Alright y'all we have a powerful conversation today. I have not done an interview for the massacre podcast in a while. And this one is so very important. So this is my dear friend Connor Beaton. He has a book called men's work, he has a company called man talks. And this is a powerful book. I'll show it to you if you're here with video. If not, it's called men's work.
And it's about a practical guide to face your darkness and self sabotage, and find freedom and go to man talks.com/book, to grab a copy of it wherever you are in the world. This book is an extremely important book, no matter where you are, if you're a man or a woman, transgender LGBTQIA plus that whatever relationship you're in, this book is so very powerful. And also, as we get into the conversation, today, we are having a relatively binary conversation about masculine or
feminine men and women. But just place yourself in this because we know that masculine and feminine of course, are energies, right? So men can have both and women can have both and whether you're gay, straight, lesbian, transgender, questioning, excetera whatever your pronouns might be, just know that there's something in this for you. And while we're talking in a more binary sense, this also applies to everybody. So try to find yourself in it
wherever you are. And also, if you know any guys in your life, please send them this podcast. Any further ado, here's Connor. Otter, welcome to the podcast. This is our first interview on this podcast in a while I've done so many clips of me coaching and stuff, but you released this book, I'm gonna show it right now before even this book men's work. Okay. Um, so this is I don't endorse books. I don't people ask me all the time to endorse books, this is a must read for anybody.
LGBTQIA plus, if you identify as a he, she they them, z, if you have a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a husband, a wife, if you're in a relationship with someone who has any masculine energy, or certainly a male, this is a must read, I think for everybody and Bravo, bravo, bravo, get run, get a copy now. And I'm plugging that at the beginning before you ask any questions, because that frickin good. So congratulations, and welcome to the podcast. And also guys, look
at this, I don't do this. I don't even read books, but I just I have so many. Every page is like turned over or highlighted or whatever. We've been going for a minute. I mean, like Connor say anything Connor, welcome. Congratulations, do this book is amazing. Thanks, brother. I appreciate you having me. I appreciate that. The warm the warm welcome. And the warm endorsement as well. It means a lot.
Well, it's literally like from my heart like it's it this is this is this is I'm so excited because I work with so many women and a few good guys, you know, but mostly women on trauma and stuff like this, and what you've released here with men's work. And just so you know that the title of the book is men's work, A Practical Guide to face your darkness and self sabotage
and find freedom. But you're I think pious, you're picking up way beyond David data, and any of the anything leftover from the game gone anything like just just a whole, you just you just you just you just innovate, like, that's like Walkman You just dropped the iPod, like, on this, like Robert Glover who endorsed the book, you know, like, you just took everything to a whole new level. And I wasn't sure what to expect when I got this book from you,
because I love you. But I wasn't expecting a paradigm shift in men's work. So before we get started, I like to just ask this question, what are your assumptions about the model and frame with which you coach men? Like what are some of the core assumptions or premises of how you approach things, because there's such great stuff in here. But I'd like to get folks, especially for the women who are listening. And understanding because we think about men's
work. You know, it's like we're going out in the wilderness and beating our chests and stuff. Like, I think that's what comes to mind for a lot of people. And what are some of your core assumptions for this book? And also how you look at working with guys? Yeah, well, I just want to say first, like, again, thank you. And it is a book that I think will shed a lot of lights on a lot of people who have already bought the book or women who are wanting to better understand
men. And interestingly enough, my publishing house is sounds true. Yep. And I was interviewed by the founder of Tammy. And I was like, she started off the podcast by saying two things. Number one, you're an incredibly gifted writer, which meant a lot to me. And why number two, she said, I really learned a lot from this book. And that's saying a lot. Because she's like, you know, I can help she is but she's, you know, in her 50s or 60s, she does not blow
smoke. No. And she's been, you know, she's a woman, and she's been married to old and for, you know, 2030 years. And so she was like, I really was surprised at how much I learned about my own Maddie about masculinity about men in the world. And so I think some of the frameworks that I bring to the table is a couple
of things. One is the framework that most men have been taught, or most of us as men have grown up in an environment that has told us that their strength suppression, that if you as a man can stuff shit down, can repress things can avoid things strong enough and long enough, that that will reinforce your masculinity somehow, or your maleness somehow. And so that that's part of the assumption.
Now, I think that how we culturally have gone about addressing that, I think we have a marketing problem with it. Because most of the time, when you see it, there's like, this is a real PR problem with how we've tried to go about working with men and bringing men into this healing conversation. Because most of the conversations that are out there, like just be more vulnerable. And that is, that's a PR problem. You know, that's how we would speak to women
within our culture. And it's just not going to land with men. And instead of getting upset that men should just, you know, shift and change and adapt and let that sink in, we actually need to need to meet them where they are. So that's one of the assumptions that there's strength in suppression. The second thing is, the framework is that men want to succeed in their relationship, they want to
succeed in their growth. And that there's been some research on this, that a man finds a deep sense of meaning and purpose in self development. It's actually one of the highest markers for a
man's health and happiness. So if you look at men who are successful, right, whether they're financially successful or successful in their relationship, and you and you start to poke and prod around a little bit to see like, well, what's made us successful, and are you happy with that success, the dividing line between I'm successful and miserable, and I'm successful and happy is self reflection, self improvement, and the willingness to go within
oneself. Yeah, and so I use the frame of assumption that when a man takes the turn takes the or heeds the call towards self reflection, that his life is
going to radically change. And my job is to reinforce that that is going to be helpful for him and meaningful, and to maybe give him some tools and resources to help him along the way, but that he ultimately wants to, and he might just be afraid to admit that he doesn't know where to begin, or he's afraid to admit that his life might change or his relationship might change. So that's another framework. And then the last thing that I'd say is that every man has a very unique
relationship to fear. And, you know, again, coming back to that first piece, that, you know, we as men find, you know, believe that we find strength in suppression. A lot of guys are just disconnected from what they're afraid of, you know, and it's not socially, culturally acceptable. relationally acceptable to admit, when you're afraid as a man, you don't get street credit for it, your buddies generally aren't
encouraging you to do it. And so a lot of men in the framework that that I work with, it's getting to the root of what are you actually afraid of? What are you afraid of happening? If you have this conversation with your wife, or girlfriend or boyfriend or whoever, your boss, etc? What are you afraid of happening, if things do change, if you implement this new habit if you implement this new routine, and actually starting to slowly elicit some of those fears, and so every man has a different
relationship with fear. But for the most part, the framework that I operate on, is that a lot of guys have been trained or grown up in environments where they've been disconnected from their own fear. And maybe the last thing I'll say, and I'll just jot this out, is the notion that many, many, many men have grown up in our culture, without any kind of healthy male or masculine role model. Amen to
that. And so there's a bhyve there's, there's a deficit of healthy masculinity, and there's a deficit of what a grounded man even looks like, you know, a young man can grow up in a single parent household, without a father figure around and go through the school system, the education system, and almost never see a man in an education system, and then go out and maybe, you know, he's fortunate enough to have a family member that encourages him to, you know, go get a therapist or get
a psychologist and enter into that space where, you know, there's only 29% of psychologists that are men. And so everywhere Wow, interesting. Yeah. And in therapist is actually less that makes less sense. And it's, it's totally and it's growing, right? It's growing, not in the direction of having more men Right. So So everywhere a young man looks right, it's like one in four kids will grow up in a in a
fatherless household. Right. So. So I think that's the last frame is the the notion that I might be working with a man or engaging with a man who just hasn't even seen what a healthy male role model can look like and how a healthy man treats women, and how a grounded man deals with his own anger or reactivity or the past abuse and trauma that he experienced. We just don't have a lot of good role models for that there are some emerging, but that's the
last one. There's many more like you'd probably say, but I think that's probably a good place to for us to begin. I mean, there's one emerging I know his name is Connor, that's for sure. I wouldn't say that much. Like seriously, like, and I mean, probably Justin Baldoni. I've never met him, but he seems pretty awesome, too. But do you like what you're doing here is, I mean, you're creating a new archetype. And I love young. So I said that on purpose. Let's talk about your young Ian
approach here for a second. So I love that you were talking about automated autonomous and talking about this in the context of really grounding it. So can you help us understand a little bit about when you talk about shadow work, Carl Jung automate autonomous, what you mean by those things in the context of men's work, just so that we can have some, like everyday
language around that? Because I think like, I'm also assuming, because you invoke Ottoman animus that this men's work could also be contextualized, as masculine work? Would that be accurate to say to? Yeah, 100%? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, Jung had a couple of
different archetypes. One was the shadow, which we could probably sub separate for right now and get into after, but then he had the Anima, and the Animus, and that those archetypes are universal, you see them in different spiritual forms, religious forms, cultural forms, etc. And they just represent the masculine and the feminine, or the yin and the yang, right, whatever polarity you want to put on, or whatever
label you want to put on it. And in Young's framework, which I find very fascinating, because I spent a lot of time with it. And my mentor spent a lot of time with me, you know, teaching me about it, is that within a man, his conscious infrastructure is masculine, and his unconscious infrastructure is feminine. And in a woman, it's reversed. So why is this relevant or important, and you know, for some people that might not resonate with them, you can use
whatever terms work for you. But it's relevant and important, because it specifically for most men, they're disconnected from their unconscious contents. So a lot of us grow up and are disconnected from our feminine qualities, feminine contents, things that, that for better or worse, we associate with women, or we associate with the
feminine. And so we've created this archetype of masculinity that's very one dimensional, that says, I am, I am only masculine, so long as I adhere to these qualities and tenants, and I don't go near these other ones, because they're more feminine in nature. And what Jung has really laid out is that no, that's actually false. That's going to create a very radical, psychological, spiritual, emotional and physical imbalance in your life, it's going to, it's going to screw your relationships is
going to mess you up. And that what we actually need to do is embrace both of these energetic psychological archetypes within us and begin to understand them. And the reason why I feel like it was so important is I've walked what I call the bridge, this is like a term that I create, and the bridge is just that space between the yin and the yang, right, the understand that understanding that masculinity has value femininity, has value one's not better or worse than the other.
And being able to incorporate both of those into my being in some way, shape, or form. So like, you know, if you had met me a decade ago, you would have seen me or maybe I guess, 12 years ago, you'd have seen me roll up to an opera rehearsal, because I was a classical singer, I was an opera singer, on 1000, CC, bright yellow sportsbike. Like most motorcycle, this right, or after the Walmart situation, this is
this is before, right. So I was trying to grapple with, how do I incorporate these different parts of me? How do I be, you know, masculine and embody that, but how do I also embrace my femininity, you know, so I go to yoga, and I do all these things. But I think the challenge is that for a lot of guys, we just we don't go near those feminine qualities or they they are oversold to us within our modern culture, right. So we're very disconnected from our masculine
qualities. And this can create all kinds of imbalances which we can, again we can talk about because a lot of conflict in relationships is a byproduct of this. So the Anima and the Animus very important, again, You can call them masculine, feminine, you can call them yin and yang, you can whatever term is work for you. But they're very important and not things that we necessarily, it's not the only part of our lives or
our psychological development. I think some people put so much emphasis on this, you know, and it becomes like a way of being that you have to live into. But I think that they are a part of our development that we need to pay attention to, when it speaks to something you said in the book, and I can't remember the exact wording, but it was something about how you want to focus on something like integration versus perfection was kind of the general spirit
of what you said. And I was just kind of wondering, kind of speak about that, because I do think that, you know, far as I can tell, especially with the guys I work with, there's this like, there's like kind of two extremes that they've seen demonstrating the world. There's either this like macho machismo almost bully or abusive, masculine. And then there's this very passive, emasculated quiet, not really respected, just kind of goes with the flow to kind of
slowly dying masculine. And I think a lot of guys don't want to or don't know how to put assert themselves in a way that isn't abusive. And what I took away from that sentiment was about the idea that, like, you're gonna mess it up. But somewhere between macho bully and over assertive and a lack of assertion feels like kind of the zone that you're talking about. Does that seem right to you? And can you say more about that?
Because I think that that's a lot, especially when you talk about someone, a guy who wants to be reasonably sure with a trauma survivor, oh, my God, you know, like, talk about nuance, and I don't want to re traumatize someone. But somehow, if I don't assert myself, she doesn't feel safer, these types of things. So could you help me understand more about that? And your take on that? Yeah. Well, I think I think we should just bring in the shadow really
quick. Because I think the reason why, I believe one of the reasons what has made my work successful in in speaking to men, is I talk a lot about this notion of the shadow, which Carl Jung created back in the 20th century. And the shadow is just the part of us where I mean, I've given it many different names, you know, The Hurt Locker, in the darkness within.
But it's generally it's the part of us where we put all of this stuff about ourselves that we don't want other people to know, that we don't like about ourselves that we don't want to admit about ourselves. So it's, you know, it's this place where we hide our insecurities. We hide our fears, we hide our inferiority, but we also store the things about ourselves that we think are dangerous, and this
is a big one for men. So if a young man grows up in a household where he sees his father or stepfather abusing his mother, he's gonna code anger as being very dangerous, not useful and not helpful. And he's very likely going to disassociate and disconnect from that anger and stash it in the shadow. It doesn't. It doesn't just disappear, it doesn't evaporate. That's impossible. It just moves into a different part of him.
And there's a great therapist named Francis Weller, who said that your pain has its own intelligence. And so your your shadow has its own intelligence, right, your shadow has its own intelligence. And Jung said that the shadow becomes the unconscious, snag that thwarts our most well meaning intentions and goals. So when we reject our anger, when we deny our assertiveness, and we stuffed that away, it has a negative
consequence. And it comes back out in maybe dating people who are overly assertive, and then we become resentful, or dating people who are very good at setting boundaries, and we're constantly trying to push against them or rebel against
them. So again, just to come back to that, that version of the young man who grew up in that household, his work in finding his way to a sense of wholeness to finding some balance between the Anima and Animus is by recognizing that he has some anger, recognizing that he has pain around it, that he doesn't want to go near it, because of the experiences that he had as a kid, and then being able to welcome that part in in a healthy way in his life to be able to set boundaries and say
no, and, you know, be very clear about what he'll tolerate and not tolerate in his relationships or at work or whatever. And until allow it to have a healthy place in his life. And in doing so, he's reclaiming something about himself that is ultimately disempowering him. And that's that's the case. I think what a lot of young men are experiencing today is that they have they feel disenfranchised
in some way. They have rejected parts of themselves that they have been told are not socially acceptable, whether it's their anger and assertiveness, whether it's their you know, compassion and love, and you know, openness, but they've rejected Did parts of themselves and living a, a half measured life is just unfulfilling in some
way, shape, or form. And so the reclamation is in being able to look at what have what did I have to reject or deny in my childhood in order to fit in with the boys at school, so I wouldn't get bullied with the, you know, the people at school that I was attracted to what authentic, what was authentically me that I had to reject in order to belong in my school system, in my family system with my friends in my
sport environment. And when we can start to see that a little bit more clearly, then we have the opportunity to work on that to develop that part, to develop resiliency towards being rejected or being assertive in our work environment, or whatever it is. And so, and that leads us, you know, Jung talked about ended the process of individuation, which is essentially the process of
wholeness. And that just brings us a step closer to a sense of wholeness, where we can welcome the rejected parts of ourselves. Yeah, I mean, and by the way, like, the one of the things that shows at the beginning, is that your book, I don't think I'm like, This is not a book. This is a work book. This is like a $3,000 course in like a very inexpensive $20 book or $3 book,
right. And one of my, one of the chapters, that's the most highlighted, there was actually the two but you talked, there's basically mom, you were doing like work around mom and dad. And one of them here is the shadow of the Father. And like, I thought this was so powerful in looking at this and just looking at like your relationship with your father.
And one of the things that you said, that literally, I was like, Oh, my God, sometimes like I say things, and then I read something that's like, those are the perfect combinations of words. That's even the best like so St. One of the things you talked about was, you came to understand, knowing why he left meaning your father didn't change the impact of his
leaving. And I think especially because we do trauma informed work over here, and we'll talk about being a trauma informed man, the second, which I cannot wait to talk about, but I thought that was so beautiful, because I really feel like we so many people go on the search for why did this happen to me? And what was he thinking and how was
he wounded? And what did his dad do to him and all the generational stuff, which is so important, but it's sort of like, like they're tiptoeing around hate giving lip service
to the impact. Yeah, right. And that, I think, understanding the impact of like, abandonment or someone being left or neglected in that way, it's a profound sense of grief that I imagined would emerge at first, but can you kind of talk a little bit about the difference between, I don't know, like, I feel like everyone says, like, I get it, my dad did this, my mom did this. And this is why they have frickin PhD and their parents passed and everything like that, and their own paths and
everything. But they haven't had a second to sit with like, Okay, well, how did that impact you? Yeah. And they orient their lives around not feeling that in a lot of ways. So I'm just kind of curious, we can speak more to that. So I thought that was just so profound, the way you said that.
Well, I appreciate that. And I, you know, I've come to realize, through my own experience, through my own pain, and abuse and trauma, and through, you know, a decade of working with men from all over the world, that the natural byproduct of experiencing emotional and psychological pain is to ask why it happened. You know, because we want our our mind wants some kind of rational explanation. Because that's what happens when
you get hurt physically. It's very clear, rationally what happened, you know, it's like, Oh, I was bouncing on it. Like, when I broke my leg, in Grade Two, I was bouncing on a trampoline, and I got double bounced, and my legs snap, and I broke my leg. It's like, it's very clear, rationally, what happened, I can, I can piece that together. When we are a child or an adult, and something happens where we get emotionally hurt or psychologically hurt. It's less clear about why it's
happened. But we focus in on the wrong part of the equation. And we can spend years and decades of our life on the wrong question, which is why did this happen? Versus what was the impact that it had on me? And that's it's a much harder question for us to immerse ourselves into, because it puts us in direct contact with the thing that we want to avoid, which is our pain, our hurt. And, you know, I spent years doing this exact thing. You know, my parents got divorced
when I was three. And they that's a very interesting family system is going to share it because I feel like the people that tuned into your show might appreciate this. But parents got divorced when I was three. My dad remarried my now stepmom when I when I was six, and my mom remarried my stepdad when I was seven. And then they both had a dog otter within a year of each other, and then they both had a son within a year of each
other and then got a dog. And so I grew up between these two identical family systems like identical, where my sisters are the same age, my brothers are the same age. So I grew up between two two family systems. But the players in the game, we're all very different, right? Like my sisters are polar opposite brothers of pull rods, etc. Anyway, when my parents got divorced when I was a kid, because I was in so much pain,
because it hurt. And I didn't understand it, it sent me on this track to kind of say, like, why did this happen? Why did he leave? Is there something wrong with me, and he was still in my life, I still saw him once or
twice a month. But I, you know, I went on this search for probably until my mid to late 20s, until I hit rock bottom, ended up in the back of my, you know, living into the back of my car, staying in parking lots, trying to figure out why he had left, and I didn't know I was on that journey, you know, unconsciously or consciously I didn't know that I was on that journey. But I was trying to figure out like, was there something wrong with me that
made him leave. And when I finally got around to dealing with the hurt, and the pain, I, you know, came into contact with a lot of these memories being 3568, and just crying, you know, as a young man, heartbroken that my father wasn't around, and heartbroken that there was another man in his place who I didn't know and who I didn't want to be there. And but that is that was so much harder, and so much more painful to deal with, then why did he leave out
what was going on? And so because then I had to, you know, and this is the this is the thing that I've talked about before, it's like, healing is not linear. It's not a linear process. And we as men have been duped into believing that our highest value is in our rational and logical capacities. And so if you can't figure something out rationally, then what the hell are you supposed to do with it? As a man, it's incredibly frustrating. So it's like, if
I'm in pain, right? If I'm in pain, if I'm hurting from a breakup, or a divorce or abuse that I experienced, or getting fired. My my main source of how I have been taught to deal with it is to rationally figure it out. Versus moving into art, I'm hurting because of this. And we've also had a void and a vacuum of men who have taught us the valuable skill of being able to deal with our own hurt as
men. And so you have all of these men who have not experienced any kind of lineage or teaching or mentorship around when you're in pain. This is what you do. What we've seen is when you're in pain, figure out why you're in pain, and then go and try and fix it. Exactly. That's that sort of old school path out pathology, acute thing versus like, actual chronic issue. Totally. What did
you say? You said, you were saying, which is, which is how we deal with with our partners pain, you know, we, we go straight to like, how do I fix this? How do I solve it for you? How do I deal with it? Versus Okay, let me understand what it feels like for you. You know, and so that that work begins with us. It's why the first line of the book is a man's work begins in pain. By the way, that's where I started underlying I was like, Oh, my God, this is gonna be
rough. This first line is underlining how much more it's so true, though. It's so true that our work begins in pain. And I think that's something that we, I think it's hard for, I'll just speak for myself, it has been hard for me to admit the pain that I'm in for all the reasons that you've been
describing. And I think the thing that I'm constantly shocked by in my own life, over and over and over again, and I still haven't internalized it, where it's a reflex is vulnerability based communication will be more productive than demand, withdrawal based communication. Like that is something that I, I wish to get tattooed on my forehead, because I'm constantly or younger parts of me are constantly shocked when just revealing what I'm struggling
with. Recruits far more support than telling people kind of what to do or guiding them to what I need them to do or coaching them in what I need them to do. And I'm wanting to kind of speak to that because that that's been an ongoing, I mean, I learned it probably 10 or 15 years ago therapy, but it's still not a reflex. For me, and I do a lot
of work. I know you do to like I'm either leading people or I'm in something whether it's coaching therapy seminar, something I live in transformational lifestyle, this piece is still not reflected from My first impulse even though I know, I know, but I had to remind myself constantly, like vulnerability based communication lead with what's
the problem. And the key speak about that, like, I know, obviously, you're in a partnership and marriage, and you also relatively new father, you know, your past the first three to nine months, you know, I mean, I'm married, I'm married, like one of the world's top Marriage and Family Therapists, which was, which was an interesting, you know, life choice. But, you know, I think it just speaks to the type of accountability that I like and
enjoy. You know, look, I think the way that I would approach this is, through the vehicle of presents. A lot of like, I look back at myself, I look at the men that I've worked with over the years, and that I work with now. And there's just such a tendency to be deeply lost in thought. And you know, Einstein had this great quote, he said, the rational mind is a faithful servant, the intuitive mind is a sacred gift. We've created a culture that honors the servant the rational mind, and has
forgotten the gift. And then sort of epitomizes the life that most of us as men lead, that we've over indexed the rational mind and its capacities and its powers. And we have disconnected from what I call our direct felt experience, the charge that exists in our body, the charge of excitement, the charge of anxiety, the charge of boredom, the charge of loneliness, right.
So for a man to be able to do what you're talking about, we have to continue to keep some of our awareness, some of our consciousness, directed at him pointed towards our direct felt experience, which is sometimes hard, unwelcome, and unwanted.
Right, it's very, it's very challenging to be present to your direct felt experience, if what you're experiencing on a daily basis is anxiety, or stress or overwhelm, or, you know, the weight of depression or just pure numbness, you know, the amount of men that I work with who are just like, I don't even know how I feel, I just feel numb. And I always say is the same thing. Numbness is not emptiness, numbness is emotional fullness. So it's not that
there's nothing there. It's that there's everything there and you're overwhelmed. The way you put words together, man is so I really value like, syntax of what's said and what order and then like, the combination association of words, I really like. It's like, for me, like good art when good words go together and what you just sent us like when it's like, really, really like, Oprah would call it
like a tweetable. But he just said, you know, like, the idea that numbness is fullness is so powerful, because what came to mind when you were saying that was you know, one of the words I learned from Bessel Vander Kolk, from Body Keeps the Score is this idea of a alexithymia, which is you don't know how you
feel, right. And then you throw in when he talks about dissociation, which is not knowing what you know, what you just said is like, even better than those two ideas combined, which is an analysis fullness, because there's so much happening in there is I'm hearing you say, yeah, there's a there's a big charge in the body, right? I mean, emotions are just energy in motion, most people have
heard that term. And a lot of men have a in such an intense charge, physically in their body, that it's hard to live in that space. So it's just easier for them to live in their heads in their thoughts in their rational minds. So they're constantly we've maybe I should not say they but we and I've still battled it. Sometimes we're just constantly in our thoughts and in our heads. And so we have to practice becoming present to what am I actually
experiencing? Because how do we admit the truth of what's going on within us if we are afraid of it? Or don't know about it, or no one's even shown us how to get in touch with it. Hopefully, right. Yeah. So that's, I think that's the first step for a lot of guys is just to say, you know, actually don't even know what I'm feeling right now. Let me figure that out. Where it's like, I'm actually feeling a lot of anger and frustration, that
should feel so overwhelming. I probably need to pause for a moment, you know, or I feel stressed out and overwhelmed. And I'm not too sure how to even be with that for more than 30 seconds before I open up social media and dune scroll, you know, for the next 40 minutes until I
forget about it. Yeah, right. So that's, that's part of the practice that I tried to embed into the book is just directly and indirectly bringing men back to the presence of what's happening beneath your thoughts, what's happening in your body, what's happening in your experience, because all of that is data. It's information.
That's right. You know, it's such important information that we have just been you'd like somewhere along the way, people forgot to say, by the way, your direct felt experience, physically, is probably some of the most important data that you're going to want to pay attention to. And if you and if you tune into certain cultures of men, they're deeply attuned to this part of them. And it makes them incredibly proficient
at certain things, you know? And so, yeah, so that's where I would say we need to start is returning to presence and direct felt experience, which is chat, by the way, chapter three is the father work in the book? And I think I mean, literally, there's like, I mean, if you want to, if you want to do the work that Congress talking about here, the book is the Grammy men's work is get it
and go through it. And you know, it can be like a late president holiday present for your partner to tell it was to sell this for me and Connor, gray, little triangle, whether I have so many other things I want to ask you and get into about this book, and just questions I have as it relates to certain things. I'm also aware of time, so I'm gonna try to go quickly. And, and also, we might not get everything, which means maybe we'll do another one also. So
couple things. So one of the things that bothers me about, I guess you could say a lot of the masculine role models, or people that are well known out there, not all but a lot, is there's two things I see, I see, like the Andrew Tate's of the world, which I just can't stand, there's so much disowned in what he's presenting. And I always wonder, like, What's your relationship with your mom. And then there's all this red pill crap, which I also don't think is super healthy. And I hate
that they co opted that term. So I love the matrix so much, you know, like, the red to me, like what we're talking about is the red pill, you know. And, and then on the other side, there's like the more respectable guys, who are usually more entrepreneurial in our coaching podcast, techie space, and they're stoic. Right, and I'm just kind of wondering if you could comment on stoicism, which I have thoughts on by curious
what you have. And then there's sort of like the Andrew Taylorism, or red pill ism of the world, because I think both of them are not good ways of dealing with the work you're talking about. One is just more socially acceptable, and agreeable to be able to present yourself in more of a stoic way. But I feel like there's still a lot under the surface in both perspectives. And I'm just kind of wondering if you think that's accurate, or what your thoughts are on those two sides?
Yeah, I think it really depends on on who it is. But I I agree with general sentiment of what you're saying, you know, I think I mean, agitate is just a whole can of worms, you know, I find what's the for, for him specifically, it's less about what he's doing and saying and more about why is what he's doing and saying, catching with so many people. Because there's some relevance in that. And sometimes we can get blindsided by I don't like what he's doing
or saying. And again, I'm not advocating for him in any way, shape, or form. So I'm making that radically and abundantly there. But we can miss out on the underlying what's going on? And why is what he's saying and doing hitting with so many people, because we need to pay attention to that. So yeah, I mean, I think with the stoic side, it's interesting, because it almost seems like it's been co opted by this kind of movement towards not having to deal with your emotions, you
know, that. And when I, when I hear a lot of people talking about it, I'm like, Yeah, I don't think you're actually getting what the stoics talked about, like they, they're actually talking about a depth of connection with an understanding of your emotional body, not an avoidance of it, not a rejection of it, not a logical thing. That's not even a word but not a rationalizing your way around it or through it. It's, it's by deeply
connecting to it. I mean, Marcus are really is one of the most profoundly emotional men on the face of the planet. When you read his work, you can't help but be like, damn, this is one of the most emotionally intelligent human beings I've ever fucking heard. Yeah, you know, and so it's, it's bringing logic into the depths of emotional experience, and allowing those two to beautifully dance and coexist. And so I think oftentimes when stoicism is is being discussed,
it's it's missing substance. For me personally, what I see is I see people who have a more avoidant attachment style, justifying more avoidance is kind of how I see it, as it's presented, generally, right. It's like let me not feel this and almost justify it. All the things you're saying, basically, here's my shadow. No, I'm a stoic. Yeah, it's, but here's the thing. And I think here's what the cross section is between the quote unquote red pill, and the Stoics. We as men love
frameworks. Yeah, love definitely works. We love logical, rational frameworks that can help us understand what's going on within us how to get results, and just a framework that we can abide by
in life. And, you know, I think, again, just to kind of speak to what I was saying before, I think that there are a lot of men who are lost, who don't have any kind of robust framework, you know, church attendance is down, political attendance is down, you know, groups were where men are gathering is down sports are down, I mean, men just aren't really connected to the structures that they would normally be plugged into. And you can debate whether or not
that's good or bad. I'm not necessarily there's good or bad, I'm simply saying that we as men love frameworks that help provide order, you know, I mean, look at somebody like Jordan Peterson, love them or hate them, you know, whether whatever your opinion is of him, my perspective is that the reason why he's become so popular is because he's doing something very simple. One, he has become the sort of archetype of the Father, for a generation of young men who have absent father
energy in their life. And two, he's saying, here's an ordered method that you can live your life by. And when you read when I read it, because I've spent a lot of time on this, trying to understand the different sides and frameworks, when I read people like Rollo Tomassi, or anybody in the red pill space, I get the appeal as a man, because what they're giving is, here's a framework for how you live life.
And, you know, admittedly, even in my book, I said, Not here's a framework for how you live your life. Here's a framework for how you move through your pain, through your trauma, through your abuse, and through your loneliness, through your boredom, through your porn, addiction, whatever it is that you're dealing with, as a man or as a masculine being. Here's how you move through that, here's the framework for you to move
through that. And out of that, rather than me saying, Here's what a man should be, and here's what masculinity is and how you should define it, and how you should live your life in accordance to it, here's how women are, here's how you move through your pain in an effective way. And out of that, you'll probably learn what it looks like for you to be a good man or a good masculine being, you know, or to be in right relationship with your own masculinity, regardless of what
gender you are. And so I tried to take a very different approach, by split still adhering to that same quality of knowing that we as men like frameworks, and that a lot of men are gripping on to this stoic revival, and this red pill movement, because they provide very clear frameworks that men can just adhere to, and abide by and live their lives by.
I think that's so well said. And what I love about what you're saying is you're kind of helping speak to the, the underlying issue versus just the symptom. And also, like, I wish that they were all go through your book. For sure, because, you know, when I when I think about, like, when I observe a lot of the guys that are trying to be mentors to men, like Rollo Yoon book talked about rollers I like I remember, someone asked me about red pill and I was like, I believe in the
matrix. That's great. I love the red pill. Yeah. And they're like, maybe you should look more into what you're talking about, like, okay. And I remember like watching interviews with Rollo Tomassi. And I literally just would just love to just talk to him about his mother and his and his relationship to her because the way I see it, is I see it as anti female or anti feminine. There's, for me, there feels like an embedded anger that you were kind of talking about earlier. That's like in there.
And like we're kind of rallying around that. And I think like when you look at the in cell movement, involuntary celibates and you know, this guy like the the Idaho murder guy, Colbert or recently, right, like, I feel
like so many guys. And then we feel these extreme versions of it, if they just knew how to do this work, and how to have right relationships sexually, whether it's gay, straight, lesbian, LGBTQIA plus, and had some sense of feeling seen and heard and knew how to assert themselves in a healthy way and how to get their needs met and like get their sexual needs met. I don't know if we would have a lot of
this. We'll call it red pill toxic masculine, and to the extreme of like the insulin sort of like, you know, homicide, stuff like that. Because when you see like, most homicides these days, it's sort of like a white dude who's probably not doing any of this work for a very long time has a really negative relationship with his mom, or the feminine And it's like I like when I look at the
coal burger thing in Idaho. You know, I'm just looking at like years of what feels like pent up rage just taken out on these poor victims. And it's like, it's like a misdirection. And that's obviously a super extreme version of it, but it gets pent up, and it doesn't really happen in other places in the world. You know, this is not like a normal thing to happen in Australia and stuff like that. So I guess, like, what does it mean for you to be a trauma informed, man? Because I love
that you talked about that. And if I know the masculine goes to challenge, I'm going to say something you can, please feel free to not pick this one up. Okay. But But what does it mean to be a trauma informed man? And how would you challenge, say, Rollo, or Jordan, or other guys who are kind of leading these movements to step into that?
Well, you know, I think just to go with like, relative Macias somebody as an example, you know, he's he's openly sad that he thinks that young talking about the masculine and the feminine being within everyone was one of the most damaging things in the human species in like the last however many years. And so from his perspective, women are feminine, and men are masculine. And that's the divine, but he's not even in touch with reality. Yeah, oh, well, yeah.
And so. So, you know, in terms of what, well, maybe I'll just finish that thought. So, you know, I think in many ways, maybe there's some validity to what you're saying, in the sense that there does seem to be some under current of anger, fear, etc, towards the feminine, because a lot of those men when I, when I listened to them, I don't hear men that are in their power as a man, I hear a man who needs to be in control as a man. And control is not power. Right?
Control is where trust has gone to die, as my wife would say, control is where we demand respect. Power is, when we are in a sense of power. There is mutual trust, there's mutual respect, there's mutual influence, right? When I'm in my greatest form of power in my relationship, it's when I can influence my partner, my wife, and she can influence me back. It's not this is a one way street. And I'm the man and I control you and I call the shots and I influence you and your I'm
not influenced by you. That's not relationship, right relationship is this reciprocal nature. And so you know, when I hear a lot of those guys talk, there's no sense of reciprocity. And that is to bring me to the trauma informed man, where I think we when we look at trauma, and I'm just gonna tie this into a negotiation for a second because I think this is important. Richard Rohr, who I love Franciscan monk, really, really cool guy, I hope I get a chance to speak with him before
he passes. He said that until a man is brought on a journey of powerlessness, he will always abuse power, will always abuse it. In unfortune, unfortunately, we are fortunately we are living in a time where a lot of men have experienced powerlessness through trauma, being sexually abused, being physically abused, being verbally abused, being outcast, ostracized, neglected,
abandoned. And we have done such a disservice of being able to say, here's how you heal from that powerlessness, and which, you know, I think you're doing tremendous work in this field. So what ends up happening is that we, we, as men pick up this model of, of, well, what do I do, I never want to be in a powerless position ever again, ever again. I never want to be
in that position again. So So these frameworks that these red pill men are putting out become very appealing, right to become very appealing, because it's a way to never feel like you are put in a powerless position again, that you can always stay in this false illusory sense of
never being powerless. So, you know, I think that we need to bring back in some kinds of initiatory processes for young boys and young men to experience what it's like in a contained, healthy way to experience a kind of powerlessness as a man so that you know what that feels like. Because if you either a never really know what that feels like, then you can convince yourself that you can dominate everything. You can aggressively overpower
everything. And it sort of ignores that there's anything bigger than you, and you take on this quality of arrogant omnipotence, or you experience powerlessness in such a traumatic way that you either never come out of it, and you become the victim to it. Or you're hell bent on never being put in that position again versus saying there's actually
value in this. So I think, you know, the role that anthropologically that initiation used to play for young boys was to help them experience what it was like to be powerful, you know, because to you, they generally go through it when they're going through puberty, and all this testosterone is going through their body and their bodies changing their minds changing and their role in society is
changing. And to put them in a in a contained experience of initiation where they experienced powerlessness, but then they were welcomed back into the community. And they got to come back into the community, and they were accepted, and they were loved. And they were, you know, embraced, and there was
guidance there for them. And so I think we need more spaces and resources like that, where we can support young boys and young men on understanding the impacts of trauma, what that actually means, what it looks like, how to identify it, how to talk about it. I think that this is happening more and more with athletes, and you know, public figures today were more men are speaking out about the trauma that they experienced in their youth or in their childhood or
whenever it was. And I think that by simply just having more of these conversations as men, we d stigmatize it. Yes. And we empower men to understand that a huge part of their power has been sequestered away by not addressing what it looks like to experience a sense of powerlessness, that there's actually a depth of meaning in that, that can bring a sense of
fullness. Because when you have experienced being powerless, and then you've come out the other side of that, it develops you in such a potent way, you know, you've probably seen this in your own work, I've seen this in my own work, you know, there's such a thing as post traumatic growth, right, we can just continue to go down the line. But and that that can be a role for you as a man, that can be an empowerment for you as men. So I think, I don't necessarily know if that answers the fullness of
your question. But the big question and beautiful answer it does. If you I guess, like, if you could kind of like, because I'm aware of time, if you could kind of summarize to me your vision for if the world had more trauma informed men? What would be different? I know, because at the very end, the book you talked about, there was a hashtag in there, about minute forward, hashtag minute forward. And I was just wondering, you kind of talked about, like, you know, what has made it forward?
And what would the world kind of look like if we did and we have more trauma informed men, and they were doing this beautiful, incredible, very important work here. Yeah, Manafort was just like a little call to arms that I created at some point for men. Because I get again, as men, we love having things to do. And for a lot of guys that enter into this work, what I've noticed is they get really passionate about it, because they see, oh, this is the thing that's been missing in my life,
this self improvement. And this self reflection is the very thing that I've been lacking. I've been trying to get it for women in my relationships and at work and making more money, but it's actually this. And so the men at Ford was like, you know, share my podcast, show my book, if you found value in it, as a man or as a woman. And because I have a lot of women that asked me like, How can I help? And I'm like, Man, I'm for it. Right pay
for it. So and how do I think the world would look differently if more men were trauma informed? I mean, it's, it's hard to condense that down. But I mean, I think that the lives of I think that the lives of every single human being would radically be changed, because we would have men who embodied empathy, you know, who, who interacted with people at the coffee shop, and on the highway, and at home with deep empathy
and compassion. And it would have a generational effect that could counter the trauma that came out of World War One World War Two, so much slavery, that you know, everything that we've experienced in the past, and and that's actually the call, you know, I think that this that, that is the call is for men to understand, how do we deal with our own pain? Because if we don't know how to do that, we are just going to pass it on. We're just going to continue to pass it on.
That's right. Well, caller I'm only pausing because of time, I want you know, I have a reservoir of additional questions inside me about this stuff. So I just want to thank you for this incredible work. And you know, you've been doing this work you have 1000s of
hours working with guys. And you know, I don't know if you've made paper papers published in journals, but I would definitely venture to say that this is definitely evidence based at this point with the amount of people that you've worked with. In a process that's worked for 1000s and 1000s of guys, y'all make sure to get men's work. Where can we go besides Amazon? Is there anywhere that we can go to get anything? Is there any other place you want to direct
people? Maybe Instagram, tick tock website and that type of stuff? Yeah, I mean, you can just go to man talks.com forward slash book. And that will pull up all the options for where you can purchase it. If you're outside of North America, you can go to the book book depository and they have free worldwide shipping. We will have it on Amazon within like 30 to 40 days worldwide. But right now it's it's still Book Depository. And
then it's on Audible. I read the book myself, that seems to be people are loving that which is cool. And then you can find me at man talks on Instagram, I highly recommend you and everybody you know, get this book get this book for all the guys in your life. And just like this is this is this is a paradigm changer. And I just think that this is I'm making a prediction, this is gonna be one of those books that grows over time. not that dissimilar honestly, from no more Mr. Nice
Guy. In a lot of ways. I think this is the new version of that. And I just thank you for your incredible work and also, which we didn't get a chance to talk to you but just as a father and as a partner and how you show up in business like all of it. Like you're just I know, I know, everybody has difficulties but you are really leading the way and how to have it all as a man so thank you for that. And I love you, brother. Thanks but I love you too.