All right, so I was on the Young Dad Podcast recently, and we got into some really important territory around why men's groups matter. Not just as nice-to-have social clubs, but as essential infrastructure for modern masculine development.
What struck me in this conversation was how much the host got it. We talked about the loneliness epidemic hitting men, the fact that most of us were never taught to actually connect with each other beyond surface-level bro-ing out. We covered what embodiment actually means and why being in your body isn't some woo-woo concept but literally how you access 80% of the information available to you in any moment. We went deep on the cultural bind men are in right now, caught between outdated models of stoic provider masculinity and overcorrections into nice guy territory, when what we actually need is integration: balls, heart, and awareness all online.
One of the things I shared was how men bond differently than women. We don't just bond through talking. We bond through doing hard things together. And in men's groups, the hard thing we're doing is going inside, facing our internal dragons while other men witness and hold space. That creates vasopressin bonds, the testosterone version of oxytocin, and it's powerful as hell.
The reality is simple. You can spend a weekend with your closest friends and still come home feeling lonely if you never actually shared what's going on inside. Most men I work with are dying for real connection, they just don't have the roadmap for how to get there.
If you're a man reading this and feeling that pull, don't wait. Get into a men's group. Learn what it means to be present, to feel everything, to lead with your full self, not just the parts you think are acceptable. That's the work. And it changes everything.
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Host: And welcome back to the Young Dad Podcast. Whether you're outside mowing the lawn, changing dirty diapers, so that would be an inside activity, or maybe you're outside grilling, or maybe, just maybe, you finally got a moment to sit back, relax, and listen to your favorite podcast. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing. Thank you so much for tuning in and thank you so much for listening. Hope you have a great day today, wherever you're at, wherever you're listening from. So, again, thank you for tuning in. Today we're going to be exploring fatherhood, mental health, relationships, and everything in between. Today's episode is for every dad, husband, and man who has ever felt alone in his struggles, wondering if he's the only one dealing with the challenges of modern masculinity. Our guest today is Jason, a men's embodiment coach, group facilitator, and certified no More Mr. Nice Guy Goat. He spent the last 20 years helping men step into deeper clarity, purpose, and stronger relationship by breaking away from the outdated lone wolf mentality. Jason's mission is pretty clear. Crystal clear. Every man man needs a men group. If you've ever been, never been in one, or maybe you thought thought about it, but weren't sure if it was for you, Today's conversation will change the way you look at brotherhood, masculinity, and personal growth. So let's dive in. Jason, welcome to the show. Happy to have you.
Jason Lange: Yeah. So stoked to be here. Thank you.
Host: Of course, man. I'm really excited to have you. So you've been on your journey for 20 years. It's a long time. Can you take us back to the moment when you realize the traditional. That traditional masculinity wasn't serving you and what led you to the world of men's work in general?
Jason Lange: Yeah, for me, I got pretty lucky in my knees in that this was back in the kind of early mid 2000s. I was struggling, all right. I was a young man in my 20s and was struggling in career, was struggling in relationships, was struggling in mental health and was looking for a solution. Right. Of like, okay, this is way harder than I think it needs to be. And I don't really have the wiring or skills to know how to fix myself, so to speak. And I didn't know how to share this stuff even with my closest male friends. This is something I see with a lot of guys I work with is a lot of men were taught to relate via triangulation. Right. Which is basically this idea that me and you put our attention on a third Thing, sports, game, an activity, fixing something. And through that we bond. But what that misses is we don't actually often have our attention on each other. And so many men I know can go, you know, spend a weekend with their closest bros, so to speak, and then come home and still feel lonely. Or those guys don't know that their marriage is on the rocks or they just got fired because we aren't really taught as men to share what's going on inside. And so we hold all that in. And that's what I did. And that created a tremendous amount of strife and stress for me. And when I first got into men's work and men's groups, it was the first place I had experienced, oh, there's another way to do this, right? We can actually support each other as men. And through the feedback and support and frankly, just love of guys in my group, my life accelerated. Right. I took off, I started taking more chances, I started taking more risks. I got into my first relationships and that led me all the way up, through now being, you know, father of two, happily married, grown my own business, and I couldn't have done any of it without other men.
Host: Interesting. So since you've been in this world, you know, a lot of, a lot of men, like you mentioned, they're like, I don't really need that. That sounds like a bunch of sissy boo boo kind of stuff. Like, what does it actually help? So a lot of guys have like, no idea what actually happens in a men's group. And some assume it's just a bunch of guys sitting around complaining about life, which I'm sure it can be. Right. But it also sounds like it can also be empowering at the same time and helpful and beneficial to us as individuals. So can you break it down for us, like, what actually happened in a men's group and why is it so powerful? How did it, like for you personally, how did it completely change the trajectory of your life in your 20s?
Jason Lange: Yeah. So probably the most important two things it did are, one, it got me into my body. So a lot of us men spend a lot of our time up here. Can't see me if you're listening, but I'm pointing to my head, ruminating. We get stuck in mental loops, overthinking things, over analyzing things, over judging ourselves. And this often causes a lot of mental hardship and actually prevents us from making the decisions we need to move forward. So for one, a good men's group can guide you out of your head, into your heart and into your body. And this is so important. Guys don't realize this, but literally, the physiology of our body is there's a bundle of nerves, they call it the vagal nerve, that go from the base of our brain all the way down our spine. And it's what connects our body to our brain, right? It's kind of the highway for our nervous system. And here's the wild thing. Only 20% of that highway is brain to body. 80% of the directionality of that is from body to brain. So if we're not in our bodies, we are actually missing out on about 80% of the information available to us in any given moment. And lo and behold, what's a better way to become a better leader, Father, husband, make better decisions? The more information we're taking in in the moment, the more accurately we can lead. So that started to transform me quite profoundly. The other thing it can do is a good men's group can help give us feedback on what is happening inside of us. So this is a thing that, you know, a lot of guys actually crave that. I know. I call this the spinach in the teeth moment. Right? We crave having a man in our life who will look us in the eye and say, hey, man, you have a big piece of spinach in your teeth. Before you walk out the door, you might want to clean that, right? And then we're like, oh, my God. I feel a little embarrassed, but, wow. Thank you for telling me, because I saw 10 people today and no one mentioned it, and I've been walking through my day with a big piece of spinach in my teeth, looking like an idiot. So a good men's group, other men in particular, can often see our patterning, our shadows, the places we're stuck way before we can. And so men grow. So we grow the best through feedback, through challenge. Right? Okay, here's what I see. Here's where you're off, Mark. It's not about shaming. It's just about giving men this kind of feedback. And a good group will give you that feedback of, where do you feel on target in your life? Where are you making good decisions?
Host: Where are you?
Jason Lange: Where do you feel stuck? And that absolutely transformed my life. It helped me move across the country, follow a passionate career. These are things I never would have done without a group. And lo and behold, those things are hard to do as well. So when I hit bumps along the road, I had a group that could support me in the process. And this is, you know, maybe the last thing I'll share is that right Part of the culture we're taught as men is this kind of lone wolf mentality. Right? A tough man, a good man, an American man, you know, I'm here in the States, is tough. He's a rugged individual. He doesn't ask for help. He just grits his teeth and he gets through it. And, you know, there's some actual merit in that. But the truth is, the lone wolf in nature, the way it actually works in the world, the lone wolf is the one that was kicked out of the pack. And that wolf will die faster. And this is a real thing for men. Men die faster and earlier and. Right. Just a new study came out that men who traditionally identify with a lot of the masculine traits we're taught in our culture, many of which are mapped onto stoicism. If you've ever heard that, you know, just like, don't feel too much, keep it all inside. Those men are far more likely to commit suicide because they hold it all inside and it catches up. And then on top of that, I don't know how old you are, but, you know, I'm in my mid-40s now, and I can tell you, and I work with many men of all kinds of different ages. You know, we're in our 20s and early 30s as men. It's like we kind of come in with a preloaded credit card. There's lots of room. We just have a certain amount of energy. We can go out, we can work hard, we can party. We just. And we find a way to move forward. You start to hit your late 30s and 40s, those bills start to come due. Right? Our body doesn't bounce back as fast. And for a lot of men, any emotional content they're holding inside ends up sapping vital energy. Like, this is a thing guys don't understand when we're not feeling. It takes energy to do it. And that ends up showing up as autoimmune disorders. All kinds of sicknesses, fatigue, depression, back issues that really catch up to guys in their 40s and 50s, where they start aging way faster than they need to. So for me, men's group was also a place where. Where I had modeled for me what it means to be an emotionally expressive man who's not collapsed and weak and not posturing and pretending to be tough, but right there in the middle, hey, my life's hard right now. I just had a severe loss. I might be crying, but I don't feel weak. And it was the first time I was around men like that that I was like, wow. Actually, I Trust that man more. He feels stronger to me because he's not afraid of his emotions. He's willing to go right into them.
Host: That's amazing. And so you mention a couple things there, right? Us as men, we, the best way to help, help a man is to speak their language, right? Men speak other men's language. That's the easiest part of it, right? We can give each other feedback so we know how to talk to each other. The way our brains work as men is that feedback will, maybe we won't like it, but it's solution based, right? It's practical, it's straightforward, it's easy to understand, it's easy to process having that feedback and knowing, okay, you're off the mark. Do this different or do this different or try this kind of thing. It's very direct and straightforward. That's perfect. Perfect. That's exactly what every man needs. The second thing you mentioned here that I want to get into a little bit more just because I'm curious, what do you mean? So you mentioned the, you know, 20% in the brain, 80% in the body and getting into the body or something along those lines. So what does that mean, getting into your body, being in your body or getting, getting into it, what does, what does that mean?
Host: Love that. I love that. And feel free to feel free to share and to share and to share. I love a good podcast to where I'm not the main one, like talking or having to talk too much. And I just get to give short responses. And it's really good. You know, God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason. So it's really nice to be able to listen and to learn to soak it all in. But like you're saying here, it's so important to understand where. First it's important to understand how your body feels, how your body starts to react, right? Whether it's sweaty palms or maybe an upset stomach or maybe you feel like you gotta poop all of a sudden or something, right? How that response means something. It means something. I'm feeling something. Maybe it's just I'm feeling I need to poop. Because I just need to poop, right? You know, I gotta go choose to go poop. That's what I gotta choose to go do. But it's important for our young kids to understand when they feel different things, helping them understand. I feel blank when this happened, or I feel this when this happens, or I feel this when this happens. Kind of create a language around it. And like you're saying here, most men aren't taught that language. They're not taught that, okay, I feel. I can feel angry or sad or hurt or upset or disgusted or whatever the emotion is when these things happen to me. And my reaction to those is so and so, right? We're taught way to internalize all those reactions. And eventually, like you, like you also mentioned all those internalized feelings, all those internalized emotions, if they never come out, they all turn back on us, every single one of them. And that's not good when that, when the day reckoning comes, right? Because it'll come, like you're saying, in a lot of different ways. It comes in autoimmune disease. It comes in, you know, organ. Organ disease. It can come in low energy, you know, physical. What's the word? I don't know what the word here, but it's like it comes out manifestations, physical manifestations.
Jason Lange: Sure.
Host: And in so many different way, shapes and form. If it doesn't come out, even if not even all of it comes out, you can still help the process along the way by getting parts of it out. And so it's. It's important to, to find how you can do it and to get it out, because it can really change a lot of things long term, not just mentally, not just emotionally, for yourself, physically as well. And it also helps you in your relationships around you, like you're saying here, helps you with your kid. It helps you be able to react properly. It helps your kids be able to react in a better way. But you can't do that unless you're able to recognize what the heck's going on in yourself and then be able to make a more conscious decision going forward from there. And so it's really important. So another thing that a lot of. A lot of men, you know, we, we struggle with and it, it's evolving. It's always evolving. And we're kind of at this place now as men where being too masculine is toxic, being not masculine enough is not okay. And if you're somewhere in the middle, that's also not okay. So there's this war on masculinity, I guess, as it is for men to feel masculine doesn't always feel okay in society, especially here in the state. So it's evolving and a lot of men feel lost. They don't know how to express themselves anymore because if they express themselves too masculine, it comes off bad. If they express themselves not masculine enough, it's bad. If they're in the middle, that's bad. It's just bad right up and down a long spectrum, which then leads to a lot of men not knowing how to express themselves in relationships. They're struggling there. They're dealing with loneliness, like you said earlier, you know, go on a guy trip, still come back feeling lonely. Go and Hang out with guys and still come back feeling lonely, but sometimes feeling like we don't fit in anywhere. Like a masculine man feel probably today more than ever feels like I don't know where the heck I fit in or where to get in, where I fit in. But along with that, what are some of the biggest struggles that men are facing today that you see?
Jason Lange: Yeah, for one. Exactly. We're taught to hold everything inside, and we don't know what to do with it or where to put our feelings. And so we hold them, we numb out to them, we dissociate them, and we turn to substances often to try to manage them. We're way more susceptible to loneliness. The stats are pretty, pretty extreme. They. That, you know, it's something like three out of five men now over the age of 30 don't have more than one close associate they share life with. I mean, these stats are like, pretty crazy. And it's all been accelerated, right, with COVID and work from home and the way our society has moved more and more towards kind of this privacy, right? We live alone. You can order everything you need off Amazon. You can never leave your house. You can work from home. Guys in particular are more susceptible to that because we're not taught from a young age to be relational. So, you know, I work with a lot of men who, if they're not in a group, sometimes they haven't deeply connected with anyone just because they were never taught to. And for a lot of us men, we then teach each other that when we become adolescents, you know, we get into that locker room culture. In any weakness, we share any vulnerability, anytime we mess up, at best, we're just ignored. At worst, we're bullied, ostracized, made fun of. So we learn to armor up around other men. Like, oh, I can't. I can't share this because they'll. They'll attack me. Right? That's very common experience for a lot of guys I know. So that's all happening. And then, you know, I mostly work with heterosexual men because that's just what I know from my life experience. And that's a place where there is a massive transformation happening. Right. In the 50s and 60s, women were able to come out of the home, into the workplace and be liberated from just being biological mothers. Right? You don't have to just be a mom. You can be someone who has your own career, has your own passions, interests. You can take care of yourself. And that kind of spurred a lot of growth for women that men started much later. Men's work movement didn't really start till kind of the 90s, and then it dipped, and now it's really coming back. But part of the struggle we're finding is, like you said, a lot of men don't know how to be in modern relationships because it used to be if you were a provider, that that was enough. You brought money in, you brought food in. That was your role. That was your job as a dad. And you were considered enough. Literally, people would get married for this. He has a good job, marry him. That's not. That doesn't fly anymore, right? A lot of women these days, more women are going to college, More women are getting certain jobs they can handle themselves. They don't need a man to provide for them. So what it leaves is men who don't. Haven't done the work, so to speak, that they don't know. Well, then what do I do? How do I be useful to a woman like that if she doesn't need me, you know, for finances? And that's a big part of growing up. Us men are having to learn how to do of. Okay, well, actually, what she needs is my presence. What she needs is my capacity to be fully present with her, with our children in all aspects of life. And us men have a certain amount of interior work we've been asked to do right where we now need to have an internal world. It's not enough for us to just be a slab of iron that doesn't feel anything and doesn't share anything. We need to be connected. We need to be able to relate to our children. We need to be able to relate to our wives. And a lot of guys don't. It's not that they aren't willing to do that. They just literally don't know the path, don't know the instruction manual, don't know what it looks like for a man, like I said, to have access to his emotions, but not to be collapsed in them and not to be posturing, which is that I don't. What are you talking about? I don't feel anything. I'm fine. So many guys move through life with but something right in the middle that actually makes us more trustable as men, which is a huge one. And then, like you said, we just. We don't have the modeling for what this looks like in our culture, what healthy masculinity looks like. And it's one of the main things I love about being in a men's group where you get around a lot of different men is. Is you get to Start to feel the pieces from each man of what they have to offer. Wow. How that man handles his anger, that's incredible. He's totally safe, even when he's angry. I don't feel threatened at all. I don't feel scared at all. Or this man, how he handles his grief. Wow, that was so beautiful. He felt so deeply. Or this man, how he handles his finances or his kids. And we start to be able to kind of collect all these little tidbits from different men and put together a piece of what an embodied, healthy masculinity looks like, which, really, in my book, involves three things. So the dichotomy a lot of guys get stuck in is we're either just kind of pure, traditional macho masculinity. Here's what I want. I'm going to go for it. Screw you. There's like, a version of that man that's in the world and often is very successful. The problem with that man is, you know, not to be too crass, but he's got a lot of balls. He doesn't have a lot of heart. He's not connected to. To the impact of his behaviors on those around him. And that's where the reckoning for masculinity has been. There's been hundreds, tens of thousands of years of what happens when masculinity, disconnected from its heart, runs rampant in the world, can cause harm to women, children, the environment, other men. It's a known thing. Then the pendulum swung the other way of. Whoa. Okay. Too much balls is dangerous. We need to bring some heart online. Right? We need to be safe. We need to be sensitive. We don't want to make people feel uncomfortable. We don't want to be dangerous. Now, it was kind of the birth of the nice guy. Okay, I'm just gonna be friends with everyone. I'm gonna disconnect from my sexuality, not be too aggressive. I don't want to be a me too guy. I don't want to push people. I don't want to be loud. And those guys are very pleasant. I consider myself, you know, something I've had to work through. And in a lot of ways, it's a big evolutionary leap, but those guys often then end up neglecting themselves in service of others. So constantly just helping other people while inside dying or feeling resentful or feeling alone or in pain or overwhelmed, that doesn't work either. Right. And then you have the kind of more traditional stoic, like I was talking about, the guy who's just like, all of that is sealed Off. I'm just not sharing anything. I just show up, I do my job, do my work, and. And then that guy often ends up at the bottom of a bottle. What we're being asked for to do in this moment as men is integrate all three. I want to have access to my balls, my power boundaries, my capacity to create safety in the world, to be okay with my sexual energy. There's nothing wrong with masculine sexual energy. It's what we do with it, right? It's what we do with it. There's plenty of men who have abused that, but in itself, there's nothing wrong with it. We want to have access to our heart, our ability to be relational, to attune to others, to be sensitive, to impact. And then we just want to have a deep awareness of how all of this is connecting in the world. And again, most men just don't have a roadmap for that. And men's work right now is providing a path for so many guys, okay? We are being asked to be more in life right now. It's not enough to just show up, do your job, come home, fall asleep on the couch, not connect to your kids, barely give your wife any attention unless you want sex from her. That was what a lot of dads did for a long time. Not anymore. Now we got to be involved, right? We got to be emotionally available. We got to be connected to our children. We got to be more, so to speak. And it's totally possible. And what I see is once guys are given kind of the instruction manual, they're all for it. They're like, yeah, let's do this. I'm in. I want to be the best dad. I want to be. I want to be the best husband I can be. But nobody gave me the path to get there.
Host: Yeah, no, you're 100% right. There's a balance between all those three different types of masculinity, right? You got to be somewhat of all three, but you can't be too much of one, but you can't be not enough of another one, because all three of them are needed in some way, shape, or form. And so it's just how you go about balancing those energies, right? How you go about finding those energies within yourself, because you have them. Every man has them. Every man has that macho man in them. Every man has that. Can't remember how you describe the other two, but every man has all three of them in them, right? At all times, we all have them in us. And it's just about how we use Them and how we balance them and how we create them. But at the same time, we still feel isolated. At the same time in all this, right, we still feel isolated even when we have families and friends. So how do we get all these feelings of isolation knowing that, okay, we have this power, we have this masculinity, we can use it, but we. We don't know how. How the heck do we get out of these feelings of isolation and start to unwind? I guess.
Jason Lange: Yeah. So this would be, you know, my prescription, so to speak, is every man should be in a men's group. I say it's, you need to get around other men that you can go deep with. So it doesn't mean just hanging out on the surface, and it means going below that. Because, like you said, one of the great things about men spending time with other men is we have shared reality. And I see this all the time, right? Man sits down, allows something to come through. Like, my life is so hard right now. I've considered ending it. Like, it's just. I just don't know what to do. And some people would hear that and might freak out. But all it takes is one man to sit next to that man and be like, yeah, man, I felt that too. Just that simple thing. Just that I have been there and I have felt that. And suddenly that man doesn't feel as alone in that anymore. It's like, oh, okay, I'm not the only one. There's someone else who's. Who's either in that or gotten through that. And that connection allows us often to become a lot more resilient in the world. And so by going deep in groups, there's this really interesting thing about men. You know, we often hear about oxytocin, particularly as you're a father, right? Your kids are born. It's connected to estrogen. It's the bonding molecule. It's, you know, you're looking in your baby's eyes, you just get flooded with it, and you're like, wow. I'm like, I'll do anything for you. In men, there's a correlate to that, actually. There's a similar hormone, and it's called vasopressin, and it's related to testosterone. It's the testosterone version of the bonding hormone. And guess how it works? You do hard things together, and then you feel bonded. So this is why a lot of men in the military or sports communities start to feel these really deep connections with guys that then will last a lifetime. And what I've seen in Men's groups. This is totally. The wild thing is that starts to happen, but what's happening is we're not conquering external world challenges. The really scary, hard, difficult things we're doing are going inside. We're actually exploring and facing our internal dragons. And when men hold space and witness other men doing that, they come out profoundly bonded. I mean, I've sat through many, many groups where a man has been courageous enough to bring something forward that some guys, I kid you not, have been holding for 20, 30, 40 years. Something they were afraid to admit. They felt shame around a piece of grief, a pace of anger, all kinds of different manifestations, but they've literally held it inside for decades and they finally bring it forward. And when a man witnesses another man doing that, like courageously doesn't feel like weakness. It's like, wow, that was bad ass. And the bond that is created between men is they witness each other go fully in and face their inner dragons and is so strong that what I've seen in these groups is those men come out and they're like best friends for life. You're just in. You suddenly know this other man so deeply and feel so connected to him. And suddenly being part of a group like that, guys get two things that every man I know deeply craves. A sense of purpose and a sense of belonging. And so being in a group like that, you get purpose because your presence actually matters to the other men. Your presence can make a difference as to what happens to another man in group. Does he feel safe? Does he go somewhere deep? Does he feel heard? Like your presence actually matters to the other guys in the group. And if you aren't there or you're checked out, men will feel it. And guys like that, actually, they like knowing that there's a purpose to their being. Then there's a sense of belonging to right of, oh my God, I'm in this group again. It matters that I'm here. If I'm not here, the guys will notice. And when men have those two things, what I found is loneliness goes way down. And I'm not talking, you need to have, you know, 20, 30, 40 best friends. I'm talking, most guys just need four, maybe six guys. They feel really solid and deep with that. They can call any time of day with anything and that man will pick up. And when guys have that, it actually goes beyond. Been talking about this recently. It goes beyond resilience.
Host: Right?
Jason Lange: Resilience just means something hits me and I don't fall apart. That's great. But what Is beyond that is actually what we call antifragile. That the more life comes at me, the stronger I get. When we have a group like that, the stresses of life come. We have somewhere to process it, guys to support us, and we're able to actually take on more. We become more powerful and we feel connected.
Host: Yeah. And I think the best thing about that, right, Is us as humans, we're not meant to be alone. We're not meant to be solo. Lone wolf creatures, right? Like you mentioned, at the top, a lone wolf will die fastest, right? Because wolves are. Everyone thinks like lone wolf's like a badge of honor, right? Like, oh, I'm a lone wolf kind of thing. No one can tame me. I'm. I'm my own person. I'm. I'm all this, you know, all this in a bag of chip. When in reality, if you think, like you mentioned, the lone wolf is probably older or younger or weaker or something, and they got kicked out of the pack for whatever reason. That's. And not a good reason normally too. And now they're on their own to forage from themselves. And wolves are much stronger together. They're much more intelligent, they're much more inept to hunt. They're much more. They're better at shelter. They're better at everything that wolves do, right? Together on their own, they still have those skills. But one wolf can't pick off an elk as well as 10 wolves can, you know, or six or four, however many, right? If there's four wolves versus one elk, that elk's still probably screwed and, you know, whatever it is. So now the whole pack gets to eat because those four wolves kind of thing. So it's important to have that as humans because we're not meant to be alone. We're social creatures. We're creatures created for a purpose, to be with each other. We're not meant to just be. Be by ourselves. And like you mentioned earlier, too, the whole Covid and everything accelerated it. Now we have delivery services for everything that we could ever imagine could come right to our door. We don't have to leave the house for anything. And that's not healthy, you know, that creates more feelings of isolation and helps you avoid connecting with yourself and others. When you need that, you physically need that. We have hormones that feed off of each other, and you need that connection. If you don't have that, you're missing a big part of the human experience. Because that's what we're meant to do. We're meant to connect with each other. In some way, shape or form. And so we don't have that. It's bad. It's really bad. It's really harmful to ourselves. And what you're mentioning here, especially like being in that men's group and having that support system, is that not only do you have it, but they also have it in you too. Right? And you can share that together. You can share these experiences together. Because, you know, at the end of the day, our lives aren't all that different. Your life isn't that far different from me. Maybe we live in different time zones. Maybe we're different. Different ages, right? We're definitely different ages. But, you know, our lives really aren't that different. We're experiencing a lot of the same things. We both experience people dying. We both experienced kids going through the public school system. We both experienced kids doing this, that or the other. We both experience, you know, being married. We both experience, you know, all these different things, but they're not that different. We're not that different from each other at the end of the day. Maybe geographically, that's the biggest thing, but outside of that, it's really not that much. I have another, like, just to echo this, like, I have another friend, his name's also Jason and he lives down in Oregon. I live up in Washington here. And we're really not that far, far apart geographically. I think we're like a three hour drive apart from each other. And we're very different in terms of he's a martial artist and all these things. And we have very different, like, political views and whatnot. And that's okay, but we're still great, good, really good friends. You know, if he's up here this way, he's gonna message me and say, hey, I'm, I'm in town. I'm gonna be in town. I'm doing this thing for work. You know, let's stop and go get a drink or let's stop and hang out, go get dinner or something. And it's that simple. It's like we're really not that different at the end of the day. Yeah, we had different views, different opinions, different thoughts, things like that because of our experiences and whatnot, or, you know, for whatever reason, but really none of that matters at the end of the day. None of that stuff that media says matters actually matters. What matters is the connection that you and I have. What matters is the friendship. What matters is, hey, you know, I'm in town. I know you're there. Let's, let's hang out. That's what matters kind of thing. So it's finding about what matters. I think that's the biggest thing that anyone can do, any man can do today is to, you know, start to reconnect and you know, if you're at home all day, well, get outside. It's as simple as that. Get out, get outside. So I don't know if we really hit it, but what there's, we mentioned, like a lot of men feel lost. Masculinity is evolving and it's kind of all over the place. But there's a lot of confusion about what healthy masculinity actually looks like. And I think it's, I think it's a scale, right. It's trying to combine those three elements of masculinity into one. And. But some guys think they, they have to be that tough, macho man all the time. Others think they suppress all the time and to avoid being toxic. So if we were to try to define it, what does a healthy version of masculinity actually look like on a day to day basis? If we were able to put that into, if we're able to paint a picture.
Jason Lange: Yeah, kind of at a high level. What I'd point to is it's connected and it's able to be impacted. So a lot of what we're taught, kind of this macho masculinity man box culture basically maps masculinity to invulnerability. So to be masculine, to be a man, means you're invulnerable, you're emotionally invulnerable, you're physically invulnerable. And as we've been talking about, that's just a mirage. No man is actually invulnerable. And I tell this to the tough guys, you know, I sometimes work with that. No, no, that's, you know, why would I ever do that? You might not want to hear it, but I don't care how strong a man you think you are, there is going to be a point in your life where your body will fail you, your body will fail you, and you will not be able to push through on your own. And that is the moment it becomes very clear, what kind of network do I have around me? This could be an accident, this could be injury, this could be illness, this could be old age. It will happen to every single man in a body. You are going to be confronted with that vulnerability at some point that, wow, I can't do this myself, I need help. And that is a terrifying thing for a lot of men who have never asked for help before, will silently suffer and wear it as a badge of honor when, you know, I've had to get do this many, many times of just wow. Actually, turns out if I ask for help, that thing that might take me two weeks to figure out took 30 seconds when someone gave me the right piece. So I just saved myself all that time and strife, and now I can get back to what I really care about in life. So, yeah, it's this ability. It's staying connected. It's not right. Where masculinity goes wrong into. I don't even call it toxic. I call it pathological, which just means it grew in the wrong way, right? It didn't get certain nutrients it needed. Doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it. It's not toxic in and of itself is. We become too separate, right? We become separate from everything. We become separate from our emotions, our bodies. We become separate from the people around us. We become separate from the environment, the world, literally. Men get depressed when they feel like they don't belong in the world. I take guys out into nature all the time. Lo and behold, what happens when you realize, wow, I am part of all this. Like, literally, I am part of all this. You don't feel as alone, you don't feel as depressed. And then there's that piece around being impacted. So vulnerability, right? Which in a lot of ways just means I share my truth. Even when it's scary to say, I feel the emotions that are scary to feel. And when men can do that in a safe way, when we can take responsibility, we become far more trustable. I tell this to guys all the time, and they don't believe me until they start to see it in their own lives. We get into groups, we start doing embodiment practices. People trust us more. So in my mind, one of the markers of healthy masculinity in the world is being in the presence of a man or woman doesn't actually matter. Embodying healthy masculine makes the people around them relax and feel safer. That's it. Feel, relax and safer. And that doesn't just come from a physical thing, Right. You can be a physically tough man that could kill anyone and protect those around you. But if you don't have control over your anger, you're not safe to be around. If you collapse in shame or grief or get frozen or end up at the bottom of a bottle, you're not safe to be around. So there's part of this component is us having a handle on our own inner experience. And knowing when to ask for help or when we're feeling triggered or whatever that might be in that capacity to create safety, that is a marker of the masculine. In my mind. Not only do we create that safety, but we often empower others in their own lives. And it's very doable, but it means us. Guys. We got to get out of our heads. We got to get into our bodies. We got to learn to deal with our emotional wounding. We got to learn how to communicate, and we got to learn how to regulate our nervous system. That's it, right? Like you said, we are social animals and we are wired for connection. And one of the primary ways we regulate our nervous system, like I said, is through the same nerve bundle. The vagal nerve is face to face contact. Making eye contact, seeing someone's face, breathing with them, can change your state almost faster than anything else. And there's a very famous research study I'll just point out. There was in mice. It was either mice or rats. I can't remember. I think it was mice because they're very close in DNA. They literally, they put a. Put a mouse in a cage and, you know, they got those little drinking things. They go where they usually have water in it, they put morphine in it. And when it was alone, that mice mouse would literally drink itself to death. The morphine was just too powerful, too intoxicating, wanted it too much, and it would just keep drinking and it would kill itself. How did they change that? Literally all they had to do was put another mouse in the cage. Once there was another mouse there and it wasn't alone, it would drink a little and it would be done. That was it. It was wired for connection. And without that connection, it hurt itself. We're the same way as guys. So you got to get connected, got to take responsibility for your inner world and your nervous system and learn how to be vulnerable. A lot of guys I know, I don't know where you're at, but a lot of guys I know, you know, they love. We love the archetypes and the story in our culture. We have Batman, we have Superman. And I always tend to point out to guys, it's like, okay, think about these two. Who's actually more courageous? The guy that's invulnerable and basically can go into any situation and know he won't be hurt. Or the guy that knows that every single time he steps up could be his last. Which one takes more courage? Batman, right? The man that is vulnerable, meaning he's able to be impacted. Courage and vulnerability are way more related than men realize. And for guys that have, you know, oh my God, vulnerability, that's for weak men. Just replace it in your mind with courage and then suddenly it feels very different. Wow. It actually takes courage right now for me to grieve the fact that my spouse just died or that my kid's not talking to me or that I just got a cancer diagnosis. It takes courage to actually allow that emotion through. You know, again, tell me who's more afraid? The guy who's unwilling to feel his emotions because he's scared of him or the man that goes right in? Just goes right in. Yeah, guys, I'm overwhelmed, I'm hurting, I'm in pain, I need help. And then he deals with it and lo and behold, you deal with it. Suddenly you can come back to life with more availability and presence to move forward your life in the way you want.
Host: Yeah, no, absolutely. And sometimes, oftentimes it takes more effort to keep these things down and keep them in than it does to just get them out. Right. Sometimes it takes more effort to do nothing than it is to do something or to say something to someone. It takes more effort to not do that and to avoid it than to just be open and be vulnerable. So something, something else to mention there. Well, all right. Is there anything from the conversation that you want to mention before we get into the wrap up question? Some, some fun light hearted stuff.
Jason Lange: Just that you don't have to suffer alone. Guys, don't, don't buy the script that you're fed in the world. Again, I'll just say getting into a group, handling this stuff like I've talked about, increasing your capacity. You will be able to do more of what you want to be able to do in the world. Whether that's create a business, be a better father, excel physically, you will be able to achieve more. The men I know deeply in this work, they make more money, they have better relationships, better sex, their kids connect to them more. This isn't just like some airy fairy stuff I'm talking about. It has direct results in your life.
Host: Love that. And it does. It 100% will. If you can become more connected with yourself, more connected with those around you, it will have an impact and it will make a difference. That's all right, so just a few light hearted questions here that like to ask here at the end of the podcast. They're just fun just to kind of bring the conversation back down because sometimes we get deep and so it's nice to wrap things up on A fun note. So first question here. Does pineapple go on pizza?
Jason Lange: Yes, absolutely.
Host: Definitely. It can go on yours, but not mine. So let me just say, man, what is your. If you could have a dinner party with three people, dead or alive, who are you picking to be at your table?
Jason Lange: A great question. I would say Carl Sagan, Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln.
Host: Interesting. It's always interesting to ask people that question and kind of see, like, how they respond, who they respond with. I've heard respond like, I always want Jackie Robinson at the table. I kind of always want Ken Griffey Jr. At the table. Just get those perspective. Griffey was like a childhood, like, icon for me. And then I would get. Not the actor. I wouldn't want, like Steve Carell himself, but I would want the character Michael Scott there as well. I think that'd be fun.
Jason Lange: That's great.
Host: I think he would make every dinner party better. Last one here, if you could. Oh, sorry. What is your guilty pleasure? Song or food?
Jason Lange: Let's see. Food, man. Just pancakes, anytime, any place, anywhere. I'm in particularly really terrible diner pancakes. I'm just all about and song. And what would be a guilty pleasure? For song, I would say, dude, I got. I got. I got a little girl. Frozen 2, the next right thing. So good, so good.
Host: I like it, I like it. And then last question here. If you. So let's say you're interacting with a very young dad, age 18 to 22, super young, just starting out his fatherhood journey. What is one piece of advice that you would offer to him? Just one.
Jason Lange: Yep. The greatest gift you can give your kids is getting a handle on your nervous system. So do your healing work, get therapy, get help. What I found in my experience, and I've seen in a lot of dads, is when we're not resourced, we will default back to the parenting the way we were parented, which for a lot of guys wasn't necessarily great. So the best thing you can do for your kids is do your own inner work and teach them that we all have to grow to thrive, and there's nothing wrong. You go to the gym to work out your body. You go to coaching, you go to therapy to work out your mind and heart. Doesn't mean there's anything broken with you. This is how we get stronger in life. And the main way you transmit that is to do it yourself. And your kids will observe it, absorb it 100%.
Host: No one else will do it for you. Right? No one else can do it for you. For you well, Jason, this has been an incredible conversation. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and breaking down why brotherhood is so essential for men. If today's episode resonated with you, go and check out Jason's work at Evolutionary Men Talk. He offers free exploratory calls to help you figure out if men's work is the right next step for you. And more than likely, it probably is. And as always, remember, you are worthy, you are loved, you are enough, and you are doing a great job. Until next time, stay present, stay engaged, and keep building the life that matters most to you. Sam.
