On one of our weekly calls my mentor Nathan Charles suggested we collaborate on something. Immediately I jumped at the possibility, and I mentioned to him that I had been planning, for at least the past year, to create a program to help men successfully navigate being MEN.
Why?
Well, for one thing, men kept ASKING me to do it. Both customers and personal friends.
And the other reason is because it was such an important journey in my own life, that, until I got it figured out, kept me playing small in my own life. Learning to come into alignment with my authentic manhood was the most important thing I ever did for my own happiness, satisfaction, and success in… everything.
Nathan practically exploded with positivity when I suggested this, and we set to work to create a program that would short-cut, for as many men as possible, what we took so many years, individually on our own journeys, to figure out.
In preparation for creating this program, Nathan wrote this important piece on the self-growth process, and how, no matter how good you get, there’s always a next level.
This shit is hard. The price in my own life was high, but I’d pay it again a thousand times without blinking.
Nathan Charles: “Growth Orientation”
One of the greatest pleasures in life is to help and witness men at the moment when they grow into being better men, better humans, and having a better life. Literally I live for those moments, to see a man grow right before my eyes.
Quick aside—remember, register today for HOW TO MAN to get much deeper in this training, and make your own powerful transformation.
The paradox of growth is that it’s messy, it feels uncomfortable, and we don’t feel like we look very good when we are doing it — but from the outside, if you know what to look for, it’s the most beautiful thing there is.
If you are watching a butterfly emerge from the cocoon after liquefying its former identity as a caterpillar, you feel awe and wonder. If you are the caterpillar losing everything, you might feel fear and confusion.
Which is what I want to talk to you about, and Alex and I have been talking about for years: what is a “growth orientation”, why is it important, what does it feel like, and what does it get you?
I’m going to share my own personal process, as it’s happening right now, to illustrate what it feels like. In order to grow, we must “lose face”.
What is a “growth orientation”? It’s the realization that everyone grows and changes, including me, and including you, and knowing how to participate in that growth.
The biggest aha! that separates the “fixed-identity” people from the “growth-identity” people is the humbling recognition of the inescapable fact that you, right now, are in a phase or stage of growth, and that there are stages previous to you that you have outgrown, and stages after you that you have not yet achieved.
Here’s the benefits, and they are huge:
1. You stop wasting your time and energy defending your current identity;
2. You accelerate and actually seek out what will have you grow;
3. Your current problems become the challenges of your phase of growth. You transcend and outgrow them;
4. You gain compassion for those behind you in your growth process, and you want to help them;
5. You gan respect for those who are ahead of you in your growth process, and you want to learn from them;
5. You realize that in any moment, you can leap ahead or fall behind in your expression of growth and humanity, and so you have a great deal of humor with yourself and others.
6. If you spend a little time growing and learning, pretty soon you are superior to those around you, and you become an asshole! Funny, but true, any man who has done anything to better himself has to go through this. Repeatedly.
Recently, just last year, I was in one of those phases where I was feeling pretty good about myself, got life dialed in, recently re-married to an incredibly beautiful, hot, devoted woman, great friends, etc.
Then it all fell apart — not on the outside, but on the inside. Here’s what I’m going through:
I do regular meditation and journaling, and late last year, that practice helped me notice that I have this habit, inside, of making my feelings wrong.
As in, I just noticed that I do that: I’ll have a feeling, say attraction to a woman not my wife, or irritation with someone, or an urge to procrastinate, something like that, and immediately I will try to distance myself from the feeling, shame myself about the feeling, avoid the feeling, do something to solve or make the feeling go away.
Anything but actually just honestly admit the feeling, feel it, and let it pass when it passes. Anything but that.
Noticing this, I decided to not avoid my feelings any more! In fact, over New Years Eve, with friends, I made a resolution to “not make my feelings wrong anymore”.
Let me hit pause there.
I’ve been doing personal development and spiritual work for decades. I’ve got an identity built up that I’m a bad-ass practitioner, I’ve got a lot of stuff figured out, and I have a lot to offer.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a bad-ass and having a lot to offer. But, having an identity about that, having to defend that identity, will tend to make me defend myself and try to prove I’m a badass, rather than just being one.
See the difference? A man identified with being a badass will TRY to be a badass, when actually, he’s not. And that makes him an asshole, a pretender, a showoff, etc.
So, I have to give up my identity of being evolved, of having my emotions handled, and so on.
That’s a growth orientation. Losing face. I’m telling you right now, with all the great stuff I’ve done, I discovered that I was totally out of touch with my emotions.
I did NOT want to discover this. Who wants to go back to square one? But truth and self-honesty are values I am more committed to than I am committed to pretending to be a badass when I’m not.
I’m not committed to NOT being a badass either — that’s just as much bullshit. It’s that I’m ignoring my identity altogether in favor of observation and truth.
I did some research about “making emotions wrong”. I came across a random internet article in which some Ph.D. therapist wrote, “this pattern is common among adult men who have been neglected as teenagers.” Holy s***! A big bell rang: I always knew my teenage years were difficult, but I had NEVER made the connection that what I had experienced could be called “neglect”.
I was flabbergasted.
When I was 15, my parents got divorced, my dad moved a thousand miles away, my two older brothers left the house, one for college and one for his girlfriend’s house. My life was really weird: I suddenly had no adult supervision (my mom was going through a really tough time). Now, much later in life, I discover that this is called “neglect”, and it has consequences.
I found a self-help book, Running On Empty: Childhood Emotional Neglect, by Jonice Webb. Do you know how annoying it is to be described to a “T” by a random therapist? Everything she wrote in there described me. Feelings of emptiness, not valuing emotions, difficulty in finding a career path, and a lot more.
A lot of what she described I had already dealt with in my work to grow as a man. But not all of it. It was very humbling.
Pause number two: if you find a book, an idea, a teacher that is very attractive to you, seems very exciting and real, then you should follow that attraction to grow. Your friends and family might not share your enthusiasm, but as long as you are growing and not getting stuck in a cult, then focus on what grows you the most.
I do not want to be described by this book. I’d rather be a badass than clinical vignette! But I have to be honest…
It gets worse. Dr. Webb suggests a series of exercises for people like me to get in touch with our emotions. So I started doing the exercises, and wow! I started getting in touch with my feelings like never before! I no longer feel empty, I no longer feel vague and disconnected…
So far, so good, so exciting… Except…
There’s no other word for it: Sh**storm.
I’m in the middle of this right now:
Getting in touch with my feelings has put me directly in touch with how I have undervalued my emotions for my entire life. And the main feelings I get to feel right now?
Anger. Rage. Indignation. Betrayal. Regret.
Why? Because to make my decisions in life, to show up for real, for who I really am, requires my real, true, un-faked, no-bullshit emotions. And I have discovered that for my entire life, I have made decisions which do not include me! Which do not include my real feelings (remember I was out of touch with them, numb, avoiding them, couldn’t get clarity on them).
So now I can’t help but re-map my life in terms of the decisions I would have made, and I’m feeling the emotions from those moments, the boundaries that were violated because of my own ignorance of my emotions.
There’s not even anything special about this. It’s just par for the course for emotionally neglected children (love you mom and dad, you were doing your best).
I got a therapist to help me sort through my feelings, understand my life, stay in touch with my feelings. One of the worst parts about this: I’m angry at my wife! Really angry. She doesn’t deserve my anger, it’s all just old crap from my past. I’m angry at myself too.
Men, this is what growth looks like.
Because I have a lifelong growth orientation, I know that this emotional storm is going to pass. I know that I want to feel my feelings. I know this is making me a better man. And I’m dealing with all of these feelings, the confusion, the rage, the betrayal, in a straightforward and manly way. I’m as clear as I can be with my wife, letting her know my feelings, my process, not dumping on her, getting a therapist. She is awesome through this, although it is hard on her.
It hurts. It sucks. And, at the same time, I’m not just a caterpillar. I have perspective. I can see that what I am going through is beautiful, too.
And, men, that’s what I want for you.
On the other side of my messy, face-losing process is freedom, integrity, love, connection, truth, beauty, and goodness. Even now, there is nothing wrong with my process. There is nothing wrong with realizing, now, that I have lived a shadow life of emotion, and moving to correct that.
We can only correct what we clearly see to correct.
I am not a victim of anything, and neither are you. But what I can choose, and so can you, is to grow, and to deal with what you can see, what you do know, and take action in your life to love and live and express yourself as fully and honestly as you can.
That’s a growth orientation.
Love you men,
Nathan
I hope you’ll join us for the full program and our private online group:
>> Register Here For HOW TO MAN at a 75% discount ONLY until Midnight On Sunday
Is this for single women too?
Mary Beth, our focus is on men, and men will get the most leverage from these ideas, but without a doubt, women will find value in these teachings as well.
WOW – I can relate with much of what you say here and look forward to the webinar tonight.
Wonderful!
I have also been focusing on personal growth for the past year. Just the process aline shows results. I am twice the man I was a year ago, and the best part is I can and will continue to grow. It seems a lot of people don’t occupy the same thoughts out of fear of what they may find. Faults In themselves that they’ve pushed away. But I’ve realized that faults are in all of us and to embrace the faults help to not only try to overcome them, but also makes us more aware if our strengths. The ones we can always built upon.
The timing of this information is what I would say at the very least, fortunate. My wife of 28 years just informed me last night that she is unable to reciprocate my desire for an authentic romantic and passionate relationship…the classic I love you and care about you but I’m no longer “in love” with you. This of course means a complete and total rewrite of what I pictured as my future. I desire truth, love and authenticity in my life more than anything else. I am really looking forward to hearing all that you have to share on this subject. However, due to a previous engagement, I will miss the first half hour or so. Is there any way to hear the message in its entirety after the live seminar? Thanks,
Keith
Hey Keith, first and foremost, I know your heart must be aching right now, but your future just became an open invitation to adventure, and there will be a time, perhaps a few years from now, where you will look back and realize that this was the best thing that could have happened in your life.
And, yes, the webinar is going to be recorded for replay. I hope you make it live for part of it so that we can talk.
I suspect that this exchange had the same effect on many others who read it as it just did on me: I didn’t cry, but I did get the burning eyes and cardboard-in-the-back-of-the-throat feeling thats the familiar cue to switch into ‘man-mode’, and choke it off.
The transparency of Keith’s agony, and the transparency of Alex’s compassion, is the suspension of brawn and brain that leaves in its wake, How to Man.
Gentlemen, I wish you well.
Lee
1) You are not limited to your perceived identity. It’s just a role in the world, a character in a perceived script. Try replacing “me” or “I” in your sentences and use your chosen name instead…i.e: talk about yourself in the third-person perspective as if you are someone else merely OBSERVING the person with your name. (Some types of meditation, as well as Ken Wilber’s Integral work do exactly this.) Suddenly, the real unnamed, cosmic, higher-dimensional you is free of the cognitive constraint of the comparatively smaller identity, as well as limiting expectations required of that person with the (your) name. Freedom of constraints then allows for open expression of your truer larger self.
2) you said: “On the other side of my messy, face-losing process is freedom, integrity, love, connection, truth, beauty, and goodness.” Says who? That is an assumption that may not be true. For all you know, this “life” you are currently living may be designed to be actually all pain and suffering, in order to teach you certain lessons, and/or foster specific growth otherwise unattainable with a life of “good” stuff or “success.” Might be ALL shit this time. And hopefully that reincarnation stuff is true in some way so that there are good times yet in store, just in a completely different life, or even plan(s) of existence. Analogy: Just because you completely strike-out at one baseball at-bat, doesn’t mean that there won’t be other at-bats.
Just concepts. Who knows if they are true, or if I…Correction: or if “Perry” (speaking of this guy here in third-person)…is full of shit.
Just one word “AUTHENTIC”
Alex and Nathan you guys are awesome. A shining light – a ray of hope.
Cheers to you.
My “big plan” is that in the very near future other men will say that about you, my friend.
Wow. Literally, wow. Such a short blog to have set off such an epiphany. Shit – I’m at work right now and I’m fearful of losing my shit right here in front of god and everybody. If anyone ever needed to read this, that someone is me. Don’t know the price tag on this thing yet but I really don’t care – the eventual payoff is going to make whatever it costs seem small.
Amen Chris, and I’ll be sending this comment immediately to Nathan. There is nothing better than the energy of a man on fire!
I only wish that you had seen this post BEFORE the sale price (since you don’t care about the price, lol!). Looking forward to meeting you inside of the private brotherhood on FB!
Chris, Nathan Charles here, really appreciate your comment. I’m a few years down the road from when I wrote that blog, and re-reading made me appreciate the growth orientation even more. I could write the “same” blog with different aspects of staying with truth and not identity (I don’t disrespect identity, I think it’s important). Stay true to your real desires.