SSP 115: Awakening Modern Men with Mercedes Terrell

Yo, what's going on, my friend? Welcome back to the State Shifters podcast. Jordan Kanlis here with you and I'm really honored, honored that you've chosen to spend some time with me today or this evening, wherever you are in the world. You know, I've just got back from a trip from Bali. I did a five day getaway, my first trip out of Australia in almost like three years. And wow, it felt so good. It felt so good to be back in Bali. Dam. And I kind of realized that it's time for me to leave Perth for a little bit. It's time to adventure, adventure on, begin the next chapter of my journey. So I'm really energized about this, this next phase of my life and it's happening, right? I'm gonna be leaving Perth next week. I'm not gonna tell you where I'm going right now. It's a bit of a surprise. But yeah, I'm leaving. My life is changing. But I'm pumped to be back here on the podcast with you guys. And I've got an amazing guest today to share with you. This was such an awesome conversation. Our guest today, her name is Mercedes Terrell. And Mercedes is a powerhouse online, to be honest with you, and she has an interesting line of work. She works with men in a few different ways. And I'm going to let you listen to the podcast to find out what I mean by an interesting line of work. But we also resonate and align on our purpose, which is to support the awakening of the modern man. And that's kind of a big part of what she does with her workshops. And some of the content that she shares as well is creating an opening for men to step more into conscious, embodied living, which, as you know about what I'm, what I'm working on right now is a big focus for me, is supporting men working directly and specifically with men in understanding how to embody more confidence, power and presence in their life. And this conversation today with Mercedes is. We went in lots of different directions, but we went deep. We went deep and that's the stuff that I love. This is the juice, right? Like the stuff that actually matters is how to actually become a powerful man in your life and what is required or what is needed from the women to support men in embodying that. So we cover some great topics. This is such an epic conversation. I highly invite you to follow Mercedes online at Mercedes Terrell on Instagram and she'll give you more information about what she's up to on there. But but without further ado, please enjoy this podcast with Mercedes and if you resonate with it, give us a review. Give us a rating on itunes. That would mean a lot. Enjoy the episode, guys. Peace.

Welcome to the State Shifters podcast, a.

Show dedicated to helping you discover your true potential through connecting the mind, body and soul.

Foreign.

We're back on the State Shifters podcast. I've got the beautiful Mercedes Terrell with me. How are you today, my friend?

I am fantastic. Glad to be here, pumped to be.

Here, and as usual, my intuition always takes me to the guests that need to come onto this podcast. And I was stumbled across your Instagram feed and was like, wow, this, this, this woman is putting out something special, something unique. And we were just chatting up before we jumped on here about how you're sort of like this Trojan horse for men who want to explore the inner work, who. For men who want to come into this work. But coming at it from a bit of a roundabout way. Do you mind explaining to listeners a little bit about what you do, Ms. 80s and, and how you got into this line of work that you're doing right now?

Yeah, I love that it's being looked at now from a more. I want to call it, like, forgiving or open mind. Because I think when I first started this work, I was really put in a corner like, ah, you can't, you can't do it. You can't enter the work from this direction. And the direction that I chose early on, as we were speaking about earlier, is really with my sexuality at the forefront. And it's not the sexuality at the forefront. And the type of like a sex expert, you know, sex. Someone who teaches about sexuality, or a sex educator, this type, or even an intimacy coach. Even though those are things that I definitely play with in my work and I definitely hold as incredibly important because I think our sexual power is. It's all power, you know, it's all of our energy is. Is built inside of that creative energy, that sexual energy, and so, so important for us to understand what that is all about. But I'm coming at the men that I want to work with from a place of consumerizing my sexuality. So in the sense of like being the Instagram model or being the only fans, you know, model where I offer sexy content to the world. And then I ask, like, you're saying the Trojan horse aspect of this. Then I ask people if they want to go deeper or I. They come across me maybe because of the workshops that I offer for men or, you know, because of the different means and videos and things I put out there that are very much focused on the inner work portion of it. I'm creating a book right now, actually, that I call. I'm calling it. So Far, I'm calling it Big Dick Energy, but I made the acronym DICK D I C K mean something that you need to embody. So right now it essentially means direction, integrity, critical thinking, or conscious thinking. And then kink. I was going to make the K kindness, but I decided it would be kink because it really speaks to. So far, that section as I'm writing, it speaks to sexual energy, like we're talking about, and how to understand it and embody it and, you know, course it through your body instead of just release it every time you ejaculate. So I'm having a lot of fun figuring out how to communicate, see the world. And especially to my. My following, which are largely males, that idea of inner work, trying to use the word work with men in my sphere is sometimes even difficult in itself. And spirituality is another part of that. And I think those are. Work and spirituality are two words that I noticed. Turn men away. And so it's been interesting trying to get creative in the way that I'm entering this field of, like, how can you come to my world? And even if that's to objectify me at first, still stay long enough to realize that there's something more here to open to. And then even just, you know, that idea of objectification, I don't know if you noticed, but I don't say it in a way where I have any, like, there's no heat behind it for me, because I did a ton of work, like years of therapy to really resolve a lot of my sexual shame. A lot of my feelings around my sexuality that came from religion and through my conditioning and through my upbringing. And during that time, a lot of that was understanding that my job as a model. For so many years, I've been a career model probably longer than most. Most models go. And I've been very fortunate for that and very grateful for it. But part of that was my ability to understand objectification and that it doesn't have anything to do with the object itself. Actually, it has to do with how, you know, other people are perceiving you, which is none of my. It's none of my business how someone else looks at me or what they do with my content or whatever. What is my business is how I feel while creating the content. What is my intention while actually creating what I'm putting out into the world. How do I feel in that? And I think that for some that absorb my content, that translates. And that's part of the reason why they do stay and they do take my workshops or they do, you know, talk with me in the DMs about their life issues and we get to another place and I create, I believe, like real connections with these people on a level that they might never experience because they probably come a lot of the time come from a culture that says you can't go to therapy, it's taboo, or you can't explore your inner self, or you can't feel your feelings because xyz. Yeah. So I love men. And this is the way that I'm talking to them.

I love it. So unique. And it's obviously so in alignment with the work that I'm doing. And we're kind of just both coming at it at different angles, but the underlying intention is the same. And can you tell me a little bit more about what the kind of the next phase is? If a man comes into your kind of network and your or your ecosystem, you know, and they come through the Trojan horse, let's say, and then you want to invite them if they are interested in going deeper into this work. What kind of workshops do you run and what kind of content does that cover?

I love that you, you brought it through that way because I, I envisioned this like spider web, you know what I mean, that I'm catching them in and I'm this like, I like to say, like black widow in the sense, because it can be really extreme and feel very consuming and deadly. Even when someone approaches their self and their inner work and the fears that come up with that. And that's, that's what the work really is that I offer. It's that, I mean, it's so funny because what you're talking about with what you do with your work. By the way, I'm a big fan of your work, so I know, I know what you do with your work. It is so much in alignment at the core. At the end of it, it's the same work that we're offering. You know, it's what we probably. I'm speaking for myself here, but I'm assuming you too have used to heal ourselves and have used to get to places that were being blocked, like in order to have a more full spectrum experience while we're here. Right. And also to figure out purpose. So in doing my own work. And that's the same work that I offer to the men who are willing to, to get to that place. I was, I was able to figure out what purpose really is. And I believe purpose actually is doing the work to figure yourself out. I think we have this like, confusion about purpose needing to be. So it's like so far out there, like, oh, I got to get to this place where I, like hear this calling. And then it's going to be like, boom. I'm, I'm, I know now I'm going to be, you know, the best real estate agent in the world, they believe their purpose is. But those things that look like jobs are actually like, peripheral. Like even my job, if I want to call it my job here as either a model or as a life coach or, you know, whatever name you want to put on the job that Mercedes is, is peripheral to what my real duty is. And that's to recognize the privilege I have of doing my inner work and becoming self mastery, self masterful. I actually define success with self mast as self mastery. So it's like if we could just understand that the, the only thing that you need to focus on is figuring yourself all the way out, like decoding and uncovering all those lost parts of yourself that you lost long ago because of emotional wounding and things that we all go through that would be like this. That's literally the solution for us to live in a peaceful state and for us to live as harmonious humans and to steward the species forward and, you know, make all these moves, leave the legacy, do all the things that we want to do, feel purposeful in our lives, in our day to day. And that's what everybody's after, is that feeling of like, I have purpose, which makes me happy, which makes me want to wake up tomorrow, et cetera. But it seems like we have to go so far out and then find our, like rock bottoms in order to turn back to it. So to answer your question, because I know I went off on some other place, but the work that after entering the sphere, if, if they do enter through the world of sexuality, which some do, some don't, just depends on how they come. But if they enter the world, let's say they enter through my only fans, for instance, and they start playing with the content there and it's the sexy content. And maybe little by little, as I'm planting seeds on the wall of my only fans or in the DMs there or whatever of like, hey, you know, inviting people to come see what this other work is or, or even just watch a video. Like sometimes I'll put a video on there of Some maybe it's an instructional of, like, how to what I would call, like, masturbate like a king, or like, how to make some part of their life sacred and intentional and present. And then little by little, you know, they start realizing that there's something there to play with. That's more than just, how do I get. Get. Release this tension. Release this tension, you know, like, how do I fall asleep tonight? Cause that's a lot of guys issues, I think, why they come to sexy content or how do I just feel better because I don't feel good. I don't want to feel the feeling, the negative feelings, you know. And that's another reason why men come to sexy content. And so as I offer other alternatives for that and they begin to see what's there, it really opens up. Like, the type of questions that come through are so outstanding sometimes that I'm like, shook. And once they're starting to talk about things that are really hitting feelings, you know, then I can see that they're opening to a place where they may be receptive to the workshop or to even just like a book recommendation I might give. And I honestly feel like right now I don't even push. Like, I don't push my workshop almost ever. I feel like if you want it, you got to go dig it up and find it, you know, and that's the only way it's going to work for you anyway. So why. Why push it? And then the other piece of it is like, I. I'm attempting to tread the ground of, like, being a female. So I'm in this body that happens to, like, want to relax and have that feminine energy happening. But I also feel very purposeful in the work I'm doing. And I have this drive and I have this way I want to, like, structure it and give it to the world. So to try to invite men through my sexuality, which is so feminine, you know, and then give them work which feels very overt and masculine. I have to be careful of how to be inviting and receiving and loving and nurturing in a way that, like, allows them to come forward and kind of. This sounds maybe very esoteric, but I call it like entering the void. And you can think of a void like. Like a literal. Like a vagina would be, right? Like the same kind of idea of the womb and the vagina. The thing that men actually deeply want to be received by is the feminine and is this woman who's, you know, the void, who's this chaotic, like, place that you can go in a sense that you can, you can be consumed by, but that because you are so much in your own masculine, you know, how to get yourself together and keep your, you know, disciplines about you and do what you need to do to move through the rest of your life. So I don't know with, I don't know if I'm answering your question well, but with my work, I'm attempting to kind of navigate these different places that I play in on just my, like regular life with the 5 million plus men that happen to follow me.

Yeah, it's this, there's so many different avenues. I want to take this, but I'm so fascinated by this approach because almost what you're doing is you're, you're, you're bringing out this web, attaching all these men, bringing them in and then like flipping it and like reversing their attention back from external into the internal. And yeah, I'm curious, like, what's the, I'm going to say conversion rate, but like, what is the, the number of men who come into your field and then end up going on this deep, internal, spiritual, purposeful journey within themselves? Like, have you noticed, like, you know, with every 10, there's like kind of one guy that discovers himself along the way? Like, what do you, what do you, what are you noticing there?

I think the guys are willing to go as deep as, like I really desire are not anywhere close to what I would like. I mean, I'm talking, I don't know, I don't have a percentage on my mind, but I would say it's more like one in a thousand, you know, or more like sometimes it's even less than that. When we're talking about people who are really getting committed to the work.

Yeah.

From the entry point that they're coming at. But that's one of the things I was talking about with you before we got on is that I know I'm going to burn, you know, a little bit at the stake here for the type of work I'm doing, the way I'm trying to enter it. And with the burning is also where it's not, it feels like it's not working. But I also have this weird faith that I am planting seeds, you know, like I am fertilizing in a sense, like these grounds. And whether they even come through my work or someone else's work or like I'm doing this show with you if, you know, you were to come on my show or something, I'm happy for them to find the work through you. You know, and I have this belief that the more I give, the more I will receive in one way or another. And even so, I know that if spending my time on this planet, it gets to be alongside men who are doing this work, however the hell they get to that work, then my life is the most abundant life I could possibly live. And so I would say tons of men, lots of them, a high percentage, interact with it at some degree. So I know I'm making an imprint. And that's even when I post the deeper stuff, you know, the more esoteric stuff even, and anything about inner work. A lot of men are touching it, but are they translating to go dig up the workshop or to go talk to me about their, you know, issues that they want to discuss on my platforms where I offer that they. Unfortunately, no, it's not a ton of them, but it's enough of them to keep me doing it, you know, it's enough for them to keep it, to keep me feeling like there's a lot of hope there. Yeah. So I have a ton of hope for men. And I know that the way I'm entering it is not like maybe, I don't know, maybe it's not the most business savvy in the sense that, like, okay, I know I'm targeting exactly my market, but I also have this belief that those men are eventually going to need that help and it's there for them when they're ready. And I've also been in this business for so long that I've seen these men literally age alongside me, you know what I mean, for so many years that I know they gotta be having these pain points coming up, you know, if they haven't hit them yet, they will soon. It's as soon as their liver gives out and they stop drinking to stop feeling their feelings or whatever they're doing to escape. And I happen to know this too. I'm not a porn star. I do consider myself a sex worker because the work I give is sexual based, even though it's not prostitution or anything like that. But I believe we need to like kind of normalize the term sex worker. So I still call myself that. And because men are coming to the work, I mean, it's coming to me through my platforms and it's not porn or any kind of hardcore, you know, any of the hardcore stuff we see out in the world, I know that they already are closer to the man who I'm trying to speak to. Does that make sense? Like they're getting closer to the, to wanting to have that work. And because it's me and that. And I never shy away from talking about this stuff, I know that something must be resonating. So they're also being warmed up in that way. So I'm with you.

There's levels to this. Right. And yeah, what I see so beautiful about this is your audience is predominantly men, probably, I would say, like 75 to 80% men, I would assume, and more. Yeah, yeah, millions of men. And naturally, just because of your essence, you're going to attract way more men into your audience than me. My audience is actually predominantly women. 70%.

So funny, huh?

Right. So there's like this overlap here where you're going to get way more attention than me just purely because what you're putting out and who you are. And if there is bridges that have been created now through this work, what you're sharing, what you're inviting them into, then that's the purpose element. Right. Because I'm kind of. My intention is the same thing. I want to build a bridge for guys to be like, hey, you know, I used to play semi pro sport. I used to be into the gym and the drinking with the mates on the weekends. But, you know, here I am over here now. There is. There is another way, you know.

Yeah.

So we're just building these bridges and the purpose is the same. And I really admire you for your courage to go about it this way, because I'm sure there would have been a lot of people who would have tried to bring you down for that approach. I would love to know more about what's enabled you to get so certain within yourself, to have this level of clarity internally as a. As a powerful woman doing this work. Because it would take. It takes a lot of confidence and belief in yourself to do this. How have you been able to cultivate that?

Yeah, that's a great question. Let's see, where to go with that. Growing up, I really needed a father who would stand up for me in ways that I really needed to be protected. And I also really wanted to be heard or to know I was heard better with my needs, my emotional needs. And along that path somewhere, I stepped into the shoes that I wanted my. My father to fill. And mind you, my dad and I have a good relationship now. We always actually had a good relationship. I was always, like, looking after him, really. And that was part of maybe the issue. You know, I was sometimes more of the parent to both my parents than they were to me. And through that, I did really, like, step into this masculine role. And this independent. I can do anything on my own. I never hated men or was never a man hating, you know, feminist or whatever, quote unquote. But I definitely resented when a man could not show up fully. And in integrity, you know what I mean? Like, when I say an integrity, I mean and in his wholeness. And of course, as a young person, didn't recognize what the hell that any of that meant, but I did somewhere in me recognize that these guys were not showing up the way I needed them to. And of course that turned into becoming a codependent in a lot of ways. Love, addicted in, in some relationships. And as the suffering comes, as always, the suffering comes, you know, through your life. And for me, the suffering came through my life and how it was reflected in my relationships, mostly my romantic relationships, as is also common, where I felt all these pain points come up. Like, I was the breadwinner in most of my relationships, and when I wasn't the breadwinner in my relationship, I was like, this relationship doesn't have any chemistry. It's too secure. You know, I didn't know these terms at the time, but, you know, this makes me uncomfortable. Why is there not enough quote, unquote, passion here and this type of thing? And obviously today I look back on those things and it's, it's hilarious. But it's also like, what a beautiful way I learned to look at myself. Like, why was I always calling in guys who I needed to take care of? Obviously because that's the way that I thought that's how relationships go. You know, you, you bring in what you, what you have in your young life with your, your care, you know, your caregivers when you're young. And as I kind of weeded that through and, and also asked myself over and over, like, what do I want? Like, what are my actual deep core desires? So much about it was being able to relax and let someone else take care of me and not be the, you know, people pleasing or like, I can do it all myself. I mean, I was hardcore, like, I literally built businesses and success was never even like a question or an option success. And I say financial success and I say that I should put quotes around it. I remember telling my parents when I was super young, I had two jobs at like 15, and then I just escalated from there. You know, I remember telling them when I was super young, like, don't worry, I have, I have five other sisters. So there was a lot of shit for them to think about, a lot of other people for them to worry about and I was taking care of. Of those other girls, you know, in my life as well. And so I remember telling my parents, like, don't worry. I'll always be able to fend for myself. Like, I already know that. I knew that from a young age. I'll always be able to, like, have money and take care of myself. I'll figure it out. I'll find a way. And I knew at that time that was something they. I thought that's what they needed to hear in order to, like, feel like they could focus on the other girls or whatever, on my sisters. And I also, of course, wanted to please my parents and make them proud and be this, like, kid who figures it all out. I had straight A's. I was a 4.0 student. I mean, it was like, there's nothing I can't do, you know? But the things I couldn't do was have healthy relationships, which is really what life is all a boutique.

Yeah.

Is having healthy relationships and feeling harmonious and good with other humans. And for me, as a person who would identify, even up till fairly recently, as anxiously attached, having human connection is super important to me. Like, I need to be around people. I'm not avoiding, you know, in that regard. And I'm not a record. I'm not avoiding people anyway. I want to be around them. Just recognizing those things made me go, okay, well, I have to just look at what it is that's me, you know, in me that's calling all this stuff forward. And I didn't really hit that point hard enough until I had finally started having all these panic attacks, depression, anxiety, just like, constant. I never had any of those experiences in my life. But I met my partner and this interesting thing happens that I think happens for a lot of people, especially around the age of 30. And I've noticed with women specifically, it's almost all of the women that I know that this happens to, where when you meet a partner who you know, this is going to be the person you're going to be with, and you kind of settle into that relationship and you realize, okay, I don't have to do what I've done my whole life, which is this sex hormone forward seeking for a partner to procreate with, mate with. It's completely primal, this part of us that drives us, no matter what's going to happen through us, whether we are conscious about it or not. And when you finally satisfy that part of your primal self that says, find a partner, make sure it's someone who's going to Be good to have children with you can settle down with or whatever. When you get to that place and you finally accomplish that, all this other comes up in the silence, in the settling, in the calm there. And all the shit that comes up is like, for me, it came up in physical maladies and feelings and on almost, you know, like, I call it dis ease, like disease in the body in the sense of, like, I literally felt sick or I was anxious or depressed or, you know, these are all mental side effects too, where I was feeling disease and I was having, like, stomach issues and I mean, like, all kinds of other disease, like I'm saying. And I had it. I was thinking, what's wrong with me? Like, someone just please diagnose me with a brain tumor or, like, something that I can go, like, cool. Like, I just need to get that surgically removed. You know, Like, I literally was desperate to get a diagnosis. I was seeing doctor after doctor about this, and they're like, just take some Prozac. And I was like, I don't think that's it. I think there's really something else wrong with me here. It can't be just my brain and the way I'm thinking. And so that search went on for a long time, but luckily I had a partner who knew a lot about yoga and had had some of these things happen for himself. And so I started doing yoga and journaling and. And looking at my dreams and dream journaling. And as I started unfolding all that work and then of course, reading, like, obsessively and, you know, listening to every guru about every subject in this realm that I could. And as I started unwinding all of that, I realized that all of my issues were just spawning from this internal war that was going on of where I was repressing, you know, all these places that I thought were not allowed to exist because they weren't perfect and they weren't, you know, A plus students or they weren't, you know, successful business women or whatever I thought was supposed to be. So you can imagine that that really created an issue for me because I had no. Relax. And, yeah, I was, like, burning the candle both ends. Like I said, I had so many jobs, I can't even. I can't even tell you. Yeah, so that's how I came to finally go, okay, I'm going to do all this work for myself. And I spent a lot of time in therapy, and I still am, and I always probably will be, and working on different modalities to look at myself, essentially. And to get some sense of mastery around my mind and my thoughts and building my philosophy of how I want to approach keeping myself well in all ways, you know, physically and mentally. And then spiritually, which came online, I think last, even though it's weird, because it was the thing I was most obsessed with when I was younger was like, the history of religions and that type of thing. And as I did all that, I realized I wanted to give it back, you know, to other people. Because I knew that anyone struggling through the type of, like, panic and anxiety that I was struggling with could be on the verge at any moment of, like, just not be just losing hope for. Why. Why would you want to live through that? And most people would take a pill at that point. I never did, I think because of the A plus perfect perfectionist, you know, whatever part of me, it didn't want to take a pill to fix the problem. And so I suffered through it, but allowed me to see things clearly for the entire ride. So that's essentially how I finally decided I was going to come to this. This type of work. And then just analyzing my. My following and the people who have supported me for so long, which so many of them were men, and noticing that in my life, in relationships, outside of my romantic relationships, I also had extraordinarily intimate relationships with men that were, you know, platonic, that were not romantic or sexual in any way. And I had always been that way, maybe because I had so many sisters. And I was like, I need some brother. What I was reaching for. My dad and mom are very intelligent and will go anywhere in a conversation also. So I think that was always a thing I needed, was that type of stimulating, intimate, esoteric or deep conversation. And so that's where I always went with my conversation. And so I knew I could have that with men without having to make it into, like, some sort of sexual thing. So all these things kind of came in line and I have kind of amalgamated them and put them together and created this work that I'm doing now. Long story longer. Sorry.

I love it because as you're sharing, I'm realizing or recognizing that this is such a common pattern for. You know, I've coached a lot of women who resemble a very similar upbringing to you, very similar pattern, which is father figure, not able to fully see them and support them emotionally and which turn then turns into the wearing the overachiever mask, which then turns into being a little bit too swayed onto the masculine side, doing a lot, but unable to soften and surrender into their feminine Essence, which often creates difficulties in relationships.

And I'd be so bitter and resentful and passive aggressive, you know, and all these things because I didn't want to actually feel into what was really happening for me, you know?

Yes, exactly. And I'm curious to know what was the specific thing that has allowed you to surrender back and meet those needs internally? To be able to see that that little girl that's down there that just wants her dad's love to be reassured that she's not alone, that she safe. Is. Was there a specific practice? Was it through the therapy, like, what enabled you to unlock that and then now go into your relationship where, you know, I'm assuming you guys have a functioning, healthy, conscious relationship where you're able to notice those patterns when they resurface and work through them. Was there something specific that you uncovered there?

Specific? It wasn't from. I don't know how everyone else's mind works, but the way my mind unfolds is like layers of. It's like this complex web. Again, we're gonna use the term, but it's this complex web of these, like, layers of. I have to think about it from every single angle. I think that's why I, like, obsessively research a topic. Whenever I research a topic, because I want to hear it from every perspective that's ever been written, almost, you know, or like, as many as I can get my hands on, until I feel like, okay, I have a really good intellectual understanding. And then I have to go, okay, I, like, literally, I asked the universe, like, now let me embody this work, which means, now let me experience it. And usually that comes with a shitload of negative feelings, which sucks. But it's also. I just. It's the way I know to do it. Yeah.

The embodiment part. Tell me more about that. How are you embodying this? Because I. I can see your. Your mind is. Has brought in so much information and is so vast in this understanding, but you've also been able to embody it. That's the part.

Yeah.

A lot of people, especially women who have similar patterns as this, struggle to. To. Yeah. Bring into their work.

Yeah. And so I don't think that the embodiment part was. Even though I intellectually knew how important it was, it was not my default mode because of. Like we've talked about, because my default mode is intellect and getting into the mind and thinking everything through. But I knew I had this part of me that just knows things. Like, when I met my partner, I think the second day I knew him, I knew that was going to be the person that I would be with like Mary and be with. Like, I just knew that was going to be my partner. I never felt that feeling before, but that was 10 years ago. And I remember the feeling happening and I was like, wow, that's the first thing I've ever known from a physical, bodily place. And so little by little, as I went through life and my experiences in life and used my intellect at the forefront for most of it, I'd noticed places where suddenly after studying something for a long time and then, you know, as I'm doing that, I'm living life at however long it takes to study something. For me, I'd feel this knowing. And sometimes the knowing comes like, oh, yeah, that's. That's it. Like, I get it now. Like, it's in me. I feel the whole like understanding click, you know, Or I'm in a situation where I'm like, that's the thing that I've been studying. But sometimes in most times for me, it comes up during journaling, which I journal like daily and a lot, where I usually get all this information out on the page. It's like so up here in my head. It's intellectually based. It's like, it's great. It's got all this amazing information in there. It's profound. It's got all the levels, it's take. It's got all the words you could possibly ever need. It's got every single articulation in it. And I've said it in a million different ways. And then at the end of it, I sit back or sometimes I don't even have to. Sometimes it's already coming through and it's this download that happens that isn't. I don't even have to think the words. Sometimes I'll just write them and I'll be like, that word shouldn't go there. But I'm writing it anyway and just letting whatever it is. And then I read whatever that download says and it's usually a couple sentences. It's very concise. And I usually go like this at the end because that means it's something I don't want to do, that I've been. I've been rejecting, needing to do. And it's going to move me through a pain point, but it's going to be painful because it always is. Just, you know, that's how we. Of course, if it wasn't painful, we would already felt it and gone through it, right? It's going to be painful. But embodying the work, if I can put it into language, especially for men, it's about, you know, the simplest thing that everybody says. It's about feeling, a willingness to feel your feelings. But like, you know, maybe to loop back in the earlier part of this conversation where I was talking about the void, I think humans in general, but men especially, they do what I call the avoid dance, the dance around the void, right? And what they're afraid to do is step into that abyss of feeling. That's that place that all the stuff that we've tucked away and we didn't want to feel comes back up from. And then we have to actually feel it in order to get through it. And so we avoided in a million different ways. And we use different escapisms to do that, whether it's drinking or gambling or shopping or whatever. And when we stop, you know, tittering our life away by avoiding and escaping, and we start becoming more intentional, conscious and diligent and maybe disciplined about actually feeling the. When it comes up, we get to step into our true, authentic selves. Because what's, you know, you already know all this, but what's trying to come through is that part of us that was probably a very young part of us that needed to be felt and needing to be experienced when it happened. You know, whenever what emotional wound stuffed us down or stuffed that part of us down happened? And so when we start feeling a yucky feeling, like I notice for guys, a lot of the time it's like a queasiness or something in the belly. For me, I notice it a lot in my chest or I feel it in my throat as tension. A lot of the time when I notice those physical sensations, I slow down. And so the number one thing I would tell guys is to slow down when you feel any kind of sensation. A lot of times we don't even have the consciousness to feel the sensation like that, when it's like a feeling in your belly or feeling in your chest or that. But we get triggered in a relationship. I think that's the easiest place to work on it because we all do get triggered in relationship, whether it's with your family or it's your friends or work or your romantic partner. And when you get triggered, everybody knows what that feels like. It usually feels like straight anger, right? Like, I call anger that kind of. I call it the head emotion for me, because that's where it likes to live. It's like so intellectualizing how to be right. I'm just like I'm gonna figure out how to be right. Yeah, yeah. And when you slow down, you can recognize what's really going on there because anger and sadness are always explicitly linked. Okay, so what is making me angry? Okay, I don't know. This person is trying to tell me how to do my job or whatever, Right? We're at work. And when you slow down with that, well, what's underneath that piece of like, stop telling me what to do. I don't. I'm not someone who likes to be told what to do. And I want to be free. Okay, well, I want to be free. What's under that? You know, like. Well, there. There's this place in me that actually feels like now emotional. Like in a. In a. When I say emotional, we're talking about sadness. But emotions, obviously, the full range of all the good and bad. And it's this place that wants to feel like they aren't going to be encroached on by their parent who might have been really overbearing, for instance. And that part is actually a sad little boy, maybe in this instance. You know, it's like a sad little boy who's just like, wanting to be seen for his free full expression, for the wholeness of who he is, and yet he's being told, like, no, you know, you're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to express in that way. You're not allowed to cry. Of course. That's a big one for guys, you know, you need to be a big boy now. And so he stuffs that down and he believes that that's really not allowed in the world. And he won't be accepted for. He won't be loved for sure if he left it out. And so that's so sad because if you look inside, there's that little boy. He's still at the age where that got told to him, you know, where that emotional wounding happened. And he's sitting there and he's essentially, like, trying not to cry so hard. Like he's just holding it in and there's all this tension and it's like making him literally sick. And maybe he feels, like, queasy because it's so tight in his belly or his throat or his chest or whatever. And as the conscious adult self, who we are today, if we're listening to this show especially, we're the people who are going to reparent that little lost child, you know, and show him that it's actually okay to feel now. And as the adult self, the conscious self the true self. We're going to bring him back online. But when we do that, it means we have to feel what he needed to feel. So crying and whatever he needed to feel in that moment and all the negative feelings as the adult self, we have to sit with them essentially, and let them, like, go through that. And when we do that, it's so hard to stay with it because we have this tendency in our culture to want to just, like, run from that feeling as soon as we feel it, right? We want to just put it away because we're used to, like, escaping or taking the Prozac or, you know, or drinking the drink or gambling or whatever it is to stop feeling that. But if we slow down, that's the mindfulness gap, you know, that's the consciousness that we need. That little split second, like that moment, we need. We take a deep breath and we recognize that the part that was acting out there is this little part, you know, this young part of ourselves, and it's stimulating our nervous system, the fight, flight, freeze, fawn response. And when it stimulates the nervous system, that's what we're calling triggered. And that's where we're feeling all the other stuff come up, like anger or aggressiveness or rage or even sadness is triggered inside of there, right? And grief, and it feels destabilizing to the nervous system. And when we're in that state, we're literally nervous, which is why it feels like tension in the throat and tension in the chest and tension in the belly. So why we take the deep breaths there, like every guru would tell you to do, is to tell the nervous system that you're not actually running from anything. You know, you're not having to be worried that your tribe is going to abandon you for crying, you know, because you're not allowed to cry. You're now in a situation where you're sitting with your adult, conscious, true self as the parent, the new parent, the parent that you needed all along. And it's holding, you know, he's the adult you is holding the hand of the young boy, you, let's say in this situation and saying, like, you can feel this stuff now, and you can feel that your nervous system is destabilized and out of whack. But don't worry, we have the privilege and the time to sit here and work through it. And we're going to breathe and we're going to breathe to remind the little boy and the nervous system related to him that it's okay to feel this stuff that comes up and then we're going to let that come all the way through and have the experience of crying or anger. You know, maybe it's rage that we need to pound a pillow or whatever we need to do or scream. Screaming so good. Maybe we need to dance and be goofy even. There's so many things that we stuff away. And then once that feels like it's finished, it's finished. At least a huge layer of it is finished. And it's so fascinating to me how long we stay in the suffering versus how long the suffering takes to move through us, but how much we are so afraid of the feeling. And I like to say to people, like, feelings are vibrations and that's it. They seem really big and they seem so scary and like we won't survive them, but they're literally just vibrations. So if we can just stay with the vibration and keep. Keep that consciousness on board, like the part of you that's witnessing. It's just the vibration that's happening here. It's not to downplay it because it's important to like take the gravity of what the child needed at the time, you know, what you needed at the time when you were having this emotional wounding. But it's to recognize from a conscious place that you can survive this. This is actually not a death threat. You know, this is not threatening your survival. So story again, longer. Just getting to that place of like finding my little girl and holding her hand and bringing her through this much needed reenactment, essentially of whatever I needed to go through. And then being that parent figure, which is so funny because I tried to write, like, try to step into being my father for all that time and my mother in other ways. But now as the conscious person who's not doing that unconsciously, I'm doing it from a very healthy place. I can actually help her move fully through the thing so that we can let it go together. Because if we can't move through it, we can't let it go together. I don't know what was your original question on this.

Who cares? That was. That was. That was amazing. Thank you for sharing that. So many nuggets of gold there. You know, the thing for a lot of men when they embark on this work is, is because there's been so many years of conditioning and patterning to not feel, to keep wearing the mask of a high achiever or, you know, the one who's always busy doing something, which is very common. Society idolizes that, right? The man who's like always achieving sacrificing himself to, you know, achieve XYZ Sporting field, you know, the, the corporate employee, whatever it is. There's now, there's like a new layer of conditioning that you need to carve out in your brain, a new pattern that says, every time that I feel this feeling, I go into it instead of away from it. And that's scary.

So, so hard, right?

Yeah, it's, it's terrifying because you're not, you're not used to the intensity. That's what it is, right? It's. It's an overwhelming sensation. And most men are very terrified by the feminine, that emotionality, that anxiety. Scared of it because we've labeled it in the past as, oh, that's bad. Last time that happened, yeah, I got shamed as a kid. That hurt.

The shame. The shame is always a lie. But the thing that's unfortunate is that the very thing that men are running from, this feeling their feelings, is the exact thing that will allow their wholeness to come back online, to be remembered. So I speak about the idea of integrity a lot. That's maybe like, you know, the basis of any of the work that I really care to get out into the world is around the idea of integrity, another word for wholeness. And when we talk about wholeness or like, you want to come to a relationship and as your whole self, or, you know, you hear that word a lot, or your authentic self, like, people are like, what does that really mean? Like, how am I not whole? How am I not authentic? I'm being me. But if you can think about the psyche as having all these different members in it, you know, I, I. My workshop's called Awakening the King Within. So I, you know, you can use it as the idea of the kingdom. It's got all these different players in it, you know, it's got all these different parts, and each of the parts have their different duties, and they all should be taking part, taking time on the. On the throne, so to speak, to play the part when needed. The warrior, for instance, the magician, you know, whatever the archetype is. And as these members, you go through your young life as these members come up. Sometimes your young, your caregiver at a young age says, I don't want to see that one at the throne anymore. Essentially, we don't want the, you know, we don't want the magician here. He's too sneaky, and we don't like sneaky people around here. Or he's got too many tricks up his sleeve. We can't. He's not predictable. He's too creative, right? Or the warrior. We don't fight. We don't hit each other. We don't do things that are violent. And that means. Sometimes that means, okay, well, we have to even stuff away where we're being. We're standing up for others, right? We're. We're being activists or whatever, or standing up for ourselves. Mostly is how that gets stuffed away. But as these different members get told, hey, you're not allowed to exist, essentially, when we're young, we decide, okay, well, stuff that part down. Like, we don't. We don't need that one to be online anymore. We do that at that point because we believe, and this is actually important because it's for survival purposes, from a primal place. We believe that if we don't stuff away that member of our psyche, that part of our psyche, that we will not be accepted by our tribe. We will not be loved, we will not be nurtured in the ways we need to in order to survive, because it's critical for our survival at a young, you know, as a young person, where we don't have those abilities to. To meet our survival needs. And so the work that I think you and I both offer is a, what I call remembering of your wholeness. So you're essentially taking those members and you're putting them into alignment where they're supposed to be with love. You're basically befriending all these parts of your psyche because they all hold something positive. It's just that a caregiver saw a negative part and decided that it was not worth existing at all. And you believed it, but it was a lie. It has so much gift that comes with any part of it that is, you know, got some tuning up to do. So as you remember your wholeness, as you remember your wholeness, you become what I call a safe man. And I believe a safe man is a man who has befriended the lost parts of himself and can feel his feelings fully. And a man who cannot feel his feelings fully can never go in to figure out where he's lost parts of himself so that he can recover them or remember them and bring them back online, he's literally disintegrating or disintegrated, right? As the opposite of integrated. So when a woman thinks about what she wants most deeply in a man, I have interviewed, like a zillion women on this particular concept, right? And if with this recent show, Mercedes in the chat, that's almost the basis of every single episode, and it's almost comical because it's such a exact pattern of what women bring up as far as what they want in a man that every episode it comes down to this, like, essential desire that what women want is the penetrative presence that she can surrender to from a safe man.

Yeah.

With the definition that we just talked about. A safe man is the only type of man who can bring that type of presence because he's willing to stay with the feelings and the chaos and the unexpected unknowns. The void that a woman brings that a womb man brings. Right. Her womb is literally like a example of this void, this place where all the feelings and all the chaos live. And so when a man can see himself for all those, you're calling it maybe feminine parts, but all those places where there's emotionality and there's feelings and he can use those feelings to source himself back to the lost parts that need to be recovered and befriended. He becomes this integral man, this king, as we call it, and the safe man that can now bring himself fully into the moment. That's what I call penetrative presence. And penetrate his woman and the world with that which is what all women want. Trust.

That's true, man. I hope the men are listening to this. I hope this is received by the right people because that's. That's it. And this is coming from a woman who has integrated and embodied this now and is now saying, hey, this is what women. You've interviewed enough of them. This is what women want. Like, it gets me sometimes because I still go to yoga classes and I'm like the only guy there. I'm like, where are all the men? There's so many beautiful women here. It's like you guys are missing out.

Yes.

Yeah. But you're so, you're so right. It's having a relate. A man must have a relationship with his inner woman. His inner female can do that. You're not going to be able to have an authentic deep relationship with the external women.

So I think maybe, like, I feel like I'm always trying to. Maybe I'm trying too much to cater to an audience that's living on a more surface level right now. But again, I want to be the bridge for those guys too. And maybe it's even to connect, this might sound even more feminine, I don't know. But instead of to connect with your inner woman or to connect with your inner feminine, because sometimes it feels like guys are like, oh, God, I can't do that. You know, it's too cringy or something. What if it's about connecting with the idea of the womb. Because we can all understand the nurturance that we got when we were brought through that channel into this planet, onto this planet. Right. Like the womb is this vessel, and the womb man or the woman that you're talking about net feminine that you're talking about is really this space of nothingness, you know, and it's. That's why it's terrifying, because anything can happen in there. It's pure creativity. It's pure darkness, too.

Yeah.

And I think that's why I called. You know, I said I'm kind of the black widow in this idea with the web, because I blink or bring this. This almost like, deadly characteristic that if you. If you get too close to it, a lot of men are afraid that they will be, you know, completely incapacitated and. And. And murdered, you know, murdered by the. The heaviness of it. The heaviness of it is something that lives inside of them and that they must encounter in order for them to be safe men. And, Jordan, I think I've heard you speak about this in. In obviously other words than I'm going to articulate here, but I know this is something that you work on, and I'm sure you work on this with men, too, but understanding evil in the world so that I know this conversation is going all over the place, but I feel like it's a really good example of exactly what we're talking about, where it's like pure chaos. And if you can make sense of it, you're the person. You're decoding the mysticism right now. You are the modern mystic, sir. If you can decode this labyrinth, you have initiated yourself into adulthood.

So many keys in here. You just have to pick one of them up.

And I'm like, yeah, like just one.

Just.

I don't know what you're going to do with it, but I hope you pick it up. This is. This is interesting. And I'll come back to the evil thing because it's so critical to this whole conversation and about a safe man. But I think it's fascinating that whatever, you know, our energies combined have pulled together is the most inarticulate I felt in a long time, or at least the. The least linear I felt in a long time, but in a way, the most feminine I felt in a long time. So it's kind of a beautiful thing to play with or to witness. But this piece about evil, I think is so critical because I believe that this is like, what would create. You know, I don't know peace on earth and harmony amongst all and help us finally, like shift the paradigm to steward the species forward in a positive evolution. And that is to understand what evil actually is. And I wish all people would just start like reading books on evil. Like, just start reading books on the concept of evil. A beautiful one to start with. Liberty Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill. Beautiful book. This idea has been sold to us in so many ways by every dogma you can possibly name. Well, not everyone, but a lot of them.

Yeah.

Regarding evil. And it has been shown to us and sold to us in this way that it is this external thing that's going to come and get you. It's the Black widow in the web and she's coming down, or he is the devil or whatever. You know, it's coming down to, to swallow you whole. And you can't, you know, you'll be incapacitated and you will be decapitated and you will be dismembered. But I'm using that word dismembered on purpose here with all the intention in the world because like we were talking about earlier, we realize that all the members of our psyche are also reflected in our worlds. Then we realize that the places of us that could ever be dismembered or disintegrated or eaten by the Black Widow are what we're calling evil. And none of it is external. It's actually completely internal. And anywhere that you see evil in the world is somewhere who is not living in that truth, and they're not living in truth in general. So coming back to your body and feeling what's happening inside you so that you can remember your wholeness, remember your parts, is the only way that we combat evil. But really all we're doing is integrating the evil and letting it know that it was all along part of us. And we just needed to see it as part of us and befriended in the sense of knowing that it had its place. Like some of the evil comes from extreme violence. But that part of the warrior, that part of the part of you that makes violence is necessary sometimes to protect your family or to stand up for something that you know is important to you. And it just, when it gets stuffed down, it comes out in what we call evil ways. It comes out as a shadow self. It comes out as these disintegrated, dismembered parts that are way overreactive and outside of reason.

So I bloody love that. The, the, the evil part is a great, that's a great example of you Know, if you haven't integrated those aspects of yourself, you are going to feel very true, triggered by the evil traits in someone else. And, and as you do this work, it's almost like you can see the evil in someone else and have compassion for it because that's a manifestation of what's inside all of us. They just haven't worked through it yet. So our role as conscious individuals now is to, is to bring love to the people who are projecting out that pain into the world and to be part of this, this work that you're doing, right? You're saying to these men, hey, I see you, I see you down there. You know, it's okay.

Yeah, yeah. And like, even on the most basic level, when we talked about the objectification piece of my work earlier, of being a place that I know, you know, being someone and, or whatever, a brand really, but that is going to be objectified sexually. A lot of people would look at that and go like, well, that's evil. And you're, you're, you're stirring it up and you're like creating it by putting work out there that can be objectified. I think that's a really fascinating concept that people have decided that if we do something with our. For instance, for me, if I do something with my sexuality, my physical, God given, blessed, gifted body and traits and beauty for that matter, and I put it into the world for the world to experience it as a gift with that is my intention. And someone comes and decides that they want to use it for some other reason, I don't know what they're using it for. Maybe it's some mal intent or it's objectification, as simple as that can be, which I don't think is mal intent, but you get the gist where it can go to a bad place, I suppose. What does that have to do with me giving a gift? You know, it's like, it's like we just need to understand, like you're saying, hurt people, hurt people. You know, as cliche as that is, it's the person who's hurting and is not in alignment, who is dismembered inside. That is acting from a place of, of dismemberment, of disintegration, a place that is not whole and therefore is not true. And just. I'll give you this too, a beautiful, I think, expression of what truth is or the way that I define it. So two pieces. One piece comes from a mentor of mine, Paul Selig, who says what's true is always true. And then Another piece comes from someone I interviewed a long time ago named Rifi Lindsay, who said, something is true when it's expansive, loving, and inclusive. And so that's really hard for people to understand because they say, well, isn't it true when something terrible happens to someone? You could say, well, that truly happened. Yes, that truly that happened. But if you look at the thing that happened, was it coming from truth? Right. And we can know that when it's not inclusive, loving, or expansive, then it is not true. And I think that really aligns with, like, just the universal law of expansiveness, of abundance. You know, it's the same idea of when you can understand that when something is actually in alignment with truth, when it's actually whole or true or authentic, it's coming from a place that is always expanding, always more, always abundant. It's infinite. It's reflected out in the cosmos. We can see it, like in so many facets of when we look out into the stars. The truth is that we are whole already. And we just need to remember that. We need to cut through the evil. All the bullshit that's been put in front of us that were lies.

Yes.

And remember our truth, remember our wholeness.

And once it comes through, it's received differently, it's felt differently. Truth vibrates at a different frequency. And as soon as you hear it, you feel it. And I feel like that's what you're doing through your work. It's what I'm doing through my work. You know, the place that it's coming from is at a different frequency. So I know it will be received differently by the people who discover you and feel the energy that you're putting out. It creates openings. Truth opens. Might be in a little, tiny little gap, but it opens something to allow something of that higher level frequency to come through. My friend, I have a question I wanted to ask you, and I don't want to run out of time before I ask it. There's actually a question that someone asked me on a podcast the other night. It was, how can. How can a woman best support a man in stepping up into this work? And maybe this could be for the ladies who are in relationships, who are doing their inner work, but seeing their man kind of like not step it up. And this is a difficult one. This is a common challenge for a lot of people, especially women, because there are more females doing this work right now than men. So how do. How would you answer that question?

How can a woman essentially get her man or ask her man to step up? It's such a good question. I have an answer like right off the bat for this. And I want to backtrack just a little bit and say for women, as I've found for myself, one of the most difficult things is to have mindfulness outside of your sex hormones. I think this is for men too. Let me just speak from that place, from a woman's perspective. I got breast lumps from when I was like 15 or 16 when I started taking birth control. And I think it was related to that. So I stopped taking birth control since then. So what I'm trying to say is I have felt my sexual hormones as they are for my entire life. Essentially I only took birth control for a few months and that happened. So I stopped taking it. And I think it's on purpose now when looking back because it gave me the chance to fully experience hormones in the way that most young women at my age and really all the way until you decide to have children and get off birth control, didn't get to experience the. There is a mania that comes with that every month. You have an ebb and flow of these different hormones that come online and create all kinds of thoughts in your mind. In a sense, for instance, during ovulation or on the way up to ovulation, which would be obviously a place where a woman is, from a primal sense, needing to find a mate to procreate with. Right. So from that primal sense, she is searching the world for these men. And what do we look for in men in that time when we're not on birth control? Which when women get off birth control, this becomes an issue in a lot of relationships because women actually start being attracted to something that's not their mate because their mate, they found that mate on birth control matched up with someone who probably is a lot more of a like safe option, less testosterone laden, right. Because their body. During being on birth control, you're being tricked into being pregnant, essentially. That's what the pills do so that you can't get pregnant. And during that time when you're pregnant, you're actually out of. You're now gone from ovulation. So ovulation, when you're in that phase, you're looking for like the testosterone lady guy who's going to be extremely virile, you know, he's going to be potent and he's going to make a baby with you that's going to give you give. It's going to give the baby the best chance of survival, you know, the strongest and the fastest. And whatever those Reasons are, and testosterone happens to be an indicator for a lot of that. But it's obviously not the end all, be all in modern age anyway. And we're talking about from this primal place because it's still what runs so much of our life. Especially because most of us run around as unconscious beings. So then you, we talk about someone who's on birth control just to round that out. She's coming from a place where her body believes it's pregnant. And so she's actually looking now for what women would look for in a primal state. You know, from think about cave women or whatever, what you would look for once you already got pregnant by the, the most, you know, fit surviving guy, survivalist guy out there. Now you need to find someone who actually is going to help you raise kids because sure as hell not the guy with the strong jawline and the testosterone because he's out trying to impregnate everything because that's what, that's what he does, you know, that's what that type of build does. And, and we're talking from caveman situation, right? We're not talking in modern day consciousness, but. And so now she's looking for a safe guy who's essentially going to help her raise her children and have some more. He's, he's maybe kinder and less violent, he has less testosterone going through him, that type of thing. So all that to say that as women for the large part of our life where we're in our maiden and mother archetypes, we are running these hormones through our bodies that create so much unconscious motivation for us to find a mate and secure mate. And we do almost anything in, in that causation, in that, for that reasoning, right? Until we decide to bring consciousness on board, which for most women, I'm going to say most women, that doesn't happen until what we call the crone archetype. So you got maiden, mother, crone. And crone is like past menopause, right? So postmenopause. So now those sex hormones are no longer happening in your body and now you've moved into the crone archetype. And during that archetype, that's when we call the wise woman. She's usually the oracle. She's like the woman of the tribe who like has her shit together. She's not out there chasing boys anymore trying to get pregnant, right? She's trying to give you advice of how to like come at life and be integrated and that type of thing. For most women, that archetype, that part of her being will not happen until she stops having these sex hormones go through her body. And that happens through menopause. Which is why the elder women are such a blessing to our society. And I wish we would see them as what they really are. They're absolutely oracles and we should be utilizing that. But any. Any who. So because we know that women are coming from this unconscious state of this primal sex hormone motivated place for most of their lives and they're interacting with men in the world from that place for at least a large part of the month. Even on birth control, there's still some ebb and flow that happens and they still have these symptoms. We can understand that they are going to have wishy washy standards a lot of the time and they're going to accept shit from men that is not okay. And then they're going to build bitterness and resentment. But feel because of these sex hormones that are coursing through their body and directing what they do with their lives, they're going to feel like they can't speak those needs out loud because it will cause the man in their life to recede, avoid escape, etc. Which happens more often than not. So to answer your question, Jordan, of what women should do in relationship with men so that they will show up as their full embodiment as kings in this world, it's to become conscious of the hormones that are going through your body. First of all, I think it's critical to track your cycle and to understand where on your cycle you're thinking, what you can do that by journaling and using a cycle tracker. And then to also hold your standards. And to hold your standards is it's hard for women because of these hormones I'm talking about and because of the culture we grow up in and because of the examples of codependency and all kinds of other ways that we figured out how to screw up harmonious, healthy relationships along our time here. But if you can do these things, get down to your core desires first, which I think you can do through a practice I call the 80 year old birthday practice. It comes from Stephen Covey who wrote the seven Habits of Highly Successful People. But I think that's good for anyone to do, to really get down to some core desires. You Basically picture your 80 year old birthday and you think about it from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to bed at night from like the house you wake up in, what your bed looks like, what the, you know, do you have a partner next to you who Is the partner or what are they? Like, if you don't know their face yet or what do you do with your day? Do you have family members that come over? Do you celebrate it? You have grandchildren by your 80 year old birthday? You know, do you, where do you live? Like, are you on a lake with a boat? Like, what do you do for your whole day? What does that whole thing look like? Do you get up and paint? Do you eat pancakes? I don't know. But it'll instruct you the type of money you think you want to be making, the type of career you want to have had. You will think about the things that people appreciate most about you and say around the dinner table, if you have dinner with your family, you know, it'll help you to indicate whether you're going to have children or not, you know, and if you're going to have a partnership that's healthy and that's what you want to wake up next to. And then you better figure out how you start getting there. Because if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably around 30 or over maybe, I'm hoping younger, because I want to be touching even younger people by this, this point in our evolution. But so once you get down to your core desires and you have those honed, which most people won't do, but the ones who were speaking to will, then you think about how you articulate those through truth and love to the people you need to articulate them to whatever those relationships are. And in this case, we're talking to a man that we're in relationship to. If I'm a woman, I'm in relationship with a man, I figure out what my desires are, I figure out how to articulate those things to him to know if his goals are in alignment. And then I do another thing. I actually think about what an emotional, what emotional needs. I need method. And in my bio it says awakening the modern man. That's like kind of like the tagline I have in there right now. And I think it's super important to define right now what the modern man is. Or you could say the modern woman is. And that is a privilege. You just replace the word modern with privileged. It's the privileged man or the privileged woman. And they're privileged in the sense that they have their survival needs met. They have food, water, shelter figured out by now, right? And if they're listening to this show, they're, they're not in dire straits. They're thinking about this stuff. They have the privilege to think about this stuff. And that is critical to understand it as a privilege because then you realize you get to do that stuff. You have all your needs, your, your quote unquote survival needs met, and now you have the privilege to think about your other stuff. Your other stuff is all the inner work we've talked about on this conversation, but it's also about your emotional needs within, within relationship. So I know a lot of people define emotional needs in, in a million different ways, but just kind of as a gist of what emotional needs would be is like validation, prioritization, space, autonomy, affection, acceptance, you know, these type of things, right? You could probably look up emotional needs somewhere and find a long list that you can go through and go, do I get these in a relationship? Am I getting enough of these in relationship? And then the first thing I'd ask you to do there or I'd ask myself to do if I'm this woman in relationship with a man who I want to call up into his kinghood, would be to assess myself, my relationship with myself. Am I showing up for my inner child for the emotional needs it has? What are the ways I'm not showing up for myself, right? What are the ways that I am not being the. You know, security is another emotionally. Trust is another emotional prioritization. How am I not prioritizing my inner child myself? How am I not trusting myself? You know, where are those places that I'm, I'm not trusting? Am I, am I giving myself enough space to be with my inner child? Especially like to be with myself? Am I giving myself enough validation? That was a huge one for me. As you can imagine, as a career model, validation was like completely external for me. It's like, am I finding ways to appreciate myself and figuring out how to cultivate my own self appreciation, self esteem, self validation, etc. So then after you have done your emotional needs inventory like that, you can go to your partner and say, here's the emotional needs I need. And these are where your standards really come into play. You have all your goals from doing this work, like the 80 old birthday practice or however you come about getting to those deep desires. Then you also have online the emotional needs that you've done the work to satisfy as much as you can for yourself. And then you've taken what percentage is still needed from someone else and you've been able to now articulate it to him and said, these are the things I really need help with you meeting. I'm doing my work to meet them the ways I can. And I'M going to be diligent about doing that. And you must. Otherwise it will. Your ask will be unreasonable and it will not be well received. And then you articulate that. So that's you asking for what you need. And then you hold boundaries around those things, which means you stand up for yourself. Essentially, you stand up for your inner child. Whenever you feel a trigger because your partner is not meeting a need, you go, okay, stop, slow down. My nervous system's activated. What's going on here? Okay, I'm not getting this emotional need met. Maybe it's validation. And you say, how much of that am I not meeting for myself? Okay, actually, I did a really good job of meeting up for myself, but I know I communicated to him that I need XYZ happening. I don't know, maybe I need, like, him to compliment me when I dress up for dinner night or whatever it is, date night, and he's not doing that. And I've already communicated it. So now you go back maybe, and you say, hey, this is a thing I said I really needed. And it. And you said you would show up for it, and you're not. I have a boundary around it that if this doesn't work, you know, if this can't work out, then I gotta feel into what I. What I need to do next to stand up for myself. Like, where are we at? You know, or however many times you need to check in until that feels like it's enough. And then you leave after that, if that's what needs to happen. But yeah, so those are how I. And in. Simply put, it would be, hold your standards, ladies. That's how you create a king, or how you call a king out, you know, up. But it takes all of that work to get there. So. Yeah, it's easy to say, but it's definitely some work to do. But it's not impossible. And actually it's. It's. Once you do it, you're like, holy shit, why didn't I do that so long ago? I wouldn't have had to date all these fuck boys and be miserable. Yeah.

I love the clarity that you brought around the cycle, understanding your cycle and the different hormones at play there. Like, you know that that's a whole other layer to that. Right. Of knowing yourself and knowing your nature. So thank you for sharing that, my friend. I. I knew we'd have no trouble with areas to go in this conversation and. And things to talk about. I feel like this time has flown by, but is there anything that you feel like you. You would like to say that you haven't had a chance to say yet to listeners or to people watching or listening.

You already are, is all that comes. There's this place inside of all of us that we're just born with. And maybe it's what's born when we're born. And it stays with you no matter how much you try to not listen to it or tuck it away or pretend it's not there and not calling you and asking you to look at it. And it's called a lot of things in a lot of different cultures, right? And I'm going to use the term, this is a Greek terminology called the daemon. But it's essentially this part of you, you know, you can call it like your soul, and it's this part of you that knows your potential. It knows the king in you or queen in you, and it wants you to go on this journey of uncovering it, of turning who you are now, this disintegrated part into it, which is essentially the integrated whole, authentic you, your true self. And it's taking that journey and saying yes to that journey is the most important thing you'll do while you're here. It's your purpose. It's the only reason you're in this simulation called human life right now. So if you miss out and you don't try and go after it, the next evolution of you, you know, of your simulation or your next generation will pick up the slack and hopefully do it then, or maybe not, and it'll take several. But the quicker you figure out that that is exactly why you're here and you start pulling on that thread, the quicker you get to see the results during your lifetime. And again, it doesn't have to happen in this lifetime. If time's relative, then it doesn't really matter when it happens. It's gonna. It's happening no matter what. But whoever's watching this right now, I have a desire, a deep desire for them to be able to experience that. Knowing that they are in their purpose and that they are whole and they feel what it feels like to be in that, because you realize that you're already. You already are. You're in heaven. This is bliss. And it comes through feeling your feelings. So that's it.

Oh, yes, I feel that. That's a great reminder. You are here. We made it. This is enlightenment right now. End game.

Yeah, we're here.

And so easy to forget that. Oh, wow, you've got some wisdom behind you, Mercedes. Damn. I've been thoroughly enjoyed exploring the void with you and the vastness of your beautiful mind. So where can people connect with you online? Where can people explore more about what you're up to?

The easiest way to connect with me is through really any of my social media platforms. I'll give you Instagram and they can branch out from there. Instagram is at Mercedes Terrell. It's spelled M E R C E D E S T E R R E L L. And yeah, I'd love for you guys to play with whatever of the content that I put out there. And it, like I said, there's a, there's a wide, you know, there's a wide range of what I, what I put out to the world. So anywhere you want to enter that space, I'm so happy to have you and I just wish all of your listeners and followers and you, Jordan, well on your journey, wherever it takes you and however it goes. And just want to say thank you for the work you're doing. I wanted to, I was listening to something of yours recently and I don't know why this came up in that moment, but I knew I wanted to bring it up here. Is that the work you're doing? Even though. Because I know both of us are in a space where we have a lot of these people who are doing similar work around us. So it feels almost normalized and. Which is beautiful because you feel like, wow, there's so much hope for this work. Like, you know, other people get it and you don't feel alone. But I wanted to say to you that it is rare AF and coming from a woman who has, you know, like I said, millions of men following me and the percentage of who is doing the work really and who really gets it is incredibly rare. So I just wanted to bring up your rareness in that and that I see you as a king and that you are here doing the work for yourself and that it is so obvious that you're in your purpose because of that. So I appreciate you for the energy and effort that it takes to, to stay with that and to stay with understanding the specialness of it, because I think that's a big motivator to stay on, on target and on the, on the journey because sometimes it gets really hard. And I also love that you're having so much fun with it. It looks like with the work you put out, especially like on your social media, that you're having a blast with it. And that's really refreshing to see that it isn't, you know, this work doesn't have to Be deadly serious. Black widow esque 24 7. That we can play with it and weave it through our life in ways that can feel like a breath of fresh air, can feel like our relief for a second, can, like, give ourselves a little bit of a break from being always in the dark, shadowy work so that we can reboot and, you know, regenerate ourselves so we can go back in when we need to take another deep dive. So I appreciate you bringing some lightness to the work as well.

Thank you so much. I really received that fully and that that means a lot. And you're right, you can't forget. You forget sometimes, you know, that there is not a lot of other men talking about this. And I hope soon there will be. But I'm thinking long term and I'm sure you are as well, with, like, this next generation, you know, we're at a crossroads right now in our evolution where there's a new earth being born. And this work that we are doing that I'm doing is we are birthing leaders of that new Earth. You know, if we can evolve the conscious man, the modern man, when they bring children into the world like my children, like, they're going to be, think of what this next generation is going to be if we have more men embodying this stuff. It brings me a lot of faith and hope that we're going to be okay.

That's so beautiful.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it actually reminds me, I think it's a biblical verse that I heard Jordan Peterson talking about recently, but it was the meek shall inherit the earth. You know, this. But the idea of meek being, like I say, safe man, because safe man might sound like safe. You're not edgy, you're not da, da, da. But what we mean is integrated, you know, what we mean is the conscious man who's willing to really look at himself. So that is who I think this next generation is hopefully, you know, going to evolve toward and they will inherit the earth, literally. So I hope that, that all. I hope our work, actually, I don't hope. I already know. I know our work is helping to facilitate that 100%.

So, yeah. Thank you again. You're amazing. And I know this won't be the last time that we. We have a deep dive conversation like this.