Mature Masculinity Podcast: How to love your body

A lot of men hold themselves to an impossible standard when it comes to their body image. They think they need to be chiseled and lean and many struggle with the self-image they have.

In this episode of the mature masculinity podcast I talk about my relationship with my body, share my experiences around being anorexic in my twenties and talk about how I learned to love and accept body, while also taking better care of myself. I talk about why men need to take better care of their bodies in general and share a few ideas on how they can do that.

How to Value Yourself

I discuss the importance of valuing yourself and how it builds up your confidence as a person. I share some processes around how you can value yourself better and how to recognize when you aren’t valuing yourself.

How to Father yourself (and why you need to)

When I was growing up I had an absentee father. He often traveled during the week for his job and when he did come home, he parked himself in front of the TV with a drink in hand and didn’t want to be bothered. On the occasions when he and I interacted it was more often than not because he was called in to punish me, which usually consisted of a combination of mental and physical punishments. I grew up and eventually had a better relationship with my dad, but I never really knew him or knew how to interact with him. My relationship with other boys and later men was one of distrust. I didn’t trust men because I didn’t trust the person who was my father.

Eventually I learned to trust men, but I realized that I still didn’t trust the energy of the father. The father, as an archetype, felt like a patriarchal oppressor who tried to dominate and control everyone around him and did his best to suppress his son out of a need to control him. When I recognized this about my relationship with paternal energy, I began to also see how this distrust played itself out in interactions I had with other men in any role that vaguely resembled a father figure. The question I faced was how to heal my relationship with the father archetype while also disassociating that energy from other men. I didn’t want to project my father issues on other men, and I was realizing that I was doing that sometimes.

My solution to the issue involved learning to parent my inner child the way I had wanted to be parented by my father. I had to father myself, and in the process heal the wounds I had around the father archetype. Some men heal these wounds by having children of their own and making the choice to be a different father than the one they grew up with. I chose not to have kids because I didn’t want to be a father. Ironically I was a step parent for a time, but that experience confirmed that I wasn’t the type of person who ought to be a parent. I had to take a different approach to heal my wounds around the father archetype.

I started my process by doing some pathworking and parts work with my inner boy. In those processes, I asked him what he needed from me. In one case, what he needed from me was to know that I would keep him safe by staying committed to my choices and following through on those actions. He also needed to know that I would still make time to play because play was essential for his happiness and when I worked all the time, it reminded him of my dad. Making the effort to reassure that part of myself helped it feel like it didn’t need to protect me from possible choices. It allowed me to step up and follow through on my mission and purpose.

I am continuing to father myself and in that process I’m getting better at recognizing when someone triggers a reaction that’s based on my projections around my father, both positively and negatively. These realizations provide me another opportunity to father myself because when I react to someone that brings up energy around the father archetype, I can examine my projection, separate it from the person and father my inner child while also releasing the charge around that other person. This is helping me change my relationships with people in my life, while also healing my relationship with my inner child AND my inner father.

Sometimes we can’t heal the relationships we had with people in our lives. That doesn’t mean we can’t do some kind of work that brings an element of healing in our lives. By working with inner our inner child, inner parent, etc., and recognizing when we are projecting onto other people, we can transform our relationship with ourselves and the people around us. If that’s something you need help with, contact me for a sacred masculinity coaching session and we can take a look at doing this work together.

Finding balance in relationship pt 1: How to be a leader

When you’re in a romantic relationship (or more than one), one of the challenges that can come up is around how you show up in that relationship. Are you showing up as the little boy craving approval or are you showing up as a mature man, confident in himself and his presence? The answer to that question can speak volumes to the overall happiness and satisfaction you experience in your relationship, and can provide a valuable clue for how your partner(s) responds to you in your relationship.

Your partner doesn’t want the little boy craving approval. It’s a real turn off on every level of the relationship and can be a relationship killer. When you show up as the little boy, you treat your partner as a parental figure, seeking out their approval for what you do. It shows you don’t have a spine and it puts a lot of unwanted power in the hands of your partner. You put your partner into a position where they have to take charge and guide and lead you, which ends up being a relationship killer. You don’t want to be the little boy in a romantic relationship, because being that way demonstrates that you aren’t ready or capable of showing up in your relationship in a way that cultivates respect or shows that you are a man who can be relied upon.

Your partner wants the mature man who is confident in himself, able to show up as a leader in way that simultaneously creates a sense of safety, while also exciting your partner because you are a reliable man who can be counted on to show up when needed. A mature man is a man who embodies his sacred masculinity through his actions and words. He follows through on what he says he’ll do and he is also able to take accountability for his actions and choices in a way that doesn’t apologize for who he is, but does acknowledge when he’s made a mistake. A mature man knows who he is, and knows the principles by which he lives his life and as a result he is able to show up as a leader in his own life.

Your partner wants a leader…not so that you can lead them, though sometimes that may be a desire, but so that you can lead yourself. A man who doesn’t look to other people for approval and yet can also be fully present with other people is a sexy man, and the kind of man someone else can rely upon. The question is how do you become a leader in your own life and as a result show up in your relationship in a way that inspires and deepens the connection you have with your partner?

The first action you can take is to get clear on the code of behavior, the principles, by which you live your life. This code of behavior is something you must stick to no matter what, because when you compromise on it, you give away your strength of being and presence to your partner and that will cause your partner to feel disrespect for you. You don’t necessarily need to broadcast what this code of behavior is to anyone else, but you do need to know it and live it. An example of this code behavior might be the following:

• I love, honor, and respect myself everyday.

• I spend time with other men, in relationships that are nurturing and supportive.

These are just a couple of examples, but these are part of the code of behavior I live every day. If you aren’t clear on what your code of behavior is, you need to spend time thinking about what is essential to your happiness and well being and then stick with it, no matter what. This means you can compromise on this code of behavior, because if you you are giving away your sovereign leadership to someone else and in the process losing an essential part of the attraction that is between you.

The second action you can take is to resolve to handle conflict on your relationship from the place of the mature, sacred masculine. The mature man doesn’t react to conflict from a place of co-dependent neediness or whininess. He takes responsibility for his actions and he is able to ground himself, becoming solid in the face of anger, and listening with intent and awareness so that when he speaks and acts he does so in a way that reveals his awareness and his ability to advocate for himself as needed, without trying to duck responsibility.

A third action you can take is to connect with other men, and I’m not talking in the locker room or sports bar, but rather in a deep and meaningful way, where you are able to speak to to the challenges in your life and be supported by other men, who nonetheless will also challenge you to be a better man. When you have this kind of connection with other men, you aren’t white knuckling your way through every situation. Instead you have a supportive network of men who believe in you and also hold you to a higher standard in terms of how you show up in your life.

If you’ve recently broken up with your ex or you’ve had a moment of clarity around how you show up in relationship and you realize you need to make some changes, I invite you to check out my upcoming class Beyond the Breakup, which shows you how to ground into your sacred masculine presence and apply it in your life so you’re no longer a wishy washy, insecure nice guy.

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.

What is intimacy?

What is intimacy? What does it mean to be intimate with someone or with yourself? I discuss what genuine intimacy is and why its important to be open to different ideas around intimacy beyond what we may commonly expect.

How to forgive yourself

When we don’t forgive ourselves we can’t move forward in our lives, because we carry the burden of our pain as a judgement against ourselves. I share how to forgive yourself and why its important for you to do this in order to heal from your past relationships and other cycles that may be holding you back from living your best life and embracing your sacred masculine power.

How to recognize when you are burning out

January is a month where I have to slow down what I do in my life because of the demands of my day job. I provide technical support for financial software for businesses, which translates into mandatory overtime and dealing with stressed out people. By the end of my working day I’m usually emotionally and mentally tapped. What I have learned to do is slow down during January and accept that what I usually do in terms of writing and other content creation simply isn’t going to happen to the same degree as it happens the rest of the year.

It’s important to recognize when you could be headed toward burnout. When you recognize that you are starting to burnout you can take preventative measures but the most important you can take is to actually yourself to have the space to reset and recharge. So often we are told to be productive, to always be doing some activity, but sometimes what we really need to do is slow down and pace ourselves.

I call this slowing down wintering and it is the deliberate cultivation of a state of slowing down and taking care of yourself instead of trying to do all the things. What I’ve learned to do is integrate wintering into they rhythm of my life so that I know when to slow down instead of continually trying to be productive. By learning how to pace myself, I maintain a state of well being that helps me avoid burnout because I proactively slow down.

You can take the same approach in your own life. Review the cycles of your life. If there are points in the cycle of a given year where you find yourself busier in one area of your life, it can be really helpful to slow down in other areas of your life. You can also do the same activity with your day. For example, I meditate during my lunch. This helps me to slow down during my busy days and gives me time to reset and recover.

There can be a lot of pressure to be on all the time, but you don’t have to be on all time and its not actually helpful to be on all the time. When you are burning out, its because you’re having to be on all the time. Turn off and allow yourself the necessity of rest and of doing activities that nourish you. If you do this proactively you won’t burnout because you’ll be taking care of yourself in a way where you preserve your creativity, well-being and overall focus.

One of the best ways you can take care of yourself the other people in your life is making the choice to deliberately create habits of rest and rejuvenation. When you take a nap or go for a walk or do some other activity that isn’t “productive” keep in mind that it actually feeds your productivity, because it gives you the break you need to have in order to recharge yourself.

Your life is more than your relationship

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.

Be better: The mantra we can all live by

One of the themes I’ve been exploring in my life is the theme of being better. By being better, I don’t mean being better than someone else, or comparing myself to other people. I’ve done all that before and its not helpful behavior because I find that it actually holds a person back from their greatness.

When I talk about being better, what I really mean is making the choice to improve yourself each day. This choice to improve yourself doesn’t mean you have to make grandiose changes. Rather it means that you pick an area of your life and you make gradual changes that help you get better. Here’s a few examples that may inspire you in your own efforts to be better.

Example 1: I started exercising each morning for 10-15 minutes. I do this each each day, focusing first on stretching and then doing a series of core exercises to help improve my core strength. I have been slowly increasing the time I exercise, and I’ve also used this morning activity to inspire exercise in the evening.

You can take a similar approach with your own physical health. Carve out a specific time of day and start doing stretches and exercises during that time. Initially you might start with 5 minutes and then work on getting to 6 minutes, gradually increasing your time spent exercising.

Example 2: I started working on my posture. My Sifu has been helping me work on my posture. I’ve been using the stretches as well as his instruction and several books to help me do specific exercises each day to straighten my posture out. Each day I spend a few minutes working on these stretches and I am noticing that I am standing taller and feeling more confident as a result.

If you want to work on your posture, have someone look at it with you and then start introducing changes to how you carry yourself. My initial focus was just on standing up straighter, but now its moved over to sitting differently, walking differently, etc. You can do the same by focusing in one specific aspect you want to change and then carry it over to another area you want to improve on.

Example 3: Reading each night. Each night I spend a half hour reading. I make the choice to slow down my evening after I finish writing by taking some time to read. It feeds my mind, gives me something to contemplate and helps me continue the work I am doing. Initially I was only reading for ten minutes and I gradually moved the time up so I was making more time to read.

Each of these examples involves making a commitment to do a specific behavior but it also involves making a time commitment. The time commitment doesn’t have to be lengthy. If you spend 5 minutes doing something that helps you be better than that’s an improvement right there. What you’ll find is that the more you do something, the more easy it becomes to commit to doing it for longer periods of time, and also applying it to other areas of your life.

Being better is really about making incremental changes. The little changes we make create the opportunities for growth and improvement that we want but they make them sustainable! Sustainable change is what enables us to create momentum in our lives around the improvement we want to create for ourselves.

The Ethos of the Sacred Masculine Part 1 - Love

I’ve been working on developing an Ethos that describes the vision and work of the Sacred Masculine. In this next series of posts I’m going to share with you what that Ethos is and why its significant to the work all men need to do to transform their lives.

The Ethos of the Sacred Masculine Quest - Part 1 Love

We have been taught to give away our love to other people and also been taught that the only love which has value is love that is given to us by other people.

A man in touch with his sacred masculine power knows better. He knows that love starts from within. He might experience someone else loving him, and he might love someone else, but until he learns how to love himself he will not be able to fully show up for anyone else.

Love yourself unapologetically, choose yourself unapologetically, Respect yourself unapologetically and the world will fall in love with you, choose you, respect you and open the doors of possibility and opportunity for you.

Love another person but balance that love with your love of yourself. You deserve the best from yourself and you cannot give your best to anyone else until you value yourself.

You are worthy of being loved by yourself. You are worthy of being valued by yourself. You are worthy of saying I have value and I choose to value myself.

I have loved others and given them my heart and my soul in a way that put those people on a pedestal and put myself in a place where I could be stepped on.

I am not doing that now though. I'm not doing that ever again...I know my worth and I choose to let go of the pedestal, the objectification, and also the diminution of all involved.

I love myself and I give myself my heart and soul and hold it in sacred keeping for the person or people who honor my heart and soul and recognize the precious gift I give of presence and passion, love and desire, devotion and honor.

They may share in the warmth of my heart and the light of my soul, the creative depth of my intelligence, the spiritual energy of my magic and the fierce life force of my body...and know what a gift it is to be in presence and power with me.

Even as I know in turn, they are also giving me the gift of presence with their heart, soul, intelligence, spiritual force and life fire.

Self love is the magic that continually transforms my life and the way I show up boldly and bravely for myself, my purpose, my missions, my passion and for the depth I bring to the world around me.

Love yourself my brothers and the world will open its heart to you and reveal its mysteries and secrets.

How to inspire confidence in yourself

One of the challenges many men face is a lack of confidence and self-esteem. We end up looking for it in all the wrong places, hoping that if we please other people enough, if we make them more important than anything else we’ll get liked, but this has the opposite effect. We lose the respect of other people when we become people pleasers and in the process we lose respect for ourselves. In this video I share how to inspire confidence in yourself and stop relying on other people so much.

What does it mean to love yourself?

If we want to be loved, we must learn how to love ourselves. One of the challenges many men face is that they look for love and validation from other people, but there will never be enough love and validation from someone else, if we don’t make the choice to love and validate ourselves. I get real and share some of my own journey around this work.

What does it mean to be responsible for yourself?

If we want to be safe we have to take responsibility for ourselves. I discuss what it means to take responsibility for yourself and share some ideas of what responsibility can look like both with yourself and in relationship to other people.

What is your Definition of Success?

Men are raised to be competitive and to strive for success, but what is success and what does it mean to be successful? Many of us live in a rat race world, always trying to get ahead, but can there be more to life that that? I bust open the myth of success and share why living a meaningful life isn’t about how much money you make or how hard you work. I also discuss what real success can look like.

How to become detached from rejection

Everyday you face rejection. Whether you're asking someone out on a date, getting an idea rejected, or dealing with criticism at home or work, you are getting rejected. If you can learn how not to take rejection personally, you can discover how to persevere and get what you really want from life and from the relationships you are in, and develop self love and acceptance in the process.

Why Men must learn how to choose themselves

Photo by Mental Health America (MHA): https://www.pexels.com/photo/smiling-man-looking-at-himself-in-a-mirror-5543538/

One of the practices that I learned last year was a practice of self-love that I began to apply to myself because I recognized how much I didn’t love myself. What I didn’t realize at the time, but have since come to recognize is how this lack of self-love is ingrained in us by a belief that we have to find love somewhere else and that the love we find will somehow redeem us for being who and what we are.

The myth that love is redemptive is a dangerous myth because it causes us to look for a mythical other in the belief that this mythical other will somehow save us from ourselves. But there is nothing to be saved or redeemed. We are whole as we are and if we can embrace that truth it can allow us to learn how to choose ourselves instead of positioning ourselves to choose someone else, and in the process losing our self respect and identity because we orient toward people pleasing that other person, who also loses respect for us because of the people pleasing.

The truth is that no person wants to be put on a pedestal or made the center of someone else’s universe. When we make the fatal mistake of doing so, we lose something significant in the process, the sense of identity that is essential to living a good life. And perhaps someone who puts someone else on a pedestal never really had that identity. We aren’t taught to value ourselves and when you aren’t taught to value yourself it is very easy to ascribe any sense of value toward someone else.

So how do you learn to value yourself?

First and foremost recognize that your partner cannot fill in the gap of emptiness in your life. If you put that pressure on them it creates a tension that hurts your relationship and causes them to lose respect as they recognize that you don’t have the capacity to take care of yourself.

The person who fills the gap of emptiness in your life is yourself. This starts with learning to love and like yourself. One practice I do is say I love myself out loud. Another practice I do is to say aloud a vow I’ve made to myself, and in the process remind myself what is really important in my life.

Another way you learn to value yourself is through the associations you make with other people in your life. Instead of just focusing on the primary relationship of your life, it’s good to branch out and connect with other friends. I go to a Kung Fu studio three days a week and connect with friends there. I go for hikes with friends and spend time with other men, in particular because it creates a a system of support that enables me to flourish and reinforces the self love I feel for myself…and also allows me to love other people in a way that doesn’t put them on a pedestal but instead celebrates the relationship as a reciprocal one where value is shared in the activities we do and the ways we support each other.

Choosing yourself also means choosing to pursue the life you want to live. So often we will sacrifice our deepest desires and wants on the altar of relationship or family, but that sacrifice is not worth the ensuing misery that occurs when you are trying to please someone else in the hopes of getting something they can’t or won’t provide you.

When you choose to live your life unapologetically, you are choosing yourself. When you choose to pursue what brings you to life, what excites and inspires you, you are choosing yourself. We have to learn how to choose ourselves and then continually choose ourselves and what brings us purpose and meaning. When we do that, we give ourselves the love and respect that provides a healthy foundation for any other relationship we may choose to have, because we will always remember that any other relationship must come secondary to the relationship we have with ourselves.

3 best practices for handling moments of weakness

I’ve never handled moments of weakness well, yet I’ve had many such moments in my life. Early on in life I was taught that I wasn’t supposed to show emotions and so I learned to bottle them up. This didn’t work very well…in my early 20’s my emotions came pouring out, demanding to be felt and experienced. It was and still is an overwhelming experience. The feeling of emotion isn’t a weakness but I was taught that it was…until I learned it wasn’t.

Shame is easily the hardest emotion I struggle with. I’ve gotten the practice of beating myself up down to a fine science and its only been recently that I’ve finally begun to learn a different approach that is allowing me to heal my shame and even so I still struggle. Tonight I’m writing this article because I am feeling shame around a few matters in my life, and I am reminding myself in the writing of it what my own best practices are but I am also sharing them with you because I hope they help you, in a perceived moment of weakness to help you reorient yourself and get some healthy perspective.

So what are the best practices that I use when I am feeling moments of weakness that crystallize into shame?

1. Journal early and often. Keeping a journal on hand, whether a pen and paper or electronic journal can help you express what your feeling and work out what’s going on in your head and heart. I recommend keeping the journal private because its a place where you can be completely unfiltered but also express whatever is going on in a way that lets you make sense of it and put it into context. I find that when I externalize my thoughts and emotions it helps me make sense of them. What I write isn’t necessarily the conclusion I come to, but it is a way for me get a lot out of my head and heart and put into a place where have an objective record to look at. When I can see an objective record, it helps me recognize that whatever I’m expressing isn’t larger than life.

2. Practice self love each day. When I started learning how to love myself I discovered that it helped me counteract the moments of weakness I was feeling, because it allowed me to realize I was lovable no matter what the experience was. For a long time whenever I’d feel weak or ashamed or something else, I would also feel I wasn’t worthy of love. When I started my self love practice and applied it to those moments of weakness and shame it helped me start changing the underlying narrative around moments of weakness and shame. I became compassionate and forgiving toward myself and this also extended over to other people. You can do this as well.

One practice I do involves saying “I love myself” to myself in the mirror until I believe it. I will look into my eyes and state this phrase as many time as it takes until I genuinely feel love toward myself. Try it. Go to your bathroom and close the door. Look in the mirror and say, “I love myself.” You may feel awkward or weird initially, but saying it again and again will help you normalize this experience and make it easier for you to start believing yourself.

Another practice I recommend is making a vow to yourself about the life you want to live. Say this vow aloud to yourself in the morning when you wake up and at night when you go to bed. By saying this vow you are reminding yourself of what a life of self-love looks like and you are directing your focus and effort toward manifesting it. And it works. I created a vow and stated it each day and my life has changed significantly by continuously making the effort to state what my life of self love looks like.

Finally, I recommend asking yourself the question, “If I truly love myself, would I allow myself to have this experience?” This question can help you check in with yourself about experiences you are having and help you make conscious choices around whether or not you want to continue having these experiences. It has helped me get clear on who I want to spend my time with and the activities I want to do and it motivates me to continue to change my life.

3. Normalize the simple fact that we all have moments of weakness. We all have moments where we feel shame or weakness. What helps me know this is attending men’s groups where I can share my struggles and hear the struggles of other men. While what we share may not be exactly the same, oftentimes the emotions and challenges we deal with are similar. It helps me realize I’m not alone and helps me accept that the moments of weakness are normal…I don’t have to always be a strong man. I do want to be an honest man, and normalizing the hard moments of life makes it easier to be honest and also opens the door to genuine change.

Find a man you can trust and start sharing your experiences. If you don’t have someone like that in your life, I encourage you to connect with me. I coach men on these very issues and I am more than happy to be an accountability partner and coach that helps you take the next step on your own journey to sacred and powerful masculinity.