In this episode of the Men's Mysteries podcast, Tim Cheesebrow and I talk about the transformative power of initiations in men's lives and share why men need initiation. We talk about our recent respective experiences with initiations we went through and how those initiations our relationships with ourselves and the people in our lives.
Images of self love can be masculine too
The other day I was writing another article and I did a search stock images of self love. What I found fascinating was that almost all of the images of self-love were of women. I found only one stock image that was free that had a man in it and even then that picture wasn’t showing the man expressing some form of self love and appreciation to himself but rather expressing love to someone else.
One of the tools of the sacred masculine is the tool of self love. On my own journey into men’s work I found that this tool was essential for helping me heal and embrace myself. I used to loath myself for being a man, because of how masculinity had been modeled to me by my dad, as well as the opinions expressed about it by the women in my life. I only started to really heal this wound when I started to love myself. I recognized I needed to change my attitude and perspective toward myself and discover what healthy masculinity looked like.
Men, and people in general, need to embrace self love. But men may find the idea of loving themselves particularly hard to adopt because we’re taught that men don’t feel. The truth is that men do feel, but they’ve been taught to bury their emotions. Burying your emotions just cuts you off from yourself as well as other people. Self love counteracts that numbness and teaches you how to connect with full intimacy and awareness of yourself and other people. It’s not a cure-all but when you start loving yourself you also start recognizing how much of yourself you’ve given away to other people and you start reclaiming it and creating healthy boundaries for yourself and others.
Self love is also a potent antidote to the heartache of breakups. Breakups are hard in general, but for men they can be particularly hard because of how much men wrap their identity up in the relationship. In my upcoming class Beyond the Breakup we explore how self-love can help you heal from the pain of your breakup and all the other relationships that didn’t work out. When men learn to love themselves it changes how they approach relationship, because they aren’t coming at it from a place of needy insecurity. They’re coming at relationship from a place of awareness and love for themselves, which enables them to hold better boundaries with other people.
A man who loves himself has a better sense of who he is, what he wants and what his mission and purpose is. He also knows he doesn’t need to go through life alone and through self love he starts reaching out and connecting with other men to create a brotherly bond where each man supports the other men. Men need to have healthy relationships with other men because it teaches them that they aren’t alone and that other men can relate to the challenges and struggles they are going through.
If we’re going to change how we show up in the world then we need to start by learning how to love yourselves. One way to model that is to show images of men expressing love for themselves in a way that’s affirms the importance of validating themselves. Men need to know it is healthy to value and love themselves. We haven’t been taught that, but more than ever we need to learn it.
5 ways to show up as a leader in your life
You are the leader of your life, or you can be. You may not feel like a leader in this moment, but the one person who is in charge of your life and how you live it is you. It’s an important point to remember because so often a person can feel powerless due to circumstances that are out of their control, yet the one thing you have control over is how you respond to those circumstances. The response may not always be ideal, but it is within your power.
In my work in my own life and with other men, one of the skills I focus on is cultivating the skill of leadership. Leadership is an essential skill that helps you transform your life. All of us are capable of becoming leaders. We may not end up being a leader at the job we work at, or in the organization you’re involved in, but leadership isn’t always about being a leader in every activity you’re involved in. Being a leader is about taking charge of the direction of your life and the choices you make around how you live your life, solve your problems, and create the adventure you’ve always wanted to live.
So how do you show up as a leader in your life?
Discover your mission - Your mission is unique to you. It is the sense of purpose and direction that you bring to your life. When you don’t know what your mission is, it can cause you to feel like you are lost. If you want to become a leader in your life, you have to discover your mission. It needs to be a mission that goes beyond the relationship you are in, or the job you work at. Your mission is what you offer to the world.
How do you discover your mission? What matters most to you? What brings you to life? In my case, it’s my spiritual work and the work I do with men. Those two activities bring me a sense of joy and purpose and comprise my mission. You may not immediately figure that out, so ask yourself this: How do I want to show up in the world? And then live the answer.
Choose your habits - Your habits define your life. If you are indulging in bad habits, those habits will create experiences that while pleasurable in the moment, will ultimately drain you of your life. If you choose good habits, you enhance your life but it also requires that you are willing to stick with those habits. For example stretching and exercising in the morning will help you stay flexible and healthy and instill a good habit.
The habits we choose are chosen because of what they provide us in the short term, but we also have to look at the long term impact of those choices. Healthy habits lead to better quality of life and happiness while unhealthy habits are usually coping mechanisms that are put in place to avoid dealing with the deeper unhappiness that you may likely be feeling. If you want to be a better leader, you need to lead yourself and one of the ways you do that is through the choices you make each day.
Honor and love yourself - We are taught to love other people, but the most important person you can give your love to is yourself. It’s equally as important to honor and respect yourself. Many people don’t honor and love themselves. Instead they loathe themselves and place all their hope for love and respect in the hands of other people.
Learning to love yourself involves not just saying a mantra that you love yourself, but adopting actual practices of self love and care. Some of those practices can be found in taking on good habits, but some of them can be found through deliberately choosing yourself. When you choose to honor your inner truths, your needs and wants as well as your mission and purpose you are choosing to love and honor yourself.
Participate in your community - So many men isolate themselves, focusing on their work and their relationship with their partner. Men need to have relationships outside of work that are intimate but don’t involve romance or creating a life with someone. Men need to participate in their communities, in meaningful ways that reflect the mission and purpose they follow.
Participation in your community means doing something to contribute to your community. For example, I staff at men’s weekend retreats as a way of participating and contributing to my community. You could teach a class in your community or do some other activity that allows you to help the community you are part of. When you lead yourself, you make the choice to show up for your community.
Take charge of the direction of your life - You can live a life where other people are in charge or you can live a life where you take charge of yourself and your actions. The former type of life typically sees a man answering to his boss, partner and everyone else, always trying to please them, always playing the nice guy, always making choices that go against his inner truths and desires. The later type of life is an adventure of your making. You honor your inner truths by speaking up for them and taking meaningful action on them. You recognize that you need to validate yourself by learning to love and respect what really matters to you.
If you need help with taking charge of your life, I invite you to sign up for a 20 minute sacred masculinity coaching session with me. In that time we’ll discuss a challenge you’re facing in your life and I’ll help you come up with a solution that honors your sacred masculine strength and shows you how you can move forward in a meaningful way. Click the link to sign up.
How to Handle Criticism
One of the most important skills you can learn is how to handle criticism. I share some advice on how to ground yourself and be present with criticism that comes your way.
The Ethos of the Sacred Masculine Pt 6: Be embodied in your sexuality with yourself and your lovers.
So many of us check out with our bodies and our sexuality.
We get caught up in trying to perform toward expectations around how sex ought to be.
We get caught up in trying to reach a specific outcome, without appreciating the experience leading up to that experience.
We get caught up in the value judgments we make about ourselves in relationship to our sexual performance and the fear we have about how others will evaluate us.
And in the midst of all that, we lose touch with our actual desires, wants and needs.
A man in touch with his sacred masculinity is in touch with his body, in touch with his sexual desires and is able to embody all of that and be present with himself and his partners without having to perform or measure up.
We embrace our bodies without feeling shame and accept our sexual desires without judging them. We honor ourselves and our partners and take joy in the intimate expression of sex.
The Ethos of the Sacred Masculine Part 2 - Unleash your wild man
The Ethos of the Sacred Masculine Quest part 2 Honor the wild man within you. Be proud to be a man
Being proud to be a man is almost unheard of these days or the assumptive association is that being proud to be a man makes you a part of toxic masculinity. You may even be questioned for being proud to be a man because it’s not a choice you’ve seemingly made, but what that question forgets is that each person makes a choice to be whoever and whatever they identify as everyday.
We ought to be proud of who and what we are, because it is a choice we are making regardless of what is or isn’t swinging between our legs.
However being proud to be a man doesn't mean you ignore the history of patriarchy or the privilege that has so often come with masculinity. If anything it means challenging it, because the patriarchal, privileged man is a man out of touch with his own inner wildness and his sacred masculinity and as a result he is out of touch with everyone else around him.
To waken our connection with sacred masculinity we have to connect with the wild man within us, the wildness that leads us to our fundamental mission and purpose and speaks to the depths of our heart and the ascension of our creativity.
A man in touch with his wildness is a man unconstrained by the norms of society. He seeks his own path instead of sticking with the rate race. He's in alignment with his vision and purpose and strives to turn them into reality.
He also creates his own life, a life of adventure, joy and passion. He knows what his life is worth and as a result he makes the choice to create a life on his own terms.
Be proud to be a man, but don't let that pride blind you to the realities of how men have shown up in the past and how some men still show up. Instead take on an informed awareness that helps you channel your inner wildness and show up with presence and awareness.
When men are ashamed to be men that's when they seek refuge in patriarchal thinking and privilege and then act them out as a way of guarding their own woundedness. They stop being present with themselves or anyone else and the result is a man who is frozen on the inside and out of touch on the outside.
When a man is in touch with his inner wildness he can show up with the presence for himself and other people that enables genuine and authentic relationship and communication.
One Year Anniversary Retrospective
It’s been one year since I made the spiritual commitment to work with the sacred masculine. I share what I have learned in this last year, talk about the experiences I’ve had and discuss how I’m moving forward with this work in my life.
What does it mean to lead?
What does it mean to lead in your life? Why is it important to lead? In this video I explore the question of what it means to lead and share some thoughts on why leading yourself is so important if you want to truly get in touch with your sacred masculine core.
Sign up for the Sacred Masculine Leadership: https://www.inneralchemycoach.com/sacred-masculine-leadership
How to be Present and Grounded with Yourself and Your Partner
Learn how to be present and grounded within yourself and with your partner in any situation that may arise.. Learning these skills can help you become a grounded man who is comfortable in his ability to show up and lead.
Why apologizing for being yourself is nice guy behavior
I used to say I’m sorry a lot. I can’t even tell you how many times I’d say I was sorry in a given day, but it could be a lot.
It was if I was apologizing for my existence.
But the truth is even more insidious. I was apologizing because I was trying to be accepted and I didn’t respect myself enough to own who I wanted to be. I was trying to fit into what I thought someone else wanted and as a result anytime I didn’t fit their image of me, I’d apologize and try to make myself fit a very uncomfortable space…namely the space of trying to be who they wanted me to be.
It never worked…
I would just end up sabotaging those efforts and then I’d be back to apologizing for letting them see a glimpse of the real me. I felt ashamed of that person and as a “nice guy” it seemed like it was more important to be anyone else other than myself, if I was going to have any chance of being liked.
The shadow of insecurity
Recently I was feeling conflicted.
I was at a crossroads about a major decision. Should I go this way or that way? I didn't know which way to go.
Should I commit to going to grad school, get another degree, a mountain load of student debt or should I commit to becoming a men's coach and do the work I know I am called to do around helping other men?
I felt weak and indecisive, paralyzed about making a decision even though in my deepest, truest self I already knew the answer. I kept questioning myself and my choices, scared I was making the wrong choice, trying to stay in my comfort zone instead of challenging myself to grow, even though that growth might be really uncomfortable.
One of my shadows had me in its grip and it wasn't going to be easy to shake off.
Can you relate to that?
What I needed was to address the shadow head on from a place of grounded and rooted masculine awareness, from a place of true strength.
The strength that can only come from knowing yourself, choosing yourself and acting on that choice in your best interests.
Fortunately I had some help and I did a deep dive into my shadows and encountered that shadow which had me in its grip.
It was the shadow of my father and a memory I had when I was 12 years old. I was at the dinner table sharing a compliment I had gotten from a girl about a book I was reading.
He said, "If you're so smart, why can't you get better grades?"
It was just one incident among many in my life where he tried to crush my spirit and make me small.
And here he was again reaching from the past to try and make me feel small, to try and make me feel dumb and keep me from realizing my potential.
But I wasn't going to let him do that. And I had help.
For so long in my life I had tried to white knuckle my way through my shadows, fears and insecurities, but what I have learned is that you don't have to go on the journey alone. You can go with brothers who understand and can relate to your experiences because they know the territory. Their stories aren't the same, and neither are their experiences, but they can relate.
I confronted this shadow with my brothers and I changed the story on a deep level and came out the other side feeling confident and grounded in myself, knowing that I can move forward with my decision and let go of the need to be in the comfort zone.
If you've ever felt something similar, felt lost, scared and indecisive, and you've tried and tried on your own to make the choice, but kept finding yourself back in the comfort zone numbing yourself with alcohol, drugs, porn, video games or other distractions, or just stuck and unable to make a decision, there is a better way.
Allow me the privilege to take you on a journey...the journey to discover your sacred masculine power and discover the deepest abiding strength you have within you.
If you're ready, sign up for a free sacred masculine strategy session and let's explore the challenges and shadows in your life by shining a light on them.
https://www.inneralchemycoach.com/
#sacredmasculinity #DivineKing #themensjourney #divinemasculine
Why Men don't trust each other
I discuss why men don’t trust each other and share the reasons that have caused that distrust and what we can do to change that through the work we do together in men’s circles.
What is Sacred Masculinity and why am I on this Journey?
I introduce myself and explore the topic of sacred masculinity and what it is and share what brought me to this journey that I'm on where I am reclaiming my sacred masculine identity.