What is your relationship with anger?
Men grow up learning that anger is often the only emotion they can express. But in my case, I learned that I wasn’t allowed to express anger toward other people. In this episode, I share how I’m transforming my relationship with anger by learning how to be more assertive. I also discuss why holding your anger in just makes you angrier and unhappier, while expressing your anger in the moment releases the anger you’ve been holding onto.
Are you abandoning yourself to please someone else? I share how to identify if you are, and why this actually hurts your relationship with yourself and the other person.
One of the challenges a given person faces is how they differentiate between the outside experiences they are having and what they tell themselves about the world around them and those experiences. The inner reality is not the same as the outer reality, but it can be easy to confuse the two and as a result not fully recognize where negative messaging is coming from. Another aspect to consider is that you don’t have control over the world around you, but you do have control over yourself and how you respond to a given situation.
Think about a bad day. What made that day bad? Chances are you can point to a number of situations that occurred during that day to seemingly make it bad, and there’s likely some reality to what you observed and experienced. However at the core of that day being bad are triggers, with associated internal messages and perspectives that took your outside experiences and painted them with a particular perspective that reinforced the internal messaging.
Now a bad day is a bad day and the experiences we have in the world can and do legitimately create bad days. However its important to understand that our internal messaging plays a role in the experience of a bad day and contributes to the overall experiences that we have. When you recognize this connection, you can also differentiate between what you have control over and what you don’t have control over.
For example, if someone cuts you off in traffic, you don’t have control over that. However if you have a thought or a feeling around being cutoff, you have an opportunity to re-orient those feelings or redirect those thoughts. You can choose to stew in your thoughts and emotions or you can recognize that you couldn’t control that person cutting you off but you can re-orient on how it’s a lesson about being a safe driver and feel grateful to yourself for being a better driver.
That’s a simple example, but you can apply this same rationale and process to more complicated situations. For instance, you might have a tense meeting with your manager. S/he is coming down hard on you about your work performance. You can get caught up in reactive thoughts and emotions, feeling like a victim, or you can look at the situation and consider that your manager might be also having a bad day and also ask yourself how you could change your work performance to address their concerns.
One of the most important skills we can cultivate is the skill of perspective. Your ability to be flexible and look at a situation from different points of view can help you see the difference between internal message and the actual situation. If you have a negative belief about yourself, and you are in a situation that seems to confirm it, take a few deep breaths and examine the situation. What is your internal messaging telling you? What are the beliefs contained within that internal messaging?
Consider those answers for a few moments. Sit with them and then ask yourself where that internal messaging comes from. Who is really telling you that message? Chances are the message is rooted in your past, when someone else told you something about you and also punished you in some manner. Sit with that for a bit.
Finally look at the external situation. How does this external situation trigger your inner messaging? What are the similarities between the external situation and the original situation that caused the messaging? What are the differences between the external situation and the original situation? Give yourself some space to consider those answers for a bit.
When we take a bit of time (and some breath!) to consider a situation, instead of reacting to it, what we give ourselves is the space to respond to the situation. We can choose our responses and we can also choose to re-orient our internal beliefs and in the process give ourselves a way to resolve the external situation without sabotaging ourselves because of something that happened a long time ago. We are more than our triggers and reactions and we can change them because they represent outmoded survival responses for situations we’re no longer in.
To live in your masculine energy requires taking on responsibility. But what does it mean to be responsible for yourself? I share my own journey around this topic and how taking responsibility can change the way you approach situations in your life and empower you as a man, in your relationship with yourself and others. I also discuss how responsibility lays the foundation for embracing sacred masculinity.
No is a magic work and learning how to say it and stick with is an important skill. I share why men need to learn how to say no in their own lives. Additionally I discuss why it’s important to learn how to listen and accept a no, and move on with your life. Finally we discuss self respect and how setting your own boundaries and acknowledging other peoples’ boundaries is a form of self respect.
One of the mistakes I see men make (and one I’ve made myself at times) is that a man will focus so much on the romantic relationship he excludes everything else in his life. This is not a a healthy approach to romantic or any other types of relationship. It creates an unhealthy dynamic where one person suppresses their own needs because they prioritize what they think the other person needs over their own needs. When a person lives for someone else’s happiness, they give up a vital part of themselves and it sours the relationship.
So why does someone do this? One reason can be poor self esteem, but another reason can also be that you feel more desire for the other person than they feel for you. Sometimes both reasons go hand in hand. Regardless of what the reason is, it can create significant problems if you don’t recognize the pattern and make changes.
The best recommendation I have is to spend time developing a relationship with the one you’re always with, and that person isn’t your significant other. That person is you. You are the most important person in your life and you’re the one person you’ll always be with, so spend time with yourself, discovering what you genuinely enjoy. By making quality time for yourself you can discover an essential truth of life: You can make it on your own and be happy being with yourself. This doesn’t mean you should breakup with your partner, but it does mean that you can recognize that life will go on and there will be good times.
So often we hold romantic relationships up as the holy grail for a person to aspire to, but while it can be wonderful to be with someone, a relationship ought to enhance your life, not become your life. When a man makes a relationship more important than anything else, he can lose the respect of his partner. His partner wants a person with a spine, who has his own interests and activity and can be independent, but also know when to make time for romantic and practical considerations.
In most of my relationships I have been fairly independent. I’ve worked on my writing projects and pursued other activities such as going to the gym and martial arts, but there have been times where I’ve subsumed my identity in favor of the person I was with. I think this is a normal part of relationships to some degree. There are times where you may need to prioritize your significant other(s) because they are going through some experience or because you’ve made plans, but its also important to keep some balance and perspective.
You can do this by pursuing your own hobbies but also making time with friends, family, and community. You can also do this by continuing to cultivate your own interest and activities so that when you come back into the orbit of your sweetheart you have something interesting to share and appreciate about each other. You are more than your relationship. So is your life…and when you appreciate that, you’ll also appreciate yourself, your sweetie and your relationship more.
I discuss how to set boundaries and then explore the sacred masculine mysteries of Saturn in relationship to setting boundaries. I also share why boundaries can help you become more aware of your own limits and discuss how poor boundaries allow you to get stepped all over.
