EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,394 words- 0:00 – 10:35
Why Successful Men Self-Destruct
- CWChris Williamson
Why do so many high functioning men self-destruct in private?
- CBConnor Beaton
(laughs) It's like, you're like describing my, my clients. Oh, boy. Um, I think there's a number of different reasons. There's, there's trying to maintain this image externally and part of that image is the perfectionist. So there's never any room for downfall. There's never any room for weakness, there's never any room for problems, um, or issues, and so for a lot of men, that becomes... (sighs) it becomes something that they start to medicate and usually that has rooting in childhood, right? That they had to be a certain way in order to garner love, to garner attention. So for a lot of super high performing men, they're, you know, they grew up in an environment where they kind of had to be perfect, and if they were perfect enough, then they would get affection, then they would get love, they would get praise, they'd get validation. And so for a lot of young guys, it's like, a lot of men in general, it's, "If I can be perfect enough and I can perform well enough-"
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CBConnor Beaton
"... then everything will be okay, but if that starts to falter just a little bit, then it says something about me personally, it means that something's wrong with me." And then sh- shame starts to creep in and they don't want anybody to know that that's happening.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CBConnor Beaton
And so slowly over time, because they can't admit that there's something wrong, they can't admit that there's an issue, they can't sort of vocalize it, they start to medicate that shame or they start to medicate the perceived weakness, the insecurity, the anxiety-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CBConnor Beaton
... uh, with booze or weed or women or, you know, hookers, whatever it is, right? Whatever their sort of drug choice is. Could be gambling or whatever.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CBConnor Beaton
And slowly over time, that becomes the method that they need in order to just maintain homeostasis and it's almost like there's a debt building in the background that's building over time. Every little mess up, every little screw up is just sort of accruing this, this massive debt inside of them, and eventually it just craters. Um, and so, you know, and in a lot of ways, they need to be able to bring forward some of those weaknesses or insecurities or-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CBConnor Beaton
... anxieties or, you know, the, the trauma that they've just been holding on for fucking decades.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CBConnor Beaton
You know? Um, so I think that's a huge part of it and, and I think for a lot of men it's, it's correlated to how... it's correlated to their sense of masculinity and their sense of manhood.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CBConnor Beaton
So it's like, "Well, if I admit this weakness, if I admit that I'm struggling, then it means that there's something wrong with me as a man, that I'm less masculine." Um, and I don't think that that's necessarily something that we think about top of mind. It's more perf- performance at all costs, and so I don't want to admit that there's something going on behind the scenes.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. As you're saying that, the word, I don't know why, but the word toxic masculinity came up.
- CBConnor Beaton
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
This actually feels like a kind of place that it suits in a bizarre sort of way.
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That it's taking traits of masculinity and making them a performance, forcing yourself to perform, and it's a way... Not that masculinity itself is toxic, which is what the current like version of that is, that this is a way to turn your masculinity into something which becomes like a prison guard-
- CBConnor Beaton
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... in a way, that's sort of locked you in jail for doing the non-masculine thing and if you try-
- CBConnor Beaton
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... you can't necessarily break out of that. So the high functioning guys are, um, what the world rewards them for in public, they struggle with in private.
- CBConnor Beaton
Correct.
- CWChris Williamson
High standards, hyper vigilance, neuroticism, obsession, drive, desire for conquer and mastery, lots of competition, lots of comparison between myself and other people.
- CBConnor Beaton
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
That is a type of pressure, uh, and that pressure causes them to set very high standards and if they ever fall short of those standards, that causes pain. "I am not enough because I have these high standards. These high standards are why I've managed to become so high functioning in the real world. I'm a hard charging sort of dude."
- CBConnor Beaton
(laughs)
- 10:35 – 27:01
Is It Toxic to Use Pain as Fuel?
- CBConnor Beaton
- CWChris Williamson
Is it a bad thing to use your pain as fuel?
- CBConnor Beaton
No, I don't think so. I mean, this is, this is the kind of, this is the kind of catch-22 about it, is-
- CWChris Williamson
Feels like a paradox.
- CBConnor Beaton
It is, it is very paradoxical. And, and I've sat with this for a long time 'cause I, I think in my own journey, this is very much the same thing, you know? I used my, my own pain, my own shame, my own sort of like, um, rage towards the world to motivate myself for a period of time and I, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. It's if we don't build the, the counter tools to support ourselves, the generative tools to be able to appreciate, acknowledge ourself, to be able to recognize ourselves for actually doing good, to be able to receive goodness in the moments where we actually achieve, accomplish something, um, that's when it becomes problematic. So it's not necessarily a bad thing to allow pain or shame to drive us and to motivate us. I think for some people, for a period of time, that's actually maybe necessary because they need to, to do something to disprove the internal story of, "I'm a piece of shit."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Mm, mm.
- CBConnor Beaton
"Uh, I'm never gonna amount to anything. I'm never... Uh, I'm gonna show that, you know, I'm gonna show dad, I'm gonna show mom that I..." You know, whatever it is. Um, and so it's not necessarily a bad thing, however, it has a shelf life, and if we don't develop the tools that are meant to go in tandem with it, it, it's always destined to fail. Always destined to, to end in some type of a collapse.
- CWChris Williamson
I find this topic, like, endlessly fascinating. I think it's so interesting. I had this one insight I've been thinking about recently, which is an infinite one rep max.
- CBConnor Beaton
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
So, the idea that, um, most people reach a particular level of pain, and that level of pain is maybe before a breakdown. Like the whole point of there being warning signs is that they warn you before the catastrophe occurs.
- CBConnor Beaton
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Right? You slow down before you get toward the cliff, not as you're going off the cliff-
- CBConnor Beaton
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... and you hit the brake as you're going off the edge.
- CBConnor Beaton
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Right? (laughs)
- CBConnor Beaton
I mean, you could do that. It's just-
- CWChris Williamson
Well, it's pointless, right? Like the whole point of the warning signs was to stop you from needing to go off the cliff in the first place.
- CBConnor Beaton
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, and one of the things that guys are praised for, and women as well, especially meritocratic capitalist society, blah, blah. If you're able to suppress, if you're able to outwork, out-suffer, be more conscientious, if you're able to put up with discomfort basically-
- CBConnor Beaton
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... if you're able to do things that most other people wouldn't want to do or couldn't do, for longer than other people, society rewards you. So you are praised in public for this thing. But the problem is, that same skill in your private life-
- CBConnor Beaton
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... causes you to be able to put up with a level of suffering that is maladaptive.
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, if you were able to say, um, "I can work 16-hour days, six days a week, for a year, for five years, to build my startup, to make my..." Congratulations. Can you switch that off when it comes to your current relationship which is totally toxic and turning your brain-
- CBConnor Beaton
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... inside-out? And you go, "No, no, no. I'm the David Goggins of suffering."
- CBConnor Beaton
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, "Fuck carrying the boats, I'll carry the whole fleet."
- 27:01 – 36:33
Why Men are Scared to Look Inward
- CWChris Williamson
What would you say to the guy who looks at the inner child work, the mother wound, the past patterns that haven't yet been dealt with, the accumulation of sort of psychological discomfort like that, uh, and say, "I think that's sort of woo bullshit, dude." Like, "That, that doesn't resonate with me. I understand that if you break an arm, you need to put it in a cast, but this is just a question of overcoming suffering, it's noble to do that, it's, uh, uh, like, the sort of life that I want to live as someone who is stoic, who does, like, just get on with stuff." This, yeah, maybe I've hit some sort of a wall, maybe I'm sort of broken in pieces on the ground, but the answer to that is to just, like, David Goggins it and stay hard-
- CBConnor Beaton
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... as opposed to Eckhart Tolle it and just, like, remind myself that I'm enough already.
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah, I mean, I do think that it's a, it's a bit of both, you know? I do think that part of the challenge that a lot of men have with therapy and therapy culture is that it's become hyper-feminized, and so I think when men look at that, oftentimes, it's like, it doesn't resonate with... Feels too woo-woo, it feels too sort of, like, soft skills, um, but I think it really is about a quest of knowing thyself. And, you know, for, e- for every man, they're going to have a journey and an inflection point where they have to decide, "Am I going to learn about who I am through trial and error and external experiences, or am I going to put on this, you know, the psychological scuba diving mask and, and go in-
- CWChris Williamson
Hm.
- CBConnor Beaton
... and actually see who the fuck I am?" And I think it's easier for men to say, "I'll just go out in the world," right? "I'll just go build some shit." Because the truth is that the scariest place to be is inside of yourself. That's the truth. Most men know that. You know, barring some extreme situations in war zones and stuff like that, but for the majority of men, for a lot of the men that I've worked with, I've worked with Navy SEALs, I've worked with executives, I've worked with artists and athletes and every single man that I've ever worked with, the most terrifying thing for them is the truth of who they are, because there's parts of them that they do not understand, and that's scary. There's parts of themselves that are out of control, and that's terrifying.
- CWChris Williamson
Hm.
- CBConnor Beaton
And so I think for... What I would say to those men is, "It sounds like you're not really willing to get in the arena with yourself, period." And you can find a medium that works for you, right? Goggins found a medium that seems to work for him, which is that's not my medium, right? I, I don't want to get up at 5:00 AM or 4:00 AM every single day and, and run until my knees are grinding bones against each other. This is just not it for me. Um, I want to push myself physically, for sure, and I want to build things and push myself from an entrepreneurial spa- standpoint, for sure, but there is something to be said for the courage and the bravery that it takes to go in to who you actually are as a human being and start to discover the unsavory parts of yourself. You know, Jung had this great saying that, that the, "The real work of a man is... The real work of men is to discover their own shadow, and if they can do that, they have done something meaningful for the world." And what he meant by that was if you don't understand your own...... maladaptive behaviors, your own sabotage mechanisms. If you don't understand how you are harming other people, then you are, you're essentially passing on harm-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CBConnor Beaton
... out into the world, onto other people, inadvertently to your kids or your family members or your friends. And that's not really what... (laughs) I don't know how else to say it, but it's like, that's not really where men find a sense of meaning and purpose. Like, i- in many ways, the archetypes of great kings and great men, they are the men that are servants to others, and how they go about doing that is by deeply understanding who they are. And so, I think for a lot of men, when I hear that, I'm like, "You're scared to know who you really are. You're actually just afraid and that's okay, but don't fucking lie to me that you're just not afraid of who you actually are." Because so many times I've sat with men and I'll say, "Close your eyes." And the, the challenge that that man will have, he'll be a killer in the boardroom, he will be a killer on the football field, and I'll say, "Sit down, close your eyes, take a breath, tell me what's happening inside of you." An immediate confrontation. So, we as men are sculpted through confrontation. Masculinity in some ways requires confrontation, and I think change requires confrontation. Any type of psychological change requires confrontation. I think the challenge is that, uh, some men are afraid of the confrontation with themselves.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CBConnor Beaton
What, what are your thoughts on that?
- CWChris Williamson
I think it's superbly accurate. I think it makes for a very interesting redefinition of the word bravery, especially for men. Uh, that emotionality, uh, tapping into yourself, being in touch with who you really are, uh, is seen as a kind of weakness. And yet, so much of that that I see among guys is like a sex-based gaslighting. Um...
- CBConnor Beaton
(laughs) I think, I think it's, I think that's one of the things that's made you very successful is tho- is those little sn- sex ba-
- CWChris Williamson
You know the-
- CBConnor Beaton
Where did that even come from, Chris?
- CWChris Williamson
I don't know.
- CBConnor Beaton
Sex-based gaslighting. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Try, try and tell me it doesn't fit though.
- CBConnor Beaton
It 100% fits.
- CWChris Williamson
It's fucking perfect.
- CBConnor Beaton
It's great, it's great. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
It is because you're scared of what's inside of you. As a man, you're terrified of looking inside of yourself, you're terrified of being in touch with your emotions, you're terrified of your heart. Don't pretend like you're not, and don't pretend like the guys who are prepared to face it are somehow lesser.
- CBConnor Beaton
Right, right. It's like, I, you know, I do, uh, martial arts, I do Muay Thai a couple times a week. I absolutely love it. I love knowing that I can like, you know, kick some dude in the side of the head (laughs) that's like six f- you know, six foot two.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CBConnor Beaton
Uh, but I also am not afraid of how I'm feeling. And I do think that... I think this is what I was talking about before, which is that we've become so one-dimensional. We've over-indexed on like one specific thing, and that hasn't been, that hasn't been the truth for men throughout human history. I mean, when you look at, when you look at men from different walks of life and, uh, you know, like the, the Spartans, right? They do hand-to-hand combat, sword training, fighting in groups, and then in the afternoon, they would learn how to write poetry and dance and play music.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CBConnor Beaton
You know, so it's, it's always been a part of, of our development as men. It's just recently in the last 100 plus years that we've sort of condensed men down into this one dimension, and it's great if you want to pop out factory workers. It's great if you want to produce armies of people, armies of men that their sole job for 10 hours a day is to put a fucking handle on an ice cream bucket. You know? It's like, you don't want a human being that's thinking about, "How do I feel about doing this?"
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- CBConnor Beaton
You don't want that, right? Because that's not useful because then that person's not going to be useful. So a- again, I think we're, we're entering into this territory, and I think this is what is causing a lot of, part of what's causing a lot of the challenges in modern dating is that women have become much broader in the sense that, you know, they still have network, they still have community, but they've learned how to compete with men. And I think that largely we as men have not adapted and figured out how to compete with women. I think that we are terrible at competing with women because women compete far different. They complete w- they compete way differently than we do as men. We as men, we compete through competition, through competency. It's like, "I'm gonna outwork you. I'm gonna be more competent than you. I'm gonna be more capable than you. I'm gonna figure out the systems and get better at it than you."
- 36:33 – 45:42
The Absence of Modern Male Role Models
- CBConnor Beaton
- CWChris Williamson
Have you seen the new stats... You know, hypergamy, the word hypergamy-
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... favorite-
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... of the, the romantic pill.
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, I call it the, the-... red pill, the romantic pill.
- CBConnor Beaton
That's great. That's great, I like that.
- CWChris Williamson
The romantic pill. 'Cause everyone that's in the red pill is a romantic. Everybody, every single guy that's in the red pill is a romantic. Some have failed, some are successful. Um, but fundamentally they want to-
- CBConnor Beaton
Relationships.
- CWChris Williamson
... they want to find and be loved by a woman. Yeah. It's the romantic pill.
- CBConnor Beaton
That's great.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, hypergamy. Uh, the bottom two quintiles, uh, of men in terms of earning and the top quintile in terms of women for earning have the female as the primary breadwinner in the household now.
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That's in the US.
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So, uh, the bottom 40% of guys who earn are dating up socioeconomically, and the top 20% of women earners are dating down socioeconomically.
- CBConnor Beaton
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
So that is getting squeezed a lot. And, uh, how long have I been fucking screaming about this tall girl problem thing?
- CBConnor Beaton
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Where again, another great meme. Um, if women are socioeconomically successful, soon enough, they're going to stand on the top of their own competence hierarchy, look across and find very few men. And the men that are there have a wealth of opportunity, so they're gonna use and discard women.
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, so yeah, we, we are at this interesting tug of war, but I think, it's not really even a tug anymore. It's like it's happened. It's happened and it's happening.
- CBConnor Beaton
It's happened. We're, we're fully in it.
- CWChris Williamson
Correct. Yeah.
- CBConnor Beaton
Fully in it.
- CWChris Williamson
And we're just trying to sort of pick up the pieces. And for women, what it's felt like, uh, objectively is a lot of gain, lots of gains, right? Uh, "I've now got degrees." There's more women getting, like e- I think it's creeping up into master's and doctorate degrees now as well.
- CBConnor Beaton
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
So it's not just that they're getting into undergrad. Um, more degrees, they earn more than guys up to the age of 30, 31. Now that's continuing to creep up as well. And you go, that just seems like a boon. Now there are prices that women are gonna pay, and those are gonna be ones that are much m- harder to quantify. Quality of life, eight out of 10 women that don't have kids and breach their reproductive window don't say that they didn't intend to not have children.
- 45:42 – 1:03:26
What Emotional Safety Actually Looks Like
- CBConnor Beaton
men.
- CWChris Williamson
What are some of the traits of an emotionally safe man?
- CBConnor Beaton
Well, first, I think you need to have the ability to regulate your own nervous system, so you need to have some level of competency over your own emotional awareness. You need to have an understanding of what's happening inside of you. If you don't know or you're not able to identify what's happening inside of yourself emotionally when you're angry, when you feel ashamed, when you feel anxious, when you feel sad, when you feel embarrassed, if you don't, if you can't differentiate between those things or identify them and then be able to regulate yourself through them so that you don't lash out and get reactive and get defensive all the time or, you know, you, you get rejected for a phone number at the coffee shop or whatever and you, you dissolve into a puddle of like, "Oh, my God. I'm such a piece of shit," which I understand. I've been there. I actually have been there. (laughs) You know, I, like, was that guy when I was a teenager. Uh, rejection was brutal, but if you, if you aren't able to understand what's happening inside of you and move yourself through it, it's gonna be very, very challenging to do that for anybody else. So that's kind of like the first place, the first step. Um, and then secondly, I think you need to have the capacity to draw out emotional content, and this is a s- this is a skill set that far few men learn. I think what we learn as men is get the, get the content logistically. Get the logistical content, like what happened, when did it happen, um, what did it look like, you know? Like, we get all those details, but what we don't ask is, "What was that actually like for you," you know? "What was it like for you when your boss was pissed off or when you fucked up the presentation? What h- what was that like for you? What happened inside of you?" And so that's another skill set that I think a lot of young men need, is to be able to draw out emotional content. "Tell me what that was like. What happened? How did you feel in that moment?" You know, when, when she said that, when he did that, what was that like? And (clears throat) those simple things are going to create a connection, a bridge for the other person to say, "Oh, this, this person is interested in how I'm feeling." And so I think for a lot of men, just showing I have interest in what's happening inside of you-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CBConnor Beaton
... is also the next step, and then being to respond and not react. A lot of the times, we personalize the shit out of especially women's, uh, the women that we're dating, um, but we, we personalize what other people are saying, and so you might have your girlfriend or your wife talking about something and, you know, b- she's talking about how she was disappointed in her mom or some argument with, with you, and all of a sudden, it's like, "Well, did I do something wrong and how could I have done that better and what's wrong with me?" And so a lot of men collapse into a type of defensiveness or reactivity to go on the attack, to character assassinate, to, you know, sort of just defend themselves in that moment, and so we need to be able to regulate and then respond versus just reacting from whatever emotion comes up inside of us when somebody else is talking. And sometimes that means that we have to be able to hear...... what somebody is saying to us and about us without becoming defensive, without becoming reactive.
- CWChris Williamson
How do you do that?
- CBConnor Beaton
Y- your breath is a big part of it. Like, y- I think this is just a very simple thing, like your breath is a huge piece of regulating your nervous system. And so, you know, for a lot of guys that I work with, when they... There's this moment, Viktor Frankl has this beautiful phrase, which is, "Between stimulus and response, there is a pause," and we have to be able to feel that pause. So, for a lot of guys, as soon as they hear hard content, you know, it's like you forgot something and your partner's upset and she's like, "How could you have forgotten to do that? I asked you, I texted you." And all of a sudden, the shame and the guilt and the, you know, the heaviness of like, "Fuck. Oh, fuck, I fucked up," or like the defensiveness that happens. Being able to literally take some breaths so that the emotional intensity and the charge that has happened inside of you can subside a little bit instead of immediately reacting from that place. What most of us do, as men, is immediately react from that place.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CBConnor Beaton
So we're reacting from the shame, we're reacting from the anger, we're reacting from the defensiveness and the embarrassment. And so what I teach a lot of men is just, like, take three breaths before you respond. I know it sounds super simple and super... it's like so simple that it sounds dumb. But if you can just start to interrupt the pattern of reacting immediately from an emotion, you can create a new pathway of being able to take some breaths so that you can, quote-unquote, "down-regulate your system." Or at the very least, you can get some awareness of, "What is happening inside of me?" So take a breath, understand what's happening inside of yourself, and then you can either choose to set that aside or you can voice it, right? It's like, "Oh, I hear you and I feel really defensive, so I'm going to pause." You know? Or, "I get what you're saying and you're right, I totally forgot to do that. I'll take care of it."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CBConnor Beaton
So you, you don't personalize what's happening and you're able to actually stay with your experience.
- CWChris Williamson
The mindfulness gap is what my meditation teacher referred to it as.
- CBConnor Beaton
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
It's like space. Uh, I certainly know the periods in my life where I've had that the most. There's a few incidents that were really, really funny where somebody, um, got very agitated. Like this guy in a Nando's I was in, in the UK. I was with my friends. Always use this as an example, it's so funny. And this guy sort of-
- CBConnor Beaton
Always Nando's.
- CWChris Williamson
... had a... I know, I know. Scum.
- CBConnor Beaton
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, I'm very working class, which is why Nando's for me is a, a huge treat.
- CBConnor Beaton
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, I walked past his table, he kicked off at me because he thought that I got too close, and this was like deep, deep, deep meditation mode me. Like, this was the peak monk mode, three-hour morning routine, like gratitude. This is when I was doing, I think, 1,000 days sober and 500 days without caffeine at the same time.
- CBConnor Beaton
Oh. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) It's... The- the alcohol thing's great, the caffeine thing's fucking miserable and pointless.
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, but was a, uh, a good lesson to learn. Anyway, this guy kicks off and because I've, uh, d- I don't know, he was obviously having a bad day, like he was obviously on the edge, he was having a bad day. And I remember, like, watching this thing unfold and I just turned around and said, "Oh," and kept on walking. And he'd made this big sort of explosion. Oh, let me give you this. You're going to fucking love this. You go to Joe Hudson yet? Have I got you into Joe?
- CBConnor Beaton
I've, I think, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Art of Accomplishment guy?
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
He stinks of you. So, he taught me this idea called, uh, vagal authority.
- CBConnor Beaton
Uh-huh.
- CWChris Williamson
You already know what it means, right? Like, you're in a room, somebody's nervous system is dysregulated, somebody's is regulated. Which way does the rest of the room go?
- 1:03:26 – 1:10:38
Why Emotional Numbness Isn’t Empty
- CBConnor Beaton
- CWChris Williamson
The, uh, vagal decapitation-
- CBConnor Beaton
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... that you were talking about that, like, you know, a person who only lives above the neck.
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, I'm gonna keep going. I've had my new tonic today, dude.
- CBConnor Beaton
It's good. It's, it's good.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm gonna get, I'm gonna keep naming shit that-
- CBConnor Beaton
I gotta start, I'm gonna start taking those.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm gonna keep naming shit that you came up with. Um, hey, do you want one for your, the turning or whatever it was, the narrow path, the turning thing?
- CBConnor Beaton
Yes, yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Manopause.
- CBConnor Beaton
Oh, menopause. Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- CBConnor Beaton
That's good.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- CBConnor Beaton
That's true.
- CWChris Williamson
Works on many levels.
- CBConnor Beaton
It's true.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, the thing that comes to mind and what I'm particularly fascinated about is almost objection handling, uh, some of the stuff that comes up that will come up for guys that I've seen-
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah, yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... online a lot. Um, I think one of the first objections earlier on is, "Well, that toxic fuel has helped me to be successful. Also, I turned that toxic fuel, I alchemized that bad thing into something good. Is that not something I should be proud of?" Um, another element might be, "In order for me to delve into this, I feel like my real world performance is going to dip and it very well may do." Uh, Tiger Woods had this issue with his swing that he'd developed as a young golfer that he needed to purposefully go back and fix.
- CBConnor Beaton
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So he needed to adjust his hand position, adjust his back swing because there was, there's too many variables in that. Why are you grinning?
- CBConnor Beaton
(laughs) When you said Tiger Woods had a problem, I was like, "With Swedish bikini models or?"
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He had many-
- CBConnor Beaton
I thought that's what you were gonna say.
- CWChris Williamson
... he had many problems. This is before that.
- CBConnor Beaton
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
This is before that. This was in the confines of his sport. Um, he had to, uh, basically unlearn, which is 100 times harder than learning.
- 1:10:38 – 1:20:48
How Men Can Develop Worth Beyond Performance
- CBConnor Beaton
beautiful gift.
- CWChris Williamson
How do you think about guys who have that disposition? Where do you think they find their self-worth from? Because it seems to me, especially in the modern world, the group that doesn't feel is able to trade on their masculinity publicly-
- CBConnor Beaton
So-
- CWChris Williamson
... in a different way. It's much more observable.
- CBConnor Beaton
Uh-huh.
- CWChris Williamson
It's much more obvious. It's more classic.
- CBConnor Beaton
Accomplishment, doing.
- CWChris Williamson
More... Yep.
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Archetypal.
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, ag- again, the objection of, "Well, not only is it gonna maybe make me worse for a little while, and I've gotta feel all of these things, and it's gonna be really hard, and I managed to survive so long without doing it, and the stuff that I alchemized was for me avoiding it, not me dee- diving into it, and now you're gonna say that maybe the world's gonna laugh at me a little bit too."
- CBConnor Beaton
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
How do you think about, uh, building self-esteem as... uh, holding on to self-esteem, holding on to things to be proud d- of in a world that doesn't... especially in the messy middle bit, which is where presumably most guys get stuck-
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, before you've got to Marcus Aurelius level where everyone goes-
- CBConnor Beaton
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... "Oh my God, the vagal authority in the guy. He's so fucking... He's... I don't know what it is. He just makes me feel, like, calm and secure when I'm around him. I don't really know what's going on, but there's something..." Before you get to that, you're this dude that's, like, trying to decode the fucking, like, Da Vinci project here.
- CBConnor Beaton
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
H- how, how should guys think about finding that self-esteem and, and that sort of pride on the journey?
- CBConnor Beaton
There's a very simple truth and equation around developing worth, which is confronting and doing hard things that you know are hard, that you know you need to do, always develop a sense of worth and value.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CBConnor Beaton
And so if you are a man that has... you're just a big feeler, you know, you're a big softie inside, and you have this, you know, beautiful treasure trove of emotions that no one's really ever ushered you into understanding, no one's really ever taught you what to do with them, how to handle them, how to deal with that intensity that lives inside of you, you have to choose whether or not you're going to address them. And I, I think what you said is accurate, that if you don't, you'll always kind of be a ghost floating around in your own body, you know, because-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CBConnor Beaton
... you will have... You will be cutting yourself off from a part of who you actually are. You, you will literally be disassociating-... from a part of who you are. And w-
- CWChris Williamson
You'll feel like you got shunted to the side of the road of your own life.
- CBConnor Beaton
Correct.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- CBConnor Beaton
And a basic psychological principle is that when we fracture off from something that is true, it creates mental suffering. So, if-
- CWChris Williamson
That's interesting. Tell me more about that.
- 1:20:48 – 1:29:05
Coping Mechanisms That Border on Destructive
- CWChris Williamson
I was going to say, what are some things that are coping mechanisms or addictions that don't look like it?
Episode duration: 1:58:24
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