Three Questions Every Man Needs to Be Able to Answer

All right, and welcome back. On today's episode, I want to talk about three questions every man needs to be able to answer.

Now, I've been coaching guys and working deeply with men in men's groups for a couple years now, and these are just three questions I've discovered in my journey that I've seen with. When an individual man can answer, the trajectory of his life starts to change. He's able to create more of the relationships he wants, be they intimate or friendship. He's able to create often more of a career that he feels aligned with and is able to feel more fulfilled in life.

And so there are three distinct questions, but in some ways they're all just different angles on the same thing and there's a lot of overlap between them. But here they are. Number one, who am I? Number two, what do I want? Number three, where am I going? Again, who am I?

What do I want? And where am I going? These are three crucial questions that you need to be able to answer about yourself to create the best life you can create as a man. And what's important about these questions is, is they're not questions anyone else can answer for you. Specifically in the line of coaching, I tend to do the most of which is helping men create the types of intimate relationships they want.

Is all about what type of connection do you have to yourself if you're not connected to yourself? The other two questions are pretty impossible to discover. But who am I? Is a process of becoming intimate with you. Becoming intimate with the sensations in your body, becoming intimate with the feelings in your heart, becoming intimate with the thoughts in your head, which are all required for you to be able to form what is really your inner sense of integrity.

Right, Integrity, just meaning alignment. How my insides and outsides match in life. Do I do what I say? Do I say what I do? And when does that alignment feel true? And when does it feel off. You have to be able to answer that question of who am I? To know when you're out of integrity, to know when you're out of alignment, to know when something isn't working for you, when something isn't your truth, who am I?

Is also about being able to stay connected to that part of you that knows whatever happens, you're gonna do your best to figure it out, right? Whatever comes at you, you're gonna be able to figure it out. So another way to think about that question, who am I? Is about really being able to trust yourself.

Knowing and being able to answer who I am is really about trusting oneself. Trusting that I can figure out whatever comes at me. Trusting I know what I'm made of phrase a lot of men tend to associate with trusting that I'm in contact with that part of me that can determine what's my truth, what's not my truth, what's integrity for me, what's not in integrity for me, and trusting those impulses and sensations and feelings in my body to actually guide me towards the life I want.

Who am I? Is a question that was often in many indigenous and First World nations across the world, part of rites of passage for young boys in the process of becoming men, right? Having experiences or ordeals or vision quests to discover who am I? And I think it's a big part of what draws a lot of men I know, and certainly myself, to this broader term we now call men's work that I've been so deeply involved with these last decades of my life.

Again, it's really important that the more you can figure that out on your own in the context of other men doing the same, the more powerful your insight is going to be and the more easily you're going to be able to answer that. This is the kind of man I am. This is what matters to me. It's super important to just even start to engage with that one now.

So ask yourself, can you answer that question? Do you know it in your bones? Do you know it in your heart? Do you know it in your guts? Yeah, this is who I am. Now flowing out of that comes question number two. What do I want? There's a lot of overlap between what do I want? And who am I? In that it's pretty hard to know what you want if you're not connected to yourself, if you're not connected to your sensations in your body, if you're not connected to a sense of alignment and integrity in yourself, because that's what's Going to be the thing that kind of cues you off around what you want.

Right. Being able to tune in and know, wow, there's a little bit more energy for me around this thing, right. This direction in my life, this person in my life. What I want is really you being able to drop in to, you know, what's your vision? What's your vision for what a nourished, whole, healthy life for you as a man is going to be.

It's not necessarily going to look like what we consider standard definitions of success. The kind of cliches about jobs and house and car and things. We're fed from the culture. What I want is about, yeah. What would allow me to live the most free as a man, the most freely in my moment to moment experience. That type of freedom doesn't always look like the conventional.

Right. One of the things I've certainly had to come to terms with and a lot of men I know have had to come to terms with here in the west and in the United States in particular, and our obsession with hard work, working hard, work, work, work, work, work. 40 plus hour work weeks, no matter what, 10 days of vacation a year is the just incredibly awful fallacy of retirement. I'm going to work super hard and not enjoy my life now so that at some unspecified time in the future I can put it all aside and finally enjoy my life.

It's a pretty terrible strategy for living. So what do I want? A big part of that is, yeah, how do I want to construct my life so I feel like I'm actually alive and experiencing it and having the types of moments and relationships that if for whatever reason, like we've talked about before, we found out that the end was near, we'd breathe easily.

Right. Ah, it's not that there wouldn't be pain, grief, sadness, fear about a death, about our death, but there'd be relaxation and spaciousness in that because we'd be living our life already. There wouldn't be big shoulds or I need to or I never got to. What do I want is about life, living that life in integrity, right?

So you identify it with who am I? What do I want is about then actually bringing it into practice. It's the manifestation of that and the result of living an aligned life. We know what we want. We're not chasing things that don't actually matter to us. We're focusing on the things that are most important to our well being, that are most important to us.

Staying nourished as men, that are most important for us to actually get to live in a vital way from moment to moment. So what I want has to really be boiled down to, yeah, how do I want to structure my life? What's the vision for how I want to live? Is it living in a small cabin in the woods? Is it living in community in Hawaii?

Is it working part time remotely? Is it finally taking the jump and moving to New York to become a stage actor? I don't know. Only you can really come to terms with that. And the different pieces that will come together to make up your life, your relationships, your career, your practices of health and wellness. You need to identify that if you're not clear about what you want, it's going to be really hard to get it.

Because I guarantee the universe can't really give you something. You don't know what you want, not because it's impossible, but because then you generally don't have the awareness to be able to tune into it when it's being offered. That's why it's so important for men to be able to answer this question, to be able to have a clear vision of what their fully lived life would look like, what their fully free life would look like.

So what do you want? Question number three. Where am I going? Again, you can feel the overlap between these three. But where am I going is in my mind a bit like, okay, so I have a sense of my integrity, I'm clear about what I want, what a nourished life would be for me. So where I'm going is how am I going to get there, right?

Like, literally, what's the direction I need to be going in my life to generally move towards getting what I want and living a life in integrity. This is one that's obviously huge in coaching work that I do because a lot of strategy can be involved here. This is where a lot of traditional kind of goals come up. Sometimes in men's groups, accountabilities which can work, they can be a good tool, but they're not the right tool always for every situation.

And so where I'm going, I like even more than specific goals. It's about direction, right? It's about a direction that you can't really know unless you can answer questions one and two, right? Who am I? What do I want? And now where am I going? Because with whatever you want, there's endless variations of that, but there's some steps, there's some movement you probably need to take to start getting there.

And part of what allows us to live a free life as men is knowing we're on the right path, knowing we're going in the right direction, and it's actually trusting the directionality that I find to be more important than that. Am I hitting my exact goals? Is it all working the way I want? The path is going to be unpredictable no matter what.

One thing I heard, I can't remember where I heard it. If anyone knows, please send in a message. Was that we tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a year and underestimate what we can accomplish in five. I have found that to be so liberating, so true and so powerful as that's the most useful lens for me to look at my life. In about five years back, where was I?

What seeds were I planting? What did I want? What direction was I moving? At the five year mark, it's pretty clear, how did I do? Do I feel more free, more alive, more nourished? Now, am I going in the right direction in my life? I personally am. I've had a lot of ups and downs and successes and failures and hard learnings along the way, but compared to five years ago, I am light years closer to living the truly free and nourished life I want.

But you gotta know again, what you want to be able to identify. Am I headed in the right direction? What's going to get me there? Right? What are the structures I need to bring into my life on a daily basis to help make sure I get there? Because the big hack with all this is if you want the goal, you just got to commit to the structure, right? You got to commit to the practice of whatever it is you're wanting in life.

You're wanting to be physically fit, feel great in your body. It's not about counting calories, it's not about doing a certain specific weightlifting routine or diet or hack. It's about committing to a practice that time and time again you just show up for. And then over time, that gets you what you want. You're on the right direction. Want a great relationship? You got to commit.

Got to commit to being clear about who you want, how you want to attract them, and then physically getting into spaces or virtually getting into spaces where you might meet someone who's aligned with you. Which again, is going to be much easier to do when you can answer these three questions as a man. Because then suddenly you've got a compass, you're going somewhere, you have directionality in your life, you have a vision for where your life wants to go. So meeting partners, the dynamic changes.

Because then it's like hey, here's where I'm headed. Are you headed there too? Do you want to join me for the ride? It can be a much clearer yes. For the people we want to date, for the people we want to love. When they can feel we know where we're going and what we want and who we are, intuit know, does that match up with me? But if we're foggy and we don't know, it's much harder for a partner to identify. Do I want to be part of that?

Is that the direction I want my life to be going as well? Are we sailing to the same place? Ideally, you're going to attract a partner who is. Who has already done this version of their work, whether they're a man or woman, where they identify masculine, feminine, or anything else that they have a sense of who they are, what they want, and where they're going. And so when you meet in the world, you can put down your maps and be like, hey, look at this.

Looking good. We're pretty aligned. Going to the same place and then no one's dragging anyone else along. It's one of the most powerful things I found in doing the work I do with men and in my own life. And there's something about being able to answer these three questions that is freeing in itself to us as men, right? When we know who we are, when we know what we want, and when we know where we're going, there's a sense of agency, of empowerment in ourselves that comes online.

And it might take some time to answer these things. It might take a little experimentation, might take some going inside, but you got to do it as a guy if you want to make an impact and if you want to lead a fulfilling life. These are three questions you have to be able to answer to lead yourself into the life you want to create, into the life you want to live, into that free and nourished place you know is out there.

We all do. As a man, it's usually subtle in the background and knowing that there's another way, there's another way I could structure my life and I could be where I would be more free, more impactful in my service to the world, more loving in my relationships. That place is going to be a lot easier to identify by answering these three questions.

So take some time, get at it. Answer the questions, who am I? What do I want? Where am I going? If you want some help answering these questions, in particular through a lens of dating and relationships and discovering your masculine leadership, the program I run, Pillars of Presence is a 10 week online boot camp for guys that'll help you answer these three questions throughout the course.

Just check out my free training whether you're single or already in a relationship at Evolutionary Men Webinar and then follow the instructions at the end to talk until next time.