The New Standard for Powerful Men

All right, and welcome back. So, on this episode, I want to talk about the new standard for powerful men.

So this is a cultural shift. We get to really hold the torch for and frankly, be the torchbearers of in men's work. And it's a very simple but potent concept I've talked about before, which is powerful men take responsibility for their pain. This is such a crucial and important thing. What does it mean to take responsibility for one's pain as a man?

Well, it's really the main shift that takes us out of the victim mindset into the the hero of our own journey mindset. Right. Which is it's not our fault certain things happen to us, whether personally, in our family, or culturally. But it is our responsibility, what we do with it. And this is an edge a lot of men are afraid of and, frankly, don't want to step into because it's hard, and we haven't really been given the skills to do it.

And so when I say our pain, really what I'm pointing to is our wounding. Right. Oftentimes, this stuff goes back pretty early in our lives to when we're kids, and for many of us, even beyond that, back into our lineage. I've talked a lot about on this podcast before the idea of epigenetics, a really burgeoning research area. In one of the most simple things they've discovered, they used mice who tend to reproduce very fast but still have quite a similar genetic structure to us as humans, as different as they might seem.

What they found was the importance of three generations in particular. What do I mean by that? Well, they ran some experiments where they would take a mouse and they would subject it to something unpleasant, and they would associate that with a smell or a light or a color or something like that. So basically, they start to create that kind of Pavlovian thing. This smell leads to this distressed state.

Now, here's what's crazy in wild two generations later. So we have the mouse, the generation after it, and the generation after it. That third generation of mouse, when presented with the same stimuli, had a similar reaction in its nervous system, meaning the information was being passed down through the gene structure.

And what they've discovered is that actually happens in the epigenetic layer the layer outside of your DNA, there's all these switches that can turn on and off. And that part is actually pretty malleable. And it's a way to transmit certain information, particularly about our relationship to the environment. And they've tracked this with human beings as well. Often that have gone through war or famine, we can see certain markers passed down, particularly through the three generations.

Why three generations? Well, it's the kind of wild thing, right? The way genetics works and birth works is the second a female is conceived, her eggs start to form. And what's wild about that is that means when one woman is pregnant with a daughter, inside that daughter is the egg of her inevitable children, right?

So you actually have the genetic structure of three generations living simultaneously and being influenced by each other. So the stress hormones of the pregnant woman express into the developing fetus and the developing fetus's eggs, which then become another person eventually. So this is kind of the mechanic they think is behind this. So what does this have to do with taking responsibility for our pain as men?

Well, sometimes the things that provide challenge for us or ways we don't show up or are triggered or really struggle in life aren't even necessarily rooted in our direct experience. They're rooted in our lineage, the generations before us. And so even beyond epigenetics, right, there's cultural and familial passing ons of the culture of a family or a country or a group of really any kind.

So taking responsibility is twofold, actually, it's even threefold. It's responsibility for my pain that I've experienced in this life. It's taking responsibility for the pain of my lineage and the fact certain things got passed on that really in some sense were no one's fault. But I'm going to take responsibility for shifting it. And then the even more meta level, which is really the edge for a lot of us men, is to take responsibility for the pain other men have caused in the world, even if we didn't do it ourselves.

And the willingness to step into this responsibility is really what I want to talk about in the sense of we want this to be the new standard for powerful men, because what we have a lot of evidence for in our culture is men who don't take responsibility for their pain and instead push it out onto others or make it someone else's fault. And again, just because someone else caused something doesn't mean they are the sole responsible party for it.

Now it's up to us what we do with the impact of that. This is so key And I've talked about it particularly with men and their parents before, right? When. When we take responsibility doesn't mean we have to blame them and hate them for it, but we do have to acknowledge what the choices and lives they lived led to inside of ourselves. But the moment we see that, it's now on us to do something about it, to do the work of healing our inner path, our inner self, our inner world, right?

And really taking responsibility for becoming whole, for integrating the wounded, traumatized parts of ourselves and learning to work with them and build relationships with them in consciousness. And here's the deal. A lot of men don't want to take responsibility. It's so much easier to point it outside if you. And yes, there is an edge of we can all be victims in some sense in our culture right now, some more than other others.

But it doesn't really do any good to rank pain. And instead we all just have to work with what we were given. And this is so important and particularly crucial for us as men right now. And one of the ways we can take responsibility for our pain is by surrounding ourselves by other men who will point it out to us and help us metabolize and process it and become more conscious around it.

I've told so many stories about men's group, right? Where I go in, let's say I got an issue with my wife and I want to rant and rave and blame her and demonize her, whatever it is. And it's often through men's group. It's pointed out to me, hey, men, you're co creating that just as much as her. So before you go attacking and blaming her, have you taken responsibility to shift your side? Can you say with 100% integrity that you've done that, that you've done your part to shift this dynamic?

And oftentimes, guess what, I haven't. Because it's easier to point the finger out than it is to point it in and say, I got to make a shift here, I got to do something different. And this willingness to take responsibility, you know, in some of these kind of performance circles we talk about, they talk about radical ownership. That's a big part of it, right? But it's not just our mistakes in leadership. It goes beyond that for the state of our nervous system.

I am responsible for the state of my nervous system in my family, in my relationship, in my men's group. Nobody can shift that for me. What I can do is know that, hey, I need help shifting that. So I'm going to take responsibility to get my ass into some somatic therapy, or to go on retreat, or to get into a men's group, or to surround myself and find the tools on. I need to be able to make those shifts.

She can't shift that. That's on me. It's my job to show up in that way and hers as well. And when we both show up restored, guess what? The connection becomes even more generative. So that state of our nervous system is deeply connected to what I'm talking about when I say our pain. We all have triggers. We all have wounding from early in our life. I do really deep work with my partner, Dr. Luke Adler, around this in our heart of shadow program that no one else can go back and do the work for you.

And in fact, one of our agreements in that program is you are responsible for your healing. We can't do it for you. We can, as we say, be the sherpas that help you up the mountain. But you gotta be doing it. You gotta be the one who actually takes the risk of feeling, of metabolizing, of expressing, of trying something new. Taking responsibility for our pain is a really important thing in this moment. I think in particular for us men, because the pendulum has swung.

It is hard right now for a lot of guys. The stats I've talked about before are pretty brutal. Men are more likely to commit suicide. Women are getting educated at a higher rate. Men suffer from loneliness and isolation at much higher rates. The stuff is real. And we can easily point our fingers out at the culture, the man box, how we've been raised, religion. These things all contribute and they're important.

And I'm going to continue talking about them. But that's not enough. We as men then have to take responsibility that, yeah, it is hard right now, but only I can really be the one who owns my personal experience and changes in the ways I need to. Taking responsibility for our pain means I'm going to do it. I'm going to ask for help and get the guidance and tools and support I Need.

So I have conscious control over some of the patterning in my nervous system. This is so key, right? We've all heard the quote, which is often actually misquoted from Viktor Frankl about the distance between stimulus and response is everything. And while he didn't say that exactly, the meaning behind it is true and right. It's epitomized in one of my new favorite songs, right, by one of my favorite bands, Pearl Jam, right?

Don't react, respond, all that means, what's the difference between a reaction and a response? It's awareness and consciousness, right? Reaction we are fused with. We just, boom, react. There is no thought. Responding means stimulus comes in. I process it, and then I choose how to respond. Men who haven't taken responsibility for their pain are stuck in reaction, stuck in, habitually closing, habitually collapsing in shame, habitually exploding in anger, habitually turning to the bottle, habitually turning to weed, you name it.

Taking responsibility means I'm gonna do the work to turn that habitual response into something I can consciously respond to. So that habitual reaction to a conscious response, that's what it's all about. And it's about awareness, consciousness, and presence of what we've experienced in our lives, what our lineage has experienced, and the many harms that yes men before us and around us are often causing in the world.

Masculine leadership as a. I'm now a champion of means. Once we see something, it partly becomes our responsibility, right? So this is even beyond just our pain. These are some pretty brutal lessons I've had to learn at things like Burning man, right? There's the part of me that's like, oh, hey, that thing isn't tied, or, that thing needs to be fixed, or, hey, that's thing, someone else will fix it. You quickly learn in environments like that that, no, you cannot assume someone else will fix it.

The second I see it, I become responsible for what might happen if something goes wrong. I have to take that on. Doesn't mean I have to be the one to fix it. But I might have to bring it to someone and take responsibility for, hey, I noticed this, you know, part of the structure was coming loose. How can we fix that? And that willingness to take responsibility for the pain and impact and problems we've seen other men cause, it's a big thing to bite off, right?

Doesn't mean we have to go around fixing every single thing in the world. But it does mean to some extent that one of the ways we can support the healing of the world is again, by healing ourselves and getting into environments and creating environments and participating in environments where men are taking responsibility for it. There pain. This is so key. And here's the thing as men, when we do it, it's ultimately so much more liberating and empowering because it shifts the locus of control from out there.

They did that to me. It's not my fault. I have no control over what happens next. Turns out that's a pretty shitty way to live. It does not feel good to not have agency and be connected to that in our lives. And I see this show up as depression in men. They feel trapped in a relationship or trapped in a job, or stuck, unable to metabolize their wounding and are constantly pointing out that it's because of something out there.

It doesn't feel good. It sucks the vitality and life force and yes, masculinity out of us. But when we take that responsibility, it might hurt. Oh, man, this is tough. I don't know how to do this. I don't even want to do this. But how else is it going to shift, right? There's the two paths to integrity in any moment I've talked about, right? There's we shift the commitment or we become aligned with the commitment, we actually do the thing.

So when our life isn't going the way we want it to, we can take responsibility, even if it is coming from an outside thing. It's like, hey, well, I have no control over that, but I do have control over this. And that feels better. It really does. It's much more empowering because suddenly we not at the whim of the world. Life isn't just happening to us. It's the shift to I have agency and direction and choice in my life and I can happen to my life, right?

I can lead myself towards more wholeness. So taking responsibility for our pain as men is one of the most crucial things. We can start to shift the culture of masculinity around, right? My first episode is real Men feel everything. We could easily add to that, right? Now that real men take responsibility for their pain, they don't make it someone else's fault, even if someone else caused it.

What we do is we take responsibility for what do I do with that now? Now the keys are in my court. I have the choice for how I handle this, right? It's gonna take healing, it's gonna take training, it's gonna take vulnerability, getting uncomfortable, getting relational. So many of these things that us men are often afraid to do because frankly, we just weren't taught how to do it. But you As a man, your willingness to take responsibility for your pain, that you is the new marker of what makes you powerful, your willingness to sit in the fire of your own wounding and work through it.

There's really nothing that isn't workable. When we have the right community, the right tools and the right accountability and people guiding us. It's really incredible how much we can transform as human beings. I've seen it in myself and now I've seen it in the hundreds of men I've worked with and coached in men's groups and programs and retreats. And here's the other thing. There is never going to be a good time.

I've seen this in my own journey and now I've seen it with, like I said, so many men I've worked with. There's never a good time to start. Life never magically calms down. There's always something happening. And it is one of the most powerful masculine traits we can cultivate to say, yeah, and despite all that, I'm going to put attention on it now. I'm going to commit to healing myself. I'm going to commit to unwinding this pain I've been carrying sometimes for months and years, decades, and for some of you guys, generations.

Absolutely. And that's a powerful, powerful place to be as a man and a powerful, powerful space to lead the way. It is incredibly inspiring to me as a coach, as a men's group facilitator. When I see men taking responsibility for their pain and going for makes me want to help them even more. I see it inspire the people in their lives and their communities and other men.

It is an act of leadership in and of itself. Luke and I talk about this in the heart of shadow is lighting the way. We light the way by going to the hard place inside of ourselves first, by not waiting, by taking responsibility, by playing that edge, by sitting in the emotional and sometimes physical discomfort of things that have accumulated in our nervous system since often when we were born.

And when we do that, we make it easier for other men to do it. So part of the power of taking responsibility for your, your pain as a man is also it makes you a leader. This is so key. You become a leader for other men just by taking ownership of your pain and learning to work it and heal it. As you can tell, I'm pretty passionate about this and I think this needs to be the new standard for powerful men.

Right. When we look at a man and we say that's a successful man, we need to take into account how Much responsibility for his pain, the pain of his lineage and the pain of other men. Is he taking? The more he is, the more badass he is, the more powerful he is, and the less harm he's going to cause to the world. So much of the strife and tension we seeing in the world right now, it comes from men who aren't taking responsibility for their pain and instead pointing it, hey, it's out there.

And then wanting you to point it out there, because the second it's pointed out there, they have control over you. The second you say, you know what, I'm part of this system and I have some choice here about how I'm engaging with it, how I'm dealing with my pain. And there's a lot out there. None of us individually can transform in the culture, in society, in structures of power and being and whatnot. But you always have control over what's happening on your side of the court.

So you can be a revolutionary just by taking responsibility for your pain. Because the more you do, the more. The more free you become as a man and the less other people can control you. And that is a radical act that we have seen very much take root in the programs and retreats and groups I've created. I talk about it as the power of a group to inoculate us against societal pressure and cultural pressure of the negative kind.

Because instead, when we have a small band of people who know us intimately and really trust us and see us, they don't just see the Instagram bullshit we put out, but they see us. They see our pain. They have connected to us. Those connections become more valuable than gold. And it's those connections we care about, not everything else out there. So this is the new standard for powerful men to take responsibility for your pain. If you want to do that, please come to my Labor Day retreat.

Do the Heart of Shadow program, do the Pillars of Presence program, or do men's group experience. There's lots of ways to get involved. Go see a therapist, work with a coach. These things do not make you weak. They make you powerful. All right, until next time. If you're interested in working with me around dating, relationships or your masculine presence in the world world, just go to evolutionary men. Apply.