do have

00:18:37.140 some physical outlets between working out and jujitsu where it's, I think appropriate

00:18:41.600 use of, of physical aggression.

00:18:43.840 Uh, but yeah, I would love to tap into how a man begins to understand where his anger issues

00:18:54.820 might be coming from and might be stemming from and, and what kind of work he should do

00:18:59.360 to harness it for productive outcomes.

00:19:02.120 Cause I do believe that even the so-called negative emotions are there to serve us like

00:19:06.600 anger.

00:19:07.600 Yeah.

00:19:08.600 Yeah.

00:19:09.600 Yeah.

00:19:10.600 I mean, there's in, in IFS, which is, it's a therapeutic modality called internal family

00:19:15.180 systems.

00:19:15.600 They say there's no bad parts in internal family systems.

00:19:18.820 And so part of, I'm going to use the dreaded term, but part of shadow work is, and I'm sure

00:19:25.080 that we'll, we'll talk about it maybe.

00:19:26.620 We will.

00:19:26.980 Oh yes, we will.

00:19:27.900 I've got notes to talk about that here.

00:19:29.460 Is, is being able to look at the aspects of ourselves that we, that we vehemently dislike,

00:19:35.480 you know, and, and, and part of that might be our anger.

00:19:40.020 You know, we might dislike our anger.

00:19:41.660 We might dislike the fact that we have grief from something, you know, grief from a divorce

00:19:47.800 or losing a child or losing a parent.

00:19:51.620 And we don't like that emotion.

00:19:53.480 So we don't know how to deal with it.

00:19:54.800 And so it just becomes something that we try and get away from within ourselves, but the

00:20:01.100 getting away from it is not possible, right?

00:20:02.820 It's a part of you.

00:20:04.440 So when it comes to anger, I mean, you've probably heard of nice guy syndrome, right?

00:20:10.140 This concept of like being a nice guy and nice guys are, are, and I've, you know, I fell

00:20:16.660 into this line in my early twenties.

00:20:18.220 I was a classic nice guy, but nice guys are generally guys who are afraid of their own

00:20:23.540 anger.

00:20:24.460 Now, why are they afraid of their own anger?

00:20:26.680 Oftentimes it's because they grew up in a household where they had an abusive father,

00:20:31.480 where they had a man in their life who was very vocally angry, right?

00:20:38.300 Very loud, very confrontational, maybe emotionally abusive or verbally abusive, maybe physically

00:20:45.140 abusive at times.

00:20:46.140 And that, that boy became a man who said, I'll, I'll never treat people like that, right?

00:20:52.420 I'll never be like my dad.

00:20:53.980 I'll never be like that man.

00:20:55.160 And so he, over time, slowly disconnects from his own anger because he sees it as dangerous.

00:21:00.900 He sees it as violent.

00:21:02.440 He sees it as a problem and he doesn't see the value in building a healthy relationship

00:21:07.740 to his anger.

00:21:08.300 So that's on the one side.

00:21:09.760 On the other side is a man who likely had to learn anger as a means or aggression as

00:21:16.580 a means of self-protection.

00:21:18.400 And again, that could be, you know, having an abusive father, et cetera.

00:21:22.940 So for example, myself, I grew up between two households and I grew up between two very

00:21:28.800 different fathers, my stepfather and my actual father.

00:21:31.940 And my, my dad was very disconnected from his anger, didn't show anger a lot when he did

00:21:39.140 get angry, angry, he'd kind of shut down.

00:21:41.420 He'd never get angry at his kids, but he'd get angry at like stupid stuff, you know, just

00:21:45.880 like seemingly like he had a, this movie is just, it's just funny, but he had this like

00:21:50.720 real anger towards ants, like black ants in the house.

00:21:56.680 Like he would just lose, he would just lose his shit, you know?

00:21:59.920 Who doesn't, who doesn't get upset over ants crawling around the kitchen periodically.

00:22:04.380 I agree.

00:22:05.300 That's interesting.

00:22:06.640 But then my stepdad, you know, is this completely different human being and who raised me and

00:22:11.840 he had a very short temper.

00:22:13.500 He would blow up the drop of a hat.

00:22:14.880 He was verbally abusive, sometimes emotionally abusive, sometimes physically abusive.

00:22:19.080 And so I saw these two versions of men that were wildly different.

00:22:23.120 And I would oftentimes oscillate between the two of them.

00:22:26.320 You know, sometimes in my life I'd be completely shut down emotionally.

00:22:29.920 Other times in my life, I would be like, you know, wild and out of control.

00:22:34.520 And usually when my anger came out, it came out in getting into bar fights, you know, getting

00:22:40.040 into fights and hockey.

00:22:41.040 Cause I played hockey, um, for, you know, most of my life.

00:22:44.880 And so it would come out in these ways that weren't healthy.

00:22:47.980 So in my everyday life, in my relationships, I had crappy boundaries.

00:22:52.060 You know, I wasn't able to say no all the time to women.

00:22:55.060 And so I was disempowered because I disconnected from my anger where it mattered most, but where

00:23:02.000 I let my anger out was in the areas where it mattered least.

00:23:05.040 And it was often coming out sideways.

00:23:06.820 It would come, it was coming out through, you know, mismanaged maladapted violence.

00:23:11.420 So why is our anger valuable?

00:23:14.180 Just as an example, it's valuable because it helps us to set boundaries and structure

00:23:20.060 with the people in our lives and boundaries and structure teach other people how to treat

00:23:25.640 us.

00:23:25.920 So if you're disconnected from your anger, then when you set a boundary, it's not going

00:23:30.900 to have any substance.

00:23:31.960 When you tell somebody, no, it's not going to have any oomph behind it.

00:23:35.380 They're not really going to feel what you're saying.

00:23:39.020 They're not really going to feel like, oh, you mean what you're saying.

00:23:41.600 You're telling me no, and you mean what you're saying.

00:23:43.480 There's no consequence behind crossing that boundary.

00:23:47.220 Exactly.

00:23:47.840 It's not even a boundary.

00:23:49.360 Yeah.

00:23:49.760 It's like, you're a wet noodle.

00:23:50.780 I can walk right through that.

00:23:51.960 You're telling me no, but you probably mean yes.

00:23:53.900 Or like, I can walk all over you and it won't matter.

00:23:56.000 On the other side, if your anger is aggressive and loud and all-consuming, when you go to

00:24:05.380 set a boundary, set structure with somebody, it feels like you can't trust it.

00:24:10.120 It feels like, oh, if I even question this or test this, there's going to be a really substantial

00:24:17.720 consequence.

00:24:18.620 And so for parenting, for intimate relationships, it keeps people at arm's reach.

00:24:25.500 It actually pushes people away because they're scared to get close to you.

00:24:29.600 So we as men have to try and find, try and grapple with this kind of dragon that sometimes

00:24:36.840 lived within us.

00:24:37.680 You know, like the fire, like when I feel angry, it kind of like starts in my body.

00:24:42.540 I get real hot.

00:24:43.620 You know, I've described it as like the Ironman core turns on in my chest.

00:24:47.500 And then, you know, if it reaches my head, then it's, it's game over, but that's the

00:24:52.120 merit and being able to build some kind of a healthy relationship with our anger, because

00:24:57.100 it's either going to destroy and tear down the things that we love most, or it's going

00:25:02.060 to ensure that people walk all over us and we don't teach them where we stand and what

00:25:06.760 we'll tolerate.

00:25:07.400 Hey, Connor, let me excuse myself one more time.

00:25:12.160 I've I'm on a new diet, a new, uh, diet challenge with my buddies and I've been drinking a ton

00:25:16.860 of water.

00:25:17.240 So I have to pee so bad.

00:25:19.520 Give me a second.

00:25:20.820 Okay.

00:25:21.180 As long as you keep this in the recording.

00:25:24.800 All right.

00:25:26.100 All right.

00:25:26.640 I'm back.

00:25:27.760 We're back.

00:25:28.440 Actually, actually the, the pee thing I was thinking about it as I was peeing, um, is actually

00:25:33.580 an interesting discussion point.

00:25:34.720 Cause I know of guys along the same lines of what we're talking about, because I know

00:25:38.080 guys who will literally piss themselves over saying, Hey, hold on.

00:25:42.960 I got to stop the conversation for a second and go take care of myself.

00:25:46.320 Like, I think that falls into what we're talking about.

00:25:48.680 They're so worried about what other people are thinking or how they might look that it

00:25:53.780 comes at the expense of their own wellbeing.

00:25:57.040 Yeah.

00:25:57.540 Does that make sense?

00:25:59.080 Yeah.

00:25:59.440 I mean, we sell, you know, some people have, some guys have grown up in environments where

00:26:04.900 they've had to sell their own authenticity, their own truth for a sense of belonging.

00:26:13.400 Right.

00:26:13.800 So what I mean by that is some of us have had to trade what we actually want, desire,

00:26:19.620 need for a sense of, uh, I belong in this family.

00:26:23.280 Right.

00:26:23.600 I mean, everybody's heard the classic case.

00:26:24.880 Like you have to be a doctor, you have to be a lawyer.

00:26:27.140 Otherwise you're banned from this family.

00:26:28.520 You have to follow this, this way of being within our family.

00:26:31.640 Uh, otherwise you're not allowed to be a part of it.

00:26:33.720 And so I think some guys have definitely grown up in that environment where they haven't trusted

00:26:38.980 that it's okay to be them, you know?

00:26:41.780 And, but that's one of the most attractive things to women oftentimes, you know, is that

00:26:46.840 you are, I want to use the word unapologetically you, but, uh, yeah, I mean, we could probably

00:26:54.360 dig into that a little bit, but to, to be unapologetic, why wouldn't you use that?

00:26:58.680 I mean, that's, that's what I would use.

00:26:59.960 So do you have a hangup with that word?

00:27:01.640 Not necessarily.

00:27:03.140 I think it's just some guys take that to mean to never apologize.

00:27:07.340 Right.

00:27:07.800 Or to be a dick.

00:27:09.220 Yeah.

00:27:09.480 To be an asshole.

00:27:10.280 Yeah, exactly.

00:27:11.000 Which is, which is not what I'm, which is not what I'm talking about.

00:27:14.080 My, my, our audience here is they're, they, they get it.

00:27:17.260 They get nuanced because we've talked a lot about it.

00:27:19.140 It is amazing though, on social media, how you could use one word and everybody's like,

00:27:22.800 well, you know, you, okay.

00:27:24.880 There's context to what we're talking about.

00:27:27.200 And I can't explain all of the context in 140 characters on Twitter.

00:27:31.640 I'm sorry.

00:27:32.640 You're going to have to exercise your mind a little bit on this one.

00:27:36.020 Oh, it's the ability for discourse.

00:27:39.140 I mean, I, I can't even mention Jordan Peterson on my Instagram page without getting some message

00:27:45.740 from somebody being like, I'm unfollowing you.

00:27:47.540 It's like, dude, I didn't even say whether I liked him or not.

00:27:50.100 I just said his name.

00:27:51.380 Like, what are you on about?

00:27:53.440 You know, like if you can't hear somebody's name like this, just, but that's the type of,

00:27:58.840 like, I would call that dysregulated.

00:28:01.980 And all I mean by that term dysregulated is that people become, I'm trying to just not be,

00:28:12.480 not like psychoanalyze and not, not use that type of terminology, but dysregulated simply means that

00:28:19.520 you're no longer in control.

00:28:21.620 Your emotions is your reactivity is your aggression is your disapproval is your embarrassment is

00:28:28.000 like those things within you start to take the wheel.

00:28:32.000 And I think that as men, we find a deeper sense of freedom of being in the leadership position

00:28:38.480 within our own vehicle, right?

00:28:41.360 Within our own minds, within our own hearts, within our own bodies.

00:28:44.320 That is really what I am always trying to advocate for is how do you be in control of your own wheel

00:28:51.520 and not so pushed about by other people's comments or ways of being or lifestyles?

00:29:00.700 You know, it's like, if those things are causing you to be reactive all the time, it's like,

00:29:04.920 man, that's going to be an annoying life.

00:29:06.920 You know, it's going to be annoying all the time.

00:29:09.120 It's going to be annoying.

00:29:10.300 It's, it's going to be unsuccessful.

00:29:12.160 You're going to be lonely because nobody's going to want to be around you.

00:29:15.480 And I, and I found that to be true.

00:29:17.340 I'm glad you said dysregulated.

00:29:18.800 I actually wrote down in my notes here.

00:29:21.080 I wrote down erratic before you even said dysregulated, because I know that when I got angry in the

00:29:27.080 past, even just over the past six months or so, I've, I've really been trying to work on this,

00:29:31.860 that little things like ants in the kitchen would fire me up, you know, like I'd have my own ants.

00:29:37.620 They weren't ants, but they were something else.

00:29:39.120 That's ridiculous that I shouldn't get upset about.

00:29:42.620 And what I've realized and what I'm continuing to realize is that not only do I not feel good,

00:29:47.860 it's not good to feel like that.

00:29:49.540 It doesn't feel good is that other people don't trust you.

00:29:54.240 Like your wife, if you're erratic, your wife is not going to trust you with her thoughts

00:30:00.500 because she doesn't know how you're going to respond to them.

00:30:03.320 Your kids aren't going to trust you with their stories or how their day was because they don't

00:30:08.400 trust that you're a stable source of, of, of feedback for them, you know?

00:30:14.680 And, and that's, that's the pit that I fell into over the past several years that I'm trying

00:30:19.860 to work through and out of currently, which is admittedly pretty challenging to do.

00:30:25.680 A hundred percent, man.

00:30:26.560 I mean, I think, yeah, I've yet to meet a man who doesn't want to be a rock for the people

00:30:34.480 that he loves most in his life.

00:30:36.260 You know, I think there's, there's just something extremely valuable that's sort of baked into

00:30:41.340 our DNA almost where we want to be a lighthouse that our families can crash against sometimes and

00:30:50.840 say, I'm getting bullied at school or, you know, have our wives come to us and say, you know,

00:30:56.020 my mom said this and I don't know how to deal with it.

00:30:57.980 And for us to just be solid and grounded and, and to be able to discern what's needed in that

00:31:03.940 moment, because it's not always the same thing.

00:31:05.900 You know, it's not always advice.

00:31:07.240 It's not always fixing their problem.

00:31:09.240 Sometimes it's just being able to listen to them.

00:31:11.340 But if we are erratic, as you're saying, you know, if we let our anger get the best of us,

00:31:15.680 then they don't trust us and they can't come to us.

00:31:18.220 And, and we, we sort of lose that position and we lose the capacity for our family to lean on us

00:31:26.680 and rely on us.

00:31:27.880 And I think that culturally, that's a huge problem, specifically with fathers, you know,

00:31:33.940 and we've, I think you've talked about it.

00:31:35.520 I've certainly talked about it, that there's this kind of plague of absent fathers within our

00:31:40.100 culture and that can look many, many, many different ways.

00:31:43.480 So.

00:31:44.980 Yeah.

00:31:45.400 I think when you say often they don't need our advice, I, the only thing I would change about

00:31:50.320 that is that very rarely, I think, do people need our advice?

00:31:53.980 Like I'm learning that now, you know, I'm 41 years old and I'm just learning that I'm learning

00:31:58.760 to say, Oh man, to my wife, when she says, I'm, I'm struggling with X, Y, and Z to say,

00:32:02.780 man, that must be really hard.

00:32:05.520 You doing okay.

00:32:06.340 Like, that's it.

00:32:07.760 Like, no, Hey, you should try this or tweak this or adjust that.

00:32:11.340 It's just to say, man, I'm sorry.

00:32:13.600 Like that must be really hard to deal with.

00:32:15.540 That must make you feel bad.

00:32:16.600 How do you feel about that?

00:32:17.740 With my wife, with my kids.

00:32:18.980 Oh my gosh.

00:32:19.780 The difference between that and me trying to solve it by giving her answers that she's

00:32:25.720 not looking for is amazing.

00:32:28.500 I wish I would have learned that 20 years ago and been able to employ that more.

00:32:32.340 The question I do have is a lot of guys listening.

00:32:36.080 I imagine like myself, understand their erratic behavior, understand that they probably don't

00:32:41.020 have a healthy relationship with anger or frustration or past trauma or baggage or whatever

00:32:45.540 it is they're dealing with.

00:32:47.540 What do you do?

00:32:49.100 How do you begin to develop and build a healthy relationship with anger and boundaries and identify

00:32:55.500 where some of these emotional issues are stemming from?

00:32:59.540 What's the work there?

00:33:02.820 Yeah.

00:33:03.000 I mean, there's a number of different ways that you can approach this.

00:33:07.020 I think if we just sort of zero in on a couple of things, you can get a sense of where to start.

00:33:13.620 One, I would say, look at the blueprint of your family growing up because your family system

00:33:20.740 growing up is just your blueprint of how you respond to the world, how your body, how your

00:33:27.220 nervous system, how your mind responds to things.

00:33:30.500 So if you grew up in an environment that was hostile all the time, you saw your parents fighting

00:33:34.540 all the time, that had an impact on you.

00:33:37.800 You know, it either likely created a version of you that doesn't ever want to be in conflict

00:33:44.260 with your spouse.

00:33:45.460 And so you act a very specific way, or it created this version of you where you are always in

00:33:52.300 conflict, you know, because that's what you saw, because that's what you knew, you know,

00:33:55.920 and that's the environment that you grew up in.

00:33:58.400 I don't think it just has an impact on you.

00:34:00.740 I think it programs you.

00:34:02.860 I think it's significantly more than, Hey, it's has a little bit of influence on you.

00:34:07.260 Like I realized that I'm, you know, looking in the mirror at 41 years old, uh, I didn't

00:34:11.440 have a great close relationship with my dad.

00:34:13.660 I didn't really even see him all that much, but Holy shit.

00:34:16.060 Am I just like him?

00:34:18.060 I mean, just like him, not from the way I look, but the way I behave and the, the, the,

00:34:23.160 the temptations I'm distracted by and, and, and enticed by it's him.

00:34:29.880 Like I've become him.

00:34:31.520 Like I didn't even have that much connection with him growing up.

00:34:35.480 And, and we have all been programmed and we don't even know it.

00:34:39.480 Some healthy programming, some unhealthy programming.

00:34:42.300 Yeah.

00:34:42.560 Yeah.

00:34:43.020 Yeah.

00:34:43.620 I mean, in the, in the book, I talk about the shadow of the father and I'm going to answer

00:34:48.240 your previous question, but I talk about the shadow of the father, which is, you know,

00:34:52.260 I sort of say like the shadow that your father cast is neither good or bad.

00:34:54.940 It's just inevitable.

00:34:56.520 And we might live in the shadow of our father because he was an exceptional man and he was

00:35:03.420 just larger than life and he was incredible and everybody loved him.

00:35:06.400 And so we're constantly chasing, trying to be him or surpass him.

00:35:11.140 We might be living in the shadow of our father because we want to live a life in opposition

00:35:15.520 of who he was because he was an asshole or he was violent or he was abusive or he was

00:35:20.560 an alcoholic or he was gone, you know, or whatever the case may be.

00:35:24.220 And so we have to, a huge part of a man's work and, and, you know, there's usually I had

00:35:30.120 a ton of resistance around this when I've, when I first started working with my mentor

00:35:34.020 years and years and years ago.

00:35:35.440 Um, but a huge part of a man's work is being able to look at what's my relationship to my

00:35:40.260 father because he's the blueprint of masculinity and being a man.

00:35:44.320 There's just a fact, you know, or, or whoever, whoever the male was that was most around you

00:35:50.520 in your life, he's the blueprint for what you looked up to as a child and, and looked

00:35:57.900 at and said, that's what it looks like to be a man.

00:36:00.320 That's what it looks like to be masculine.

00:36:01.600 So we have to be able to look, look at that and reconcile with that in some capacity in

00:36:06.700 order to step out of that shadow and live our own life.

00:36:10.500 All right, man, I'm going to take a pause and a step away from the conversation real

00:36:14.020 quick.

00:36:14.860 Uh, I, I just want to say that I appreciate all of your support over the years.

00:36:18.440 Like I said earlier, we've been going for eight years now.

00:36:21.240 Um, many of you have emailed me and messaged me asking for ways that you can support what

00:36:26.100 we're doing here.

00:36:27.220 And I've got a couple of suggestions for you.

00:36:29.440 Uh, if you, if you want to help, I'm more than willing to give you ways that you can

00:36:33.520 do that.

00:36:34.120 Number one, first subscribe, uh, leave a rating for, and share this podcast.

00:36:39.060 You have no idea how far that goes.

00:36:42.040 If there's hundreds of thousands of people listening and there are, and all of you subscribe,

00:36:48.500 leave a rating wherever you're listening and share this podcast with somebody else.

00:36:52.380 This thing goes to the stratosphere.

00:36:54.780 I mean, it really, really explodes as a grassroots movement and you sharing, leaving ratings

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00:37:00.520 That's simple.

00:37:01.020 It's easy.

00:37:01.420 It only takes a couple of minutes.

00:37:02.900 Uh, next you can pick up a copy of the masculinity manifesto wherever you like to get your books.

00:37:08.360 That's my newest book, the masculinity manifesto, and also any merchandise, including our best

00:37:13.180 selling battle planner, uh, in our store at store at store.orderofman.com.

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00:37:29.500 Those are the best ways to support subscribe, leave a rating for, and share this podcast,

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00:37:38.180 email.

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00:38:01.740 Uh, and the most important thing again, that you can do right now is just share this work

00:38:05.480 with a brother who needs to hear it.

00:38:06.860 All right, that's it.

00:38:07.740 Let's get back to it with Connor.

00:38:10.700 So I want to, I just want to push a little bit harder on that.

00:38:13.800 So we have to look at the relationship and, and that's, that's what I mean.

00:38:17.600 And maybe you're getting the answer on that is like, how do you do that?

00:38:20.740 Like, how, like, is that, is that journaling?

00:38:23.940 Is it, is it just sitting and pontificating on all the experiences you had with your father?

00:38:29.540 Is it interviewing him or people in your life that knew both of you?

00:38:33.140 Like what, like tactically, what does that actually look like?

00:38:36.220 Cause that's what I want.

00:38:37.240 Like, I want to do that, but I don't know what that means or how to do it and make sense.

00:38:41.420 Yes.

00:38:41.900 Now, what do we do?

00:38:43.300 So I can get, I'll give you this one and then we can talk about anger and give the

00:38:46.060 tackles for that as well.

00:38:47.440 So with your father, there's a number of different ways to go about it, but the very simple place

00:38:51.860 that you start is, am I trying to avoid being like him or am I trying to be like him and

00:38:58.300 surpass him?

00:38:59.120 So just kind of seeing what area do I fall into?

00:39:02.400 And then you can dig a little bit deeper and say, what did I learn from my father?

00:39:08.100 So you could journal about this, right?

00:39:09.560 What, what were some of the lessons that I wanted to learn from him?

00:39:12.460 What were the lessons that I wanted him to teach me, but I never got, because that'll

00:39:16.980 show you the vacancy that you're likely feeling into as a man, the things that, that you actually

00:39:22.400 never received.

00:39:23.240 And then who did I actually want him to be as a father?

00:39:29.500 What I've learned over the years is that many men have a version of who they wanted their

00:39:35.960 father to be, right?

00:39:37.960 I wanted him to be nicer.

00:39:39.860 I wanted him to show up to my baseball games more.

00:39:41.600 I wanted him to be nicer to my mom.

00:39:43.780 I wanted him to teach me how to camp, whatever it is.

00:39:46.660 But most men have a version of their father who's, who has never showed up.

00:39:51.580 And that's, that's who they really have to start to get to know.

00:39:55.520 Who did your want?

00:39:56.680 Who did you want your father to be that he wasn't?

00:39:58.600 So that's just a good thing to sit down and journal with.

00:40:01.780 The other thing that I did that I think is great is write out 20 questions that you want

00:40:06.680 to ask your father.

00:40:07.440 And if he's still alive, sit down and ask him, you know, I, I sat down with my dad and

00:40:13.020 I had written out 20 questions and they started off very easy and light, and then they got

00:40:18.720 much more difficult and, and deep, you know, to the point where I was asking him, like,

00:40:23.860 why did you get divorced?

00:40:24.780 And were you having an affair?

00:40:26.740 Because that conversation had never been had.

00:40:29.640 And so.

00:40:31.140 What was his response to some of those questions?

00:40:33.660 Like, how did he take that, that, that question?

00:40:36.920 He was a little prick.

00:40:37.620 He was a little prickly.

00:40:38.560 Yeah.

00:40:38.920 I mean, he was a little, like his guard was up and, you know, it was challenging for him

00:40:43.240 to have that conversation.

00:40:45.380 But I was clear with him.

00:40:46.600 Like, you know, I said, I'm asking you these questions because I genuinely want to know

00:40:52.000 who you are and want to be free of judging you for anything.

00:40:56.160 And I think there was something about that comment that he could respect because I was

00:41:02.460 very clear that I'm not trying to blame you for anything.

00:41:04.440 I'm not trying to drag things out.

00:41:06.400 I'm not trying to blame my life on you.

00:41:08.460 I actually want to free myself from having you be the, you know, background reason for

00:41:15.120 any of my problems in life.

00:41:16.360 I actually want to let that go entirely.

00:41:18.400 And so I think that that helped him a lot.

00:41:20.500 So sit, you know, write down 20 questions, sit down with your father, ask him those questions.

00:41:25.500 If you don't know your dad, try and go on a journey to understand who he was.

00:41:30.560 You know, many men, it's like one in four kids in America will grow up without a father

00:41:36.640 in the household now, which is astronomical.

00:41:39.880 So there's a high chance he just didn't really know your father.

00:41:43.200 And so part of your journey might be to actually go on a little bit of a quest to interview the

00:41:49.700 people that knew him best, to understand him.

00:41:52.520 And I've given that to guys who, you know, their father left or, you know, had an affair

00:41:57.960 and they didn't see them anymore, or they were workaholics and they just never got to see

00:42:02.220 them, et cetera.

00:42:02.700 So that, that can also be a worthy endeavor.

00:42:06.360 And then lastly, I would say, ask yourself the question, be really, really honest.

00:42:14.060 What about your father or your relationship to your father?

00:42:17.740 Have you resented?

00:42:18.860 And I think that a lot of men are carrying around, at least maybe I shouldn't generalize

00:42:24.380 a lot of men that I've worked with over the last decade from all over the world, not just

00:42:29.380 North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, the UK, Ireland are carrying resentment towards

00:42:37.480 their father.

00:42:38.200 And resentment is just poisonous.

00:42:40.080 It gets in the way of our relationship with our fathers.

00:42:44.240 And because our fathers were a blueprint, again, for what it means to be a man and to be masculine

00:42:49.660 unconsciously, we carry that resentment somewhere within us.

00:42:54.400 You know, Friedrich Nietzsche, I put this quote in the book, but Friedrich Nietzsche said that

00:42:58.780 within the son is the hidden secrets of, of the father within the son is the hidden secrets

00:43:06.340 of the father.

00:43:07.080 And so there's this notion that whatever was hiding within our fathers, whatever he didn't

00:43:12.640 have developed within himself, that we are carrying that on in some capacity within our

00:43:18.100 relationships, within our lives.

00:43:19.960 So get clear on what you may resent your father for and see, you know, what would it require

00:43:25.100 of you to forgive him?

00:43:26.740 What would it mean to let that go?

00:43:28.480 How might you do that?

00:43:29.900 You know, do you need to write a letter to him that you never send, that you burn?

00:43:33.520 Do you need to sit in conversation with other men and, and be able to discuss some of the

00:43:39.580 shit that you went through as, as a kid?

00:43:41.780 You know, I think one of the things that we, that we underestimate as men and maybe just

00:43:48.120 as a culture is that grief is meant to be shared.

00:43:52.320 And the amount of men that I have seen, and it's heartbreaking in some, in some degree,

00:43:58.300 but the amount of men that I've seen that are carrying pain from their childhood, specifically

00:44:03.840 from their fathers is massive, you know, fathers who are abusive, fathers who were not around

00:44:09.260 fathers who were just cruel and mean.

00:44:12.500 I mean, the stories that I've heard from some kids, from some guys' lives, it's no wonder

00:44:18.000 that they have a short temper with their kids because it's what they got.

00:44:21.380 You know, like, I'll just give you, I'll just give you a personal example.

00:44:24.600 So when I was like 10 to 11, 12 years old, my stepdad, you know, God bless him.

00:44:33.540 He's, he was the main parent of my life.

00:44:35.660 He drove me to hockey practice all the time.

00:44:37.400 I mean, this isn't to, to, to spite him in any way.

00:44:40.300 He really helped to raise me and make me the man that I, that I am today.

00:44:44.120 But when I was a kid, he didn't know how to deal with me because I was out of control.

00:44:48.880 You know, I was hyper all the time and bouncing around and, and I was just a wild, wild little

00:44:55.160 kid.

00:44:55.680 You know, I was like your typical boy that was just a wild hell raiser, you know, causing

00:44:59.700 all kinds of pranks, but he didn't know how to deal with me.

00:45:03.300 And so whenever things between us got rough, he would completely lose his temper.

00:45:08.740 And he would say things like, you're such a stupid piece of shit.

00:45:11.440 What the fuck is wrong with you?

00:45:13.000 Why can't you get it right?

00:45:14.500 And when that didn't work, then it would escalate to physical violence.

00:45:17.680 So that as a boy, I didn't understand what to do with that.

00:45:24.760 I was just hurt by it, right?

00:45:26.420 I just carried this happiness and this weight and I just didn't know how to, you know, I

00:45:29.780 didn't know how to deal with that.

00:45:31.100 And so when I became older, I just didn't trust men because I saw men as being abusive.

00:45:36.380 You know, that if I got, if I built a really strong relationship with a man, it was probably,

00:45:41.040 it was probably inevitable that he was going to try and hurt me in some capacity.

00:45:45.240 You know, he's going to lie.

00:45:45.960 He's going to betray me because that's what I grew up with.

00:45:49.160 The man that I was closest with in my life would berate me when I would get something

00:45:54.320 wrong, you know, in hockey.

00:45:56.780 And I had so much evidence to prove that men are going to hurt me.

00:46:03.040 And so that turned me into a man who in some ways disconnected from what it meant to be

00:46:10.800 a good man, to be a great man.

00:46:12.900 And in some ways it turned me into somebody who didn't know how to deal with his own anger.

00:46:19.960 So my inner dialogue, and this is the, maybe the last thing I'll say, um, my inner dialogue

00:46:25.500 was brutal.

00:46:28.460 You know, I do this exercise at men's weekends.

00:46:31.820 I lead where I'll have a guy write down what he normally says to himself when he gets something

00:46:36.700 wrong, you know, and he'll write out like, what the hell's wrong with you?

00:46:40.920 You're so stupid.

00:46:41.500 Like, how could you have done such a, you know, blah, blah, blah.

00:46:44.180 And then I'll say, okay, sit across from the man next to you and say those things to him.

00:46:50.640 Right.

00:46:51.640 That, that inner critic that you're normally talking to yourself as say that to another

00:46:57.060 man.

00:46:57.700 So hard to do quickly realize like, I don't want to do that.

00:47:00.620 Like, I like this guy.

00:47:01.520 Like, why would I talk to, you know?

00:47:03.060 And so the reality is that most men are living in a kind of self-abusive relationship where

00:47:08.640 they are talking to themselves and treating themselves like garbage.

00:47:13.780 They're verbally abusing themselves internally.

00:47:16.480 They're berating themselves constantly.

00:47:18.400 They're literally just beating the shit out of themselves day in and day out.

00:47:22.520 And it's like, well, if you don't rectify that relationship, first and foremost, how are

00:47:26.460 you supposed to have a healthy marriage and relationship with your kids?

00:47:29.080 But secondly, that voice came from somewhere.

00:47:31.560 You learned that voice from someone.

00:47:35.040 And what I realized in my probably late twenties, thankfully, because I'm of a mentor was that

00:47:40.540 my inner dialogue was so violent and so abusive because I was carrying on the relationship with

00:47:48.460 my stepdad, that voice inside of me literally was him.

00:47:52.260 And so what most men need to realize sometimes and wake up to is that the voice, the way that

00:47:58.680 they speak to themselves is often a by-product of the way that a father spoke to them, a way

00:48:04.600 that a coach spoke to them, a way that a parent spoke to them, that they are carrying on within

00:48:09.300 themselves.

00:48:10.380 And so that's why it's so important to explore, to start to see who treated me in this way,

00:48:16.880 that I'm now allowing myself to treat this way.

00:48:19.780 Does that make sense what I'm saying?

00:48:21.000 About the inner dialogue and the critic?

00:48:22.300 Yeah.

00:48:22.740 I mean, I'm enthralled just because, yeah, I mean, this resonates deeply with me.

00:48:27.700 I was thinking about, as you were saying this, this, what was the quote by Nietzsche again?

00:48:32.500 What was the quote?

00:48:34.640 What is hidden in the father will be revealed in the son.

00:48:36.840 I got a little backwards when I said it the first time, but what is hidden in the father

00:48:39.620 will be revealed in the son.

00:48:41.280 Got it.

00:48:41.740 So I was thinking to myself, you know, there's probably a lot of guys who are not willing to do

00:48:51.540 this work for probably multiple reasons.

00:48:55.460 Maybe, maybe it's just painful.

00:48:56.780 I think that's probably the biggest.

00:48:58.620 It's just painful.

00:48:59.320 It might be that they don't know how that might be an issue.

00:49:01.720 Might be that it's, that it's painful.

00:49:03.860 I would say that's probably a big issue.

00:49:05.880 And in my head, I'm thinking to myself, you know, with three boys and a little girl,

00:49:09.260 I'm like, man, if I'm not willing to do it for myself, because we were talking about

00:49:14.120 your father, but what about your kids' father, which is you?

00:49:18.700 If you're not willing to do it for yourself, for whatever reason, man, think about what

00:49:24.900 we can do for our sons if we figure this stuff out.

00:49:28.760 Because if we don't, they're doomed, just like we were.

00:49:33.300 And, you know, a lot of times I hear guys be like, yeah, my dad, my father, my this,

00:49:36.780 my that.

00:49:37.120 It's like, okay, well, all that's true.

00:49:38.820 And I agree with you.

00:49:39.800 It's like programming.

00:49:40.660 It's all true, but you're also a grown ass man.

00:49:44.280 And so it's time to put that stuff aside to address it.

00:49:48.500 So you can set it aside, not just ignore it, but to address it.

00:49:51.860 So you can put it aside and change the trajectory of our lives for ourselves.

00:49:57.660 Yes.

00:49:58.120 And also for our sons who will have our secrets revealed in them.

00:50:05.760 That's right.

00:50:06.400 Yeah.

00:50:06.860 I mean, I couldn't have put it better.

00:50:08.960 I mean, the first line in my book is a man's work begins in pain.

00:50:13.400 That's the first line, because I think that that is the true calling of what the essence

00:50:19.040 of a man's work is supposed to be.

00:50:20.920 If you don't, if you as a man don't know how to deal with your own pain, not only are you

00:50:26.160 screwed, but the people around you are screwed because you're going to pass that pain on through

00:50:31.040 your interactions with them, through your conversations with them.

00:50:33.700 And so part of what we have to do is build some kind of an understanding of what hurt us, what

00:50:43.440 caused us pain and why and where we're passing that pain on in our lives.

00:50:48.140 Because if we're not aware of that, then we're, we're just a slave to it.

00:50:51.900 We're just naturally doing it.

00:50:54.260 And, and we, we do owe it to our kids.

00:50:56.760 I mean, a part of the reason why I've done this work and I wrote this book is because I

00:51:01.200 have a son.

00:51:01.680 And I want to have a much better relationship with him than I did with my, with my parents,

00:51:09.160 with my father, with my stepdad.

00:51:11.300 And I know my anger is wild sometimes, you know, I still get it wrong.

00:51:16.780 Like you were talking about your wife and, you know, not intervening.

00:51:20.040 It's like, I've been doing this work for a while.

00:51:21.780 I'm at like 60, 40, you know, 60% of the time I can be like, that sounds hard.

00:51:25.400 And 40% of the time I'm like, you should do this.

00:51:27.880 You still want to solve it.

00:51:28.880 I know.

00:51:29.420 I know, man.

00:51:30.020 I'm like, I can hear myself talking, like, like almost audibly arguing, like, oh, you

00:51:36.500 should do this.

00:51:37.040 And then the other, the little devil on the side's like, do this.

00:51:39.640 And then the little angel on my other shoulders, like, just shut up, just listen, nod your head

00:51:43.660 and, and acknowledge what she's saying.

00:51:46.220 And that's all.

00:51:47.040 And it's like this, this just debate that I is like real.

00:51:51.560 I can feel it in my mind.

00:51:53.960 Yeah.

00:51:54.380 Well, I think it's, it's where we find value as men, right?

00:51:58.100 We want to be a value to our partners, to our wives, to our girlfriends.

00:52:02.580 Right.

00:52:02.900 And so I think, I think that we just, we try and be a value to our wives and our girlfriends,

00:52:08.360 how we would normally be a value to other men.

00:52:11.780 And that's the mistake, right?

00:52:13.800 Another man might actually want you to say, well, have you thought about this?

00:52:16.780 Have you done it this way?

00:52:17.580 Have you talked to this guy?

00:52:18.720 And he'd be like, oh shit, I haven't done any of those things.

00:52:20.940 Thanks brother.

00:52:21.380 But our wife is like, I don't want you to do any of those things.

00:52:24.660 I just want you to understand what the hell I'm feeling.

00:52:28.880 And so that's the gap, but it's very, again, just to sort of bring this all back around,

00:52:32.840 it is very challenging to do any of the things that we're talking about.

00:52:36.020 If your life is being run by your pain and it is hard to do the work that you and I are

00:52:41.220 talking about.

00:52:41.920 You know, I remember I worked with a Navy SEAL who came to work with me because he was having

00:52:47.340 some challenges in his relationship and we started to work on his past and some of the

00:52:53.880 things that he'd been carrying, grief from being in battle, from his childhood, from

00:52:58.040 his relationship with his father.

00:52:59.700 And I walked into this exercise that was pretty intense.

00:53:02.780 And he, you know, once the exercise was done, I said, how do you feel?

00:53:05.660 Like, how did that go?

00:53:06.900 And he paused and he looked at me and he just said, man, I would rather rush a machine gun

00:53:11.680 nest, a machine gun nest in Afghanistan to do this shit.

00:53:14.740 Like this is so hard, but it's the stuff that made the difference in his relationship,

00:53:20.200 you know?

00:53:21.240 And, and I do think that, you know, a lot of us as men are just carrying around a pain

00:53:27.820 that is debilitating our capacity as a father or as a business leader or as a husband.

00:53:34.680 And as a, there's, there's a gentleman named Francis Weller who says that your pain has its

00:53:39.700 own intelligence.

00:53:41.140 And I think that's true.

00:53:42.340 You know, it's like when you, when you get into an argument with your wife and she says

00:53:47.900 something and you blow up, you know, and you get reactive, well, what's getting reactive?

00:53:54.940 It's your pain, right?

00:53:56.800 Saying, I don't like that you said that.

00:53:58.260 I feel embarrassed or, you know, whatever, whatever it is that you end up saying.

00:54:02.160 So your pain has its own intelligence.

00:54:03.800 So you better learn to listen to that part of you.

00:54:06.480 Otherwise that part of you is going to cause absolute chaos in your life.

00:54:12.220 It will cause chaos, right?

00:54:14.120 And Carl Jung, famous Swiss psychologist said that your shadow, I'm going to bring back to

00:54:19.020 shadow, is, is the part of you that gets in the way of your most well-meaning goals and

00:54:25.240 aims and thwarts them.

00:54:26.660 So this part of you is the part of you that's sabotaging you, your pain, your hurt.

00:54:32.520 So I don't know if I'm making a good enough case for it, but we, maybe we can talk about

00:54:37.320 what to, what to do with it.

00:54:39.000 And maybe some, I think you are, you want to get into.

00:54:41.660 Well, as you were saying that I was thinking about, you were talking earlier about being

00:54:46.840 a rock, right?

00:54:47.920 Every man wants to be a rock for his, I would just say for his people.

00:54:51.080 So whether that's your employees or your kids or your wife or your friends, for your

00:54:54.840 people, you want to be a rock.

00:54:56.640 And, and what I found in my own life, this applies to me for sure, is that we can't be

00:55:02.340 that stable rock when we're trying to search for validation from other people.

00:55:07.060 Because if that's what we're after, whether it's your wife's approval, like, Hey, a pat

00:55:11.340 on the back, like, thanks for taking out the trash today.

00:55:13.520 Good boy.

00:55:14.440 And if that's what makes you happy, then you're just going to be tossed to and fro based on

00:55:20.140 the whims of other people rather than, Hey, I got up and I went to the gym today.

00:55:25.940 There's a snow storm out here right now.

00:55:27.800 It's a pretty good storm.

00:55:28.780 The roads are a little snowy and icy.

00:55:30.740 I would have had every excuse in the world to stay at home, but I went not because my

00:55:36.840 wife would know, or because she would validate me for going, or I would, but because that was

00:55:43.220 the commitment I made.

00:55:44.580 And I'm trying to figure out how I can validate myself.

00:55:47.800 Like, I don't need it from you, Connor, with all due respect.

00:55:51.260 I don't need it from my, that's why I can ask you challenging questions because I don't

00:55:54.960 care.

00:55:55.640 Like I, I want to know I I'm able to validate myself.

00:55:58.780 And when guys can do that, that's where they become that stable rock.

00:56:02.680 That isn't going to be tossed by a woman's emotions or a man's strange look, or maybe some

00:56:08.720 shady business dealing.

00:56:10.260 You know, somebody took advantage of you, which sucks, of course, and you'll be upset, but it's

00:56:13.980 not going to toss you into this downward spiral of emotional chaos.

00:56:19.140 Yeah.

00:56:19.600 And I think that's the thing that you're talking about that's so valuable that I, that I think

00:56:23.820 that we, we often under index the importance of it, which is self-recognition and self-validation.

00:56:30.020 The truth is, is that if you as a man haven't developed the internal skill of self-validation,

00:56:35.640 you will constantly seek that from outside of yourself.

00:56:39.480 So you'll look to the women in your life.

00:56:40.820 You'll look to the men in your life, you'll look to your kids even, and you'll say, validate

00:56:44.440 me, reinforce that I have worth.

00:56:47.020 And so self-validation and self-recognition is a skill, but it requires that you have some

00:56:52.660 internal sense of compassion and that's the real kicker.

00:56:56.320 So if your internal dialogue is just constantly beating the crap out of yourself and self-deprecation,

00:57:01.820 how are you supposed to recognize yourself?

00:57:03.780 Because nothing's ever good enough, right?

00:57:05.840 So I just want to come back to, to the anger piece and give you like four simple things.

00:57:12.280 I don't know if I ever answered that unless there's a different direction that you want

00:57:15.060 to take.

00:57:15.240 Before I get to that, I want to ask you one other question that's been pressing for me

00:57:18.920 is, you know, we hear a lot about this idea of self-love and self-validation and proving

00:57:25.800 it to yourself and taking care of yourself and the whole analogy of the oxygen mask.

00:57:31.040 You know, if you're going down on a plane, we all, we all hear that and maybe to get

00:57:35.640 a little personal with you, where does the conversation about God come into that mix?

00:57:41.920 Cause I know for me is I try to validate myself through my actions.

00:57:45.540 Like I try to be an integrity, not always, of course, but I try to be, and I know when

00:57:49.860 I am an integrity, I feel really good about myself, but also I'm learning to derive my sense

00:57:55.980 of worth through my divine nature and that I am a divine being, a son of God.

00:58:03.420 I don't need validation from anybody.

00:58:05.620 That's already who I am.

00:58:07.140 I'm really curious about your take on that.

00:58:11.180 It's a really solid question.

00:58:13.240 And like enough that makes me really pause to contemplate it.

00:58:16.700 I think how I've always viewed this is, can I operate as a man to treat myself in the

00:58:29.220 way that God would treat me?

00:58:32.580 Because God certainly didn't make me to just punish me all the time.

00:58:37.860 You know, God likely created me because, and us and all of us and everything in existence,

00:58:42.180 because there's love in some capacity.

00:58:45.260 And of course there's hardship.

00:58:46.440 And of course there's all of those other pieces, right?

00:58:49.880 There's challenges and there's, you know, things that we have to push through and et cetera.

00:58:54.120 But absolutely part of the equation is that, and under the, under everything, under all of

00:58:59.780 that, under the challenge, under the whole thing is God's love.

00:59:03.080 I would say it's God's love for us.

00:59:06.040 God's love for me.

00:59:06.880 God's love for you.

00:59:07.700 And so can I operate in alignment with how God would love me, with how God would treat

00:59:13.920 me?

00:59:14.540 And can I embody that as often as possible, which likely, which likely means that I need

00:59:20.440 to treat myself in the image or in the perspective of how I think he would treat me in that moment.

00:59:30.660 And so sometimes that means being compassionate, you know, and understanding that I'm flawed and

00:59:35.360 I'm human and I'm not God.

00:59:36.900 And so I'm going to get it wrong.

00:59:38.620 And, and that doesn't mean letting myself off the hook, but it means giving myself grace,

00:59:43.120 you know, grace, the capital G.

00:59:46.540 I think that's one of God's greatest gifts is grace.

00:59:49.260 And it's, and it's oftentimes for him to give, but it's for us to practice.

00:59:53.740 And so we have to practice giving ourselves grace.

00:59:56.140 I think that's so valuable.

00:59:57.340 And then this, just the second piece is the recognition, you know, of course, God gives

01:00:04.060 us recognition in many different ways, but I think again, why should God give us recognition

01:00:11.580 or provide us with, um, validation externally through our business, through success, through

01:00:20.800 accomplishments, through all of those things.

01:00:23.460 If we aren't willing to do that for ourselves, why should God have to do that?

01:00:29.100 If we're not willing to do that for ourselves?

01:00:31.880 I mean, part of, I think if you, if when I read most scriptures, what I see is that man

01:00:40.840 is, is possible, is, is capable of many things and capable of receiving many things from God

01:00:47.060 and through God, but that we oftentimes have to embody that first, that we have to take the

01:00:52.500 lead first.

01:00:52.940 It's like Indiana Jones, uh, you know, having to step out on the invisible bridge first.

01:00:58.260 It's like, that's faith, brother.

01:01:00.460 That's faith.

01:01:01.480 So like, if you're asking God for forgiveness, why should he give it to you first until you

01:01:06.300 step out on that bridge and try and find it for yourself?

01:01:08.600 If you're asking him for grace and compassion and validation, why should God give any of those

01:01:14.840 things to you first, before you have trained yourself in being able to give those things to

01:01:19.840 yourself first?

01:01:20.620 So I don't, I don't know what your thoughts are on that.

01:01:24.500 No, it's, I, I'm just, I was just curious.

01:01:26.520 I'm thinking about that analogy of the bridge in Indiana Jones.

01:01:29.180 What's interesting about that with regards to God's grace is that you, you said, you know,

01:01:33.520 you have to take the leap of faith first.

01:01:36.460 Actually, actually, no.

01:01:39.060 And I, and I'll tell you why I think that's the case is because the bridge is there.

01:01:43.000 The grace is already there.

01:01:44.880 You just don't see it yet.

01:01:46.260 It's, it's not like you take the leap of faith and then he builds the bridge as you go.

01:01:50.480 No, the bridge has already been built.

01:01:53.300 You just need to walk on it.

01:01:55.920 But that, that is the faith component.

01:01:57.660 You need to trust that it's there and then walk on it.

01:02:00.600 I'm trying to figure that out.

01:02:01.720 I'm saying it as if like guys need to do this.

01:02:04.360 I need, but you still have to, but you still have to do it, right?

01:02:07.340 God can't convince you to walk on the bridge.

01:02:10.080 Otherwise that's not faith.

01:02:11.360 That's all I'm saying is that, that we, we as men are often looking for something not,

01:02:17.400 not to be given to us, but, but there's, there's just this value in developing some

01:02:25.060 of these things within ourselves, you know, self-compassion, self-validation, not so that

01:02:30.720 you can, you know, fit into the Instagram or YouTube mold of self-love and the emotions

01:02:35.680 that are out there.

01:02:36.360 I mean, all of that is just sometimes obnoxious and so ridiculously cliche, but more so because

01:02:42.980 you have, in my terms, aligned yourself closer with God's intended creation and, and that

01:02:51.600 there's value in that and that you find yourself closer to God in the act of doing so.

01:02:55.500 You know, you find yourself closer to God in the act of self-validation, self-recognition,

01:03:01.680 being able to give grace sometimes to yourself again, not to let yourself off the hook.

01:03:06.620 It requires discernment, right?

01:03:08.400 To be able to discern, am I just letting myself off the hook?

01:03:11.360 Cause I'm being lazy.

01:03:12.380 Sometimes it's true, you know, or am I giving myself grace to not beat the living crap out

01:03:16.660 of myself because I'm flawed and I did the best that I could.

01:03:19.100 That's also true.

01:03:20.640 So I think that that's how we begin to live life from a spiritual place.

01:03:30.280 I love it.

01:03:30.700 I, that, that concept of alignment, I wrote that down and highlight it and did all the

01:03:35.380 things so I could remember that, but alignment's valuable.

01:03:37.860 Um, you were going to, I think you were going to share, if I heard you correctly, maybe a four

01:03:42.540 part framework for dealing with your anger.

01:03:44.960 If I, if I heard you write something like that.

01:03:46.780 Yeah.

01:03:47.880 I mean, I think, uh, I wanted to give something a little tactical because I know we kind of

01:03:52.120 touched on it and didn't, didn't get around to it.

01:03:54.100 Uh, step one, get to know the signs, get to know the signs of your anger.

01:03:59.940 And those signs are physical.

01:04:04.100 They are language based.

01:04:05.420 So you'll probably be saying certain things.

01:04:07.900 You might hear yourself saying the same thing over and over again.

01:04:10.840 You might hear yourself using what I call absolutes, right?

01:04:14.280 You always, you never, I go to that all the time.

01:04:16.700 That's how I know that I am reactive and that my anger has a hold in me, right?

01:04:21.180 You always, you never, how come you never do this?

01:04:23.840 How come you always blah, blah, blah.

01:04:25.560 So get very familiar with the signs of what you say and what it feels like physically in

01:04:30.060 the body.

01:04:30.480 Right?

01:04:30.800 So for me, I, I start to feel this like heat and energy rising up through my core.

01:04:36.220 And then it feels like, again, that Ironman analogy, uh, Ironman has that core right in

01:04:41.820 the center of his chest.

01:04:42.520 It feels like when I, when I start to lose my temper, like that part of me just gets switched

01:04:47.680 on.

01:04:48.120 All of a sudden it's like, Oh, I can feel this massive amount of energy right in the middle

01:04:52.400 of my chest and it's moving up into my head.

01:04:55.240 Step number two is name that out loud.

01:04:59.300 Name it out loud.

01:05:00.180 I am angry.

01:05:02.180 I'm getting angry.

01:05:04.060 Or I am too angry.

01:05:06.320 Or I'm losing my temper, not because of the other person, not to blame, not to judge them

01:05:13.940 or any of those things, but you just name it out loud.

01:05:16.800 I'm being reactive.

01:05:17.560 I'm feeling reactive.

01:05:18.500 Step number three is, and this is maybe going to be a little controversial, but say what you're

01:05:24.880 feeling behind the anger.

01:05:27.260 Say what you're feeling behind the anger.

01:05:29.180 So anger is almost always a secondary emotion.

01:05:33.040 Why is that?

01:05:33.920 You said this might be controversial.

01:05:35.440 I don't think that is, but why, why do you think that might be controversial?

01:05:40.480 Uh, because many of us have lived a life with a very small emotional palette where we feel

01:05:51.120 happy, we feel angry, or we feel nothing.

01:05:54.620 That's some guys.

01:05:56.080 And like, I was like this in the past.

01:05:57.460 I felt happy.

01:05:58.060 I felt angry or I felt numb.

01:06:00.440 And that's the case for a lot of guys.

01:06:02.200 They don't realize that they maybe felt embarrassed first, or they felt anxious, or they felt ashamed,

01:06:07.020 or they felt hurt, or they felt sad before they actually felt angry.

01:06:11.300 So anger is a secondary emotion.

01:06:12.820 Anger is kind of a catch all.

01:06:14.380 That's right.

01:06:15.180 That's right.

01:06:15.660 So it just becomes like, oh, I feel something and I don't like it's anger.

01:06:20.180 So say what you're actually feeling.

01:06:21.820 And that might take some practice where you're like, okay, I'm angry.

01:06:26.160 What was I feeling just before this?

01:06:28.360 And maybe you felt disrespected.

01:06:30.720 Yeah.

01:06:30.860 That's the word that came to mind for me is disrespected.

01:06:33.500 It's like, I'm angry because you did this thing.

01:06:36.020 Why am I angry?

01:06:36.660 Because it's, you're disrespecting me.

01:06:39.040 Okay.

01:06:39.440 Now we're getting closer to the real issue.

01:06:41.960 Yeah.

01:06:43.020 Yeah.

01:06:43.420 So that's step number three.

01:06:45.180 Say what you're actually feeling.

01:06:46.300 And then step number four is shift your attention from your thoughts to your body.

01:06:52.980 Okay.

01:06:53.500 Explain that.

01:06:54.080 Your attention from your thoughts to your body.

01:06:55.520 So like I said, anger has a physical quality to it.

01:07:01.680 All emotions have a physical quality to it, but anger specifically has a very physical quality to it.

01:07:06.160 And if we're only aware of what we're thinking, we'll disconnect from the physical part of anger.

01:07:12.220 And we won't be able to, what's called down regulate.

01:07:15.200 We won't be able to cool the heat of our anger.

01:07:18.640 Okay.

01:07:19.380 So if we're just stuck in our thoughts, how could she do that?

01:07:22.060 Why did she say that?

01:07:22.860 What the hell is wrong with her?

01:07:24.100 Like, why didn't I think about this?

01:07:25.520 Whatever is going on in our mind, we will not attend to the physical part of the heat that we feel in the body.

01:07:32.660 And we won't be able to cool down.

01:07:34.660 And so we'll just stay in that hot space.

01:07:37.000 Is it healthy to just, I mean, I'm not saying you're saying this,

01:07:41.680 but here's what I'm gathering is, okay, now you can begin to regulate your temper, right?

01:07:47.180 Is that healthy or are you just suppressing it?

01:07:50.580 And actually what you should do is go to the gym or go for a run or go hit your punching bag or whatever, right?

01:07:59.460 To attach it to something physical in nature.

01:08:02.840 Yes.

01:08:03.660 So we could add a fifth step because I think this will be helpful for everyone that's listening.

01:08:12.600 Which is decide what to do with that.

01:08:16.280 Do you need to go and sit and breathe?

01:08:19.120 You know, for one of the things that a lot of guys don't like is that they have to build up a tolerance for their anger.

01:08:23.780 They have to build up tolerance to contain the energy, the like intensity of I'm fucking pissed right now.

01:08:31.040 Sorry to swear so harshly on your show, but I'm pissed right now and I don't know what to do with the energy in my body.

01:08:37.360 It's not so much the thoughts that we think, it's the intensity of the charge in the body, right?

01:08:42.900 It's like this fierce energy that we start to feel that we don't know how to deal with or contain.

01:08:47.120 So discern or decide what you want to do with that energy.

01:08:50.900 Maybe you go and sit and just close your eyes and breathe into it and see if you can just calm it down a little bit or downregulate it.

01:08:58.760 Maybe you go and press some of that energy into a punching bag.

01:09:01.960 Maybe you go to the gym and lift some weights.

01:09:03.940 Maybe you go for a run.

01:09:05.040 Maybe you do some breath work.

01:09:06.160 Maybe you take a cold shower.

01:09:07.700 All of those things, really solid options to choose.

01:09:11.520 I use all of them depending on what's going on in my life.

01:09:14.840 But one of the best things to do is sit and use the breath.

01:09:19.360 Your breath, because when you're, maybe I'll just say one last thing and I can see you got a follow-up.

01:09:23.800 When you are angry to that capacity where it starts to become defensive or aggressive or whatever it is,

01:09:31.700 what's happening is that your body is moved into your sympathetic nervous system,

01:09:36.860 which is like your stress, the stress part of your nervous system.

01:09:39.740 And the more that you're in that part of your nervous system, your sympathetic nervous system,

01:09:44.920 the more that you're releasing cortisol and neuropronephrine and adrenaline.

01:09:51.120 And so your body is literally getting more and more and more and spun out.

01:09:54.380 Your heart rate starts to elevate.

01:09:56.180 Your breath rate per minute starts to elevate.

01:09:58.600 And if you don't have any control over that part of you, over the physical part of you,

01:10:04.420 then everything else doesn't matter, right?

01:10:07.240 What you say, how you respond.

01:10:09.720 If you don't, if you're not able to regulate your breath and your heart rate and the physical

01:10:14.880 sensations that you're having, then it'll always be a problem because anger will show up

01:10:19.140 and it'll consume you and it'll take over the show.

01:10:21.220 So you have to start to get really familiar with what, what does it actually feel like?

01:10:26.240 And can I build up a tolerance for that feeling, right?

01:10:30.760 It's like getting punched for the first time.

01:10:33.600 Probably the first time you get punched in the face, you have very little tolerance for it.

01:10:37.100 You're not used to it.

01:10:38.060 You're right.

01:10:38.600 It's like the first time I got punched in the face when I was playing hockey, I was like,

01:10:41.240 holy crap.

01:10:42.000 Like what?

01:10:42.560 That, that was wild.

01:10:43.960 But eventually you start to build up some tolerance for what that feels like.

01:10:49.360 Anger is no difference, right?

01:10:51.480 Anger is no different.

01:10:52.860 If your story internally is, I hate that feeling, or I feel out of control when I'm angry.

01:10:57.960 Well, then you're always running from the anger.

01:11:00.500 It always has the best of you.

01:11:01.940 So you have to literally sit with that part of you and breathe and say, I can face you.

01:11:08.960 Even as intense as you get, I can be with you.

01:11:12.080 Because if you as a man can't be with your anger, how is your wife supposed to be with it?

01:11:16.040 How are your kids supposed to be with it?

01:11:17.600 So you have to do the hard thing to sit, eyes closed sometimes in silence and breathe and

01:11:24.080 sit with the dragon of your anger.

01:11:27.320 It's not the sexy thing to do.

01:11:29.020 It's not the thing that a lot of therapists are going to tell you to do.

01:11:32.440 But I think that it's the thing that I have seen the most benefit from in my life.

01:11:37.020 Because then when it shows up physically in my body, I'm not afraid of it.

01:11:41.620 I don't let it take over.

01:11:42.840 And there's some type of control where I can direct that energy.

01:11:48.220 Or if it gets too much, then I can go and use a punchy bag.

01:11:52.180 I can go and do jiu-jitsu.

01:11:53.980 I can go do what I need to do.

01:11:55.180 Right.

01:11:55.720 I think that's true of all of them, all emotions.

01:11:58.080 I actually see a therapist myself.

01:12:00.140 And we were talking about being sad.

01:12:02.820 Like, what do you do when you're sad?

01:12:03.720 And he said, be sad.

01:12:05.420 Like, sit in it.

01:12:07.340 Be sad.

01:12:07.760 If you need to cry, cry.

01:12:08.700 Like, if you need to be sad and you're upset or guilt or whatever, like, go ahead.

01:12:12.120 Just sit in that.

01:12:13.340 Let it out.

01:12:14.080 Experience it.

01:12:14.900 And then it doesn't have control over you anymore.

01:12:17.080 But too many guys won't do that.

01:12:19.760 Like, they're like, oh, well, I'm going to go distract myself.

01:12:22.440 Usually with an activity or friends or a woman or drugs or in my case, alcohol.

01:12:28.900 They're going to go do something to get out of that feeling rather than sitting with it.

01:12:32.740 I wrote something down here, too.

01:12:35.320 And maybe this is point number six is I think we tend to get angry with our conversations

01:12:41.640 and relationships with other people.

01:12:43.280 That's typically where our anger comes from.

01:12:45.480 I would say maybe exclusively.

01:12:48.260 And one thing I've found to be helpful is asking myself, is what I'm feeling true?

01:12:55.680 And it's usually not.

01:12:57.500 Like, so for example, if I'm angry with my wife about something, the secondary feeling

01:13:04.180 might be disrespect.

01:13:05.960 I feel disrespected.

01:13:07.060 She didn't do what I wanted to.

01:13:08.580 And therefore, she doesn't respect my authority or my desire or whatever.

01:13:13.320 Right.

01:13:13.660 And then I ask myself, is it true that she doesn't respect me?

01:13:19.960 Okay, probably not.

01:13:21.120 So I might actually go to her and say, hey, hon, when we were talking earlier, you said

01:13:25.900 this thing.

01:13:26.500 And I was very angry about that because I felt disrespected, but I'm not sure how you

01:13:31.720 meant it.

01:13:32.140 Can you explain yourself?

01:13:34.100 And then she explains herself and you're like, oh, got it.

01:13:36.820 Yeah.

01:13:36.960 I completely misconstrued what you were saying or what you're getting at.

01:13:40.640 And I've found that to be really, really helpful for me for what it's worth.

01:13:45.300 100%.

01:13:45.660 No, that's a great, that's a great caveat and asterisks to add in for sure.

01:13:49.680 Is it true?

01:13:50.260 Is what they're saying true?

01:13:51.760 Well, brother, this is a lot.

01:13:53.320 I got a lot of notes here as I always do, but man, I love our conversations.

01:13:57.060 I love your perspective.

01:13:58.160 It gives me a new way of looking at things that I don't naturally gravitate towards,

01:14:02.940 which I think is where the value for me comes from.

01:14:05.800 Why don't you let the guys know where to connect with you?

01:14:07.840 Obviously, where to pick up a copy of the book and how to learn more about what you're

01:14:10.960 doing with men's work.

01:14:12.840 I mean, yeah, men's work.

01:14:15.100 I got the book right here.

01:14:16.660 That's right.

01:14:17.240 Yeah.

01:14:17.720 I'm excited to get that, man.

01:14:19.000 I'm excited to get my copy.

01:14:19.820 I think it's in the mail or in the post.

01:14:21.980 It's on the PO box.

01:14:23.500 Yeah.

01:14:24.420 It's every chapter has questions to dig into, to journal on prompts, and then exercises

01:14:30.740 to integrate everything that I talk about.

01:14:32.280 So man talks.com forward slash book, uh, that's where you can find the book.

01:14:37.260 And then man talks.com is where you find me.

01:14:39.300 And then on Instagram man talks, it's all, all the same.

01:14:43.280 It's all there.

01:14:44.260 We're going to sync everything up and let the guys know where to go guys.

01:14:47.340 I'm telling you, follow Connor, follow what he's doing, because it will be very, very helpful.

01:14:51.840 And it's enough in alignment with what we do, but different enough where you get a perspective

01:14:58.260 that I haven't brought to the table and I think it rounds out the discussion for men.

01:15:02.280 So I really appreciate our friendship and appreciate your perspective.

01:15:04.800 Thanks for joining me, brother.

01:15:06.700 Likewise, man.

01:15:07.340 Thanks for having me.

01:15:09.260 All right, you guys, there you go.

01:15:10.480 My conversation with Connor Beaton, uh, again, his newest book called men's work is out a

01:15:16.260 practical guide to face your darkness and self-sabotage and find freedom.

01:15:20.440 I am knee deep in the book right now.

01:15:23.220 Um, I'm actually reading it myself and oh my gosh, I can't tell you how valuable

01:15:27.400 that the insight and the information, of course, from this podcast, but he dives deep

01:15:32.040 into doing some of this work that we talked about.

01:15:34.800 And I, this is a book that every man needs to read.

01:15:37.640 So pick up a copy of men's work.

01:15:39.700 Do me a favor, take a screenshot right now.

01:15:41.720 You listening to this book, or excuse me, this podcast rather, and tag me tag Connor on

01:15:47.560 Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, wherever you're doing the social media thing, subscribe on YouTube.

01:15:52.780 We're trying to blow up our YouTube channel right now.

01:15:54.960 Uh, we've got a lot of work to do and we have an uphill battle.

01:15:57.400 But I think if we enlist more men, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions

01:16:01.320 of men across the planet, uh, we can begin to make our impact and dent in the world.

01:16:06.380 So I appreciate you.

01:16:07.680 I appreciate Connor coming on the podcast and, uh, let's blow this thing up guys.

01:16:12.660 We'll be back next week.

01:16:13.880 No, we won't.

01:16:14.600 We'll be back tomorrow.

01:16:16.320 Tomorrow.

01:16:17.220 We'll be back for our ask me anything until then go out there, take action, become a man.

01:16:21.420 You are meant to be.

01:16:22.720 Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast.

01:16:26.100 You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be.

01:16:30.060 We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.

Order of Man - February 07, 2023

CONNOR BEATON ｜ Acquainted with Our Anger

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