033 - A Look at Masculinity Beyond Shame
What would it mean for you to be without shame? As human beings, as part of nature, we’re naturally drawn to wanting to restore balance and peace within our lives, and there are two ways in which we can do it – the healthy way, or the unhealthy way. In today’s episode, we dig deep into how we can allow ourselves to feel the things we do not want to feel: shame, anger, grief, and so on, and learn to find the deeper message underneath it.
Accompanying me on today’s walk are William Walker and David Bryan, and together we discuss shame from multiple angles and views ranging from shame being a protective shield to shame redefining our masculinity.
In This Episode
(05:54) – Describing the different types of shame.
(08:53) – On being riddled and crippled by shame.
(17:31) – Disempowering patterns, beliefs, and behaviors.
(22:13) – Giving voice to all parts of you, shameful and proud.
(32:36) – Beautifully redefining manhood.
(35:32) – Shame is your protector.
(51:08) – Identifying the definitions of masculinity within you.
(51:33) – David recalls a moment of self-accountability and self-acceptance.
(1:03:00) – William on how men are terrified of knowing who they are.
(1:03:26) – On being accountable to align your souls.
(1:11:18) – Creating a compelling vision to justify the pain of change.
Notable Quotes
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“My father stood in front of them, and he said these words. Every one of you on this committee I've gotten to know personally and each of you has shared intimate details about things that you would not want to be mentioned in this room. So, if you're judging me today and you want to excommunicate me, pull the trigger. I've never been more proud of my father than in that moment because he knew his humanity. He knew who he was. He knew he had failed.”
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“My experience working with a lot of men and also myself is that sometimes men are terrified to know who they are. They're terrified because they built a life in an image around being a certain kind of man, and they're being loved for being a certain kind of man. What if they change what people still love them? Will they still have the status they have? Will their wife still love them? Will their kids still love them? Men are terrified about that because they want to be responsible for their environments and they should be. But there is a part of this I think every man has to face, which is you have to be responsible, but you also have to be true to yourself. If you're not true to yourself, you're going to be miserable. You're going to make people suffer anyway. So you have to do both.”
Our Guests
William Walker coaches men and leaders on their personal and leadership development. Over the past 20 years he has worked with diverse adult and youth populations including men, executives, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, community leaders, inmates, adolescent boys, at-risk teenagers, and university students. He is the author of Walk of Honor and Stories of Sovereign Man and has written several articles on men’s health, organizational learning and leadership, personal mastery, and masculinity.
David Bryan became a father at 21. Throughout much of his life in both white-collar and blue-collar jobs, he struggled to provide financially, wrestled with a victim mindset, and lived paycheck to paycheck. In 2013, David committed to changing his life and was immersed in the teachings of Tony Robbins, and Eric Thomas, among others. Over the next decade, David went from being homeless to building a multi-million-dollar construction management firm, in the halls of Harvard Business School.
Resources & Links
On This Walk
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[00:00:00] William: And so it's good to question what am I protecting and why do I need to be protecting this? Is that helping me? Is it helping others? Is it helping the situation?
[00:00:10] Luke: Welcome to On This Walk, a show about the winding journey of life in all its realness. I'm Luke Iorio. Please join me in my brilliant heart-centered guests each week as we look to navigate this journey more consciously and authentically uncovering how to tap back into that sense of connection with self, with soul, and with something bigger than ourselves.
[00:00:31] Now, let's go on this walk. Hello there. Once again, welcome to On This Walk and let us begin with a question today. What would it mean for you to be without shame? I recently connected with men's coach and author William Walker through a mutual friend. He wasn't meant to lead to a podcast, but as we got into things, this topic turned to the presence of shame within the masculine within men, and that led to this conversation and episode.
[00:01:00] And since recording this, and I've been working with an intimate, private circling program that I've been running recently, and a very relevant, timely conversation came up into relation to this. And so I had been speaking with this circling program about how we are naturally drawn to wanting to restore peace and balance within our lives, within ourselves, our emotions, our minds, our bodies, our relationships, and so on.
[00:01:23] However, we can do this in ways that are healthy, and we can also do this in ways that are unhealthy. The healthy ways tend to be more conscious chosen, intentional because we know that they serve us, but those aren't the patterns we're worried about. It's the patterns that restore a perceived peace or balance through avoidance, through distraction, disconnection, through turning away from what brought up the feelings of discomfort within us.
[00:01:50] We tend to fire up all sorts of patterns when there is something we do not want to feel, something we do not want to face. Enter shame. Anger, grief, inadequacy, vulnerability, and so on. If we can find a way instead to turn towards that which we don't wanna feel, allow ourselves to feel and be with it, to not react from that place nor to avoid it and allow it to be seen and acknowledged, to find that deeper message underneath it, or to hear its plea for what it's asking us to transform.
[00:02:23] That's how we truly transforms these difficult energies and emotions. And so this is one such conversation as we are going to turn towards shame to face it, to talk about it, to be with it. And to see what it can hold for us if we do. Joining me is William Walker, as well as our mutual friend, David Bryan.
[00:02:44] William coaches men and leaders on their personal and leadership development. Over the past 20 years, he has worked with a diverse population of adult and youth, including men, executives, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, community leaders, inmates, adolescents at risk, teenagers, as well as university students.
[00:03:00] He has coached and facilitated leadership trainings and workshops with hundreds of executive leadership teams, organizations, including Standard Chartered First Bank, the Royal Bank of Canada, Abbott Labs, GC Biotherapeutics, and Emergent Bio Solutions. Wilm has also written two books on spirituality and masculinity, walk of Honor and stories of Sovereign Man.
[00:03:21] He's written several articles on men's health, organizational learning and leadership, and has presented inspiring talks on podcasts as well as international conferences and community events on topics such as leadership, personal mastery, and masculinity. Now let me introduce you to David Bryan. David became a father at 21.
[00:03:39] He now has three kids, ages 22, 21, and 11. Throughout much of his life, both white collar and blue collar jobs, he struggled to provide financially wrestling with a victim mindset, living paycheck to paycheck. In 2013, David committed to changing his life. He immersed himself in the teachings of Tony Robbins, Eric Thomas, and so many others.
[00:03:59] Over the next decade, David went from homeless at a repossessed car to building a multimillion dollar construction management firm to the whole host of the Harvard Business School with his co-founder, who was a student there. David later co-founded several companies designing to democratize access to personal growth resources and financial opportunities for all.
[00:04:18] In 2019, David was burnt out from trying to please others and was forced to face the trauma, shame, and grief that his poor choices in previous years had created. Through the support of coaches, healers, and friends, David began to forgive and learn to love himself. David continues this healing journey with his greatest purpose being a father to his kids, while hoping to inspire others to do the same.
[00:04:39] Now, you guys all know the deal. Do me a favor, please hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. Drop us a rating and review as well. And if something in this episode truly hits home for you, please share out your thoughts with the hashtag on this walk. Now let's drop in with William and David and let's go on this walk to finding a place that is without shame within.
[00:05:00] Hello there, gentlemen. I am so glad that we get to go on this walk together today. I've been looking forward to sharing this space with both of you fine gentlemen, as we've all kind of gotten to know each other , over a kind of a brief period of time, but a deep period of time, I would say. And, this actually, this came this conversation we're gonna, we're gonna get into, William came from the time that you and I spent together and you had raised this topic, this conversation that's been kinda in your heart, I guess you could say, of what would it be like to be men without shame?
[00:05:30] How is it that we can become men without shame? What does that journey look like? What does that possibility hold? What would change for us if that in fact happened? Maybe if I do begin this conversation with you, let's first clarify, what do we mean by shame? Before we're without it, we've gotta acknowledge actually, what is it?
[00:05:50] And so if you could begin there.
[00:05:52] William: Well, I would distinguish between unhealthy, unnecessary shame and perhaps inevitable or healthy shame that we all experience as humans. So for me, healthy shame in its purest form is, the self-conscious recognition of our own wrongdoing, which can lead to humility, forgiveness in ourselves, and accountability.
[00:06:15] Maybe we did something wrong, we know it was wrong, we recognize it, it leads to healthy corrective action. Perhaps that to me, is healthy shame, often connected to, our own sense of morality. Unhealthy. Shame to me is an attack on ourselves. It doesn't lead to any genuine humility, forgiveness, or accountability.
[00:06:36] It can be crushing, it can be debilitating and even paralyzing. And it's ultimately a kind of aggression towards ourselves. We are wrong on a human level. We are wrong. It's as though, yeah, we attack our own, being our own self and wrong ourselves for being ourselves versus identifying perhaps a behavior or something we did and holding ourselves accountable to that, which I think is healthy.
[00:07:02] We become, more we become destructive to ourselves in that unhealthy shame.
[00:07:08] Luke: Yeah. I think that's probably the clearest distinctions that I've heard that have helped me in the past is to be able to separate this unhealthy shame as a recognition of that's when we feel like we have done wrong, that we ourselves are wrong.
[00:07:22] Whereas, and again, this might just be some semantics, but I see what you described as a healthier form of shame as what I would say is guilt. Meaning that the guilt side of it is we assign, okay, that behavior was wrong, that action may have been wrong, it got crosswise with what I intended, but you're not making yourself wrong in the process.
[00:07:39] Meaning me as a person, as a soul is wrong. And yes, I know that, right? And when I've gotten stuck in those times, I know what starts to surface is that we have this feeling of. Being unlovable or unworthy or that we're not good enough. That's how we start making ourselves wrong, as if we're broken in some way.
[00:08:01] And the more that we get trapped inside of that space, the more that we begin to constrict, we begin to constrain ourselves, hold back from the ways in which maybe we would lean in and be more vulnerable, or take more risk, or put ourselves out there more. And of course, the more that we do that, the more that we hold back, the more that we kind of hide those parts of ourselves, the greater separation we're creating between who we feel we know ourselves to be inside versus how we're presenting ourselves to the world.
[00:08:27] And of course, the greater separation, the greater division that we create there creates this barrier, this wall that traps the shame in. And then we hold and we sit in that and it becomes this very vicious cycle that perpetuates itself. David, I wanted to bring you into the conversation and see what's already beginning to surface for you as you think about this topic.
[00:08:48] David: First of all, I'm just grateful to be here with both of you. It brings me a lot of joy, the getting to know you. The last couple months, Luke has been a true joy and a true gift that I'm excited about the where this all will lead and we have a lot of excitement, around things we're working on, and with William, he's been my brother, he's been my men's coach, he's been my business coach.
[00:09:18] He has walked through some very dark times with me and that I will never be able to thank him fully for walking through that with me in the way that he did. He's like a tree. He's kind of like this anchored like tree that is just earth, right? And he has the ability, To sit with a man in his shame with deep presence and love and acceptance while also mirroring back.
[00:09:58] Is this who you want to be? Is this how you want to live? And that takes someone that has been, as you say, on their own, on their walk. He's been on his walk from the story. We'll have to have him tell some stories about a bear licking his face on the Appalachian Trail . And his take is walking the entire Appalachian trail and writing book about it and all that.
[00:10:26] But, I look, I think about times where in my own life and many of these stories, William of. Shame what shame has looked like in me. And shame has riddled me. It has crippled me. It has brought me beyond to my knees, to points where I've nearly taken my life before. The actions, my behaviors, the things that I've done in my life.
[00:11:06] I would not want people to see the intimacy of that. And I hope that resonates with people that are hearing this and to just sit with that because I believe that is what so many men and women feel. That why? Like I could never let anyone see all of me. No way could I let anyone see all of me. I think the first time I really started looking at shame was with my therapist in college.
[00:11:43] It surfaced of an attempted sexual abuse by a baseball coach when I was in middle school, and immense bullying in middle school. That happened for over a year and a half, and though I did nothing wrong and I gratefully in that moment was able to run away and get out of the situation. And the man who now is in prison for 19 counts of child abuse, it happened.
[00:12:23] He went to prison about, I think it was about five years ago. I think about my shame. And I wonder what he feels like. I wonder what he feels like sitting behind bars in jail. Does he feel shame or does he not feel shame? Is he so desensitized to the shame that he doesn't feel it? And to me, for anyone that is listening, if you still feel the shame, you still got a chance.
[00:13:02] It's when you get desensitized to the healthy shame that I think you're talking about William and Luke, that's when we need to be. because healthy shame has helped me break away from unhealthy patterns and unhealthy behaviors and get out of situations that would've led me in a completely different direction.
[00:13:27] Yeah. In my life, had I not had that healthy shame. And yet when I take that and I internalize it, and then I say, this is who I am. I am unlovable. I am unworthy. Even to the point of when I struggled with sex addiction in my twenties and it's always been there. I love the movie, the Beautiful Mind at the end when they're having the pen ceremony.
[00:13:59] And he asks him, it's kind of the Pulitzer Prize, it has kind of a Nobel Prize, has a stigma, he is like, oh, so you want to know if I'm crazy? . He's like, do I still see them? Yeah. I still see them. They still haunt me. I just choose not to acknowledge them anymore.
[00:14:17] Yeah. And that to me is what addictive behaviors is really about, is they're still there. I just am choosing different behaviors and I'm able to step out of the internalization of this is who I am. To say, no, this is not who I am. Yeah. That I am lovable. I am capable of love
[00:14:45] Luke: and what you are, so several things that you're bringing up.
[00:14:48] When we get stuck in that place of shame, where we have now personalized it, to say that this is who I am. I am unlovable. I am unworthy, I am broken, I am not good enough. That's where shame has become linked. To all sorts of, very, very significant societal issues of suicide, violence, dominance, control, oppression, all sorts of things.
[00:15:16] Because now we're trying to either hide it, prove otherwise, or we have now actually, considered or gone to the step of trying to, or actually having taken our lives and because we get so convinced by that shame spiral and that feeling of shame that you described it partly as healthy shame, but I wanna extract something else out of what you brought up, which was when, I think when you were alluding to, if you still feel it, to me, what you were alluding to is empathy, meaning our ability to still feel.
[00:15:51] Deeply and feel for others. If we have a sense of guilt and not a guilt that makes us wrong, but a guilt that we've done something wrong that we would like to make amends for. Yes. It's because we're beginning to see beyond ourselves. Yes. We're beginning to think of what are the ramifications, the implications of this, what's the impact of this?
[00:16:10] And we feel some motivation to write that, to correct that in some way. To make amends, I wish I hadn't done that.
[00:16:19] David: To the moment you can say, I wish I hadn't done that. Right. I wish I hadn't hurt you. Yeah.
[00:16:26] Luke: Yeah. And so there's an acknowledgement that's in there. And then to be able to get to a place of, as you said, acknowledging they're still there, the addictions, the patterns, behaviors, whatever they are, for us to get to a point where we can see they're still there and we choose otherwise.
[00:16:46] And that's really easy to say on this side. And that's part of what I wanna talk about for a moment, because really easy to say that once we have found a place of disempowering those particular patterns and beliefs and behaviors that we've had, it's easier to say, okay, I can see them, but I now have this whole other list, and direction way of being, way of doing that I can rely on and that's what I'm gonna go do.
[00:17:08] But how do we get from one or the other?
[00:17:10] William: I really appreciate what David shared and that to help, visualize more what like unhealthy shame and healthy shame could look like. And one of the reasons I think this is really relevant topic for men is because as men we don't, as David was pointing to, we don't always want people to know how we feel.
[00:17:30] Yep. And we want to hide it to protect our image to, to not be perceived in ways. We think are not masculine or not what we're presenting ourselves to be. And sometimes I think we hide the shame from ourselves too, because shame is very vulnerable and raw and intense. So there's a lot of reasons to avoid feeling it too.
[00:17:52] But as you said, Luke, if we do avoid it, then that can lead to, further problems, more aggression towards ourselves, depression, even extreme forms of aggression towards ourselves and others. So it's not good, but so how do we deal with that? David? I started to talk about this and I think for me, the way I have dealt with shame and the way I deal with shame when I'm working with a client, for example, is to intervene, to explore it, to be curious and critical about it.
[00:18:25] Why am I feeling this way? Where does this come from? What's the origin of this? Am I feeling shame because I think I should be like someone else, or because I think I shouldn't feel what I'm feeling? Or is it because of something that happened to me? There could be many reasons for the shame, but if we don't intervene and challenge that part of us that attacks ourselves, that part of us, that takes us to unhealthy shame, that's what cripples us.
[00:18:52] That's what keeps us stuck and paralyzes us. And at times when I was younger in my life, I didn't have any tools to intervene. And I think some people don't have tools to intervene, or when you get overwhelmed, you lose access to your tools. But one tool or one starting point is to intervene and to get curious, why am I feeling this?
[00:19:09] Where does this come from? Is this legitimate? Is it legitimate for me to feel this way? Versus am I in a really unhealthy self-attack on myself? Am I attacking my own being? Am I attacking my own self? That's not good. I wanna hold myself accountable to an action or perhaps feel something that I did to someone else.
[00:19:33] I don't like how I feel because of something I did to someone. Okay, so what's my next step? Maybe I can accept that I'm flawed and have some remorse and apologize to the person and do something, practical versus attacking myself. So there's different strategies we can then employ once we understand what's going on.
[00:19:55] But often in a shame cycle, people don't understand what's going on. They're just attacking themselves.
[00:20:01] Luke: That's actually what we're. I wanna make mention of this is why, to me, for me and my own journey, but I think this is kind of valid from a, from also my professional experience. It's why I needed to work with professionals and practitioners throughout this process, because when you are stuck inside of that place, everything you just mentioned is completely true and valid.
[00:20:21] I don't know if I could have seen it. I don't know if I could have seen, I'm being aggressive with myself or I am actually now putting myself down and recreating some of the circumstances that maybe had come up that created the shame in the first place for me. And so there's that moment of intervention is critical.
[00:20:39] Critical to intervene that in, intervene with that new narrative, that rebuilds a different inner dialogue for ourselves. But the ability to have some form of a assistance, support in that process. Be it a therapist, a coach, a men's circle, whatever, right? Any number of different ways that we can address this or begin addressing this.
[00:20:57] And I think what it also did, one of those key pieces that somewhere along the line, a teacher coach guide of, of some sort started intervening with me was the recognition that shame or any of the not good enough or anything else that was coming up for me, that was parts of me. Not all of me.
[00:21:19] right? And as soon as I was able to make that distinction of, that's a part of me. And there's also parts of me that love me. There's parts of me that hate me. There are parts of me that feel I'm a really good guy and I do all these great things. There are parts of me that are embarrassed by some of the things that I've done.
[00:21:37] And when I could start to recognize there are so many more parts, I gave voice to the other voices I wasn't hearing,
[00:21:46] David: I'm taken back to and feel the emotion of the moment. It was 14 years ago and I was at an I F S conference, therapists, and. Dick Schwartz, the founder of I F S
[00:22:08] Luke: Internal Family Systems,
[00:22:09] David: and Dick said, do I have a volunteer of someone that would like to go through it? And then my friend Bill, like watches me. He's like, raise your hand, . So I'm like, okay. So I raised my hand and I'm in the middle of a room with over a hundred therapists and I'm sitting in the room face-to-face with Dr.
[00:22:26] Richard Schwartz, and he takes me through the process internal, and he knocks fucking feel it like it was just yesterday. He takes me down to my heart and he says, what do you see? And I said, nothing. It's black and you can feel the weight in the room. Just drop, right? Like it was like the energy was just like sucked out of the room or the air was just sucked out of the room.
[00:23:02] And. . And he goes, can you ask, do you know what it looks like? And I was like, kind of, not really. And he said, can you ask it a question? And I said, okay. And he said, what is it trying? Is there anything that it wants you to know? And it's, I said, yes. It said it's not safe to go in there. And again, you hear, people are like, whoa.
[00:23:35] And it's not safe to go in my heart. And I grew up the son of a minister, a Presbyterian minister who was in spoken front of thousands of people on Sunday mornings. And I met Billy Graham when I was a kid, right? Like that's the circles that I grew up around and in that moment, he. Can you now see what it is?
[00:24:03] I said it's the Bible and the therapist just, again, you, and in that moment I heard the scripture in my head of Guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life. And I had internalized cause of being told that your heart, like literally these were the things that I was, whether that was being what was exactly taught to me, but it's what I was hearing.
[00:24:38] Yeah. It's what I was learning at that age, which was, your heart is not a safe place. You have to guard it with scripture, you have to guard it with this. It's not safe to enter your heart. It's not safe to feel to, to love to have ecstasy. It's not safe to do those things. It leads you to destruction and your desires are not what you want.
[00:25:08] And those aren't healthy. The desires aren't healthy. This is what I grew up in. And in that moment he said, do you want to go into your heart? And I said, I'm not ready. And so he said, that's okay. That's okay. And so we rose back up and I remember looking him straight in the eyes with this great, like his love and just was just pouring on me.
[00:25:36] And people put their hands on me and it was just a really powerful moment. I'll never forget yet, the thing that comes up for me, the reason that comes up is because, How do we trust ourselves? How do we begin to trust ourselves that I'm okay when we've done these things or when we've experienced such pain in the world or whatever.
[00:26:01] I mean, I just wanna hold space in this moment right now for, what is it, 20,000 people in Turkey and Syria that are now dead. I mean, it was 2000 that died in the world. A little over 2000 I believe in the World Trade Center and 20,000 human souls are gone and maybe more. And when I look at the world and I see all the beauty and all the amazing, I'm in North Carolina and the mountains around me and nature and beautiful trees and owls across the street playing with each other right now, , there's so much beauty.
[00:26:44] and yet there's so much pain. Yeah. And then I look inside of me and I see that same pain and that same beauty, and I don't know how to make sense of what I think is a contradiction, but perhaps the mystery is in a paradox. It's a paradox of the beautiful interweaving in the dance between the dark and the light and the shadow and the light coming together in this beautiful dance of life.
[00:27:14] And it's all belongs as our friend, ESHA a star, the grief shaman, and healer and wisdom teacher, she talks about it all belongs. And Richard Roar talks about, and I hear that, and I want to just pour love into all the parts of me that still don't believe that it all belongs.
[00:27:37] Luke: Yeah. Again, several things. One to where you were just speaking to is that recognition that there is so much polarity inside of this life, right?
[00:27:48] For there to be light, there is dark, for there to be the things that we deeply enjoy, there are the things that we deeply don't. If there is love, there is grief and there are these polarities that come with just what this existence is, and so we can get trapped in that polarity, meaning we can only get stuck in what feels like these massive swings are only in the places that make us feel unsafe, or we can step back for a moment and accept that this is part of what it means to be in this body.
[00:28:17] It's part of what it means to be in this life is there's going to be polarity, there's going to be these circumstances. You highlighted with your example, with your experience with Dick Schwartz. To have a facilitator, not just facilitator, but to be welcomed and to have somebody hold space for you with presence, love, and acceptance as you named before.
[00:28:37] Is something that is critical because when we feel that presence, love, and acceptance, which is why I also say this is not only with coaches or therapists, this can be done with a properly structured men's circles and things like that too. Is that when you can feel safe to even begin to walk towards any of that darkness within you that you feel is there and express even just a piece of it and feel seen, held, and not judged in that space is so freaking liberating, , that all of a sudden's like, oh, wait a minute, you guys didn't recoil, you didn't just cast me out of here and say, you're a miserable human being.
[00:29:18] Get outta. And I've seen that , I've witnessed this in men's circles, multiple men's retreats, the men's retreat I was just at, where men are bearing things that have been unbearable to them. And other men are leaning in and showing them love and showing them acceptance and saying, it's okay.
[00:29:35] You're okay. It's okay. You did the absolute best that you could based on everything you've been through in your life. All the experiences, the people that hurt you, that you didn't even realize had been hurt themselves, and they took that hurt out on you. You didn't know otherwise, you couldn't have. But now you are choosing to turn towards it.
[00:29:55] And find a way bit by bit of unlocking it. And there's beauty in that process
[00:30:02] William: to keep building on what we've been sharing here. I think your examples, David, are great, for a few reasons for me because for one, there're demonstrations of what Luke said, that there're there's benefit in having support to explore the unknown within us, things we're not familiar with or uncomfortable with.
[00:30:23] And we need support to do that sometimes, whether it's with a therapist or a coach or a men's group. And that's really supportive. And then the other thing I'm taking from what you're sharing, David, is, which I think is also important, is the expansion of our view of ourselves. The broadening of what is my belief about what it is to be a man or to be human?
[00:30:49] How much am I, do I even allow in that definition? Because in my experience, that definition itself is what can produce or liberate us from su produce suffering or liberate us from suffering. So it's healthy too to explore and expand the limits of our own definition of what it is to be a human being or man, especially for those of us that identify strongly with being masculine men.
[00:31:16] Inherent in that is a contradiction that we have to deal with because we're not just masculine. There will be inevitably other feelings we feel. Can we hold that too in our own definition of what it is to be a man? And I think unfortunately, a lot of men struggle cuz their definitions of. Being a man are too small, they're too narrow, and then that narrowness, they suffer and they suffer because they can't exist.
[00:31:44] So if you can't exist in your own definition of what it is to be a human or man, to me, what it speaks to is that your definition is too small. Your self-concept is not mature enough. It's not complex enough because if you can't exist in it, it's not correct.
[00:32:02] David: You're just redefining what manhood is in a beautiful way, William.
[00:32:07] William: Yeah. Well it's something I've really deeply looked at in myself and also with clients. If I'm suffering, if I can't exist, if my human experience and my own direct experience of life doesn't conform to my ideas of what it is to be human or male, my ideas are wrong. Yeah.
[00:32:30] It's just, that's objective truth. If your ideas can't hold your experience and make you a a healthy, functional person, they're not mature enough, and that's why we need to work with coaches, therapists, teachers, to expand our view, to include all of us and still be a man.
[00:32:52] Luke: What I think you're leaning into right now describes a friction.
[00:32:56] That a lot of men are feeling right now, which is that a lot of the things that we are experiencing, and for a lot of men that I speak to, there is a draw towards being more open, being more vulnerable, stepping up, facing these types of things in very different capacities, and then hitting up against this image and definition of what it means to be a man.
[00:33:18] I was just reading one of the articles I read, quoting back to some research quite a while ago that came outta Boston College that talks about the image of it, the norms of being a man emotionally. You're supposed to be in control. You are supposed to prioritize your work. You're supposed to continue to go after status because that's what it means to be the protector and the provider is to grow your status.
[00:33:36] To grow your influence in that regard. And you are supposed to be the defenders to the effect of I will protect to the point of violence. and I will bring that out. I will go there to do this. What's really interesting is I feel that friction that's occurring and I'm curious cause there's one other thing that dropped in for me as you were speaking cuz it was, what I actually wanted to bring up before, and you brought it around already, was that there is one other recognition of shame that we want to include here, which is that shame is also your protector.
[00:34:12] Shame serves as a protector because it feels like this is what is too rough to bear. I can't allow this to be seen. So the wall around the heart, the walls go up, the barrier goes up. But the way that you just described it, William, is that the masculine broken definition is doing nothing more than playing out the shame protector that exists inside of us.
[00:34:35] We're doing nothing more than creating the same barriers, the same level of protection and defending, because we don't want this to be seen. We don't wanna be seen as weak. We don't wanna be seen as vulnerable because that's the image that's gotten rewarded for the last 2000 years. And now it's like, wait a minute, if we can break this wall in us, can we in fact break that definition?
[00:34:55] David: I had a crisis in my business a few years back and I said, are you available this week for a three day immersion? And he goes what? ? I was like, I need you now. He gets on a plane, he flies down to meet with me and the person that I was with, another man. And it was imperative. It was a business situation and.
[00:35:27] William sit. So this is actually, we're actually getting an example of what working with a men's coach or therapist, life coach. Is like with two men being able to handle. So I think here it's actually, this is an example here of what this looks like. And so William sets the container and just walks us through this process very intuitively, very mindfully, intentionally, to get you to slowly begin to unfold and unveil until you get to the root in the core of what's going on.
[00:36:06] And that moment was the turning point in my business relationship with this other man that was very meaningful and critical. And what came out of that? Was this other man, the shell, the strength that I have to always be on. I have to always be present strong in that veil of strength and certainty that we're taught, that we as men have to have.
[00:36:44] William Masterfully was able to just keep reaching. It was like he kept reaching into the, for his heart, but knocking until he said, yes, I'll open this. And he goes a little further. You're knocking and you go a little further. Until in that moment, all the friction that this other man and I were having with each other of two lions going at each other saying, I will not move and you will not either.
[00:37:16] What are we gonna do? And so William had to get us to calm down from fight mode first, I believe, and I'll let William speak to more of like how he actually did this, but I'll tell you from my perspective when I listened, which he got me to do, David, I want you to be quiet right now and I want you to listen to what he is saying and not just hear him, but listen to what he's saying.
[00:37:52] And this man broke down in this pillar of strength that I had always seen is immovable. He was just, I have great love for this man and great gratitude and respect. I love him so much like a brother and. But I saw his pain in that moment and what he was trying to protect and it gave me empathy and compassion in my fight.
[00:38:29] Just it gave away. And how William and I met is through my mentor who passed away five years ago, who was the greatest human I've ever known. And William and I were his closest friends and we miss him all the time. But we connected as a result of his passing. And his name was Tolu Lopez. Eli called him tlu and he would say, David Love is the greatest fight.
[00:39:14] Love is the greatest. That's how you fight. I had love and compassion for not just this man that I was in business with, but my friend, my fellow brother, my fellow man. And when we can begin to see each other that way. Or my sister, right? This is my sister, my fellow sister here. I don't want to hurt her.
[00:39:40] Whether that's my love relationship or a friend or my sister, my mom, whatever that is, or whoever she is or he is. I see you. Can we see each other with that Great compassion and empathy.
[00:39:55] William: Well, thank you for that. It's very, yeah, po very positive, meaningful memory for me working with both of you. And I think for me, and related to this topic, being very curious.
[00:40:10] About who people are as human beings and what's going on in a given situation is really the thing that drives me in a situation like that. So, creating a space to understand and know the human being, not just the business person or the man, but who is it that is struggling and why are they struggling?
[00:40:35] I, want to know, I care. And to see people for the experience they're having versus seeing them as an object or, In a way that I think they should be. So it's a deep curiosity that drives me and I have a desire, honor the dignity of people in given situations. Cause that's important to me too.
[00:40:58] So when it comes to these kinds of challenges within our personal lives or business as a coach, it's about opening up the conversation, opening up the space to talk about what's really going on. Cuz as Luke was saying, we may be stuck in a process around shame because we're protecting ourselves, we're protecting an image of ourselves.
[00:41:19] And I think in the case of working with you and your colleague that's, that was going on, it's often going on in, in different business situations. There's images we feel we need to. Sometimes there might be legitimacy in that, and other times there isn't. And so it's good to question what am I protecting and why do I need to be protecting this?
[00:41:37] Is that helping me? Is it helping others? Is it helping the situation? In the case of a business partnership like you had, it wasn't really necessary there. There was no need to be so protective in such an intimate and close relationship. So that's why I kind of pushed there. But I think it's a good example of even in business, do I feel it's okay for me to be in a certain way?
[00:42:01] Do I feel I can express myself in this way, in business, or do I feel that's wrong or I'll be rejected if I do. So, if I open up this part of me to you or share what's going on with me, will you reject? When you end our relationship, and those are legitimate questions to ask in, in business, but sometimes they're wrong.
[00:42:24] They're assumptions. They're limiting the capacity to build , a partnership or to have people understand us, to collaborate, to deepen trust. And so it's good in those contexts too to question why am I protecting myself with, am I ashamed to show this part of me in this context? And is that reasonable or not?
[00:42:48] That goes back, to being critical, and questioning ourselves and our motives.
[00:42:59] Luke: We jump in here for a moment, and this is the key point to be critical and question our motives. We don't tend to question ourselves in this way. We're already caught up in our story, our narrative. The reasons why we believe we're right are justified in our actions, words, and thoughts. But what is the motive behind those?
[00:43:18] Are those thoughts, perceptions, words, and actions coming from a place of truth? Or are they coming from a place of protection, of defensiveness, of resistance or righteousness? When we don't turn towards the emotion of shame through our own self practices and work, we tend to build up walls and defenses so that the shame cannot be touched by others.
[00:43:38] And if they get close, we will project our hurt onto them through judgment, hurtful words and actions, resistance, separation, and anything else we could do to push them back. Why do we do this? Why do we let certain energy specifically shame, take us into this sort of cycle that more often than not, has the result of pushing away that which we really want?
[00:44:00] Depth of connection, warmth, understanding, partnership. We don't wanna feel alone yet. Shame isolates us. Why would we do this? Shame is an energy that's similar to pain. Pain emerged as a way of alerting us to what may be damaging to us physically so that we could change course shame was meant to prevent us from damaging our social relationships because staying in the tribe literally was life and death.
[00:44:26] As we evolved, it's an energy that was meant to let us know where repair may be needed. However, over time, we internalized in personalized shame, meaning as opposed to ouch, don't touch the hot stove again. We made it mean that we're a terrible person for having touched the hot stove in the first place.
[00:44:43] We made it mean that we're broken in some way, that what we've done or what we've experienced has made us less of a person. We made it relate to our value to our worth. It was never meant to be that. That's why we made this distinction earlier on in this conversation between healthy and unhealthy shame, or as I had framed it, shame and guilt.
[00:45:01] No matter what we experience in this life, the inherent value of who we are cannot be diminished. Shame now. Has become a way of beating ourselves up to try and keep us in check in some way, keeping us retreated, keeping us separate. We even hear how shame is abused in our society, telling people that they should be ashamed or trying to cancel another human being.
[00:45:23] There's a big difference between being accountable and being diminished or canceled or trying to do that to someone else. We release shame by bringing it into the light, the light of awareness, meaning that our shame lives in the shadows. It lives in darkness and secrecy. We first need to bring our own awareness to what we are feeling, to acknowledge the shame that is there.
[00:45:46] We then wanna develop a self-compassion practice, and again, I'll refer you back to the work of Kristen Neff or Brene Brown for this. Then we wanna find a safe place to begin speaking about our experiences with a professional, with a circle, with a close, trusted, or empathetic friend. This is how we begin to heal the shame that's within us.
[00:46:07] To bring it back into the light so it no longer can hold us back or create the stories that keep us isolated and separated from those around us. It's time for us to keep turning towards it. And these are a few of the ways that you can begin to do so. Now let's turn back to our conversation with William and David.
[00:46:35] The way you also describe that though is as we look at expanding our definitions of what it means to be a man and, and where is it that our experiences taught us, it no longer aligns with the image and therefore we need to expand what we view. All too often, if I think of, do I share this, how open am I, et cetera, in, in this relationship, call it professional or otherwise, my mind is trying to present that as if it's an either or.
[00:47:05] It's not true. That's part of the ways that we buy into not just shame, but ways of protecting ourselves is it's gotta be this or it's gotta be that. And if I'm on this side, I'm okay if it's that side, I'm not. And we eliminate the, 10,000 shades of gray that are somewhere in between. And that's what keeps us locked into these definitions as opposed to recognizing the definitions are always going to be evolving.
[00:47:32] They're gonna be changing, they're gonna be shuffling. And so how is it today? I can define this view of myself, of what it means to be a man or a father, or a spouse, or a partner, or what have you. And how can I define it in a way that allows me to keep expanding and growing? And so maybe I'm not going to share the whole story.
[00:47:53] Maybe I'm not gonna tell 'em everything, but maybe today I'm going to, I'm gonna share just a little bit more than I normally do. Maybe I'm gonna talk about the fact that today, you know what? , I am dealing with a little bit of grief in my life. Or today I, yeah, I'm feeling like there is something that's being held back here and just to acknowledge maybe what we're experiencing without needing to give the story right now without having to go there.
[00:48:15] So it's whatever. What are those little ways that we start to crack open this door? And again, I share it back to the example of the men's circle before, but all of a sudden we share something that we've been holding back or hiding or otherwise, and it's met with acceptance. It gives us a little bit of faith, a little bit of trust to say, oh, maybe I could share a little bit more.
[00:48:33] And now all of a sudden we can feel ourselves starting to expand more back into the wholeness, the fullness of who we are. You know, I think it is the, for me, one of the things that I recognized was that, in that role of that definition, I'm curious how your definitions of have changed for yourselves of, of how you see yourselves and how you see yourselves as men.
[00:48:54] Because for me, one of the things I've been exploring, Which was more true for me earlier in life. But I, there are absolutely still strands of this now, was that part of my definition was that I needed to be a pleaser because that was part of the way that I counteracted any of the things that didn't feel comfortable within me.
[00:49:14] Whether it was shame or it was guilt, or it was just a lack of belief or confidence or what have you. And there's all sorts of reasons in history for that. And I wouldn't have said that was in my definition of who it is that I am and how that is, is me as a man. But it absolutely was true.
[00:49:31] And so it's us finding, yes, these are the things that we will define ourselves as a man, as a human, as a whatever, as whatever role, we're assigning to what we're defining at this moment. And what are all the things that I'm not defining? What are all the things that are in my definition, but I don't realize are there?
[00:49:46] And for me, that element of pleasing was there and it manifested in all sorts of different ways. And today's, the way that it manifests is very, very different than the way it used to manifest 10, 20 years ago. But it's still there, but now I'm looking for it. How have you guys seen that definition both expand for yourselves, but also how have you identified elements of you that are in the definition that you weren't fully aware of, that you didn't know to start looking for?
[00:50:14] William: David, thank you for pointing out that our definitions of ourselves as men and humans evolve or can evolve. That in and of itself is powerful to know that I'm an evolving definition based on my experiences. That's so useful cuz if you don't have that, you're already stuck.
[00:50:39] David: I'm thinking back to a moment that happened about two months ago.
[00:50:45] I was sitting in a boardroom with the CEO , and the head and another executive at a yeah. Billion dollar company. Right. And I just can't help but do heart stuff in a business. It's who I am. And I remember looking the c e o in the eye and saying everything you're wanting to do right now of how you're wanting to go connect with your people across the United States and all the, everything you're wanting to do will not happen unless you rise up.
[00:51:31] Unless you step into vulnerability, unless you lean in and show them and you have to be the leader of this or none of it will happen. Yeah. Because all the rest of the individuals on your team are gonna be trying to do it in their own little individual way and they have no guidance in it's chaos.
[00:51:54] And I think about that to how do I feel safe to speak? Where do we as men feel safe to have these conversations? If I'm a husband. Okay. We take a husband that has three kids that are under the age of 10. I have 22, 21, and 11. When your kids are under the age of five, you have no life , right? Until they go to school.
[00:52:27] It is, you go to work, maybe you get to go to the gym, and then you are home in full on daddy duty and your wife is throwing the kids at you as you walk in the door practically and saying, I need a break. Right? And when this becomes the pattern every single day when we're in machine mode from a work standpoint, during the day at work, where do we have the opportunity to even have these conversations?
[00:53:00] Maybe it's at church on Sunday, which is where a lot of men have found quote circles of men's groups or things like that is where they may have been attuned to that, and I'm gonna step out here and say this. yet I've been in men's circles and men's groups and churches. I grew up in them. I never once out of all those men's circles, had a men's circle that I didn't feel shame.
[00:53:37] That I didn't feel like I was trying to be. Coerced into repentance were shamed for my actions. So I was afraid to speak up and not be authentic. And so what did I do? I put the mask on. Yeah. The masculine mask. And I am powerful. I'm strong. And let me coach you and train you when it's like you're sitting here.
[00:54:05] I'm gonna go even further on this. My father was on the discipline community for the Presbyterian church in America. The discipline community, the church discipline community committee. My father had an affair on my mother when I was in my twenties. My father had to sit in the chair, the hot seat in the discipline committee.
[00:54:32] The man who was on the discipline committee, and I'm diving deep into shame right now, but this is, he was sitting there judging others before or being the judge of the committee, and now he was sitting there and it was the proudest moment of my life with my father, with the words that he said. They said to him, unless you repent and you go back to your wife, you will be excommunicated from the church.
[00:55:11] And not only are we gonna excommunicate you, we're gonna write it publicly in a newsletter that goes to every church across the world in the denomination that says you had an affair and you have ex you've been excommunicated. That's taking shame to an entirely different level. And my father stood in front of them and he said these words, every one of you on this committee, I've gotten to know person.
[00:55:44] And each of you have shared intimate details about things that you would not want mentioned in this room. So if you're judging me today and you want to excommunicate me, pull the trigger. I've never been more proud of my father than in that moment because he knew his humanity. He knew who he was. . He knew he had failed.
[00:56:10] They will tell you it was the greatest mistake of his life doing that. Greatest mistake of his life was having an affair. But that man is my hero today. I love him. He lost his career in his fifties. He had a PhD, had to totally reinvent himself in his fifties. But that man. Began the process of healing and began to love himself despite what others said.
[00:56:49] And the hardest shame to me is when others are pointing at you and saying that , you're wrong, you're worthless, you're not worthy, and so forth. That's the hardest to come back from. And I, and my fa I got to see my father model that for me. So my charge to all of us, and pose it back as a question to all of us is how do we begin to create these spaces in business when we don't have the time in our daily lives?
[00:57:25] So we think or we don't prioritize. So I'm asking both of you, how do we as men begin to shift this mindset of this is how I can, I have to be. For my wife and my kids that I have to be strong because all I know is when I show vulnerability, it backfires on me. Maybe that's what they're, what men are experiencing.
[00:57:47] I'm hope that people hear this and maybe it's reaching in deep because I know both of you have deep experience and ideas on how we can begin to shift this.
[00:57:59] William: So I really like your example, David, cuz it's, yeah. Very courageous, real example of self-accountability, self-acceptance and standing in the face of pressure, in the face of social expectations, which is something that every person, every leader in a position of responsibility sometimes has to face.
[00:58:23] What are the standards of my industry profession? What are the laws? What's the history, being taken to the, fire based on those things. And in your example, There's a way that, at least the way I'm interpreting it, your father is, he's including himself in the accountability, which is a very powerful and hard thing to do sometimes, and I think that is an important part of evolving our definitions of masculinity.
[00:58:51] So to go back to your question, Luke, like how do we do that? Or how have we done that? A part of this ha has to do with intimacy with oneself. Deep self-respect for oneself as well as for others in the world. The more, in my experience, we come to know ourselves, we develop genuine empathy for others and the world as well.
[00:59:13] So it's not sometimes it could be perceived as a selfish thing. And even for me, and I think other men might be able to relate to this, sometimes prioritizing ourselves, prioritizing our own evolution, even could be something we shame ourselves for at some point. As if we don't have the right to change.
[00:59:29] We don't have the right to grow, we don't have the right to evolve beyond how others see us or how we've seen ourselves. That can be scary. We might not even wanna allow ourselves to do that. So, for me, it's about continuing to stay in touch with myself. And there was times in my life when I didn't know how to reconcile being sensitive and strong.
[00:59:53] I felt I, I had to do one or the other and I was told I had to do one or the other, and I moved between the two. And over time realized I don't have to do one or the other. I am strong and I'm sensitive, and I know when to embody. Either of those qualities depending on the situation. And so part of this may sound cliche, but I think it's very important or it's being important for me, and it's come, it's in the example with your father, David.
[01:00:22] It's like being true to oneself is very important in continuing to define ourselves As men, we're expand our definitions of ourselves as men. It's also important to have accountability. To have pure accountability, cuz sometimes we can fool ourselves. But there is a level of this that's very personal and very particular to each person.
[01:00:44] And so what I've learned through spending time with all kinds of different men from all kinds of different walks of life, working with teenage boys from all kinds of walks of life, inmates, executives, entrepreneurs, people from all kinds of backgrounds, is that there are many ways to be a man.
[01:01:04] There are many ways to be a man. And the ideas we have, Are not necessarily relevant to us. And that's a big challenge I think, of being a man today. And ev something every man has to navigate is it's okay to conform to traditional norms or virtues of masculinity. Nope, that's great. Especially if it's authentic to you.
[01:01:26] But that process of discovering, if that is even authentic to you, I think is something that's not always easy. We have to grapple with that within ourselves. And it can change over time. It can change based on the commitments we have in our life. It can change based on where we live. It can change based on what our priorities are.
[01:01:45] And so being curious about where you're at as a man is so important. Where am I at now at this point in my life for today? And having people to talk to that are not gonna judge you or try and fix you is important to discover that. Whether it's with coaching or men's groups who are not coming at you with an agenda, they're curious about where are you at, how are you evolving?
[01:02:04] What are your priorities now in your life? What's meaningful to you? And my experience working with a lot of men and also myself, is that sometimes men are terrified to know who they are. They're terrified because they built a life and an image around being a certain kind of man, and they're being loved for being a certain kind of man.
[01:02:22] What if they change? Will people still love them? Will they still have the status they have? Will their wife still love them? Will their kids still love them? Men are terrified about that cuz they wanna be responsible to their environments and they should. But there is a part of this I think every man has to face, which is you have to be responsible, but you also have to be true to yourself.
[01:02:43] If you're not true to yourself, you're gonna be miserable. You're gonna make people suffer anyway, so you have to do both.
[01:02:49] Luke: William, I absolutely love that. I wanna jump off on a, a few things as we kind of bring this around full circle. But the, one of the notions you brought up there is that, how often is it, or what is that struggle for us as men of prioritizing our growth?
[01:03:04] And I wanna put it in the context of, if we frame it, and I see this all the time, and the, all the programs and the, the lotions, the potions, the magic fixes that are out there. , I can get you as man to grow as long as I frame it in terms of performance and getting ahead, getting more money.
[01:03:19] Then I'm allowed to do it because it fits the narrative and now I'm getting ahead cuz I'm providing more, I'm more manly, I it, all the things fit right. But what we're talking about, what you're talking about, and I see this myself walking into that spiritual retreat that is gonna be much more about looking at the truth of who I am.
[01:03:41] Am I even authentic to what I think I'm authentic to right? Is that even my stuff that I believe in and I walk around and I walk into that room and I look around and go, cool, four other guys are here. Out of the 50 people in the room, it's truth of it. The times that I've been less than 10% of men in a room and been in that room is, I can't even count 'em on two hands.
[01:04:03] How often that's happened And it's, I think very much to William what you brought up is that if we start questioning, do we really believe these things? , is this really us? We start chipping away at that armor that we have built up, and then it's if that starts crumbling, where does this end? Do I at some point, do I end up in pieces?
[01:04:27] Because that it feels like it's starting to fall away. Now, the flip side of that is that we do actually feel that friction where we do want to be our true self. How many people, everybody listening has heard me quote repeatedly from Bronny Ware and the top five regrets of the dying. Number one regret is I wish I had been true to myself as opposed to the expectations of others.
[01:04:48] That's, we've had most of our conversation revolving around that particular topic. I don't wanna be the man. Not only do I wanna be a man without unhealthy shame, I wanna be a man without regret At the end of my. Yeah. And that requires me really getting to know who I really authentically am, not what I've been taught, not what my parents gave me, not what the church gave me, not what society gave me, not what I'm supposed to be to fulfill this role in in our communities.
[01:05:15] I wanna know genuinely, who am I as a being, as an energetic being, and then how does what I am as an energetic being translate into being a. Father, a partner, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, to widen the view before we narrow it again. And so it's a, it's an immensely important process for us to go through and it's what's needed.
[01:05:39] Look at the way society is built on the veneers of needing to overprotect ourselves and needing to buy into all of these, stereotypes and generalities that we keep trying to portray. Society needs us to break that mold, and that's for all of us. I'm speaking right now, this conversation's been for the men, but it's for everybody to have a role in that and cannot emphasize enough, which both of you have brought up now in, in the last couple things you guys have shared, the importance of accountability.
[01:06:05] We've gotta stop allowing ourselves to get off the hook. We need accountability, and that means we need to be accountable to each other until we feel like we have such accountability to ourselves. And frankly, I will be very clear to accountability to our souls because when you feel the accountability at that level, Your integrity locks in a completely different way.
[01:06:29] Because you, as soon as you step out of that soul alignment, you can feel everything in life start to go sideways. Yep. Been there. I've tried it. I've gotten into soul alignment. I'm like, maybe Justin life comes and smacks me back and says, Nope, not doing it. If you wanna go that way, I'm gonna bring you a ton more pain and now you know what that pain is, I'm not gonna let you do it.
[01:06:51] And it's like, oh yeah, you're right. It's just easier to stay over in this lane. It's easier to stay in alignment now, but it takes this type of process that we're talking about to really go in and do the hard work, to look at the things that have brought shame and fear and doubt and mistrust all those things up in our life so that we can finally get back to saying, this is who I really am.
[01:07:13] David: What that brings up is it reminds me of the moment. I remember the moment in time when there was that shift for me. It was in 2013, I was listening to Ultimate Edge Tony Robbins PR signature program. And he said in that there's two ways that people change. One is when you have enough pain Yep. And say, I don't wanna live this way anymore.
[01:07:44] And he says, when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change, than you will change. Yeah. The other is when you have such a compelling vision for I want that and I'm not staying here anymore, I want that. And when we look at that and I look at my own experience in my, the story of my life, how shame has played, its part in that story.
[01:08:19] I'm 44 now. The next 44 years of my life, I don't want it to play the same role it has in the last 44 years in the next. And so I think the charge to all of us men is are we willing to leave what has been uncomfortable or what has been comfortable while still experiencing the pain of shame? Are you willing to leave the pain of shame to step into the light with other brothers with accountability in order to not have shame, play the same role in your story?
[01:09:05] Luke: And to me, that's what I want. Let me ask both of you then this, and actually this will be all for all three of us to answer. And I'm really curious cuz I'm asking a, a big question. I have no idea how I'm gonna answer this one yet either. You brought up that. , it's the pain of change, right? And that the pain of staying the same needs to be greater than the pain of change for us to create that change and or a compelling vision.
[01:09:31] You started to allude to this now, David, and what you were just describing, but you still referenced the pain and being free of the pain. So I'm gonna ask each of us to answer, to wrap up on this. What is your more compelling vision? We know the vision we've been sold, and that vision isn't working anymore.
[01:09:51] So what is your personal, more compelling vision?
[01:09:56] David: You go first, William .
[01:09:59] William: Yeah. I think my vision that I am attempting to live into on a daily basis is to be a conscious man. When that means to me is to be as conscious as I can be of all that I am. Going back to your point, Luke, that there's parts of us reco, but also recognizing that yes, I'm a man, but I'm actually at my essence.
[01:10:27] I am a soul and I am here living a human experience and I'm a man, but I'm being an authentic man based on who I am, based on what I've learned, not based on what other people expect of me or what people think a man is. I'm living my own vision of what it is to be a man, which means to be accountable to myself, accountable to the world, and accountable to God or to consciousness.
[01:10:56] And that's an evolving, unfolding thing. I don't know where it's gonna go, but I know what those core commitments are, and that's my vision and it's an everyday challenge. But that's what I. I'm living into on a daily basis.
[01:11:13] David: This is where I get excited. I envision me sitting around a campfire with you guys and many other guys.
[01:11:25] And William, we can probably go back up to the mountain up there where we made our campground, we actually, William and I had to create it cuz there wasn't one up there, the top of the mountain. And we did it about a year, it was like a year ago, this next week, I think it was when you were here, William.
[01:11:42] And we created, oh man, that was such a great evening. And that fire we had, I want five or 10 other guys to sit around that fire at the top of that mountain. And I want us to have meaningful conversations and then I want to take that actual physical experience. And find a way to scale that on a global basis so that all men can experience that type of fire sitting around a campfire.
[01:12:18] And we can grow and heal together and evolve together, as you say, evolve together of what it means to be a man, and the way that we can show up as the kings that we are and be the anchors and the strength that women need us to be, other men need us to be so we can all live with a little less stress, a little less pain.
[01:12:48] That's my vision.
[01:12:49] Luke: Both of you have beautiful, compelling visions that you're laying out. What just came to me? Is a whole new word actually, . So I'm just thinking this through because it came through in what you guys were describing is that a compelling vision to me is to be congruent to my soulness.
[01:13:10] And what I mean by that is to be congruent to the soul that is embodied in the wholeness of this form. And it's because we have, I want to be able to hold the opposites of everything we experience and everything that I am. Within the wholeness of who I am. I wanna be able to hold the grief. I wanna be able to hold the love.
[01:13:33] I wanna be able to hold the moments that I feel like I've been less than, and the moments that I know that I am complete. I wanna be able to hold all of these moments within me. And I want to be able to be congruent to the fact that there is something deeper, number one, within my soul that is trying to manifest inside of this life.
[01:13:49] That is why I am here. That is the unique soul print, as I've heard before, that soul fingerprint, that each of us, every single one of us is, that's meant to come through. And I want to be congruent. I mean, I want to be present to the fact that we do experience such a wide array of emotions and experiences and ups and downs inside of this life.
[01:14:13] And I wanna experience all of them, but as who I am to not get lost in those up and downs and to still be congruent to my soul, even while I'm going on the rollercoaster ride that this life is. I think when I do that, When you do that, William, when you do that, David, in your own respective compelling visions that, that you both laid out.
[01:14:33] That we all three have laid out. We're giving permission for others and other men specifically in this conversation to begin to do this work, to see and envision this for themselves. And I long for the day of having more and more men be able to sit around that fire, David, that you just described, have these types of conversations and to do so without feeling threatened.
[01:14:55] To feel so, without feeling shame. To do so, without feeling the fear of, guys, this is what I am struggling with. I want to be more congruent. I want to be accountable to this and here's where it is that I could use help . And for every man sitting in that circle to turn around and go, sure. How can we help you?
[01:15:12] Not, I'm sorry for you, not you need to do better. Not anything but great. How do you want our support? We need more of that. William. David, I wanna thank you guys for being here. This has been a very fun walk. I have a feeling it will not be our last , and I deeply appreciate the way that you guys have leaned in all that you've shared, the personal stories, the personal experiences and wisdoms that, that you guys have accumulated, all of which have become well earned one way or the other with, scars, tears, and the otherwise.
[01:15:40] But I wanna thank you guys for being here, and I'm gonna thank you for sharing who you are and for sharing your hearts and souls as part of this.
[01:15:45] William: Thank you so much, Luke, for having us, and pleasure to be
[01:15:48] David: here. Thank you, Luke. It's an honor. I believe there's some sparks that are happening , that'll turn into that fire on top of the mountain, so most definitely.
[01:15:59] Luke: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining me for this episode of On This Walk. Before signing off, please subscribe to the show and don't miss a single episode. Also, please rate and review us. This helps me greatly in getting the word out about this show. And remember, this is just the start of our conversation.
[01:16:20] To keep it going, ask questions, add your own thoughts, join the ongoing conversation by just heading over to on this walk.com, and click on community in the upper right hand corner. It's free to join until we go on this walk again on Luke Iorio. Be well.