What Do Women Think About Men Having Coaching?

Hey guys. In case you’ve ever questioned the value of getting coaching to help overcome the gap between what your father should have taught you, and what you actually learned; check out the comment I just received on my article about the problem of passive fathers teaming up with controlling mothers.

Helen writes:

My husband has totally abdicated his role as a leader in our family. He is content to remain checked out of parenting, the marriage, consumed with self-pity over having his life now seriously limited by MS, addicted to watching sports and living in complete submission to life…he lives life like he is a guest in his own world. My children, now 20 and 23 see him as weak willed, clueless, apathetic and a poser. For many years I have worried about my son and growing into man. I have been the one to throw the football, teach how to use tools and power equipment, how to paint, wax a car, fix leaky faucets, hang a light fixture etc. His Dad just passively watched saying he was not good at that stuff….he is simply lazy, passive and apathetic. With the challenges of life, his own crappy father, he chose to get bitter instead of be better.Continue reading…

Don’t Shave For A Week

Hey, it’s Graham here from The Confident Man Project. Today, I have a suggestion for you which you might notice I’ve got a little bit of facial hair going on here and that’s because I haven’t been shaving for about a week now. So I’ve got about a week-long growth.

If you want to make a big change in your life, one of the big ways to do that that’s pretty easy and dramatic is to make some change in your personal appearance. For instance, if you’ve never had a beard, well, try growing one. If you always have a beard, try shaving it off. If you’ve never had a mustache, try growing one of those. If you always have on, try shaving it off.

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Seek Out A Male Mentor

Hey there, it’s Graham from The Confident Man Project, and I want to talk to you today about the importance of finding some mentors or a mentor. Everybody who is successful in life has people behind the scenes that are teaching them and mentoring them and helping them take the next step from where they currently are towards where it is that they want to go.

You may not know this because often the mentors are hidden. The mentors generally do not advertise themselves, but you can bet your bottom dollar that ever successful person out there has one or people in their lives who are mentoring them specifically to help them to achieve the sort of success in life that they want.

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I can relate; Men need to hear this

Hey guys, I just want to respond to Tony Porter’s TEDWomen speech about the man box and his call to men. I think the only problem with this speech is that it’s given at a conference mainly with women.T he actual substance of his talk really isn’t just about violence against women: It’s about freedom for men as you’ll notice in the quote right at the very end.

I can totally relate to what Tony’s saying. I had a father who was just emotionally not there. He was physically there so perhaps I was luckier than some guys, but when it came to anything related to emotions he completely kept them to himself. He was obviously very ashamed of how he felt and I think still is, and as a result the only emotions that I could see him express really were when he would seethe with frustration or when he would explode with anger.

And, yeah, that might be okay for the man box, but it’s not okay for relationships with people generally. So, yeah, I can relate to Tony’s message, and I recommend this video to any guys, not just to women:

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Read The Way Of The Superior Man by David Deida

Hey there, it’s Graham from The Confident Man Project, and today I want to recommend this book to you. It’s called The Way of the Superior Man. That’s a pretty cool title. I mean, who doesn’t want to be the superior man, right? Well, let me tell you a couple of things that I really like about this book. But first I’ll read to you a little bit from the introduction:

The newly evolving man is not a scared bully, posturing like some King Kong in charge of the universe. Nor is he a new age wimp, all spineless, smiley and starry-eyed. He has embraced both his inner masculine and feminine, and he no longer holds onto either of them.

He doesn’t need to be right all the time, nor does he need to always be safe, co-operating and sharing like androgynous Mr. Nice Guy. He simply lives from his deepest core, fearlessly giving his gifts, feeling through the fleeting moment into the openness of existence, totally committed to magnifying love.

Well, that sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it? A little bit airy-fairy perhaps, but let me tell you a couple of things that I got out of this book that I really like. So the first one is the concept of masculine and feminine energy. Now, the idea behind this is that all of us have a mixture of masculine and feminine energies that are running our life.

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How Joining A Men’s Group Builds Your Confidence

One of the most powerful things I’ve done in the last 12 months to continue building my own confidence is to join a men’s group. Our fortnightly gatherings allow me to connect more deeply to other men and in doing so, connect more deeply to my own masculine power. My experience of other males at my all-boys high school wasn’t a particularly positive basis for me to build trust in men. So my men’s group is a valuable opportunity to learn trust and mutual respect amongst men who are prepared to be vulnerable and real about what is going on in their lives.

Joining a Men's Group is a great way to build self-confidence.

Joining a Men’s Group is a great way to build self-confidence.

With this in mind I was keen to interview Brett Churnin from mensgroup.info, who is at the centre of a loose collective of men’s groups all founded with the intention of growing more confident, capable, loving, powerful and honest men.

Brett first become involved in a men’s group after he and another desperately single male friend discovered David Deida’s book The Way of The Superior Man while looking for more powerful ways to relate to women. They came to realise that being a man was very different to what they had thought, and started to explore the notion of masculinity and how to develop themselves as men.… Continue reading…

The Hero’s Journey From Frightened Boy To Confident Man

I’ve been fascinated lately to discover the work of Joseph Campbell and his book The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Campbell’s life work involved analysing the myths, legends and stories of every nation, culture and religion to identify common themes and patterns between them. He found a striking commonality between the stories of different cultures and identified a pattern which seems etched in the human psyche that he called The Hero’s Journey. Think of any major blockbuster movie or movie franchise like Lord Of The Rings or Star Wars, and you’ll see elements of The Hero’s Journey. I also see a remarkable parallel with the adventure that every man is called to in growing from a frightened boy into a confident man.

The hero of every man’s story is ourselves. Not necessarily who we are now, or who we think we are; but our real self that only emerges as the journey progresses. It’s the journey from boy to man, but also the journey of self-knowledge, stepping into our own power, being more authentic and ultimately being free. So here’s how I see men growing up fitting into the framework that Campbell identifies for the every man hero:

The Hero's Journey is also a metaphor for growing from a boy into a man

The Hero’s Journey

Initially, we live in the protected world of childhood.… Continue reading…

TantricBlossoming’s Being Man Retreat

I turned up to the Tantric Blossoming Being Man retreat with a sense of excitement about experiencing more of this “Tantra” thing that I’d heard about in my [intlink id=”1293″ type=”post”]interview with Tantric Practitioner David Anderson[/intlink]. It was clear to me that Tantra had to be experienced rather than merely talked or read about, and I felt ready to dive in. From what I knew about David and his co-leader Martina Hughes, I figured there would be some great experiences in store.

At the same time, I also felt tremendously relieved just to be able to take some time out from my not-so-normal life. The panic attacks that I had experienced only a couple of weeks before were still very fresh in my memory; they had seriously undermined my confidence and the lingering fear of their possible return weighed heavily on my mind. Being overwhelmed by fear and anxiety seemed the antithesis of where I was trying to head in my life, and I wasn’t happy about it. Confident Man, my ass; the previous few weeks had felt more like panicky, fearful little boy to me.

By comparison with the panic attacks, my usual thoughts on meeting a new group of people faded into insignificance: “Would I fit in?”,… Continue reading…

How to Connect With Your Inner Warrior

Regardless of how you currently feel about yourself and your confidence as a man, all of us have an inner warrior with genuine self-esteem, inner strength, a sense of purpose, a mission in life, and the self-confidence necessary to go after what we really want. The question is how to get in touch with your inner warrior? The answer is to go on a heroic journey of initiation, self-discovery and growth towards your authentic self.

Changing the world one man at a timeWe can’t undertake this journey alone, so I recently spoke to Boysen Hodgson from The ManKind Project to find out more about what that organization offers men seeking more confidence, clarity and direction in their lives. Here are some of the lessons from this interview:

To connect with the warrior within, we need to go on a heroic quest of adventure. It’s normal to resist the call to adventure initially due to our fear of being seen for who we really are, but the challenge is necessary to discover the resources within us that we aren’t currently aware of.

We decide during childhood who we need to be in order to be accepted, and then get stuck in that childhood decision as an adult long after it has been useful to us.… Continue reading…