Conversation between Josh Trent and a guest about modern masculinity and personal transformation. The speakers argue that entrenched beliefs ("programming" or "resistance") resist change and must be updated through awareness, spiritual and emotional work, and rites of passage. Practical steps emphasized include choosing awareness, using situational-awareness frameworks (OODA loop), breathwork, and a three-phase process—gather, apply, embody—to become an embodied, trustworthy man.
Chapters
Why is it so hard when we're presented as men with a new way of being? It's so hard because we are fighting biology. Steven Pressfield calls it the resistance. So what is resistance's number one job? What is a holodyne's number one job? What is a core belief that got installed almost like a microchip in a computer? What is its core job? Its core job is to function without change. In the same way that when I touch a keyboard and I type in the word Johnny on a keyboard, I know that when I hit the J, it's going to show up as a J on the screen. Well, our beliefs function, dude, exactly the same way. When I am presented with new information that goes against the construct of the programs that were installed in my mind that activate the holodynes and the beliefs and the way of being, there is going to be a system error, right? It's. There's going to be a 404 in my soul. It's going to flash up and it's going to say, error. This is not our way of being. What are you doing? Like, this is not real. So that is when your soul has to come in and override the programming. So your soul has to come in and see things from an observer perspective and look down and go, okay, I understand that this is a new way of being. I'm going to pause for a moment. I'm going to learn about the art of masculinity. I'm going to learn what it means to truly be a man. Right? Right. Now, the reason that all of our computers get updated every day, the reason that Zoom gets updated almost every day, is because the world is always changing. Technology is always changing. Humanity is always changing. Human evolution is always changing. We must meet the demands of the modern world in the current moment, dude, because if we do not, our programs will actually pull us away from evolution. And guess what? Word is in evolution? There's love. There. The word love is found in evolution. Love is always calling us forward. If we are willing to change the programs and update our programs and really let go of the holodins and the belief systems that are holding us back. Now, this is not an intellectual thing. I know I'm using words, and we're speaking to people's minds through their ears, connected to their hearts. But what I'm talking about is a spiritual and emotional shift that can only be done through rites of passage, through direct spiritual work, through emotional intelligence work. This is not heady. This is heart. So that's that's what men need to do right now. And that's, that's what's going to make the old ways of being die so that the new ways of being can live. Mm.
So, so good man. This is where I think, how do we, we break down the obstinates that men have to say, well, I'm fine the way I am, or to accept, like, okay, I do need to get in touch with love and spirit.
That's a deep question. It's good, man. It really comes to a decision point. So Malcolm Gladwell, in his work, he has a book and he talks about the tipping point. And the tipping point comes when all of us have experienced a way of being that is creating pain. We change through pleasure and pain. It's an axis. And the reason that dark comes really strong right before light is because every day we're in a tipping point. We're in a tipping point. Fucking every single day. Every single day. You and I can choose to show up based on, on our awareness, right? I believe in the military community there's a. There's like a map for situational awareness. Right. Mark Divine calls it the Ooda loop, the loop of awareness. And so every day we, as men, we're constantly scanning our environment and being aware of what's going on. How do we show up in our environment as a true leader, as an authoritatively playful man? Well, the only way we do that is by first being aware. So, number one, dude, and I know you've talked about this, and I'm still going to say it again, because sometimes it takes to hear the truth 55 times and on the 56th time, something sinks in. Number one is, and let's just take a breath here. First you have to choose that you want to be aware. That is the first step. Choose that you want to be aware of what's actually going on in reality. Not the reality that's subjective, but the objective reality. From you looking 30,000ft, what's really happening? Then after that, what is your decision making faculty about how you're going to adapt and serve in that awareness, in that observation? So how are you going to adapt? How are you going to serve from a place of love, being an authoritatively playful man, how are you going to do that? That's the work. So those three things is how you do it. Now, obviously there's many, many tools that need to be unpacked. Once you've made the decision, you have the situational awareness and you're there. One of my favorite tools is Breathwork. I love breathwork because it cuts away all the chatter. The monkey mind is really the default mode network. The default mode network is programmed from trauma. Ages 0 through 7 is where we all take it on. Many people that are in wartime, they also experience PTSD from mortar shells going off and just from, you know, doing the ultimate sacrifice, which is going to war. I mean, I can't even imagine so much reverence and respect for people that do that yet. When we're in life, life sometimes can be asking for peace and asking for playfulness. But to the degree we're programmed and we're not aware of our awareness, right, we're not observing what's going on, we can actually come into a situation and be like ready for war from a nervous system perspective. So our work is multi pronged and multifaceted because once you make a choice from 30,000ft to observe, then you actually see in your OODA loop like what's happening here. How can I adapt and be loving in this situation? What tools do I need to adapt? Then you actually have to go execute, right? You have to, you have to, what I call, you have to gather, you have to apply and then you have to embody. And this is the three phases of intelligence that, that we talk about with wellness for us is like, I need to gather because as a man, I have to gather, I have to hunt, I have to apply, I have to do the breath work, I have to have the hard conversations, I have to practice my breath work. And then as a man in that final phase, I have to embody because a man that embodies virtues and a man that truly from his heart is speaking something that he believes and he's being what he's speaking, well then he's embodied. And then that kind of peace can be trusted. And when you're trusted with your peace because you're being honest with yourself at your current level of development, then really no one and no thing can get in your way. And that's how you can really be an embodied man here in the world. I unpacked an incredibly challenging concept, but that's really, it is simple. But just because it's simple, like, does not mean it's easy, right? No way.
No, absolutely not. But I think this is a great start to getting guys that are kind of fighting or not really looking at evolution as a priority in the sense of how do I just even start on this path to say, hey, I'm accepting, to be aware, to look at that 30,000 foot view and say, let me actually understand what's going on with me and what's actually the big picture here before I jump into reacting, before I jump into kind of taking on the old programming and saying, this is continually the way.
