How to Become an Anti-Fragile Man (with Luke Adler)

Jason Lange: All right, and welcome back. Super pumped after a bit of a hiatus here to be back for another episode of our Heart of Shadow series. And I'm joined here by my brother in arms, Dr. Luke Adler. Welcome back, Luke.

Luke Adler: Thank you, brother. Good to be here.

Jason Lange: And, yeah, I was super excited. I reached out to Luke. We're doing a Heart of Shadow program right now, and was so pumped to record this episode because this thing kind of clicked for me this week where, you know, we've talked a lot in this series in my podcast, in your podcast in general, around this idea of becoming more resilient as men, so being able to handle more of life's stresses and stay present and receive it and not collapse and whatnot. And as I was kind of digging into that, actually, this is. I had done another podcast where I was talking about the kind of weakness of macho men. And it's interesting, since I've recorded that, I've kind of caught myself where I was like, ah, it's so, so interesting that even that frame, the weakness of macho men is still a bit patriarchal. There's strong and there's weak, and men are strong, everyone else is weak, right? Of just like, it comes down to this kind of binary thing. And that got me into, well, like, what's another way to think about? And then that's where I kind of was feeling into, you know, fragile versus, okay, resilient, right? To be fragile means we're easily kind of taken offline, shattered, lose presence, you know, whatever, overwhelmed. Because there's, quite frankly, I think you and I both know women like this because we're married. There's plenty of feminine beings in the world who may not be physically strong, but are sure as shit not fragile. Like, are incredibly powerful strong in that resilient sense. Anyway, that was kind of the goose chase that led me onto this word fragile, and looking into it. And then I came across these concepts of antifragile and fragile. And the best way I'll drop a graphic in the show notes for this that I can point to this is it was very simple graphic where it was like, fragile. It's like the ball hits the glass, the glass shatters, right? So it doesn't hold its integrity and it falls apart. And then resilient, which is the one I've actually spoken towards a lot, I think. And it's still very powerful. The example is just ball, like, hits the iron slab and it bounces off. That's it, right? Boom. It's gone. Very powerful, very strong. Hasn't shattered. But, you know, you hit it long enough, at some point there's going to be a crack in that system, because that energy, it just. It can only take so much. And that's it. You know, it's like that energy just goes away.

Luke Adler: Something.

Jason Lange: But then the definition of antifragiles got me so excited because I was like, holy crap. I think this is what we are doing and seeing in our shadow work program and in our own group. And that was this idea of antifragile, where the chaos and disorder from the outside world actually strengthens the system over time so it doesn't weaken it. The example they used for that was instead of like a flat wall, it was like a curve that actually takes the ball in, takes its momentum, and then shoots it out. So that energy is redirected. And, you know, in the martial world, Aikido, I think, is a great example of this, where we use the force coming at us and we redirect it to a deeper aim or purpose or safety or whatever that might be. And I'll pause here in a second, but that. That image of antifragile got me just lit up because I was like, boom. That's what we're doing with shadow work here in these groups. That's even beyond making men more resilient. It's actually taking this material, the things that trigger us, that get us reactive and through the masculine vortex, right? This engine of love and just presence that we create in these groups with this modality, we transmute that into vitality and life force. We can then direct in ways we want in our life. And why that's beyond resilient is actually the more that stuff comes at us, the more powerful will we become. And I think this is something you and I have both experienced in our. In our own selves that, you know, it's not 100% of the time. Sometimes we get burnt out and fried human beings. But on a good day when we're resourced, it actually kind of gets exciting when we get triggered or reactive or realize, ooh, there's something going on here, I think is I'm not conscious of. It's in my shadow. And why it's exciting is because there's almost always gold on the other Side, right. There's. Wow. If I go into this, I think there's something really possible here I'm not even realizing. And to me, that I think was. Is this antifragile thing of, wow. Shadow work becomes this engine for releasing vitality and energy in my life and redirecting it. So in a sense, I want to get triggered because then I can use that to deepen myself and show up in different ways.

Luke Adler: I love what you're saying. It's so apropos to what we're creating in Heart of Shadow. And of course, you know, because our work is on the living evolutionary edge of transformation, it's also completely related to what's happening culturally in the world.

Jason Lange: Right.

Luke Adler: It's just. It's just. It's not just a mirror. It's the exact same phenomenon. And the idea of resilience is really interesting because we heard that a lot during the pandemic. You know, we need to become more resilient in our immunity, in our health. And. And when I think of that term and when we hear it as a culture, we hear certain colloquialisms like stay safe or when the going gets tough, the tough get going or persist or, you know, I always think of Michael Jordan when I think of, you know, resilience, right? There's always going to be one human being that has more resilience than every other human being, right? Like he's someone I think of, or the great explorers of. Of the Arctic, you know, who persisted through unbelievable temperatures for several winters. How do some people have that ability to survive and even thrive and excel, while others have less of an ability? And people will often interview such people, and often a person like that who's kind of exceeded all expectations will have some phrase that they live by, some thing in their mind that they would tell themselves. You know, and really what that all points to is mindset. You know, there was some kind of mindset that they could anchor into that allowed them to persist. And I would actually connect that way of approaching challenge to resilience, to say that there's some kind of. Some kind of sutra or phrase or core belief that allows you to stay with difficulty. But like you said, Jason, we're all limited in these bodies. We're all limited by the physicality of life. And there is a limit to what any. Even the greatest kind of athlete or survivalist or kind of, you know, person in their field that's reached the top, there's a limit to what they can withstand. If they hit the ball against the wall long enough, that ball loses its elastic quality and just can no longer bounce. It's just like a thud, you know. And so we've noticed that. And then we've experienced this thing in running Heart of Shadow and refining it, cohort after cohort. Like, no, we're not really talking about resilience because in fact, in what we teach, we're not giving people anything to believe in. Like, we're not teaching any dogma in what we do. It's an experience of a space of awareness, of a space of being that gets generated in relationship. This is one of the key attributes. So you think of Michael Jordan, like his relationship and him becoming one of the greatest athletes of all time was really one with himself. I mean, he had his coach and he did work with some psychotherapists, but it was really like his own self determination. We're not talking about that. We're talking about relating what happens when you relate in a certain way to another human being that becomes available to.

Jason Lange: You.

Luke Adler: That allows you to move past a state of resilience, past a state of individual toughness where I, me, myself have to be the one to persevere, to fight, to kind of win the championship. It requires another being. It requires me giving something and receiving something in a certain way that moves me beyond my own individual toughness to not a sense of toughness at all, like you're saying, Jason. It's not like strong man, weak man. It's to a space that's beyond resilience, that's beyond belief and beyond mindset. A space that's beyond our own sense of inadequacy and unworthiness that we're having to fight against in order to be resilient. It's like what you said. It's a space that could be described as being made up of love, being made up of support, being made up of creativity, ingenuity, wisdom. I almost makes me think, Jason, we should like retitle our work, like from shadow work to like masculine vortex work. Because we're doing the shadows, like around the identity, right? But the magic. Not the magic, the phenomenon is in the vortex. That's what creates this incredible aikido, like resilience, where, like you and I having been doing this a long time, I mean, it's just we're getting more powerful, more creative, we're willing to take more risk from a totally grounded place that's rooted in the support, you know, like for this venture, Jason. The support of you and I, sense of total adventure and brotherhood. That's grounded in a shitload of experience, a lot of hard work, intelligence, understanding of business, understanding of psychology, understanding of emotion, et cetera, and so on and go on and on. And just a quick example, like, your kids were sick a couple weeks ago, and I was running the group alone. And you had to do that a couple times when I couldn't figure out the tech early on. But it was really interesting because I've led shadow work by myself for many years, and I've gotten used to running it with you for several years. And, you know, my experience of working together is like, I'm super relaxed and, like, I'm having a lot of fun, and I get to, like, pass it to you. And it's. It's this very easeful experience. And it's not that I'm incapable of leading by myself. I like it. I enjoy it. But that night when I was doing it, I was like, wow, I don't feel as relaxed. Like, I was having fun. I was able to settle in and find a nice groove, but I was holding the space without you. And so I just felt like I had to hold more energy than I normally do. And so there was a way in which relationally, you know, not having the vortex that you and I hold together, it just required more of me, and I could do it, but I realized I enjoy doing it with you more because I relax more. It's more fun. And so there's this relational thing where I'm witnessing you, I'm holding you, you're holding me, and there's this interplay that's more delightful and creative, and frankly, just there's more, well, being in it for me. Yeah. And so it's just like a personal example of. Of, like, you know, our connection, our connection as friends, our connection as teachers, and our connections as connection as business people. It allows for this vortex to get created when we teach. That's even more expansive than it is by myself. And so that. That tells me something about teaching. It tells me something about business and who I want to work with and what I want to do. And that's. That's an example of what shadow work is. You know, I can give more, but I think that's. That's an interesting one from a. From a business perspective, you know, and a holding space perspective.

Jason Lange: Yeah, it's so cool you had that. I've had that experience many times, and part of why I initially was like, hey, you want to do this thing together? It's like, I can do it alone, but I just have a Sense it's going to feel very different if we're co leading it together. And it has. I would totally agree. And I think that's an example of. I think that's. I think it's also an example of the, the anti fragility. I'm talking about in a sense where because we were holding it together, our program was able to hold. I had to step out to take care of my kids instead of. That meeting was canceled. Guys don't get, you know, there was like space and good stuff was still able to happen in another way. I've been kind of thinking about the, this anti fragility state is. It really is the state of relationality. What I mean by relational is it's a dynamic relational process where, where we are impacted and reacting like reacting in a good sense, which is very different than that resilient thing. Because, you know, another way I've talked about in some recent episodes and we've. We've talked about, I think to think about the resilience thing, particularly for the masculine, I actually think there's a. There's two versions of it that manifest there's resiliency in terms of. And Right. We have definitely worked with guys. You have a little bit of this, I have a little this. We are The Ivan Drago Rocky 4 slab of iron, like, can just take so much like, yeah, just keep hitting us. We're gonna grind, we're gonna get through it. And a lot of men, I think, have that, like, there is no room for me to be impacted by my life or slow down or show any weakness or whatever. But I actually think there's a polarity there. It's still a type of resilience, but it goes the other direction, which is instead of the ball hitting the wall, the wall is going to go beat the shit out of every ball before it even hits it. So it's the, it's the kind of aggressive coming at unilateral, you know, macho man, whatever you want to call it kind of thing that is not at all relational. This is what's happening, right? And often what's powering that is underneath I feel scared or weak or some capacity. So I'm going to attack you before you can attack me. Right. To eliminate the threat. I think those are both versions of this kind of resilience thing that I'm talking about, which is not really relational. There's not kind of an exchange of that energy and it's easier. You know, I think that's the honest truth in some ways. And again, we're in a cultural moment where we're seeing a pushback to unilateral action, particularly from the masculine, that this is what I think should happen and this is what we need to do. And to me, you know, personally, I'm like, well, that's fucking lazy. Like, it's actually much easier to tell someone what to do than to actually relate to them, right? To actually as. As an entity, come to some kind of agreement and move forward together. And to me, that's the more anti fragile state where something's coming at us and then we're having to work with that energy and redirect it in some way to deepen our relationship or the world or whatever. And I think about this very viscerally, even in terms of intimate relationship, where I've again, I'm like, oh, there it is. I've just used a different frame for it. Of I often teach guys or talk to guys about, you know, in my book, real love in real trust. They're earned, right? There's a certain amount that can be, you know, just come online. But the deepest trust I've experienced in my coupledom and I've seen a lot of couples go through is not that we never have any problem or conflict. It's actually what happens when we do have conflict or there's a rupture we're able to repair in that process and come out of it. And actually, every time we do that, it creates a much deeper trust of, oh, we don't. I don't have to fear conflict because I trust that we can move through this thing together. And, you know, the image I often use is like weaving a tapestry. You know, every rupture is a chance to create another stitch. And every time you stitch it, it gets stronger, right? The bond actually gets stronger. And I think that's another example of this kind of antifragility that, you know, really we were. We have a lot of therapists in our personal shadow group, and we know a lot of therapists. You know, most of them that work with couples are like, yeah, the couples that make it are the ones that learn to fight. Well, like, they. They don't just. They don't pretend like there's no problem. They actually fight. Doesn't mean aggressive, but they come into conflict. I want something and you want something. And we have to process the reality of that negotiation together. And in that, we actually create more strength and trust with each other. Because the feeling is, oh, I don't have to pretend to be anything other than Myself. You don't have to pretend to be anything other than self. We can both bring ourselves honestly forward and we have a mechanism to always re establish connection. And that's another version of this anti fragility where the more we go towards the conflict or have the stressors, the stronger our relationship becomes. And what we're kind of pointing to here is this thing we're on the vanguard of. I would, I would say particularly this process that we lead men through in groups and that we've experienced ourself of using the shadow work to kind of bring this masculine vortex online. It does that where suddenly the things that are coming at us, at life, they don't chip away at us and make us weaker and SAP energy. But when we have the engine behind us to metabolize that, like we've talked about, it liberates energy for us and we become more, our capacity actually goes up. The more we're stressed, the more we're challenged, the more we have to deal with our reactivity. And so we become more powerful. Fathers, husbands, leaders. Our bodies I would argue, get stronger. I'm pretty clear, like, yeah, my body is actually much more powerful than it was six years ago. And part of why that is, is I actually allow my body to be impacted. I don't pretend like I'm not suffering or overtired. It's like, oh no, I feel it. And then I work with that and that I take better care of my body and lo and behold, it has more energy then to give back into the system. But so this idea that, you know, we've seen it in groups, I mean, I remember our very first group, right, we finished and then some fucking gnarly shit happened to a few of those guys in their life circumstances. And it was unbelievable to see that they now had somewhere to work with that, that this thing that might have before just shattered them, actually they were able to go deeper into it and come out of those experiences even more alive and whole and able to engage with life moving forward. And I think that's what inspired me for us to talk about this was to give guys this vision of what we're talking about here is not just, oh my God, I can, I can take more, could take more of the stress in my life from my job, my capacity for suffering is going to go up. It's like, no, the, the mechanism we're talking about here is every time something comes at you, if you're willing to turn towards it and work with it in a loving space, you're going to come out of that more alive, more capable, more engaged in a way that actually makes you more than you were, not less.

Luke Adler: Yeah, let's drill down to it even more. The space that resilience is built around is a vibratory experience that none of us ever want to experience. And culture, personality, identity is structured in a way we create ourselves in a way to not feel this very core experience inside that we could surmise as this feeling of unworthiness or not being good enough or that something's wrong with me, with life. And of course, if you think about that statement and that feeling, you go, yeah, of course I don't ever want to feel that. I don't want to feel like something's wrong with me. And I will do anything and everything to never feel that. In fact, I will build an identity and I'll create a life to avoid feeling powerlessness, to avoid feeling loss, to avoid feeling anxiety. I don't want to feel those things. So let me structure myself by being very positive or being very tough. I'll use just some typical examples. Or maybe I'll beat. Beat unworthiness to the punch and just think I'm terrible, I'm a piece of shit. And I'll just kind of anchor into that because. Because at least there's some familiarity there. And so no matter how you approach that space of not being good enough, whether you resist it, avoid it. You know, be like, I was many years an inter. Eternal Tony Robbins just trying to stay inspirational around it. How do I keep inspiring? Inspiring. And if you look at any of those contexts, eventually they become pretty boring. They become pretty tiring. Like, if. If you've ever animated it, I'll. You know, if I've ever animated it, if you hear someone else animating any of these paroxysms of, like, positivity or negativity or polarity, eventually you're just like, this is fucking boring. Like, I'm kind of tired of hearing you keep saying, like, you know, live strong. You know, whatever, whatever, whatever. The thing is, like, it's. Because you can tell. You can tell. Any declaration like that is against something else, meaning there's resistance to it. There's some part of us that's trying to keep another part of us shadowed. And we just know anytime we're in a polarity like that, we are hiding some part of our experience. So even if you're like, I'm a piece of shit, I'm ugly, we're. What's in the shadow is you're beautiful and you're positive and you're wonderful. And it takes energy to resist your. Your beauty. Anti fragility, as a matter of speaking is like another word to say that would be like the experience of being indomitable, the experience of being like, never endingly lifted up. The experience of. Of like a pure source of inspiration that never ends. Right. And. And that's what antifragility is pointing to, is. Is a strength that just has no bottom to it. A strength that has the ability to be utterly flexible and at the same time, like utterly stiff and, and upright and erect. It's got. It's got this capacity to. To adapt and move and like aikido, take your energy and redistribute it. It's. In other words, it's alive. It's not fixed. It's not married to, in a fixed way, a certain state of being. What happens in Heart of Shadow and shadow work in the heart of shadow, let's be specific, the heart of shadow is that we take people into a state of consciousness, a state of awareness or an experience where anything that you have inside of you, any emotion, any feeling and belief gets to be held. Not just witnessed, but held, reflected, vibrated back to you with absolutely no agenda. There's no agenda to fix, to remediate, to opine, to have an opinion, to kind of coach. And what begins to happen is that sense of identity that's fighting to not feel unworthy, to try, to not feel like something's wrong, that sense of trying to hold that deep sense of inadequacy hidden, it just unfurls. And sometimes that happens really quickly, like a massive catharsis, and. And sometimes it just melts a little more gently. And that's the skill that you and I, of course, bring, Jason, through many, many years of training is meeting someone's pain right where it's at, meeting that sense of really fragility. You know, even in a resilient state, there's some way we're trying to project that fragile feeling of something's wrong and allowing someone to experience a state where nothing's wrong, where there's nothing to fix, where there's nothing to remediate, where there's nothing broken. And it's not even like a. I'm not even trying to point to anything mystical or beyond here. We could use that kind of language. But it's the phenomenon of love and care that's present in a group, this context, a group of men that requires nothing. You're not requiring anything of me, Jason, even when we teach you Know, one of the amazing things about the way we teach is, and I feel it from you, and I hope you feel it from me, is this space to just go wherever you want to go, to be however you want to be. I never have the experience of like, oh, I wish Jason would say this or Jason would do that. I mean, if that crosses my mind, I might ignore it. It's just like. No, no, no. That follows us even into the teaching of just like. There is total freedom to. To explore and express. And what that freedom, that freedom allows relationally is this experience of anti fragility. You become free to not have to fear that there will be some kind of reprimand or punishment because we're not living in a space of something's wrong. You can't really make a mistake when there's been a space that's open to welcome all that you are, all of your judgment, all of your hate, all of your sexual shame, all of your perversion, whatever tendency there might be to murder to the darkest of the dark, that that can all be brought into the group. Your tendency for great love, your tendency for positivity, all of it is welcomed. And what happens is our sense of self and identity begins to anchor into a deeper place beyond unworthiness, beyond not feeling good enough. We actually anchor our sense of who we are in a space that is beyond resilience, a space that is not fragile whatsoever. A space that is teeming with life force and energy and connection. It is so beyond resilience, it does not require any believing into any philosophy. It does require a few things, though, and that's the principles of the work, which is transparency, vulnerability, playing your edge, honoring self, honoring all of our agreements. It requires a few things. Luke Adler: I mean, being able to offer this to other men, Jason, and the way we've designed it, the way we refine it, every iteration, we tighten it up. You and I keep learning more because we're living in a space, the space of creativity. We live in it. And so we continue to refine this offering. It's of course, a deep, utter joy. It's an honor to work with men. It's an honor to work with you, to have such a great partner. And, you know, we can see where it's headed. We can see where it's headed. And if you're out there listening and you're interested, you know, please contact us we would love to get you involved. It's very powerful. The men that have gone through this already, they're still in their men's groups, they're still going, and they're self organized. It's just the most amazing phenomenon, something Jason and I could have never anticipated. But the groups are still going some years later. And this is the vanguard of masculinity. This is. This is the evolutionary edge. Come join us. Be a part of this. It's incredible. And you're needed. We need you. We need your support. Evolutionary men, heart of shadow. Check us out.

Jason Lange: Always a pleasure, my friend.

Luke Adler: See you, brother.

Jason Lange: If you're interested in working with me around dating relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to evolutionary men. Apply.