Help for Those Stuck Between Boyhood and Manhood
Episode Stats
Summary
Gregory Koufakis is a therapist, addiction counselor, and the author of The Primal Method: A Book for Emerging Men. In this episode, we discuss why many men are stuck in their transition from boyhood to manhood, how to move forward, and what to do about it.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:00:11.140
You probably know a young man or several who struggled to transition from adolescence to
00:00:15.260
adulthood. He's in his 20s, maybe even his 30s, and seems lost and in limbo, unsure how to create
00:00:20.300
an independent, flourishing life. Maybe you're this man yourself. My guest today has some ideas
00:00:24.880
on what has gone wrong in these cases and how to break out of the debilitating cycles many young
00:00:28.940
men whom he calls emerging men find themselves stuck in. His name is Gregory Koufakis and he's
00:00:33.320
a therapist, addiction counselor, and the author of The Primal Method, A Book for Emerging Men.
00:00:37.660
Greg and I begin our discussion with why many men get stuck in their transition from boyhood
00:00:41.340
to manhood, Greg's own story of arrested and frustrated development, and how working as
00:00:45.320
a 26-year-old under a 16-year-old manager was part of what he needed to do to move on from
00:00:50.040
his dream of playing professional football. We then discuss why traditional therapy methods
00:00:53.600
typically don't work for men, how Greg developed his own form of counseling that emphasizes
00:00:57.300
getting outside the therapist's office to move, take action, and participate in real
00:01:00.980
life, what Greg calls entering the agora, and why this approach is so effective. We also
00:01:05.340
discuss the things that help young men move forward, which include Greg's concepts of
00:01:08.740
emphatic challenge and holding the line, as well as finding good mentors and friends. And
00:01:12.720
we end our conversation with what men can do to start nurturing their small, latent spark
00:01:16.160
into a more powerful and purposeful fire. After the show's over, check out our show notes
00:01:20.020
at aom.is slash emerging men. Gregory joins you now via clearcast.io.
00:01:35.660
All right, Gregory Koufakis, welcome to the show.
00:01:41.160
So you are an addiction counselor, but you seem to have found your calling in working with a certain
00:01:47.540
type of, I would say, young man, a young man in his 20s, early 30s, maybe. How would you describe
00:01:54.040
the typical man you work with in your counseling work? So I work with young men, 18 to 35. They
00:02:03.220
have, on the surface, a lot of different problems. Mostly, like you said, I'm trained and specialized
00:02:09.320
in addiction. And with addiction comes a lot of other problems. But the main person that I work with
00:02:17.060
is somebody who's getting stuck in the transition from boyhood or adolescence into manhood.
00:02:25.880
Well, and I like in your book, The Primal Method, you start off describing this encounter of a young
00:02:31.020
man that you would probably counsel with a young woman about his same age. And the young man's just
00:02:36.960
sort of like, no vibrancy, no life, no vitality. You can tell he's just, there's nothing like
00:02:43.980
generative there. Nothing, there's no creative force. There's nothing, no vitality. And then you
00:02:47.840
have this young woman come in and she's like, she's got spunk and spark and vital. And I thought that
00:02:53.500
was a good, because I've seen, I've met a lot of those young men you've described.
00:02:57.400
Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's, you know, that is a true story. I remember, you know, going to the juice bar
00:03:07.120
and just sitting there and, you know, a few times in a row, I'd see this young guy and not to pick
00:03:14.940
on him. But that's why I said, this is our guy. You know, this is who we're talking about. It's
00:03:21.920
somebody who is sitting slouched over, you know, you can tell nothing is going on in his life.
00:03:30.680
He's totally disconnected. His face is kind of pale, but, you know, he probably used to be
00:03:38.940
somebody. So there's always that disconnect, you know, like who you were and who you are
00:03:46.760
and then where you're going. And it kind of gets progressively worse. It can.
00:03:54.140
And as you said, oftentimes it starts out that way, where you just sort of a young man,
00:03:58.100
be some sort of disengaged, doesn't know, listless, doesn't know where he's going in life.
00:04:01.700
And as a result, they end up in some sort of addiction, alcohol, drugs, et cetera.
00:04:07.520
Right. Yeah. When you, when you don't know where you're going and you don't have clear guidance,
00:04:15.620
the probability of you getting lost is high. And that's exactly what's happening. There's no,
00:04:25.600
there's no clear, inspired, supported direction. And this is what we have getting lost.
00:04:35.520
And why do you think there's so many young men like that today? Like, what do you think
00:04:38.400
has contributed to this uptick in men getting lost in that transition from boyhood to manhood?
00:04:44.260
Hmm. Yeah, that's, that's a good question. You know, I will say from, I haven't done a whole lot
00:04:53.400
of speculating in terms of why that is, because the people that end up working or meeting with me,
00:05:01.300
it's so obvious that there is a problem. I, I could do a lot of different speculation about it.
00:05:09.740
I think on, if I'm giving an optimistic view, I would say that males, we are evolving and we need
00:05:21.620
more than we got in the past. Like I was thinking about our conversation while I was taking a run this
00:05:29.820
morning and I was like, you know, it, it just doesn't, it just doesn't feed a man anymore to
00:05:36.640
say, well, you know, when you get 18, you go to the army. And then after that, you, you marry your
00:05:42.640
college sweetheart and then you work at the local, you know, wherever that just doesn't do it anymore.
00:05:48.880
So I think part of it is that males are hungrier for a more, a deeper like purpose. And that is the
00:05:59.640
responsibility of a culture, you know, of the community to help nurture what the young emerging
00:06:07.780
men need. And, and that's not happening. So, so it's sort of that, uh, that is what's happening.
00:06:14.780
And, you know, when you were one of these guys, you now counsel, can you tell us your story?
00:06:20.680
Cause I thought, I mean, it was, I thought it was really interesting. What, what, tell us about
00:06:24.100
your story and how did you get to where you're now helping men the way you used to be?
00:06:30.320
Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, like, like you said, I, I, I am one of the men that I used to
00:06:37.600
counsel. I had a whole lot of potential in life. I was born into a very, very good family.
00:06:46.440
They gave me everything they could. In fact, you know, my town gave me everything, you know,
00:06:52.680
the, the community, but I think, you know, for me, obviously, you know, I I've spent a lot of time
00:07:01.240
like thinking about my own story, but I, I really resisted sort of going with the flow and I,
00:07:12.000
I never really wanted to follow what my society or what my culture was, was teaching me. I just,
00:07:20.880
I just didn't want to follow, you know, uh, direction. I didn't want to follow guidance.
00:07:25.920
I did have a saving grace, which was that I was an athlete and I put everything I had into that.
00:07:32.580
But, you know, along with that, I, I started getting exposed to life and that included,
00:07:39.940
you know, different, different drugs, different, you know, temptations, gambling, just overall bad
00:07:48.240
living. And I ended up hitting a wall and hit multiple times. And it was, uh, yeah, it was,
00:07:56.860
as you said, it was a, it was a tough story. I don't really know what to say about it. It's
00:08:01.300
very, yeah. Well, just to be clear, you weren't just any athlete, like you were playing D1 football.
00:08:07.900
Yeah. That's a big deal. I mean, that's like, like 1% of high school athletes will ever get to do that.
00:08:13.140
Right. And you, you made it. Right. And I, and I only started playing football when I was a junior.
00:08:18.520
So for me, you know, it would, it required a lot of dedication and a lot of work. And,
00:08:24.880
you know, if you had asked me at the age of, you know, 17, 18, 19, my only purpose in life
00:08:34.360
was to become a professional athlete. That was, that was it. And, uh, yeah, I played division one
00:08:41.200
football and, you know, learned a lot of lessons from that, but yeah, it was, uh, the top of the
00:08:48.080
top. And as you said, during this time, you, you meant you, you hit multiple walls, like you incurred
00:08:54.340
a lot of gambling debt and then started doing drugs. And then you had these moments where you'd
00:08:58.160
bounce back and like football seemed to be your saving grace. Like you'd always like, well, I'm just
00:09:01.540
going to rededicate myself and get disciplined for football. But then you reached this moment where
00:09:06.640
you, you pretty much hit rock bottom and football was no longer there to save you. Uh, what was that
00:09:12.560
moment and how did that serve as a turning point for you? Yeah, well, I had made my decision.
00:09:19.840
I thought I made my decision to walk away from football and I was kind of at a good place with
00:09:27.240
it. I had a number of injuries and I was really starting to broaden my horizon. And I was living
00:09:36.100
out in Arizona. I was starting to get exposed to different, you know, forms of spirituality and
00:09:43.260
martial arts. And I was kind of ready to move on and, you know, step into the unknown, so to speak.
00:09:51.560
But I was at the gym one day and the quarterback on the team at the time, Ortiz Jenkins, he and I
00:10:00.060
were, were friendly. And I told him that I was, you know, I made my decision and I'm, I'm going to
00:10:05.840
move on. And he challenged me and said, you know, you're leaving on their terms. You're leaving on
00:10:12.360
the coach's terms. You're not leaving on your terms. And that, that really lit a fire under my ass.
00:10:18.960
And I started to train, you know, to, to get back into football. But at the end, you know, I,
00:10:27.280
I just couldn't, I got my body back where I needed to, but I couldn't get my academics. I had failed
00:10:33.820
out of school at that point. And I, I remember like I went in and I, I tried to get my grades changed
00:10:42.740
to become reinstated. And it just, I couldn't do it, you know? And I remember walking out of the,
00:10:52.320
the building, sitting on the pavement and just bawling. Like, I don't know, I don't know what
00:11:01.820
I'm doing. I don't know where I'm going. And, you know, it was a very sad, but ultimately cathartic
00:11:11.460
moment because I finally, and I tell this to a lot of the guys that I work with, you have to let go
00:11:19.800
of that old dream that you had, you know, there, there is a new dream waiting for you. My, my whole
00:11:29.600
method rests on that premise that there is a purpose for you. There is a dream for you. And the
00:11:38.400
only real person that's getting in the way of that is you and all of your effort. And I was a,
00:11:45.580
a classic case of that. I mean, life just couldn't get through to me because of my fixed ideas of what
00:11:53.520
I wanted my life to be. And then after this moment, you, you basically had to start from
00:11:58.160
ground zero. You got a job at a coffee shop and you were taking orders from like a 16 year old kid.
00:12:05.220
Yep. 22 and really humbling. And you learned a lot in that process of just learning how to do a good
00:12:11.760
work and be in humility. But how did you make that transition from, okay, I'm working at a coffee
00:12:17.200
shop to I'm going to become a counselor. How did that happen? Yeah. So first of all, I was 26.
00:12:23.820
I was 26. All right. Yeah. 26 year old getting bossed around. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was, you know,
00:12:29.760
he wasn't doing anything wrong. He was just bossing me, you know, he was doing his job. But for me,
00:12:34.420
that was, that was very, very humbling. How I got to, from there to where I am is I built my life up
00:12:42.560
brick by brick by brick. And there were multiple times that I wanted to jump ship and build my life
00:12:54.200
real quick because that, that was my MO, you know, like all, all young men want a life that they are
00:13:03.000
happy with. They want, they want to dream big, but what I didn't understand and what they don't
00:13:09.140
understand is that that requires a process that, that requires time. And I, you know, when I felt
00:13:19.240
like I had finally gotten myself into a natural rhythm of life where I wasn't moving too fast and I wasn't
00:13:29.200
moving too slow, it became clear that it was time to think about a career. And I just did a very simple
00:13:38.580
self-assessment and said, I realized that there are two things that I'm good at and two things that I
00:13:45.500
like to do. I, I love to argue and I love to search for the truth and argue for the truth. And so for me,
00:13:56.300
that meant either going into law, which I know you, you have your experience in or going to become a
00:14:03.380
therapist. I felt like that I could, I could reach people and I booked, I had a childhood friend,
00:14:11.180
a family friend who was a lawyer and a family friend who was a psychologist. And I reached out
00:14:16.520
to both of them and said, listen, I want to meet with you. And I want to find out like what your,
00:14:21.000
what is your life like? And the psychologist booked an entire hour for me free of charge.
00:14:29.780
I went to his office, sat down, we talked about what it was like to, you know, to travel that path.
00:14:37.240
And, uh, it was a really a great conversation. And the lawyer was so busy that even though he cared
00:14:44.640
for me, he blew me off. And I said, right then, you know, that's not the quality of life that I'm
00:14:50.960
looking for. And so I went into psychology and went down that path.
00:14:56.740
And now you're an addiction counselor. Well, let's talk about, uh, your approach to counseling
00:15:01.300
because it's different. Cause I think when most guys hear counseling, they think, well,
00:15:04.260
I'm going to go to this office. I'm going to sit down on this chair. They don't have couches
00:15:07.920
anymore. You know, it's just a chair, a nice leather chair, the downgraded, and you're going
00:15:14.100
to talk for, you know, maybe an hour. That's not what you do. You, you get the guy when the,
00:15:20.080
when a man comes to see you, you get them out of the office. Tell us about how you discovered that,
00:15:25.060
okay, just sitting down to traditional talk therapy doesn't work for men.
00:15:28.800
Yeah. I mean, I, I came from the addiction recovery industry and what that industry looks like
00:15:36.520
is that you, you, you have a lot of support and a lot of structure and a lot of leverage.
00:15:43.620
So these guys, you know, by the way, I wasn't just counseling young men when I was in working
00:15:50.120
in rehabs, but I was a very, very effective counselor in, in rehab settings because you,
00:15:59.620
you have that structure. You can really, really lean into people and, you know,
00:16:06.520
they don't have any other distractions in their life. And so I found a way to make that work.
00:16:12.240
But when I transitioned to having my own practice, I tried what was, what is practiced,
00:16:21.580
which is, you know, people have their, their hour long appointment and they come and they sit down
00:16:26.680
and you talk. And I just found that doing that was not really reaching these young men. It just,
00:16:40.560
nothing was really transforming. We might have a good conversation here or there. And also,
00:16:48.060
you know, oftentimes there was nothing to talk about. So I, in a mix of just boredom personally,
00:16:56.220
being bored and also seeing more importantly, seeing that what I was doing, wasn't working.
00:17:02.980
I made a simple decision to tell the young men that I was working with, that I would no longer meet
00:17:09.580
with them in a physical office, that we were just going to go outside and do something. And I had no idea
00:17:17.660
what something was. And it, from that very simple decision to just walk outside over the course of three
00:17:31.180
to four years, an entire method evolved. And I understood why I took them outside and what I was
00:17:41.260
actually doing with them. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:17:48.980
And now back to the show. No, you, you call this, so you, you call traditional forms of therapy
00:17:54.300
dialogic, right? So it's talking, right? Your idea of just getting them out there and doing something
00:17:59.240
like the walking cure you, you, you dubbed, you also dubbed it the diakonetic action or the action
00:18:04.440
axis. So motion or movement. It's like, what do you think, what do you think is going on? Like,
00:18:09.100
why do you think it's just something about men? They're, they're hardwired. So they respond to action
00:18:14.720
for sure. But also, you know, by dialogic, I mean, you know, cognitive or rational and, you know,
00:18:27.780
we all have a rational part of us. It's the reason. And it turns out that young men don't even have
00:18:37.460
that part of the brain fully developed. After I left the office, okay, I saw that instead of just
00:18:46.860
relating to men at the rational level, or what I'm saying, the dialogic, the dialogical level,
00:18:54.540
I started to see that, that we were moving around, we were moving in the world. And I noticed that
00:19:02.700
multiple things were happening. Number one, we, we were moving our physical bodies. And I saw that
00:19:12.540
there was a power in just doing that. Okay. But also we were, we were doing things together and we were
00:19:22.240
creating a bond. I was creating, and we were co-creating a bond ourselves. So we were connecting.
00:19:30.520
And then furthermore, they were learning how to enter the social world and build a life for
00:19:39.920
themselves. So three main things were happening. And when I started to write the book and think
00:19:46.780
about why this method was actually working, because in the beginning, I had no idea really what I was
00:19:54.540
doing or what was going to happen. So this was only in hindsight. I, I saw that what we were really
00:20:02.480
doing is we were reaching beyond the rational mind. We were reaching deeper to the part of our mind or
00:20:12.180
the part of our being that connects with others and with the world. We were reaching into the part of
00:20:21.380
our being that moves. And even the, the kind of more forward thinking, psychotherapeutic approaches
00:20:32.140
know that that is where the source of both the problem and the solution is. It's in how we connect
00:20:40.460
and how we act. So, so by saying diakonetic, I mean that, that we're, we're moving in the world,
00:20:48.660
we're moving in the world together. And yeah, it was, it blows my mind how, how, how this taps into
00:21:00.260
the deeper part of a young man. And it's much more exciting.
00:21:05.360
Right. And you call this, you know, going out into the world, like entering the Agora. So you're Greek.
00:21:09.420
So you, you brought in some of your Greek culture and heritage into this. And the Agora is just,
00:21:12.980
it's the public. It's like where you go, where people interact. It's where, you know, Socrates,
00:21:17.700
you know, basically accosted people and asked them what, what is virtue.
00:21:22.160
But there's something about that. Like you said, that's transformed. Like you're actually,
00:21:25.200
I think one of the problems with traditional therapy is that you're, you're sort of taken out
00:21:28.100
of the world and like what you're doing, it can be theoretical and it can be, it can be useful,
00:21:33.580
but then like the app, learning how to apply that in the real world can be hard. There's a disconnect,
00:21:38.320
but if you're actually learning on the fly in the real world, there's something about that,
00:21:45.000
Totally. And the beauty of that is that then all the, by the way, I do have to say,
00:21:50.420
I'm not against talk therapy. I think it works well in conjunction with what I do. And also I believe
00:21:58.360
that for emerging men, especially you need to act first and then talk about what you did.
00:22:08.280
No, that makes sense. And to be clear, like what you were doing with these guys is you were taking
00:22:12.420
them out of the office. You might go for a walk, you might go to a coffee shop, but then eventually
00:22:16.200
it was like, Hey, let's go rock climb. Let's go to a boxing gym. And you let them sort of drive
00:22:23.460
that. And, and, and that's the other thing too. I was really impressed by like how patient you were
00:22:27.340
with this. It wasn't like, Hey, right, right away, we're going to go to a rock climbing gym. It was,
00:22:32.160
Hey, we'll just go to a coffee shop. And it might be three months before the guy was like,
00:22:38.120
Exactly. Yeah. That's a great observation. And I learned that because the, the young men that were
00:22:44.620
coming to me initially, they were, they were pretty much the people that were not responding
00:22:50.880
to traditional forms of treatment. Right. So there, there was, there was a real learning process
00:22:59.020
that, that, that we went through to, to figure out how to do this. And, uh, the guys that I was
00:23:05.960
working with, I had to be very, very patient with them. And I learned a really important lesson,
00:23:13.300
which is that it is very important for a man to, especially emerging man to organically come to his
00:23:23.100
own hunger of what he wants to do in life. So for me, it was a huge deal when these, these guys that
00:23:32.880
I started working with would say something like, I heard about this art exhibit in Tribeca and I'd
00:23:41.900
like to go there. And also my uncle told me about an Italian restaurant in that area. For me, that was
00:23:49.060
an example that they were creating a map of the world and they were getting excited about exploring
00:23:56.640
that map. And that's the beginnings I found of creating your life. You, you have to get out into
00:24:06.600
the world and that starts with, you know, exploring the world, poking around, getting excited about
00:24:13.200
different things. And yeah, it's a, it's a very, a very patient process. You know, I work with a lot
00:24:19.760
of different counselors and things like that. And I feel like a lot of times they, they suggest a lot
00:24:27.380
of things to these young men and, and they don't understand why these young men don't just like
00:24:33.060
follow what is being said. Like, but that there's way more power in that young man creating their own
00:24:42.100
sort of a hunger for what they want to do. Well, and another point you make that the reason you
00:24:48.360
want to get these guys out there and doing stuff with them is that you understand, or you came to
00:24:52.700
this understanding that emerging men, these young men, they need to see what it looks like, like
00:24:58.360
actually see what it looks like, feels like for another man. Like, what does it look like for a man
00:25:03.240
to engage with the world? And like, you were serving that mirror for them. Like you were serving as
00:25:07.360
that, that, uh, pattern to follow. Yeah, that's, that's what I, I realized, you know, after a couple
00:25:15.540
of years of doing this, that I was seeing more progress and by progress, I mean, these guys were
00:25:23.900
getting inspired to live and they were starting to make changes in their own life. I saw that we were
00:25:32.960
making more progress just by them seeing how I did it rather than me talking to them. So in, instead of
00:25:40.560
me trying to talk to them and teach them how to build a life, I just went out into life with them.
00:25:48.580
And I, I was right alongside them and they were able, I feel what they were able to do was they were
00:25:56.180
able to see what I was doing and they were able to internalize this model of how you go out and
00:26:05.000
enter life, how you attack life, how you give life your all, how you love life. The most important
00:26:11.960
thing that we can do for young men is put a man that is further along in that journey, right in front
00:26:19.460
of him and just let him see how to do it. And there's a lot of science to back that up too. There's a whole
00:26:25.620
part of the brain called the mirror neuron system, which I think it will be very important to
00:26:32.040
understand that going forward, that really what happens is we mirror each other. We tend to mirror
00:26:39.960
the most influential or the most powerful person that we're around. And yeah, we were, this is what I
00:26:49.260
believe was happening with a lot of these young guys. They were just seeing what I was doing and they
00:26:58.020
So basically young men at this age need a mentor.
00:27:01.120
Yeah, they need, they need somebody who can show them how it's done. You know, so if we want to call
00:27:09.580
that a mentor, you know, there are different levels to how, how deep of a bond two men can create. And, you
00:27:19.040
know, it gets into the highest forms of teacher student. But if you just have another man who is
00:27:26.320
actively, genuinely pursuing the best version of his life in an authentic way, this is, this is a true
00:27:38.900
Yeah. I love you described you, you, you've experienced this in your own life. What you,
00:27:41.860
when you were a boy. So there's like this guy in your neighborhood growing up who just a cool dude,
00:27:46.780
like had, you know, had a wife, kids, but had a job, was responsible. But at the same time,
00:27:52.860
he didn't let that grind him down. Didn't seem like other men who were just like, I just
00:27:56.960
going to sit down and watch Matlock. He was, he was out there doing stuff, even when it was in his
00:28:03.340
thirties and forties. And you saw that and you're like, man, being a, being a grown man can actually
00:28:08.220
be really cool. I want to be like that. It's important for, you know, men who are further
00:28:16.500
along in their journey to open their world to the younger men in, in whatever forms that takes,
00:28:25.920
because, you know, this guy who we're talking about, he, he didn't sit me down and talk to me
00:28:34.440
about life. He didn't try to solve my problems. He didn't try to, you know, find out what I was
00:28:41.360
feeling or what was bothering me. He just was another man that I could walk with. And I had fun
00:28:50.900
and I realized that I was just taking notes, how he lived his life. And the most important thing was
00:28:59.420
how he, he, he, I felt like he opened his heart and he was, he was enjoying life. That was very
00:29:07.600
important for me to see how a man can open his heart and enjoy his life. And that was all I really
00:29:17.360
needed at that time. So this, this primal method that you've developed. So you, one part of it is
00:29:24.020
getting men out there being action oriented, mirroring, you know, positive masculinity,
00:29:30.180
positive manliness to them so they can see what that looks like, feels like. There's also this
00:29:34.780
other part you talk about that young men need, but they're not getting is this idea of emphatic
00:29:40.020
challenge. What do you, what do you mean by emphatic challenge?
00:29:42.980
I mean, being opposed and feeling a pressure that is exerted on them in the book. I give
00:29:57.460
the analogy of when I was in Japan with my wife, we were in the train and we were looking out the
00:30:06.800
window and I saw these, these green bushes that looked like they were, they were like in
00:30:12.700
pixel. They were animated. And I said, what are those bushes? And they said, those are not bushes.
00:30:19.820
Those are trees. And they actually, if you leave those trees to grow, just to grow like wherever
00:30:27.420
they want and however they want, those will become 30 to 50 feet high. And we, we prune those
00:30:35.620
trees consciously and constantly to pack the color and the flavor into them. And this is what young
00:30:46.580
men are missing. They don't have people over them that are, that are showing them that are kind of,
00:30:54.740
and it's a tough process because a lot of young men, they do have people that are,
00:30:59.860
you know, riding their back, complaining, lecturing them. That is not what, what I'm talking about.
00:31:07.280
And, and that's not what emphatic challenges. Emphatic challenge, of course, is like a level
00:31:12.460
of opposition. You need to be challenging young men. And I would argue men in general, we just need to
00:31:20.560
be challenged in order to bring out the best of ourselves. And related to this idea of, of emphatic
00:31:26.560
challenge. So, you know, giving, giving young men, like, you know, calling them out basically
00:31:30.900
and seeing if they can step up to it. But you also have this idea of holding the line,
00:31:34.340
right? What is that? And how's that related to emphatic challenge?
00:31:37.260
Yeah. And I, by the way, I want to say about the emphatic challenge, like what that ultimately means
00:31:43.480
for me is when I meet these young men that are, let's say between 18, 25, it's looking at them
00:31:52.900
and challenging their view of the world and themselves. Like everybody has these hidden beliefs
00:32:05.320
on how, how they believe life should go. And my emphatic challenge to them is where did you get the
00:32:15.480
idea that that that's how life works? Where did you get the idea that you're just going to snap your
00:32:24.860
fingers and have this amazing life? Who gave you that idea? Or maybe I'm coming across a little
00:32:33.000
judgmental right now, but it's a genuine curiosity. Where did you get that idea? When? And most
00:32:41.380
importantly, is it working? Is it working for you? There comes a point in a young man's life where
00:32:49.080
he has to look at how he approaches life and he's got to be willing to, to ask whether the way that he
00:32:57.460
approaches life works. You know, why, why did I stay the course when I was at that, uh, bakery getting,
00:33:06.420
you know, bossed around by a kid, six, you know, 16 years old is because I saw that my way didn't work
00:33:15.320
like me thinking that I was this top dog and I was so great. Well, if I was so great, then how come I'm
00:33:22.780
here? So for me, it was constantly humbling myself and learning what are the ways of the world. And to do
00:33:32.160
that, you, you have to seek out men who are really making their life work, right? You, you meet with
00:33:41.620
a lot of people, right? And everybody's telling you your, their ideas, right? Sure. But how are those
00:33:49.260
ideas working? Some of them are. And by a lot of them, not some are, and some aren't, but how do we
00:33:55.500
know if it's working or not? You know, you have to, you have to really look at whether those ideas
00:34:02.660
that somebody's telling you that whether they work, do they make this person happy, truly happy?
00:34:10.080
Are they leading this person down a path in their life that they are excited about? That's evolving.
00:34:16.420
So for me, emphatic challenge means let's get real, let's get honest. And Hey, by the way,
00:34:25.580
I'm going to get honest too. So I'm not saying that I'm fully evolved and that all my ideas are set in
00:34:32.600
stone. So I will tell the young man and they, they appreciate this. I say, listen, I'm we're,
00:34:38.020
we're climbing the same mountain. You and I, I might be 10 feet ahead of you, or I might be 10 years ahead
00:34:44.040
of you. I don't know, but let me tell you something. This mountain is an unforgiving mountain or maybe
00:34:49.280
not. It's a ruthless mountain, but it, it, it's forgiving, but it's ruthless. It doesn't get any
00:34:55.500
easier. So I'm always challenging my beliefs. So that's the piece about the emphatic challenge.
00:35:03.560
Hold the line. You know, if, if you're going to try to do anything difficult in life,
00:35:12.420
somebody has to prevent you from hitting the escape hatch when it gets difficult.
00:35:21.940
And I'd be willing to bet if there are young men listening to this,
00:35:27.060
if your life is not working for you, you can almost guarantee it's because when things get tough,
00:35:35.440
you give up. Now you can, you can give up in a thousand different ways and you can tell yourself
00:35:45.940
whatever you want, but the bottom line is you're giving up. You're, you're not putting your full
00:35:51.920
self in this experience. And when things got difficult, you gave up. And when that happens,
00:35:59.920
you have to have people there that they, they are there to support you, to keep going.
00:36:08.920
You want to know a funny story? All remember in the book where I said that, that team captain,
00:36:15.020
he challenged me and, and he, he brought out the best of me. Right. Right. I went home to my mother
00:36:21.780
mother that day. And I, I had already concluded. I said, football is not for me. I said, this is,
00:36:29.900
this is, I I'm glad I ran through, you know, that line and, and thank you very much. I've learned all
00:36:37.920
the lessons I needed to learn. And I come up with my excuse. I was going to play basketball all fall.
00:36:44.280
And I was going to practice. I had it all mapped out. And she looked at me, said, you are not quitting.
00:36:49.540
You made a decision to play football and you're going to play this season. And I was, no, damn,
00:36:56.820
you know, she held the line. I went back. I figured it out because the people in my life did not allow
00:37:04.120
me to quit. Right. This is a chronic pattern in the work that I do. The minute that you push people,
00:37:11.200
they want to give up and their parents or whoever's in their life, they either believe that nonsense
00:37:18.240
or they hold the line and say, no, you're not going to give up. If you're not allowed to give up,
00:37:26.400
what happens is you end up facing the feelings, your feelings that you are trying to run from.
00:37:37.980
You're not running from football or running from your marriage or running from your job. You're running
00:37:45.560
from yourself. You do not yet have the ability to contain all of your feelings. And you've become
00:37:55.700
a specialist at opting out, choosing the easier path, because then you get to feel something that's
00:38:03.020
better. But those feelings are all you. So if people hold the line, then the person gets to feel all of
00:38:11.800
themselves. Okay. So we've talked about young men, emerging men need action. They need to be out there
00:38:20.400
and exploring the world and seeing what, you know, like an authentic, positive masculinity looks like
00:38:26.960
by having a mentor. And this mentor is going to hold the line. They're going to challenge them. But then also
00:38:32.900
one of your goals as a counselor with these guys, when you work with them, is eventually for them to
00:38:37.720
develop their own circle of male friends. That's not just you. I mean, is this guy, you're kind of
00:38:43.700
like their friend, you know, that you become their friend, but you want them to have a circle of
00:38:48.640
friends that might not necessarily involve you as well. Yeah. I become their friend. I become their
00:38:55.460
brother. I'm helping them to resolve the barriers that they have to connecting with another human being
00:39:05.740
at a meaningful level. Once they learn that, or as they learn that, because, you know, each person
00:39:14.600
connects to the world and connects to other people in their own unique way. And the only way to learn
00:39:24.200
how you connect with other people is through experience. And you have to have somebody. When I,
00:39:31.620
when I wrote the book, I realized that what I'm really trying to do is I'm, I'm trying to become
00:39:37.720
a master at connection. Um, I basically say to these parents, when they come to me and they say,
00:39:46.760
you, you don't know our son. He's so lost. He doesn't connect with anybody. He's this, he's that.
00:39:54.340
And I know, and I tell them, I say, I guarantee you that I can connect with your son. That's,
00:40:03.140
that's what I believe. I'm going to be able to connect to the unconnectable
00:40:07.880
through that process. That person teaches themselves how to connect. And then the goal,
00:40:18.280
of course, is that they have to learn how to make connections in their own life. They have to replicate
00:40:26.000
it. But first they got to see what that looks like in order for them to do that.
00:40:30.500
Yeah. And they have to more than see it. They have to feel it. They have to manifest it. They have
00:40:35.780
to feel it in their being. What is it like to connect to another person in a meaningful way?
00:40:42.620
Because a lot of guys, they have people in their life, right? Friends, quote unquote,
00:40:52.060
but they're not really connecting to them. They're not really creating nourishing connections.
00:41:00.520
So even if you're surrounded by people, you still could be missing out on the beauty and the power
00:41:08.260
of connection. And that's what I'm teaching them.
00:41:13.540
Right. And in the end goal of all this, like, you know, hopefully what people get to, and again,
00:41:17.920
like we said, this could take months, it could take years for it to happen. But the, but the end goal
00:41:23.000
is to have that young man that we talked about earlier, sort of like flat, no spark, like fill them
00:41:29.920
with like, they want, like you want that guy to have some vitality. Like you call it generative or
00:41:34.000
creative. You call it like, they have a male womb, basically. They want to create in the world.
00:41:38.440
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That is the ultimate goal. And like you said, we are in the darkness of the night,
00:41:46.920
leaning, hunching over a little spark of fire that we found, and we're just gently blowing on it.
00:41:55.060
We're just gently, we're literally, our ears are to the earth, blowing on this, cradling this fire.
00:42:03.380
And then the young man sees that that's what we're doing together. We're blowing on, we're gently
00:42:11.920
blowing on his fire to live. And that's what I mean by the difference between the rational,
00:42:19.700
the dialogic, this is deeper than logic. If you ask a man, you know, questions about,
00:42:28.880
you know, I don't know, like, should you be living at home with your parents? Should you have a job?
00:42:36.760
Do you want to have a purpose in your life? They can say the right answers to that, but it doesn't
00:42:44.100
mean that they're activating their primal power, that, that will to live, that hunger, that inspiration.
00:42:52.380
For me, all the work that I'm doing with these young men is to try to light that fire.
00:42:58.580
That's the fire that's going to keep burning through the night.
00:43:02.500
Well, Greg, let's say that someone's listening to this podcast. Maybe they're a young guy.
00:43:06.040
They've got, maybe they have some sort of addiction. Maybe they don't, but they still,
00:43:08.980
they see themselves in that guy we described for just no, no spark. Like what's like the first,
00:43:15.880
what's something that someone could do today to start, you know, igniting that fire, blowing that
00:43:21.080
little spark that they might have? Well, what I did when I was in that position is I made a deal
00:43:31.460
with myself. I made a deal that I was going to appreciate my life for one year. And by appreciate
00:43:41.580
my life, I meant I was going to do what I needed to do to get my life a little bit better each day.
00:43:53.040
I was going to literally appreciate it. And I wasn't going to put any criteria around it.
00:44:01.460
I wasn't going to say, Oh, by in three months, I'm going to be at level a hundred. I just said,
00:44:08.140
I'm just going to tilt this thing five degrees, three degrees. So what you young men can do
00:44:14.780
is you can just make a decision to be thankful for the fact that you have life and appreciate your life
00:44:24.440
day by day for a year and read the book. Because I wrote this book for you to try to give you some
00:44:32.420
tools that I believe our culture is not giving you.
00:44:37.080
Gregory, where can people go to learn more about the book in your work?
00:44:39.820
The website. So we have go with the bro brother, Gregory, go with the bro.com. And the book is
00:44:50.200
Fantastic. Well, Gregory, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:44:54.780
My guest name is Gregory Kufalkos. He's the author of the book, The Primal Method. It's
00:44:58.300
available on amazon.com. You can also learn more about his work at his website, go with the bro.com.
00:45:03.000
Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash emerging men. We find links to resources,
00:45:08.500
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at
00:45:19.300
artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles written
00:45:22.960
over the years. And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free episodes of the AOM podcast, you can do so on
00:45:26.500
Stitcher Premium. Head over to stitcherpremium.com, sign up, use code manliness at checkout for a free
00:45:30.640
month trial. Once you're signed up, download the Stitcher app on Android or iOS, and you can start
00:45:34.320
enjoying ad-free episodes of the AOM podcast. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you
00:45:38.220
take one minute to give us a review on Apple podcast or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if
00:45:41.460
you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member
00:45:45.340
who you would think would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continuous support.
00:45:48.320
Until next time, this is Brett McKay. Remind you not only will listen to a podcast, but put what you've