One of the Awesome Powers of Men’s Group

All right, and welcome back. So today I want to talk about one of the many awesome superpowers that come from being in a men's group.

Long time listeners of the show will know that I really believe that every man should be in a men's group because of the many, many positive things that can bring into our lives. What I want to dial into and focus on in this episode is really this idea of how being in a men's group and being around trusted, supportive men that can hold us can help us get really clear about what we need and want in our lives so men's group can actually create a safe place for us men to explore.

What do I want and what do I need in my life, in my relationship, in my work? These different arenas that we're all engaging in needs I like to think of as kind of the baseline layer, the rules of engagement. Hey, here's just what I need to even participate, feel safe to be engaged. So needs are often closely related to boundaries, whether they're in our relationship or in our workplace, wherever that might be.

Sometimes there's certain things we need in order to feel trust and safety and a desire to keep showing up. Whether that's, I need to know that, yeah, we're exclusive now in our relationship and that neither of us are going to be putting energy into other relationships or I might need that. Hey, I, I need some time apart from my partner sometimes to be able to recharge as an introvert or whatever that might be.

Or we absolutely can have needs at work as well, right? This idea that I'll give you my best, I'll put in my hours, but I need to know that I can take a vacation the week after. Right, Whatever that might be. There's certain boundaries there. Wants aren't so much the rules of engagement or what we fall back on. Wants are kind of what's a little bit further out there. These would be my desires.

What I want is for this to be true. I don't know if that's true for you. And so let's see where we can meet in the middle. A want is kind of aspirational in a sense, but it's not necessarily a non negotiable for what we, what we need to Participate in that relationship or workplace, whatever that might be. Now the thing with a lot of us guys and I tend to work with a lot of nice guys, I consider myself a nice guy, as Dr.

Glover defined is it can be really hard for us to be clear about what we want or what we need. Nice guys in particular is I like to think about them, tend to over index on what other people want in need. They put other before self. And there's some positives to that right there. There's some great things about that and there's a time and place for that. But where nice guys get into trouble is we can often do that all the time and we're often getting into relationships or situations or arrangements that aren't really honoring ourselves in the process.

Men's group is a place where even nice guys can really slow down and start to dial into what is it. I need or want to really feel fully aligned to whatever element of my life I'm exploring. And that requires a certain amount of safety, of not being judged, of being able to be messy and put things out there that maybe aren't exactly what we want or we need.

But it's through the exploration that we can often get clear about it. And so I tell guys I work with all the time about this idea that men's group is the place where we can kind of be messy with our other men who don't need anything from us in the context of that group, they're just champions for us in our lives. That messiness means we can move a lot of emotional energy or we can be fuzzy.

And it's in sharing the exploration with others, we can get feedback that helps us dial into what do we actually want, what do we actually need, what are we aligned to? That extra set of eyes on us can be crucial in helping us dial in what our truth is. For so many of us, I include myself in this part of what makes us a nice guy is again that over emphasis on other.

And so our own ability to connect to our sensations, our desires, our wants, our impulses in our body is often a bit atrophied in comparison. And so men's group's a place where we get to start scrimmaging and practicing that muscle slowing down, connecting to our body, connecting to our sensations, sharing them and then getting feedback about how those land. The beauty of a group is it's often just a little bit removed from our day to day life.

And what I mean by that is yes, sometimes we can be in men's group with people we work with or guys from our families, but oftentimes we're not right. These are associates, these are friends, these are brothers that we've built in another container. So they have a little bit more leeway to really reflect to us what they're seeing from the outside of our system and can slow us down and help us really connect to the truth in our bodies and report to us when they see a mismatch.

So I see this all the time in groups. I lead, right? And it's. A man might be sharing something or saying something is true and what he wants, but his body and the emotional expression behind it are resonating in a totally different way. So there's not alignment there, there's not integrity there. We might miss that inside ourselves. This is a type of shadow work. Another thing I often do for men, shadow, as we often talk about it, means something we can't see in ourselves.

But other people can see really fast because they're on the outside. They have a different perspective. Right? You can imagine the idea is it's kind of hard to see my shadow because as soon as I turn around, it's not there anymore. But other people standing right in front of us can often see it. And so they can point out when the things we're saying aren't aligned with how it's being expressed and moving through our bodies. And that is an incredible gift that men's group can really bring to us, that surfacing those incongruencies becomes a powerful place for us to bring them back together, to get into alignment.

Well, okay, why, when I said that, did it feel so different? Let's dial into that. What's the emotion underneath? What am I afraid of? What am I not sharing? What am I holding back? Other men can help us dissect. That can help us, guide us into those sensations and feelings when suddenly, boom, a light bulb goes off. Actually, what I want is this, but I was just afraid to share it because I might get rejected or my partner might think I'm crazy, or I have a fear that my boss might fire me, whatever that might be.

Actually, what I want is this, and we can kind of dial it in with men's feedback around us. And men are pretty good. We have powerful intuitions and ability to read each other, to help men realize when they're not coming across as congruent. Seen this time and time again, when a man finally connects to what he wants and what he needs and is able to share that vulnerably, it's like things line up from head to toe and there's just a exhale in the group and often an energy of, yeah, that's it.

I totally feel that that's right where you're at. I trust that when we're aligned in our insides and our outsides, it creates this trust around us. Again, not everyone's going to love that, but they're at least going to trust us because they know where we're at. Too many nice guys, we don't actually share where we're at. So everybody's guessing all the time. And it creates a lot of discomfort in our relationships, in our families.

Honing in to what we want and what we need and learning to bring that forward in a congruent way is a real power and strength that we can cultivate with each other by sitting in circle as men. And life can start to change really fast when we get down to the nuts and bolts of what we want and what we need, and we hash it out with our brothers and then bring that back into our life.

They'll sharpen you up, they'll tune you up. You share a little bit, they give you feedback. And in that back and forth, you'll get closer and closer to your truth. Here's what I want, here's what I need. How does that feel for you when you can get to that place? As a man, you are crushing it. If you're interested in working with me around dating relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to evolutionary.

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