7 Skills Every Man Must Master

All right, men, welcome to the Man Talk Show. I'm Connor Beaton and today we are going to be talking about the seven skills that every man will benefit from developing and mastering. Now before we do that, just a quick reminder. Hit the subscribe button below or the bell icon to get notified of future videos that I'll drop on how you can be a more self led, effective man in the world, a better husband, father, business leader in the world, because that's what this channel is all about. Okay, so let's talk about the seven skills. I thought about this quite a bit and put this list together based on the time that we are living in historically, but the time that we're living in socially, culturally, geopolitically, and based on the work that I've done with thousands of men over the years. And so the first thing that I wanted to start with is, is developing your capacity to defend yourself, both physically and cognitively. Now, most of the time when men talk about how we need to develop the ability to defend ourselves, what they're generally just talking about is your ability to defend yourself physically. Now that is incredibly important. And you can learn a tremendous amount about who you are. You can learn a tremendous amount about the world by doing things like martial arts, Brazilian jiu jitsu, combat training, weapons training, boxing, kung fu, etc. However, what we often miss out on is the really key importance of developing cognitive defense mechanisms, psychological defense mechanisms. So we've entered into a new era, new period of time that has been developing for the last decade. Decade to two decades just probably started somewhere in the 80s. But specifically in the last couple decades, what we started to see more and more is that the people who control the narrative of our cultures, of our societies, of our news medias and social medias, the people that control those have a tremendous amount of power. And we've entered into a time where we've stopped reporting news, right? News outlets and stations have stopped reporting news from a fact based perspective and have started reporting from a narrative based perspective. So what they do is they say, here are the facts and here's what you should think about the facts. Now, not all news stations do that, but generally this has become the prominent and accepted way of creating media, of talking about what's happening politically, geopolitically, economically, with, you know, within wars, etc. Is that people will give you facts and then they'll tell you how you should think about it. So for you as a man to stay sovereign, to have a sense of freedom, to have a sense of being Able to provide and protect yourself, your relationship, your family, your business. You need to know what and when you are being conscripted into someone else's digital or informational warfare. Because the reality is, is that we have entered into the age of information war, the age of misinformation, disinformation, fake news, hyper criticized online content, right? The fact that whenever you post anything online, it means that you're going to elicit, whether you like it or not, the criticization and the criticalness and the harshness of any, anybody that comes across. Eric, everybody has the feels like they're entitled to criticize everything that they come across online. And you are just like all of us, living through a time of hyper polarization, of real division and disconnection, both within the west and within the East. And so the reality is that you as a man need to learn not only how to protect yourself physically, that is an incredibly important attribute, right? I do that. I train myself in boxing, I've done some Brazilian jiu jitsu, I've done some combat, combat training, some arms training. All of those things are incredibly important. I would encourage you to do those things. However, I think that it's equally as important to learn how to protect yourself against influence through narrative, through story, through media, through misinformation. Now, there's a few things that you can do in order to protect yourself cognitively and intellectually and from the sort of narratives that are out there all battling for your attention. Because the reality is people want the attention specifically of men. Because men are the ones who engage in the fighting, right? Men historically have been the ones who wage the wars, who go to battle. And so the more that social media campaigns, news outlets, etc, can gain your attention and can create and turn you into a mouthpiece for their narrative, the more power that they have, right? There is a war for your attention, there's a war for your consciousness right now. So what do you do? Well, the first thing that I would recommend is reading a book by a woman named Carol Dweck called Mindset. This is all going to give you a basic understanding of fixed versus growth mindset, how to move into a more growth oriented mindset and out of a fixed orientation that is likely keeping you stuck, sabotaging you, holding you back, et cetera. The next thing that I would recommend is a book called Influence, which is by Robert Cialdini and that is all about the psychology of persuasion. Now that's a really good book because it's going to give you some insight into how our minds operate how we can be easily persuaded, how you can begin to understand influence, which is incredibly important. And the last thing that I would say is start to follow some bipartisan journalists and media outlets to the best of your capacity, right? So move away from the polarized nonsense maybe of mainstream media and go to a place called Substack. And substack is great because there are a ton of journalists there who do an incredible amount of work. And you can begin to piece together a set of individuals who are studying a topic, like a specific war or like a specific virus. And you can gather a tremendous amount of information based on these individuals. And I think having a diverse subset of people that you are following is going to be incredibly important, because otherwise it becomes very easy on social media, Facebook, Instagram, et cetera, for us to find ourselves in a bubble, in an echo chamber, where people are regurgitating the same facts, where people are regurgitating the same opinions about what's happening. And there's no diversity of ideas, there's no diversity of challenging a specific narrative. And you want to challenge a narrative because as people move towards more polarized ends, they lose the capacity for critical thinking, for real discourse. And for you as a man, that is an incredible, an incredible skill to have to be able to think critically about the issues that we are facing. And that will benefit you and your family and your relationship and your business. So that's number one. Number two is survival skills. I cannot stress this enough. I think that having basic training on how to start a fire, how to create shelter, how to clean your water supply when you are out camping, I think all of these skills, you know, hunting, using bows, using being able to hunt with a firearm, all of those skills are very handy. And as the world moves into this space of insecurity and supply chain issues and everything that's going on globally, it's not a bad idea to have these types of survival skills at the ready because it does a few things. One, it builds confidence for you and you know that you'll be able to protect and provide for your family should things go awry. But they also just instill a sense of reconnecting you as a man with nature. Right. If you take the sort of dystopian viewpoint out of the conversation that seems to be very prominent in our modern culture and society, it's bringing you back to an ancient form. Right. It's what Terence McKenna called an archaic revival. And the idea within the archaic revival is that we go back into the past and reclaim some of the ideas, some of the behavior, some of the rituals that we used to have, because there's merit in those things. And for us as men, being able to go back to the simple foundational pieces of knowing how to survive in the wilderness, knowing how to create fire, knowing how to create shelter, knowing where to find water and how to find water, knowing how to hunt and to be able to track a little bit, Some of those things are incredibly empowering. And also they put us almost, for some men, it puts them into a spiritual contact with nature, with a different part of reality and existence that maybe they've been disconnected from after living in cities for a very long time. So that's the second piece that I think is incredibly important. The third skill is money and finance. Money and finance. How do you provide for yourself? How do you save? How do you earn, earn more money? What do you do with that money? You know, I think one of the most surprising things for me when I started to earn money was that I had no clue what to do with it. You know, I had been broke and poor and in debt for my entire life. And I started to realize that no one had taught me, not my education system, right? The school system didn't teach me jack about money. My family didn't really teach me about money. And so suddenly, when I started to earn decent money and then started to earn really good money, I realized that I had no clue what to do with that money. I didn't know how to save it, I didn't know how to invest it. You know, I didn't know how to plan long term. And that had a detriment when I started to build a family. Because even though I was making good money, you know, if my son came to me five, six years ago, although I didn't have a son at that time, I wouldn't have known what to tell him. You know, I would have been like, yeah, make money, earn it, save it, you know, and then you spend it, et cetera. So begin to educate yourself in basic ways, and there are some good resources out there, I think. You know, Tony Robbins has put out, oddly enough, he's put out a good book, I think that explains basic principles like an ETF fund, index funds, how to actually save your money, how to look out for how the financial institutions take a tremendous amount and which ones you can actually move towards. So there's educating yourself within the fiat currency.

Sphere, right? Being able to educate yourself around the banking systems and some of those basic principles about how to get out of debt, how to stay debt free. How to save money. And then there's educating yourself on the side of cryptocurrencies and whether or not that's a pathway that you want to go down. Again, I'm not going to make a comment about whether or not you should or shouldn't do that. But for you to begin to educate yourself on, is that something that you want to invest in, something that you want to put your money into as a means of generating and developing your assets and how you plan for yourself, for your family? I think one of the biggest challenges that most men have when they think about starting a family is the big questions, right? How do I provide for a family? How do I financially plan for a future? Especially when we're living in times like these that are incredibly uncertain. You know, we don't know what's going to happen with global economies, we don't know what's going to happen with currencies. There's the rise of digital currency, so there's a lot of questions on the go. So. So allocating time to developing a bit of a sense of what economic options are relevant, are valuable for you specifically, and your long term goals, your long term vision for yourself as a man, for your family is incredibly important. And if I could say anything to 21 year old me, I would have said invest time and energy into better understanding financial markets and into, and not in like a global sense, but into better understanding what is, you know, stock trading entail. Is it challenging? Are, you know, are there basic sort of safe guesses that you can put money into that are going to yield a better return than say an rrsp or a 401k? The answer is likely yes. So I would just really reaffirm this is a skill that you can spend some good time and energy in and reap some reward. Because when you have financial security, when you start to develop some financial freedom, it's incredibly empowering for you as a man because you've created again, more sovereignty, more independence, more freedom, more ability to provide yourself, your partner and your children with the type of life that you ultimately are capable of having. Skill number four is listening and communication skills. So I think that this is an incredibly important skill that oftentimes gets overlooked. You know, for us as men, obviously in certain dynamics, like within relational dynamics, it's very common for people to say, like, men need to listen more and more. And while I think that's important, the art and the skill of having people feel and understand that they feel like they are listened to by you is a very Underrated skill. Now, I'm just going to break this down a little bit because that might be something different than what you've heard before. So usually we think about listening to people and we just sit there and, you know, we just listen to them and we're like, okay, you know, yeah, I get what you're saying. And maybe we give some feedback, you know, about how they can solve their problem with their boss or in the relationship. Maybe we give some advice. But having somebody really feel listened to is for them to know unequivocally that you understand what they're experiencing. And that's a different thing, because that's not about solving their problem. It's not about providing the perfect solution. It's not about just simply sitting there and listening. It's really about asking questions, getting curious, and being able to engage that person. From the place of I'm going to really seek to understand what your experience is. You know, if you're having a problem with your boss, I want to get to the depths of, why is it a problem? Not only why is it a problem, but how do you feel about that problem? What's the internal block that you might be experiencing? What's the story that you're telling yourself about this issue? And to get a fuller picture so that to the best of my ability and my capacity, I can understand the situation that you are in through your lens, through your experience. Because where most of us go wrong when we're listening to another human being, especially in relationships, this is like. This is like downfall 101 of how most of us get it wrong when we're trying to listen to our partner in our relationship. Right? Our wife is upset about something that happened with her mother or, you know, one of your kids. And most of the time we are listening through our own context. We're listening through our own filter. And so she'll say something about, you know, well, my mom said this about you or our kids, and I was really pissed off. And you're listening through your own lens of like, well, that wouldn't offend me. So why are you upset? And immediately we've missed the mark. We've missed out on the capacity to not only be empathetic, but to have a real kind of logical, pragmatic, and practical understanding of that other human being and what their experience is and what their perspective is. And so if you, from a rational, cognitive standpoint, as a man, want to really have exceptional communication skills, then you have to be willing to try that framework out. You have to Be willing to put yourself in the other person's shoes and perspective and say, okay, I'm going to put aside my views on this for a moment. What I think about it, how I feel about it, and the advice I want to give about it. I am just going to get curious about what is this person's experience. And sometimes that means saying, well, it sounds like you're saying this. Is that true? It sounds like you feel this way about your mom saying that. Is that true? And what you really want to do is start to build a body of evidence for whether or not the, the manner in which you are seeing things, the way in which you are hearing the other person communicate is accurate based on how that person is communicating. That one simple act of listening with the intention of truly understanding that person's experience, not from your experience, but from theirs, is one of the most powerful tools in being able to understand how to lead in your relationship, how to lead in your family system, right? Whether that's your kids, that's your wife, that's, you know, how to lead within the work environment, in the workplace, that one tool and resource is going to go a long way. I'm going to go through the last three here relatively quickly and give just a little bit of context, but these are equally as important. So the number five is regulation. So Viktor Frankl has a great quote where he says, between stimulus and response, there is a pause. And that pause is where we take time to regulate our nervous system, regulate our body, our mind, our thoughts, our emotions, so that we can respond properly. And an unregulated man is not a free man, an unregulated man, a man who is at the whims of his, of his nervous system. A man who is at the whims of, of his reactivity when his anger comes up, when his frustrations come up, and those are the things that are leading the charge. He is not a free man. He is a man that is a puppet to his emotions, A man who is a puppet to his automatic thoughts, his automatic reactions to a situation. So regulation equals freedom. When you can begin to regulate your nervous system and you have practices like, like cold showers and ice baths and breath work and meditation and mindfulness practices, all of these experiences are going to help develop a more robust version of you being able to regulate yourself under stressful situations. Because at the end of the day, your capacity as a man to metabolize stress is incredibly important. Men who can metabolize stress make for better leaders. Men who can metabolize stress make for more sovereign and free men. And that is what we need in the world. That's part of my. That's what I believe number six is the skill of cultivation or the skill of stewardship. Now this is something that I think we've lost a little bit of in the world today. And part of what has been a traditionally a masculine task, a male oriented responsibility, that we are stewards to things that matter culturally, two things that matter within our family, right? The idea of having something handed down through the generations, whether it's a tradition or a home or some land, or, you know, a spiritual or religious view, all of those things we as men can be stewards to. And that stewardship, which is the job of supervising or taking care of something, right? Such as an organization or property, that stewardship comes with a tremendous amount of responsibility and demands that you step into a different layer, a different quality and a different caliber of maturity. So my invitation for you in this skill is look for what in your life you would like to become a steward of. Do you want to become a steward of masculinity? Do you want to become a steward of a certain property within your family that can be handed down generations? Do you want to become a steward of a business or a movement or a cause? All of those things can be incredibly powerful. And this brings me to the last aspect, which is leadership. And the last skill that you can develop as a man that is incredibly powerful and potent is leadership. And leadership, by definition is the process of socially influencing one or more people towards a common goal or task. If leadership is about influence, really, it starts with you, right? It's about how you influence yourself towards the goals, towards the outcomes, towards the mission, the purpose, the vision that you have for your life. But then also how you lead, influence, make decisions for the people around you, right? Your relationship, your marriage, your family, your finances, all of those different pieces. So to develop leadership, the skill of leadership which many people are lacking in the world today, you know, many men have started to adopt this kind of dictatorship, tyrannical version of authority and leadership. And it's just not that, right? True leadership is a, is about the benefit of the whole, right? It's the real king archetype, kind of like Eragon in Lord of the Rings. He is the embodiment of the united king, right? The whole king. And that's what leadership, masculine, male oriented leadership is meant to be about. It is meant to be about the whole. It's meant to be about continuity. It's not meant to be about division. And polarization and hatred and those other types of pieces. That's a very different form of leadership. And that's, you know, in, in King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, they talk about the shadow archetype of the king, and that's a part of it. So developing your skill of leadership, making decisions, creating direction for yourself, for your relationship, for your family. Your being able to make decisions that create the pace at which certain things go. Being able to make decisions and choices that give your team in your work environment or the team of your family a sense of what direction the family is moving towards financially or for vacations or whatever it is. So those are the seven skills. If you resonate with this, hit the like button below, comment below, Let me know which skill you are working on in your life right now. Which one stood out to you the most, which one you think is most needed. And ultimately, if you think that I missed a really important skill, I would love to hear that. So comment below and let me know what skill you think I should have added. Until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off. If you want to learn more about leadership, you can check out this video above. And until next time, see you then.