The Truth About Your Excuses

I was a man for a number of years who was ruled by his excuses. You know, I had excuses for everything. I had excuses about why I couldn't go out. I had excuses about why I was so damn poor and broke and in debt. I had excuses about why my body didn't look the way that I wanted to, why I ate like crap, why I didn't feel good most of the time. I had excuses about my behavior and my relationship, excuses for porn watching excessively, excuses for my cheating. You know, excuses for why my career didn't look the way that I wanted. Like, I really had a number of excuses in my life that were running the show. And I remember working with a mentor. This is probably like 10, 12 years ago, and we were having a conversation. I was bringing this up because. Well, I was bringing it up because he called me on it. We were working together, and I hadn't done an assignment that he had given me. And he said, you know, you seem to have a lot of excuses. And I said, I know. I want to get past that. How do I get past that? Like, what do I do about my excuses? How do I overcome my excuses? And he said, you know, Connor, it's not that your excuses are getting in the way. They're not the problem. The problem is that you're afraid to face your fears. You don't know how to face your fears. And I remember going home that night and sitting down. I had this little desk in this terrible basement suite that I was living in. It's all I could afford. It was like 300 bucks a month. And even that was a stretch. I could barely put food on the table at that time. And I remember going home and taking out a pen and paper and writing down, your excuses aren't getting in the way. It's that you don't know how to face your fears. Excuses are just the symptom, and fears are the virus. And that stuck with me for a long time. I actually put a little note on my computer and I had it on there, and it said that phrase, and it said, do whatever it takes. Confront your fears. And since then, in many ways, that's what I've been doing. That's what I've been trying to do. Public speaking, getting my finances together, getting my health in order, getting my shit together in my relationship, not being unfaithful, being true, being honest, being direct about what I want in my life, and confronting the fears of asking for what I want, confronting the fears of building a business and making money and having people Judge me for all of those things. I mean, it's. I have really gone above and beyond to try and face as many fears as I could. And it has fundamentally changed my life, fundamentally changed my life. I came across this Aristotle quote the other day where he said, he who has overcome his fears will be truly free. He now I don't know about ever completely overcoming all of my fears. I don't know if that's actually even a possibility. But what I do know over the years is that on my journey, in my own personal life, one of the most radical things that I have done is to start to learn how to face and confront the fears that I've had within myself and within the world. And now, you know, 12 years later, a decade's worth of working with other men, with thousands and tens of thousands of men around the world, I've started to realize that not only are most men not equipped to face their own fears, but we've actually developed a culture where countless men aren't incentivized, they're not taught, they're not shown that facing their fears is not only imperative, but it will fundamentally lead to a sense of liberation. So we've cut out many ways, the tradition of initiation. Because initiation was meant to be this thing that would bring a young man into confrontation with something that he was so afraid of that he couldn't overpower, that he couldn't strong arm into submission, and in fact that he would be put into a sense of powerlessness. And that's the ultimate form of fear, right? It's like, what do you fear as a man? Well, maybe death, maybe some sort of ending, but at the end of the day, it's a sense of powerlessness, right? It's a sense of powerlessness being a man who is strong, who is capable, who is competent, who wields a certain kind of power, being put in a powerless position. And that's what initiation was really meant to do. It was meant to help us as men get into a kind of right relationship, to fix ourself towards the notion that there is indeed a merit, a distinct quality of growth and ascension and expansion that arrives on the back of facing our fears. And you can see it, right? You can see it within our modern culture. You can see this notion that the people who have been inundated in this participation prize, awards ceremony kind of existence are scared shitless to take risks, are afraid to face their fears. They don't know how to do it because they've never been taught that it's actually fundamentally important to us as human beings. And so there are so many men that are walking around in the world today and their lives are just riddled with the wounds of excuses. And they think in their heads that if I could only eradicate my excuses, if I could only overcome those things, then my life would be better. But it's the wrong question and it's the wrong solution. The real question is, are you willing to do whatever the hell it takes to face the fears that you've been avoiding? The fear of rejection, the fear of failure, the fear of pouring everything you have into something, into a relationship, into a purpose, into a skill, into developing a capacity or a capability within yourself, into trying to master something and having it not work? Are you willing to face that fear? Are you willing to face the fear of having people judge you or mock you, or ridicule you? You know, when I started Man Talks, I'll never forget, I really was terrified of people not liking me because I had developed my whole existence on people loving who I was. You know, if I could get you to laugh, if I could get you to like me, then, then I found a sense of safety in that. And so when I started Man Talks, I knew unequivocally that I was going to face some hardship, I was going to get pushback, People weren't going to like it. I mean, even the name Man Talks was going to get some flack from people. And I'll never forget, I put it out, you know, the first couple weeks and first couple months, and I mean, I got so many comments from women being like, why do men need this? And, you know, I mean, just shit talking me like, this is misogynistic and all this kinds of stuff. And it was really hard. And every part of me was afraid of not being liked because I had been so conditioned while I grew up, you know, to gain acceptance, gain approval at all costs. And that's how I found my safety as a man. I had never been initiated. I had never gone through a process of intentionally being taught how to face my fears. And so later on in life, in my late 20s, when I went through this process with a mentor and he guided me in this direction of, okay, you're going to face your fears and here's how you do it, and you do it incrementally and you make sure that you're not biting off more than you chew. You know, the notion of the hero's journey where he hears the call, that's the first facing of fear. The first facing a fear that we have as men is that we hear the call. We hear the call to an adventure. We hear the call to start to sharpen ourselves in some capacity, to start to build ourselves into a more complete beast. As Jack Donovan would say. We start to. We hear the call to better ourselves, to expand ourselves as a man, as a father, as a husband, as a leader, in whatever capacity, as a son, as a brother, etc. And so we hear that call. And in that call, there's fear. What's going to happen? I don't know. I'm about to face the unknown, right? I want to lose £15. I want to start Brazilian jiu jitsu. I want to get into boxing, you know, I want to make more money. I want to start a business. All of these things that we feel within ourselves when we feel that first initial call. There's fear immediately. There's fear immediately because we don't know what's going to happen. And this is the truth about change. This is the truth about expansion, right? This is the truth about any quality of personal development, of growth within your life, Whatever area it happens to arise in, is that you as a man are going to be thrust into confrontation with your fears. It's not the other person, it's not the business, it's not the social media garbage, people commenting and judging you and, you know, telling you that you should be doing something different or that you're going to fail or that you're not enough or, you know, whatever it is, it's not any of those things. It's the internal fear. It's how you as a man will learn to carry, will learn to face, will learn to be with your own fears. You know, Thomas Paine had this great quote where he said, the slavery of fear has made men afraid to think. The slavery of fear has made men afraid to think. I would just alter that for the modern day to say the slavery of fear has made men afraid to act. I think that so many men are afraid to really act in a direction that would take them into some form of confrontation with their fears. But that's really the work. And so look at your life, look at your life today and be brutally honest. Admit that where you are afraid. Admit where you are afraid. Write it down, make a list, share it with other men that are in your life, right? Say, you know what? I'm trying to get better at facing my fears. I have all these excuses. I thought my excuses were the problems. It's actually that I'm afraid. You know, I'm afraid and I Don't want to be seen as afraid. I don't want to be seen as scared. I don't want to be seen as a man who isn't willing to face his fears. And so the only way that you can overcome that, the only way that is by a form of confession, by saying, you know what? I have been afraid. I have been playing small. I have been letting my fears get the best of me. The fears of getting myself into better shape, of earning more money, of paying off my debt, of having a better relationship, of bringing my sexual wants and desires into my relationship. I have been afraid. And here's specifically what I've been afraid of. The next thing that you do, and this is the hard part, is commit to confront. Commit to confront those fears. Bring others into the loop. You might want to find an accountability group, a men's group. You might want to just have one or two men in your life where you go through this process together. And you say, for 30 days, we're going to face our fears. For this quarter, right? These three months, we are going to prioritize facing our fears. That might be the fear of getting rejected by women. So you commit to confront that by going out and engaging in conversations and trying to get phone numbers and confront that fear directly. But you commit to confront that fear for a very specific period of time and you do it with other people. Right? The notion that you as a man should confront your fears on your own. Yes. That voyage, that journey is yours, right? And it's yours alone. And they are your fears. But. But there is deep, profound merit in confronting your fears alongside other men who are doing that. That is the literal definition of iron sharpens iron. That you go through this confrontation alongside other men that are doing the same thing. And you witness, you sort of feed off of their bravery, right? It's like bravery and courage can't happen without fear.

So if you want to be a more brave individual, the pathway is by going towards your fears and by starting somewhere that's realistic and manageable. I think where a lot of guys fall off the train and fall off the bandwagon, is that they try and confront fears that are far too great for them. You know, they. It's like they're trying to face the final boss, but they haven't leveled up, right? They've got like 20 levels between them and the final boss. And. And they're expecting themselves to confront and beat the final boss, but they haven't put in the legwork in the beginning. So start where you are. Be Brutally honest, you know, be brutally honest about what you can and will confront and gain some momentum, gain some confidence in your capacity to face your own fears. And as you do that, over time, you will slowly mold and shape yourself into a man who is capable and competent at facing his fears. And by doing that, you will not only enrich your own life, but you will enrich the lives of the people around you. Because we live in a culture and a society and a time where fear is rampant, where the mind virus of fear has infected so many people and so many conversations and people are terrified of daily about so many things. And there are genuine things to be afraid of in our world today. But those of us that are willing to confront our own individual fears can also move out into our communities, into our society, into our cultures, and confront the fear that collectively we are struggling to manage. So start where you are. Start small. Admit what you're afraid of. Find people that want to go on this journey with you and commit to. To confront. And if you don't have your own group of men that you can do that with, then by all means, go and check out the Man Talks alliance on Mantalks.com There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of men doing this exact work from all over the world. Powerful men that are successful in almost every area of their life, that are committed to doing this work. Let me know what fears you are facing in your life. Hit me up on Instagram. Man Talks, and let me know what fears are you committed to confronting today, tomorrow, this month, this quarter?