Redefining Masculinity: How International Men’s Day Inspires Change — Jason Lange | Ep 137 | Observeday

Host (Observeday): Welcome to the Observe Day podcast, the show where we celebrate the days that matter. From holidays to meaningful observances, we bring you inspiring conversations, stories, and ideas to make each day count. Whether it's raising awareness, learning something new, or simply sparking joy, this is your space to explore the calendar in a whole new way. I'm your host, Wisdom Okonkwo, and I'm excited to share today's observance with you. Let's dive in. This November, in celebration of International Men's Day, we're exploring what it truly means to redefine masculinity in today's world. Joining us is Jason Lange, a men's embodiment coach, group facilitator, and evolutionary guide. Jason has spent over two decades helping men cultivate emotional awareness, purpose, and deeper connection in their lives. He's a Certified no More Mr. Nice Guy Coach and has trained with world renowned teachers like John Wineland, Dr. Robert Glover, and Ken Wilbur. Through his platform, Evolutionary Men, Jason champions one message loud and clear. Every man should be in a men's group. Today we'll talk about breaking free from outdated stereotypes, raising vulnerability, and building communities where men can grow together and not alone. Welcome to the podcast, Jason.

Jason Lange: Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Wisdom. I'm pumped to be here.

Host (Observeday): Yeah. Jason, your story begins with personal struggle, loneliness, discomfort, and disconnection. What was the turning point that led you to men's work?

Jason Lange: Luck. I would say I got pretty lucky in that. Yeah. You know, I was struggling in a lot of ways in my teenage years, into my mid-20s, and went on a journey to try to figure out, okay, how to be a healthier, happier, more productive man with the kind of relationships I want. And I got pretty lucky. I was living in a part of the world and where men's work was a little more ahead of the curve and already happening. And I heard about this thing called the men's group, and me and some buddies started meeting, and it just completely transformed the trajectory of my life in terms of getting connection with other men, having guys present for me that could track me, support me, and help me figure out what direction in my life I wanted to take. Along with one of the most important things a men's group can give any man is really good feedback, right? Really good feedback about the decisions and choices making in our lives. And I just got so hooked on it, so to speak, it eventually led me to supporting other men, to getting into groups, because more than anything else I've done, it's changed my life before.

Host (Observeday): We get to you know, the importance of men's group. What do you think has changed about what it means to be a man in today's world compared to when you first started this journey?

Jason Lange: Yeah, totally. I think we're still in the midst of an incredible transformation that is impacting men quite significantly. And, you know, the script for a long time, obviously slightly different in different parts of the world, but the script for a long time was to be a successful man meant to provision, get some money, keep your family safe so that your wife could raise the kids. Really, that was kind of it. Like you go off and work, you get the money and it supports a family, but not necessarily directly involved. And in order to do that, many generations of men often earned and protected their families at the expense of their own emotional, physical and mental health. Right. So might be suffering inside, but, oh, this is what it takes in order to X, Y or Z. That whole script has just really started to break down across the world in that a lot of places in the world now women outearn men, women in terms of finance and income, and that has really left a lot of men confused. Well, if the one thing I've been taught I'm supposed to do in order to be valuable as a father or in relationship isn't needed anymore, what, what do I do? What's the point? And that's where we're seeing a lot of men feel like they've been left behind in all the changes that have emerged in our culture. And I'm pretty passionate in that. It's not that it's easier for women or harder for women. It's hard for women and it's hard for men. Everybody is having to grow right now and being asked to be more and in particular for men, there is something happening where it's not just enough to go out and financially provide and provision in those traditional senses. Now it has to include more of us. Our capacity to actually be present, to be relational, to be involved deeply in our children's lives, to be involved around the house and householding tasks. And some guys resist that and want to go back, but there's no going back in that sense. Right. The world just keeps evolving. And so us men have a place, very much have a place in this emerging world. But a lot of us just don't have the training we need to feel like we know how to participate in it. And that's where stuff like men's work and men's groups can be really powerful, where we actually learn how to get out of our heads, how to get into our bodies, how to communicate, how to take care of ourselves so we're not damaging ourselves while we try to help everyone else, which is a real thing for a lot of guys. So it's never been a more complex time in some sense. But it's also in another sense, there's never been a more free time in that it used to be if you were born in a female body, you were expected to have kids and be a mother. Right. That was kind of your lot in life. And if you were a father, you were expected to go off and work. That's all, like I said, out the window now, where we get to pick and choose in a way we never had got to before. Where you can be a stay at home dad, you can be a woman out in the workforce, and those are good things. But it does mean we have some learning to do as to how to relate to each other to keep things healthy as culture evolves.

Host (Observeday): Yeah. At the beginning of the episode, you mentioned how important men's group, you know, is to the work you do and the man you've become. For a lot of persons, they're like, oh, what's mains group? What's he talking about? That's a totally new concept to them. Before we go, I had to start talking about the importance of men's group. Can you explain simple terms? What men's group? What does men's group mean? What does that mean?

Jason Lange: Yeah, so men's group's one of those terms that I kind of joke. It's a little bit like meditation, where someone can say, hey, I meditate. And then you could ask them, well, what kind? There's like an infinite variety of meditation and there's a lot of range in terms of exactly what a men's group is. For many, many years, when you would say men's group, most people would associate it with one of two things. A church study group or some kind of addiction recovery group.

Host (Observeday): Before we dive deeper, I'd love to invite you to join the Observe day newsletter. Every week I send you highlights of upcoming observances, creative ways to celebrate, and behind the scenes, extras from the shows. It's the perfect way to stay inspired and never miss a meaningful moment. Sign up [email protected] join that is observed.com forward/join. Now let's get back to the conversation.

Jason Lange: Like aa and those are types of men's groups that exist and have existed for a long time. Even before that there were, you know, different gentlemen's clubs and the Mason, you know, there's all these different clubs that exist around the world that are kind of men's groups in a sense. But what I'm talking about is more of a new emergent. And it's this idea of a group of men who gather together and instead of just keeping it on the surface and talking about sports or politics or things they like and want to fix, you know, common culture. For a lot of men, the topic is each other in our lives and how we're showing up in them. So a men's group is a group of guys that gather together to get real about what's happening in their lives so they can get support and real feedback and often accountability for other men on how to course correct more and more towards the things they care about the most. And what it really is is this shift, which so many of us men are just indoctrinated with, of go at it alone. You know, default male culture is never show weakness, never show vulnerability, always be tough, don't ask for help. You know, these kind of default things that a lot of guys grow up believing. And because of that, we then live these extremely isolated lives where we never want to talk about what's not working. And all the stresses we're carrying get more intense because we have no way to deal with them. So a men's group is a place where we actually have somewhere to deal with it. And yes, sometimes it means learning to feel in dealing with the grief or shame or anger that often directs our lives without us knowing it, because no one ever taught us how to be with those emotions, let alone what to do with them. Sometimes, um, in men's group, we learn to deepen our presence and what does it mean to actually get out of our heads and into our bodies in a way that makes us more trustable to other men and other people. And it's a place where we get social connection and where we can get really clear feedback about how we're showing up in life and get guys to help us get clear about what it is we want. Where are we putting our time? Where are we putting our energy, and why are we even doing that? Even with all the changes that have happened, so many guys still kind of get fed this script and step onto this escalator of life, of I'm supposed to do this, then this, then this, then this. And they never ask themselves, well, where do I actually want my life to end up? And suddenly they're 20 years into a career where they work 40, 50, 60 hours a week, their bodies are exhausted, they Spend no time with their kids and they're stressed out and they've never asked themselves, what am I doing all this for? What's the life I actually want to live? And a men's group is the kind of place that can cut through all that, really cut through and help us get clear about as, you know, as human beings, we only have so much time on this earth. So where do we want to put our attention so that this is kind of the deepest reaches of a good men's group? How do we want to be living our day to day life so that when the moment inevitably comes where we're taking our last breaths, we're not full of regret or contraction. Our hearts are opened, we're at peace. We have this sense of, I gave it my all, I gave my life, everything I had. I went for the things I wanted. I have no regrets in that sense. Right. I really played full out. And a men's group can help us get to that state.

Host (Observeday): Yeah. Wow. How's a men's group different from traditional therapy or regular friendships?

Jason Lange: Yeah, totally. The. I'll start with therapy. And I'm very pro therapy. So let me just be clear there. I think everyone should be going to therapy, including men who often have the most resistance because they think therapy's only for people who are broken. Right. And I always joke, well, do you only go to the gym when you're injured? Guys are like, no, I go to the gym because I want to get stronger or even when I'm healthy. Right. And therapy, coaching, these are like that, but for our heart and our mind. Right. We sometimes we go to them when we're injured or have a problem. Sometimes we want to go to them when we want to increase our capacity for being in the world. And the thing about therapy is it tends to focus on one to one relationships. So it's an individual. Right. I'm paying someone to hold space for me. And that in itself is often the healing that's available in a therapeutic relationship. Because a lot of us never got healthy attachment and presence from our families or caregivers because they didn't know how to do it, they didn't have time, they were stressed out about other things. So a therapy relationship can help us heal kind of our individual one on one attachments, normal default male friendships, on the other hand, they're great. I'm not here to say don't do that stuff, you know, go play sports, go fishing, do the traditional activities. But that doesn't necessarily go under the surface. So I work With a lot of guys who maybe have spent the whole weekend with their buddies. Buddies. But their buddies don't even know their wife's about to leave them because they just don't talk about that kind of stuff. And most men default to what I call relating via triangulation or side by side relating. Me and you have our attention and are literally looking at some third thing, sporting game, some kind of physical activity, talking about politics, watching, you know, who knows? But our connection is built by having our attention on the shared third thing. Men's group. How it's different than both of those things going backwards this time is starting with friendships. We turn our attention from that third thing to each other, right? So it's actually facing you with my attention on you, even if we're in a circle. And what we're connecting over is what's most important to you in your life. Where are you in pain, what are you wanting? What are you celebrating? And what, what's the experience of being with you, like moment to moment? And we talk about that. You know, I sometimes I hear you talk about this thing, da da da da. When you say that, like I don't trust you, or every time you talk about your job, you know, your eyes look down and your voice drops and it's like you're a zombie. But every time you talk about your art, you know, your chin's up, your eyes are bright, and you're like full of energy and excitement. And so we get to share things like that with each other, which help us get clear about what, how we're showing up in the world. So different than a friendship is, you know, friendships can do this, but we go deeper, right? The whole point of a group is to go deeper and under the surface. And while a lot of us are sophisticated enough to bullshit one person, it's pretty hard usually to bullshit seven or eight other men, right? Somebody will call us forward if something isn't lining up in our behavior or how we're showing up, or sharing, et cetera. And then where it's different than, you know, a therapeutic relationship is it is peer to peer. So it's many relationships happening simultaneously. And that's different. You know, a good long term men's group, guys are there because they want to be there, not because they're paying someone for it. A lot of groups will start with that. And the first time men experience groups, they'll often go to a paid group where someone's leading it. But the most impactful groups long term are going to be the groups you self organize with your closest male friends and you meet not because anyone's telling you to, but because of what it brings to your life. Your effectiveness goes up, your resiliency goes up, your clarity about what you want goes up, and your networking goes up. Right. I recently been talking about this in terms of social capital. We think of capital in terms of our money and investment and opportunities. The connections we have with other people are an incredibly huge asset in our lives. For what happens when my life doesn't go the way I want. Wow. I have eight other men who would do anything for me, will help me find work, will give me a place to crash, will help me move, like, you name it. And that's a huge resource that we can get from men's groups that we can't necessarily get from our therapist and that we haven't necessarily gone deep enough to get from our kind of day to day friends. So again, the idea is there's, it's different than therapy in that it's many relationships and it's different than friendships in that this, there's a explicit container that takes us deeper than day to day relating to help us get the most out of our short, short lives.

Host (Observeday): Yeah. Oh, thank you so much for that. You know, we've been talking about men's group and one of the things about men's group, it's, it's a place to, to go deeper. That's the word you used. Many men still feel you uncomfortable opening up about emotions or vulnerability. You know, the, you know, it's really like, how can we begin normalizing emotional honesty without the shame and all the BS and all those things.

Jason Lange: Yeah. It just begins having conversations like this. And what I would say is most important is physically or even virtually on something like zoom. It's getting around and being present with other men who are deeper than you emotionally. And what I mean by that is the quickest way to start to rewrite the script is when a man meets another man. And I see this in men's groups all the time. And he sees that man being completely vulnerable and willing to express his grief, his anger, his fear, his shame without collapsing into kind of mishmash pool of victimhood and without also pretending like it's not there and getting all big chested and bravado and I'm fine and da, da, da. But right in the middle, this, this sense that, wow, I'm allowed to have feelings and the experience I've seen just time and time again is the quickest way to rewrite that story. Is when a man experiences another man in deeper, fuller, more authentic emotional expression than him, he starts to realize, whoa. The thing I, in my mind thought was gonna make this man seem weak, actually, it has me trust him more. I feel closer to him. I believe him more. I think he's quite courageous, actually, in that he was willing to feel that fear or express that anger in a healthy way, or share his shame. Right. Or just fully give himself over to the grief of some incredible heartache in his life. So it begins by getting around other men and actually having the experience, which tends to burst the bubble of what so many guys are just indoctrinated with. Right. You know, um, you can think of all the locker room terms that men call men when they see them emoting or vulnerable or whatever. And the truth is, I've worked with some of those guys. I've known some of those guys who, who. Who make fun of or demonize it. And it's all driven by fear. They are afraid of feeling at that depth and capacity, so they have to make it wrong in other people. But a man who is totally relaxed, totally at peace with his emotional body has no fear of his emotions. Grief. Great, let's bring it. Anger, Great, let's bring it. Shame. Great, let's bring it. And that actually ends up to me, those are the men I've witnessed in my life who have no fear when it comes to their fear. No fear when it comes to their other emotions. They're just willing to be fully in the experience. Those are the real, what I would call warriors. That it's like, wow, okay, this guy's not messing around because he doesn't have to tiptoe around emotions his whole life like so many men do. Put on this big puffy chest, this armor, pretend like we're tougher. Then when. I don't care who you are as a man, we all have stuff going on inside. And what I do see, crack men as they get older, that a lot of the tough guys don't want to think about is I don't care how tough you think you are as a guy, every man is going to have to deal with the moment in their life or where their body fails them. And you can't just push through and you just can't be tough. It can be illness, it can be accident, or the thing that's going to come for us all, old age. And it's at that moment where you cannot just push and drive through because your body doesn't even have the faculty you are going to Be reliant on what are the relationships around me? Who cares enough about me to help me when I need help, and can I even let that help in? Which is a whole nother thing a lot of guys struggle with. But point being, it's a slow, slow turn of the culture. But more and more men are waking up to it because the alternative, which we've been seeing and has been really coming to a head these last decade, is men die faster, suicide rates are higher, heart disease is higher, they drink themselves to death, they smoke themselves to death. Loneliness is feeling lonely, right? Big report that came out a couple years ago by the US Surgeon general. Just as dangerous as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day has that much impact on your longevity. And so we have this crisis, right, of men wanting to check out or whether it's addiction, suicides, you name it. And it's because that's what happens when we're not connected. It becomes too much, and we want to get away from it. But men are starting to wake up because they can see. And most men I know know a man in their life, whether once or twice removed, who just couldn't take it anymore and either checked out through suicide or just ended up at the bottom of a bottle or so addicted to some drug that, you know, their life's essentially over. And so changing the culture around that is basically saying you can be a badass, powerful man and you can have an open heart. And in fact, the more you get in touch with that open heart, the more courageous a man you become.

Host (Observeday): You know, for men listening who want to start or join a men's group, what's the first step?

Jason Lange: Yeah, totally. So many resources these days, which is great. There's lots of global organizations you can join, you can Google, you can go on meetup.com to try to find stuff near you. Therapy offices. Often, you know, if you have a counselor or therapist, they can give you a lead. But I have trainings now. I train men how to start groups or give them the experience of being in a groups. And I'm not the only one. There's lots of people out there doing it. So if you're hungry for it, you know, you can find it online, how do I start a men's group, Et cetera. But the basic gist of it, you know, what I'll tell guys is again, I can give you all kinds of training, but it's just grab two other men, say, hey, you want to meet this time at this place? And we're each going to take 15 minutes to check in and talk about what's actually going on in our lives. What's actually going on? Not just the surface stuff, but where are you in pain, where are you in tension? Where are things not working out for you? What are you wanting that you don't know how to get? These are the kind of deeper things. What are you avoiding feeling in your life? And each man checks in and then you give each other feedback around what you heard, what you felt the most, what you were curious about. And that could be it. A men's group could be that simple. And all that it takes is I would say three guys, even two guys. You could just do it with one buddy and go a little deeper is the most basic framework. But you set the expectation ahead of time. We're each going to have some time to check in and talk. We're each going to give each other some feedback. And we're not just going to report on the surface level of our day to day. We're going to go deeper. So instead of saying, well, yesterday I did this and I did this, and I did this and I did this, we're going to go deeper. Right. I'm really struggling with this. I don't know how to create this. My family is dealing with this and I'm coping with that all by doing this. And then you get the feedback. Right. That's the most basic thing. You could just run out and grab two guys and do right now and it's going to be a start. And then there's lots of ways to go deeper with that. Learning certain structures, embodiment practices, connection practices, things I teach men and a lot of other guys teach now. Or if you're like, I don't want to learn, I just want to find a group. You know, you can go to organizations like the Mankind Project, you can come to my organization, I run some online groups and just get involved in one. So you can kind of catch the momentum of someone already doing one.

Host (Observeday): Yeah. Well, for listeners who want to learn more or just join a group, where can they connect with you? And also check out. You mentioned you teach people how to start a group and also get access to some of your resources out there.

Jason Lange: Totally, yeah. Best way to keep up with me is at Evolutionary Men. So it's not dot com, but it's men. And on there you can see podcasts, writing programs. I have. And yeah, I have a program called Men's Group Mastery that's all about. You want to start your own men's group? Give. It's basically a men's group in a box. It'll give you all the tools you need to start one. Or if you're like, I don't want to lead one, I just want to experience one. I have one called Men's Group Experience where you just get to drop in with five of the guys for 12 weeks. I set it all up for you. You meet over zoom. It's very deep, very powerful. If you got some guys that want to do it with you, just bring them all along. Email me. We'll. We'll set you up, we'll get you rocking. And if, even if you don't want to work with me or join one of my groups and you're like, I just don't know where to start, just email me. There's a contact form on my. I'm. I'm pretty plugged into most men's networks, so I can help you try to find something local or online or in your time zone. That might work for you as well.

Host (Observeday): Thank you so much, Jason. You know, for sharing the importance of men's group in becoming a a powerful man that all the relevant links mentioned in the description so listeners can just click and go directly to your site. It's been an absolute light chatting to you, chatting with you.

Jason Lange: Thank you so much for helping spread the word.

Host (Observeday): That's it for today's episode of the Observe Day podcast. Thank you for spending your time with us as we explore today's observance. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and share it with a friend who'd love to celebrate life's special days too. Don't forget to join the [email protected] join for more Observant stories, tips and updates. Until next time. Keep finding meaning in every day.