The Seesaw

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who said ‘ok’ to the playground bully when he said, ‘Hey jump on’ to the other seat of the painted green wooden playground seesaw.

This playground in front of the winter outdoor hockey rink (and summer tennis courts) also had the big swings that were awesome; you could pump your legs to swing so high. And then jump off at the peak of your follow through which was a good 15 feet above the ground. Way outta control!

There was the long metal slide that heated up to burning hot in the July afternoon sun. You couldn’t slide down without a serious leg burn.

So on this day the local buffoon convinced me to participate and now I am up in the air as he lifts his seat and bashes it back to the ground. This sends me flailing a foot above my seat. I hold onto the metal handle with all my ten year old might.

He laughs the asshole. He loves it. Again he bashes his seat down punctuated by his villainous cackle. Again my legs fly into the air. I’m bucking this green wooden bronco and wondering how to jump off as it looks like he is not going to let me off.

Likewise the seesaw in relationships can generate a variety of emotions from elated to enraged. I am sure you know what I mean.

Let’s look at the fulcrum which is the part in the middle that is the balance point between the two extremes. According to the little drawing above one side is ‘Self’ and the other being ‘Love’ in our relationship seesaw.

Too much self at the expense of love means a person is in a relationship for personal gain. To feel loved with out offering love in return. Another imbalance is when we don’t love ourselves enough and submit our fulfillment to the satisfaction of our partner.

Somewhere in between the two is an ongoing sensitivity of give and take that looks to somehow feed both at the same time. So make yourself loveable and therefore, in your own way, attract love. Without negating this love you attract, your art is to seek out how to love another for the person they want to be.

The Intensity

My parents never gave me the sex talk. I don’t know if it would have made much of a difference. There is so much happening in puberty it can be tough to have an impact on the teenage reality. Nowadays in middle age I can probably listen better and could use some of that conversation.

Photo by Aiman Zenn on Unsplash

We can all use companionship going from the intensity of puberty and youth, through the adventure of young manhood to the intensity of an adult. The intensity of being an adult is to discover how to live with purpose. Purpose can be elusive in middle and old age.

Not being able to connect with some sense of purpose creates in a man anxiety and is an invitation to look into the abyss. That is why it is important for generations of men to speak to one another about: individual purpose, spiritual currency, functions of the soul, stages in life, emotional responsibility.

Individual Purpose – The combination of soul – spirit – mind- genes in each of us is unique. We all have a different purpose according to the planet and our destiny. Comparisons are futile. The point is to offer clean emotional residue to others and the planet as a result of dealing with the opportunities to grow as a human. This residue will have an impact on all aspects of your daily and soul life.

Spiritual Currency – Energy powers our brains, hearts, thoughts, hopes and beliefs. There are different types and levels of this energy. There is energy for: the physical body, mental processes, emotional sustenance and participating in high soul activity. Higher emotional powers are the ones that, when we don’t understand them, can contribute to a sense of being lost and lack of connection to our stage in life. Whereas when we do develop a higher emotional life of service we live with a sense of peace.

Stages in Life – Life changes us. You have a scar on your chin you didn’t have when you were 10 years old. You have habits you formed in your youth and goals you established as a young man. Over time we grow into another stage of life. Each stage has its new highlights and emerging capabilities. Often times from lack of understanding we experience emotional and physical changes (puberty, mid-life, children, marriage, the urge to find meaning…) as burdens or defects. Not true. They are challenges to put yourself out there. To create your own Satisfaction. To share Your Best Ego. Don’t limit yourself.

Functions of the Soul – The soul is employee of the month – every month of every year. The soul is reliable and always in the moment. Never yearning for the good old days or dreading its future. The soul takes the energy we connect it to and gets the most out of it.

Emotional Responsibility- With changes in each life stage we often don’t know what we are doing. This can cause us to perhaps blame others. Saying for example we never wanted to change, or we resist new people or situations because indeed they might open the door to a new you. This new you might leave behind old friends or introduce different vocabulary to your decision making.

The new you takes responsibility for how he feels. That can help to find a higher purpose that is a natural response to that intensity of middle age.

The Female Frixion Series – 3 – Emotional Acoustics

Emotional Acoustics

Rodrigo yelled.

‘Hey! Leave me alone.’

Then came the answer. Rodrigo was 8 and yelling into the valley.

Hey leave me alone – the valley copies him.

Don’t copy me!!- Rodrigo yells and turns his back on the valley. He’s a funny, smart 8.

2 long seconds later –

Don’t copy me.

Amazing fealty for an echo. It is Instagram before Instagram: a brief recording of the moment and then it is gone. I guess it’s a combination of the low valley architecture furnished in green with pine trees and sloping hills.

We caught on to what Rodrigo was doing – it gave us a good laugh.

The power of our echo is amazing. The impact the rebounding of our words and actions have in the lives of others.

This duration and the degree of the echo are always a product of one’s emotions.

The more invested we are in the other person the greater the duration of the echo. That can work both ways.

Combine that with the intention of the person plus the context and the echo could provide an uplifting harmony or a deafening noise puke.

Why?

We, men and women, are governed by the need of being loved and loving someone else.

How do the results of the Female Frixion rebound off the walls of love of her spouse? It is the acoustics of his sense of value for himself. That value can be anchored in his family, in how he takes care of his tools, his income, what people think of his wife. His value can also be self generated – so that way it is associated with higher connection (in contrast to external value that is dependent upon likeability). His self value in conjunction with his male instinct determine the harmonies he hears between the 3 roles of his wife.

So when communicating the Female Frixion to her partner she will will feel received, understood and appreciated. Or if the man doesn’t grasp the concept of Female Frixion, the woman eddies in the river of communication, then he will substitute something else as his understanding of her message although it is inaccurate. And that will be the basis of his decision making about her from then on. Commonly labeled: happy wife – happy life. Or it can get adversarial between people and the Female Frixion is cemented as a 3 headed monster that is apparently the source of all marital issues.

Or with self-Love in both people it can be cultivated into

A tricycle of love.

There are no short cuts between you and the truth. Whether that be you and not feeling alone (short cut is to find someone not your wife);

Feeling disconnected with manhood in midlife (short cuts include but not limited to, drugs/alcohol).

Feeling loved and loving. (Short cuts too many to list but they all boil down to abandoning yourself as a man.) You have to do the work.

You can be smart about what you are struggling with. This means elevate your emotional agility to attract perception about how to struggle better, struggle happy, struggle together.

What Is True Because Of You – 4 – High Heals

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Photo by Sarah Cervantes on Unsplash

I saw a documentary years ago about women boxers.

Some women who go to the gym and learn to punch for self protection. Then there are those women who are professional boxers that live and train to fight.

And then there were the women that were the focus of this film. They are mothers and wives who have a full life and a full time job. And they box. They get into it for personal motivations that are part of their story.

I remember the single mother, let’s call her Suzie, being interviewed as she put her kit in the back of the car. Late 30’s, 2 children, at least 1 ex-husband, very cheerful. And she hits other women. For exercise!

I can imagine that it functions as therapy. So can shopping. And unless it is Black Friday nobody hits anyone.

So the stress release involved in boxing that Suzie feels is quite clear to see. The training required puts her into great shape. The adrenaline and associated hormones of landing a nice right hook help to feed part of her female life. So actually there is a lot of upside. As long as you don’t get knocked out.

Is that it? What else does she get out of it?

Doesn’t her body pay a price? They do have to wear protective head gear etc. Doesn’t it hurt? Yes. And without being sadistic, that’s part of the motivation. Part.

When you get hurt your body takes over the healing process. Without delay or excuses, with precision and efficiency: It is how the human body loves.

Even between rounds the body of a boxer starts to heal. Healing is miraculous and beautiful. And it feels good.

Suzie wants to feel good. Remember she is cheerful. With all of life’s challenges she has turned out to be a happy, middle-aged single mom (who you don’t want to fight over a parking spot):)

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Photo by Sarah Cervantes on Unsplash

When healing the white blood cells protect a wound from infection. They also produce chemical messengers called growth factors that help repair wounds.

Dopamine helps regulate new blood vessel creation in the healing process of skin wounds. More wounds = more dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical in the brain that causes you to feel good.

Natural ways to generate dopamine are: exercise, meditation, sleep and certain foods to name a few. Destructive ways to generate dopamine are: alcohol , drugs and related poor lifestyle habits.

Dopamine can help us heal and also be a factor in cementing a habit. Whatever that habit might be: Smoking, drinking, boxing or getting hit by your boyfriend.

The hitting part hurts your face and damages your self esteem but the dopamine connects the whole process with getting better. So some people end up using cocaine to get the dopamine.

Some women don’t leave the violent boyfriend so they can get hit again to get the feel good of healing dopamine.

Here is a crazy idea – that part of the difficulty of women to leave an abusive relationship is because, mixed up with their level of self respect, they kind of want the next fix of a neurotransmitter released in the healing process?

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Photo by Chris Ensey on Unsplash

Healing feels good. As it should – with all the goodies the body is generating. Don’t make healing from violence your source of feel good.

Instead …

Find something that pulls you up into Your Best Ego. Could be dancing, cooking, organizing, being a good mother, forgiving, inviting someone, highlighting someone else’s good trait in a difficult situation or having a connection moment with nature. Your Best Ego is you choosing for yourself how to live. Your Best Ego includes people that bring respect. Your Best Ego is at a level of energy that generates healthy sources of happiness. Your Best Ego seeks value to keep growing.

Be like your body and bring the growth factor; be the growth factor.

High heals.

It is true.

Is it true for you?

What Is True Because Of You – 2 – Standards Are Important

Kurt Vonnegut advised to ‘Start as close as close to the end as possible’.

The American writer had 8 Rules For Writing. Gems of guidance for creating an interesting story. The above is #5.

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Rules for Writing

Vonnegut’s writing put humanity on display – and it often wasn’t pretty.

Perhaps he was lazy. The closer you start to the end – the shorter the journey so the less you need to write. Perhaps starting close to the end is a story design method so the writer stays true to the intention of the story.

Each conversation is a story. Even if that conversation in a dark 30 seconds on a downtown street is between strangers, full of swearing, worrisome and in full public view. What happened was this big and tall guy darted in front of two walking women (mother and daughter) and ‘BOO!!’ he yells out of nowhere. The daughter screams back; her mother said don’t. Daughter pursued him down the sidewalk to share her fright but he wasn’t interested. He already got what he wanted and wasn’t about to listen. His sudden scare manoeuvre works to steal some good energy. In this case: Female energy; high potency anger energy; the beautiful energy of being the focus of the ‘conversation’. All of this makes him feel important and makes up for a lack of relationship in his life.

Dirty business tactics on his part. The business of energy management –

we are all in the same business of energy: give and take, diminish and elevate.

The big, tall guy on the dark, downtown street was using guerrilla tactics. And he started quite close to the end of the intention of his story – which was to steal good energy. It only took him seconds. End of story. For him.

Does that mean he is good at what he does; steal? Or that he has no art? No energy art.

What about the others in the conversation?

Still recovering from the disturbing encounter the mother was coaching her adult daughter as they resumed their journey. The residue on the daughter from the experience is anger. Next time ‘listen to your mother’.

And if her mother isn’t there next time then the daughter would do well to activate her strength of resistance. Meaning make the continuance of her life ( like the walking conversation with her mother) more important than a grown man who is blind to his own value (due to self esteem or illness).

Resist the low. Adhere to the high. You are important. Standards are important.

So, tonight when you lay your head down – wonder – ‘what is true because of you?’

What do you want to be true because of you? This is like Vonnegut telling his students to start as close to the end as possible. If you have a good day what is the energetic residue? If you have a bad day, what is the energetic residue? If you are alone? If you are accompanied?

Close your eyes and know:

Because of you there is a marriage with a sense of loving and being loved;

Because of you a woman has no fear of violence in her marriage.

Because of you a colleague knows they are valued.

Because of you nature spirits flourish.

Because of you …

Life will jump in front of you and scream ‘BOO!’ now and again. When it does, resist the low. Maintain your standards that seek the good.

The Angry Young Men Series – 9 – Their Youth and Future

Angry young men are angry because their youth and future have been tarnished by lack of vision

by weak elders who know fear, greed, recklessness with respect to the planet and a paucity of Belief in a man.

Young men will hit each other including the closest loved one within striking distance.

Be it their mother or sister, girlfriend or wife.

Because they can’t handle life right now, in the moment. Life can get to be too much of not having enough. Too much of not being enough. It’s frustrating. It’s demoralizing. So It takes balls to not succumb to the forces of diminishment – and to want discover want kind of man you are – when the people in charge of the world have run it into the ground.

Thank God a new story is being written by elders-in-training who are:

Forgiving and then immediately use that conversation to take the reins of their emotions to support their mission;

Doing the personal development work to understand the many currents of daily and devotional life;

Elevating the conversations about intricacies and complications of the intertwining of relationships with life stages;

Insisting we appreciate that the planet unto herself is on a development journey called evolution.

And that all of these are powered by potent, far reaching forces. Forces that are received,

translated and shared when we refine and simplify our needs and rituals to ‘love and be loved’.

They Don’t Understand Women – AYM4

How young men end up being angry young men and probably violent even though they don’t want to be.

A man by design is an authentic, brave, believing expression of the man version of human.

Alas, what you meet on the street or get into an elevator with is likely an insecure jumble of random goals, half baked intentions and unrealistic self-help affirmations.

Regardless of his facade many a man is a cocktail of doubt and aggression. In many of us men this seamlessly translates into very little self-confidence to access our natural emotional agility to be able to listen. We can listen. We listen to deliver satisfaction. However if the person speaking seeks fulfillment, instead of getting either satisfaction or fulfillment, we have conflict.

Men are great at one thing: being men. The art of Being a man is doing that one thing to get many results. Like going to work pays you money but also brings you satisfaction, admiration from your family, peace for spouse/children and life education for challenges ahead.

Society’s life education about men and women is lacking to the point of being harmful. Therefore the level of man in the world today is low when compared to our abilities and innate sentiments.

It is exactly these beautiful emotions a man has for those who surround him that he needs to shine on himself. That way each man can be his own salvation or inspiration or …

Now because women are naturally different they very often arrive at certain insights via different avenues before a man does. Women might assume that men will, and should, have complimentary insights.

Our history of interpersonal conflict illustrates that men don’t work like that at a societal level. We can create a new narrative for men.

A man connected to his natural spontaneity, vision and get-up-and-go will have put himself in the position to observe the similarities with women in the desire to grow and the differences in their expressions.

GO YAW!

Go Yaw.

George Gurdjieff the mystic and spiritual teacher spoke about universal forces and principles. One very simple yet powerful concept is that of pitch and yaw. Pitch is the thrusting outward force and yaw the receptive energy. Here it is easy for an overlay to be seen with the yin yang understandings. I like to think the word Yoga had a little hint or message right there in the short 4 letters of the word. It is asking us, maybe telling us to – go ya. In other words right there in the name is the essence of the discipline: go yaw. We are being asked to do the work of the poses and stretches in order to set us up to receive.

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Photo by Katee Lue on Unsplash

So in class we do the movements and breathing to get to a point where you can receive, as in yaw, after the pitching nature of your movements.

As in any Martial Art the original purpose of yoga is to create oneself as a a node of connection between higher and foundational energies. Practice over time produces self knowledge. This in turn results in personal growth so one can better manage daily life to be able to participate in elevating self knowledge.

Yoga is amazing. After a class I feel my body on a subtle hum and my mind at peace (read I carry less internal friction based in the whims of the day).

The breathing, the stretching, the speeds all combine under the guidance of a teacher who lands us in shavasana (lying down ‘corpse pose’ that can be followed by seated meditation). This puts me in a place of readiness to offer high quality stillness to connect with higher realms of perception.

So go ya(w)!

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Photo by Daniel Mingook Kim on Unsplash

10 Things a young man needs to to hear from a man.

Photo by Tuce on Unsplash

10 things a young man needs to to hear from a man. Always Be growing. Be curious about how to combine these 10 things to make you a generator of confidence and humility.

You are a vibrant power. This a seed of wisdom that should bother a young man. To grasp how it applies to him and be able to spot it in others. The trajectory of a man is seen in his ability to grow due the compounding interest of belief and accomplishment. Many things will try to deviate a man from that trajectory. So what is stronger ? Deviation or belief?
Do the work to be emotionally agile not fragile. This one is so important to teach by example. The work can be analogous to juggling. If you focus on one ball then all of them will fall. To take it up a level you use your peripheral vision to manage the task at hand. What is being asked is to be able to have long term vision while still managing the present.
Define strength: mentally, physically, emotionally – as a man; find out what it is for a woman. What is your formula for strength in each case: Emotional Strength = _________ + ____________ Use your strengths to highlight them in others.
Decide what you want the residue of your decision making to be – belief, respect…
Love yourself. This will sound cheesy to a young person because their identity branding takes importance over most things. Still, this simple yet deep concept has many expressions into our lives. All of them are springboards for growing. Starting with your Ego. Elevate it to Your Best Ego; Accompanying your Soul we develop our participation in the Higher Soul. Then there can be talk of the universal spirit…
Always be generating. Generate your own reason for what you’re doing. This makes you the author of your own story so you aren’t at the mercy of someone else’s laziness. Be clean.
Connect with nature: breathe/5 senses, rejuvenate, exercise, ground, appreciate, marvel. Make nature your man cave. Use the peace in the moment and the power of nature to visualize you: healthy, successful, happy, spontaneous, loved, loving, agile (see #2), …
Frame your journey to make sense of how to manage the competing interests for your attention. Have a way to process what happens to you in various stages of life. This really helps when dealing with stress to understand what is impacting us so we can take responsibility for it. This is a proactive measure to rise above violence against women.
Understand how to understand women. If you don’t know how to access your abilities and insist on dwelling in the lower levels of energy you will end up ignoring what she asks you to do. At the maintenance level you can do what she asks you to do. At the perception level you can ask yourself what she would want and do it.
Be of service. Find people who don’t count the cost. Read the books they read.
Goetz Heinen on Unsplash

Be The Man

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My wife and I finally went to that restaurant we had been meaning to go to for maybe a year. It is in a neighbourhood where we don’t shop or go to often. Returning from the bathroom I looked up over the doorway to the dining room and saw that famous quote attributed to Gandhi – ‘be the change you want to see in the world’. Well, yes, yes, yes. I agree. I need to hear that and follow through on that everyday. Now, I am adjusting that sentiment slightly – ‘be the man you want to meet in the world’.

Angry young men are angry young men for a reason. In part they are angry because after puberty we all receive and process more higher energy. The higher energy has more potency than we are used to receiving so if you don’t know how to deal with this new energy potency then it can be dangerous. Imagine you park your Prius outside your home at night and wake up to see a Lamborghini in your parking spot. You simply are not used to the power at your finger tips. You don’t know how to direct the abundance of potential at your disposal. It is this same influx of life force that make young men feel invincible. This can mean there are no second thoughts to drink and drive or do drugs or have unprotected sex or vandalize or be a bully. Why do all those activities if they aren’t productive? Well – to a young man that isn’t the point.

It is important to clarify here that it is crucial to get out there and have as much fun as possible. Have a party, travel, take your selfies. It is, however, not fun if someone else pays for the diversion. That means your inner religious life shouldn’t be sacrificed by you being a slave to social media or other ego based pursuits. Leave some time and energy to investigate your inner life. Leave some energy for patience (as in patience for you to understand) to understand women because they are not men.

Men generate violence because they don’t create other options.

Get patient:) Get creative! Get spontaneous!!

So why is bullying or vandalism so attractive to a young man? The young, unaware men are just using up the energy they wake up with each day. In fact if they don’t use it up then it gets bottled up and the result can be much worse. Just think of the ‘incel’. The involuntary celibate = incel. Guys who struggle socially so they sit at their computer hating women. These guys don’t understand what to do for themselves so they hate. An easy target for their hate is women. These guys actually don’t hate women. They don’t know what to do to get happy, to be accepted or who to talk to who can meet them where they are at in life and help them grow. Hate is not a good use of young man energy.

Our formal Faiths that are practiced in temples and churches are failing young men. Men need tools for maximizing their daily energy and their elevated energy. Because our society generates few real resources for higher energy focus this very potent force gets squeezed into the quotidian confines of looking for a (better)job, looking for a (better)life partner and figuring out how to look cool and make money.

Photo by Cassandra Hamer on Unsplash

We need relevant steps and tools for the spiritual aspect of life. (Check out other Wild Coach posts)

We as a society do not give our young men the references needed to understand this force that wants to convert him into a vibrant power. We do not provide inspiring opportunities for men to express themselves and figure things out. We provide the internet and floundering faiths. They need a scale of stuff to do and a reason for it so they can bridge intensity of youth into intention of life.

We as men cannot continue making women pay for our ignorance of what a man is and the stages he goes through in life. We need to know what those stages are asking of a man so he can respond and feel accomplished. So he can offer not just a bruised or inflated ego but also emotional agility instead of fragility!

Look up, breathe, smile and be the man you want to meet in the mirror, in the world.

The Conflict of the 3 lives Vs Man Dealing

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In the hit movie Crazy Rich Asians the mother of the protagonist is Eleanor Young played by Michelle Yeoh. She plays the part with icy precision. She tells her son Nick’s latest girlfriend Rachel that a woman does not follow her personal passion at the expense of her family duty. That comment encapsulates the conflict that women have to deal with. The task of prioritizing and investing energy and time in one aspect of their life at the expense of others. Specifically being looked at here are three aspects of our life: the adventure life, the professional life and the maternal life.

Now men have their paternal life that they have also to balance with the satisfaction of their professional and emotional lives. A man’s life can be rich, deep and layered (not that guys ever talk about it). However it seems that the internal management of these three lives does not incur the same degree of internal conflict as it does in a woman. That is not to say that men are better at personal life management because we all know that isn’t true. There are many a man out there who is lost inside himself and would be lost in his daily life if a woman (mother, girlfriend, sister, or his partner) did not keep him on track with a progression of simple life hacks.

It is not that hard to see how this difference between men and women can then lead to conflict between them. Men often can’t grasp how these same three categories of daily life instigate so much drama in a woman. For the man there is no conflict between these lives. They are to be prioritized and dealt with. Welcome to ‘Man Dealing’.

An expression of Man Dealing can be that he understands, in the moment, that his wife needs what she needs. Whether it be a massage, arrive home to a clean house or to jump in her car and see someone filled the car with gas so she doesn’t have to stand out there in the wind of a blowing cold, dark January morning for five minutes filling the thing up. The uncomplicated way of Man Dealing can be useful and efficient. Not to mention a huge relief so a woman doesn’t have to ask for things or explain why she wants them.

On the other hand the cold satisfaction of Man Dealing can be a massive frustration for women and has no doubt played a part in many an argument. This can involve him getting angry, fed up, frustrated from his lack of understanding of these three life currents. A woman feels these currents as three distinct tributaries flowing into a greater river. A man sees one river, feels one river and makes decisions based on that river. And that is why, at least inside the man, there is no conflict. So, according to him, there is nothing to talk about . Its pretty straightforward.

These life currents have different implications for a woman. Having children does not impact a man and woman in the same way: physically, psychologically and in terms of the Satisfaction and Fulfillment experience (see my article on Satisfaction and Fulfillment on The Wild Coach blog). With the hope/expectancy/preparation of having children means the Professional life of a woman will almost certainly be on hiatus, stop or change. Having a child or children quite possibly translates into less of an adventure life. Adventure can mean romance, travel, active social life, independence. Having a family is a nuclear reaction in a woman’s maternal life.

So for women it is a conflict that is not a problem. However many a problem has been born from the poor management of this reality by both men and women. There is no female deficiency or lack of feminine perception. Communication is a two way street.

nikolas-noonan-682177-unsplash Photo by Nikolas Noonan on Unsplash