‘The shortest distance between point A and B is a straight line’. It’s a common saying, usually used to simplify things and probably by someone who has a bit of condescension in their voice. It’s kind of like ‘buy low and sell high’ in the investment world; easy said but good fuckin luck if that’s […]
The Switchback — The Rugged Gentleman
Tag: life stages
Life Stages: An Excerpt from a book in progress about Satisfaction
U smile. Justin Bieber’s anthem on the infectiousness of infatuation. Both people are smiling for the same reason but doing so each in their unique way.
Likewise, we all have a unique response to Life Stages. Some guys don’t move out of their parents basement until they are 32 years old (because their parents sold the house). Then there are the girls who get kicked out of the house when they get pregnant at 18 years old.
So there can be confusion. For the young woman she will be a mother by the time she is 19 years old yet she is barely entering the adult stage. The maternal role can be forced on a woman quite early so she finds herself late at night panicked by her baby that doesn’t stop crying. That same night her teenaged friends are posting on instagram from an awesome party with no worries about motherhood. Then again a 38 year old woman can yearn for years until pregnancy magically arrives. Both are valid expressions of Maternal life of a woman. Hopefully they are accompanied by an equally valid expression of a Paternal life from the man, the father.
Just take a look at The Bieber himself. His Professional Life ignited at 13 years old when he was discovered in Stratford, Ontario by music promoter Scooter Braun. Considering his age he handled himself with aplomb. His response to the call to come into his own as an adult has been well documented on social media. He mixes a double hydrogen dose of humility with the oxygen of confidence giving life to his broad range of talents. His emergence from a boy into a man has been a struggle just like it is for you and me.
Life Stages aren’t the same as Life Roles. Life Stages are the development episodes of life from radiant newborn to marvellous infant and quickly into curious child. The child lurches towards adolescence when, as teenagers, we battle with the intensity of youth. The intensity of youth is almost smothered by the responsibility felt by the adult life. Then the (in)famous midlife: what will the midlife crisis reveal? As if emerging from a pressure chamber we appear as an elder.
The Life Roles of Maternal/Paternal, Professional and Romantic are addressed in another chapter. These Roles are another world unto themselves that we have to manage at the same time as grow and develop. By no means are Life Stages the same as the various parenting tasks or marriage realities. Regardless if you have a life partner, get married or have children you will be processed by these Life Stages all the same way.
Having children, while its impact is undeniable, does not make any Life Stage more difficult unto itself. Anyone will have less time and energy to think about where they are on the metamorphosis of maturity if you have 3 children under the age of 5. Inevitably your sense of Satisfaction or Fulfillment will be complicated by the moment to moment experience of your life partner in their current Life Stage.
Being single means you have the freedom to complicate your own life. And as quickly simplify it. A 45 year old man married for 23 years and a single man of the same age can equally draw anxiety or Satisfaction from their Life Stage. They will rationalize the negative or positive of their life through the range of events with people, emotions and emotional baggage in their life.
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The three Life Stages are: Youth, Adult and Elder. They are ready with experiences and uncertainty. Hey, are we going to find love and all the healing that comes with that?
Each stage has its function: Youth is to gorge on experience and program you for the challenges to come; Being in the Adult role is to apply your personal algorithms to life so that you can actually grow and not feel left behind. Elder is to beacon into the generations that follow from your inner core the path forward. Elders offering settlement and belief is crucial for the people in mid-life who are stressing with payments and relationships and the undercurrent of meaning or purpose.
Photo by Margarida CSilva on Unsplash
You are responsible for you in all Life Stages – You are accountable for your actions. You are the generator of your own emotions. Nobody has control over you. No matter how much you get frustrated and angry because you don’t understand your wife. No matter how confused you get about what you want and why. No matter how bad you think you look. For everyone the stages of life cause us to feel out of sorts So it is good to partner with whatever will outlive your current stage in life. Of course one candidate for partnership is your ego that will never leave your side until your dying day. Another potential partner is your soul. Unlike the ego, the soul is true to your growth as a person and a human.
Taking responsibility for our Emotions is a fabulous personal development step to offer our life partner. You can be right. You might be wrong. You probably forget. We all do. What is the challenge is to be accountable for our words and actions. More to the point is to understand the ripples and waves that we can cause in others. Ripples of amusement or frustration; waves of love and appreciation.
Please Remember: Your soul will never leave you, it is always true to your Satisfaction and Fulfillment.
Mind Sprouts: About mid-life – it is a natural stage lasting a decade or so and unto itself does not come prepackaged with a crisis. We create the crisis. When we can’t find a purpose we create drama. Welcome to your crisis. If you are 45 years old then it gets labelled as your midlife crisis. We all do dumb, or spontaneous or silly or regrettable things at different stages of life. No doubt you have seen, or been the guy with the sporty yellow convertible that is a man cave on wheels.
Mid life is a re-orientation. The crisis comes from lacking orientation before getting to mid life. So it makes a lot of sense if you feel unoriented and fall into panic because something is lacking in life …. there is an elusive Satisfaction at some level …
Previous to mid life we were growing as a preponderance. Somewhere around mid life, growing gets accompanied by the development of our Higher Soul response to life. Whether we are aware of it or not. Our body and soul are expecting us to answer a calling or a nudge for a Devotional life. A Devotional life can yank us out of any mid life potholes. A life with purpose can transcend some or all of the weight of depression.
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Believe it or Not: Who you marry is not who you divorce. What? Yes it is the same person but not the same woman. The person you are divorcing is not the woman who said yes to ‘Will you marry me?’. Here there is zero (0) room for blame. If someone refuses to let themselves be urged by the Human Soul into the man they are meant to be then they end up changing without growing. We all change. We always change. That’s the force of the trajectory of Life Stages The conflict comes when we don’t keep up with the change by accompanying inevitable change with personal growth. Grasp the difference between change and growth. Change is the same person in different clothes. Growth is you with new power that you learn to connect to. Growth is you learning that loving yourself is at the same time simple yet weird and beautiful. Growth is keeping up with the moving sidewalk that is the process of Life Stages.
You decide. Daily. You can stagnate. Or you can Grow. Leading yourself to developing your Personal Religious Life. Think Transcendence. Think My Best Ego.
Know this: What you want and the Life Stage you find yourself in are distinct. They can seem to be aligned to the same goal of your happiness and success. They can also be adversarial. As a means to not have your life direction usurped by the demands of any Life Stage yet at the same time not running away from the reality of where you are now, it is useful to decide what you want. It’s a lifelong process to repeatedly declare and refine what you want then follow through with action. Decide and communicate what you want as a: spouse, man/woman, parent, human. Have the humility, agility and confidence to provide constancy in their pursuit.
Nothing Personal. Satisfaction is you getting to your limit of deriving value from the experience. Sometimes we never can get enough: think of sports, drinking, gossip, shopping.
Life stages finish according to their schedules regardless if you were the best or the worst at that stage. Regardless if you did what you said you were going to do. Regardless if your wife knows that you really do love her for who she is.
Read – Erik Erikson, the German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst is known for his theory of psychosocial development. In The 8 Stages of Human Development there are very useful ‘conflicts’ that are highlighted that help us grasp what each stage is asking of us as we move through life. Themes like Intimacy versus Isolation and Generativity versus Stagnation are two that seem to apply well to a man’s need for Satisfaction and a woman’s need for Fulfillment.
The following link provides a brief overview of this theory as well as some good references for further research: https://www.halffullnotempty.com/eriksons-8-stages/
Nature analogy The opportunity to see our reflection in nature with respect to Life Stages is abundant: The seed is a magical germination, the roots are reaching out for minerals, sprouts break through the earth with focus, the trunk surges towards a life giving sun, a blossoming of colour and fragrance accompanied by a fruit carrying the seed of the next generation.
Photo by Kendall Young on Unsplash
Question: Can you discern how the Life Stage you are growing in impacts your decision making?
If you have a few minutes take a look at a relevant post.
Transcendence – An excerpt from a book on Satisfaction
Photo by Devon Hawkins on Unsplash
In the chapter on Habits, Routines and Rituals we saw how champion chess player Bobby Fischer was able to rise above his own, widely known and expected, opening Routine in order to win. He made the moment more important than the past. Instead of the assumption he would start with 1e4, he opened 1c4. For me a no chess layer the change is minimal but in the chess world of the moment it was brilliant mayhem. 1e4 means moving your pawn that is in front of your queen 2 spaces forward. 1c4 is moving your pawn in front of your bishop 2 spaces forward. In the intense public spotlight and with years of the same opening move of he was still able to think for himself. He was in service to a higher master: world champion status.
And this is the challenge. In the moment of battle, be it world chess championship or an argument in your marriage or a strategic decision at work, can you address the adversarial with spontaneity. Is there a higher level of meaning or connection that you seek? This search for the way forward will lubricate your options at operational levels. Like when you give in and just agree with your wife when things get heated just to avoid a yelling match. You go beyond you …
Be Self Transcendental… It is mystical sounding terminology. Mysterious allusions to sessions wafting with incense and ensconced in chanting. What it boils down to is you getting over yourself. Getting over your low emotions about what is happening to you. Getting over your reaction to the Life Stage you are experiencing. Getting over your lack of foresight and your lack of discipline or spontaneity and self belief.
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Transcending your history allows you to be persuaded by your instinct, so the moment flows through you, the light radiates out from you.
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The world doesn’t need your version of the hero/victim emotional pendulum. Meaning that you think your ideas are awesome yet you still feel you are still under appreciated and hard done by life. As a result you are going to usurp your conversations at work etc. as your therapy. So that when you are finished talking you feel better. Even though it can be made sense of it is not fair to conversation. Or the other person.
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The nature of conversation is therapeutic. It is the back and forth aspect of people emptying out that massages their existing and exiting feelings and ideas so they can bring in new ones. It is the give and take of talk and listen, of confirm and refine. It’s refusing to be brought down by a person or topic while resisting judging others for where they are in the moment. If we realize how to benefit from it, conversation offers transcendence.
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How do you transcend the darkness and step toward the light – by yourself and for yourself? How do you use your past and not be used by it? How do you rise above your fear, your stress, your limits, your anger and assumptions?
Awesome transcendence options include:
- Seeking a connection with nature
- Offering others a person on a development journey
- Updating your Beliefs
- Highlighting Your Best Ego
- Being responsible for your High and Low Emotions
- Forgive.
Mind Sprout: Transcending yesterday’s Satisfaction to get a new, different Satisfaction does not make yesterday dumb or waste of time. That is how growth works. Who knows exactly why you had to be the way you were yesterday.
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- Change is not the focus. That’s doing things the hard way. . That’s the style of military basic training. Where they break down the new recruits as a means to build them back up again according to military objectives. This way those young men think they owe the military inhuman loyalty for making them a man; for providing them some sense of belonging and a purpose. Well. Those military psychologists are on the mark that the vitality generating exercises recruits perform accompanied by the camaraderie are crucial components of a healthy person. The military, ISIS among others, are abundantly aware that a young man craves direction like a heroin addict scrounging for their next high.
Juxtapose the previous with the following
- Improve the connection with what is possible as opposed to breaking what made us impossible. What is possible? Us the intuitive, us the provocative and proactive, us the inspired, the spontaneous.
Please Remember
1. You have ways, many ways to elevate into the person you want to be; the person your soul knows you to be.
2. In a moment of reflection … imagine … there you are, on the balcony, cupping, smelling your hot coffee, as the morning is in the throes of dawn. You feel that you have the embers of vitality, animated with your breath to fuel the flames of curiosity. You radiate the magnetism of belonging so others are intrigued by you. Your sense of direction nurtures others much like the forest canopy provides cover to the new growth in the forest floor.
Challenge in Nature: Walk slow. Walk differently. Our gait gets set when we are young. It is amazing how difficult it can be to be conscious of our gait and walk differently than we normally do. Go to the park or back yard and if possible take your shoes off – check for dog poo first!:) Nature will join you on your little barefoot journey. Walk slow, walk differently. Try to walk a bit more on your toes, or roll your feet a bit more. Give it time today, or another day. The work is to be aware of you being different while actually remaining loyal to who you are. Sounds weird. So get out there!
Take the time and know it is valid to find or create your ways to elevate into the you of now, the you of vigour, vision and vitality.
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UPDATE YOUR BELIEFS
It’s ok if you don’t really know what you are doing. It’s ok if you do. It’s ok if you know what you stand for. What do you stand for? You stand for something you understand. You stand for a principle you uphold. You stand for your marriage being real, alive, supportive of the man’s journey into the unknown.
Share a bit of your vulnerability about you morphing over time into a different, newer you. To share your desire to grow. To transcend your education, your era, your ancestors.
Transcendental Meditation (TM) emerged out of India coming to the west in the 60’s. TM is a technique for avoiding distracting thoughts and promoting a state of relaxed awareness. The late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi derived TM from the ancient Vedic tradition of India. He brought the technique to the U.S. in the 1960s.
One way to think about TM was that it took out the poses out of yoga and left you with breathing and mental imaging.
Breathing can aid you in transcending the many stresses of life. Mental imaging is activated to focus your energy on the growing side of stress. From the positive side of stress declare your beliefs. The debilitating side of stress we probably all know well.
Satisfaction is related to and impacted by stress, change, challenge, failure, growth, different, new, dread, negativity, unknown, lies, poor eldership by ancestors. This range of stress will highlight both your strengths and weaknesses that naturally are revealed by each Life Stage.
One of the messages of Jesus could be categorized as ‘be transcendental about yourself’.
In other words; Get over yourself.
Instead of the tyranny of your feelings, make something else the first consideration in the process of understanding. That ‘something else’ is what you stand for.
Photo by Tamarcus Brown on Unsplash
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YOUR BEST EGO
Get over what your Ego is screaming at you and strain to hear the nuances of Your Best Ego.
Your Ego is like industrial farming – based on numbers and not vitamins, succumbing to shareholders and not natural planetary processes, satisfying the fertilizer salesperson and not your instinct.
Your Best Ego is like organic farming – that can let land fallow because it is not addicted to now/profits/expansion but rather on a journey of learning and growing. There is variety and companion planting.
Self Transcendental is catching up with your Life Trajectory. Your Life Trajectory is inclusive of Your Best Ego and understanding of the Male Stack and Female Frixion. Low emotional baggage is filtered out. Your low emotional baggage will accompany you at the expense of learning and growing and sharing. That’s a hefty baggage fee.
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Humility = Humanity = Humility
Self Transcendental is in the moment. A moment shared with inner and outer lives:
Inner lives of Peace, Satisfaction, Belief, Connection, Vision.
Outer Lives of accomplishment, belonging, service, happiness, challenge, growth.
Transcendence is a bridge. A bridging.
It relieves us of our downward facing habits like: judgement, grudges, comparison, negativity, excuses, jealousy, ______________, _____________.
These misdirected habits, like judgement, are Minimizing Marauders. They minimize you. Minimize your abilities. Minimizes the female instinct. Minimize the opportunity that offers itself in the moment. They reduce the value of your willingness to love and be loved. They suction out your Belief in Marriage. They make you good at being mentally critical of your wife for being a woman. They are nasty.
Picture that in your unconscious urge to transcend these Minimizing agents of nastiness fall like coins from your pocket. As you cross the bridge of transcendence into the New You these coins fall from your grasp. They tumble through the wood planks of the swinging suspension bridge. You can either grab the railing for stability and stay standing as the coins fall into the deep, narrow, cold river with a minute splash – gone – as you move forward feeling the wisps of clean mist rising from below. Or you can try and grasp those falling coins (agents of nastiness) prostrating to money on the planks of the bridge clutching a few coins, not having taken the step to step into today.
Your activated Vision is vital so you can see in your mind what you want to become. That’s why your Updated Beliefs are beautiful fuel so you can feel in your blood the man you are in the moment. Transcend the excuses and ridicule, the mistakes and regret. Your Satisfaction Skills are so much stronger than immature ridicule . Satisfaction Skills include: getting stuff done, knowing how to delegate, being an awesome teacher, _______________________, ______________________, __________________.
Transcendence causes change. Change can make us feel vulnerable. Change can be mislabeled and vilified by Ego based fear subscribing leeches. Don’t listen to them. Transcendence is a process to the New You. The New You will be received, loved and accepted just like the old you was received. The thing is the old you had a best-before-date of yesterday and the New You has a best-before-date of tomorrow. It’s a constant flow that uses your Inner Lives … to be you in the moment. The moment will renew and so will you. The New You emits constancy of Peace, Belief, Connection, Vision and Satisfaction.
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Forgive:
Gravitate to the love. To let go of the old. Your former you doesn’t give you as good results as the new, as the now. In comparison the old you is stale, inflexible, brittle, musty and rusty. The task at hand is to harvest the residue of human qualities from your past experiences that now reside in your inner Life. Your past is valid and necessary as part of your foundation for growth of your version of a man.
Why? To offer to your spouse the real you, you of the moment with all your constant qualities and a history of success [???]
How? Breathe, smile, straighten your posture, laugh, share. Understand that we do things because of the power of the Life Stage we are living working through our Ego working towards My Best Ego.
Breathe …
Count in – 1,2,3 (deeper breath) …….4..5..6 (breathe into your pelvis) …….7…8…9…… Let the old yield to history and the new reveal you.
Take a moment – take a look – 1 Minute Wilderness: https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/wild-coach.com/902
The thing is the more we focus on the need to forgive, the process of forgiveness, what we need to forgive in ourselves and others we are submerging ourselves in yesterday. Making the past the focus. We are walking backwards while trying to get on the bus to the future. That can make a lot of unnecessary work for others. Others need to know that they are forgiven or we forgive ourselves without reliving the whole incident. It’s painful to poke old scars and opens healed wounds. A more fruitful focus is what we learned about ourselves, others, doing stupid things and how life stages can make something seem vital to us in the moment. Exhibit that you have learned by what you do. Let them hear it in your decision making. Let them see it in your eyes when you ask a question then shut up to listen.
Elevate. Find a reason for what you do. Adhere to that reason. A reason higher, greater than you reveals another aspect of you that is beautifully simple while being enigmatically you. A powerful reason is to be immortal. It was born before you and continues after you are gone. Over the first 18-20 years of life we are being repeatedly handed the baton of self-responsibility. The beliefs and values of those who nurtured us often become ours through osmosis. Updating them makes them yours. And that actually makes our parents so proud, when we take the family baton from them and do better than they did in their day. We carry their admirable qualities of humility, companionship, support, agility, constancy as our inheritance. At the same time we elevate above their downward facing habits, failures and arrogance before their instinct. Elevate above the Ego of the moment letting yourself be pulled up into perception by your reason for action and your desire to see it made real. This power fuels your service.
Service.
Service takes so many forms and expressions. We all know what it means because we have been put into a situation of service having raised children, helped siblings and cared for aging parents.
Parenting is a service industry that we signed up for with no pay but lots of incredibly rewarding moments, feedback, suggestions, arguments, disappointments, complaints and challenges to the ego that are answered with growth. Being a spouse is the same.
None of these service roles include violence. They do include communicating to generate understanding. That’s what this book is about – creating your own avenues of communication, expression, stress relief and Satisfaction. It’s about the you that is emotionally agile enough to offer your spouse support for her Fulfillment without the threat, hint or image of violence: sexual, physical, emotional, psychological using money, guilt or force.
We need to find something in the marriage or realize something about our wife to be of service to. For many reasons. Help others who need help. Service offers our qualities towards making things better. We get Satisfaction of being valued. At the end of the day we are not wanting for Satisfaction and so offer our wife a man that is: peaceful, cooperative and warm.
Service can be: coaching, volunteering to talk with elders or pick up windswept coffee cups in the park or accompany a blind person or cook at a homeless shelter.
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Perception.
Let’s say perception is you thinking outside the box ( the box that men put themselves in); You tapping The New You on the shoulder and asking for advice. It is almost for certain that your life is framed by societal understanding of you as a man. However the misunderstanding of the abilities of a man, especially in relation to a woman, is rampant. This vacuum of value for a man’s nature is not limited to any culture or race or socio-econimic class. We all underestimate the man that you are. It is the man that you have become that won’t let us talk to the real you – the New You. The New You loves perception. The man you actually are responds to the human instinct.
How do we meet this fabulous guy? This perceptive, instinctual dude? How will I recognize him if he is new …?
This seems to be a major reason for using psychedelics. Get past the conscious brain so your creativity creek can tribute into the flow of the river of innovation. Psychedelics, nowadays being used in micro-doses can do the heavy lifting of leapfrogging our mental pathways, negative or creative, to perception, to germinate innovation, enlightenment, possibly forgiveness.
There is a resurgence of psychedelics in behavioural research and bio-hacking.
Some famous and effective bio-hacking personalities are Tim Ferris https://tim.blog, Dave Asprey the Bulltetproof coffee guy https://blog.daveasprey.com/about-dave-asprey/. They are excellent sources of information as a result of using their bodies as guinea pigs, their minds as test tubes, their lives as laboratories. Doing whatever it takes; eating, climbing, swimming, fasting to increase the yield of your body and brain. The guys who do this are bright and brave and I am not going to follow their path.
I would say we are in constant reception of soul micro dosing.
David Bryce Yaden PhD. John Hopkins University is doing great research into what might be termed ‘soul hacking’. That would be another way of talking about the personal religious quest. A study of the Devotional and the daily life in cultures. The book is for academics but the search is for all of us.
If we eschew psychedelics there is a buffet of drugs on the market be that coffee, alcohol, delusion, love, work, money, success, sex and more. It is likely that most if not all the things on this list of activities are not as effective to deliver perception. Perception in this case being about The New You. Who is this New You?! New Me?!
This is a guy that already exists. It is a guy that makes you look good, look smart, on the ball. This guy is fast! Fast at knowing how to join in or to go it alone.
He has the sensitivity to get Satisfaction and let Fulfillment happen.
He uses the past and isn’t used by it.
He isn’t scared of the moment because he has no need to control it. The moment is free and so is he. Free to accept a compliment. Free to stop, smile and tell his wife she smells great.
Willing to see he has changed as he is processed through the succession of life stages. Realizing that his spouse will be similarly changed and it is his task to update himself with her growth. Admire her belief in moving the marriage forward that requires the best of you.
Leverage the future of the New You in negotiation with the Old You.
Scent Of A Woman: “I’ll Show You Out Of Order.”
Excerpt – Men
An excerpt from a book in progress about Satisfaction.
Photo by David Billings on Unsplash
Men: A Declaration
Untangling ourselves from the many demands and distractions of life,
It is the task to remember and to realize …
A Man is a Vibrant Power.
With a Willingness that is Clean.
With an Agility that is True.
He Seeks how to Help and be Helped,
As one of his expressions of Loving and Being Loved.
He insists on finding a way to grow
and bask in the flourishing of others.
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This is you. You know it. You love it. And then life happens. Life Stages contort us. Stress manhandles us. Age changes us. Both husband and wife can feel when this declaration above doesn’t describe the man in their midst.
No big deal really. If he can get his boot in the stirrup to get back in the saddle. If he knows how he can find his power. To do and to be.
A woman loves her nurturing nature. She savours the fulfillment when she can embody her nature. When that nature gets usurped by ‘saving her toxic boyfriend from himself’ then the morass of emotion that ensues is bottomless. The problem is when he can’t find the stirrup, or his power or doesn’t know where he is at.
Man Formula
Man = Control x Dexterity + Purpose
Or
Man = Versatile/The Moment x Love.
Go for it. What is your Man Formula?
Man = ________________________ + ____________________ / __________________
Man = ________________________ x ____________________ + __________________
If you are reading this on a device then in your cell phone put your ideas in notes.
There is no right response. There is you, the moment and the man you want to be.
Is your Man Formula an algorithm for reliable growth or a declaration of predictability?
In the moment whatever is needed of the man for his own Satisfaction or in service to others is the Formula for that moment. And that is a big part of how men can fumble and stumble. This feeling of being lost. The idea they are not valued. Not knowing what they want because things move too fast for their This-is-the-man-I-have-become Mind Set.
Man Cave
Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus written by John Gray in 1992 is a seminal work on relationships. From there we get a concrete identification of the Man Cave.
To hear the man himself take a look at this TedTalk:
The Man Cave of my childhood was my dad in his furnace room. I was born after he had established that dark, hot cramped room as his retreat. There were no windows in that basement emotional hideout. But it did have all kinds of little nooks where you could hide a mickey of whisky. He kept tools and screws, seasonal clothes and various knick knacks collected from trips. He also kept all kinds of sports jerseys and equipment long after it was of use except to act as his personal jailer that wouldn’t let him join the present moment. You had to be very careful if you wanted to get rid of anything from his cave.
There was actually a lot of love he had for being a father that, if he could have grown some emotional agility, could have been repurposed. Instead he spent his time rearranging running shoes and ski boots completely cut off from any sense of togetherness. Imagine if he had received the guidance from his father or other family members about how to deal with the emotional challenge of being a man in the succession of development stages of life. He could have still been the king of his Man Cave – no one was going to take it away. His cave could have been an engine for Satisfaction in him that reverberated through his family. And ignited his interest in the unique way of Satisfaction of others. This scenario is more common than sad. The details are obviously different in every family but the dynamic of a man cave becoming a prison is likely a pandemic.
The Man Cave Function (fill in the blanks) My Man Cave generates in me: _______________________ + _________________________ so I can offer ___________________________ + ________________________ Into my personal and professional life. |
The Man Cave is actually quite varied in its expressions. It can be the convertible he drives 8 times a year and keeps in a storage unit in impeccable condition, the shed out back, the garage that is completely organized, swept and labelled, or the garage that is a wanna be junk shop. Some guys are very efficient at Man Caving – finding Satisfaction in their guy time. Other guys their Man Cave becomes their life. Their Man Caving might be sharing their photos of antique cars or buying and selling baseball cards. It might be drinking beer and looking at his phone.
Does he emerge from his cave and offer a confident man to his spouse in times of marital stress. Or to share the paternal sensitivty to know when his son needs guidance in school, about sex and drugs. Or to clarify the concepts of Male Stack and Female Frixion? If we can’t handle stress or provide sensitivity because we hide in our Man Cave then whatever the cost of our Man Cave – it becomes really expensive.
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Question: The Man Cave has its purpose. It’s a matter of ROI. Is the return on the investment he puts into it worth the human life energy that it soaks up?
The song These Eyes by The Guess Who in 1969 is what can happen if we get swallowed up by our Man Cave or are otherwise unable to communicate with our spouse.
These Eyes
These eyes, cry every night for you
These arms, long to hold you, again
The hurting’s on me yea
But I will never be free, oh my baby no no
Hear it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw8nXCx5qgo
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It’s not that your Man Cave is a bad place. It is a matter of management.
Man Cave can also be seen as an action if the Man Cave is functioning as an aspect of his emotional management leading to Satisfaction. Things like: working late, volunteering, sibling/parent issues, exercise, coaching, professional development, attending church/temple.
Nothing wrong with your unique man cave or your Man Caving routines – as long as you are in charge. See Chapter 7 on Habits. Man Caving process allows a man to breathe, think, process his emotions, organize his stuff and his thoughts whether consciously or not, create new avenues for expression of his unique synthesis of love and of being autonomous.
Autonomous can mean to the man to be in control. Control may be useful but it can become tyrannical. Tyrannical it may appear to be, at first glance, on one’s family members. But really it is limiting the emotional range, spontaneity and willingness of the man.
Man Caving is the natural experience to regroup and then re-engage with family, with life and personal growth challenges.
Man Caving is the process of a Satisfaction craving creature getting what he needs at his speed.
Man Caving can be cool and rewarding and stress relieving but it is not an end unto itself. The world keeps rolling while we are man caving. The point is to re-integrate with renewed energy to seek and create opportunities to offer love and be of service. Service can be telling a hilarious story from work, taking out the garbage, asking your daughter what she finds interesting about studying chemistry. Being of service to others delivers Satisfaction to you. As a result you can offer a man at peace willing to love and be loved. Checkout this post:
https://wild-coach.com/2019/05/17/10-things-a-young-man-needs-to-to-hear-from-a-man/
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Reflection:
What conversation would shed light on the path of repurposing some of my Man Caving towards Satisfaction so I can offer my family the real me?
Take a few minutes to watch this brief nature video as you reflect on your conversation:
https://wild-coach.com/2020/04/10/1-minute-wilderness-clouds/
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We may use our Man Cave because we just had an argument, need some space and want some autonomy. Or from boredom of being at home and everyone is doing their own screen time on a phone or laptop. We may go Man Caving out of habit: after dinner, load the dishwasher, kids do their homework while pretending not to peek at their cell phone, wife reading beside kids so you go to the garage to clean the car and organize your tools. What is the residue from our cave time?
When a man, or the man and woman can’t extract the necessary value out of the Man Cave experience then he feels incomplete, lost; can be irritable and fragile. Let’s avoid blame and find a way to communicate.
What he likely won’t say with words is that he lacks confidence. Success begets success. However the change process from lack of confidence, that semi-consciously expects failure, to a good attitude with resilience and resourcefulness can be challenging. A fragile man lashes out at others who are trying to germinate little successes in him. Even a man not so fragile thinks he is seen as incompetent because he can’t see that getting help is natural. That needing help is normal. Accepting help is smart and being grateful for help is very becoming of a gentleman.
Mind Sprouts:
Mind Sprouts are opportunities to use your Focus and Belief to grow mental pathways.
I am not wrong because change is constant and cannot be controlled.
I am not being made wrong because my family asks more from me based on their beliefs in my ability to grow.
I am not a bad man because I am being tasked to elevate my understanding.
Where are there five minutes in myday to think about elevating my understanding?
Let’s Remember:
We are all responsible for our emotions.
‘no man is an island’
Share without counting the cost.
Forgiveness is a by-product of your energy being refocused on growing.
Let go of yesterday; Grab the Now and Point it up at your Future.
Say/Think/Write:
As a way to generate Emotional Self-Responsibility – what are your thoughts today:
I am proud of me as as man because __________________________________.
I get disappointed with myself when I __________________________________.
I get frustrated with myself because I can’t understand my wife.
I can laugh at myself when I _________________________________________.
I feel Satisfied because I did my morning exercises before going to work.
I feel ____________________________________________________________.
I have settled into mid life somehow. I think it has something to do with when I can sit out on the porch early on Saturday mornings. It seems to bring me some kind of peace. It’s like a meditation watching the birds and the squirrels and the trees.
I have a little ritual that brings me ____________________________________________.
Nothing Personal:
This Satisfactioning is life long work. Each man is a work in progress – each day. Which says over time, your Art and Skill of Satisfaction will become part of your Personal Religion. Whatever that means and whatever that looks like.
The Mother Of All AI
Did you see Ocean’s 8?
It just came out on Netflix. Sandra Bullock leads a group of women on an intricately planned jewelry heist. It’s a fun movie. At one point they use a 3-D printer to reproduce a famous statue in miniature. Amazing!
We’ve seen this before.
Technological developments like the invention of the car, the phone, the computer. These inventions are a life disruption whether that be good or bad. Whether it brings us money or surrounds us with charlatans.
AI (Artificial Intelligence) has arrived and is gaining a ton of momentum. In part because many of the innovations are useful for people. 3-D printers can manufacture human organs apparently! Just last year a human heart was printed. And then there are the results in money saving efficiency for companies. Investors are always looking for the next big thing to throw lots of money at so that creates lots of buzz.
A simplified definition of AI in one word is: resources. AI is powered by algorithms. Algorithms are written by people and then evolve to become self regulating. Algorithms can learn to teach themselves to get better at getting resources. These resources are called data. So AI is powered by algorithms that eat data for breakfast, lunch and dinner. This has become known as Big Data. It is huge!
So big in fact companies like Facebook etc. need massive data centres to store and manage all the info about you and your neighbours shopping habits. These data centres need lots of energy to keep from over heating. AI is useful but there is definitely a behind the scenes cost the planet is paying for our need to keep our data cool.
Speaking of algorithms there is one that has been around since before Amazon, before Facebook, before hotels.com.
And you are it’s data
Center:)
Your soul.
Your soul needs you. Your habits, routines and rituals. The more you can refine these three resource management processes the more you are synthesizing your soul with your life. The more you can resist the big data shareholder mentality.
Facebook is a monster. A many tentacled beast that gorges on ‘likes’ and boredom.
Get a life. A Soul life. A higher soul life.
Read a book. Yes! You can order it on Amazon. Orrrr, you can get it from the library. Borrowing books from friends is a good way to have a problem:)
Or to generate your soul life connect with nature – plant some veggies, share a walk in the park, hike in the forest, go barefoot, …. breathe….
The planet is the mother of all AI – Authentic Intelligence – nothing artificial there.
AI is not the enemy.
Lack of purpose is.
Man Cave
Man cave.
What is in it? Cozy? Messy? Big enough just for one? Does it have 2 wheels?
Photo by Gijs Coolen on Unsplash
Where is it? Does anyone else even know it exists? What do you do there (besides whatever you want)? Is it social or for healing? Do you connect your today with the previous and future you?
Photo by Alex Azabache on Unsplash
How does it relate to your comfort zone? Is it an escape or reinforcement?
Is life for doing and your cave for being? is it the shed out back, a canoe from your teenage years, yoga, the barbecue (in January!)?
Can you make your man cave mobile so you never have to retreat from life or your marriage? So you can stay and figure things out through conversation.
Photo by Matthew LeJune on Unsplash
If you have a Man Cave that helps you regroup for a better tomorrow does that make you a cave man?
The Wild Coach 