Why You’re Stuck as a Man
You are working hard and nothing is moving. Two energetic habits burn your fuel and produce no motion, and one of them still feels like being a man.
Stuck is rarely a discipline problem. Most men who come to Jason Lange are already working hard, already up early, already doing the reps, and still nothing moves. What is usually happening is that the fuel is going somewhere you cannot see. Some of it goes into holding old material down, which is a full time job your body is doing whether you notice it or not. Some of it goes into soothing. Weed, porn, a screen, a second drink, all of which change how you feel in ten minutes and change nothing by morning. Soothing and healing look almost identical from the inside. Over a decade they produce very different lives.
If you are here, you have probably already tried the retreat, the book and the new routine, and landed back where you started faster than you expected. "Why You're Stuck as a Man" names the two energetic habits that burn your fuel and produce no motion. "One Way Men Keep Themselves Stuck" is the soothing question, asked directly. "What It Takes to Really Change" lays out four elements, because waking up is the part everybody talks about and it is one quarter of the job. Work through the episodes below.
You are working hard and nothing is moving. Two energetic habits burn your fuel and produce no motion, and one of them still feels like being a man.
Two men, same age and same income, and only one of them changes a room by walking into it. The nine capacities that account for the difference, taken one at a time.
Three disconnections sit under most of the flatness men bring me, and the first one is from your own body. What each looks like, and the way back from each.
Resilient means you survive the hit. Anti-fragile means the hit feeds you, and Dr. Luke Adler and I get into what has to be metabolized for that to become true.
The retreat cracks you open and then Monday morning arrives. Why the state fades without structure, and what integration actually asks of you once you are back home.
Debt has its own pain, whether it sits on a credit card, on your body, or in a garage you cannot park in. What paying mine down took, and where men stall.
Almost every men's organization is named for one kind of man. This one is named for men, plural, because bootstraps have never been how a man actually grows.
Growth does not make your life easier, and that was never the deal on offer. What better actually means in practice, and why connection is what makes it possible.
A Pearl Jam song and a piece of developmental theory. What changes when a pattern that has been running you becomes something you can see and make a choice about.
David Romero went from the Air Force Academy to sitting with plant medicine. Why the medicine is not the cure, and what set, setting and integration actually ask of you.
Most of what you do in a day is organized around getting away from a feeling. What changes when you turn and move toward it instead, and where vision comes from.
You will sign up for the cold plunge and the heavy set without blinking. The challenge that actually changes a man is usually the one he would never volunteer for.
Stuck has a physiology, and Dr. Luke Adler can tell you what stagnation does inside a body. Where the numbness starts, and what actually gets things moving again.
Weed, porn and a screen will change how you feel in ten minutes and change nothing by morning. Soothing versus healing, and how to tell which one you are doing.
Chasing enlightenment can become one more way to leave your own experience. Dr. Luke Adler and I on waking down into intimacy, which is what most men actually need.
You train past your capacity so that ordinary life stops feeling like a stretch. What training at the edge looks like for a nervous system, and why you do not live there.
Growth looks like a jagged line with plateaus and backslides, and expecting a straight one is what makes it hurt. How to read the flat stretch you are in.
The guru model came out of a different culture and a different century. Practical questions to ask anyone you are about to hand your development to, including me.
You want the anger or the anxiety gone, and nobody in history has managed that. Moving from relating from a part to relating to it is where change starts.
The medicine can crack something wide open in one night and you will still be you in the morning. What has to sit alongside it for the change to hold.
Emotion is energy in motion, so when you hold it in nothing moves, including you. Why your feelings are the fuel for the action you keep putting off.
The wounds around shame and trust were built in relationship, which is the only place they get repaired. Why relationship is the strongest tool for change you have.
The shutdown that kept you safe at nine years old is the same shutdown blocking you at forty. How to see a pattern that has been running you since childhood.
Waking up is the part everybody talks about, and it is one quarter of the job. Four elements of real change, and why leaving one out stalls the whole thing.
WHEN LISTENING ISN’T ENOUGH
Most of what Jason talks about here gets practiced somewhere else, with other men, over months. That’s what the programs are for.
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