Men's Coach Reveals What Women NEED From Men (Max Trombly)
In this in‑depth interview, host Josh Trent talks with life‑coach and father Max Trombly about what men need to create safety, love, and authentic joy in relationships and life. Max shares personal stories of growing up with a mother battling cancer, the loss of his mother at sixteen, and his subsequent survival‑driven mindset that carried him through a decade in punk music, photography, farming, and entrepreneurship. He explains how his early "mother wound" created an inability to receive love, leading him to develop "energetic agility"—the skill of moving between mental, emotional, and somatic states to be present for his wife and children. The conversation explores the role of grief as life‑maintenance, the danger of bypassing grief, and how authentic joy only emerges after fully feeling sorrow. Max critiques modern self‑growth shortcuts such as peak‑experience festivals, plant‑medicine ceremonies, and addiction to pornography, arguing that without daily integration these experiences become "spiritual ejaculation". He describes concrete somatic practices (breathwork, cold/hot water, movement) he uses to manage nervous‑system dysregulation, back pain, and eczema. The dialogue moves to the broader masculine landscape: the need for mentorship, the four‑stage initiatory pathway for men, and the concept of "men of the soil"—men who are grounded in physical reality rather than digital distraction. Max outlines his emerging coaching programs, a holistically‑grown company, and his commitment to slow, correct growth. Throughout, both speakers emphasize presence, love, and the practice of guarding peace as the core gifts men can offer to their families and communities.
Chapters
Trust is the foundation of everything good from the feminine. If you do not, she will stop trusting you. She will stop being able to love you with an open heart, with an open body, with all of her goodness. Until you're a man that can sit in stillness and go, I fucking love my life, then you're actually just chasing a dragon.
Max Trombly is a life coach, father, and leading voice for healthy masculinity with 650,000 followers worldwide.
Women, they want love, they want safety, they want containment, they want a life that feels fulfilling, that has meaning. So many men have never received good love, and so they're just desperately attached to not receiving love. So when they're in relationship, a woman can't feel his presence because he's present with all these other things that are feeding him at some level, but not her.
Let's go into the most important skill on planet Earth.
Yeah, because you'll fuck it up all the time.
What is your understanding and embodiment of containment? What does it mean? I know you've said before, Containment is not control.
No.
Which echoes Teal Swan and Alex and many of the people that have been in the studio.
Yeah.
So if containment has nothing to do with control, not at all, what exactly is containment? And essentially, why can't a family ever thrive without it?
Yeah, so there's personal energetic containment, so self-containment, and then there's containment of relationships. So I just want to distinguish those two things. Self-containment is the capacity to really shore up where your energy goes and what you create with your energy. And so a lot of men are porn over here, addictions over there, confusion over here, numbing on their phone over there. So their energy is spiraling everywhere. So when they're in relationship, a woman can't feel his presence because he's present with all these other things that are feeding him at some level, but not her. So self-containment is directed energy. Like right now, I'm here with you. You can feel that, right? Yeah. So this is like, I'm—
we're here.
This is where we are. This is my energy contained. Now the second piece of containment is, yeah, I've got you, baby. Like my wife, like, I've got you, I've got us. Let's build a life together, and I'm going to action on it so that that happens. It's presence. It's a co-created life vision and acting on that. It's recognizing that the feminine is experiential and making sure that the feminine is having an experience that's positive if I want a positive experience of her. So it's like, really, like, look, I garden. Do you garden? You grow anything?
We just built a huge garden box.
Yeah. So when you garden, the thing that's cool about gardening, if you have a garden of a wide variety, is across a couple seasons, for that garden to really work well, It's not you just do one thing and then it's good. You have to tend to it. You have to water it. Some things you water more, some things you prune back. Like there's an art to a garden across time. It's the same thing with containing a relationship. What are the things that are needed for me? What can I do? What can I bring so that this feels good? This feels better. I talked about energetic agility earlier. That is my capacity to shift out of my work mode and be present with my wife when she gets home, which is what she needs every day because she just picked up the kids and everything's crazy and she's just in a moment of, you know, sort of not so much dysregulation, but it's a transitional moment. So if she gets home with the kids and I'm right here and I'm just like, I got it, let's go, let's do this, you know, she can relax and go, okay, great. And she can do what she needs to do to kind of come home while I can hold the moment. And then, you know, as we move through the hours or so after work, it's like, how do we make homework happen? How do we make dinner happen? How do we do this dance every day? Yeah. So that one person isn't feeling like they're killing themselves doing it all, and two people are kind of dancing through it. Each day to make sure it happens. So containment, it's presence, it's co-created vision, it's the capacity to create experiences with and for her so that she feels like life is good with you. Does that make sense?
Beautiful.
Sex and intimacy, joy, play, etc. And then also containment is long-term safety, which would be financial planning. And so whether you're the predominant breadwinner or not, as a man, you know, if you can really wrap yourself around this is how we're going to do life through the end of our days, that is another place where safety is really important. And women especially in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Like, the older a woman gets, the more she's aware that she is either okay or not at a financial level. And that's underneath her capacity to feel safe, period. So if a man isn't willing to come in and say like, I've got it, even if it's just like, we can work together and create a budget, or it's like, I actually have you and we're good. Like, if a man's not willing to do that, then they're just abdicating leadership around one of the core primary parts of safety in life.
Yeah, what comes up for me is I think about for a long time I resented the fact that containment has degrees of restraint. Yeah. And I came from this old school, La Mesa, California, like, don't feel your emotions, put some dirt on it and get back out there. I played football, like, nice, very like rigid, rigid, masculine, classic.
That's fine.
I mean, there's a time and a place for it. I actually think there's a time and place for it as well, but it's like a small, totally developmental curve. Then when I got into marriage, especially this is our 7th year of marriage. We had a tumultuous time because it was really about me setting a frequency or a tone that had lots of ups and downs. Yeah, it was about Josh's inability to process and grieve the old version of Josh.
Totally.
Since we're talking about grief.
Yeah, totally.
Because I was still attached to the part of me that had this ticker tape going and my unconscious would say stuff like this. It's not fair. I want to be able to come home after a long day of work and get her love and get her nourishment.. But the man in me called forth recently in the past 6 months. Yeah, that's even more aware of restraint isn't torture.
Yeah.
Restraint for containment isn't me taking a beating or taking a toll.
Yeah.
Restraint is me loving and respecting her in a way that doesn't involve words.
Yeah. Totally.
It just involves my presence.
Yeah.
And it's like I can feel the emotion of that with you right now. It's like it's so powerful and so beautiful.
So important.
It took me so long.
Yeah.
To get. How do you believe men can shorten that curve? Because for me, it was a long learning curve. That restraint actually meant love. Yeah, containment.
I mean, unfortunately, to shorten that curve, any man that confronts that— he, you know, this is the thing, is so many men have never received good love, and so they're just desperately attached to not receiving love. And like, that's their reality. And until— the way that I teach this in my men's space is women and children first. Like, as a man, if you can take care of your wife and your kids first, then she will be available to love you to the end of days.
Yeah.
And so it's not that I don't get my needs met and I just serve my wife and kids. No, I get my needs met beautifully, probably more deeply than anybody else I know. But it requires that I show up fully, serve and create the home that then, you know, she who is blossoming as love, desire and play can be maintained.
What was your learning curve with restraint?
Yeah, I mean, just realizing how much energy I was putting everywhere but my relationship, you know, energy that I was putting into even my own self pursuits for the sake of my relationship and like, you know, work life and realizing how much I had to actually contain my energy. This energetic agility piece. Like when my wife gets home, it's like, nope, fuck all that. I'm here. What's up? How you doing? What do you need? You know, what are we doing this evening? How do we get to this point? What has to happen tonight? You know, like really being present with that on a daily basis was the practice I just had to surrender to because I want to do it. I'm a worker and I'll read and type and investigate stuff for 120 hours a week, you know what I mean? But I had to realize that that behavioral style, even though I could justify it as the thing that I'm successful because of, was harmful to my relationship.
This is so good.
Here I am, you know what I mean?
So many times in relationship, there'll be like an avoidant attachment that goes with an anxious attachment. That's definitely how it was in my marriage. But I want to ask you this question about the way in which men and women relate, and then if you can tie this to safety, even better.
Yeah, I'm sure it's going to tie directly to safety because it all seems to boil down to safety and masculine containment, really.
You said when you sat in here, the first moment you got here, you were like, Men set the tone.
Yeah.
Which I want to go into with you. But I have this understanding that for a long time in my life, I was actually a prince, that I was pretending to be a king.
Yeah, that's what most people are.
Can you unpack that and tie that to safety? Why are most men pretending to be a king, but they're really a prince?
Yeah, yeah. Virtually everyone's a prince. And the difference between a prince and a king is, are you self-oriented and seeking your own experience? Or are you serving beyond your own experience and capable of creating your own experience? So let me say this again. Are you in relentless pursuit to feel something for yourself, or are you capable of feeling what you need and also holding that that is around you? Prince is self-oriented. The self-growth space is very self-oriented. You have a bunch of princes that think they're kings or pretend to be kings in that space. A true king can stand holding all the heartbreak that he's experienced, serving his needs from a place of co-created possibility, and serving all that is around him. Wife, kids, community, you know, I'm here for all of that. Does that make sense? And that's been something that really, like, it snapped my mind open because I don't see a lot of people that actually feel like kinks. But you know what, I had a really interesting experience years ago. I was a photographer for 10 years. I was music for 10 years, photography. I had a studio, it was a successful endeavor. I shot around like 250 weddings over the course of a decade, and I was in the American South And I would go to these weddings before the wedding. I would go to the family's homes where the grooms are like the groom, groomsmen are getting ready, or I'd go to the whatever. I'd go to these houses. Every once in a while, I'd enter into a home where you could feel the weight of the patriarch in a good way, positive way. Like you could feel like the grandfather. And even if he was dead and there was just a dad, like you could feel like lineage and like the patriarchal goodness. Like this is a contained home. This feels great. And like you could feel the matriarch and you could feel like this dynamic that just felt like, wow, this is something else. Multigenerational containment. And I didn't know what it was at the time, but I saw it enough. And I also saw other spaces where that didn't exist, that were chaotic, that were weird, that had a lot of drama, that I really— I was like, man, what is that? And now that I know what I know, I mean, 10 years of men's work, and I've been running men's events for a long time, and I've been teaching men and coaching men, and I work with women as well, but you know, I've been working really in the field of the masculine. Um, what I now know is that you know, there are kings out there. And what a king is, is somebody who has built his life in such a way that he can serve himself and serve beyond himself, period, full stop. Makes sense, dude.
I felt the energy of the younger version of Josh when you were speaking. I love that you said you could feel the matriarch and the patriarch. Yeah, and in a healthy co-regulation, co-creation way. I got an essence of that from my grandfather, and he had his stuff too. He was in World War II and Can you imagine, by the way, what it would be like to go to war? Are you kidding me?
That's fucking brutal.
Like, just the stuff that men have been through. It— yeah, our lives and our stresses of like email lists and technology pale in fucking comparison.
Grocery store meat. You don't have to hunt mammoths, right? You don't have to fight off warring tribes.
You literally don't have to shoot an M16 to defend. Okay, so anyways, the reason I'm saying that is because there is this poisonous soup that we're swimming in.
Yeah.
And it is this illusionary war that I want to get your take on. Yeah. Between hardcore fifth wave feminism and red pill, uh, David Goggins, Andrew Tate. Oh yeah, the gap that's widening, it's, it's just, it's such bullshit. In my heart, I see it for exactly what it is. It has nothing to do about what you saw in the house with the blended matriarch and patriarch. No, this illusionary war that's being fed, really, if we're being honest, by Instagram. It's being fed by TikTok and Instagram massively to get and views, which people are unconsciously outsourcing their attention for currency. What do you make of this bifurcated illusion of red pill and feminism? Can we just fucking put down the weapons and learn how to love each other again? Yeah.
No, you can't. Because look, anything that is rooted in reaction is not rooted in truth. Reaction is not truth. There might be truth in the reaction, but the thing is, anything that's reacting to something that's wrong is in the dance with the thing that's wrong. So men aren't, you know, men are bad. We need feminism.
Great. Cool.
So if you live in this dynamic where men are bad and we need feminism, that means feminism is only propped up on the truth that men are bad. So as soon as men are good, what happens to feminism? As soon as men actually show up, what happens there?
Yeah.
And I've seen it. I've seen it. As soon as a woman that's super, I hate men, gets— has a good relationship with a good man, that shit disappears, you know, because they start to do the dance of recognizing like, oh, there's actually a union here. And look, I don't want to shit talk feminism. It was really important in the suffragettes and the first wave of sort of equality rights in the United States and elsewhere and globally. And by the way, this does not exist globally. So, yeah, you know, one of the really crazy things in our culture right now is just how loud all this is. And it's like, yeah, but you have all the rights that you could want. You have the rights to do anything you want in this country. And, you know, people want to say, well, not this and not that. And it's like, well, yeah, but are you sure? You know, because right now people are pretty good. I know a ton of women that are CEOs of major companies. I've coached them. And, you know, and, and people are capable. Anyway, I want to get back to the end. To what you originally said.
Yeah.
I spent my life in hatred at systems because I was rooted in my pain and needing to find a place to put that pain. And so we have a world that hasn't grieved and they're sitting on top of pain, you know, mother wound, father wound, or just whatever. And the world is manipulating that, that emotional truth by going, and this is why you are in pain. This is why you can't succeed. You know, the number one thing to keep you disempowered is to believe you can't do something, but it's also the excuse for why you're not actually doing things. And people love to have excuses. And that's one of the things with this all is like, you know, I have a couple friends who I'm just like, man, if you just gave up that whole belief and realized you could do whatever you want with your life and started doing it, you'd, you'd be successful. But instead, believing that you can't because of systems and blah blah blah, and it's like, you know, it's just all disempowerment belief, which ultimately serves people that then manipulate those people. Cliques are money. You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And attention is money. And so the more people are, oh my God, fuck men, or like, fuck women all day on their Instagram. Yeah, David Goggins makes money, you know, Andrew Tate makes money in his podcast. But you know what's interesting? The whole red pill thing. What's interesting is, so I went to see Jordan Peterson talk. I was just curious, like, what is his in-person transmission? A couple years ago.
Yeah.
And, um, and I was curious what he was doing. And I'm in the city of New Orleans and You know, I had a men's circle in New Orleans for a while, and I had about 30 guys, but it took me like a while to get it to 30 guys. So Jordan Peterson comes out, and it's at the Sanger Theater in New Orleans. And right before he started, I turned around, and it was a packed house full of well-dressed men. And I was like, who are these men? Because they're desperately seeking a better possibility in life. These aren't angry, rednecky, I hate women men.
Men.
These are men that actually want to have a good life.
Yeah.
And, you know, these are the same men that are at Chris Williamson's events. These are the same men that go to, you know, some of these guys go to Tony Robbins. Some, like, these, these are men seeking a better life. I just was astonished how well dressed they were in the city of New Orleans. Three-piece suits all through the whole place. And when I looked around, all I could see was men of genuine care. Like, not men that hate women, men of genuine care. And then there was this interesting thing where he used an app where you could ask questions and then you could vote on the questions. And it doesn't matter what the top 5 questions were. I was curious what kind of questions men were asking. And they were so beautiful to see the questions. I mean, there were women in there too.
But what was some of the questions?
How do I create a real life? How do I create a life with a woman? How do I actually blah, blah, blah? Like, it was like they were all so attuned to the depth of potential.
Yeah.
And, you know, when you look at the pain underneath feminism or you look at the pain underneath red pill, what you have is people that just want love. They want love, they want safety, they want containment, they want a life that feels fulfilling, that has meaning. That's the core piece. And what most people are doing is they're on the rat race of life with no meaning, not knowing how to get out of that, and not knowing what they're working with at the emotional level. And so they're stuck in this sort of neurotic hyper mess. Yeah. And you can see it in the psychological prescriptions, you can see it in the behaviors in the field of life. Like, people are not okay. But then the people that are okay are the ones that go, fuck all that shit. Yeah, I'm just going to root in healing myself and creating the life I want to live.
And then that peace that you're describing.
Yeah.
You said the ones that are okay.
Yeah.
That peace that you're describing is a gravitational force that attracts others that are craving that peace.
Yeah.
And it's not just because like, so you have a certain degree of peace to you. That's why people are resonating, right?
Thanks.
I have a certain degree of peace to me as well, but I'm not always peaceful.
Yeah, no, but that's the thing about peace. But that's the thing about real peace is that You know, a man who can be of peace can also maintain that peace.
Yes, we can maintain that peace. But the question I want to ask you is this— this took me a long time to actually grok.
Yeah.
A man that is good with his imperfections, yeah, of not always being perfect, of not always holding peace, of not always being perfectly contained, is a man that can actually hold greater amounts of all of them.
Yeah.
In other words, his— to the degree that I'm an imperfect man.
Yeah.
And I set down my perfectionism mask, right? Then it takes away the pressure, which actually attracts more experiences where I can hold even more space. Yeah. And be even more productive. Have you found this in your work? Yeah.
The Heartbroken King. Like, the Heartbroken King is a man who— I'm here with my heartbreaks. I'm here with my imperfections. I'm here knowing the truth that life is not perfect. Like, if you can be of right— look, nobody's perfect and everybody knows that. And so if you can accept your imperfections and know that you're still here and, you know, ready to show up, like, that's really where people can trust you. Because anyone that thinks they're perfect or trying to be perfect or trying to get everything right is untrustable because that's just a nervous system reaction and a fear.
Have you heard of the four-burner theory? No. This is something I just came across.
I think I had heard of. Yeah. Go ahead.
Okay. Just recently somebody sent this to me. Yeah, it's on the screen right now, y'all. So there's a man who's really a king, not, not a prince that you've mentioned, not a prince pretending to be a king. Yeah, but a real king is able to look at his life in 4 sections. There's family, health, career, and friends.
Yeah.
Career could also be purpose.
Sure.
Where I'm at right now is actually I've turned down the burner on friendship. Yeah. We have guys that come over once a week and we do sauna and cold plunge, but I am fully invested in my family and my health. And my career.
Totally.
The, the, the theory says that we can only have two. I don't agree with that. I think just because a model is created doesn't mean that it's true.
Yeah.
What are your thoughts on that?
Well, I think that— I think that where that's wrong is that you don't have to have all four burners at the same time. So like on a Tuesday, you know, my first hour is wife and kids burner is pretty hot because getting them out, right? And then I can turn that down and I can serve that as a low simmer all day, and then I can really ramp up personal pursuit burner. You know, and then, you know, there's a way that you kind of look— if anyone that can— I'm from New Orleans, we cook. And so like when you're cooking, like you're constantly adjusting burners. So that's the way I would look at it, is how do you adjust your burners in such a way that maintain a cohesive balance in your life? That's the core piece. But this piece around friends, yeah, I mean, we have young life behaviors that you kind of have to outgrow. Like I don't have space for hanging out with friends at all, like at this point. I mean, I have some friends, we communicate, we have like a Zoom it's a, it's a group across the country. And so, yeah, you know, we'll have a Zoom call once in a while, we have a thread, we're constantly communicating. And yeah, but I have one local friend and we get together once in a while. But the truth is, man, I, I'm building a massive thing. And, um, one of the things that's been nice is I brought some of my friends in there, so we're able to kind of play in the realm of this development. But I, you know, my deepest purpose is my wife and kids, man, and it's my lineage. And like, you know, it's interesting, you said something like your career can also be your purpose. Yeah, sure. But I actually think your wife and kids are the deepest purpose, period. I mean, you can get rid of your career and start a new one 5 times in your life, but God forbid you lose a kid. It's a whole different game. Yeah. So like, I don't think that we're having real conversations about the depth of purpose. I think people think career is purpose. It's not something you do to serve your purpose. Does that make sense?
The purpose that I feel is that I am actually here to do what my soul is calling me to do.
Soul alignment in your career, in this current form. I think that's great.
Yet the deepest purpose below that purpose, which you're speaking about. I want my son, my daughter to look at me and go, wow, my dad's really doing his honest purpose. That's my ultimate purpose.
Yeah.
And I think, like you said, we— and even David Deida talks about this, right? There's, there's this liminal space sometimes where your purpose is actually to sit in the space of you not having your purpose so that your children can watch you be honest in your pursuit of your purpose. And be honest that you're not living it.
Yeah.
To be honest that you're in the space between it. I think that's— I think, I think a lot of men, they pretend to be a prince, they pretend to be a king, but they're a prince. They pretend to be on purpose.
Yeah.
But they're actually not. There's this enteric nervous feeling that we get around certain men.
Yeah.
They say all the right things.
Yeah.
But we can see who they actually are when we peer into their eyes.
Totally.
What do you make of that?
Well, David Deida didn't have kids, so how would he know?
Good point.
You know, Yeah, a lot of the spiritual teachers would say—
I love that answer.
Yeah, no, but it's just real.
It's very real.
Yeah. And then I hear this all the time from men that don't have kids. They're like, you know, your career is purpose. And I'm like, no, it's not. Yeah, it's just not. Yeah, you can get rid of your career and start a new one tomorrow. No emotional charge there. You could just go, I'm gonna adjust my life. You lose a kid, that'll kill your life. Your kid and the death of your children holds such a deeper importance than any career will ever. Does that make sense?
Look, you don't have to keep asking me if stuff makes sense.
I know, but I just—
you say it a lot.
Yeah.
And I just want to let you know, everything you're saying makes sense.
That's fair.
So you can set that aside.
I think it's a habit. I think it's a habit.
Yeah.
Does this make sense?
Well, because you're tracking here, you're a coach, right? And I get that, like, sometimes getting people on a yes— I'm here to say that everything you're saying makes sense.
Yeah, right. Well, that's fair. But no, but I want to make sure that we're tracking here. And so at the end of the day, getting back to this point, there's a lot of spiritual teachers that say really nice things, but if they're speaking from a vacancy of wisdom because they don't actually live it, then it's hard to know whether it's true. And this is my own personal path in self-growth work, was to realize how many teachers were just saying nice things but it wasn't based on anything. You know, a lot of the lineage philosophy, like, is not really actually lived experience that they're teaching from. They're teaching from ideation, and that doesn't mean it's true. Yeah, I know.
Stop saying that. Jesus Christ, come the fuck on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sorry.
So literally, when I think about all the ways in which The Way of the Superior Man taught me. I was single when I was reading it. And I literally, until this moment— yeah, this is why I love podcasting— until this moment, it never dawned on me that Dada never had children. Much respect to John Wineland as well. You know, his daughter, he's a father, right? And she, she's no longer with us. And I think about other people in the world who are in the space of relational healing or relational teaching. Yeah, it's not that I want to be negative towards people that don't have children. It's just through my own lived experience.
If you're a man that has children, you need to study with men that have children. Yeah.
For me, it's, it's an impossibility for my soul, and I believe for most souls, for most men who are here, to have a full understanding of being a king, being an embodied man, and living a life truly on purpose without children. I just don't see it as a true possibility for the far, far majority of us.
Yeah, if you have kids, your kids are going to be your deepest purpose, period. And if you ignore that or aren't aware of that, then you're just a dissociated father that's not actually showing up for what's available for him and the depth of meaning there. When it comes to the people that don't have kids, good for them, and they can do whatever they want, right? And I love the expression that a lot of people that don't have kids are creating toward. Yeah, but it just doesn't speak to what I'm living as and what most human beings are, because most people do have kids. It's actually a majority of people that have children. It's just that in certain bubbles like the Bay Area and here in Austin, there's a lot of people that don't. And so you feel like there's more people living that kind kind of expression of life. But the reality is that's not true at all. Most people have kids. When I was talking about Data earlier, the thing that people have to understand is that I have deep reverence for him as a relational theorist. And so in terms of his theory around relationship and the energetics of polarity and the dynamics and, you know, masculine and feminine energetics, he's a, he's a brilliant man.
Oh yeah.
And so I'm not here to just tear down Data, but the thing that I will say is you also have to understand that when it's missing the comp— like, how do you do 3 hours of deep eye gazing sensual practice when you have kids tantruming because they're like 3 and 5 years old.
Like, forget it. Yes.
So you have to learn how to work with energy in a way that's different, and you have to actually change your expectations. You know, even, um, whatever, I don't want to talk about other teachers, but there's just people that have these books, and when you read it, it's just like, that's actually impossible for my life, and I can't even integrate any of that really into my life because of the requirements that it requires. Yeah. So I studied with a number of people, and I read a number of books, and I looked at my own life, and I went, what is this really for a real human being, for a real human experience in which I have growing up. You know, I'm in New Orleans, Louisiana, so it's not just kids, it's not just wife and kids, it's wife, kids. It's a violent city. It's actual threats to my wellness and my family's wellness. Like, this is what I was living in as I was studying this stuff, going like, how do you justify that with this? And most people don't have to deal with that, but I live in a pretty hard place, and, and I've had to look at what does it really mean to be a man through the lens of that. Hurricanes where we're evacuated for 2 months.
Why do you choose to live there?
Well, her family's from there multigenerationally, and so we have an incredible community around us. You know, her mom lives down the street.
So it's worth the violence.
Well, we moved out of the space where that was a problem. Okay. And so, you know, I— we shifted where our home is. Yeah. And the other thing is also just I'm aware of what I need to be in the face of that. And that's one of the things around masculine protection that we don't actually have to flex. Most people don't have to flex it because we have safety, because men keep us safe. This is one of the funny things when women say, like, I don't need a man. It's like, only In a world where men keep you safe and hold the stability of life, can you say you don't need a man? But you need hundreds and thousands of men holding you up. Does that make sense? And so one of the things that we have here is we have places in this country where— dude, it took 7 hours for the police to show up after a phone call once while violence was happening, you know? And there was a point where I just realized, like, I can't rely on anybody but myself to keep my wife and kids safe. And so what does that mean? You know, and what do I have to do to become the backstop that they get to rest behind? Does that make sense?
So does that— so does that mean— it makes perfect sense.
Yeah. Sorry, Jesus, dude. It's just going to happen. It's going to happen.
I'll just give you grace on it.
Yeah, please do.
So what did that mean for you? Did you— did you purchase firearms?
Did you go through physical training? Yeah.
Got it.
Yeah, I'm armed and I'm capable of holding the exterior walls of my house. External threats.
I'm glad you said this, man. There's a great segue about data. I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Like there's— all these books in the studio, like, they're all important, beautiful wisdom, and they all have a really beautiful timing of the season a man is in for that wisdom to be fed.
Yeah.
So I, I'm glad you mentioned that. But it, but it's perfect that you talk about where you live because you really touched my heart earlier when you were talking about you went into the home and you could feel the matriarch and the patriarch there.
Totally.
It was this beautiful harmony. That's what I got from you.
Totally.
The harmony.
Yeah.
What do you believe in current modernity takes men out of harmony from being a patriarch in union with a matriarch.
Yeah. Self-satiation, self-orientation, the pursuit of self, which is what everybody's doing. Men and women are both self-satiation.
Yeah. What are the ways that shows up?
Uh, you're just pursuing things that have you feel a certain way.
Got it.
You know, all the things people—
vices, coping strategies.
Yeah. Self-growth work, everything, you know, trips around the world, Bali, Tulum, all this stuff. It's just feeding, it's consumption. It's a consumption lifestyle.
I have some friends, yeah, that are in their early 40s. I'm 45, and they have some friends that are in there. You're 45 as well?
I think so, yeah.
Yeah.
What year are you, '81?
1980.
Yeah, okay.
So a lot of my friends that are here that I've turned that burner down on, and I love them, they, they're still— they're going to play parties and they're doing all this exploration, which more power to them. Yeah.. But at some point, I'm like, I've had other conversations with, with fathers. I'm like, when are they going to grow up? Not from judgment, just from awareness. Like, when are they actually going to grow up?
Well, they're going to feel this is judgment because they don't know. But yeah, it is. It's completely self-orientation and self-satiation. Self-satiation. It's spiritual masturbation, man. Like, it's like, what do I need to do to feel certain things? It's like, it's just a constant pursuit of this.
And the veil— let's go deeper into this. This is a really big one that pulls men out of being a true king, I believe.
Oh yeah, it prevents it 100%.
It prevents it. So there's this guise in front that's like, well, I can still have responsibility and I can still be in authentic joy.
It's a full pie problem.
And my authentic joy looks like me going dancing and taking ayahuasca every month and doing MDMA at play parties 2 times a month. It's like, that's not reality here. You're just justifying your behavior. Yeah.
And you're putting your desires— you're putting your desires over her needs in relationship. Relationship so that she'll feel safe. Like, if you're in a relationship with a woman and you're like going to play parties and doing ayahuasca and doing MDMA like a couple times in like, like a month, like, I mean, some women are gonna be like, it's fine, doesn't matter, because they don't need safety because they don't need a man. But like, at the same time, if you want to create a co-created union where she feels safe, can you really be living that way? Yeah, you know, like, I know what my wife needs, I know what women need, and I'm speaking to this online and I'm generating a massive following because women need something that most people aren't talking about, which is discipline, orientation toward relationship, depth in that as life experience and purpose, and getting rid of all the stuff where we're just like, oh, but I want to go to this and that and the other thing. Does that make sense?
Yeah, I think about the way that I was not modeled what you're speaking about.
Neither was I, and neither were most of these people, right?
And so I'm, I'm giving grace to everything because gosh, it's, it's anytime I think something has to look a certain way.
Yeah.
I'm actually preventing it from being that, which is a strange paradox.
Totally.
If I'm casting judgment on my wife or my friends for the way they live their life, it, it, it—
I see your reaction to something that you're— yeah, judgment is just dancing with the thing.
Yeah, literally I'm stealing the potential energy of them being their authentic self, or you being your authentic self, or me being my authentic myself by holding them in a box of they should be this way.
Yeah, no, people can do whatever they want. But for you and for the men that I work with and for the people that I work with, how do we actually create a beautiful life from within our homes and within the, you know, not needing things outside? Like, I don't need anything really. Like, I'm good. I don't need to do anything on any day of the week. I don't need to go anywhere. I don't need trips. If I take a trip, it's with my wife, you know, or like, it's like with my family. Like, that fills me at the deepest level. You know, to see my kid playing soccer and just crushing it, like to see my daughter and her joy and her play, like that's where the depth of life comes from. And I get that that's not everybody's deal. Sure. But the majority of people have kids and they're missing out on the deepest opportunity of their life because they're in this sort of nervous system box of neurosis and just, this is what I need to do. Like, I can barely hang on. Yeah. So I'm really— I'm here to work with real people, like people that— and it's not that people are self-orienting, self-serving. People are not not real. But at the end of the day, like, I don't have any friends that don't have kids, and there's a reason.
Sure.
And like, that's just real because it's a different place.
It's, it's a more challenging orientation of shared responsibility and shared life path. It becomes more— it's like, yes, I can have single friends, but there's nothing in my opinion that's more sacred on planet Earth than marriage and children, because it allows me to step into a part of myself that lets the old part of myself die.
Exactly.
Celebrate that.
Exactly.
I celebrate the old version of Josh Trent. I love him.
Yeah, no, I love you, bro. Literally the best thing that has happened in my life is I've just, I've cut away all the things I thought I needed to feel good. And I've built a world where I feel good every day. Like, I feel good in love. I feel good as myself. I feel authentic in my expression. My kids are happy. Like, when things go off and they're like not happening well, you know, kids and tantrums, I know how to work that. We know how to bring it back to love. We know how to create joy. Like, being an artist of good in my home is the thing that actually feels good all the time.
Let's go into the most important skill on planet Earth.
Yeah, repair. Yeah, because— yeah, because you'll fuck it up.
All we all— when our car breaks down, we take it to the mechanic, but we're taught from our parents that you just keep going. Like, if your body was a car, you don't repair, you just keep going and you pretend like the repair was there. Yeah. And then you wonder why you get sick.
Yeah.
I believe— I'm curious what you believe, I believe that the majority of autoimmune illness, yeah, and the majority of really all disease comes from a lack of repair with self and a lack of repair with other.
I truly believe that.
What are your thoughts on that?
Well, first of all, I agree with that, um, you know, the somatic imprint of emotions that are unresolved, absolutely, you know, and their, their, uh, relationship to chronic disease. But I think, you know, I'm about to teach this on this, um, I'm running this men's program right now On Thursday I have a call.
What's the name of the men's program?
The Way of Man.
The Way of Man.
Yeah, yeah, it's rooted in ancient wisdom around what it means to be a man truly. Anyway, um, the call coming up is on, uh, From Tension to Resolve. And so in life there are moments where there's tension, and the whole art is how do I resolve this. And repair is often— if it's— if you're in union with somebody else in the tension, then repair. Hey, sorry, I mucked that up. I I could have done better. I mean, just last night my wife was like, yo, and I was like, I'm sorry, I could have done that better. And she's like, thanks. Boom. Rather than denying her experience perpetually across time and eroding the trust she has in relationship. Yeah, if you don't repair, you erode the trust and safety that a woman can feel in relationship with you. Men listening, this is a deal. Like, if you do not repair, she will stop trusting you. She will stop being able to love you with an open heart, with an open body, without— like, with all of her goodness. Trust is the foundation of everything good from the feminine. So repair is necessary, and getting good at it's really necessary. You know, I was just teaching the guys in North Carolina. I said, you know, for those of you that deal with shame and shame spirals, like, get over your shit. Fuck it. That's just super selfish. Like, oh, me, me, me, what I did wrong. Like, fuck that. Like, just let it go and then go, what's the next right action to bring us back to love?
Yeah.
And if you can come into that orientation as a man and you can steward back toward resolve, which is often a repair pathway or an energetic pathway, which I'll explain in a second, then you create a culture where we're all good. It's all good. Sorry, I fucked up. We can do better.
You know what I mean?
Oh, I said it again. No, you're good.
I'm giving you grace for that, right?
I know, I know.
This is part of the process.
Yeah, well, thanks for the grace. But you see, like, you see, like, you know, the foundational thing that a man can offer— um, look, I set the tone, and the tone of my house is we can make mistakes and we can still love each other.
Man, if you— y'all replay that again. Can you say that again?
Yeah. Men set the tone, and the tone I set in my house is we can make mistakes and we still will come back to repair and love each other.
That honestly, like, brings up emotion in my throat when I hear you say that.
Yeah.
Because the majority of my childhood, not only my familial experience, but even in my cultural experience growing up in East County San Diego, it was about forcefulness. It was about pride. And it was about something that I'd love to get your insight on. About 6 months ago, Alison Armstrong sat right there.
Yeah.
And we had a clip that went so viral, it was like 10 million people and they shared everywhere.
It was amazing.
Powerful statement she said. And she said, men, listen to me. Feeling shame is part of what makes you honorable.
Yeah.
When you're, when you're able to feel your shame.
Yeah.
You're an honorable man.
Yeah.
You talked about in your men's group, the men that are bathing in their shame and you're like here to be the the father figure that says, hey, enough with bathing in your shame. Yeah, let me teach you how to feel it so you can move through it.
Well, that's the core distinction, and, and she's right. So the thing is, to feel your shame is to be able to say, man, I'm ashamed, I really fucked that up, and I feel embarrassed. Yeah, that's ownership. But what most men are doing is they're getting locked up in the denial of that being okay. I fucked up, that's not okay, that means something about me. I'm not like— you know, there's this, this It's like a washing machine. Yeah, it's a washing machine. Yeah. And you end up just in your self-orientation in that experience of shame. What Alison Armstrong is talking about is the capacity to feel it authentically. Baby, I'm sorry, I'm, I'm an asshole. I really fucked that up, and I see the impact of that action on you, and I want to do it differently. You know, this was a big part for me. I, I wasn't allowed to feel— I wasn't allowed to make mistakes. If I made mistakes as a kid, then I was made wrong for it, right? And, and that's so many of us men. And so what that means is when we make mistakes or when we think we make mistakes, we hide because lest they find out and then we feel shame. So my work as a man has been to go, I just feel ashamed. And then it's so, it's so liberating. Like I've often said that shame, being able to actually feel your shame is the most liberating emotional state because that's the one that keeps most people imprisoned.
Yeah. You know, amen.
Yeah, totally.
On the screen right now for everybody watching, I know I've brought this up probably 1,000 times on this podcast, but it is the Hawkins scale, y'all. And literally, look at the bottom of the scale on the screen. Shame vibrates at 20 Hz per second.
Yeah.
The reason why shame is at the bottom is because that's the rock bottom where all the other higher frequencies come from.
Yeah, if you're in shame, you can't feel anything else, right?
So, so then if a man right now— speak to the soul of a man who's with us right now, or, or I don't even know if it's gender specific, but I think men, we have a harder time with shame than women. Can you speak to the soul of a man who's with us right now and he's so in the shame? Yeah. And he doesn't know how to get out of it. What would you say to him?
Two things. One, I would say, yeah, me too, man. I get it. It's hard to make mistakes and realize that you'll be okay on the other side. And the second thing I would say is, get the fuck over it.
How do you think he might respond if you said—
He'll be pissed, but someone will wake up. Someone will hear me out there. I just did this in my men's group. I said, most of you need to get the fuck over your shame. And get back on the horse.
Yeah.
And sort it out.
So let's go into that. You say get the fuck over it. I would say go the fuck through it.
Yeah, that's fair. But the thing is, most people are in this place where they can't feel it. And so it's just like, let it go, man. And until you can learn how to own it, then just let it go.
But don't you think it's going to come back around for them to have to go through it?
Of course. Of course. I mean, here's the nuance of how we explain things. But the thing is, look, in my work, one of the reasons people really gravitate towards me is because I'm not afraid to say the thing people need to hear. And often I'll call men on their bullshit, and some of the bullshit is just where we get stuck in our self-orientation. The thing is, a lot of men get stuck in shame, and it actually robs them of the truth of their reality. I had a guy who was so in the "I did wrong" in relationship that he couldn't see what she had done to him. And ultimately, what he wasn't actually feeling was the anger around what happened to him because he was stuck in some shallow, "Oh, it's just a patterning from young life," you know.
I can relate so deeply.
And it's honestly, it's not even real shame. At the end of the day, when you start to actually practice with your shame and just say, I'm ashamed, I fucked that up, you realize it has no actual grab on you. It's patterning. That's why I say get over it, because it's a pattern, not a reality.
I, I totally respect your language on that. That's cool. But one of the beautiful things about pod— people always go like, why'd you have John Demartini on? Or why'd you have Max on? He said this. And I'm like, I don't have to agree with everything that's fine that my guests say.
Yeah, but I think you do agree. Yeah. I mean, the The reality is you have to feel it. You have to feel the part of you that's like, man, I fucked it up.
Absolutely.
You know, so that's— and that's where freedom comes from.
Let's go into this aspect. I think about the way in which we're wounded happens in relationship.
Sure.
For you, it was— in full respect and grace to ask this question— for you, it was your mother exiting planet Earth early in your life. Then it was 10 years of photography, and then 10 years of something else, and then buying a farm. Like, it's been a large segmental journey for you. Yeah, but the original wound for you and for all of us happens, especially if you look at Mark Wollin's work, intergenerational trauma. He totally called it Didn't Start With You. He describes the mother wound as the original wound.
Yeah.
And the father wound is important to look at. But that mother wound for you, there's got to be so much good and so much joy that came after the grief and after the processing. Do you also follow suit in the fact that the mother wound in your life and in all your clients' lives and just in human life. Do you associate with that belief from Mark? Do you believe mother wound is the original wound?
Yeah, well, I think that, you know, the thing about a mother, whether you're a man or a woman, mother is the original safety. You know, when you're a baby, before you're even aware of the world at large, you know, her body, her breast being attached to her body, that's where safety comes from. It's a co-regulation moment. You know, there's, there's like all this attachment philosophy and my wife is really into this and she taught me a lot. But just in the early stage of childhood development, a mother's body is where safety is found. Her heartbeat, nourishment, you know, the two things that a baby needs, warmth. And so I think that when there's a disruption in the mother connection, especially when it comes to love, nourishment, and safety, it immediately starts causing problems. And then in terms of— I mean, the way I would look at it is mother is the seed of love and father is the seed of wisdom. Not that women don't have wisdom, But when you're growing up as a child, you know, your father kind of holds the helm whether you want to believe it or not. Like, you look like either your dad's on it and he's here and he's present, or he's not. And much of the wounding that happens is actually in the vacancy of those things. And so what I'm often unpacking with people in my work is it's not that your mom was a bad person, but the way she didn't show up in the places you needed it left a vacancy that had you grabbing for things without knowing how to do it or grab it— love, safety, orientation. Does that make sense?
We were standing outside before we hit record.
Yeah.
And you found this incredible artifact. Yeah, I'm going to put it on the screen for everybody to see.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's not a great one, but it's a— yeah, it's a preform that was—
and you were like, I just have something in my dharma that allows me to find artifacts. I think of this and I shared with you this story when I had a journey once, a medicine journey. I looked back and I saw an infinite number of pages.
Yeah, totally.
Where Max and Josh are on this page right here. And then I looked forward and I saw an infinite number of pages as well. Yeah. And I think about the way in which the story of your mother, your mom, your grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, totally. And then maternal and paternal. We are this amalgamation, I believe, of what I like to call emotional epigenetics.
Yeah.
Which is essentially our emotional patterns, our unconscious beliefs, and our environmental expression.
Yeah.
That turn off and on trauma or trust, safety or fear in our neural tree.
Yeah.
What do you believe about your lineage when you feel into your mother I'm sure you've done so much work on this, right?
Yeah.
But when you feel into your mother and when you feel into your grandmother and you feel into your lineage— yeah, in all directions— yeah, why do you believe you're here on planet Earth?
Well, it's interesting that you bring this up. I was just in the mountains with, uh, 50 men from around the world, um, and I was holding them in this kind of concept. And the way I taught it is this, to borrow from the Aborigines of Australia, you know, there's songlines. There's songlines that exist that sort of tell a story. And if you look at 100 generations back and 100 generations the future. We are in the middle of a song that's being played, and you might be inheriting a song that has a bit of a minor or a disrupted rhythm. Yeah. And, you know, your role as a human being, if you want to look at it this way, is how do I correct the song line so that it brings joy, light, and positivity? You know, you might not do that, and then you're just passing on a song line that's distorted and maybe not of health and, you know, rightness. And so what we get to do when we look at lineage is, yeah, what did I inherit that's of good? What did I inherit that's a wound? How do I sort out the wounds? How do I amplify the good? You know, every one of us has skills that come down the line for sure. Yeah. When I look at all the men that I come from, there's a distinct survival potential that these men had to kind of shift lives parallel, like, I'm going to do this and succeed. And I mean, that's directly in my way. Like, throughout my life I've been like, this isn't working for me. I'm going to go this way and then continue. And I've been able to kind of do that. And that's a skill set that my paternal lineage has going back to the 1500s. Yeah, you know, and so when I look at this lineage and then future lineage, how do I write the things that are off? It's just bringing myself into right alignment with my authentic expression— love, joy, play, goodness, and potential— and then passing that down the line. Yeah, that's my goal.
It's simp— it's simple in theory. Yeah, of course it's challenging in practice. Like earlier we talked about what happens in the arena Yeah, I feel like when we get wounded, yeah, the wound happens in relationship.
Totally.
And then it can only truly be healed in relationship as well. And I think about the arena that we're discussing right now. Yeah, in my opinion, there is no greater and more profound arena than fatherhood, being a husband.
Totally.
And working with children and being with our wives. I can't describe a more intense arena.
Yeah, I mean, I was just talking to somebody the other day. Um, my wife is my teacher. My kids are my teachers, you know, I learned from them in how my experience of self and what I'm expressing functions to make their lives better. You know, does she feel safe? We can get back to the safety thing in a second. But does she feel safe in this home? Does she feel safe and protected from the outside world? Does she feel safe across time? Does she feel safe as love between us? That's the field of play that I get to work with. And when that's not working well, what is that? And what can I do to shift and change that? So she being my teacher, really through an embodied way. Like, okay, I can bring a little more of this, I can bring some magic over here. It creates good, enlightened, enlivened life. Does that make sense?
What's one of the best things that you've learned from your wife about your way of being that wasn't aligned?
You know, I think with so many men, like, I spend so much time in my head. I'm a real thinker. Like, I think a lot and I philosophize in my mind and I think about all these ideas, ancient man artifacts, all these things. How to build companies, you know. I'm always in that place.
Yeah.
And the number one thing I learned from my wife was the need for me to pivot at the end of a workday and shift my energetic way so that I'm completely present with her and the kids when they get home. Because otherwise there's just this massive— like, it's two things like banging up against each other. I'm hanging on to work, trying to get things done. She gets home, there's energy with the kids, the house is shifting energetically, but I'm resisting that shift. Yeah. So the biggest lesson I learned was just energetic agility. Like, at the end of my day, shake it off, take a shower, do whatever I need to do to move my energy so that when she walks in the door with the kids, like, I can be like, hey, what's up, moving on, let's do this.
Yeah.
And so that was number one. I think number two is also the biggest lesson that I learned from my wife was my inability to really receive love, you know. Like, I was building a life with my wife to create love, but because I had lived for so long not really receiving love in a way that felt right or opened me to love.
Yeah.
With my wife, I just had to really look at all the ways she was loving me that were just kind of bouncing off me. I mean, physical affection is like my number one, but when she would put her hands on me and I'm in my head, I'm barely feeling it, you know what I mean? And so really looking at, okay, how do I become more attuned to her gifts of love so that I can actually live as and receive love? So, you know, those are two of the big things, you know, energetic agility and my capacity to receive love in micro moments. Text, touch, etc.
I know somebody watching, listening can feel what you just said as their own expression. Because to go back, there's 3 big things that we can connect the dots on. Number 1 was safety, which we'll go back to. Number 2 was the original wound, which is that mother wound that you described when we're having that, you know, in utero experience.
Yeah.
And then number 3 is actually even the awareness that we're feeling disconnected, even the understanding that we, we know there's something more, or we want to have a different connection with our wife or with our children, but it's not there. Let's go back to the safety part, and then I'll remember the other two. This is so good because when you describe being touched and then not actually being able to receive it, yeah, what is the biggest thing you've learned about— and for all the people with us, like, when they feel abrasion or when they feel tense around touch, yeah, what did you learn from that in your own life experience?
Well, the way I look at it is if I'm in a moment where I'm in my head and I'm thinking about things and she comes up puts her hands on me, if I'm not receiving it, or if I even like kind of like hunker down even more on my thought forms to try to figure out something in my mind, yeah, that is in direct contradiction to the life that we want to be creating in relationship. And I had to stop being— I'm not so important that my thoughts matter more than love, you know what I mean? Like, I'm not that important. Like, love is important for the sake of my kids. So I had to just look at what are my priorities here in relationship, and it's clearly not me thinking. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah. No, my, like, my priorities are creating a beautiful household.
Sure, sure.
And so, yeah, I mean, that's one of the things I really had to knock back is just like, my mind can wait until tomorrow. Oh, you know, really good. Yeah. And, and then the second thing is, yeah, just really taking a breath and allowing her touch to, to shoot through my body as a salve to my human experience. Does that make sense?
One of the biggest things that I feel from you is that you've had this separation from the mother early. How old were you when she left Earth?
Well, so what's complicated is that I— and I didn't even realize this— I always thought at 16 she passed away. So that was the wound. But the thing is, she was sick for 10 years with cancer. So when I was 6 years old, I basically lost my mom into her experience of cancer. And then it was just sort of this thing where she was always dancing around her fear of death, which was actually separated from love in our family. And she was— she loved me. She was a beautiful mom. She was really great at love. But then she would disappear into cancer moments. And I would be in fear. I'd be in prayer. And like, you know, I went through this whole thing, like, what's going to happen here? So from 6 to 16, I lived in a bit of a fear state and an insecurity. And my dad was a working man that just didn't really know what to do with all that. So he was in his own kind of fear and grief and his own stuff with it. And so when she did pass away at 16, and my dad went deep, deep into grief. I was basically just alone, you know, but I was already kind of making my life at that point. You know, when I was 15, I started setting up concerts for my bands. I was in punk rock bands for a long time. So yeah, I had like forged signatures for like Knights of Columbus halls to like put on these concerts. And I was bringing bands from New York City, Connecticut, all over the place and just setting up shows. So when my mom passed away, I just went— I doubled down on that. And so I kind of ignored the pain. And well, ironically, and was in punk rock bands, just expressing it into the world. Yeah, for a long time. So 16 to 26, I was in the music world in Boston.
You had said, to quote your writing, that unless grief is felt first, yeah, that joy and love can't come afterwards. I find that incredibly profound. Most people want to bypass grief. It sounds like you as a man in your maturation, there was a bypassing of grief, but fully got to love and joy.
Yeah, I got stuck in anger. I mean, that's the thing, most people get stuck in different phases of grief. You know, denial is the first one, which a lot of people are kind of in for a while, and then anger is the one people tend to get stuck in, and they make beliefs around the nature of life from the anger. That's, you know, grief. And, um, you know, the thing that I realized about grief is it's— it's— grief is not sacred, it's life maintenance. If you want to be a human being, you've got to grieve. You've got to learn how to grieve so that you can move through all the suffering that we're inevitably going to feel. We're going to lose people, things are going to happen, relationships are going to break down. And I really learned this around my divorce. I got divorced at 35, and I recognized if I'm going to build a life beyond this moment, I need to double down on this grief and go fully into it for as long as I need to to be free of it. And so I really studied grief at that point. That was about, I guess, 9, 10 years ago. And I mean, most self-growth work is grief work, really. My friend John— John— John down in New Orleans mentioned this like in front of the men the other day. He was like, you know, all of this work comes down to what do you need to let go of so you can be free? And that's really true. That's really true. Like most of us are stuck on things that we didn't receive or didn't get in the right orientation young, at a younger point, i.e., mother wounds, father wounds. Yeah, we just need to grieve that stuff and let it go, you know, man, much respect for what you've been through in your life with reverence.
I speak of it now because my, my mother's still with us and knock on wood, she'll be with us for a while. But I was born, my soul chose this path to be born to a mother that has struggled for 40 years now. Plus with manic bipolar.
Yeah, it's tough.
So I never really understood what home felt like as a safe, calm place. Yeah, there'd be highs and lows. When I was young, I watched her get carted out of the house on a stretcher.
Totally.
My dad was in his own cognitive dissonance. Much love and respect to him as well. Yeah, but the challenge that became my gift— yeah, my ability to connect with you right now and my genuine curiosity of like, who you are, what are you all about, what are you here to to do and how can we learn. Yeah, that came from the wound.
Totally.
What's your greatest gift that came from your mom's cancer?
Yeah, I mean, I think it was survival. Like, I'm a really good survivor. And so what that means is like, I just got out there and started building a life when I was 15, and I got really good at just succeeding at things. And so whatever my goal was when I was young, I achieved it. And what— why that's been really beneficial has been that, you know, when I set my sights on something, I'm usually pretty effective at it. So I had a pretty effective career in music, although I didn't make any money, but that the point anyway. So 15 to 26, I was in music. 26 to 36, I was an artist, a photographer. I created a beautiful business and bought a farm in Virginia. I learned how to farm. You know, these are all things that are just part of my story. While I was learning how to farm, I started finding artifacts and feathers, and that changed my whole trajectory on life. And then, you know, the past 10 years have been a relentless pursuit of authentic love and authentic depth of life, and what does it mean to be a man. Like, this is the stuff that I've really been chewing on and trying to figure out.
You said something really good. You, you said initially it was survival. Yeah, it was the ability to be masculine and have like a finite completion of things. And then in between that, now there's this authentic joy and helping and leading others towards being in authentic joy. What closed the bridge? What closed the gap between the gift of survival from your mom's passing versus the gift of embodied joy?
Well, that survival persona that I created, um, was really a contraction of a nervous system. It was like a fight or flight And on top of fight or flight was the capacity to do the next right thing to survive. And so that was sort of a mode that I was in. The thing that you said a little while ago that's really important is unless you can feel your grief, you can't feel your joy. And so when I got divorced at 35 and I started to really dive into how do I live the most authentic life, one of the first things I realized was that there was no joy, there was no happiness. I was just in this kind of dark phase of life.
Yeah.
And the last time I remembered feeling joy was like age 5 or 6 before she got sick. And so before my mom got sick. And so, so I really doubled down on that idea of joy, like how can I feel joy? And I live in New Orleans, Louisiana, so one of the great things is I can just go out and dance in the streets any, any night of the week. So I made that a practice during this year of kind of intentional practice post-divorce. I spent a year really doubling down. So every Tuesday I had a meditation class that I went to, and every Thursday I danced on Frenchmen Street with just tourists that were in town. And I would just go out there and dance until I was done. And just even if I didn't want to, it was practice. So it wasn't a choice. It was, I'm going to dance, I'm going to go feel joy in this moment and share joy with other people. And I did a number of things then. I was also in this deep kind of doing the work to, you know, grieve and heal the stuff that I had not yet grieved and healed from my life. Yeah. And, you know, Brené Brown has a quote, something around like, if you don't— if you can't feel your sadness, you can't feel your joy. Like, it's either you feel your emotions or you don't.
Yeah.
And so if you're denying the harder emotions, the ones that most people are afraid to feel, well, you're also denying and robbing yourself of the good ones like joy and love. And so to really come into an authentic lived experience of life, I just realized I had to feel everything. I had to move through stuff. I had to process it somatically. I had to let it go through my body in different ways. I had to learn how to feel peace. I mean, most people want peace, but they can't feel peace because their nervous system is kinked up and they're in fight or flight potentially. Yeah. Well, Yeah, so then you have to double down on peace. These 50 guys that I just had in North Carolina a week and a half ago, one of the things I did is I brought them to an incredibly deep somatic experience of peace, and then I taught, this is what you seek, but you have to guard this because otherwise you're going to go back to your house and you're going to be back in your neurosis, back in your nervous system, back in your belief systems around life, and you're going to have none of this. So if you want peace and contentness, guard it. Guard it. I said guard your goodness like a million times. And what that means is practice, heal, grieve, move your emotions, feel fully, get out in the sky, get out in water, get out of your experience and get into the one you want to be living. Does that make sense?
I think you're gonna love this. I have an experience in my life, yeah, that I want to share with you, man. And it's probably like I could have almost been at your group and received what you just said, probably, because I feel like you just spoke to it. And I'm going to share, yeah, so briefly I'll share this. I, I met with a a coach, a mystic. Her name's Kylie Ryan. She's going to be on the show. And she walked me through this process. And there was a moment where she and I both realized that my use of pornography for 30-plus years was completely connected to a covert unconscious contract that I had made to all the men going back in my lineage. Native Americans have the seventh generation.
Totally.
It was 7 generations back of men that didn't make women feel safe.
Yeah.
That used women sexually. That unconsciously we're taught that pornography is somehow connection, even though it's pseudo connection.
Yeah.
And there was this cutting of the energetic cord, which is wild. If you would have told me I'd be talking about cutting energetic cords 10 years ago, I'd have been like, you're crazy, dude. But I see it for what it is now.
Yeah, totally.
And what I realized is that the way in which you described that men haven't actually acclimatized to feeling peace.
Yeah.
You talked about guarding your peace.
Yeah.
We as men have been so conditioned to completion, to getting zeros in our bank account, to getting the deal closed, to driving. And there's a time and a place for that. Yeah, but it's hard for us as men to turn that off. And so for me, my inability to turn off that finiteness and completeness, yeah, manifested into an addiction where I would go to a pseudo connection to bring me the peace that I did not hold.
Totally.
And that was the ultimate gift of this. My story is like a micro of, I'm sure, what you see on a macro. Oh, it's all the same with many men. Can you describe your lens of what I just shared?
Yeah, I mean, the thing is, we all develop coping strategies to experientially cope with the hardship of life, period. And for men and women, you know, sexual gratification, ejaculation, orgasm— these are things that dramatically shift our embodied state. So if you're tense and you're all kinked up on your energy, and then you go get off It's like all of a sudden you're like, okay, you know, it gives you the peace that you desperately seek.
A temporary peace.
Yeah, of course it's temporary. Very temporary. And it is an addiction. And, but the thing is, whether it's that or any of the other, you know, it's that through heroin. Like, it's all a spectrum of stuff that is like, I don't feel okay, what do I need to do to feel okay? Does that make sense? I mean, even sex addiction, where you're actually in a relationship with a person and you think it's of right orientation, um, but if it's from compulsion and need rather than desire to create, you know, love and intimacy and play and joy, all the things in sex. Um, I was working with a guy, uh, this past week around this idea of just, yeah, if your sexual desire is rooted in compulsion and the need to feel different, then she's not going to feel safe with the sex. And that's the thing we were working with. And so untangling the compulsion aspect, which is the addiction aspect, uh, was, was part of the work. And anyway, so yeah, at the end of the day I mean, there are so many ways that we can negotiate this experience of feeling better, including, you know, much of the peak experience addiction that people in self-growth work are engaged in these days. Like, it's not actually self-growth, it's self-satiation through experience.
Can you go into that? What do you mean by that?
Yeah, well, most of the self-growth that is in the field is, I'm gonna go do a thing and it's gonna feel great, but then they snap back with no integration into the life that they're living, so they don't actually grow.
Plant medicine ceremony after Tony Robbins workshop, and then they come back to back to back. There's no integration.
Yeah, and all those things can be functional and they can work, but the thing is, if there's no way that you're actually looking at your Tuesday morning and how you can integrate what you learned, or, or, you know, what you became during an experience, uh, then you're not actually doing self-growth work. You're just doing— you're, you're doing, my life is hard, I'm gonna go do a weekend, I'm gonna feel differently. I mean, it's just spiritual ejaculation, man. Like, I met a guy who had done 50 ayahuasca ceremonies, and he was— there was nothing to him. He was empty. He was a spiritually vacant man, and his path was to then walk through a threshold of 2 years of depression to recover himself. And it's just like, you know, you can drive— it's, it's all part of the same thing, you know. Now, are those things of good? I mean, in the same way that sexual gratification and ejaculation in union and relationship can be a beautiful gift that feels great, you know, can plant medicine function to help someone see something? Sure, you know. And for a lot of people, they kind of need something to crack their neurosis that they can't crack. Yeah, but it's then how do I, how do I go from peak experience down to just practicing with this in the nuance of a Tuesday morning? Does that make sense?
From peak experience to the actual practice. The actual practice, that's the biggest gap that I struggled with for probably the majority of, for sure, all my 20s, and then definitely my early 30s, where I would go to peak experiences, plant medicines, breathwork, um, mushrooms, weekend workshops. I was just constantly striving. But my energy, my intention.
Yeah.
When I went to those experiences was, I hope this heals me. I went, I went to those experiences with like a very victimy energy.
Totally. Give me the thing I need to be better.
Yeah.
Yeah. Instead of I need to do the thing I need to be better on a Tuesday morning. Right.
But I had to go through that. I know. Of course.
Yeah, we all do.
Yeah. Okay. Well, when I really am able to come home to Josh Trent. Yeah. Or when you were able to come truly home to Max and all of his imperfections and everything else. There's so much beauty there because then all the pressure valve is released of us having to be fucking perfect all the time.
Totally.
And then we don't have to spend all this money on experiences that we think are going to bring us back to us. Totally. What comes up for you when I share that?
Well, it's interesting because just recently I said something to my wife. I said, you know, thank you for loving me for like, I don't know, I'm going to swear, but I was like, I'm a motherfucker. Sorry. Like, thank you for loving me in my like, kind of grovely whateverness. And she was like, I love you. And I was like, it's that fucking simple. Like, she doesn't give a fuck. I'm a pain in her ass. Yeah, yeah, she's a pain in my ass too. But we love each other and we're both— we are the totality of life with each other. So it's good and the hard. And you know what my wife has done for me that's so profoundly healing is she just loves me, period, full stop. And she's a stand for what she needs in relationship. So that's where she's my teacher. She's like, fuck no, we're not going to do that. I'm like, I hear you. And I can do the same with her. But, um, yeah, you know, I just have a really— she's not saving me, but she is the thing I need to be self-saved. Does that make sense?
Because she's not— you said she's not saving me, but she's the thing I need to be self-saved.
Yeah, for me to relax into the availability of love, which is ultimately the big wound for me. Like, my mom was sick, my dad was out, like, I had no love.
Yeah.
And so I spent a whole life, you know, determined to just be okay without love. And then when I met my wife, like, we really practice having a deeply loving relationship. And so it's not that she's saving me from my wounds, but it's through our relationship that I'm able to save myself through her bringing love to me and me going, yeah, that's real.
That's so beautiful, man.
Yeah.
Let's go here next, because this is something that was hard for me, and, and it was what honestly my marriage is built upon now.
Yeah.
I came to my wife early on and I said, I'm struggling with addiction. I just want to be honest with you about it.
Yeah.
And it was where everything was built from.
Yeah, totally.
But there's no way, like, my children— my children would not exist if I was not able to feel my shame.
Totally.
And not able to be in real honesty with my wife.
Yeah, that's true.
There's— it— this is such a big one that I want to go one, even one layer more deep with you on. I think about society and the way that it really extinguishes men's ability to feel shame because of strip clubs, social media, shopping, overworking. Crypto, you name it. There's, there's this barrage of hooks that modernity likes to sink into the psyche of men. Women too, but we're just talking about men.
Such as modern men, like they were talking about this 2,000 years ago.
Yeah, there's been prostitutes for a long time, right? So, so the, this really distortion, this distortive energy that pulls a man out of his feeling capacity. How have you been able to safeguard yourself from that distortion? And how do you teach men to safeguard themselves from distortion?
Well, I practice peace and I practice love and I practice like on a daily and weekly basis. I do embodied practices where I'm able to shed the world and shed all things modern and of human plane. And I just come to this place where I have the capacity to be love and create love and do it in connection with God and a higher orientation. And by mid— like, I mean, I'm— I practice this constantly. Even right before this podcast, while you went back up to your house, I went outside and I just stood outside and I felt the wind and I just felt gratitude for being in this moment. And it's an orientation at a deep level that happens physiologically, spiritually, and psychologically where I just can go, hey, I'm right here. And like, that's real. Like, I'm not thinking about anything outside of this moment. Does that make sense? I might be thinking one thought, like something to bring in the next moment with this. But aside from that, like, I'm just— I'm here with you.
Yeah, it's the dance. I had a guest on my show and Shelley Lefkoe, she's such a gem, dude. And she was like, most people look at life as a ruler. But what we don't realize is life is lived on the last 3/4 of an inch.
Yeah.
And I love that because the dance that you're talking about, it's like you can still be present with someone and be thinking about what they're saying to then share something that you believe is worthy of sharing too. Like, that's like almost like I did dance lessons with my wife in Hawaii.
Yeah.
So it's like when a man leads, it's like he's thinking about the music, you know, but he's still— he's still present. This balancing of presence.
Yeah.
And thought, yeah, I think is where most men get convoluted.
Yeah, well, they don't know what presence is. They don't know what presence feels like. And that's one of the things I train in my men's work, is I train people to feel presence from a relaxed state. Like, you know, how to just be here now and, um, and how to oscillate with energy and then come back to presence. Like, that dance is really the hard thing because most people can do this and then they're like, okay, back to what I was doing, and they're completely disconnected. Yeah, but how do you actually, like, you know, stay right in the field of this moment? And do this dance of whatever, conversation or energetics with your wife, like, you know, intimacy, love, connection, etc.
Do you find— I find that when I'm really caring about this vessel, yeah, like deeply care, like great food, hydrating in the morning, doing the sauna and cold plunge, I have a great gym at my house, like I've designed my life to, to take care of my body.
Yeah.
On days when I miss movement or sweating, I really notice my neural tree slanted towards sympathetic. Do you notice that as well?
Yeah, it's just real.
This is real.
Yeah, yeah. So if you're not in a healthy state physiologically, um, your nervous system is just not going to be resourced, you know. Your body's not going to be calm. Yeah, because if your system is of right orientation, you're kind of balanced. But as soon as you're not in right orientation, you know, different parts of your body are doing things, you know, your organs are doing things that like— it takes away from your capacity to feel still, you know.
Yes.
And feel easeful and at peace. Lethargy also is a hard one for a lot of people. Like if you're, you know, if, if you if you are holding your body in such a way that you just feel lethargic all the time, like, yeah, you're not going to have the vitality for joy. You're not going to have the vitality for peace because you're just going to feel like you're not okay. Does that make sense?
The, the men that are experiencing like an autoimmune flare-up or skin issues or, yeah, massive weight gain or back issues or just pain in general, right? I believe that it's the body sounding a really loud alarm.
That's right.
Have you ever had an alarm sound for you that was so loud physically that you couldn't ignore it anymore?
So I live in relationship to my body, and I can feel it constantly. And so, like, even during this immersion where I had 50 men, you know, in North Carolina, I could feel my low back was, like, really, like, tense. And I have an old low back injury from when I was in my young 20s.
Okay.
And whenever I'm holding stress around holding things, my low back amps up. Or if I'm holding a different kind of stress, um, you know, there's like a eczema-style skin thing that like I've had throughout my life, that usually pops up around fear. And so when I notice these sensations, I can actually practice the contrary action through practice to kind of tone it down. Does that make sense?
It's always going back to more peace for me.
Yeah, well, that's exactly what it is, cuz that's— yeah, all things being like, if all things are a reaction to your nervous system or your felt experience of life in a negative way, then the only thing to do is come back to a positive experience of life as practice.
Period. You know, so you're leading men and you feel the, the back pain. What do you— where do you go internally when that experience is happening?
Well, I can breathe it down and I can dissolve it in the moment if I'm in the moment of leadership, like where if something's happening live. Yeah, but usually it starts to ramp up over a couple days, and so it's not like a momentary acute pain, it's more like it's a soreness that, that emerges. And so I just do practices for it, you know. I use cold water, I use hot water, but I also do these things. There's some exercises I'll do I'll lie on the floor and I do some somatic movement exercises that help unhook the energetic inflammation. Does that make sense?
Do you think we ever fully heal physically and emotionally?
What does that even mean?
Like, do you think there's a finite end healing place where we go, I'm healed?
Death?
I don't even know if death, because then I've heard like there's some sorrow where we come back around again and we—
who knows?
Who knows?
Well, for this physical vessel, like, yeah, we're just in a dance with our physical vessel until we're not. And so once that is complete, then we're complete.
Yeah.
And then we're at complete stasis physically, spiritually. Who knows? There's a— yeah, I'm with you on that. Like, there's a bunch of different possibilities of what happens there.
I guess part of the cool dance of this conversation with you has been like, like there's kind of a little friction. Sure. It's good. It's not bad. It's like fun.
Yeah.
Well, life is— life is like that.
Yeah.
And so I think for so many men— I had a gentleman here, gosh, a month ago. And he struggled with being a nice guy his whole life.
Totally.
He was in— he was unable to sit in a conversation and actually speak his truth. And I feel like my gift— and I wonder really now at the end of this conversation, almost like what you would describe as your ultimate gift. I'll share mine. My gift that I know it now is to feel my feelings with honesty and to be able to speak that honesty out in the world no matter where I am and to help others do the same.
Yeah, that's it.
That's all. It's actually that elegantly simple for me.
I love that.
Now, just because it's simple, Max, doesn't mean that it's easy for me to do all the time. That's why it's a dance. That's why it's an ongoing process, right?
Yeah.
So with that said, we've explored some very big cul-de-sacs here and some deep nuance.
Yeah.
What do you think we missed when it comes to men providing safety? What do we get to know about that? And then also, what do you believe now at your current level of development your current level of consciousness, yeah, is your gift to the world?
I think my gift— when I think about my gift to the world, I mean, again, my wife and my kids are— that's my world. And so my gift to that segment of the world is to be here now with joy and play, you know? Like, that's my gift. I'm present. I'm here. Let's play. Um, when it comes to my career and what I'm doing in the world at large, I think my gift is, um, for some reason I have these skills that have allowed me to be a really good communicator of ideas that help people come into authentic expression of self, you know, whether it's men, women, couples, like to come into authenticity and actually receive what you desire. I have a way of doing it that seems to be— I mean, my dad was an engineer, so I think there's a systems mind thing that's probably—
oh yeah, I can see that in there, you know what I mean? Yeah.
And so I have a way, I have a way of interpreting, uh, interpreting the life experience. And I think that is a gift. And, and the other thing is, um, I give permission to people to just let go. To let go, accept reality, and then generate a little bit of courage and choose what they actually want to be living as. And I think that's one of the big things is like, get off the train, let's pause for a second, now choose the right train and let's go. Does that make sense? And so that's sort of the thing that I do in the way that I engage in the field of, I guess, my work. But again, my deepest gift is to be here now and joyful with my wife and kids. And that's the thing I'm here to really live as, you know, until they're out and then it's with my wife and then it's, you know, career exploration and things like that, yeah.
The authentic joy is different. I built a model for our tribe. It's on the screen right now, and I want to direct people to where they can go to get involved with your programs and join your ecosystem and just go play with you.
Yeah.
Figure out what this life is all about. Yeah. Essentially what all we're doing.
Yeah.
So it's on the screen right now, y'all. LiberatedLife.com. I built this, this understanding of the heart pentagon and the mind pentagon and what I found in my research. This is so cool. You'll definitely appreciate this as a systems man.
Hmm.
I thought to myself, gosh, if Hawkins describes the space between our head and our heart for men specifically sometimes can be the Grand Canyon.
Totally.
And what actually closes that space for us? Yeah, it's the understanding that authentic joy isn't fabricated. Authentic joy isn't faked, but conditioned happiness is.
Yes.
And I think a lot of men have been conditioned to act like they're happy.
Yeah, that's not real though.
But somatically we can feel that they're forcing their happiness.
Yeah, I really love that.
Do you have a dichotomy that you're working with that that feels true for you about what it means to be authentic versus what it means to be fake and forced?
Yeah, I mean, if I'm in self-orientation, then I'm pretty much in an authentic experience of life because I'm just in my mind and my own habits. If I'm in the play of life with my wife and kids, I'm present here and alive. And also with you here now, or people in general. When I'm working with people, I'm alive and authentic. And that's the experience that I want to be living more as. But, you know, I think the real practice for me personally is, yeah, just that kind of making sure that I am— it's energetic agility, like the capacity to go from one energetic texture to another energetic texture, from mentalism to presence in relationship, from, um, we're having a hard moment and it's tense in my family to like joy and play, you know what I mean? Like to be an artist of moving not only myself but my family energetically into a state that's of good, of resolve, of love, of play. That's kind of my— I think that's my That's what I do. That's my practice.
Yeah, I can— you have a great father energy. I think the call for the masculine here right now on planet Earth has never been louder. Yeah, it's because the ways in which specifically husbands and wives— but forget about that, just men and women— the bifurcation is growing so vast. That's why, honestly, recently, Max, I actually unfollowed everyone. Yeah, I mean, I don't follow anyone. I mean, it's not because I'm cool.
No.
It's because I don't want my feed to be anything other than AI.
I don't want my field to be it either.
Right. I'm just focused on AI. I'm focused on my business, my family. I'm very clear in my priorities, is what I'm saying. And so for you, is there any final clarity you could bring to men that are caught up in the distortion, to men that feel just all over the place, their energies in all spaces?
Yeah.
Can you provide any parting grace or comment that might be able to shock a man into focus and clarity?
Yeah. Well, I'm writing a book on masculine initiations, and there's four different segments of a man's life. And any man that doesn't understand the initiatory pathway needs to learn it, because otherwise you're just going to be an adolescent for the entirety of your life. The only way to break out of adolescence is true mentorship and apprenticeship in space beyond your comfort zone across time. And this whole model of masculine development is missing. So for the men that are in the field that are listening, going, I don't know what to do, find mentorship, find people you can study with, be in spaces where you can actually feel what men feel like. In my men's workspaces, most of the men are 45+. I got an 83-year-old. I got guys in their 60s. I got guys in their 50s. A lot of them I'm training to be conscious elders because we don't have them anymore. So that's a weird thing, but I'm doing it just the best I can. And, you know, find, find spaces like for a lot of men across the country, go back to your churches, find men that are of the soil, that are of heart, that are of spiritual depth, and just feel what it feels like to be a man that's not in self-orientation. Because right now everyone is being told, go do this, go that, go be that, you know, the money, the cars, the trips around the world, the Burning Man, the ayahuasca. Like, that is all distortion. Like, until you're a man that can sit in stillness and go, I fucking love my life, then you're actually just chasing a dragon.
That's a great way to end right there. There you go. That is the truth.
Yes.
I love that you said men of the soil. Yeah. What do you mean by that, men of the soil?
Well, a man that can check and track and feel and be in reality, as in like outside this building, and at peace, is a man that's here. And most men can't. Most men are outside checking their phones.
Yeah, I've always felt that there's what's presented, and then there's always the COVID emotion or the COVID story for something deeper. And it's typically 5 layers deep. Yeah, we went probably 3 layers deep. Where can they go 2 more layers deep with you?
Well, for men that want to work with me, I run these men's programs and they have in-person immersions where we feel a different experience of life and we create energy differently and feel how, you know, we can access these different kind of realms of existence. And none of it is plant medicine, it's all really just, you know, it's through somatic and presence practice and just working in the field of authentic life. Um, you know, I'm online, I'm everywhere online. This podcast, they can find me, and also Instagram. I'll be starting a YouTube at some point, but You know, I think for now I'm developing a company in such a way where it's a holistically held company. And so I'm not for fast growth, I'm for correct growth. Do you know Yvon Chouinard?
Who is it?
Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia. He wrote a book, Let My People Go Surfing. When I read that book, I realized that as I build this company, I can do it right for the people that work for me. The reason I say that is I'm actually hard to access at this point. Like, there's not a lot of ways you can get into me, but I'm building different places to kind of do this work with people. People. Um, but I'm doing it slower than most people probably want because I'm doing it well. Anyone that works for me— it's a family business, and so it's not just about me, it's my wife and my kids. It's about anyone that works for me, their family. It's, it's a part of it. I'm not extracting people away from their family to have them work on my company. My company feeds the people and their families at home. And so that's something I'm building with my company. And I say that just to say I'm not available for the majority of the world, but there are, you know, limited spaces, whether it's coaching or whether it's my programs, that people can I can get into. And I think the stuff I'm teaching is really important, so I'm trying to find ways to get it out to, you know, larger numbers. But for now, that's just not my concern. My concern is doing it right.
Appreciate you being here, man.
Yeah, I'm glad to be here.
It makes sense.
Yeah, yeah.
Geez.
Well, you came on a good referral, you know. A good friend of mine was like, you should talk to this guy. And so I was like, great.
Yeah, the, the clarity that, that y'all have received today— and if you haven't gotten enough clarity, you can rewind this again is this one ultimate fact that I believe feelings that dictate our emotions, that actually become this access point, like feeling is a governor that allows us to feel shame, joy, anger, rage, all the, all the stuff. It's just a governor that allows us to feel information. So if we can step aside from what we're experiencing. Yeah, I'm not a sad person. I'm experiencing sadness. Yeah, I'm not a depressed or apathetic person, I might be experiencing those emotions.
Correct.
This is a conversation worthy of sharing for men. I wished, Max, that I could have had a conversation like this or experience— gotten fed a conversation like this when I was like 20 years old.
I know, me too.
Podcast wasn't even around back then. I was in Hawaii like fishing and surfing, being very self-oriented, as you say.
Totally.
So thank you for sharing this wisdom, this understanding that we don't have to let our emotions rule us. We don't have to let our past rule us.
That's right.
And I appreciate you being here, man. Coming out to Austin, being on the show.
Absolute pleasure, man. It's been great. Yeah.
Share this podcast, y'all. It's worthy of sharing. Here's why. What Max is bringing forth, we go deep into in the tribe anyhow. The reason that I named it the Liberated Life Tribe is because liberation is only possible when we're airing out our secrets, when we're feeling our shame, when we're going through the stuff that, by the way, all of us go through. We all feel stuff. Can we just be honest about the way that we feel it? And can we do it in community? So until we see you again on another podcast, I'm wishing you love, wellness, but most importantly, peace and power. I do not believe we can have real power unless it comes from peace. See you next week.
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