Surround Yourself With Men That Will Call You on Your Bullshit

All right, and welcome back. So today I want to talk about another one of the many reasons it is so important as a man to surround yourself by other really high quality, trustable and deep men.

And it really boils down to, it is so crucial for us to surround ourselves with other men who can tune us up and call us on our bullshit. One of the tricky things about getting into personal growth and development and just being a human is that our brains tend to get into grooves. They tend to codify certain behaviors, they tend to move towards energy efficiency.

The result of that is oftentimes our self image is one of the last things to kind of catch up to how we're actually showing up in the world. It can be very easy for us to see ourselves behaving in one way, even though on the outside were behaving on another. So this idea of being able to tune us up and call us on our bullshit, I think is so crucially important for any man that is wanting to have an impactful presence in the world.

Having men that can tune us up is really about having guys that can give us feedback, right? That can let us know where we're not lined up, where we're not in integrity in terms of how we're showing up in the world, how we're showing up in our relationships, and even often how we're showing up in our bodies and our emotions because of that self image problem.

Sometimes we don't always get it or see it or notice it or feel it in ourselves, but other people can often tune into that way faster for us. A lot of feminine nervous systems in particular are very good at doing this. But masculine nervous systems can really sharpen this capacity as well to just feel into another man and get a sense, is he lined up?

Are all his different parts speaking and moving in unison, or is there something off? Is there a part not fully online or a part that's not actually showing up in the way he thinks it is. This tuning up is really just men giving us feedback about our presence. Our presence oftentimes just comes down to how lined up are we in the moment, how quiet is our mind, how here are we now.

I'm a guy that's been doing work for a long time trying to Grow and better myself and healing the many different wounds and traumas that I've had in my own life. And I can tell you, I still get this one wrong. I may be deep in men's circle, sharing or reflecting, letting guys in or asking for some kind of support around something important in my life. And I've had more than one time and far more recently than you might think.

Men look at me, just take a breath and be like, hey, men, I'm just not feeling you as very grounded right now. You feel kind of all over the place and scattered. My first reaction will often be, but some kind of. And there's a yearning to kind of defend and prove otherwise. Gotten much better. And just noticing that yearning and taking a deep breath and that feedback, when I let it roll through me has more often than not been correct.

Suddenly I sink a little deeper, breathe a little deeper, and begin to orient to the moment from a different place, more grounded place. And when I can acknowledge that, yeah, I can feel that I was not in my body or my mind was kind of just vomiting thoughts the second I can just admit that that's often what makes the shift too.

Boom. Deepening in the moment. And then usually the men I'm with, their nervous system shift as well as mine. Relaxes and grounds and moves more into integrity in that moment, which really just means being truly as is. Even if that is up in my head and a little ungrounded because I'm scared. It's the truly being with that that relaxes and grounds us.

It's kind of the paradox. Getting that feedback from other men has always been super helpful for me because it helps me increase my capacity to start identifying those states in myself. Right? That is the tuning up of, oh, I thought I was showing up this way, but I'm actually showing up that way. This is what those two things feel like in my body. That helps us build a deeper sense of interoception.

Right. An awareness of what's happening inside our bodies. Us men can be really great with that. It's one of the things I love about men's work, is how it does help us cultivate that in situations like this. But it just takes practice, and we don't often get a lot of training on that out in the world. Certainly not growing up. I know I didn't. So that's been a capacity I've had to develop in myself to serve other men who then are developing that capacity to serve me.

And that tuning up becomes so crucial because there's something so powerful about a man when he's lined up, when he's in integrity, right? When all of our insides and outsides are oriented and moving in the same direction. You know, it's kind of like if you've ever seen the way a magnetic field, you can have the iron filings poured out on a table, and they're kind of chaotic and everywhere, and then when the magnet comes in, kind of lines them up, gives them a sense of direction, and it's beautiful.

It's quite beautiful. And that can happen inside ourselves, too. But it often takes this feedback. It often takes other men who are doing their best to be in their bodies and lined up, giving us that feedback in real time. But how much they feel us, how much they trust us, how true our words and breath and posture are in the moment, how they're really experiencing them.

Now. There's another level to this tune up as well, right? And this is an incredibly. And I think this is one of the missing pieces in a lot of men's culture in the world right now. And where a lot of men go awry, right? Whether it's the gurus I've talked about on previous podcasts or even just ourselves in our own small ways. And that's in that subset of men who we trust to tune us up.

I think we all crucially need a couple men who we trust, hands down, that can call us out on our bullshit, right? Who can just call us and make clear they think we're full of shit. I think that one's so important, it's kind of the ultimate tune up of, hey, man, this is not good.

What's going on here. I know you can do better. This doesn't feel right. And that's a really important piece of that in the context I'm talking about. Calling someone out on their bullshit is not a shaming or demeaning tactic. It's actually an awareness of, I see you, brother. I see your heart. I see what you're capable. I see what you're capable of. I know you.

And what I'm seeing and experiencing or hearing right now is not that. And I love you so much. I'm not going to stand for it. Let's do better. You can do better. What needs to happen for you to be the man I truly know you to be. These can be brutal and painful conversations and feedback to get right, but they're so important, and in a deep way.

I actually think that's the essence of masculine love and a love that so many of us men are craving every cell in our body craving presence of others, the noticing of others who give a shit about us and won't let us slide. Right? It's that calling forth energy, even more than calling out.

It's calling us forth to be the best versions of ourselves, which we often have a sense about. But we get lost in the self image and the excuses and all the different things we can do that have us fall out of integrity or out of alignment or when we don't even realize it sometimes. But having these kind of guys that just without question to some extent, when they bring that level of feedback, we hear it even if it's uncomfortable, even if we don't want to.

It's a very important component for us to have in our lives. You know, there's the phrase that you'll often hear going around the men's work world of iron sharpens iron. This is kind of what that is. In essence, another man's awareness and consciousness helps me tune up and sharpen mine and call me forth when I'm not showing up in alignment with the true capacities these men have known and discovered and been with me sometimes for short times, sometimes for long times.

It's other men who can do this tuning up of us. It's the their consciousness noticing our consciousness and helping us realize and see where ours isn't totally lined up, where it's not in integrity. It's way easier often for other people to see this stuff than for us to see it inside ourselves. This is where the shadow components are so embedded in us along with that self image of our brain, that other people's nervous systems can really often see and feel intuitively when we're not lined up.

And what's great about a men's group or any kind of group work we're doing this in is each person's consciousness is kind of like a different antenna tuned into slightly different frequencies. What makes that so powerful? In a group, it can be pretty easy sometimes to bullshit one person. You know, I used to joke, I was in therapy for a couple years and I was pretty good at revealing and uncovering and sharing my story in a way that I could kind of get the response I wanted out of my therapist.

Like a super manipulative way, but in a protective way. Right? I kind of knew how to give just a little bit of vulnerability, just enough to kind of keep them at bay, or to round the edges around my own experience to maybe make myself sound a little better, feel a little better than I was. What really struck me as I moved into Ben's work. Just one person was someone I could kind of COVID my stuff up with.

But a group, two to five to six other guys, almost always somebody's antenna, somebody's consciousness would be able to tune into the part of me that wasn't quite lined up, that was withholding, not sharing or protecting or not really leaning into the vulnerability that would line me up. Like I said, sometimes being in integrity doesn't mean we're solid and all together on top of things.

It's taking a few slow breaths and feeling I'm none of those things right now. I'm not on top of my life. I'm in a panic. I'm in deep grief. I'm. I don't know what to do, or I'm mad. And boom, there I am, actually fully aligned with the state that my body is actually in. And everyone relaxes. There's the truth that's real, that's trustable, right?

That's the power of this kind of group work, and particularly men's work. This is the iron sharpening the iron, right? It's our consciousness getting less muddy and more clear and aligned with what it is actually doing in the moment, how it's actually showing up. Other men can help guide us to that. And then it gets easier over time because we've had the experience of what it feels like when a bunch of men are around us saying, yeah, I trust you right now, this feels true.

Or, I don't know, something's off, man. Feel like you're holding back or there's some part of me that's just not trusting what you're saying right now. That process of going back and forth till that clarity happens between two people or the group in one person, that is the iron sharpening the iron. That is the tune up, right?

Or maybe more effective would be to call it the tune in. It's us getting tuned in more clearly to our actual truth and way of being in the moment, right? Instead of it being a little bit fuzzy, one click of the dial away, like on the radio, suddenly, boom, the signal is clear. Other men can help us make our signal clear, get clear in our presence, get aligned in our thoughts, our emotions, our posture, our body, our voice.

And that has a massive impact on how everyone experiences us in the world. And when those men can take it deeper and are really feeling us far off course, willing to call us on our shit, so to speak, call us forward to remind us they see a standard or a potential in us that we're not hitting in the moment, and they want to help us hit that. That's the greatest gift any man can receive from another man.

That calling forth that reminder, hey, man, I know you can do better because I see it, I know you sometimes other people in our men's group may know parts of ourselves even more than we do. We may be stuck in these images of ourselves from the past, whereas other people are often far more easily able to see us in the present. Right. It's the same thing. Like, if you haven't seen someone in a while, you have a greater sense of contrast of them.

Wow, you look great. Have you been working out? Oftentimes we're like, yeah, but I don't really feel like I'm any more fit because we've been just doing the reps day in, day out. We see ourselves every day. We're super close and intimate with ourselves, which can make it harder to see the changes on the outside. Other men in our community, other men in our circle, particularly in the context of a men's group that meets regularly, going to be getting that dose. They will see the changes and they will often see them faster than us.

And that's going to orient their perception of us as they tune us up, sharpen us, help us get more aligned into ourselves, help us be more grounded in our own integrity of what's true for us, and help call us out on our bullshit when we're lost in the muck and mire or we're not really playing full out in life even though we keep saying we do or we're complaining over and over and over again about something we haven't taken action on and we're just blaming others for.

This energy shows up in all kinds of different ways. One of the places it showed up for me has been in projects. I really care about things I'm often checking in about that I'm stressed out about, but aren't actually getting done. You know, just the simple reflection from a man that, hey, you know, I notice you've been coming in here for a couple months talking about this and you say it's really important to you, but it's not happening.

Like that doesn't feel right. Man, what's going on? You either need to finish this thing or let go of it. Been massively impactful for me. Helps me get. It's helped me get clear. Oh, yeah, actually, you're right. And then I make a choice. Either I am going to finish this and stop complaining, or maybe I'm going to let that thing go and renegotiate create a newer integrity around what's right for me. This tuning up and calling forward can also show up just in how other men can track what we often talk about.

Right. Sometimes we're so close to our own issues, we don't see them fully. It's the whole point. And whether it's being stuck in a relationship that wasn't quite working. But maybe I didn't want to admit it's my men who helped tune me up. Yeah, you know, come in here for the last year and talked about how painful it is. What's your plan? Like that doesn't seem healthy for you or her.

What are you going to do about it? And then finally the shifts happened. So it's important, you know, take some time, make a list. Maybe you're in a men's group, maybe you're not. But who are the men you trust in your life to help tune you up even more? So who are the men you trust in your life to call you on your bullshit and help you hold the standard for who you truly are?

If you want to get connected to me and some other men, you can join me for a drop in men's group and at Evolutionary Men events. And if you want to go really deep and do this work in community for men who are focused on bringing integrity and leadership to their dating and relationship life, take my free training at Evolutionary Men webinar. Till next time.