The Art of Manliness - The 5 Shifts of Manhood

00:00:00.000 We're at McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.180 In the Apostle Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, he wrote,

00:00:14.920 When I was a child, I spoke as a child. I understood as a child. I thought as a child.

00:00:19.660 But when I became a man, I put away childish things.

00:00:23.480 What does putting away the ways of childhood and stepping into manhood look like?

00:00:27.480 My guest says it requires making five key shifts in mindset and perspective.

00:00:32.380 His name is John Tyson, and he's a pastor and the creator of The Primal Path,

00:00:36.480 a rite of passage geared toward helping boys become men.

00:00:39.460 Today on the show, John and I impact the five shifts of manhood

00:00:42.260 and how parents and mentors can help young men make them and move from immaturity to maturity.

00:00:47.360 After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash shifts.

00:00:57.480 All right, John Tyson, welcome back to the show.

00:01:04.260 Mate, thank you so much for having me back on.

00:01:06.560 Really enjoyed it last time and looking forward to our conversation today.

00:01:09.580 So yeah, we had you on last year to talk about this years-long rite of passage

00:01:15.640 that you did with your son to help him transition from boyhood to manhood.

00:01:20.960 And that's episode number 810, How to Turn a Boy into a Man.

00:01:23.620 And that's one of our most popular episodes ever, and we still get positive feedback on that episode.

00:01:28.100 So thank you.

00:01:29.240 I wanted to bring you back on because in that episode,

00:01:32.280 we briefly mentioned these things that you call the five shifts of manhood.

00:01:38.720 Every boy and every man, for that matter, needs to make in their lives

00:01:43.940 in order to develop into mature masculinity.

00:01:46.340 And these five shifts, they were inspired by some rules of manhood that the Franciscan monk,

00:01:53.060 Richard Rohr, we've had him on the podcast before.

00:01:55.700 He set these rules out in his book, Adam's Return.

00:01:59.060 But let's talk about your shifts.

00:02:00.160 What are your five shifts of manhood?

00:02:02.860 And how did you go about formulating what these shifts should be?

00:02:06.820 Yeah, Richard Rohr, his five rules for manhood were life is hard.

00:02:10.840 You are not that important.

00:02:12.160 Your life's not about you.

00:02:13.320 You're not in control.

00:02:14.820 You are going to die.

00:02:15.840 And I thought that these may actually be a touch discouraging to a 13-year-old to hear straight out.

00:02:23.100 And even though they're true, I felt like what young people need is a desire to know they're making progress.

00:02:30.480 So by framing these as shifts, they get a sense of journey or, yeah, they're moving forward in them.

00:02:37.300 So minor ease to difficulty, self to others, hold to a part, control to surrender, and the temporary to the eternal.

00:02:46.220 So the way I sort of put it is boys psychologically are interested in ease, primarily care about themselves, think they're the center of everything, try and control their lives to manipulate it how they want, and then think only about the moment.

00:03:00.360 But men embrace difficulty, they're just a small part of a great story, they surrender to something greater than themselves, and they live for the long-term rewards rather than immediate gratification.

00:03:13.700 So I try to set up a one-year journey to focus specifically on helping them make the sociological, spiritual, narrative sort of shifts that they can move forward into maturity.

00:03:25.060 Yeah, I like that idea that you need to help boys see progress.

00:03:29.920 I think that's one of the appeals of Boy Scouts when you're a young man.

00:03:33.060 And I think that's why boys like video games, because you're always gaining an XP, and it feels like you're making progress.

00:03:38.940 And you need the same thing in our moral progression as well, particularly for boys, young men.

00:03:44.060 Yeah, totally agree.

00:03:45.320 What I want to do in today's conversation is unpack some of the underlying principles of each one of these five shifts of manhood.

00:03:52.480 So let's talk about that first shift.

00:03:53.560 The first shift is from ease to difficulty.

00:03:57.400 What is it about a boy's life that's easy?

00:04:02.680 Well, you know, I think, guys, in today's world, I think in some ways things are probably actually harder.

00:04:10.180 So, yeah, there's a lot of anxiety.

00:04:12.380 This is the most anxiety-ridden generation.

00:04:15.240 There's a lot of societal confusion.

00:04:17.460 Kids don't know how to build a solid sense of self, social media.

00:04:20.920 So when I say ease, I'm not wanting to make it, you know, sort of dismiss some of the challenges, particularly our kids growing up now face.

00:04:28.400 But in many ways, as a whole, things have gotten easier.

00:04:31.700 Technology, physical safety, even the prioritizing of kids' mental health and well-being is not something that's always existed in our world today.

00:04:39.700 But I think I'm talking primarily, when I talk about this, about the internal sense of ease, which is a boy who refuses to grow up and move beyond himself.

00:04:51.280 So sort of a Peter Pan syndrome.

00:04:53.920 And I honestly think in many ways parents can do a lot of damage with this.

00:04:58.160 They can work to make their son's lives easy.

00:05:02.340 There's an amazing book, I know you're aware of it, called The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter.

00:05:07.120 He said in 1990, that's when they really began to track the rise of helicopter parenting.

00:05:12.940 And now they've actually moved on to what they call snowplow parenting, where parents basically violently remove any obstacles to their kid's success.

00:05:19.500 But one of the interesting things that came as a result of helicopter parenting is that in the next generation, anxiety amongst college students rose by 80% after helicopter parenting began.

00:05:30.920 So parents thought they were helping their kids by taking away their difficulties, taking away their challenges.

00:05:35.500 And all it did was actually make them feel insecure and ill-prepared to face the realities of life.

00:05:41.160 So yeah, I'm basically trying to help, particularly young men, young adolescents, realize that there's a sense of dignity, nobility, strength, internal honor, and confidence that comes from embracing hard things.

00:05:59.320 When a man steps into a room and realizes, I can handle this, or I can lean into this, or I can learn this, his internal sense of self will develop and grow.

00:06:09.520 And I think, honestly, a lot of the pressure that folks feel in our world today is that nobody's giving them that chance.

00:06:14.780 So you've got people in their 20s who literally aren't prepared for the challenges of adulthood life.

00:06:19.540 So I want young men to lean into accepting responsibility, developing a sense of competency, internal honor, confidence that enables them to make a contribution to the world.

00:06:31.100 So you're a pastor, and as a pastor, you're in a unique position to see people's lives both temporally, like how they're doing with their career.

00:06:39.520 Or the relationships, but also spiritually, how are they just doing?

00:06:42.620 Do they have a vitality to them?

00:06:44.340 Yeah.

00:06:44.560 And you get to see their struggles, like people go to you when they have problems.

00:06:48.660 How does this embrace of ease that you've been talking about, how have you seen this manifest in people in your congregation and people you interact with?

00:06:56.760 Well, in many ways, it stunts their development as people.

00:07:03.580 I think that we are put on this planet with a sense of purpose and calling, and there's something we're meant to live into.

00:07:10.600 And if they're not given the chance to develop and mature, this definitely holds them back.

00:07:16.100 So you think there's a verse in the Scriptures in James 1, and it's a verse that's actually very, very similar to Stoic philosophy.

00:07:23.120 It says, consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, because the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

00:07:30.160 Perseverance must finish its work, so you're maturing complete, not lacking in anything.

00:07:34.000 And sadly, I see a lot of young men who have an internal sense of lack.

00:07:40.040 They feel a sense of shame because they know they don't have the maturity they need to face what life is asking of them.

00:07:47.080 So yeah, I think there's a sense of stunted development, perhaps some foundational regrets, wishing that someone would either push them harder or give them more responsibility or give them a chance to even fail in areas that they're working out.

00:07:59.980 So yeah, if I could honestly say, it would be this, people are frustrated and sad.

00:08:05.380 There's a sense of sadness that they're not all they could be and a sense of frustration that people haven't pushed them to become that.

00:08:11.960 Yeah, so I work with teenage boys in my church's congregation.

00:08:15.480 I've coached flag football.

00:08:17.220 And one thing I've noticed with a lot of the boys that I mentor and lead, a lot of them just seem like anesthetized.

00:08:23.900 Like they're just so cocooned and it's like they lack this vitality that you'd hope to see in a teenage boy, like that thumos, right?

00:08:32.140 That spiritedness.

00:08:33.360 Yeah.

00:08:33.820 And it's so frustrating.

00:08:34.880 She's like, man, like this is the time of your life we should be excited about doing new things and excited about making goofy mistakes.

00:08:42.100 And they just kind of approach life just like, meh, and it's so frustrating.

00:08:48.000 And it's like, I feel, sometimes I feel helpless, like what can I do?

00:08:51.220 And I think it is a lot of this just, this life of ease.

00:08:53.960 They're just embraced in their phones and video games and they're missing out on really great parts of life.

00:09:02.820 Yeah, I think they need to be called into it.

00:09:05.000 I think that's a lot of people's frustration.

00:09:07.300 I mean, originally the idea of the rite of passage was that a young man is going to go through a series of changes, relational changes, psychological changes, mythological changes, physical changes.

00:09:17.900 And the goal was to give him a pathway to activate his energy and direct his energy so that he could make it through this gauntlet without falling apart and sort of keeping it together.

00:09:29.440 And I think that because for a lot of folks, you know, they have no other spiritual tradition that they're growing up in.

00:09:36.280 They have sort of shifting family dynamics.

00:09:38.500 A lot of them don't have relationships to call them into the life of adventure, to call them into this journey.

00:09:45.320 I don't think there's anything more exciting on earth than being invited by an older community of people to figure out how to grow into an adult, handle your stuff, become mature, accept responsibility.

00:09:57.780 And I think because we've lost that, the guys say, well, what's the point to get into what?

00:10:03.520 A meaningless job to people are getting married later and later.

00:10:07.200 So is the family it?

00:10:08.480 Is work it?

00:10:09.300 So that there doesn't seem like there's a vision of life being a glorious adventure or be an invitation into that.

00:10:15.480 I think that's sad.

00:10:16.900 And I think another thing that impacts this honestly is the distortion of where the value is found.

00:10:22.420 But so, for example, we live in a society that values TikTok stars or value celebrities.

00:10:27.540 And in many ways, it's actually a distortion.

00:10:30.400 You know, I'm here in New York City.

00:10:31.660 It's almost 9-11.

00:10:33.260 And I'm thinking about to what happened in society when 9-11 happened.

00:10:37.360 So they would shut down sports events and they would honor firefighters, first responders, and policemen as the true heroes.

00:10:45.860 So normally, the celebrities would have the stadium and everyone would cheer.

00:10:49.000 They literally stopped the games and honored men who sacrificed and served others.

00:10:55.400 And it was like there was a moment where our culture saw clearly the glory of what a man can do when he's at his best, living for something beyond himself.

00:11:05.640 And I get sad that it takes such major crises to sort of right-size our reality.

00:11:10.520 So, yeah, I would just encourage if you're a dad or if you're a youth worker listening to this or if you're an uncle or you're a mentor, invite young men out of their ease.

00:11:21.020 Invite them into something.

00:11:22.500 Call them out.

00:11:23.760 Tell them you see something in them.

00:11:25.480 Tell them there's a journey ahead and you'd like to take them on it.

00:11:28.720 I think a lot of guys are just waiting for that invitation out of ease into something that really matters.

00:11:34.520 So you talk about ways that you can start making that shift from ease to difficulty.

00:11:37.960 And one of them is facing instead of running away from conflict.

00:11:43.480 How do you see boys and misguided young men run away from conflict?

00:11:49.160 Well, part of the challenge they face is, you know, very, very few young men are in healthy environments where conflict and how to handle conflict is modeled for them.

00:12:00.920 So you've got kids who are growing up on devices.

00:12:03.340 You know, they say things on their phone that they would never say in real life to a person.

00:12:07.500 So they're hyper bold online and they're not given the opportunities to navigate this in real life.

00:12:13.360 I just heard a professor say, this is a professor who basically oversees freshman orientation.

00:12:19.500 He was asked, what's the most important thing you do preparing freshmen to succeed in college?

00:12:24.040 And his answer blew me away.

00:12:25.120 He said this, it is teaching students how to talk to one another face to face.

00:12:29.260 So he said almost all of his freshman orientation is just helping kids figure out how to communicate with one another in person.

00:12:38.480 So number one, I think we need to accept part of the responsibility that we haven't given them a lot of opportunities to grow in this.

00:12:46.460 Another thing I think is healthy is they've got to see it modeled.

00:12:49.820 They have to see conflict modeled either in the home, in the local community.

00:12:54.920 Maybe coaches can help facilitate this.

00:12:57.060 Because what we honestly end up doing is we stuff it down and there's no healthy expression of anger.

00:13:03.980 And when that anger is turned inward or the frustration or the conflict is turned inward,

00:13:08.020 A, either the relationship will suffer because you're not working through it,

00:13:11.820 or B, a kind of cynicism and bitterness will settle in the heart.

00:13:16.200 So I think, yeah, we've got to put people in positions where we model it so they realize it's not bad.

00:13:21.560 Conflict is not bad.

00:13:22.460 But I think you've got to have a larger vision of the value of relationships.

00:13:26.440 Like it's worth fighting through conflict to restore the relationships.

00:13:31.480 One of the books I love, it's actually, it's not a super new book.

00:13:35.580 It's a book called Radical Candor.

00:13:37.680 And in it, the author talks about trying to find that sweet spot.

00:13:41.020 She says, if you don't, if all you do is care about a person's feelings and you never confront them,

00:13:46.680 it's going to make it toxic.

00:13:47.900 If you're too obnoxious, like you just rage at them, that's not going to work.

00:13:52.460 But Radical Candor is that combination of care and challenge.

00:13:56.500 And I'll tell you a story that was really interesting to me.

00:13:59.320 Once I was dealing with one of my staff members and we're doing an end-of-year review.

00:14:04.320 And I wanted to share something awkward with him that I needed him to work on as one of our pastors.

00:14:09.380 And he said to me, hey, can you just pause for a sec?

00:14:11.640 I sense you want to say something really hard to me.

00:14:13.960 And I want you to know that I also sense that you're intimidated to say it.

00:14:18.380 And I want you to know something I have learned.

00:14:20.820 That refusing to share based on what you think other people will perceive you as is actually a form of selfishness.

00:14:28.280 You've got to love me enough to confront me more than your fear of me rejecting you.

00:14:33.100 And I remember, man, you know, there's a power dynamic.

00:14:36.360 I was this guy's boss.

00:14:37.600 And he had the courage to say that and was one of the most life-giving gifts.

00:14:42.280 Love cares more about the relationship with a person than a fear of conflict.

00:14:48.820 And so I think we've got to cultivate love, value relationships, model it, give them examples, and then give them space to fail.

00:14:54.900 Or, you know, if you don't know what you're doing in terms of dealing with conflict or having crucial conversations, you've got to give them space to work through it.

00:15:03.120 So practice, modeling, valuing it, leaning into it, accepting as a part of life, and really helping, I think, young men understand your life will be defined by the conflicts you have.

00:15:14.960 Learn to get good at them and handle them well.

00:15:16.800 And the more we do now, I think the better our society is going to be as well as their lives.

00:15:20.680 Well, related to embracing conflict, I've noticed that a lot of young, a lot of teenagers have a problem with this because they're learning how to do it.

00:15:29.220 But even a lot of older men have a problem with it because they haven't developed this capacity.

00:15:34.540 And that's just to be assertive.

00:15:36.360 Yes.

00:15:36.980 What can we do to help young men learn how to be assertive?

00:15:40.340 So it's, you know, assertiveness is standing up for basically being a self and setting boundaries and pushing back or saying no.

00:15:48.900 How can we help men be more assertive?

00:15:51.660 Well, I think what gets celebrated gets repeated.

00:15:55.160 I mean, that's a basic in management.

00:15:57.760 And so a lot of times I think where we go wrong is we shame the lack of activity, you know.

00:16:03.360 And Robert Bly, one of his most interesting insights was that boys experience shame in the presence of their fathers when they are passive.

00:16:12.140 There's just a sense that a dad puts out, which is why aren't you doing more?

00:16:16.560 And so, so often they retreat to their mother's sort of feminine energy because if a young man comes in, an adolescent comes in and he hasn't done enough, mom is primarily going to say, hey, that's okay.

00:16:27.220 I still love you.

00:16:28.100 The dad's going to express disappointment.

00:16:29.980 I think we've got to find a way to be a little more holistic.

00:16:33.420 I think we need a reward action when we see it.

00:16:36.520 I remember really, really, just a practical example.

00:16:39.400 My son was home and the stomach I really needed him to do.

00:16:42.540 And he was doing 20% of what I needed and 80% of it I needed, I wanted him to change.

00:16:48.300 And I was thinking about this, what gets rewarded gets repeated.

00:16:51.720 And I thought, okay, I can nag him about the 80% because he's not been proactive, he's not taking initiative, he's too old for me to nag him.

00:16:59.060 And I thought, or I could encourage and affirm the 20% he's doing right.

00:17:04.160 And so even as a little experiment in parenting, I just, I highlighted the thing he was doing well.

00:17:10.540 And I watched his whole face light up and then guess what happened?

00:17:15.100 That 20% went to about 70% without any nagging or feedback from me.

00:17:21.480 And so, yeah, it was just rewarding the activity that he was doing.

00:17:25.620 I also think one of the things we've got to do is help them deal with the fear of rejection, you know, and this starts really little.

00:17:33.060 I used to make my kids at Chick-fil-A or McDonald's go up and ask for refills.

00:17:38.180 And that doesn't sound like much, but when you're like five and you have to walk to the front and there's a line of people and sort of ask someone to do something that you don't know if they're going to do for you because you're a kid.

00:17:50.640 I think those little small things over the course of time can build sort of assertive reflexes where you're sort of training yourself to take action.

00:18:00.040 And then I think one of the things we can do is show them the rewards of assertiveness.

00:18:03.580 Passivity leads to limited options and leaving things to the last minute reduces your agency.

00:18:10.860 You're stuck with situations you don't want.

00:18:13.380 So I think, you know, showing them the beauty and power of expanding their horizons by being proactive seems to work.

00:18:20.240 My son, he's now 23.

00:18:22.360 I was teaching him this stuff a decade ago.

00:18:24.900 He absolutely has this in him now.

00:18:27.280 He had a few situations where he lost options due to passivity.

00:18:31.600 And I heard him talking to his sister who's 20.

00:18:36.000 And he said, one of the things he said was like, one of the best things I've learned is that if you are not proactive and assertive, you will limit your options and that you will not like your life.

00:18:43.980 And again, that was just small little things over the course of time to develop those instincts.

00:18:47.560 So I think, yeah, reward what you want to see.

00:18:49.400 And I think you'll see more of it.

00:18:51.280 I love that.

00:18:51.840 Giving your kids opportunities to practice the skill of assertiveness.

00:18:54.500 We've done that with our kids too.

00:18:55.700 Like at Chick-fil-A, you know, you can swap out the toy for an ice cream cone.

00:18:59.560 We made our kids when they were like four or five.

00:19:02.220 If you want the ice cream cone, you got to go ask the person.

00:19:05.580 And they were terrified, but now, you know, they did it.

00:19:08.280 And then as they've gotten older, we've had them expand that.

00:19:11.680 The things they have to ask for become harder, but they're doing it.

00:19:14.380 And little by little, it's going to add up to something, I hope.

00:19:18.000 Yeah, I agree.

00:19:18.520 So another way that you can shift into embracing difficulty in manhood is embracing responsibility.

00:19:26.220 But a lot of boys, a lot of young men in their 20s, they don't want to embrace responsibilities

00:19:31.200 because, let's be honest, responsibilities can be burdensome.

00:19:34.940 So how can we make the idea of embracing responsibility more attractive to young men?

00:19:40.120 Well, I think a huge part of it is showing them that it is a gift.

00:19:46.980 It is a gift as a man to be able to handle hard things.

00:19:50.540 It is a gift.

00:19:51.920 Again, I know that this has been brought up a lot, but it's confidence comes from competence.

00:19:57.780 And the more that they get confident in handling difficulty, the more they're going to start

00:20:03.460 feeling good about themselves.

00:20:05.100 Like, hey, man, I can help you with that.

00:20:07.680 They're going to see others' eyes light up when they show up and they can add value in

00:20:12.700 a room.

00:20:13.560 Again, there's that sense of internal dignity.

00:20:16.260 I have what it takes to face the moment.

00:20:19.640 And I think one huge motivator that we don't talk enough about is recognition of peers.

00:20:26.320 Peers, you know, we want honor, not just from the opposite sex or the people that we're

00:20:32.280 attracted to.

00:20:32.920 We want honor from our peers.

00:20:34.900 And so when your friends look at you with respect because you can do something or you

00:20:40.660 can handle something, I think that's a huge motivation.

00:20:43.120 So I would say you've got to give them a vision of the beauty of being able to handle hard

00:20:48.880 things.

00:20:50.160 And again, the more you affirm that, the more you recognize their growth and their effort.

00:20:55.840 But I think the more that you begin to see of those things, I did an apprenticeship as

00:21:01.140 a butcher from ages 16 to 20.

00:21:04.280 So I dropped out of high school, got a job at 14, dropped out of high school at 16.

00:21:09.060 And I know that feeling of, you know, a group of older men who could do everything in a butcher

00:21:14.960 shop and all I could do with a knife was cut my arm.

00:21:17.560 I mean, I just, it was terrible.

00:21:18.960 And then over the course of time, they gave me small skills and challenges and were patient

00:21:25.660 with me.

00:21:27.080 And my internal sense of, yeah, of dignity, of honor, of recognition of value just grew

00:21:33.480 over those four years.

00:21:35.460 And so again, I think it's giving them a vision of that, showing the rewards of that.

00:21:39.820 And then one of the best ways to help them embrace difficulty is to turn around and have

00:21:43.500 them teach people a little bit younger than them what they've learned.

00:21:46.880 And they will feel amazing seeing their growth, knowing they can impart what they've learned

00:21:53.200 to other people.

00:21:54.000 So I think you've got to create a cycle, like sort of like a multi-generational cycle of

00:21:58.600 the beauty of difficulty and then a desire for you to grow in that path so that you get

00:22:03.060 affirmation from peers, honor from those above you, and dignity as you invest in those who

00:22:07.900 are coming up.

00:22:08.880 I think that's great.

00:22:09.380 I think that's a really important point, particularly for men who are in mentor positions to young

00:22:13.760 men.

00:22:14.180 You need to affirm these young men.

00:22:15.800 When they embrace responsibility and they do the right thing, tell them they're doing

00:22:19.320 a great job.

00:22:20.580 And I mean, because if every guy's listening to this podcast, they probably had a moment

00:22:23.780 when there was a man and not just their dads, but it was like, it could be a coach, a teacher.

00:22:29.460 I think especially when it comes from another man that's not related to you, it just invigorates

00:22:36.360 you.

00:22:36.620 It makes you feel amazing and you want to do more of it.

00:22:39.460 So if you are a coach, a youth leader, a teacher, when you see a young man embrace responsibility

00:22:45.280 and do the right thing, tell them they're doing a great job because that's going to

00:22:48.440 do tons for them.

00:22:49.780 I just hired a guy on my team.

00:22:53.600 And in the interview process, I was the second interview we did, young guy, 25 years old.

00:22:59.380 He was living in the South and moving to New York City is embracing difficulty.

00:23:05.100 It's more expensive.

00:23:05.980 It's a faster pace of life, a lot less sort of life comforts.

00:23:09.680 And I said to him, this is a 25-year-old guy, why do you want this job?

00:23:15.100 And I'll never forget this.

00:23:16.720 I've been interviewing people in some way, shape or form for two decades.

00:23:20.040 And he said, I'm a young man and I want to load up responsibility on my back so I can

00:23:27.140 expand my capacity.

00:23:30.540 And when I got off the interview, I said to the person who was going to be his manager,

00:23:35.400 hire him.

00:23:36.800 It almost doesn't matter what that person does.

00:23:39.680 A young man in his mid-20s who's thinking about life like that, what a rare and refreshing

00:23:46.260 thing.

00:23:47.460 And yeah, I'm actually looking at that guy right now as I'm doing this recording and he

00:23:51.560 is killing it.

00:23:52.620 He's doing an amazing job.

00:23:54.180 He stands out in a crowd because he's chasing down responsibility.

00:23:58.040 My definition of masculinity is the joyful pursuit of sacrificial responsibility.

00:24:04.300 And I think that's when a man is most fully alive, when he is joyfully pursuing.

00:24:09.680 The good of others through sacrificing himself, you know, and obviously as a person of faith,

00:24:15.200 I think we see this best in the person of Jesus.

00:24:17.140 But that archetype of the man giving his best for others, I think it's compelling.

00:24:22.220 And I think it, I think our world's aching to see more men like that.

00:24:25.780 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:24:31.920 And now back to the show.

00:24:33.720 Okay.

00:24:34.000 So we talked about the first shift from ease to difficulty.

00:24:36.160 Let's move to the second shift and that's the shift from self to others.

00:24:40.400 What does this boyish self-centered approach look like?

00:24:43.560 Well, it basically, it just makes you live like you're the center of the universe.

00:24:49.520 Part of the challenge in modern life, Charles Taylor talks about living in an age of the

00:24:54.040 authentic self and the authentic self basically says, life exists as a blank canvas for me

00:25:01.520 and my own pursuits and fulfillment.

00:25:05.200 So there's no concept of the common good.

00:25:08.280 There's no concept of obligations to a larger society or to a previous generation or to,

00:25:15.040 you know, any sort of religious tradition.

00:25:16.820 It's just you doing you and the world exists to expand your rights.

00:25:21.540 And listen, there may be societies where individualism has been repressed.

00:25:26.300 There's been an unhealthy collectivism that's, you know, required the triumph of the individual.

00:25:31.260 But I don't think that's the world that most of us are living in.

00:25:34.020 So what it actually does, and part of this is how society forms us, you know, when you

00:25:39.960 have social media feeds, you only see who you want to see.

00:25:43.500 We're living in a world of preferences.

00:25:45.860 And so whenever we don't get our preferences met, we feel like it's a major crisis.

00:25:50.880 St. Augustine talked about the idea of incurvatus, which he called love turned in on itself,

00:25:56.620 which means love is an other-centered orientation, which means it requires another to find its

00:26:03.960 fulfillment and proper expression.

00:26:06.360 And he says the problem, in essence, of what sin is, is that all of our love is turned inward

00:26:11.600 towards ourselves.

00:26:13.340 And so as a result, we end up sort of inhibiting our growth, and we become people whose hearts

00:26:19.820 are closed off.

00:26:21.040 And this can make us bad neighbors.

00:26:23.580 It can make us bad partners in relationships.

00:26:26.260 It can make us bad employees.

00:26:28.820 And we just live in a little—C.S. Lewis wrote a famous essay on sexuality to a young man

00:26:34.280 he was writing to.

00:26:35.440 And he says, the self and selfishness is a prison we live in, but the challenge we face

00:26:40.680 is that we learn to love the prison of the self.

00:26:44.020 And so we think we're free in it, but we're actually trapped in it.

00:26:46.680 And the goal is always to come out of ourselves in love towards other people.

00:26:49.540 So, yeah, this is, I think, the hardest war because selfishness feels good.

00:26:56.860 Selfishness feels great at first.

00:27:00.600 And when you're young, you don't have that trajectory or history to see the damage selfishness

00:27:07.100 does.

00:27:08.100 So, yeah, I think we're relational beings.

00:27:10.520 We're created to love, and we thrive best getting beyond ourselves into love.

00:27:14.780 So, I think this is one of the most important shifts to move from a self-orientation to a

00:27:19.980 vision of caring for others.

00:27:21.560 And we talk about the point of adolescence and your early 20s is to develop a self.

00:27:27.740 But if you don't have others in your world, like, how can you develop a self, right?

00:27:33.600 I think you need other selves to know that you are a self.

00:27:36.480 Does that make sense?

00:27:37.260 Like, if it's just you—

00:27:38.260 Yeah, totally.

00:27:38.720 Yeah.

00:27:39.280 Yes.

00:27:39.940 You need little bits of feedback.

00:27:41.000 You need those little relational pings, you know, those belonging cues, all of those small

00:27:47.380 little things that just sort of help you orient your way through life.

00:27:51.580 And, you know, I think it's up until age two or whatever, an infant has no awareness that

00:27:55.180 the universe doesn't exist for himself.

00:27:56.720 But the older you get, the more you realize life is about others.

00:28:00.080 And so, yeah, again, I agree with you.

00:28:02.040 I think it's important.

00:28:03.020 You've got to figure out who you are before you try and change who you are.

00:28:06.340 But it's really—it's more advantageous to help you figure out who you are in relation

00:28:11.480 to others, not just on your own.

00:28:13.320 Yeah.

00:28:13.480 And I think a lot of the focus you see on the internet and YouTube videos is about self-development

00:28:19.220 and self-care.

00:28:20.600 But I think, you know, I understand what they're trying to do with it, but I think it's actually,

00:28:24.980 you know, it's counterproductive.

00:28:26.500 I think you'd be better off shifting your gaze outwards.

00:28:29.400 Yeah, and even the field of positive psychology, I mean, all the research is showing that happiness

00:28:36.760 is an indirect product, which means you never get it by trying to pursue it.

00:28:43.980 And a lot of the resilience research shows that the best thing you can actually do for

00:28:49.280 yourself is serve others.

00:28:52.080 And again, even if you call this kind of altruistic selfishness, it's better than just selfishness,

00:28:57.760 you know.

00:28:58.740 So I think even the sort of psychological research is showing us that we are more emotionally

00:29:03.720 healthy.

00:29:04.320 We are less anxious and depressed when we consider others and put their needs at least as equal

00:29:11.140 with our own.

00:29:11.820 So I think, you know, that's catching up to what religious traditions have often taught.

00:29:16.080 Well, how can we help young men make that shift from self to others when they are growing

00:29:21.620 up in an environment where it cocoons the self?

00:29:25.440 Any insights or ideas there?

00:29:27.760 Well, one thing I'd say is, you know, you got to get your son out of his room.

00:29:32.840 You got to get him out of his room.

00:29:34.760 He's got to engage around the home.

00:29:37.400 I think there's value in bringing your kids with you.

00:29:40.380 I think all men should be trying to serve their community, serve larger society.

00:29:44.100 And that's got to be a sort of a cause that's appropriate to you.

00:29:47.480 You know, that can be an international cause, helping alleviate poverty.

00:29:50.700 That could be something as small as, you know, caring for your local park or mentoring.

00:29:55.500 You should be doing something for others in your life.

00:29:58.060 And I think the biggest thing you can do is invite your son to come with you.

00:30:01.500 If you're a mentor, you're already doing this for him, but like invite him into things.

00:30:06.440 I think it's also important to expose them to trips and experiences that expand their heart.

00:30:12.060 You can't make this happen, but you can create environments of self-awareness and discovery.

00:30:18.240 You can sort of stack the environment where you know this is going to happen.

00:30:22.500 Like when I sent my son on a one-year gap year around the world and people were like,

00:30:27.420 why did you do it?

00:30:28.160 And I said, here's part of my honest goal.

00:30:30.480 I want to irreparably break his heart for the global poor so that he doesn't become a selfish

00:30:35.440 and entitled American college student.

00:30:38.160 Like I just want him to know there's a world out there that he has a contribution to make it

00:30:43.980 and that is in genuine need.

00:30:46.040 And I'm actually very, very grateful because he came back from that, the exposure to that.

00:30:51.540 He was in, you know, he worked with AIDS orphans.

00:30:54.660 He went down to Central America, worked with kids in poverty.

00:30:57.680 It just changed his heart.

00:30:59.000 And there's a kindness to him and a self-correcting awareness towards others.

00:31:04.700 So I think, you know, those kinds of experiences, they can start small and they can grow up.

00:31:10.400 And then give him relationships with people who are different than him, you know?

00:31:14.520 So he's got to have people he likes, but then you want to expose him to people who can challenge

00:31:18.320 his perceptions and challenge his understanding and sort of push him to acknowledge that there

00:31:22.860 are differences in the world.

00:31:24.420 And again, just the way life is these days, you're not going to have to go very far.

00:31:29.740 You just have to have an open sort of heart.

00:31:32.500 You know, I think, you know, one of Jesus' greatest teachings, probably his most famous,

00:31:35.520 one of his most famous ones, the parable of the Good Samaritan.

00:31:37.800 And the basic point he's wanting to make is your neighbor is whoever's in front of you

00:31:43.600 with a need.

00:31:45.660 And when you view like loving your neighbor as you love yourself is whoever's in front

00:31:49.360 of me with a need, that's an opportunity to go beyond myself and to repair the world,

00:31:54.980 even in a small way.

00:31:56.360 And, you know, most of us are not going to live dramatic lives, famous lives, big lives,

00:32:02.180 but we can live profoundly meaningful lives.

00:32:05.560 And most of the change we're going to be making is very small change.

00:32:09.460 But I think you reweave the tapestry of the broken world strand by strand.

00:32:15.220 And I think it's small lacks of other centered sacrificial care, exposing our kids to that,

00:32:20.040 teaching them to be proactive, to respond to that, to embrace the difficulty of that.

00:32:24.480 I think that's a gift that we can give the next generation.

00:32:27.160 And, you know, the shift from self to others, it requires you to make that shift from ease

00:32:31.860 to difficulty because shifting your focus to others can be really hard.

00:32:35.500 Like, I mean, one of the hard things about serving others and being for others is that

00:32:39.600 people can be really dang annoying.

00:32:42.360 Like they just can be really frustrating.

00:32:44.600 So how can we help a young man develop the patience that's needed to serve others?

00:32:49.520 I think one of the big things, you know, I think almost all traditions have some concept of

00:32:56.620 the golden rule and, you know, Christ said, be merciful as your father is merciful.

00:33:02.820 And in essence, he's like, you've been shown mercy.

00:33:04.860 You've been shown kindness.

00:33:06.420 Now you're obligated to show it to others.

00:33:08.760 So I think, yeah, we have to, we have to have a sense of our own annoyingness.

00:33:14.780 We got to, you know, we have to have a sense.

00:33:16.480 I said, wow, I at times can be very annoying and then therefore out of the sense of kindness

00:33:22.260 I've received from, you know, my family, from my community, my friends, I have to extend

00:33:27.380 that to other people.

00:33:29.180 I, again, I also think there's going to be moments in our lives where our kids are going

00:33:34.180 to watch us respond to how we're treated, you know?

00:33:38.480 And again, all of life is a chance to grow.

00:33:41.560 That's the beauty of life.

00:33:42.540 You're always in it.

00:33:43.520 So you don't need these big dramatic things is like all of it is fuel for change and is

00:33:48.600 modeling.

00:33:49.840 Someone can cut you off in the car.

00:33:51.660 Do you scream at them?

00:33:53.460 Do you presume the best?

00:33:54.640 Or when your kids are like, what a jerk, how could they do that?

00:33:56.740 Maybe you could say, man, I wonder if they're late and, you know, it's taking their kid

00:34:00.940 to school for the first day and they're really anxious about it.

00:34:03.800 You know, you want to humanize other people.

00:34:06.020 You want to help them get into other people's shoes.

00:34:08.300 You want to sort of help them empathize with what's happening.

00:34:11.340 So yeah, I think you've got to model it.

00:34:12.480 You've got to sort of teach through it.

00:34:13.900 You've got to have a sense of awareness of our own flaws.

00:34:17.360 And then one of the things that I think I try and do is I try and this is, this is just

00:34:21.400 classic how to influence and influence people.

00:34:23.840 Your kids, you know, don't like having their own annoyingness pointed out.

00:34:28.380 And if you do it harshly, it's probably going to be counterproductive.

00:34:30.660 So I would always try and point out flaws indirectly by using myself as the example, you know, like

00:34:37.620 modeling to your kids, like, Hey, you know what?

00:34:39.400 I just want to apologize.

00:34:40.260 I realized I was really angry with you and I sort of yelled at you a little bit.

00:34:44.000 That's got nothing to do with you.

00:34:45.460 That was me.

00:34:46.060 And I'm sorry to project that onto you.

00:34:47.560 When you model that in front of your kids, it's a tremendous, tremendous amount of power

00:34:53.280 and they begin to see, Oh wow, I can treat other people like that.

00:34:57.400 Or I can ask for forgiveness when I'm like that.

00:34:59.220 I think it just sets a relational tone that, that sets them up to live well.

00:35:02.340 Another thing I've tried to do with my kids to help them embrace this self to others in

00:35:07.460 a mature fashion.

00:35:08.320 I think an immature way that people want to make the shift from self to others is they

00:35:12.580 want to do good for others, but they want to be appreciated for it.

00:35:16.000 Yeah.

00:35:16.460 Yeah.

00:35:16.840 But then I, there's this essay by this writer from the late 19th century, early 20th century,

00:35:22.280 William George Jordan.

00:35:23.560 And the essay was called the courage to face ingratitude.

00:35:27.720 And I love that idea.

00:35:28.840 And I tell my kids that you have to have the courage to face ingratitude.

00:35:32.180 You're going to do good things in life.

00:35:34.280 And it could be at work.

00:35:35.720 It could be at church.

00:35:36.660 It could be just for a friend and you might not be told thank you for it.

00:35:42.340 It might be overlooked and it might not even be because the people are inconsiderate or rude.

00:35:47.000 Maybe there's got a lot going on in their life where they can't take time to recognize

00:35:51.700 what you've done for them, but you still got to do good anyway.

00:35:54.340 You have to have the courage to do good, even if no one's going to recognize that you've

00:35:58.220 done good.

00:35:59.560 That is, that is powerful.

00:36:00.920 There's this one little line Jesus has in the Sermon on the Mount that is probably one

00:36:06.240 of the things I struggle with the most.

00:36:08.760 He says, be kind as your father is kind or be merciful.

00:36:12.880 It says, because he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

00:36:18.660 And that is really, really hard because there is that, that's what you're addressing.

00:36:23.480 There's that inbuilt sense in us where they're like, well, they're, you know, that's a bad

00:36:27.720 person.

00:36:28.160 They deserve it or they're ungrateful.

00:36:29.900 So I'm going to withhold my gratitude.

00:36:31.500 It's like, no, that's what God is.

00:36:34.220 You know, he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

00:36:37.460 So you need to be too, if you really want to be like your heavenly father.

00:36:40.320 So I love that idea.

00:36:42.760 Otherwise, in some sense it is, it's an immature form.

00:36:45.580 We're just doing it for ourselves to get recognition or it's a, it's basically a payback

00:36:50.240 or a relational exchange.

00:36:52.120 Like if I do something good for you, you have to acknowledge this.

00:36:54.540 I love that idea of the courage of just taking it and learning to handle that as a man.

00:36:59.960 That's good.

00:37:00.520 Uh, so the next shift, the third shift is from whole to part.

00:37:04.320 What do you mean by that?

00:37:07.380 Well, you know, I'll just give an example.

00:37:09.180 I think the latest survey I saw was over 80% of kids when asked, what do you want to do

00:37:15.360 with your life?

00:37:16.800 Responded to either a YouTuber or social media influencer.

00:37:21.700 And that is such a shift from the traditional vocations that people pursued.

00:37:26.980 And here's kind of what they're saying.

00:37:28.240 I want to be the center of my thing.

00:37:31.640 And you've got to help people realize this is a very disorienting reality, but there's

00:37:36.500 about another 8 billion of us floating around right now.

00:37:40.160 And so we're a part of the human story, but we're not the center of it.

00:37:44.640 I mean, David Foster Wallace says, uh, I think it's in, this is water in that short little

00:37:49.700 book.

00:37:50.420 He says, we have to deny our own experience because there is not an experience that we've

00:37:55.960 ever had that we are not the center of.

00:37:58.240 And so he's like, in some sense, we're living in a reality distortion field because everything

00:38:02.720 we experienced, we're the center of it, but that doesn't match reality.

00:38:05.420 So a part of the goal of life is to help our sons move beyond themselves.

00:38:10.560 So you want two things.

00:38:12.020 You want sort of confidence that you are important and that you do matter, but you want humility

00:38:19.900 to acknowledge it's not all about you.

00:38:22.640 And again, so the goal is not to try and be the center of the story.

00:38:26.860 I think that that sort of narcissism and self-focus is unhealthy for, for a person.

00:38:31.700 It's going to distort them.

00:38:32.980 It's unhealthy for society when you've got men who are using the world to build themselves,

00:38:36.840 but you don't want sort of passive, weak men who lack confidence, which is, well, I'm

00:38:42.260 insignificant.

00:38:42.780 I don't matter.

00:38:43.820 I, or I'm nothing.

00:38:44.580 It's that, that's that combination of like, Hey, you matter.

00:38:47.980 You've got a role to play, but it's not all about you.

00:38:51.620 So, you know, take your place on the wall, build your thing, but you got to realize it's

00:38:56.780 not all about you.

00:38:58.200 And so I, yeah, again, I think part of that is exposing them to the larger world.

00:39:02.140 And I think, again, this, I think is connected to embracing difficulty.

00:39:07.820 Every man in his heart really has to be able to do this.

00:39:10.960 He's just got to hold his own.

00:39:13.000 A man needs to be able to hold his own.

00:39:15.960 And when a man can hold his own, when a man can pay his bills, win the love of a good woman,

00:39:21.840 you know, marry, stay married and enjoy marriage, raise kids.

00:39:26.360 Or if they're single, you know, like live, live with a sense of purpose and calling.

00:39:30.340 That's going to give you enough to not have to make everything about you.

00:39:35.580 And I think it'll give us that sense of, Hey, I can't do everything, but I am doing something

00:39:39.060 that matters.

00:39:39.560 And I'm a part of something bigger than myself.

00:39:41.200 And I have a part to play.

00:39:42.580 And let me just play my part well.

00:39:44.320 And I think there's actually something very liberating about that.

00:39:47.260 You know, the older I get, I'm in my mid forties, the older I get, the more I'm like, I don't

00:39:52.240 want to be the center, but that's, that's, that comes with age.

00:39:55.720 And so I think, yeah, helping him get that sense, play your part.

00:39:59.280 You do matter, but you're not the center.

00:40:01.900 Confidence and humility is, I think, very, very attractive and really what we need in

00:40:05.540 the world today.

00:40:06.480 Yeah.

00:40:06.500 So it sounds like this shift is helping young men figure out their role in life.

00:40:11.840 And I think oftentimes we think we, there's this idea and I think modernity that we have

00:40:18.580 to create our roles and maybe there's some roles that we do create for ourselves.

00:40:22.680 We can be constructors of ourselves, but I think one thing you're talking about is helping

00:40:27.360 young men find those roles that already exist and helping them embrace them and excel at them.

00:40:35.600 So that role could, it could be like, it could be parent, it could be fatherhood, it could

00:40:38.840 be being a husband.

00:40:39.480 It could be having a role in your community.

00:40:41.820 Like there are, there are roles there.

00:40:43.580 I think that's part of the problem with modern life is that we, there is like an existential

00:40:48.000 pressure to create ourselves into the thing that we want to be.

00:40:53.260 And as a consequence, you just feel just overwhelmed by it when, man, there's, there's tradition

00:40:59.020 you could fall back on that can help you, give you a sense of, a sense of self that's

00:41:04.820 already there for you.

00:41:05.620 And then you can change that role a bit based on your own uniqueness, right?

00:41:10.540 So you don't have to reinvent the wheel is what I'm saying.

00:41:13.220 Yes.

00:41:13.740 I think these are very challenging times, particularly for young men.

00:41:17.420 Listen, I'm a big, big believer in empowering women.

00:41:21.980 I don't think anything we're talking about is to the exclusion of women.

00:41:26.640 Obviously this is a conversation focused on young men, but these are particularly challenging

00:41:31.140 days for young men coming up.

00:41:33.780 So there's, you've got gender confusion, which is, you know, definitely too big for this podcast,

00:41:38.140 but it's like, we don't even have a sense of, of what it means to be a biological being

00:41:43.200 anymore.

00:41:43.540 That's like very, very confusing for people.

00:41:45.820 And then you live in a world where again, yeah, many of those traditional roles have disappeared.

00:41:49.880 And so many of the things that men were traditionally affirmed for have now sort of evaporated.

00:41:56.060 And so there's sort of a sense like, wow, what, what do I use my strength for?

00:42:00.280 What do I use my competitive spirit for?

00:42:02.680 Like a lot of those things have been weaponized against young men and in sometimes because,

00:42:06.940 you know, they've done damage with them.

00:42:08.400 But for those coming up who haven't even had a chance to do damage.

00:42:12.040 And so a lot of times it just sort of, it mutes them.

00:42:14.960 You said like young men coming up, they just lack of vitality.

00:42:18.940 And I think it's because they think if I really express who I think I am, will this get weaponized

00:42:24.800 against me and will this be worth it?

00:42:28.380 And so I think, you know, a huge part of what we're called to do as parents, mentors, leaders,

00:42:33.300 coaches, teachers is to help them figure out who they are, what their gifts are, and how

00:42:41.260 to get the next season of their life right.

00:42:43.400 There's an interesting word people use a lot.

00:42:46.340 It's a biblical word, but we use it in society a lot.

00:42:49.180 It's the word equip.

00:42:50.520 Like we want to equip young men.

00:42:52.520 We want to equip the next generation.

00:42:54.840 I've never really heard anybody teach a lot on equipping.

00:42:57.660 So I did it like a word study in Greek and to equip, which means to help them get ready

00:43:03.140 for their role, has four main ideas.

00:43:05.560 The first one is the idea of healing a broken bone.

00:43:07.960 So when someone had a broken bone in Greco-Roman culture, they go to the doctor and he would

00:43:12.680 reset the bone, put a cast around it, tie it to something.

00:43:16.300 So it's the resetting of what is broken.

00:43:18.780 So part of the way we help men fulfill their roles is honoring their journey.

00:43:22.480 Let's go back through your story.

00:43:24.160 Even your childhood, where are the areas that you feel like there could be brokenness or

00:43:27.960 pain?

00:43:28.860 We want to address those wounds.

00:43:30.380 We want to address those unmet longings, those places.

00:43:33.100 I think that's an important part of what it means to get them ready.

00:43:35.240 Then the idea of preparing a ship for a long journey.

00:43:38.340 This is the image of a ship being loaded up with cargo.

00:43:42.360 So part of what it means to help them get ready is to put into young men's lives the tools

00:43:46.740 they're going to need when they're in the ocean of adulthood.

00:43:50.320 Restoring something to its original condition.

00:43:52.220 This is the idea of renovating something that's been lost.

00:43:55.620 And I think that's perhaps what you're touching on.

00:43:57.540 You know, there are a lot of really healthy values that have been lost in our modern society.

00:44:03.380 Helping young men find those and live in those.

00:44:07.280 And then lastly, training a soldier to fire.

00:44:09.380 Each young man is going to have character flaws, proclivities that need to be addressed.

00:44:15.360 And sometimes it can be a lack of skills.

00:44:17.220 So I think our goal is to sort of put our sons or young men in front of us and say, what issues

00:44:23.380 of brokenness can I help them with?

00:44:25.320 What are they going to need when they go into the future based on who they are?

00:44:28.360 What needs to be restored that they've lost because of our culture or their own mistakes?

00:44:32.220 And how do we teach them to fight?

00:44:35.020 How do we train them to fight well?

00:44:36.580 Which is the idea of a soldier learning how to prepare.

00:44:38.640 How do we get them ready for the conflicts and challenges of life?

00:44:41.440 I think if we were just asked those four things, put our son's name in the middle of a piece

00:44:44.900 of paper and then ask whether they need healing, whether they need preparation, what's been

00:44:48.840 lost, and then what they need to fight well, I think we'd go a long way in helping them

00:44:52.940 get ready for life.

00:44:54.180 Oh, I love that idea of that broad definition of equip.

00:44:57.420 Let's talk about the next shift, the fourth shift, which is the shift from control to surrender.

00:45:01.900 So how does control manifest into boys or an immature man's life?

00:45:08.040 Well, yeah, control, it's a fear-based insistence on trying to manage the outcomes towards your

00:45:12.600 liking.

00:45:13.620 And so it's just like, I've got to get what I want.

00:45:16.980 And we sort of joke about control freaks and that sort of thing.

00:45:21.800 This would be the opposite of passivity.

00:45:24.300 Ultimately, we've got to come to terms with the fact that 95% of our arrival on planet Earth

00:45:31.220 had nothing to do with us.

00:45:33.580 You didn't choose the time of history you'd be born in.

00:45:36.420 You didn't choose the color of your skin.

00:45:38.440 You didn't choose when you would be here.

00:45:41.200 You didn't choose your family.

00:45:43.440 These are all things that were done for us.

00:45:47.540 And these are all things that happened to us.

00:45:51.240 And you've got to have a sense.

00:45:53.420 It doesn't all depend on me.

00:45:56.400 And this is surrendering to something greater than yourself.

00:46:00.000 I'm thinking a little bit about, you know, sort of the beauty of the recovery communities.

00:46:04.600 I think in some ways, you know, they are teaching the rest of the world how to really be vulnerable

00:46:09.460 and how to love.

00:46:10.960 But in a recovery community, you know, say AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, it's like I gave up

00:46:17.540 trying to be in charge of my life.

00:46:19.720 Like I had to surrender to something greater than myself.

00:46:22.580 So part of the problem of sort of having a controlling spirit is you don't trust other

00:46:29.580 people.

00:46:30.080 Your heart dies as you close it off.

00:46:32.320 You refuse to empower others.

00:46:34.140 So you will often stunt the gifts, nurture, and development of others around you.

00:46:39.620 It's very, very hard to control everything in love because love requires empowerment.

00:46:44.520 Controlling people end up terrified and alone or only surrounded by people who fear them.

00:46:50.380 And so, you know, from the Christian tradition, you know, the big thing that people would talk

00:46:54.880 about is surrendering to love.

00:46:56.900 Like that's the great tradition, surrendering to love.

00:46:59.620 So St. Ignatius of Leola has a quote, he says, sin is an unwillingness to trust that what

00:47:04.920 God wants is our deepest happiness.

00:47:07.480 And so most of our mechanisms, we feel like we're orphans on the planet and we have to make

00:47:12.380 it all happen for ourselves.

00:47:14.160 And that can distort us.

00:47:15.600 But the relief of saying, I'm going to entrust myself to something greater.

00:47:19.240 I'm going to surrender myself to a purpose beyond myself, live into that, that produces a kind

00:47:25.260 of openness and humility that I think our world desperately needs.

00:47:31.000 And again, this really does take trust because there's many, many times where we think, well,

00:47:36.060 if I just control this, it's going to give me the result I want.

00:47:38.980 But often it actually does the opposite.

00:47:40.740 So surrendering to love, I think is a huge part of this.

00:47:42.940 And I think that's a hard one because for boys and for young men, even immature men,

00:47:49.140 they have, we have an idea that to be masculine, to be manly is to be in control all the time.

00:47:55.940 And so when you tell a guy, well, you actually got to surrender.

00:47:58.400 It's like, wow, that's passive.

00:48:00.060 That's unmanly.

00:48:01.000 But as you're saying, what you're saying is that as you surrender yourself to something

00:48:04.040 bigger, that surrendering process can actually embolden you and make you more expansive and

00:48:09.340 more powerful, we'll say.

00:48:11.080 So yeah, the ultimate, I mean, again, from my faith tradition, the ultimate example is

00:48:16.580 Christ in Gethsemane.

00:48:19.040 You know, here is, you know, the greatest man who's ever lived a life of, of, of love.

00:48:24.320 And he's on his knees, sweating drops of blood saying, father, you know, not my will, but

00:48:30.940 you'll be done.

00:48:32.300 And it actually takes incredible courage to surrender.

00:48:37.640 The strongest thing you can do is acknowledge that you're not God, you know, like I'm not

00:48:45.040 in charge of everything.

00:48:46.380 So I think I see it, I think more like you, which is it takes a kind of fearlessness.

00:48:52.660 It takes a security to surrender.

00:48:54.880 But we'll say this, you've got to be able to surrender to something.

00:48:58.540 Like if you don't have a larger sense that you're in a larger story or there's sort of

00:49:04.120 an ultimate meaning or cause you're living into, it can be very, very hard to surrender

00:49:08.100 because if you're like, I'm here for no reason, there's no purpose, I make up the rules, that

00:49:13.620 is going to produce a kind of, I think, unhealthy aggression and domination that can damage the

00:49:19.640 world.

00:49:19.880 So yeah, people have to go on their own journey and figure out what it is.

00:49:23.100 My tradition is learning to surrender to love, but believing that as you do so, it takes

00:49:26.780 courage to let go.

00:49:27.980 And in so doing, we actually get given back more than we could have accumulated for ourselves.

00:49:33.040 Yeah.

00:49:33.060 You see this idea of surrender in a lot of like movies, right?

00:49:36.420 There's always that moment where the hero of the story has to surrender.

00:49:40.700 He has to make this leap of faith.

00:49:42.260 I'm thinking like, I mean, here's a dumb one, like Joe versus the volcano.

00:49:44.960 Remember that Tom Hanks movie where he goes to the top of the volcano and he has to decide,

00:49:49.100 I'm just going to jump in and he jumps in and then he spits out.

00:49:52.900 But you see like other like Gladiator, The Matrix, you know, a lot of these movies where

00:49:57.520 in order for the hero to grow, he has to just surrender to the possibility of failure, I

00:50:05.620 guess.

00:50:06.220 And, but in so doing, he opens up the possibility of success.

00:50:10.260 Yeah.

00:50:10.740 I mean, totally agree.

00:50:11.520 I mean, in essence, the archetype of every villain is the villain is trying to control

00:50:16.160 everything.

00:50:17.100 Right.

00:50:17.200 Right.

00:50:17.700 And the hero is the one who was surrendering out of love for others.

00:50:22.280 Yeah.

00:50:22.660 And so there you've definitely, like that archetypal sense of like go through any movie, the villain

00:50:27.780 is the one trying to control everybody out of selfish motives.

00:50:32.140 And the hero is the one who will give himself out of love for something greater than himself.

00:50:36.520 It's, it's, it's, it's there.

00:50:38.060 It is something core to who we are as men that I think we need to mature into.

00:50:43.380 All right.

00:50:43.820 So that's the fourth shift from control to surrender.

00:50:46.020 The final shift is from temporary to eternal.

00:50:49.580 So what does a boyish temporary view look like?

00:50:53.440 Well, I think, you know, it looks like now, it looks like the immediate, it looks like

00:51:00.660 instant gratification.

00:51:02.840 It looks like I don't care about the future because there's no such thing as the future.

00:51:07.580 And all I want is this now.

00:51:09.840 And again, what, what can be so sad about this is we limit our options.

00:51:14.860 Every choice we make now is either reducing our horizon of possibility or increasing it.

00:51:20.360 And a lot of times we make short-term decisions and short-term thinking that sort of hold us back.

00:51:25.620 And so, yeah, the, the big goal is to try and get them to think long-term, big picture outside of this season.

00:51:34.640 When I was with my own son, I would always, whenever I sensed something that was shifting in his heart, maybe he was shifting, you know, sort of psychologically, developmentally, or even in terms of his interest in his hobbies.

00:51:48.140 He's, I'd always try and process that with him, which is like, Hey, you know, you used to love robotics when you were 12, but now that you're 16, why don't you like him anymore?

00:51:59.660 And he'd say, well, I think I just outgrew it.

00:52:02.360 And I want to say, enjoy your moment, but I want you to know when you're 25, you'll probably outgrow what you love now.

00:52:08.300 So hold it loosely.

00:52:10.000 Think long-term, you know, think big picture, teach him about the compound effect, about how our daily decisions set us up for something longer.

00:52:18.140 So, yeah, again, we can so overload the present that it crushes us if we don't have the relief valve of later to work out our expectations.

00:52:30.560 And ultimately, I think our goal is to help young men make wise decisions based on greater rewards later on, rather than just immediate gratification.

00:52:37.360 This is hard.

00:52:38.420 This is an instantaneous generation.

00:52:41.760 And again, I think this starts when kids are very, very little.

00:52:46.380 We have to teach them, you know, self-restraint.

00:52:49.620 We have to teach them the ability to think big term.

00:52:52.640 A lot of parents, and look, I understand it is so hard to parent in the modern world, but, you know, your kid cries, so you give him an iPad.

00:53:00.520 And then bingo, he's trained to get what he wants immediately.

00:53:04.040 And I think it takes real sacrificial love to sort of say no to the moment, explain why, give them encouragement along the way, and help them see the rewards of long-term thinking.

00:53:14.660 This is very, very hard.

00:53:16.700 Almost everything in our culture is at war to make sure that this doesn't happen.

00:53:21.260 So this requires a real intentionality.

00:53:23.980 So you mentioned some things that you can do to help your son, or even it could be your daughter too, this applies to them as well, to make that shift from temporary to eternal.

00:53:31.360 And for you, you know, for you, because you're coming from a Christian background, eternal is you're thinking about not just earthly life, but the life to come.

00:53:37.380 But, I mean, you even talk about in some of the stuff you've written about helping your children think long-term when it comes to finances, when it comes to your time management, when it comes to your relationships.

00:53:51.000 So what are some practical things that you've done with your children to help them make that shift when they're thinking about, instead of thinking about just now, when it comes to money, time, and relationships, they're thinking about 10 years from now, 20.

00:54:02.240 Even, like, it could be even the next generation.

00:54:05.780 Yeah, I mean, I, we did that for both of my kids.

00:54:09.220 I opened a Roth IRA as soon as I could.

00:54:11.900 So I took them through the compound interest thing, you know, showed them the chart.

00:54:15.820 And so I would say to them, do you want this money now or do you want to save it?

00:54:18.860 If you have it now, you can spend it whatever you want, but I want you to know that this is going to cost you four or five times as much, or would you like this when you're older?

00:54:26.680 You know, so I think one of the things that we forget is almost every moral system that matters is actually motivated by rewards.

00:54:36.260 We forget this.

00:54:37.460 You've got to hold rewards in front of them to show them that it's worth not giving in to the short term.

00:54:43.800 So what I was trying to do with that retirement chart, you know, if you put $6,000 away a year now, you'll retire as a millionaire and it will be effortless for you.

00:54:54.400 Like, but, but all you will have done is stewarded time and money and decisions right.

00:55:00.080 And then I sort of try to expand that out.

00:55:02.200 We're big, big believers in life in, you know, just the law of the farm, law of sowing and reaping.

00:55:06.980 And you reap what you sow, don't expect the harvest if you haven't sown anything, man.

00:55:10.840 I got that in my kids' heads so many times, law of sowing and reaping.

00:55:15.720 I wanted them to realize you will be rewarded if you make wise decisions now, and you will experience regret if you don't make the right decisions now.

00:55:24.100 Now, listen, you can redeem that regret, but why not start by doing it right?

00:55:28.400 So yeah, we would talk about the law of the farm all the time.

00:55:31.360 Even went out to a farm, walked my son around, sort of showed him,

00:55:34.700 can you imagine expecting a harvest here when you've done nothing?

00:55:37.640 That one definitely stuck with him.

00:55:40.000 I did, you know, I took my son to a graveyard, helped him to see the sort of the shortness of life,

00:55:46.060 made him walk around, you know, the whole watch your dash exercise.

00:55:49.440 It was interesting.

00:55:50.260 My son, a couple of weeks ago, I said, where are you going?

00:55:52.880 He said, I'm going out into the woods.

00:55:54.860 This is in upstate New York.

00:55:56.280 And I said, what are you doing?

00:55:57.260 And he said, I'm going to contemplate what I want to do with my dash.

00:56:01.060 And so that's him.

00:56:02.100 That was, you know, it was probably almost 10 years since I'd done that with him.

00:56:06.260 And here he is still in the woods going, man, I want to live my life well.

00:56:10.340 I want to make that out.

00:56:12.100 So I think, yeah, getting that eternal outlook, I think is important.

00:56:15.600 Yeah, that dash exercise was really powerful.

00:56:17.860 We mentioned that in the last episode and that stuck out to a lot of people.

00:56:20.820 And so that's, you go to a graveyard and you look at a tombstone or a headstone

00:56:24.700 and there's the date that the person was born, the dash, and the date that the person died.

00:56:30.860 And you got to ask, what am I going to do with my dash?

00:56:33.440 What's going to be in that dash?

00:56:35.140 I think that's really, really powerful.

00:56:37.060 Something that we've done, we try to do with our kids is talk about our family history with them.

00:56:42.220 Yeah, yeah.

00:56:43.040 And talk to them and show how decisions that your grandparents made, your great-grandparents,

00:56:48.600 your great-great-grandparents made, led to you.

00:56:52.080 And you can have that same effect on your children, your children's children.

00:56:57.520 Like helping them see that they're big, like going back to, you know, from whole to part,

00:57:00.980 helping them see that they are part of a story, that the decisions they make now

00:57:04.800 aren't just going to affect themselves, it could affect generations to come.

00:57:09.280 Yeah, I think that's hugely important.

00:57:10.880 Well, I mean, most kids don't know their grandparents' names.

00:57:13.680 We can't even go back two generations, three generations and make sense of our story.

00:57:19.060 In the primal path, one of the big things I have fathers do with their sons,

00:57:23.480 it's a little thing I call putting your son's story in context,

00:57:27.220 which is you need to take him on a tour of what made you, you, what shaped you,

00:57:31.360 who shaped you, where you were shaped.

00:57:33.580 Sometimes that's as simple as maybe you grew up in the same home

00:57:36.280 and you want to take him to four or five really meaningful moments.

00:57:38.400 For me, I took both my kids back to Australia where I grew up.

00:57:42.560 And you just, what you're wanting them to see is the universe did not,

00:57:46.820 the big bang did not happen at your conception.

00:57:50.440 You know, like you are a part of a longer story

00:57:53.600 and you will set up the coming generations with the decisions that you make.

00:57:58.380 And I think we've got to hold that in front of them.

00:58:00.620 There was a famous Protestant theologian from a couple of decades ago

00:58:04.820 named Jonathan Edwards and he had this phrase, he would say,

00:58:07.300 burn eternity on my eyelids, place eternity on my eyes.

00:58:10.860 And in essence, what he was saying, like, help me think big picture long term

00:58:15.080 because there's a conspiracy of the immediate that often robs us

00:58:19.260 of what it is to come.

00:58:20.480 Just on a practical level, I was doing some financial planning

00:58:24.000 and I saw the shocking statistic, 50% of Americans who retire

00:58:28.880 have zero money for retirement, 50%.

00:58:32.620 3% have more than $500,000, say, for their retirement.

00:58:37.980 And I don't judge these people.

00:58:40.100 I feel sorry for them and have compassion for them

00:58:43.120 because nobody either gave them the tools or the pathway or whatever

00:58:47.120 to consider their future and now they're in it.

00:58:49.680 And I think sort of like gracious warnings, holding eternity before our kids' eyes,

00:58:54.740 reminding them of the largest story, that's a very, very rare gift

00:58:58.340 we will give our kids.

00:58:59.920 But doing it will set them up.

00:59:01.800 I think not just for a good life, but for a good eternity.

00:59:05.200 So you developed a program, you mentioned it, it's called The Primal Path

00:59:07.920 that helps dads lead their sons through the shifts we've been talking about today.

00:59:11.840 And it's sort of based off of the rite of passage you took your son through.

00:59:15.660 Tell us more about that and where can people go to learn more about it?

00:59:18.800 Yeah, I mean, a rite of passage, James Hollis, who's a Jungian psychologist,

00:59:23.260 says the point of a rite of passage is to hold a person together

00:59:25.660 during a stage of transition.

00:59:27.860 So, you know, around 13 or so puberty, these energies will possess a young man

00:59:34.020 and he will feel like he's becoming somebody else.

00:59:36.840 And so the goal is to sort of, yeah, create a pathway

00:59:39.660 to initiate them into a healthy adulthood.

00:59:43.380 And almost every society in history has had one of these paths,

00:59:46.800 almost like a code in human culture.

00:59:50.040 Tribes in different times of history, in different parts of the world

00:59:52.960 who never communicated together, realized there's a pathway we need to get right.

00:59:56.900 So I basically, I really didn't invent anything.

00:59:59.780 I just read a bunch of books and then try to create or recover that rite of passage.

01:00:05.000 So it's basically got a series of stages.

01:00:07.060 The first one is, you know, it's an invitation to a journey into adulthood

01:00:10.640 from an older formed community of men.

01:00:13.700 So a father plays a very, very central and important role,

01:00:16.940 but it really is a communal experience, being initiated into a community of men.

01:00:21.140 Then you've got to have the death of childhood thinking and relating.

01:00:24.600 You've got to learn to put your childhood away behind you,

01:00:27.580 get rid of that sort of naivete and embrace reality.

01:00:30.700 Third, you go through a season of transformation and training.

01:00:33.580 In ancient societies, it was around three things.

01:00:35.820 Number one, it was the faith tradition, who are our gods or our moral principles.

01:00:40.480 Number two, what skills are needed to contribute to my community.

01:00:45.040 And number three, what is respect in our community,

01:00:49.440 which means how do I, you know, play my part in the good of the community.

01:00:52.920 Then they were sent out on what they called the ordeal.

01:00:56.300 And this was so a young man realized that he had what it takes,

01:00:59.220 that he was tested with the things that he had learned.

01:01:02.020 And then last, he was brought back and blessed by a community of men.

01:01:04.440 So I basically just took a bunch of that stuff and put it into a program called the Primal Path.

01:01:10.700 And you can do a one-year journey based on the five shifts.

01:01:13.940 That's something that we sort of rolled out lately with the five shifts we've talked about.

01:01:18.280 15-minute little daily connection points.

01:01:21.220 We do a thing called man school every week, which is giving him a practical skill to be able to do.

01:01:27.220 And then these things we call difficulty days, where when you get to the end of one of the units,

01:01:31.680 you have to sort of earn a patch.

01:01:32.980 We use sort of like faux military patches, but sort of like the Boy Scouts.

01:01:37.160 It's just the sense.

01:01:38.000 I'm making progress.

01:01:39.340 I'm moving ahead.

01:01:41.080 So, yeah.

01:01:41.520 And so far, honestly, it's actually been kind of, it's kind of been remarkable.

01:01:46.100 We've now had thousands of dads go through this.

01:01:48.160 And I get stories daily and they just make me weep.

01:01:51.880 I got one yesterday and I literally put my head on the table and just wept.

01:01:56.220 Because it was a dad break in generational cycles.

01:01:59.600 You know, this is a dad who felt like no one did this for me.

01:02:03.040 I felt like I was winging manhood.

01:02:05.580 I was terrified of damaging my kids.

01:02:08.060 And now a year into this thing, I've got a relationship with my son I never had.

01:02:12.700 I can see healthy masculinity growing in him and all of the flaws from my childhood.

01:02:18.640 He doesn't have any of those traits.

01:02:19.800 And when you just see that sort of change, it's really life-giving.

01:02:24.080 So, we live at a time of history where in many senses, most of the bad things happening

01:02:28.940 in the world are because of badly formed men.

01:02:32.040 Most of the damage in our world is men whose character is not set, who are living out of

01:02:37.000 childhood wounds.

01:02:37.860 And I just wanted to create a path to do it.

01:02:39.320 So, you can go to primalpath.co, primalpath.co if you want to read more about that.

01:02:45.500 I also just developed like the five biggest principles on this, which is just like a little

01:02:51.180 five-day email course.

01:02:53.460 And so, if you sign up for that, you can jump on that.

01:02:56.340 And then something really interesting, so many dads were going through the primal path and

01:03:00.400 they're like, I need this for me.

01:03:02.560 Like, what about me?

01:03:04.200 So, we actually started something for men called Forming Men.

01:03:07.540 You can go to formingmen.com and that is basically the primal path for men.

01:03:12.780 And so, it's helping them go through, in some sense, an adult rite of passage to deal with

01:03:17.940 their brokenness and become the men they feel called to be.

01:03:20.240 So, yeah, just trying to help repair some of the damage that's happened in the world.

01:03:25.520 Again, I care about women.

01:03:27.680 I have a very, very high view of women and their role in the world and all that.

01:03:31.380 But there does seem to be a huge deficit in spaces for male conversation and formation.

01:03:36.980 So, hopefully, these are life-giving places that help men on their journey.

01:03:41.060 Fantastic.

01:03:41.140 Well, John Tyson, thanks for your time.

01:03:42.420 It's been a pleasure.

01:03:43.780 Thank you so much, mate.

01:03:44.800 Always good.

01:03:46.960 My guest here is John Tyson.

01:03:48.220 He is the creator of The Primal Path.

01:03:49.980 You can find more information about that at primalpath.co.

01:03:53.200 Also, check out his book, The Intentional Father, A Practical Guide to Raise Sons of Courage

01:03:56.820 and Character.

01:03:57.340 It's available on amazon.com.

01:03:58.880 Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash shifts, where you find links to resources

01:04:03.180 and we delve deeper into this topic.

01:04:11.820 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.

01:04:14.760 Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com, where you find our podcast archives,

01:04:18.700 as well as thousands of articles that we've written over the years about pretty much anything

01:04:21.820 you'd think of.

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01:04:25.900 reviewing up a podcast or Spotify.

01:04:27.380 It helps that a lot.

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01:04:36.240 And until next time, it's Brett McKay reminding you to listen to AOM Podcast, but put what you've

01:04:40.800 heard into action.

01:04:55.900 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

The 5 Shifts of Manhood

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