What Are You Grounding Into?

All right, and welcome back. So on this episode, I want to talk about getting grounded and what that actually means to us men and what the impact in our lives might be.

And I want to start with a really crucial distinction that often gets missed in conversations around getting grounded. And it has to do with something I've talked about before on this show, the difference between a state of consciousness and a stage of consciousness. So a state of consciousness is one that's temporary. It comes and goes. It's like the weather. It's stormy now and then it's gone.

And the thing with a state of consciousness is it can come at any moment, but it's not necessarily permanent. Right. We can hit a flow state, maybe in our golf game one day and have the best round we've ever had, but then we can't quite obtain that again. Or we might hit a creative flow state, or we might have a deep oneness experience meditatively, and suddenly it all makes sense.

But then we can't quite get back there, right? We had this peak experience and then we can't quite get. Get there again. That's a state of consciousness. And we all have access to them and they come and go. And it's an extremely important thing to understand because then on the other side is a stage of consciousness, which is a stabilized structure that we can come back to or maintain stability in over long periods of time, right?

So this would be the difference between having a one off, best golfing match of my life and, and okay, I can do this repeatedly now, over and over and over again. And when it comes to stages and states, there's often a lot of confusion. And when it comes to grounding, what it turns out we're most often talking about is the state experience, right? That right now I could lead you in breath, work in meditative awareness in some embodiment practice to help you get grounded into yourself in this moment.

And that is extraordinarily important in a day and age where most of us, particularly us men, are walking around ungrounded all the time. And what does that really mean? Well, often it means we're up in our heads and we're not actually here. Grounded really just means in this state sense connected to my direct felt body experience. In this moment and feeling rooted.

So feeling oriented, grounded means, ah, I have a sense of where I am and what I'm feeling in this moment. That includes my physical body, my emotional body, my surroundings, and my mental landscape. And it's really important to cultivate that capacity as a man if you want to be able to get more people to trust you to do meaningful things in life.

If you're a leader or a CEO, if you're leading your kids, your wife, your family, whatever that might be. If you're not grounded, trust tends to go way down because people don't know where you're at and they can tell where. We're often quite spun up in our heads in rumination, disconnected from our actual felt body experience as men. And this is, again, so crucial. And we have to train ourselves to be able to access that state in the moment.

But there's no way to really hold that permanently. It's going to kind of come and go, and that's okay. But we build a toolkit and an awareness of how do I get grounded in this moment? What is it that's happening in my system right here and now? Where am I orienting from in this moment? Can I feel my connection to the earth? Okay, here I am.

I'm grounded. And that is great and powerful, but it misses something really crucial that I have just not been seeing in the world of this work that is really important for our lives as men. And it has to do with the stage structure of grounded, which another way to think about it is, what are you grounding into? Right? So just to use kind of a visual metaphor here, the practice, the state experience of grounding is shooting our roots down into the earth, right?

Here I am, here's what I'm feeling, here's what I'm experiencing, here's where I'm orienting from, and here's what I'm tethered to. What we're getting grounded into. The stage structure is, well, what is that soil underneath me? Is it loose sand where it doesn't matter how far down I shoot my roots, I'm still going to get knocked over. Is it tough dirt? Is it an interconnected web of other roots that the more roots that go down in my community, the stronger it all gets?

This is what's so key. The structure, the stage experience of what we're getting grounded into is what I kind of call the shit work of our lives and the relationships and community of our lives. Anybody can go do a workshop and get grounded in the moment, but that doesn't have anything to do with what are they grounding into in the entirety, the whole picture of their lives.

Right. What is their financial situation, what is their relational situation, what is their health situation? These things are all really important. And to be truly grounded in the most empowered and empowering sense as a man, you have to have both. You have to have that state capacity in the moment to shift your awareness, connect to your direct felt body experience, get rooted in the earth and know where you're orienting from.

And you have to build a rich life to ground that all into. And in fact, the richer and stronger that network, that system, the more it will support you. When you can't ground yourself in the moment through a state experience, that structure, that root system, will provide you some stability. The thing about just getting grounded from the state experience sense is it tends to be fun and sexy and the kind of things we can do in workshops.

Knowing exactly what's going to happen in my bank account over the next three months, and having community that can support me. Right? The other theme that's come up a lot on the show, and I thank David Romero for introducing this term to me, is, you know, community is immunity. And that's essentially what I'm talking about with the stage experience of what are we getting grounded into? You can be someone who can totally ground in the moment, but have no connection in life, still be the lone wolf, have no structures to catch you when you can't catch yourself.

That's where things like men's groups, longtime listeners know and are probably exhausted of me, right? Repeatedly banging the bell, hitting the drum, so to speak of, hey, you got to get into community. You got to get into a men's group. That is one of the most powerful tools for what are you getting grounded into that cannot change instantly. What structures are you investing in, in building in Your life that creates stability, that strong root system that you can plug into.

So when you're getting overpowered, we're losing it. Something catches you, something stabilizes you. And you need both. We need both. As men, getting grounded is something from the state State experience we can do very easily. It can teach you that in a weekend, can teach you that in a two hour workshop. Most of the time it's instant getting grounded into a strong, resilient, connected life that takes work and that takes the kind of work that doesn't necessarily show immediate results.

Right? It takes sticking with it, trying things out, experimenting what works, what doesn't work, what really helps me show up from this wise, integrated self in my life in the most stressful situations. And then what do I lean back into when I can't hang there anymore, when I get triggered, when I get exhausted, when I get stressed? That's when we revert to what are you getting grounded into? And when that catches us, makes it a lot easier to come forward, access and generate that state again.

Okay, here I am again. Here's my direct experience. Here's where I'm orienting from. Here's what I'm wanting. This capacity for us men completely dissolves the either or paradigm so many guys get stuck into of. Yeah, either I'm the macho, lone wolf, red pill cowboy, or I'm some wafy head helpless man that just needs other people to support me. You need both. It's both.

And getting grounded isn't just the state experience. Again, I'm going to keep repeating it. What are you grounding into? And that is something you have to take a long, hard look at as a man. Because most of what's being fed to us in our society now is not very strong, not very stable in terms of grounding into something. You need relationships that support you in getting stable in these different structures of your life.

That's what it means. And you cannot fake that. You can't walk into a workshop, you can't walk up to a woman, you can't lead your team and just fake that in the moment. That is the result of an investment over time that has built an actual structure in your life that can't easily be wiped away and it can't easily be created. Right. It takes time, it takes sticking with it. It's an investment that pays dividends, instability.

And certainly what I've noticed in my life, certainly what my wife noticed when she met me, what I notice in so many men I work with now in my coaching programs, my shadow Program, dating and relationships. Programs are when they start to get grounded into community. Meaningful, trustable, raw, honest, powerful community. It sets the stage to start handling these other things and in their lives.

The diet, the food, the energy, the wellness, the finances, the purpose, the sex, the relationships, you name it, those start to stabilize after that. And suddenly we have this durable system that is our life. It's this web, it's this network we're plugged into. And when we combine that with that state capacity in, in the moment to show up. Here I am right now, feeling my entire experience, my guts, my heart, my head, my environment, my relationships, it becomes incredible.

You become a rarefied presence in the world that people notice, remember, trust, and want to be around. Your nervous system itself. That state of you have the capacity to ground and you have the structure to ground into, becomes an actual generative field that other people can feel and want to be around. And then it starts to support them in doing the same.

This is part of the. The new masculine leadership. Taking utter responsibility for the state of my nervous system. How grounded am I right now and what am I grounded into? And the more you do that, the more you build that network, the more you're creating the web for other people to plug into. And in times of great instability and uncertainty, that's something I think we all need.

Again, the practice of generating the state experience, of getting grounded is relatively easy. We can work that, we can do that over zoom. It can just take a few minutes. You still have to do it right. There's no shortcuts. You still have to do it. And that is a meaningful practice. And we can train and increase that capacity, but it has to be matched with what are you grounding into, what is your life, what is the network, what are the systems, what are the relationships?

If those aren't strong, durable, meaningful and conducive to wellness, that temporary state is only going to take you so far. If you want to get some help, reach out. I can help you get grounded both into the moment of yourself and help you take a long, hard, important look at what are you getting grounded into. And very easily start to plug you into community of men to support you.

All right, until next time. If you're interested in working with me around dating, relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to evolutionary Men apply.