What I Wish I Knew About Being A Man In My 20s

Most guys think that the key to being a man is to work hard, to push through all your problems, and basically figure everything out by yourself. And honestly, that'll get you pretty far. It gets you a pretty good job, a pretty good relationship, and a pretty good life. But if you actually want something deeper, like a partner that actually knows who you are really, or friends that you feel emotionally connected to, not just random conversations about work, or a sense of yourself that is filled with purpose but not dependent on your job, you're gonna have to live by a very different set of rules than most people. And that's what this video is about. It's about escaping the 5 lies that most men believe in their 20s and 30s. These are lies that I believe myself. So breaking these down with me is Joe Hudson. He's a coach for companies like Apple, Google, and OpenAI that they use to help their executives stay ahead. Now, I personally discovered Joe years ago, and his work has really transformed my life. No exaggeration. He is a big part of the reason that I have 100% stake in Charisma on Command. He's changed how I run it, and from time to time, he gives me these little one-liners that completely transformed relationship issues that I've been stuck on for months and sometimes years. He's great and he's deep. That means that this isn't the usual Charisma on Command quick 10-minute fix. This is about the fundamental architecture of how you live and relate to yourself and others. It's about intimacy. It's about how you withstand intense pressure and how much of your true self you allow others to see. Most self-improvement never talks about this stuff but I think it's really, really important that we do. So while you're listening to Joe and I speak, pay attention to where these patterns show up in your own life because small changes here, it's like the root of a plant; it affects everything above it. So, okay, let's hop from here right into the first lie. Lie number 1 is probably the one that most men believe the most fully. They don't even need to say it and it's that vulnerability makes you weak. That if you were to share what you actually felt, that people would respect you less, women wouldn't be attracted to you, and other men would see you as fragile. Joe says that this is backwards. He says vulnerability is actually one of the strongest things that a man can unleash. Here's how he explains it.

It's when you speak your truth that's a little bit scary. That's vulnerability. Like, oh, I'm like, oh, I pucker a little bit to say the thing that I'm about to say, but I'm gonna say it anyhow. Yeah.

How does, how does that come through? Like, what, what, what might that look like?

Oh, it could be anything from, uh, Wow, what you're saying right now really bothers me. To no, I'm not going to do that. Yeah. To I'm really scared right now. Do I love you? Do I love myself?

Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, no. Yeah, I feel great right now for a lot of people. Yeah. Or I feel like I did a great job here. You know, you— we've been told our whole lives, like, don't get a big head. So, okay, I'm not going to say that anymore. And so the reason that vulnerability is so powerful is that when you do that, and you get met, which you will always get met eventually, then all of a sudden the thing that you're ashamed of in your life can heal. You know, I'm gonna say something right on the edge there, which is I can be a sociopathic, like, killer of people, and I can find, like, a nice community of people who are also sociopathic killers of people. Like, I can go be a part of ISIS. Like, I— like, let's go do— let's go kill some people, right? It's ridiculous, but It's like, how is it that we couldn't find somebody who can actually accept us for who we are if they can find some— a group of people who accept them for who they are, right? It makes no sense. So what we're actually scared of is that this one person who I have some sort of weird attachment thing with—

there's a girl that I like, or there's someone who I want to give me a job, or there's a customer that I'm trying to sell, and I need this individual Right. To consent to this deal.

Right.

Okay.

I need this individual.

Yeah.

Is, is where it is, where the problem starts.

For me, this has been like there's a real difference between I need this individual and I need other people.

Correct. Okay. That's beautifully said. Yeah. You're two people, right? This is you. This is someone else. This doesn't feel good.

Mm-hmm.

This doesn't feel good. Yeah. This feels good. They can do whatever they've got to do, but this feels good. Okay, right. And if you're not being vulnerable, you're doing this. And if you're being needy, you're doing this. So it's like, what is it to actually be yourself despite the consequences? And so the weird thing is, like, men were like, we're going to be strong, we're going to like do this thing. But like, are you just being— are you being yourself? Mm-hmm. Are you doing the thing that's actually true for you in this moment? Are you saying the thing that's actually on your mind, right? Are you not because you're trying to manage the world. The way I would say be yourself is if you're doing something that causes you shame or constriction, you're not being yourself. That shy person, if they're just like happily content in their room doing their thing, great. But if they're saying, I wish I had somebody, I wish I could do something, I wish I like was out there more, then they're not being themselves. Shame is an emotion that's job is to stagnate other emotions. Like, that's the job of shame, meaning you're sitting on a couch with your aunts and you fart and all your aunts laugh, like, you're just going to keep on farting. It's like no big deal. You sit on a couch with your aunts and you fart and they shame you, they're like, you shouldn't do that, you're gonna— you're gonna hold it in, you're gonna not do it, you're going to stagnate. And so that's what shame does. So when we shame ourselves, we're stagnating on stuff. So one of the things you can definitely find out where you have shame is the thing that you've been telling yourself not to do that you've been doing for the last 2, 3, 4 years or a decade. That's shame. Shame is always in those spots. So if you're telling yourself you should work out and you're not working out, you're ashamed of your body. You have shame around not working out. You have shame around potentially what you eat.

So I'll give you an example for me. I would like look back at my day and I maybe I played video games and I got too into it. It was a group video game. I got too into it. Somebody, a friend of mine, fucked up. I was like, dude, what the fuck? You know, I yelled at them in that moment. And then I'm laying in bed at night and I'm going, come on, man, don't do that. Like, you shouldn't do that. And I would go into the next day and we'd play again and I'd do it again. And then I'd go and I'd beat myself up at night and you're not kind enough, you're not thoughtful enough. You're like, these are your friends. Don't do that. It's just some stupid game.

This is the shame holding the pattern in place. The reason that it's happening year after year, day after day, is because you're in shame. The way out of the shame, call up your friend and say, hey, I'm sorry, I apologize for that, right? Which again is vulnerability, which again, and there's something in you that knew it or you wouldn't be beating yourself up. Yeah, right. So there's something in you that goes, oh, I'm not being myself right here because you're constricted and you're circling. That's another way to find your shame is like if somebody, if somebody gets upset at you at something, and you buy in, you get upset back, you get triggered by it, or you go, oh yeah, I shouldn't have done that, in a like a shame-filled way. That's all shame, right? So if you're in a fight with somebody, every— everything that's happening in that fight, you're— you have shame around.

Having shame around it and the thing being totally true are not the same thing.

So the idea that you're gonna come out of a fight going, you're right, or you're wrong. Oh, I like— if, if that happens, it means somebody hasn't learned their part of the— yeah, of the thing.

Yeah.

But your job is just to focus on your own. Like, that's where your freedom lies. Your freedom is never going to come because they say they're sorry to you. As far as forgiving somebody, it's for your own freedom. And you can't do it if you think you should do it, because again, that's shame. And so that's just going to stagnate that feeling. You have to actually move through your whatever is there, the anger, the frustration, speak your truth, draw your boundary, then potentially you can forgive. Yeah. But the forgiveness comes naturally when you've actually taken care of yourself. Yeah. The forgiveness doesn't come because you're supposed to forgive. If you're gonna be vulnerable, the vulnerability is, oh, how do I be who I want to be no matter how scary it is?

So that was lie number 1. Now lie number 2 is one that most ambitious men get stuck in for a very long time, and it's the idea that grinding is how you win. You just have to work a little bit harder, push through, sleep a little bit less, discipline your body, postpone that relationship obligation, ignore the part of you that is quietly falling apart. Now, Joe says that grinding is bullshit. He's not saying it from a place of laziness. He's saying it because he has seen what it costs. And quite frankly, at this point in my life, at 38, so have I. Here's why.

The second thing about that I wish I would have learned, uh, in when I was in my 20s about being a man was that grinding is bullshit. And this is coming from a person who, like, you know my schedule, right? I just told you what my schedule— I work all the time. My daughter walks in the room, my phone is down. I'm with her. She wants to spend time with me, I'm with her. My wife wants to spend time, I'm with them. They're like, they're my highest priority without a doubt. So how is it that I could say grinding is bullshit if that's how I work? If I put in huge hours every week? The reason is, is because it's not grinding.

Work and grinding are not the same thing.

I'm just living my passion. There's nothing I would do. I do not do anything for money that I wouldn't do for free. Everything I do, I love. Let's look at what grinding actually creates. What grinding creates is I grind for a while, then I burn out and I just play video games. I grind for a while, I burn out, I just like watch porn, I like check out, right? So you can't just grind and tell yourself you should do this and should do that and, and, and eventually not burn out from it. And so it might take a year, might take a week, it might take, you know, it depends. Everybody has their own cycle. I can't tell you how many people I know who are successful CEOs who sold their company and then they stayed in their pajamas in their house half depressed for years after that. Like, that is a common Silicon Valley.

This is, I think, the thing that people don't see.

The other one is I go, go, go, go, go, and then I have to get blotto fucking drunk and I get high on ketamine. Yeah, yeah. And I go to orgies and then I work, work, work, work, work, and then I fucking get blotto drunk and get high on ketamine and they go to orgies and then There's other ways of doing it, right? There's, there's lots of ways that you can do that up and down, but there's no way you're not doing that up and down if you're grinding. The second thing that grinding does that just messes with people is when you're grinding, you're almost always doing the wrong freaking thing. So I'm sitting there with a young team and they got backed by Sequoia, and the CEO comes to me. He wants to work on like getting the team in shape. So we were talking with this guy like, hey, let's— he wants to like get his team together and like really work together well as a team. And which is what I'm good at. And his team obviously doesn't want to look at that. And they're like, we just need to grind. I'm like, cool. So just tell me, just answer this question. If you would have grind, like really done your grinding like 6 months ago, where would you be right now? Would you be ahead?

Mm-hmm.

He was like, I think so. I was like, really? So Claude Code wouldn't have just like made everything you did for 6 months worth nothing? Nothing. And he just like, he thought about it. I'm like, and, and then those 3 discussions that you knew you should have had that you didn't have, how much time did that cost you? The thing that grinding does is that grinding consistently puts your focus in the wrong place. Yeah. So if I look at somebody who's like, I'm grinding, I got my list and I got my to-dos and I'm doing this thing. Here, the first thing I'll do is I'll just look at them. I'll say, okay, what are the 3 things that make everything on your list irrelevant or easier?

Yeah.

What— just what are the 3 things? Did you do any of those today? And the answer is almost always no. They're doing the thing that gets them the dopamine hit. It's the same as like porn addiction.

Yeah.

It's the same as like video game addiction, right? It's I'm checking boxes, but the boxes don't amount to creating the life that you want. Almost always. Whereas if you're doing the thing that you love, you're naturally inclined to be doing the most important thing. The thing about grinding is that there's a deep should in it, and a should outside of being somewhat of a shame, a piece of shame, it's also just never creates the thing that you want.

Grinding is deeply uncreative. It's like, I know how this is done. It has to— you just, you turn like this.

The wording is like beyond perfect. It you're grinding to create. Yeah. And it is deeply uncreative. Let's say I go into two companies and one of the guys, this CEO, is like, I'm having fun, I'm doing this thing, I found this other thing to do. And they, they're checking boxes, but they're having fun doing it. The other one's like, I'm getting it, I'm grinding, I'm getting it, I'm grinding. It's like, who, who do I think is going to be more successful? Yeah. Especially maybe 2, 3 years, the grinder might be fine. But 20 years, 30 years, it's the person who's obsessed, who's happy, who's like, this is, this is my passion. When somebody is like chasing money like that, they're, they're basically just chasing dad or mom or some, some earlier stage thing that they weren't— they were there instead of being like this, they're like this. They had this thing where their whole life they were chasing their parents' love. Their parents are gone, and so now they're like, have to chase something.

Something needs to be pursued.

Something needs to be pursued.

Something evasive needs to be pursued.

Exactly. Something that they can't entirely get.

Okay. And then the money's never enough.

And yeah, they can never get the— Yes, because—

and this is the— well, I need enough for this year. Now I need enough for the next 5 years. And now I need enough for everyone in my family until the day that we all die. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

That's exactly how it works. And the reason that that's happening is because they're not satisfying themselves. They're chasing something instead of focusing on what do I need to do to be proud of who I am? What do I need to do if I assume that I'm good? The story that's told is work hard, earn your thing, take care of people, and don't bitch. You know, like, that's the story that's told.

Yeah. And see how hard you can hold that posture.

Yeah. And then just go look at the people who did that. Go see if that's the, you know, the pill you want to swallow. Like, go look at the results.

A lie number 3 is one that most of us were taught growing up, and it's implicit. Don't feel too much. Don't be sad. Don't be scared. Don't need anything. Definitely don't cry. Be tough. Keep moving. And after a while, that becomes strength. But Joe says that this lack of feeling isn't strength. It's numbness. And the problem with numbing the bad feelings is that you don't just lose access to the sadness or the fear, which a lot of people think would be good. It isn't. Because you also lose access to clarity, to intimacy, to joy, to gratitude, and to knowing what you most deeply want. You can't numb one without the other. The volume goes down totally. So here's what to do instead.

Feeling your emotions gets you a lot further than pushing your emotions down. Every single emotion is intelligent. It's a signal. Might not be true, but that doesn't mean that I'm not like carried away or something, but there is something to learn from every emotional experience. And the more I resist it, the less benefit I get from it. What we know is that if I take the emotional center out of your brain, your IQ will stay the same and you will cease to make decisions. It'll take you literally a half an hour to decide what color pen. So when this happens to people, their entire lives, smart people's entire lives fall apart. What we basically know about humans now, neurologically speaking, is that we make decisions to feel loved, to feel like a winner, to not feel like a loser, to not feel like a failure, to not feel bad, to not feel hated. That's why we make decisions. And you can just look at your own life and say, how many, how many, how many decisions did I make to feel loved or to feel wanted or to feel valuable? And it's just like so obvious.

I think for some, some men, there's this deeply protective stance of I'm rational. And so it's not obvious to them. And I just want to slow down and be like, yeah, that is, that is almost shame at any emotional experience. It's just like, I am rational. Women are emotional or something like that, or weak men are emotional.

Is— yeah, so that's the thing is that, that I am rational always comes with I am better because I'm rational. Yeah, it always comes with that. And that's one of the other things that emotions does. When you start to feel your emotions, you don't have that judgmental, arrogant stance anymore. You just can't have it. So behind every judgment of somebody else is an unfelt emotion. Yeah, yeah. I judge you for being late, there's an emotion that I don't want to feel. I judge you for being a different color. Yeah, there's an emotion that I don't want to feel behind it. And so you have to put yourself above people when you stop feeling your emotions. And just, just right there, if you are one of those people who's deeply rational listening to this and I just called you out on thinking that you're better than people, then I know something about your rationality that you don't know. Mm-hmm. Because you've never put that together, because if you had, you'd start feeling your emotions.

Yeah.

Every one of those addictions is avoiding an emotion, right? When you're about to do that addictive behavior, stop and go, what's the thing I don't want to feel?

Mm-hmm.

So you can be as rational as you want, but all the things that your rational mind is telling you that you shouldn't be doing are all being done to avoid the emotion. So one thing is to realize whatever the want that you have is, it's there underneath it is a, like, inherently good want. So let's say I want to jerk off to porn right now. Like, that's the thing that— that's one thing I know I want to do because I'm about to go do it, right? Then the question is, what's, what's the need behind that want? I think that's the question. Oh, the need is to relax.

Yeah.

Okay, cool. So what's the need behind the need to relax? Oh, it's to feel connected. Okay, so what's the need behind the need to feel connected, uh, to feel whole.

Hmm.

Okay, so the porn is a strategy to feel connected and whole, to feel relaxed, connected, and whole. All those other things are just like good. We can't— we can't even judge them.

Yeah.

And if we can satisfy them in some way that isn't porn— and I have no objection to people using porn, but Like, if some— if you can, if you can do that, if you can like say, oh, that's actually the thing that I want, and then own that want, which is vulnerable.

Yeah.

To own.

Yeah.

Like, hey babe, I just really want to feel connected right now. Right? Then you don't have to go through all this like weirdness that never satisfies. Like, you don't ever like finish porn and go like, my work here is done.

Yeah.

No, no, it's like Nah, it just doesn't matter.

Which seems to be the case when you are only able to connect with intermediate wants, stepping stone wants, things that are incomplete.

And the interesting thing is about the emotional work, this is the thing that I think people have a hard time, men in particular have a hard time with, which is, you know, Joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions and she won't come into a house where her children aren't welcome. And on one level, what that means is once you allow yourself to feel all these emotions, then there's a lot more joy and love in your life. But the other thing that it's not quite saying is that the positive emotions are far harder to feel than the negative ones, which makes no sense to anybody's mind. Like, no, I want to be happy, of course. But when you allow your heart to break, it increases your capacity to love. When you allow that excitement— when you allow that fear completely, there's like this excitement. Like when you felt that wanting that you were describing earlier, It, it's like, oh wow, this is intense, this is big. And, and though the positive emotions are actually more challenging, and the reason they're more challenging is because they're more identifying, obliterating. Like, they, they just obliterate your identity, and then you're left with actually the truth of who you are, not what you think you are. You know, it's not the, I'm the quiet person, I'm the charismatic person, I'm the you know, stockbroker. You're actually left with your essence. How does great decision-making happen? Great decision-making happens is I don't mind feeling like a failure. I don't mind feeling unloved. I don't mind feeling like people hate me. I don't mind feeling like I'm amazing. I don't mind feeling ecstatic. I don't mind feeling love. And if you don't mind feeling all those things, your solution set gets a lot wider.

Now, the last lie is one that most guys don't want to touch. This is actually the one that I think is hardest for most people. It's the lie that your childhood relationships with mom and dad aren't important or that they were so good that they don't need to be examined because if those things aren't true, you might have to reevaluate your relationship with your parents, particularly your mother. You'd have to see how the wounds in that relationship have shaped how you relate to women, to approval, and to love. If you cannot look honestly at those childhood patterns, you'll keep acting them out with women. I know this sounds cliché, but you'll wind up chasing approval. You'll confuse love with control, and you're going to solve problems in the wrong place, all to avoid that hurt little boy inside of you.

So everybody knows when a woman has daddy issues, right?

Yes. And I— before we get— there's so much gut reaction shame that comes up when people say the term daddy issues and mommy issues. It's often pejorative. It's used to describe the girl that's giving you a hard time. Oh, she's got daddy issues. So the idea that you might have mommy issues and/or daddy issues is just like hard pass, no. But it's, it's, please, please remain open.

I love that. Yeah, I love that. The mommy issues that men face, one is they are constantly chasing women because they had an emotionally unavailable mom. That's one form of mommy issues. I have to constantly try. If I sleep with enough people, finally I'll feel like whole and nurtured. And it doesn't work, obviously. And then the other one is that I had a mom who hovered over me and like incessantly didn't let me have my own freaking space, please.

Yeah.

And then I become extremely avoidant and I'm just constantly avoiding my life, the relationship. And the avoidant one is actually makes for a far worse life. The avoidant one ends up with a marriage where it just goes horribly bad. The avoidant one is like, just like, relationship with the kids are horrible. Like, it's just an extremely depressing, sad place to end up. The one where you're trying to get women's love, it's like, it's annoying, you know. You never, you never allow yourself to fully get nurtured. Uh, you don't see that women actually want to be there for you. Um, but it's, it's just something that I don't find that we talk about in our society, that somehow or another men don't have issues from their mom. And I— and it's also, I think, important because, like, if men are having these behaviors, whatever you call toxic masculinity or avoidance, it's like mom's gotta play some sort of responsibility for that.

People really don't— if they love their mothers, they don't want to take that dip. They do not. It feels like a total betrayal to have the experience of, she hurt me, you know, like, and, and that it actually is like the— they can't— that there's a loyalty there that can't be touched, uh, is what I've seen.

Yeah, so I, I had one recently. I had a new coachee come in and I was like, tell me about, you know, your history with your parents. He's like, you know, my parents are great.

Every time, every time, every time. Great childhood.

And I just, and I just laughed. I just laughed. And he's like, you've heard this one before. I'm like, yeah. And, and so it is an interesting thing, right? Our parents dedicated to us, even the worst ones, they dedicated to us in some way. And so it does feel like a betrayal to— but when you see that what they want for us most is to grow and to become people that we're proud of, yeah, then there's just this moment where you have to, you have to like take a hard look at their humanity so that you can learn about your own humanity.

Yeah.

And if you don't, then you're going to make the same mistakes with your kids. If you don't heal it, then, then it just keeps on going, you know? Like, if I look back in my own history, it was alcoholic father, Al-Anon mother, alcoholic grandmother. Like, it just— like, you can just see alcohol, Al-Anon, alcoholic, Al-Anon, alcoholic, Al-Anon. And I can see, like, the future generations going in that same direction and multiple families. Like, we do have this thing where we pass on, pass on our, our actions to each other. And you can stop it, but you can't stop it without actually acknowledging the pain of it. So if you take a look at like a pattern that somebody has in their life— I'll give my own example. I emotionally abandoned as a kid. Every one of my relationships, I was just emotionally abandoned over and over and over again. And I was like, all right. And I— and the way that I created it was if I kind of felt that emotional abandonment coming, I'd do one of two things. I get needy. Oh, could you, could you, could you? Which makes women want to abandon you. Or I'd be like, fuck you, which makes women want to abandon you. And so I was like, well, how about if I fall in love with that emotion of abandonment? And which sounded crazy, but And then I started looking forward to that feeling of abandonment. Oh, that feeling of abandonment teaches me the thing about myself that I'm not— that I am not allowing. That tells me how I abandoned myself. That shows me the ways in which I still am looking for someone to make me whole instead of acknowledging my own wholeness. And so I could start looking forward to abandoning that feeling of abandonment. I could start welcoming it.

Welcoming is the first action that one can—

yeah, it was just like, yep. Welcome that. And then when somebody would start— when I would feel that emotional abandonment coming, I didn't have to do this, and I didn't have to do this. All I had to do was be like, oh yeah, cool.

So that covers the 4 lies, but there is a 5th one that most men don't really have a name for, and it's that other people's feelings are your fault. This one is so hard to see because it's not about what you're doing wrong or anything like that. It's about what somebody else's emotions, how they affect you. It's that guilt trip that makes you feel just crappy. It's the fear that somebody points at you. It's the way that somebody passive-aggressively gets angry at you and how that impacts you. Here's what Joe says.

In our society, getting angry at somebody is like a known phenomenon. Like, don't get angry at me. They're getting angry. If you're a kid in a school ground and you hit somebody and you're like, I'm angry, Boom, and I whack you in the face, then we know who the perpetrator is. It's the person who hit, it's the person who got angry. As it turns out, men more likely get angry because of testosterone. And so, so that's how it goes. But there's just as pivotal is get sad at, get scared at, right? Where a mother or a father can guilt-trip you because look at how hard you're making my life. Or a girlfriend or a boyfriend, oh, this is like, it's the, you know, you, why could you hurt me like that? Uh, you know, or the crying. It's the same thing, which is I am going to take my emotion and I am going to use it to control you.

Yeah.

If I'm getting angry at you, I'm trying to control you. There is a way in which I can get sad at you. There's a way I can be scared at you. Yeah, I'm on an airplane and a kid starts crying. I can like get up, look back in the plane. Everybody who's got like a face like this is somebody who wasn't allowed to cry. So that's just like— so the, so the first thing you have to do is like understand where you're at. Yeah. And what you need and attend to that. So anger, someone starts yelling at you, it's pretty obvious. Okay, they're, they're not yelling into the world. They're not yelling in the room by themselves or yelling at me. Yeah, that's really clear. So what's happening for them? Well, they feel out of control. They feel alone. They're like, I can't get the support that I need in that moment. They are often feeling, um, like unseen, unappreciated for what they, what they've been trying to do. It's typically— and a lot of alone is in there. So if you address that If you say, hey, hey, I really want to support you and you're making it really hard by yelling at me, or I see that you're really upset and I want you to know that I do care about you, it's just I can't do this with you right now, like, it can change that anger a lot. So an example of this is I had a client who was working for one of the most famous Silicon Valley narcissists, and he would come into the team every week and just start yelling at everybody because they weren't on time or on track or whatever. And this had happened for like 6 months. And I was like, here, you know, here's something to try. So she does it. She— he's yelling and she's like, hey, I want you to know it's— what you're saying is really important, and we really, really understand that what you're saying is, is, is wise, and it's something that we need to be doing, and we see that your vision is important, and we really want to help you, but it's really hard to help you when you're yelling at us. Mm. And he never yelled at them again.

Mm.

And then he joined her board when she started her own company, which is one of like 3 boards that he's in, and asks all the time to be on board.

Yeah.

So she's actually addressing the underlying issue that's there. And it's the same thing that you do whether somebody's sad or somebody's scared, whether it's at you or not at you. You, right? So if somebody's super sad, if they feel, you know, it's like, oh wow, this, you know, this sucks for you. And it sounds from a male point of view, this sucks for you is like, this sucks for you, sucks for you, dude. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. But it's interesting because oftentimes the person who's sad is just like, yeah, it does.

Yeah.

And that's all they need. They just need to be seen.

How does— yeah, because I can feel like sucks for you, dude kind of has this like get away from me energy versus like, oh, that really sucks.

That really sucks.

And it's, it's got that there. I think it's so important, this vertical alignment that you're sort of talking about. Like sucks for you, dude feels like this, or sucks, you know, and versus like, oh man, that's both of them.

This—

oh, oh yeah.

Oh, it sucks for you totally disempowers the person. You can see people do this all the time. One complains and the other one's like, yeah, that's horrible. It's just disempowering all over the place. But pushing away also, it's just, no, I'm going to be here with you in that sadness. I'm going to be here with you in that fear. There's a deep desire to be seen in it, and there's a deep desire— there's almost like a way in which love is trying to break through in that moment, right? It's like, oh, I'm sad, and, and it's like, oh, if I, if I can be with your sadness, then your sadness doesn't manipulate me. All the game's completely up. Yeah.

Let's do fear, 'cause this has been one of the really hard ones for me.

Fear's a challenging one, 'cause as men we are really taught not to feel that.

And when you say, "I see that you're afraid," the gut reaction for most everybody is, "No, I'm not." I just ask, "What are you scared?

What are you scared might happen?" I don't say, "What are you scared of?" I say, "What are you scared might happen?" And that's it. That's all I do. And everybody—

a lot better. Everybody answers that question because there's an outcome.

Yeah, there's an outcome. What are you scared might happen? Or what are you concerned?

What are you concerned might happen? It's even more gentle. Yeah.

And then they, they can like say their thing.

That's great.

And then you can be with them, see the thing, and then make a choice. You can say, oh, I, I understand that that's a concern that you have, and I'm willing to take that risk, or I'm not willing take that risk. The thing that's interesting about fear to me is fear is an act of devotion. You don't— you're not scared of something you're not devoted to. I'm scared that you're gonna blah blah blah means I'm devoted to you, right? I'm scared that, you know, I'm not going to make enough money, which means I'm devoted to money, or devoted to my own security, or I'm devoted to feeling free, or whatever it is that money represents for me.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so there's an interesting thing when you can see your own fear, somebody else's fear, as just a form of devotion. It's really— it's a beautiful thing. The other thing that I think people miss is they're just like, how could I ever love that emotion? How could I ever welcome it? The same way you lift weights, right? Lifting weights is not comfortable. There's nothing like, oh, this is comfortable. The first time you did it, you're like, ouch. Yeah, right. And then you kind of get into it and then you're like, oh, this feels great.

Yeah.

And it works the exact same way.

So I hope that you guys enjoyed that conversation. Like I said, Joe has been a true mentor to me, someone that I'm greatly appreciative whose work that I found. Now, working with him one-on-one is actually something that's very difficult. It's something I rarely get the chance to do, but I have personally gone through all three of his publicly available courses: Connections, Masterclass, Grace Decisions. They're incredible. If you know me, you know that I basically sell Charisma University on this channel, but I really, really recommend that if this resonated with you, please check out Joe's work. We happen to have a coupon discount code that'll save you some money on his Connections course. It's the best way to start. It's like the entry-level course that'll give you a sense if you want to do this. It's very different than Charisma University because it's not done privately, it's done in relationship. It's a cohort-based model. Where you're going through and you have 2 meetings. You meet with somebody one-on-one and you go through exercises with this person and you meet with a group. What's really, really powerful about this is that no matter who that you wind up being partnered with or anything, whether you love them or you're triggered by them, what comes up in you is going to be useful in the relationships in your life. And it's designed in such a way that you don't need to have the perfect partner chosen by Art of Accomplishment because they teach you how to use your reactions and self-diagnose what's going on so that you can take that into your personal relationships. I highly, highly recommend checking it out. Like I said, if this has resonated with you, if you want to, coupon code is in the description, link is down there. And no matter whether you use our code or not, like, just Art of Accomplishment is great. Joe is great. I love this conversation with him. I hope you guys did too. So hope you enjoyed it. Look forward to seeing you in the next one.

Peace.